The year is 5190u. While Union busies itself with waging a desperate war against the Aun Ascendancy and trying to manage the warring states of the Karrakin Trade Baronies and Harrison Armory, a team of Department of Justice/Human Rights (DoJ/HR) administrators has come to re-establish links with Nuavaao, one of the last Second Expansion-era settlements that has weathered multiple catastrophes, beginning with the total engine failure of their colony ship after 426 Cradle Standard Years of interstellar transit.
After the subsequent and tragic loss of the UAS Terpsichore and all hands, things were rough going for the surviving civilian colonists, lacking any of the shipboard facilities and relying on scavenged parts from the shuttles and landers. To make matters worse, approximately 278 C-S years ago, shortly after planetfall, the planet's foliage began attacking the fledgling settlements in what would become a bitter war. The colonists retreated to the grasslands and mountains, eventually burning football-field-wide firebreaks between them and the lush jungles of the planet,which they maintain vigorously.
Now, having finally arrived after receiving the initial report from a desperate planetary Committee, a DoJ/HR contingent and their security team, including a group of crack mech pilots—colloquially known as lancers—seeks to investigate these claims and try to get the colony back on its feet. And, if any of the Terpsichore's payload can be retrieved, particularly the more sensitive components, so much the better.