As planet after planet was set ablaze or shattered, the Titan fleet advanced rapidly.
At the edge of the Pheos system in T'au territory.
Iax's Titan fleet was adjusting its formation, its enormous, planet-sized hulls gradually spreading out into a lateral formation staggered above and below one another.
The Heart of the Forge's immense Gravitational Generator swept metal-rich debris from the system's orbits toward the planetary surface like a colossal cosmic hand.
The other Glorious Conqueror-class Titan Ships resembled beasts poised to strike. Beneath their hulls, the strangely structured crystalline lens arrays, covered in energy conduits, had finished calibrating and simultaneously locked onto every planet in the system.
Deep within the arrays, dark red radiance powerful enough to warp space gathered. The energy load was approaching its preset threshold, and tiny amounts of escaping energy erupted in the void as arcs strong enough to blast fighters apart.
The Matter-Fusion Ray Arrays had reached 99.7% charge. In just one thousandth of a second, devastating beams would cross the void and ignite the surface of every planet in the system.
Just then.
The fleet's deep-space detection arrays and dimensional sensors simultaneously identified a series of non-friendly signals.
A stream of errors and warnings instantly took priority within the Data Core.
"Warning! Ultra-high-speed target group detected. Count: 29. Seventy-five degrees below the system's ecliptic plane. Impact countdown: 60... 59..."
Cold logic was abruptly interrupted.
Iax's thought core analyzed the sudden data stream with astonishing efficiency.
Among the twenty-nine targets was an enormous planetary unit larger than a Titan Ship, approaching at the terrifying speed of nearly light itself.
It was this immense unit that had triggered the warning.
Like a deadly rogue planet trailing a string of debris, it hurtled straight out of the deep darkness on the other side of the system!