The appointed day had finally arrived.

It would only be a matter of in-game hours before Donovan’s gaggle of hedonists and mooks arrived in the system, and after that would come a few scant minutes during which the final preparations could be made before the orbital drop would likely commence. Both sides prepared for what was to come, with one preparing more thoroughly than the other. In a roughly 20-mile area of rough and uneven terrain on that desolate and barren world, the Players and the handful of mercs on Axton’s side waited anxiously for the Imperial raiding force to arrive in orbit.

The moment that the ships that Donovan had command of took up position overhead, the large reactor that had been partially buried underground revved up to full power, and a potent dome shield covered the defenders. This would make an orbital bombardment an exercise in futility, and thus this forced the ships to descend just barely into the atmosphere to allow for an orbital drop to take place.

The seven military transports began to release their drop pods, each containing at least one War Suit or 8 infantry soldiers. The pods screamed through the air, hurtling towards the ground at an absurd speed, but as they fell towards the terrain below, they came under fire from the guns operated by the so-called ‘plebian’ Players and the NPCs left by Daxter. The guns were old, weak ad generally inaccurate, but they made up for that by being both many and having variety in their make and function.

The bigger guns were slow to reload and slow to fire but were more accurate and had a longer effective range than the ones that fired faster. These guns were the ones operated by merc who had seen the most combat and their experience let them either damage or outright destroy a handful of pods. Once the pods began to reach the last third of their journey, their retro thrusters kicked in and began to slow their descent. This left them open for the smaller guns that had higher rates of fire. The amount of lead flying downrange began to increase exponentially, but as these were not larger and more potent round the damage that was inflicted was much less than that of the larger guns.

Still, the plinking damage of dozens of guns hammering away at the drop pods was enough to knock a few of them off course and even damage the retros on a couple of others. However, the number of pods that were coming down was too many to be dealt with in such a way, and the pods began to project an energy field from below themselves. This field allowed them to pass through the shield bubble as if it wasn’t there, and the pods finally landed, and the deep strike was (mostly) a success.

All at once the various dugouts, foxholes, and other fortifications began to train their weapons on the pods and unleashed a withering onslaught towards them. The pods containing infantry could not even open up to unload their cargo without the men within being torn to ribbons by the small arms fire that was hitting them like an incessant deluge, but the pods with War Suits inside of them were a different story altogether. These opened up and their passengers disembarked while returning fire as they took it.

The War Suits piloted by the Empire’s Players were mostly in the Light weight class, which afforded them a degree of maneuverability that heavier mechs would not have. This did, however, mean that their armor was wafer-thin, and as Axton had found out the hard way back in the Beta, a few well-placed shaped charges would be enough to knock one of them out of commission in moments.

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However, the number of shaped-charge weapons was much less than was needed, but the Players and mercs used them regardless. The entire area was filled to near bursting with landmines, pitfalls, and other movement-inhibiting objects and devices, and a few Imperial War Suits were rendered inoperable in mere moments as they stepped on landmines, which in turn left them wide open to being hit with anywhere from 4 to over 10 shaped charge warheads in short succession.

However, the more effective weapons were now quickly running out of ammo and the Imperial War Suits and their Player Pilots were beginning to get used to the trap that they had foolishly sprung. With the initial shock of their predicament having passed, the Imperial War Suits began to lay waste to the meager defenses and allowed their infantry NPCs to finally disembark from their pods.

However, each foxhole they blew up and each dugout that they razed would only stay silent for a short while. Just like the Imperial Japanese had done to many islands in the Pacific Theater of WW2, the year of prep-time had allowed for the dense earth to be carved out. Only flamethrowers, thermobarics, or a concentrated infantry incursion would be able to deal with this, and the fact the main bulk of the enemy that the Imperials faced were Players meant that only a complete wipe was to be enough to destroy the defenders.

But the Imperials did not have the time for that. Soon they were forced to turn their gaze skywards as comms from their raiding fleet filled the air. They could not hold their position and provide support, as the myriad pirate fleets that had gathered and hid in the asteroid belt had made themselves known and were already engaging in boarding actions. The sheer volume of pirate ships meant that the raiding fleet’s defeat was an inevitability, but the crews in those ships were too proud (or too beaten down by their masters) to even begin to contemplate a retreat or surrender.

As the cries of “Death before Dishonor” and “Victory or Oblivion” coming over the Imperial comms began to drop off, the myriad pirate ships detached their umbilicals from the larger and more purpose-made warships. Soon after, the transports and light warships that had brought the attackers to their destination flew off to parts unknown with new masters at the helm. This sent a wave of panic and a wave of joy through the attackers and defenders respectively, and with their ability to flee now gone, the hedonists and their mooks now had all the more reason to increase the effort they put into their offensive.

However, if they thought that they alone could claim to have brought War Suits to the battle, then they were woefully mistaken. As the battle had raged, the final preparations were being made. Unlike the hedonists who worked with Donovan, the Players on this rock who were with Axton had waited an in-game year, and in that time, they had been very, very busy.

Axton had schooled them in the basics of War Suit combat, and now it was time to show the fruits of their education. All over the roughly 20-mile-wide battleground, hatches in the ground, hidden by dirt and dust, popped open and pistons raised platforms up to the surface. The decadent assholes who had come to gank Axton were shocked to discover that they now were facing a roughly equal number of War Suits, all of whom were what the Galaxy had christened ‘Frankensuits’ after the first of their kind.

The ugly machines faced down their more standardized cousins, and the battle entered its third phase.