Bakka
Inside the Sector Fortress's command headquarters, warning lights bathed the entire space in scarlet, pulsing between light and dark.
Cestus stood before the main console, both hands braced against its cold metal edge, his gaze steely. Information poured in like a tide, report after report shouted out by communications officers and technicians.
"Commander Cestus, we've detected massive Warp activity outside the Sector Fortress!"
"Commander! Violent fluctuations in the Warp!"
"Commander! Signals on the Auspex! The enemy is closing in!"
The noise in the command headquarters reached its peak in an instant. Everyone moved faster, their voices overlapping across the Communications Channel.
But Cestus's posture never changed.
His fingers remained motionless. Only his eyes moved, gleaming beneath the lights as they turned toward the main screen and took in its densely packed signal markers one by one.
"Activate the minefield at the Mandeville Point. All ships, assume battle formation. Disengage the safety locks on the Star Fortresses' defensive systems."
Cestus delivered his orders in terse, precise sentences, his mouth almost expressionless.
His voice might not have carried throughout the fortress, but the communications network relayed it to every warship, every gun emplacement, and every soldier waiting for battle inside steel compartments.
Countless mines had been laid before the Mandeville Point.
Those carefully positioned spherical devices densely covered the coordinates through which ships had to pass when emerging from the Warp.
The explosives packed inside them could tear through a cruiser's armor, and when hundreds of mines detonated at once, that region became a gateway of death.
Hundreds of warships formed up before the fortress.
Following their fleet formation's established pattern, they arranged themselves into an arcing defensive line, shielding the Bakka Sector Fortress behind them.
Enormous shipboard guns swung their barrels through the darkness, aiming at seemingly empty coordinates and