Odds
The first time Voshno ever visited Ghala, and he was stuck under a tarp. He was a Tengaran country boy all the way through.
Ghala was the jewel of Tengaru, a balmy place where vacationers from other places came to enjoy themselves. For the adventurous, there were the wild lowland jungles and higher, cooler altitudes, but always the trees and the vibrant slashes of wildflowers, in a riotous array of colors as the green was shot through with a dizzying array of shades. Bisecting this greenery were the waterways. The waters were often of crystalline purity in the lakes, which were the size of small seas, though muddier in the jungles themselves. Further up from the equator, the soil turned to clay and the land was still crossed with rivers, estuaries and lakes, where it was more tall grass, rather than lush rainforest.
As a result, Tengaru did not bother with building roads, except in towns and cities. The transport system used what already was there, all that water. That was their highway system.
In better times, Ghala would have beings sipping all sorts of drinks on sidewalks and enjoying the balmy pace of life. But they resisted their occupation strongly and the Empire responded with increasingly harsh measures to protest, which turned into insurgency and moved from the University centers out to the countryside where the farmers and the fishermen became the backbone of the fighting.
But Ghala still had its guerrilla cells, and these were active in the last few days at the behest of an Alliance Intelligence controller that made patient contact with the local organization, not terribly impressed with the conduct of the 43rd Alliance Regiment's lack of urgency about actually fighting the war.
She said the magic words: Iron Masks.
The city-fighters of Ghala were experienced and wary, and had been cadre'd by experienced Tengaran gendarmes and criminals that knew their city. They were able to procure the required equipment and promise their support. Snipers, surveillance, explosives and streetfighters. But they were not the ones that would break into the Sultana's manor.
Teams of guerrillas would hit the position with explosives and high volume heavy blaster fire. The assault would be timed with a volume of fire against Imperial positions and a purloined Imperial vehicle, outfitted as a ram with explosives to crash the compound, which lay by the water. If they could breach, they would. And they would support the rescue team as much as possible. But they expected to be stopped cold, because they were hitting a company of Imperial Storm Troopers.
The real assault element was the rescue team was hidden under a tarp in the bed of an ostensibly civilian vehicle, the sort of speeder truck that saw less use outside of Tengaru's cities than on most planets, but were still commonplace. Five beings in armor with the t-shaped visors, one Twi'lek in a uniform for a food delivery service, making for the delivery dock near the kitchens. Theoretically, they'd get checked if they made it all the way there, but that wasn't the point here.
Voshno did not like jetpacks, but the truth was that no one expected guerrillas to just jump the fence. It was not in Rebel doctrine to use jet packs. And even Resol Squad rarely used them in their months as a lowland jungle raiding unit that inflicted casualties, kidnapped officers and stole equipment, out in the hinterlands, but never really got to use the jetpacks in combat. Surprise doom for the Imperials.
That wasn't the original plan, but Hadaj had to improvise. When the SpecForces task force en route was intercepted by the Empire in a bad luck situation, she found the answer to her 'specialized strike troop' problem, after realizing that Jest wouldn't merely mind losing them, he'd welcome it. And unlike Colonel Jest, when Old Man Resol told her the best way in was with jetpacks, she took the grizzled bounty hunter and mercenary's advice to heart.
The asset inside, GRIEVOUS, had a small group of dedicated infiltrators, locals with well-hidden loyalty to the Sultana, ready to get her into a safe room when they got the signal. That would give them time to prevent an execution and give them the window they needed to clear a way to her. These were palace staff, they would not last long in a fight and these people knew their odds. Without their supreme bravery, there would be no op.
Hadaj had a good plan, that was what Old Man Resol said to his boys. Those people inside were giving their lives, more than likely, to get their ruler to that safe room. Make it count.
Voshno had some residual loyalties to Tengaru and the Rebel Alliance, but he was a Mando Boy now. He knew what this war felt like from the day he found his family's farm done in, he and Grin. His brother died in his arms, a burned out hole in his chest. He was not usually the one that had the battle lust out of the squad, but the anticipation had him shivering a bit in his armor as he waited for the word. The speeder truck glided over the cobblestones of the street, its occupants keeping all suit systems turned down as much as possible so as to not be picked up on a scan. Still, they had macros set in the microcomps they all ran that would bring it all to life with the signal, slaved to Resol's signal.
When the signal chirped, the fire started. Moments later, the tarp was ripped off the truck and the Mandos launched themselves over the fence, coming down with blaster fire and already charging across as the guerrillas soaked up the casualties of engaging the white jobs. All around, there was a world of fire, but that was the world Mando'ade inhabited.
Old Man Resol, who should have been slowing down, showed none of that as he sprinted ahead while others covered, and then covered them as they moved through a sculpted garden with high hedges and stone benches, and into the kitchens of the Manor. Long months of conditioning the Mando way, with assault courses and killhouses, raid after raid after that, sharpened them to the point where even the Barabel moved nearly as fluidly as the Nautolan, as they covered angles. But they generally held fire, because the point wasn't to seek out Imperials to kill, however much as they might want it. They only engaged the ones that spotted them, staying on the move.
That didn't mean a stormtrooper or two didn't get in the way, but they were mowed down with volume of fire. There were Tengaran Royal Guard, but that corps had been purged of loyalists. The ones that got in the way were subject to the same treatment by the insurgents out there, some of whom were former members of that corps as well -- they'd briefed the snipers well on how to identify the officers, which added to the confusion as beings screamed out. The smuggled-in firepower, repeating blasters, E-webs and other, allowed the guerrillas that few minutes or so of superior firepower before the Imperials could mobilize true fire support.
Those guerrillas also knew their odds. They were engaging the Imperials in a stand up fight in Ghala, something they avoided for a long time, because they reckoned the prize worth it. They were buying Resol a way in and would pay the price; time favored the Empire.
Resol Squad had nav waypoints to work off of that would show them primary, alternate and tertiary routes to the safe room. They could hear the blaster fire and grenades echoing in the jasper-veined stone corridors of the Sultana's residence, and that was where they were headed. The staff not in on the caper took one look at the armored forms of Mandalorian warriors and didn't stop to think, "How did that happen?" but instead opted for the instinctive response. Confronted by armored, heavily armed warriors, they got out of the kriffing way.
