Stack, breach, clear. There was a rhythm to the close quarters fighting that COMPFORCE troopers were not terribly familiar with but Jenk Beskad was; he'd been in the fighting in Lorya, on Uslam, that was street to street and building to building, holding to cover the evacuation of key leadership and people. 

He managed to get on one of the last transports out with fellow Uslamer troopers that made it too.

His squad wasn't all Uslam, but they had enough veterans of the siege that the knowledge was trained into the replacements. But the way the Rebellion was going, he wasn't sure there'd be any Uslamers left in the Uslam Liberators by the time it was done. Every operation, no matter how well-planned it was, resulted in risks that took one more of their comrades away and replaced them with a new face. The Rebellion's recruits had the hearts of nexu tigers, but did not know enough, and there wasn't enough time to get them ready, if there ever was a way to make someone truly ready for war and all its encompassing horrors.

The most worrying replacement, however, was Lieutenant Grann Ulgo, an Alderaanian. Besk couldn't fault that the man tried and might grow into the role despite being a Core Worlder from "a planet where peace and beauty are common preoccupations," but the man wanted to be in the breach team when he probably should have been helping keep the perimeter. There was a time and a place for "Lead from the Front" and this operation was not it. Ulgo wasn't as bad as ex-Imperial officers who often looked at the Liberators and cringed a bit, because they were used to the crisp paradeground and propaganda-vid appearance of the Imperial Forces, which were positioned as a visual prop to the regime's terror -- Stormtroopers in white, walker vehicles, a mass of indomitable force. All the same, he was green.

He should have let the veterans lead the breach. He got a smoking hole in his chest. The man behind him got the trooper that did it, but the damage was done. Besk got down on a knee, when it was his turn in, as the others moved to secure the first section of interior, slowly and deliberately. He checked the man to see if he was still alive, which meant that he'd need treatment, or if he was dead. Then, establishing that he was killed, moved him aside so they could collect him later.

There wasn't much sentiment in it; the young man's eyes stared up into nothing. The next room in the facility was up, and his squad was already preparing to enter. They could see the sparks from a torch on the other side. Someone was trying to seal it. Besk glanced at the tell-tale sign and then nodded to another trooper, who placed an explosive charge on the door. They'd brought plenty of those. With the charge placed and less than half a minute to the explosion, the Rebels fell back. 

The charge went off, the door was blown off its guide-rails, and two grenades went right through like clockwork. When those went off, the squad started to move in, covering corners and looking to make sure anyone left alive didn't get back up. There were a couple of mangled bodies and one screaming officer to show for the effort, but no one was taking chances. A blaster bolt silenced the officer.

Unlike Rebel bases, Imperial facilities had a common layout due to the manufacturing complex behind the Imperial regime; standardization of equipment was an economic measure to drive costs down, which meant that as much as could be pre-fabricated was. That made it easier for Imperial Forces to be familiarized with the layout of a base anywhere. 

It meant that you had a reasonable expectation of what the layout was in a given Imperial facility and knew where to go. Besk's squad wasn't the only one in there, Green was also in the building, tasked with command and control. Besk's job was different; powerplant, engineering. Hard reboot of the power systems to give Intelligence a window during which they could slice through using the command consoles. That meant that they were going down a set of stairs, not trusting a lift.

Meanwhile, they could hear the sound of intensifying combat outside. "Tick Tock" here was "Boom boom." The Liberators needed those fixed defenses and fast.