If you are Starborn and opted to go through the Main Quest motions again, you reach a point right when you get prompted by Vlad to upgrade The Eye. You can take a [Starborn] dialogue option that will enable you to proactively take Constellation's partial Armillary out of the Lodge and pre-empt the Hunter's attack from ever happening. However, the SSNN newscasts will still talk about the gun battle. There appears to be a missing condition check on this bypass in the newscast dialogue entries.