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“Alpha--Echo. Made entry in subsector twelve. About to make contact with Charlie. Foxtrot right behind us.” Pinned down by an E-Web emplacement and her ears still ringing from her section’s concussion grenade, Johanna couldn’t make out the report from the remaining third of her unit that had just made egress onto the station. However, more than five hundred meters away, an additional thirty shock troopers joined the assault on the aft turbolaser batteries to catch the Sith defenders between two angles of fire. Bryce rapped on the helmet of her adjacent Talon. A violent series of hand signals followed: smoke, suppressing fire, dark. That last gesture was met with a confused frown from the Chiss; Bryce repeated the gesture more emphatically, this time greeted with an exaggerated nod and a countdown of five seconds. The Bespinian took a deep breath and prepared herself for a mad crawl up the corridor… Two smoke grenades rolled up the corridor. A wild-spray of fire issued from the shock troopers, mostly enthusiastic but unaimed fire towards the E-Web position, but a number of carefully aimed bolts struck glowpanels, shrouding the interior of the battlestation in darkness and the meager crimson glow of emergency lamps. Into that crimson haze Johanna dove, a grenade in her left hand and her sidearm in her right. Two of her Talons followed, crawling madly through the smoke and darkness in an attempt to spring up at point-blank range and assault the Sith fortifications. “For Carida!” At this range and in the confines of durasteel-reinforced corridors, the shriek of the concussion grenade was shattering. Johanna only had time to place a gauntleted hand to protect her neck--and then once the little impacts of rubble on her back ceased, she was up and running, only meters away from the ruin of the E-Web blaster. A fallen Sith trooper, sitting against the barricade with both legs bleeding profusely, shakily raised a blaster pistol towards her. Captain Bryce caught the glint of the armor moving in the darkness and felled him with a lucky bolt to the breastplate. Only a second later, she and two of her shock troopers were in the last fortification, punching and stabbing and firing their blasters at point-blank range. Red, both figurative and literal, filled Johanna’s vision. The Twi’lek who had followed her up had drawn her vibromachete and brought it down on the neck of a Sith trooper, spraying the area with rivulets of hot blood. Johanna reeled and dropped to the deck when a blaster round creased her midsection--it burned fiercely, but the bolt struck the plastoid where it was strongest. Her attacker wasn’t quite as lucky--his next two shots whined past where Bryce’s head had been only milliseconds early, whereas her pistol fire struck his shin, knee, then finally his groin. Bryce forced herself under the cover of one of the engineering consoles of the power distribution room. A lifeless, blue arm was twitching just beside her. It was just her and the Twi’lek in the meager salient into this vital facility. “Payload up! Prime and bring it up!” She screamed to her Talons to reinforce her position. Hopefully, they would arrive in the few seconds before the Sith realized that it was just two shock troopers who had broken into their fortification.