With nearly a century having passed after the Dark Priests were successfully destroyed by the then still nascent cult of the Star Child, led by Teeln, Prophet of the Star Child, the attention of the Council is finally turned from matters of existence and keeping their people alive, to the issues of living and giving their people comfort and luxuries that previous generations labored to attain for their successors.
One of the first issues tackled by the Council, and soon after that tackled by millions of laborers working in unceasing shifts for years in turn, are the matters of housing and logistics. Ramshackle and makeshift shelters are efficiently replaced block by block with hab-blocks created to a degree of comfort and sanitation that previously had taken great care for many labor units.
Now, millions live within cubes of 3x3x3 meters; a single person lives within one such cube, which is joined by nine others of its like into a flat rectangle. The middle three are turned over into a communal space for cooking, eating, and relaxing. At the same time, one of the cubes, typically next to the entrance, has its interior replaced with sanitation stations. Three of such levels are then placed atop each other and connected via a staircase, with the communal spaces in the middle of such a resulting hab-cube then usually individually organized as the labor units inhabiting them wish to, with shrines, relaxation spaces, communal caretaking services, and a place to sell food and drink to the streets the most common variants. These hab-cubes are then placed where sensible and needed and further assemble into massive constructions where tens of thousands live and assemble for work on the newly created public transport lines.
These transport lines zip and zoom throughout the station, transporting people, raw materials, finished products, and complicated machinery from every place that could need any combination of those four. These lines, created with a century of hindsight and hopefully millennia of foresight, have already led to a massive increase in the available free time of millions, with many people having to be held back from working those extra hours they gained with a much-reduced commute. As Teel, Prophet of the Star Child, says: "There is a time for work, and there is a time for rest. A weary body and a tired mind do not labor and praise the Star Child to their best."
Still, though thousands are left fumbling for things to do for several days whenever a line connects their homes to their place of work, thousands more are pretty happy that they can now move throughout the station within only a few hours instead of days.
The Military is quite happy too, as the expansion of the shipyards and the docks proceed at a fast pace, the labor units and their labor captains constructing and assembling both those and the new military manufactories seemingly working in a competition against each other, trying to see who will finish the quickest. A competition joined by the shipyard units, with the monitor defense fleet of the Candle Keepers quickly growing to ten light scouts and two heavy frigates, with the last of the trio and the skeleton of a light cruiser monitor already lain down.
Things are looking to proceed well and without difficulties!
There are difficulties.
Specifically, a distress call was sent out by the Kil'drabi at the tail-end of the decade when their sensors discovered the signatures of warp-emergence events happening near the system from the direction of the Ubraka system.
Typically, they would have looked at the ships emerging once the light hit them and promptly ignored it, only sending information that new vessels had entered the system, but those that had emerged were different.
According to the information we gave to them and the data they have, the ships that warped into the Droma system are the equivalent of two Light Cruisers, though even calling the amalgamations of scrap, metal, guns, engines, and ...fires that burn in space(?) that, would be an overstatement.
Still, even if these two ships are heavily damaged, they probably outweigh the entirety of any one SDF in the system, the Kil'drabi's singular, half-finished, generation ship included in this metaphor.
Now the question is, what should be done about them? The Kil'drabi request, though with some shame within their ambassador's voice, that they can attempt to aid any fight against the Orks with some fighters and local hastily re-assembled ship weaponry, but that would almost ensure that they are discovered by Droma III. The result would inevitably be the locals trying to "finish the job," as the conversion of the planet has not proceeded to the phase where a violent take-over would succeed in time. It would also tip off the local Imperial presence to our existence. Nevertheless, they would like to hide themselves, their industries, and ship components that are top-side and not hidden beneath the surface of the Frozen Moon. Attempting to choose a mix of both, fighting and hiding, would offer the advantages of neither due to the time and space constraints, as well as the local SDF slowly taking notice of the Orks.
As for the SDF, they have sent a request for aid to us, seeking to form a bulwark against the Orks around Droma IV as Droma VII is on the other side of the system and Droma III behind IV, meaning the Orks will have to slingshot past the planet to strike at their home. They bring to bear all their ships, five light defense monitors equipped with two torpedo tubes each, armed with six shots each, and two medium defense monitors fitted with a light macro-cannon broadside of two cannons on each side.
The obvious downside to this plan is that the Orks' path could see them barrel through the stars and stumble right over our home, and thus wreak havoc should they manage to land and start infecting the station with their spores. However, the station is armed heavily enough to destroy the ships on its own, but that leaves the possibility of boarding craft or shots infecting it nonetheless.
Our own SDF consists of ten light scout monitors equipped with a light lance turret and two heavy frigates armed with two light missile turrets, two torpedo tubes with one shot each, and a light lance battery of two lances on each side.
Now...
(6-Hour Moratorium)
[] What Do? (Write-In Battle Plan)