As Axton and Franken sped off through the caverns and out into the canyon, the immediate area trembled as a gout of fire erupted from behind the player. The craft carrying the rebellious NPCs had begun to take off, and the caves that once were their base were now filled with the blast of the ship’s engines. The ship began to move upwards, propelled by chemical rockets, something that to NPCs would be called an ancient and ordinarily obsolete method.

However, these boosters were what the ship was equipped with, and once that craft reached the appropriate position it would ditch those things and transition to more modern (by in-game standards) propulsion. As Axton had suspected, the Andromedan transports could not power up in time to meet the fleeing people, and they and the now-former mayor were forced to watch as the large civilian transport vessel screamed through the sky and out beyond the planet’s atmosphere.

The ship jettisoned its boosters and began to switch over to the standard method of propulsion, which allowed it to move beyond the majority of the colony world’s gravity well before shifting to its FTL drive and popping out of the system.

Yes, that’s right; FTL drives in-game made a popping sound when used. Imagine the sound of TFS Goku’s instant transmission, and you’ll get roughly the right sound.

Regardless of the devs’ curious choice of sound effects, the NPCs that had once called the world home, only to resist and then flee it, were now long gone and the only people left on the world were the Imperial Marauders, Mayor Stebbs, and Axton himself.

…

Stebbs was now royally fucked whether or not he managed to put Axton down, as the target he was given in exchange for his freedom and minimal authority had now gone too far away for him to reach. As you might imagine, this left the bastard with a massive well of hate and rage for the man who, in no small part, was responsible for this turn of events.

As luck would have it, said person was still on-world and was charging towards the compound. He would make damn sure that Axton would never leave this world in anything other than the very chains that he himself would be wearing. Outworlder or not, Axton had still become an enemy of the Andromedan Empire, and as a result, he was now, to them at least, nothing more than an exceptionally fun toy to play with.

Entering his gold-plated War Suit, Stebbs prepared for what he knew would be his final battle. He had been trained on how to use them, but this would be his first time really using one to fight. He knew how to move the thing, how to lift the arms and he knew what each button and switch was for, but he was ultimately unaware of just how sloppy a job his laborers, both paid and not, had done. This would come to be his undoing, but the details of that are destined to be revealed at a later date.

…

“My Master.”

A voice not too dissimilar to an average adult man of around the age of 40-50 years old who suffered from severe asthma came out like a heavy wheezing sound from one of the Imperial Marauders. His acknowledgment of the person whose hologram towered above him was tinged with a subtle undertone of fear, but that hint of fear was muffled by the excessive genetic and cybernetic modifications that had turned him and his fellows into what were essentially nothing more than augmented slave-soldiers.

“Am I to assume that the backwoods hick failed in his assigned task?”

The same female voice that had caused Stebbs to nearly pass out from fear-driven PTSD earlier on sent shivers down the messenger’s spine. He did not want to answer, but he knew that he had to.

“Yes… the pawn has failed to meet your desired results. How shall we proceed?”

The woman on the other end gave a sinister and twisted smile before replying.

“First, my dear little mouse, tell me how badly he fucked up.”

“All of the surviving colonists have escaped the planet and system in a ship that no one seemed to know was even there to begin with. Only one being of their number now remains, an Outworlder, who is charging our position in some kind of patchwork War Suit.”

“Truly…” the woman muttered. “Truly that dog is nothing more than a failure who isn’t worth the air it breathes. Let that mutt use its War Suit to try and regain what little favor it had to begin with, although after it wins you are to send it into oblivion and leave this rock to waste away, devoid of any sentient life.”

“As you command, my glorious Master.”

“Oh, and do let me see exactly what is going on outside. I want this Dark Outworlder to know that he is doomed from the get-go.”

….

In the ship, the Marauder pressed a few buttons and flipped a switch before responding with yet another bit of slavish devotion. Soon thereafter, the hologram cut out and instead manifested as an even larger hologram standing proudly just above one of the transports. The sight of this woman sent those around into a panic, but none were more unnerved than a certain Player was.

Axton looked up at the colossal hologram and nearly lost it. This was not because he thought the woman was beautiful, not by a long shot. This woman was a high-ranking noble in the Empire, and as a result, had gone to many great lengths to keep herself young and fresh.

What had so many people scared and even horrified was the sheer amount of what seemed to be body modifications and poor plastic surgery that the woman apparently had undergone. After looking at the hologram a second time, Axton was left to wonder if the woman was a devotee of a certain Ruinous Power or if what this ungodly hideous woman looked like was legitimately considered to be the standard for which all beauty in-game was judged.

Stifling his upset nerves (and stomach) Axton continued to close the distance and prepared to fight the forces under the command of that 10-kilometer tall hologram.