Boom!
A heavy impact rattled the bridge, drawing the attention of several Sharkborn crew members as a dark purple, arthropod-like spike pierced clean through the overhead plating.
"What is that?"
Before anyone could answer, a second and third spike slammed through the metal ceiling.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
"Hostile attack!" one of the crew yelled, but the realization came far too late.
With a loud crash, a massive mechanical spider dropped straight through the ceiling, casting a half-black, half-white web over the room.
Thud!
Within seconds, the remaining guards were pinned into a tight bundle, thrashing uselessly against the adhesive strands.
"Come out, my little darling," Blackarachnia purred, ignoring the muffled growls of the trapped guards.
A mechanical insect crawled out from beneath her abdomen, nuzzling against her spider leg before unfurling its wings and hovering toward the helpless Sharkborn.
Behind her, Dirge glanced at the scene once before silently leaving the bridge to clear out the remaining crew on the lower decks.
Moments later, the trapped guards were entirely consumed, leaving behind a brood of small mechanical hatchlings that scurried across the floor.
Blackarachnia smiled down at her new creations.
Skygnaw had managed to recruit her precisely because he made a direct promise: she would be granted full freedom to breed mechanical insects on Planet Kugrage and forge a true chitin army of her own.
Using fallen enemies as raw fuel achieved two goals at once.
After all, grand promises meant little compared to tangible assets.
"Patience, my darlings. There will be plenty more soon," she coaxed, gently stroking one of the newly hatched insects.
She glided after Dirge with her brood scurrying close behind her legs. What should have been a terrifying sight almost carried a strange sense of maternal warmth.
Silas Trifang had deployed the vast majority of his standing legions to the surface to crush the Mindborn, leaving the remaining fleet units thinly manned.
Combined with the overwhelming force of high-tier Decepticons like Blackarachnia, Dirge, and Razorclaw, the element of surprise turned the boarding action into a total slaughter.
In less than ten minutes, every ship in the orbital fleet fell under Decepticon control.
Aside from two damaged vessels that were disabled during the breach, every other warship was captured intact, its propulsion arrays fully functional.
The strongest fortress always crumbles from within.
Though the alien warships possessed thick armor and heavy shields, their internal design held no defense against Cybertronian warriors moving freely inside their halls.
When Skygnaw received the successful report on his internal comms, he was steering the Nemesis in a relentless pursuit of the Abyssal Lord.
The duel had swung decisively in his favor.
Directing a brief reply for Blackarachnia to secure the captured fleet and await further instructions, Skygnaw refocused his full attention on the fleeing enemy flagship.
By now, the Nemesis and the Abyssal Lord had drifted far from the skies above Tas City, tearing toward the upper limits of the planet's atmosphere.
"Keep chasing, Decepticon! Your end is coming!" Silas Trifang snarled, keeping his eyes locked on the vessel pursuing him on his main display.
He assumed that once he rejoined his fleet in orbit, he would make the intruder pay in full.
Trifang remained blissfully unaware that his orbital fleet was already gone, lost to new masters.
Because Blackarachnia and her strike team had moved with terrifying speed, the garrison troops had been eliminated before they could even send a distress signal to their leader.
Boom!
An explosion suddenly echoed from deep within the Abyssal Lord.
Trifang's optics flickered with doubt. Before he could ask his crew what had happened, Gnash rushed into the bridge.
"Lord Trifang! A Mindborn squad breached the outer hull and engaged our internal patrols!"
Ten minutes earlier, before the Abyssal Lord accelerated out of the lower atmosphere, Wala and his personal guard had leapt onto the outer hull.
"Search the surface! Find an entry hatch!" Wala ordered urgently.
His head bodyguard, Ridge, motioned to his scout detachment. The scouts nodded and jogged across the hull, scanning the metal plates.
Ridge shared the noble surname, a title granted to exceptional outsiders who joined the major clans as trusted inner circle members—often serving as commanders for elite guard units.
Though they found no standard hatch, the team managed to map out the warship's general structural layout.
However, as the Nemesis pressed its attack, the Abyssal Lord began to climb sharply, forcing the boarding team to cling to the outer armor.
"Forget the hatch, Ridge! Blow a way in!" Wala demanded, nearly thrown off the hull by the sudden shift in gravity.
At his command, Ridge signaled his heavy ordinance specialists, who stepped forward carrying thick tactical packs.
Locating a structural seam, they planted heavy charges against the hull before retreating to a safe distance.
Seconds later:
Boom!
A localized explosion tore a wide gap into the ship's outer plating.
Pering down into the smoldering opening, Wala spotted an internal corridor and grinned with excitement.
"Follow me!"
Wala and his bodyguards dropped through the breach, landing directly inside a corridor where a Sharkborn patrol happened to be making its rounds.
The guards stared in surprise at the sudden arrival of the young noble and his soldiers, before raising their mace-spears in unison.
Intruders detected in Corridor Seven. Repeat, intruders in Corridor Seven.
Zing! Boom!
A firefight erupted immediately.
"Insolent insects!" Trifang roared upon hearing the report, slamming his heavy hand onto the console as gunshots echoed down the hall.
Misfortunes never came singly. He had intended to ignore the surface troops for the moment, yet they had dared to crawl directly into his ship.
"Gnash, take the helm! I will crush these pests myself!"
"Me?" Gnash pointed at himself in disbelief, before catching his leader's menacing glare and snapping to attention. "Right away, Lord Trifang!"
Trifang strode out of the bridge, marching toward Corridor Seven with heavy, furious steps.
Inside the hall, Wala's elite guards were holding their ground remarkably well against the patrol.
"These monsters aren't so tough after all!" Wala thought proudly, firing his pulse rifle continuously into the advancing alien soldiers.
As the heir to a noble family, his combat training was solid.
However, his pride proved short-lived as Trifang stormed into the corridor.
"Out of my way!" Trifang growled, shoving his own troops aside as he charged toward the intruders.
Seeing a massive alien chief charge into view, the bodyguards shifted their fire, unleashing a barrage of pulse rounds directly at his chest.
Rat-tat-tat!
Wala's personal guard carried high-end military gear, but to their horror, ripples of energy shimmered around Trifang's body, deflecting their fire completely.
"A personal energy shield!" Ridge gasped, his heart sinking.
He tried to shout for Wala to fall back, but a dark corrosive beam shot past his helmet, forcing him to dive behind cover.
Ignoring the incoming fire, Trifang pressed forward, followed by a growing wave of reinforcements.
With their leader at the front, the Sharkborn troops fought with renewed ferocity, pushing the Mindborn squad backward.
Though the main legions were deployed on the ground, the Abyssal Lord still carried a substantial internal security complement—far more than a small guard unit could handle.
With Trifang advancing from the front and secondary squads closing in from behind, Wala's team found themselves pinned inside the narrow hall.
The corridor offered almost zero cover, and every second, another bodyguard fell—their heads severed or their bodies dissolved by corrosive blasts.
Though Wala was no fragile noble, the brutal slaughter left him pale with fear.
"Defensive formation! Protect the young master!" Ridge barked, while pointing at a side wall. "Breachers, blow us an exit route!"
He knew they could not survive a straight firefight inside this corridor.
"Understood, Captain!"
The demolition specialists pulled heavy boxes from their tactical packs, rushing toward the side wall under the covering fire of their comrades.
Though small in number, the elite guard functioned with seamless efficiency, operating with dedicated scouts, breachers, and riflemen.
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