After the destruction of the Baraken space station, the Tartarusios turned its course toward the Labyrinth. It didn't take long for the news to reach the emperor's palace.
Inside the grand hall, Emperor Kaiser sat upon his black stone throne, the air thick with heat from the great torches that lined the room. Veyra stood at his side when a guard burst through the door, breathless and pale.
"My lady," he stammered, bowing low, "urgent news—the ship we had under custody has launched from orbit."
Kaiser's head snapped toward him. "What did you say?"
The guard trembled. "Your Majesty, after they escaped, they turned their weapons on the station. It's gone. Everything—gone in one shot."
For a moment, silence filled the hall. Then Kaiser rose, fury burning in his voice. "How could that be possible? A single vessel destroying one of our stations?"
Veyra's expression hardened. "Mobilize every force we have on the planet," she ordered. "If they're heading for the Labyrinth, we'll crush them before they ever reach its walls."
Within the hour, the skies above Baraka filled with movement—thousands of imperial ships forming ranks across the stratosphere, engines roaring as the planet prepared for war.
Inside the Tartarusios, tension hung thick. The ship cut through clouds of red dust, racing toward the planet's farthest reaches.
Youri turned to Zoma. "How do you even know they're inside that place?"
Zoma's eyes flickered blue as data streamed across her neural display. "When the emperor ordered their imprisonment, I intercepted the signal. All prisoners were sent to the Labyrinth—a facility deep in the southern wastes. It's not just a prison… it's a world within walls."
She brought up a holographic projection of the surface. "This is the outer layer—the Gates. It's the only entry point to the Labyrinth."
Everyone gathered around the glowing map.
The outer layer was nothing more than a fortress—massive reinforced walls stretching for kilometers in every direction, built from concrete, steel, and stone so dense it could survive orbital bombardment. The walls rose over a hundred meters high, their surface bare and gray, weathered by dust storms but solid, unbroken.
Watchtowers lined the perimeter at even intervals—tall, narrow spires crowned with rotating spotlights and automated turrets. The towers pulsed with low warning lights, their scanners sweeping the horizon in slow, deliberate arcs. Inside, guards manned their posts in isolation, surrounded by silence and the hum of machinery.
Beyond the walls spread a barren security yard. Rows of barbed fencing, motion sensors, and armored patrol roads covered the plain. The ground was packed dirt and iron plates, blackened by oil and scorched by old engines.
At the northern face stood the main gate—a pair of colossal blast doors, layered in metal and magnetic seals. Each weighed thousands of tons, designed to stop siege tanks or even orbital bombardment. Control bunkers were embedded into the walls beside them, where clearance codes were verified through biometric and neural keys.
Above, searchlights sliced through the smoky skies. Power cables and transmission wires ran along the walltops, connecting towers, gates, and command outposts. Farther inside the perimeter stood a secondary wall—smaller, but no less fortified—forming an airlock zone between the outside world and the depths of the Labyrinth.
It wasn't beautiful. It wasn't meant to be. It was raw, functional, and terrifyingly efficient.
Youri leaned on the table, frowning. "There's no way we can get in on the ground. That place is locked down tighter than a star vault."
Zoma nodded. "Exactly. But that's why we won't go through it."
Preston glanced at her. "You mean—"
"The third level," she said. "There's a natural breach—a crack in the ceiling that exposes the forest inside. It's unstable, but it's open. If we can reach it before their fleet closes in, we can slip through."
Youri smirked. "A long shot… but it beats dying at the gate."
Zoma's mechanical iris gleamed. "Then it's settled."
Hours later, the Tartarusios descended through the storm.
At the outer wall, a lone guard stood atop a tower, scanning the red horizon. For a moment, all was still—then a dark silhouette appeared through the haze, massive and fast.
He blinked, adjusting the scanner. "What the—?"
The signal spiked. His heart froze. That wasn't a supply freighter.
"Sound the alarm!" he shouted into the comm.
Sirens wailed across the perimeter. Towers lit up, guns rotated toward the sky. The entire outer layer came alive, engines powering up, soldiers running to their stations.
Then the Tartarusios broke through the clouds—its hull gleaming, its massive main cannon charging with a blinding blue light.
"Fire control ready!" shouted the tower commander. "All defenses, open fire!"
But they were too late.
A single beam burst from the ship's cannon—pure, focused energy that cut through the air like a blade. It struck the gates dead center.
For a fraction of a second, silence—then everything vanished in light.
The gates evaporated. The watchtowers melted. The reinforced walls that had stood for centuries turned to molten slag. The ground shook violently, flames consuming everything in their path.
The Tartarusios soared through the rising smoke, engines howling, its shadow sweeping across the burning yard. Behind it, the planet's surface glowed red with destruction.
Inside the ship, alarms flickered across the bridge, but no one spoke. They had no time.
"Target destroyed," said Zoma, her voice calm amid the chaos. "Proceeding to the third-level breach."
Youri gripped the controls. "Hold on to something."
The Tartarusios climbed, engines straining against gravity, then turned sharply toward the massive fissure that split the sky above the labyrinth's third level.
The hangar bay opened, steam venting into the air. A huge metallic shape stepped onto the launch pad—a Titan, its armor glinting with reactor light. Tom climbed into the cockpit, locking in the neural links.
"Titan online," he said through the comm. "Deploying now."
"Good luck," Youri replied.
The Titan dropped through the open hatch, plunging into the storm. Its thrusters ignited, stabilizing its fall as it descended toward the forest below. The Tartarusios hovered overhead, its cannons firing in every direction, holding back waves of enemy interceptors already streaking in from the horizon.
Below, the third-level canopy shook under the impact as Tom's Titan landed, dust and debris exploding outward.
The mission had begun.
From orbit, the Labyrinth burned like a scar on the planet's surface—its once-impenetrable walls reduced to ash. The empire's fleets were closing fast, thousands of ships darkening the sky. But the Tartarusios held its ground, firing, moving, surviving—buying time for those below.
And in that moment, for the first time in centuries, someone had broken through the Gates of the Labyrinth.