The barge hits the ground hard, sliding to a stop. Phantom deals with a small group of TIEs that came in, but he is outnumbered, pulling off crazy maneuvers just to stay alive.
Meanwhile, the Mandalorians drop the ramp and prepare to drop. Loading their EE-3 rifles, they drop down with the use of their jetpacks.
The Commando team waits for the barge to get closer to the ground before jumping, landing with some hard combat rolls.
The barge hits the ground and slides. Dagger runs from the cockpit to hop in his headhunter, scrambling through the corridors. Upon reaching his starfighter, he hops in and quickly fires up.
"C'mon....c'mon...we need to get out of here," he says to himself.
R-6 shoots straight over him and sets down gently. The Z-95 Headhunter finally start up as the barge gets hit with a volley of laser fire. Carefully taking off, Dagger flies out of there to join the fight.
Ace gets his headhunter out of there finally, totally not but because he got trapped inside a room when the barge got hit. He joins the fight in the air as well, hungry for targets.
Phantom has taken out a few TIEs, but due to not having a gunner, it's hard for him to do much.
A bomber goes head on with Phantom, whom fires two missiles into it, destroying it. After destroying the bomber, Phantom pulls a hard banking turn to avoid the volley of fire headed for him and sprays some fire at another TIE. Dagger pulls up into the fight and starts tailing a fighter.
"Just like old times, eh Phantom?"
Phantom thinks back, getting nostalgic. Now is not the time for that, he thinks.
"Yeah, old times indeed," he says solemnly.
They continue the fight above as the other teams rush forward.
"How are we going to approach this now?! They'll be waiting for us," Raider says. A sniper bolt comes out of nowhere in front of them, almost clipping Elara. ducking for cover behind some lava rock she says, "carefully. We might be able to flank them but one of us needs to keep them busy."
"And how do you suppose we do that?"
The land is, of course, barren. Wide open with only a couple boulders and divots offered any protection.
"Fly straight up and shoot at them with your rifle. Then I will sprint for the divot just in front of us," Elara explains.
"That's a little risky, but it might work." His modified EE-3 could reach them, but how well would he be able to hold them off?
Meanwhile the commando squad quickly moves forward so they can be ready for when the Mandalorians reach they're point. As they are running however, Sparrow looks ahead and says, "wait, hold on."
The rest of them stop and look to their right to see Raider hovering, firing at the stormtroopers. Elara has run to a divot in the lava rock, popping up to four at the stormtroopers here and there.
"They're not going to make it like that," Vermillion says.
Without having to say anything further, the four of them run in that direction, joing the Mandalorians in their struggle. But because of the lack of cover, the Commandos are out in the open. Thanks to their superior armor though, they are well protected. No E-11 bolt is going to affect them too much. Stormtroopers also can't shoot, so I think they'll be fine. I digress as we get back to it.
The Commandos reach their partners and start lighting up the stormtroopers with their DC-17Ms. They don't have amazing range, so they can't really aim that well due to the stormtroopers being so far away, but they scare the fuck out out of them and get a few lucky hits here and there.
"Rush forward! We have you covered!" Sage yells at the Mandalorians, as he attaches his sniper.
The two Mandalorians rush forward, Raider flying to Elara and lands to run with her. bolts fly past them, having to dodge a few, some bouncing off their beskar armor. Sage snipes a few of before the pair reaches the stormtrooper position, flying up blasting the two directly on front of them.
Elara takes the right, pistol whipping the nearest trooper, blasting the next one behind him, and throwing that one over the edge. Raider goes hand to hand with the troopers, knocking most of them out. The commandos rum forward to join them.
In the sky, the battle continues. Phantom dodges a barage of fire. Snake immobilize it with and ion blast, Dagger flies up behind and blasts it. Ace tails a fighter and causes it to spin out and smash into other fighters. Phantom drops a few more in quick succession with Dagger backing him up. The TIE fighters dwindle as their transmission frequency gets hacked.
"How long do think you can keep this up?" a voice comes over the comms.
"Is that a clone?" Ace sounds over the comms.
"Not uncommon," Phantom says. "Clones make up the first generation of the Imperial Army."
The voice continues, traced from a TIE fighter, "Do think we will just let you go after betraying us Phantom?"
Phantom's eyes go wide in shock under his helmet, fear spreading. He couldn't believe it, could that really be him?
"Niner? Is that you?"
The TIE pilot answers, "oh yeah, it's me. And the rest of Blue Squadron that didn't die from your stunt on the Venator, and we've been waiting for our revenge!"