Bakka.
The strongest bastion in Segmentum Tempestus, the Imperial Fleet's most vital anchor point in the entire segmentum, and the last gateway to Segmentum Solar.
It now hung silently in orbit above an orange-red planet.
The Sector Fortress.
The principal home port of Battlefleet Bakka, it coordinated warship movements throughout the sector and provided repairs and maintenance.
For the entire Imperial Fleet stationed in Segmentum Tempestus, this place was their heart, pumping blood and strength into the defensive network spanning the segmentum.
The dock arrays outside the fortress stretched for dozens of kilometers. Massive gantry cranes and mechanical arms hung motionless in the darkness, waiting for the next warship in need of maintenance to arrive. Inside the fortress, behind ranks of airtight doors, lay endless corridors, barracks, ammunition stores, command centers, and countless military facilities still in operation.
This place had once been the pride of the Imperial Navy throughout Segmentum Tempestus, the home port of countless warships, a precision cog in the Imperium's military machine.
Now, however, an invisible weight pressed down on the air here, making it almost impossible to breathe.
Responsibility for defending the Sector Fortress fell to Company Captain Cestus of the Ultramarines.
He stood at the observation platform in the fortress's main command center, looking through armored glass into the void outside, filled with distant specks of interference. His expression remained unchanged.
Several companies of Ultramarines and Space Wolves, numbering over several thousand Space Marines, were stationed here. In theory, this was already a force powerful enough to crush any invader.
But Cestus knew that what they were about to face was far more than a single enemy fleet.
He had received word of the Horus Heresy long ago, but he had been unable to pass that news on.
Every warship dispatched to carry the