Battletech #1

On an unnamed desert world in the Draconis Combine, Lieutenant "Max" Maximillan is the leader of a squad of four dispossessed MechWarriors (himself, Quinton, Han and Antonio), the "Dispossessed of the Seventh Battalion". Regarded as worthless without their BattleMechs, they are summoned before Field Marshall Chiba, who sends them to a honorable death in a suicide mission—a banzai charge against advancing enemy forces of House Steiner. (Descending DropShips in the opening narrative, with the Steiner crest visible on a Leopard, establish that House Steiner is attacking a Combine world, i.e. the Combine forces are the defenders.)