It didn't take long for the patrol ships stationed in orbit to catch wind of the explosions and the blinding beam of light that followed. Every radar system in the sector went briefly blind, overwhelmed entirely by the flash, then came back online screaming about unidentified objects nearby, contacts multiplying faster than any single station could track. Within moments, every ship that had picked up the signal converged on the point of impact, where the massive Tarstenia stood locked in combat alongside Central Command. The sight of it alone was enough to trigger confusion among the crews arriving, weapons officers hesitating for precious seconds over targets their systems refused to classify — and once they spotted the scattered wreckage of the destroyed Lex units drifting through the debris field, it didn't take much longer to understand that whatever they were looking at, it wasn't a Terrian vessel, and never had been.
Sixteen ships answered the call and surrounded Tarstenia, Hyperion, and Theia together, locking all three into a tightening ring, weapons batteries cycling into firing position across the entire perimeter as commanders scrambled to make sense of an enemy their own databases couldn't identify. Cannons and batteries swung into position and opened fire without hesitation, lasers and gunfire tearing through the void until every shot found its mark against Tarstenia's hull, wrapping the massive ship in a haze of smoke thick enough to swallow it from view entirely. Theia burst out of that smoke a moment later, the wings mounted along her back flaring to life in an instant, orange light spreading behind her as she climbed higher and higher before finally coming to a stop above the encircling fleet, looking down at them the way something ancient might look down at something briefly inconvenient. The ring mounted on her back began to spin, lifting slowly off her shoulders and rising until it hovered just above her head, spinning faster and faster as particles of light gathered at its center, drawing in brightness from everywhere around it. In a fraction of a second, a beam tore free from the middle of that ring and swept across the ships below — a single, clean cut that sliced every surrounding vessel neatly in half, leaving nothing but molten metal hanging in the gap between the halves before they detonated one after another in a chain of secondary blasts.
The blast was loud enough, and bright enough, that even the God Unit facility on the far side of Central Command caught the flash lighting up the planet's edge. Alarmed operators there scrambled a fresh fleet of twenty ships the moment distress signals from the destroyed vessels finally reached the rest of Terria's sprawling orbital network, urgency spreading from station to station faster than anyone could properly contain it. Tarstenia, despite everything thrown at it, had taken no real damage beyond a few scorched patches of hull. Central Command kept firing regardless, though every shot sailed wide of both Hyperion and Theia entirely, and for a moment it almost looked as though the two Fallen Units were content to simply dodge and wait, unbothered by anything the empire could still muster against them.
That didn't last. Hyperion lunged — vanishing from where it stood and reappearing directly in front of Central Command an instant later, letting out a scream that sounded closer to something animal than anything mechanical, a sound that seemed to rattle straight through the hulls of every nearby ship. A trident of blazing green light formed in its left hand, burning like open fire despite the total vacuum surrounding it. The operators inside barely had time to register what they were looking at before their view split cleanly in two. Hyperion had already cut straight through Central Command, dividing the pride of the Terrian fleet into two halves so fast that most of the crew inside never even felt it happen, let alone had time to brace for it. Fire and secondary explosions bloomed along both severed edges as the two halves began their slow, burning descent toward the planet's surface below, falling straight toward the catacombs.
By the time the God Unit facility's reinforcements arrived, all they found was Central Command already ablaze and falling, fire trailing behind both halves like twin comets. They didn't get long to process the sight before Hyperion appeared directly in their flight path and wiped out the entire fleet in a single, unbroken sweep. Explosions lit up Terria's orbit from end to end, one after another, and no one on the surface had the faintest idea what was actually happening — a direct consequence of Tarstenia's unique jamming capability, which could sever every comm line within its operating range without exception, leaving the planet below deaf and blind to its own unraveling.
As Central Command's burning halves plummeted toward the catacombs at terrifying speed, streaking fire visible even from the ground far below, Tarstenia's main hull split open — revealing none other than the Tartarusios, launching out from inside it and falling in tight formation behind the wreckage, using the debris as cover all the way down to Terria's surface, hidden in plain sight within the chaos of its own making.
What made the catacombs so dangerous was simple: they could disintegrate any known material in the galaxy on contact, no exceptions granted for size, origin, or intent. Ships. Meteors. Weapons. None of it mattered — unless that object carried a valid landing permit or administrative signal. Central Command, as it happened, still carried its own admin clearance even in pieces, wreckage and all, which meant it wouldn't trigger the catacomb net regardless of how broken it had become. That left a single, narrow, uncontested path straight down to the surface — one the Tartarusios intended to use for as long as it possibly could, staying tucked safely between the two falling halves of the empire's shattered command center, riding its enemy's own corpse straight through the one door left unguarded in the whole of Terrian space.