The stunned survivors were just starting to pick themselves up out of the ruins when Katiya's bolt pistol and Zeb's shotgun hewed them down. Katiya was expeditious with her shots, each round bursting the head of an enemy like a pulped fruit until there were no more targets. Blood mingled with ferocrete dust and the superstructure creaked somewhat alarmingly.

"We need to get moving," Katiya said, clambering up the rubble to reach the main control room beyond. The core of the station was a cylindrical shaft containing the broadcast equipment. The mechanisims themselves were arcane, tied with seals of the Mechanicus and incensed by swinging burners. Three levels of catwalk ringed the central transmission spire, one sunk into the ground and one above them. The commissar and her aide stood on the central catwalk.

"Emperors teeth," Katiya growled as she beheld the formerly sanctified chamber. The transmission spire had been daubed with strange runes that made her eyes ache. Small pieces of polished metal and pieces of animal bone and feathers were tied in some kind of fetishes which hung from seemingly random pieces of equipment. On the bottom level an astropath was plugged into the array, the flesh around his input plugs black with infection that should have long since killed him. Whatever was going on here, it was clearly more than a simple broadcast station.

"Approach the conduit only by nines," a mechanical voice declared. Katiya's head whipped around to see a servo skull floating towards her. Well a servo skull of a sort. Rather than the sanctified units she had seen countless times in the past this one still had meat on it. THe flesh was rotting but had been articulated somehow by mechanisms beneath the ruined black skin. As it spoke the mechanisms worked in an eerie counterfeit of human musculature. The effect was like watching a spider wearing a deathmask attempting to pretend to be a human.

"Intruders to be destroyed, blood to be shed, only by nines," the thing continued in its synthesized voice, droplets of oil dripping from a mouth that was held open by a metal grate.

"The Emperor Protects," Katiya hissed, and then whipped her power sword out in a glittering arc that bisected the head. It fell away in a shower of sparks, giving a brief and grizzly view of intermingled machinery and human brain matter. The spire exploded into action, pistons pumping and steam jetting in all directions. Metal screamed on metal and the whole structure seemed to shake. Dozens of the psuedo-servoskulls burst from recesses and passages in the wall, gibbering insanely. The only common and understandable phrase seeming to be 'only by nines.' They rushed the intruders, some spitting las bolts from their eye sockets, others wielding short cutting torches or blades, other still chomping mechanically with decayed teeth of old bone or rusted metal.

The rockcrete walls echoed their monotonous iterations, the corrupted servitors grinding their way towards the two with their multitude of armaments. They weren't heavily armed, but the shivving of the chainsaws, the scatterfire of what firearms they had, and the parody of life the servitors represented was enough to almost overwhelm his senses. He clenched his square jaw, eyes set as he pumped his shotgun and fired off another slug, ripping through the flesh and iron, wiring and yellow servitor fluids spraying the walls. A bullet struck his carapace armor, caving in a section with a crater but holding strong overall. He turned his gun on the one that fired at him, its head exploding from the next slug.

"Intruders to be destroyed, blood to be shed, only by nines," they repeated with cold rhythm. Their metal jaws reminded him of the Orks in some strange way. Memories of the hulking green Xenos ravaging the bodies of his comrades, many with strange metal appendages and jaws and ears of steel. It caused hatred to burn through Zebulon, and even as one came perilously close to slicing through his throat with an attached blade, he merely dodged and shoved the arm away with the length of his gun roughly before unloading three shots into the servitor's midsection, dropping it.

Katiya hacked and shot with her weapons with masterful precision, slicing one servitor down the middle in a clean lateral bisection, tearing it back up in a backhanded slash, slicing through a cybernetic arm, the chainsaw on the end of it losing its spin as it clattered to the ground. The blow torches roared, they were so close. Katiya punched through one of the infected abominations with her bolt pistol, only for her jacket to catch fire as one crept up from behind. Zeb, in the midst of reloading, cried out a warcry and tackled the thing as Katiya swiftly slid herself out of her jacket, the embroidery alight before it even hit the ground in a wave of dust from the old floor.

The thing turned its torch on Zeb, but like lightning Katiya hacked off the appendage holding it, offering her hand for him to grab. He took it in his, and she hauled him up despite her deceptively slim build.

"We need to get out of here," He said to her, firing off another round. Their enemies closing in, encircling their position in the cramped room.

"They're nearly decimated," she said dismissively, scowling and leaping back into combat.

Unfortunately Katia's confidence, proper and pious as it was, was short lived. Her humming powersword bisected a loading servitor with two vast magnetic claps for hands, dropping it to the ground in two parts which gouted biofluid in pressurized jets. Her leather parade boots slipped in the ruin of cables and she lurched sideways. The mistep saved her life as powerful tentacles of hammer wrought iron punched through the ferocrete wall in a spray of dust, whipping through the air she had occupied a moment earlier. A large figure clambered through the breech in the wall, nine of the hydro mechanical tentacles giving it an appearance of something like a spider and something like a squid but entirely neither. The creature at the center of the writhing limbs might have once been a tech priest, but he, or more accurately it had long since given in to the ruinous powers. The metal grill that would ordinarily have graced a priest of Mars had been replaced with a piece of carved blue crystal that duplicated the effect. The remainder of the face was in shadow but Katia felt that was rather a blessing. The eyes beneath the hood blazed with blue white light that didnt seem to illuminate so much as throw sharp unnatural shadows. The red robe was woven with patches of shimmering blue fabric and golden inlay that hurt the eyes to look upon. Katia noticed that even when his skeletal body was not supported by the tentacle things it seemed to hover an inch or two above the ground. An ozone stink bit at the back of her throat and the reeking stench of the warp permeating the air.

"Remove impediments from the formula, only by nines," it buzzed metallically.

"Warp spawn!" Katia shouted swinging her bolt pistol up into line and firing of the entire magazine in a flurry of bolt rounds. The Warp-priest swatted the rounds from the air with a single swipe of a mechadendirte, the metalized tentacles sparkling under the impact of the bursting shell casings. Another of the tendril reached for her and she batted it away with the blade in a shower of sparks. She backed towards Zeb, keeping the tentacles from her with a series of sharp savage parries.

"We need to get out of here!" she shouted to Zeb, ducking as one of the tentacles swept over head, dishing in a plate of 2 inch metal like it was tin foil.

---

Ultima Segmentum
999.M41
Planet Iax: Agri World of Ultramar
1800 Hours

---

Zeb had done this three times in his career, and he still wasn't used to it. His skin felt like it was peeling off his bones, and his helmet pulled at his chin by the strap, almost as if it wished to strangle him through some warp infused spirit. He opened his eyes, sweeping his gaze around the two thousand odd guardsmen now with him in the drop. Every last one of them strapped into a compartment like an old terran roller-coaster, only far more tightly and marginally more secured. Above him, the speakers blared their descent in low gothic. Twenty thousand meters...eighteen thousand meters...fifteen thousand meters...

The reinforced steel of the drop-shuttle's hull was layered with three inches of ceramite, easily able to shrug off any small arms fire and some lower yield missiles, but still dangerously vulnerable to anti-orbital guns, lascannon or kinetic. Even past the howling of the wind and the murmering and coughing of his fellow troops, gunfire from the planet could be heard roaring and screeching past their shuttle. He was glad he didn't have a view of the outside, he could imagine what it was like out there, even with his experience.

Twelve thousand meters...ninety five hundred meters... seven thousand meters...

Something rocked the drop-shuttle as an explosion tore into the trooper's eardrums. For one horrifying moment, Zeb thought apart of their hull had been breached, but a moment later he realized the distance of the sound and the fading rumble leaving his ears. Another shuttle had been obliterated, likely within a thousand meters of their own. Emperor, he hoped it wouldn't happen to them, and it was a small relief to know the explosion had only now knocked them slightly off course. Not that they were usually sent to the ground with a high expectation of accuracy. After a moment, he thought for a minute and prayed Katia hadn't been in that shuttle, either. He had never heard of a guardsman making "friends" with a commissar, or even the bureaucrats keeping them together as a team because of "the Emperor's Luck." But somehow it had happened to him. If any of the troops with him knew they were a pair without hearing of their exploits on Pavonis, they would assume the two of them were 'fraternizing,' or worse, that he received his Sergeant rank by nepotism. Of course it was bullshit. Katia was pretty, maybe even beautiful, but he wasn't going to risk losing his head over it. And he had faced too many horrors to have his promotion questioned.

As the distance was listed again, he made sure to pull his tongue behind his teeth and gently shut his jaw behind his closed lips. Many guardsmen had lost their tongues and senses from one of these landings. There would be more than a few casualties. There always was.

(Two weeks earlier...)

"Judging by the maps, there's a small village northeast of your drop point. Meet me there, and we'll coordinate with the colonel." Katia said in her moderately smoothed valhallan accent.

"Isn't the entire planet filled with small villages?" He asked, a bit less formal to the Commissar whilst they were in private. Iax's climate and verdancy made it one of the most naturally agriculturally productive worlds in the Imperium. In fact it was the breadbasket of all of Ultramar. The inhabitants harnessed the planet's inherent fertility, covering its surface with well-ordered farms and cultivated woodlands. Other than a few stretches of mountains and a various collection of shallow seas, it was all green.

"Yes," she said, flashing a grim smile. "But this village will be called Du-retour, a few hundred miles from the only city on the planet, First Landing. We'll need to reinforce the troops stations there and hold out until the Ultramarines can return from their crusade."

"How long?" he asked, betraying no emotion.

"Two hundred Terran days. Not too bad."

"Yes ma'am." was all Zeb said, saluting her. They might have begun working together less antagonistically, but he still treated her by her rank when needed. His refined jaw squared and his blue eyes stamped forward when his hand raised out of respect, before turning tail and marching out. She stopped him at the door by barking his name. He turned to her. "Commissar?"

"Get there alive." She said.

"You too."

The thrusters activated, a low rumbling that sounded like waves crashing against rocks erupted from beneath them. Now they could hear the 'pings' from small wartrukk shootahs ricocheting off the hulls of the shuttle. One large bullet even penetrated the hull, making a small hole in the far wall. The bullet sprang against steel in flashing sparks, but the primitive slug hit no one, luckily. The hole it made whistled with a gale-force pressurized wind, like a hellish stean train.

Three thousand meters....one thousand meters...

They had slowed down, but not enough to make the abrupt, concussive landing any less jarring. If Zeb had not been strapped in, he would have been flung to the ground and broken a bone or three. When he regained his vision, blood was pooling on the steel girders below his feet. Three men down from his position, one man had crimson pouring out of his nose and mouth, his body unresponsive. Alarms blared and lights flashed, and the buckles were automated to release every man simultaneously. One buckle had malfunctioned, the trooper scratching at the straps wildly. Zeb stepped out without issue, adjusting his helmet. The cries of "WAAAAAGH" could be heard just as the doors were rolling open.

"Grab your guns! Left wall!" Zebulon cried, pointing over the men as the imperial guardsmen began yelling in confusion. A few saw him, followed by dozens more, becoming hundreds as they stampeded to the gun rack. Zebulon remembered that rush. A few men wouldn't survive the charging press of the others. As an officer, his lasgun was on the right. He needed to remember he wasn't above them, even with his newfound privileges. The other five sergeants followed him, grabbing their frag and krak grenades. Three chainswords were presented for them, and Zebulon saw two be taken by a pair of older sergeants. He looked at the third, and then shook his head. Not against Orks, he wouldn't. He didn't plan on getting close enough, and he preferred his newly acquired Cadian-modified Lasgun and the Catachan Fang he had acquired on Pavonis.

The doors opened, and blissful sunlight peered through the open hull of the shuttle. The Ork Nob that stood in the opening cast a great shadow over the frightened men.

The smell of Drill Abbess Seutonia’s breath woke her. Seutonia had smoked lo sticks all her life and now had abscesses in her gums that that medicae treated with a herbal tea. The smell that came out of her pores was an odd mix of old smoke and burnt plants mixed with some faint inadequate spice. Doubtless she had discovered that Katia and Salvia had stolen a bottle of amasec from the Provosts stock and drunk it behind the arms hall after dinner. That would explain why her head hurt. She was due for a good thrashing. Or she had been thrashed? No, Seutonia had been dead for nearly a decade, killed when demonstrating how to disarm a limpet mine. Katia opened her eyes. It was dark and noisy. The air stank of hot metal, burning plastics and decades of sweat and fear. Metal groaned and popped, something hissed and boiled nearby, like hot iron in a mulling barrel. The scene was lit by sickly green emergency glow strips, though these were mostly covered by brackish water that luminesced a lurid jade under their influence. Crash webbing gripped her chest and she hung upside down, the weight of her braided and coiled blond hair hanging downwards, the leather of her great coat caught awkwardly around her backside. The dropship. Holy Throne she had been on the dropship when it had been hit. The gurgling grew more intense. Something flashed blue as power lines shorted, the purity seals overwhelmed by the inrushing fluid. They were in the water. There weren’t supposed to be any large bodies of water near the drop site but she had no idea how high they had been when they had been hit, a lucky shot might have dropped them half a continent away in the Black Ocean. She grabbed for her restraints, trying to pull herself free but the tangled canvas wouldn’t give. A cold fear knotted her gut. Katia had always known she would die for the Emperor, but to drown in an overturned dropship? She would not go before the Golden Throne that way. With a fury she tore at her straps struggling vainly to get them to buckle and…



“We got you Commissar!” a voice shouted, and a stab light beam hit her in the face, blinding her with its radiance. She cursed and tried to turn her head but hands were already grabbing her. She heard the saw of steel on canvas and a moment later she fell into waiting hands, that righted her and stood her on the deck. The water that squelched beneath her boots was only a foot deep. Two guardsman, a corporal and a private with a medicae specialty stood before her, both looking bruised and battered.



“Prax,” Katija said, her mind pulling the noncoms name from his disciplinary record. The trooper staggered back as if struck, stunned to be recognized by the regimental commissar.



“Yes Ma’am, Corpral Praxidii,” he responded attempting to come to something like attention. The medic’s eyes also widened. The idea that a commissar would be able to identify a single trooper by name was a shocking one, much less under these circumstances. By the look of awe in their eyes, her stock with the troopers had just risen. Truthfully she only knew the corporal’s name because she had been reviewing his disciplinary record. Praxidii had a long line of disciplinary issues, mostly practical jokes, which was why they shortened his name. He had the usual brushes with authority too, something she put down to him being a little on the short side, Maccarius Syndrome. All of his reprimands had been issued for activity in barracks however and not in the field. Perhaps not coincidentally he was also one of Zeb’s drinking buddies.



“What’s the situation?” she demanded looking around in vain for her commissarial cap. The damned thing must have come off her head during the crash, and was now lost beneath the muddy water.



“We seem to be fraked commissar,” Prax responded glibly.



“Succinctly put. Perhaps if you could indulge me with the specifics?” Katia responded with a touch of acid in her voice. The grin slid of Prax’ face.



“It’s pretty bad ma’am, both of the chimeras broke their brackets when we turned turtle, there are a lot of dead,” Prax responded. The blood on the medic’s face and the gore smearing the arms of his khaki fatigues spoke elequonently on the subject. On queue they pushed out of the secondary crew bay and into the primary, shoving aside a nest of fallen electrical wiring,. Sunlight shafted in from a pair of ragged holes, presumably blown by whatever had knocked the dropship out of the sky illuminating the cavernous main bay. A pair of chimeras, buckled scrap now, were against one wall having ripped free of the minimal tie downs used when expecting a quick disembarkation. Long tracks of ripped deck plating charted their final journeys where they had smashed into the wall where the troops had been strapped in. Blood oozed out from beneath the carriers to drip down a short rise into the muddy water. Fifty percent casualties without a shot being fired. The air was already beginning to stink with the smell of blood entrails.



“Who is in charge?” she asked, eyes following the bales of camo netting that had been unwound to create a make shift ladder up to the breaches which were now the only viable exits.



“That’d be me ma’am, Lieutenant Ralvo was seated starboard,” the noncom replied grimly. By the Emperor’ Mercy Prax and his men had been on the other side of the bay when they hit, the universe had really flipped a coin on them, a slight quirk in trajectory and they might have been the ones smashed to pulp. Katia had been riding along with this dropship to see if Ravalo might warrant a captaincy when the slot opened up. A waste, but when the Throne called, it called.



“Everyone is out,” he went on, “twenty survivors. Maybe a dozen who can fight, some wounded and a pair of enginseers. Somewhat belatedly she realized that they had come back for her when they noticed she was missing. Most guardsmen would be more than happy to leave a commissar to her fate, the office didn’t exactly inspire popularity. Katia knew that many commissars, particularly the more brutal stripe, often suffered convenient ‘accidents’ during their service. Perhaps her standing was higher than she realized, or perhaps Prax was looking out for his friend Zeb.



The climb out of the dropship was more awkward than it looked, the camouflage netting was, by its nature, irregular and some strands were too thin to hold the full weight of a man. Some strands parted as they climbed, making it as much an exercise in distributing weight as it was one of strength. How wounded men had climbed out Katia had no idea.



“Watch yourself Ma’am,” Prax advised as Katia reached the jagged hole. It was good that he had warned her but the smell of hot metal had already reached her nose. The hull of the dropship didn’t glow, but the heat of reentry still shimmered as a distortion above the hot plating. A bridge of half melted sets of flack armor, its woven plastic somewhat flame retardant, marked the way off. It was an ingenious if messy solution to a tricky problem. The dropship itself lay in a shallow pond filled with greenish plants that grew up through the water. To one side rose a terraced hill while on the other a bank had been raised. It was obviously artificial and intended to channel the water which might once have been a river but now ran down through a series of shallow dams to make irrigated fields for whatever the green crop was. Both banks were heavily planted with some other crop this one with broad green leaves and bright red fruit. The dropships pilot had brought them down in between the two banks and they had ripped down the artificial valley, tearing open dozens of the small damns in a gigantic muddy waterslide. Probably that was the only reason the inertia of the crash hadn’t killed them all. Now the pond was draining slowly, the sluggish trickle of water from upstream not able to cope with the sudden loss of dams. What water and mud remained hissed and gurgled around the hull of the dropship, sucking up the waste heat. Wilting of the nearby plants suggested that there had been a great cloud of steam when they had hit and gave the whole area a faintly soupy smell. The rainbow sheen of promethium products and sacred unguents spread out over the shallow pond around the dropship, like a halo guiding the gallant machine spirit home after its noble sacrifice.



Katia picked her way over the bridge of flack vests until she reached the spot where the hull began to curve downwards. A cable had been tied to some kind of antennae mount and ran across to the hillside bank. Without waiting for explanation, Katia took a step back, jumped onto the cable and took three steps before her momentum allowed her to wobble, jumping lightly onto the embankment. A score of Gudrunite troopers sat among the greenery, looking bewildered. Some were improvising slings for broken arms, others sponging at bloody head wounds. At least they were all armed, having been prepped for a combat deployment. A few even had full packs and webbing on, having had the presence of mind to unship their gear, or at least whatever gear they could find, before scrambling to safety. A pair of troopers with the scarlet band and cog wheel symbol of enginseers, were arguing over an acetate map, trying to figure out where they were. Katia touched her earbead.



“Commissar Lubedenko to any Imperial Forces, we have a shuttle crash with wounded, please respond.” There was a hiss of static. That wasn’t surprising, the comm beads only had a range of a kilometer or so if they weren’t hooked into more powerful base units or retransmitters. Normally that would be the chimeras which had been reduced to so much scrap by the crash.



“Any idea where we are?” she asked as Prax and his medicae clambered less dramatically over the rope to join her. Prax scratched his chin for a moment in consideration.



“Probably a few hundred kloms from the LZ at max, they only hit us a few seconds before we was due to hit the ground. Katia’s short term memory had been blurred by the impact but that made sense, Orks were not exactly known for their marksman ship and there had been no auspex reports of their ramshackle aircraft in the area.



“Probably in the western highlands then, these feeder rivers lead down to the plateau and join up to become the Narafi Mar,” she recalled from the briefing slate. Luckily the immediate AO had been something she’d studied. They simply had to follow the channel down to the plains and meet up with the guard or whatever locals hadn’t yet fled.



“What’s that?” the medicae asked, Katia turned to regard him quizzically but before she did so she heard the sound. The distant roar of engines. Rescue? She glanced at Prax who looked back at her in concern.



“Stand to!” she shouted and strode up the terrace, brushing through the greenish bushes and squashing fallen fruit under her boots. To her infinite relief her weapons, which she hadn’t checked, were still at her belt and she drew her bolt pistol. It was a master piece, given to her by the Governor of Pavonis, its ancient black casing re-engraved to show the mark of the Commisariat in dull silver. She racked the slide, hearing the soft click-click of the shell seating home. The roaring sound was growing louder now, growing fast, and there was an arrhythmic thump to it. It was coming on so fast, so fast and so loud almost like a jet which was just subsonic. She had just about reached the crest now but instead of continuing she crouched down and shouted into her comm as she caught a flash of movement on the other side of the ridge.



“Orks!”



The first of them burst over the ridge crest twenty meters from Katia. She had an odd impression of a combination between a cargo hauler and a motor bike as the thing roared into view, spewing oily black smoke from a pair of exhausts which looked to have been the horns of some great carnivore hollowed out for the purpose. It was going so fast that it left the ground as it cleared the ridge, flying ten meters into the air. It hung there for a moment, rear tracks still spinning out bits of grass and mud. Katia had time to catch site of ugly greenish faces, in expressions of comical shock or wild glee, before plunged downwards and planted into the ground with a shriek of tearing metal. It hit nose first, throwing green bodies in all directions as it tumbled end over end, making three complete rotations before smashing into the opposite bank and exploded in a gout of promethium flame. Bright white highlights burst through the sooty red flame as ammunition cooked off like Emperor Day fireworks. Two more of the bike things leaped over the ridge these, learning from the fate of their predecessor, managed to turn enough to stick the landing with a squeal of protesting struts and a thump that Katia felt through her spine. Both of the bikes opened up with their crude equivalent of bolters, blasting plants to fleshy pulp but coming nowhere near the Gudrenites. A fourth and fifth bike leaped over the ridge to Katia’s immediate left, their drivers breaking their suicidal rush sufficiently to manage something like a controlled landing. Every one of the vehicles was a different grotesque collection of scrap, some hand made, most looking like looted agri-equipment. They were painted in gaudy colors of no particular consistency, with bright red strips predominating. The air stank of fisolene and burning promethium as well as the odd tang of crushed crops.



“Open fire!” Katia ordered in the same heartbeat that las guns began to crack from the wrecked dropship. Most of the fire went wide, the Imperials wrongfooted by the speed and reckless haste that the greenskins displayed, though a couple of las rounds spanged off the engine cowling of the closest bike. Katia realized that she was now between her men and the Greenskins fortunately the green filth were too focused on the dropship to have noticed. As the bike things reached the muddy mire of the partially drained rice fields, they threw up twenty meter rooster tails of mud and shredded crops behind them like banners. The hoots of enjoyment from the orks was audible even over the roar of engines and crackle of weapons. One of the bikes bogged down and its occupants, a half dozen orks with big axes and brutal looking bolters leaped free and rushed towards the humans. The whole tableau had taken all of three or four seconds.



Katia had never seen a live ork before, but she had seen the preserved corpses of several at the Scholam. As an open minded citizen of the Imperium Katia knew she should despise all Xenos equally, even so she felt the ancestral Valhallan hatred of the twisted abominations fire in her breast. She ran down the hill back towards the Guard position. One of the orks who had been thrown clear of the first wreck stood up not ten paces from her, regarding her with hateful yellow eyes. It seemed impossible that anything could have survived the bone shattering impact but the thing raised its axe and opened its mouth to roar its warcry, rotted yellow fangs filling its too wide mouth. Katia’s bolt punched through the soft pallet of its mouth and burst its skull like a dropped melon. A second creature was starting to rise up but she dispatched it with a shot to the neck as she ran towards her troops, hurdling through the plants and hoping no one fired in her direction. The three surviving bike things were back under what passed for control, their crews, if such a term could be applied, bailing out into the mud and crops like green bowling balls, paying no heed to personal safety. The vehicles themselves roared on, guns firing on fall auto without the pretense of aiming. Two of the bikes whipped around the rear of the dropship, bolters ringing sun bright ricochets from the hull. One of the bikes slewed violently as it was caught by its own reflected ordnance, it mounted the half buried hull and sailed into the air, turning over and smashing into the ground twenty feet from where the Gudrunites hunkered. Incredibly the driver was still alive, attempting to pull itself from the wreck as dozens of las bolts blew it apart. That left two bikes, one shouldering its way up the rise to try to get a line on the Imperials and the other sweeping around in a broad arc, spraying mud as it turned in a power slide. Katia, realizing almost two late, flung herself down as the twin stream of orkish bolts ripped across above her, showering her in the shattered stems of crop plants and the sour smelling fruit pulp.



“Commissar!” Prax shouted in her earpiece, assuming she had been cut down, but she was already pushing herself to her feet.



“The Emperor…” The bike was racing right towards her at staggering speed. Katia leveled her pistol and fired with a rapid snap snap snap. Bright bolter casings burst around the nose of the thing and ripped into the drivers shoulders. The bike hurtled towards her, filling her vision with its snarling intakes and the drivers insane grin. It wasn’t going to… One of the shells blew the things right arm off and it swerved aside at the last moment, rapidly losing momentum as it turned up hill and into the thick crop growth. The driver stared down in shock at its severed arm, grabbing at the controls with its left hand. Katia’s bolt pistol clicked empty as she aimed for the head shot.



“Frak!” she yelped and sprang towards the bike, reaching it just as the one armed driver gripped the throttle lever. Her powersword came out of her belt and ignited with a gout of smoke as sap and mud burned on the blade. It came down in a glittering arc and severed the orks other arm at mid elbow, killing the throttle for the second time. With an irate scream it lunged for her with its mouth, and she ducked back, evading by millimeters the bone crunching bite which echoed like a gunshot. The blade whipped the things head off neatly and the ork slid from the saddle.



“…Protects,” she said with a gasp, finishing the adage she had begun a subjective lifetime before. Unfortunately the rest of the battle was not progressing so well. More by luck than good judgement the orks had managed to deploy themselves in an almost perfect ninety degree arch with the crew of one bike at each end and the Imperial position at the apex. The final bike appeared to have bogged to the axles in the mud at the rear of the dropship and the driver had leapt free to join his fellows. Prax and his men didn’t have the firepower to deal with a dozen orcs, and certainly not when they had to split their fire between the two groups. As she watched las bolts cut into the onrushing foe in an increasingly panicky rapid fire. Shots which would have killed or incapacitated a human were ignored and even guaranteed kill shots were uncertain. A las bolt tore of an orks jaw but the beast just screamed its weird WAAAAAGH cry and charged onwards. Unless she did something, and soon, they were going to be over run. Once the orks closed the distance and could employ those axes it would all be over. It would all be over already if they used their guns, but they appeared to have forgotten them in the excitement.



“Prax, concentrate on the uphill group,” she called over the comm.



“But…” the noncom objected, justly concerned that the other group could sweep in unopposed. Katia climbed up into the saddle of the bike thing, ignoring the way ork ichor soaked her trousers and grabbed for the controls.



“Just do it!” she snapped and pulled the throttle open. She almost lost control immediately. The ork bike had nothing in the way of throttle control, it was essentially max or nothing. The bike lurched forward at a prodigious rate and Katia had to use all her strength to cling on. To add to her woes, suspension or power assisted steering evidently didn’t exist in the diseased minds that had designed this thing. The sheer power of it tried to drive the spine of it up through her tailbone and without the body weight or muscle mass of an ork she was nearly thrown from the saddle with each rev of the engine. Grimly she wrestled with the wheel, turning it downhill by force of will alone. Desperately she gripped with her thighs as it picked up speed at an alarming rate, racing down towards the second group of orks. She realized that if she let go of the throttle to pull the trigger she would be thrown clear.



“Well, there is more than one way to skin a grox….”



The bike hit the orks at nearly 60 kph. Katia made a wrenching turn at the last moment, flinging the rear of the thing out like a scythe. It would have overturned if not for the sheen of mud under the tracks and the meaty impacts of the orks against the side hull. Tough they might be, but she felt bones shatter like clay pots as she swept over them in a vast bow wake of mud. Katia let go of the throttle at the last moment and merely focused on hanging on, the wrenching twist of the turn all but dislocating her arm, commissarial great coat fluttering around her like a black banner. The abused engine finally stalled out and the las fire she could hear in place of it sounded shockingly quiet. She saw the last of the orks fall, mere meters from the Gudrunite position as the bike finally came to a halt and she stood up in the saddle on unsteady legs as gobbets of mud pattered down around her. Wild cheering erupted from the guardsman, a mix of ‘Commissar and Katia’. She should put a stop to it she thought, and then slumped back into the seat, feeling the abuses of the last few endless minutes in every muscle in her body. And she would. In just a minute. When she could stand again.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"

The cry was followed by harsh, guttural xenos words roared with inhumanely deep voices drowned out the cries of the men, even silencing them into a hush through sheer power. It only lasted until the brutes dispensed with roars and made good on what Orks were good at. The front Nob raised an axe that looked like a swathe of sharpened scrap steel strapped to the support beam of an engine. Behind him, orks nearly as large streamed in from the outside, choppas and shootas gleaming in rusted steel. They reached the first ranks of frightened soldiers, cutting off limbs, impaling men, and breaking their bodies with horrifying ease. Even so, the brave soldiers of the 207th and 208th Temperarius battalions fought like cornered animals, and Emperor knew that's what they were.

Zeb was mesmerized by the blood spray for a brief second, unable to look away until he took hold of his courage and wit. Hundreds of men still scrambled for their lasguns, and those that had them were fixing bayonets or looking for a clean shot they just couldn't get through the mass of men. Zeb saw a group of men, likely friends, traveling across the wake of officers behind him. He stopped their run with a shout, telling them of the racks of shotguns twelve meters behind them.

"Sir, those are for officers of your rank..." One of them hesitantly began, and the objection was very obviously a poor attempt at trying not to be recruited for a suicide mission.

"You'll get them and you'll follow me or we're all dead." Zeb ordered, holding his modified lasgun at the hip. He didn't raise it to be antagonistic, but the group of guardsmen saw the barrel vaguely pointed their way. That coupled with the death stare on Zeb's face made them not hesitate much longer, rushing over and grabbing the pump actions. Zeb didn't wait for them, knowing any second of delay sent another dozen men to meet the God Emperor. Reaching to his belt, he pulled out one of his krak grenades. Some might argue a frag was better against orks, and it was true the Krak was meant for anti-armor operations, but Zeb wanted to do the maximum amount of damage within a short blast radius, for the opportunity of Orks streaming in through the rampway of the shuttle.

"Move! Move!" He roared, shouldering through frightened troopers, shoving himself closer to the front.

"Sir, they're slaughtering us!" A blonde guardsmen cried, losing all dignity in his frightened state.

"For the Emperor!" Another screamed, hefting a lasgun above his peers, eyes wild.

"EMPEROR!" Zebulon roared, pulling the pin out of his grenade and pulling his hand back. A man was tossed into the air by an Ork's backhand, Zeb ducking under flailing limbs. Had he been struck, he might have been thrown to the ground and had the grenade detonate in the midst of them, but luckily Zeb had good reflexes. He lowered his head in a boxer's weave and then threw the krak grenade as far as he could. The heavy, handheld bomb arced through the air, spinning like an old terran football. Zeb watched as it hit an Ork on the head, the xenos showing a complete stupid bewilderment like a younger brother getting socked by an older one. It didn't have the time to be embarrassed or enraged. Less than a moment after it bounced off its thick skull, the krak grenade detonated.

A low, ear shattering 'thump' shot across the shuttle. Ork flesh incinerated and bones shattered, blowing the ones out of the blast radius onto their knees or on their backs. Very little shrapnel flew, but the concussive force was significant. The Orks went quiet just as the men had when the xenos had begun their bloody assault. The two sides seemed to be undecided as of what to do, and it was Zeb that broke the silence.

"Forward! Cut them down!" His voice rang, and the men at the front ran forward in a wave, the odd lasbolt flying into the disoriented Orks as the unarmed men picked up what choppas they could handle the weights of and charged with thew makeshift melee weapons. Zeb made it to the front, lasgun firing with a loud continuous 'crack' as he unleashed the full-auto of the weapon, the gun barrel barking as it singed green flesh and pierced Ork eyes and extremities. Two of the brutes regained their wits and stampeded toward Zeb, pig eyed and spittle flying from their frothing mouths. Zeb hefted his lasgun and obliterated one of the dreaded aliens, simultaneously cauterizing and puncturing their skull. The other was nearly on him, and he leaped back to get some room, but a thundering boom rent the air and blood splattered from the Ork's chest. It staggered but didn't go down. Two more shots were fired, crippling it by caving in its knee before the second ripped through its neck. Zeb turned and saw the group he had commandeered pump their shotguns and press forward. Another sergeant lead an assault on the left, flanked by three squadrons of guardsmen. Three men fell from shoota bullets, the large slugs shattering bones, one tearing through a man's skull until it was naught but a cave that drooled blood.

Every second, more men were armed and outfitted. The Orks that were still alive leaped at the guardsmen with wild abandon, taking out three men or more for every one of their number lost in such close quarters. But they were pushed back, more grenades being thrown into the bottleneck, shrapnel and explosive force tearing into the greenskin tide. Suddenly, multiple explosions rang out, the Orks crying out in fear as the 'thumps' grew louder and tore into their ranks from the outside. They exploded in a manner Zeb imagined a psyker would use, but there were none there he knew of. The men looked to one another confused, and all Zeb could guess was they had attempted to bring in grenadier orks themselves, but the explosives thrown from the guardsmen had detonated the leading booma orks and set a chain reaction down the line. The men were halted by shouting officers, letting the orks finish themselves off, firing at any survivors that got off the ground or stumbled in sight through the fog of debris.

The guardsmen took this time to order themselves, forming ranks and making sure no one's hands were without a weapon. Gingerly they marched forward, Zeb at the vanguard that stepped into the haze. He didn't know what to expect, but it did his heart well to hear the distant thumping of basilisk artillery gun batteries. There were slight tremors that accompanied the booms, making good on the name 'earthshakers.' Zeb heard a groan to his right, seeing an ork with muscled arms pushing itself off its face and shaking his head, before looking up at Zeb stupidly.

Zeb shouldered his lasgun and fired through the brute's mouth, tearing into its insides and ending its life. Even its eyes blistered from the intense heat of the lasbolt. It's body fell forward onto the dirt again, Zeb spitting on the corpse. Katia had an ancestral grudge against the xenos, but Zeb had firsthand experience that fueled his disgust for the beasts. The WAAAGH he campaigned against on Lorn V would forever be etched into his memories.

"Sir!" Zeb heard from his left. He turned and saw corporal Hagman. Finally, someone he recognized! It was weird for Hagman to call him sir, but in front of the other men...

"Report, Hag." He said.

"Du-retour should be less than a score of Kilometers to the northeast. If we hurry and don't run into another warband, we could make it there before nightfall."

Zeb nodded, satisfied at that if need be, but he still had the will to get there quicker somehow. He turned to the group of soldiers that had followed him. The shotgunners and a few squads of other guardsmen, every man looking his way or at the ground. He turned towards the smog that was now lifting, showing a lightly obscured countryside, well manicured and organized trees amongst rolling hills of rich farmland, now scarred and sliced by war. Even with the damage, it was grand to look upon. In the air, bright projectiles flitted across the cloudy sky as more shuttled floated from the heavens in the distant horizon. Even as he watched, another shuttle was burning, flying across the sky towards the planet like an asteroid.

"Everyone who wants to follow me, I'll be marching east to find some vehicles. I have a mission to get to Commissar Katia. Every man that wants to stay with the main body, leave now. Where I'm going, we won't get the support you'll need."

Not a man refused him. He didn't know why, but somehow, they wanted to follow him.

“Commissar please, I really must protest,” medicae Gressler whined. Katia fixed the man with a long suffering gaze. He shrank back somewhat from her chilly Valhallan gaze but didn’t quite retreat. Gressler was a nervous looking man whose hair was prematurely balding but was by all reports an excellent medicae.



“These men have broken limbs, probably internal injuries, if we load them onto that …thing and drive them over rough terrain… well me might as well just shoot them now.” He squared his shoulders as though expecting a physical blow. Katia spat out the mouthful of fruit she had been eating. It was somewhat bitter and astringent, but not altogether unpalatable to someone used to soylent veridans and guard rations.



“Well given, that this crash site will be overrun with orks within the hour, long before relief can get here, those are pretty much our two options medicae,” she replied grimly. In all likelihood many of the wounded would die if they were moved, but there was no option. Those too badly wounded to walk were being loaded into the back of the ork contraption that Katia had captured. Having felt the thing bucking and gyrating beneath her, it was hard to fault the medicae’s assessment.



“The Emperor Protects,” she told him, clapping him on the shoulder as she stood. Prax was waving that they were good to go, what little extra gear they could salvage piled onto the wagon with their wounded.



Despite the down hill, progress proved to be frustratingly slow. Though the engineseers managed to find a way slow the ork vehicle, no amount of chanting or ritual percussion could convince the stubborn ork machine spirit not to stall constantly if the throttle were at anything short of full power. Adding to that, it had a tendency to bog if driven in the watery fields, or to tangle if driven through the crop vegetation. More than once Katia considered going up and over the embankment, onto the relatively open slope, but being in the open with the orks about sounded like a bad idea. It was almost two hours before they found their first sign of Imperial civilization. The irrigated fields gave way to a broad reservoir, an expanse of muddy water several hundred feet across. In the middle, on an artificial island accessible by a causeway of crushed rock and gravel bounded by large oozlite pilings, was a pump station. The building had been constructed with all the grandiose enthusiasm of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Large pipes sank into the lake at intervals like rusted skeletal fingers. It rose almost thirty meters over the lake, a broad ferocrete rampart surmounted by twisting piping and ductwork of uncertain function. Now and again vapor of some kind vented from it with a hiss audible even from several hundred meters away. The great cogwheel of the Mechanicus stood above its imposing entrance, verdigris bronze looking sickly in the fading light.



“Well that is something,” Katia remarked, feeling cheered to see something Imperial standing undemolished. That in itself was proof that the orks didn’t yet have total control of the country. An imperial installation might mean comms and perhaps even first aid equipment, though given the cog boys tendency to ignore the needs of the flesh, there was no certainty.

“No welcoming committee,” Katia noted to no one in particular. One of the Enginseers, a woman named Clavin, shook her head.



“It might all be automated, perhaps run by a few maintenance servitors,” she opined. Katia nodded.

“Corporal, lets get in there and see if we can find some billets while the enginseers see if we can get someone on the comms,” Katia called, getting a thumbs up from the non-com who began shouting orders. Night was falling fast, but it was still light enough to see a heavy mass of cloud building to the east. Katia was no magus meterologica but she suspected that it would be raining before too long.



Thunder split the sky overhead, bathing the pump station in purplish light. The surface of the lake rippled with the constant slashing rain, reflecting the light like fields of amethyst. Katia stood in the entrance portal looking out, a mug of ration pack recaf in her hand. It was terrible. That was the definition of ration pack recaf, so bitter it made her sinus twitch despite being loaded to near saturation with condensed milk, but it was hot and the mountain rain had a chill to it. True to sapper Clavin’s prediction, the pump station was entirely automated. A staff of a dozen servitors trundled around the place on articulated tracks which could transform to grips to climb ladders. The things mindlessly circled the complex, pausing at intervals to transmit bursts of sound in the weird scratchy language that the Mechanicus used to propitiate machine spirits. Clavin thought that she could repurpose the status beacons to create active comms but it was slow going. If they hadn’t succeeded by morning they were going to have to make a decision. As far as Katia was concerned that meant pushing on towards the costal littoral, though Prax was advocating to sit tight while they sent the bike on ahead to find help. Both approaches had their advantages, but both were inferior to simply calling for help.



“Lo-stick commissar?” Prax asked, looming up out of the darkness behind her. Katia shook her head, continuing to peer out into the rain.



“Shouldn’t you be asleep?” she asked after a moment.

“Shouldn’t you?” he rejoined. There was silence for long moment, disturbed only by the crack of thunder and the continuing ripple of rain hitting the surface of the lake.



“I wanted to ask you something commissar,” Prax said at last, his face illuminated each time he took a drag on his lo-stick. Katia didn’t respond, something out in the rain had caught her attention.



“About what happened on Pavonis, I…” Katia yanked the lo-stick from his hand and crushed it beneath her boot, holding up a finger for silence. Over the thunder came the sound of distant guttural voices. Shadows moved on the hillside, too large to be men. A particularly vivid burst of lightning cracked above them, illuminating a score or more of orks moving through the rain. Marching was far too strong a word, meandering might have been better. One of the brutes even appeared to be splashing in the puddles. Light glinted off the edges of choppas and the crude bolters they carried.

“Frak me…” Prax began but Katia covered his mouth with her hand. The orks were headed in this general direction, but they might not have been able to make out much of the pump station in the darkness. Lifting her left hand she crooked her fingers into a field signal. Stand to. Prax nodded and disappeared. A moment later a half dozen of the Gudrenites crept into the vestibule, lasguns aimed down the causeway. Prax made his own field signals. Two squads here. Two squads overwatch. That meant they were up in the pipeworks with a field of fire down onto the causeway. Smart.



“Oi, it’s a hummie buldn!” an orkish voice shouted.

“Wot?!” another called and there were general cries of excitement and discovery. The orks came forward at a curious trot, splashing into the lake before realizing it was two deep and circling around to the causeway. Katia eased her bolt pistol from its holster and racked the slide. She signaled to the troops. Hold fire. The orks were looping across the causeway with careless leisure, oblivious to the lashing rain and the lightning overhead. Katia could smell them now, a vegetative reek like fungus and old socks.



“Ya think there is any lootz?” the leader, was asking, identifiable by his larger size and the pair of curling animal tusks worked into his crude helmet.

“Wait wot dat sme…” the brute began to ask.

“Fire!” Katia ordered, putting two bolts into the leaders neck, that sprayed blood in a broad arc. Las fire erupted around her as the Gudrunites opened fire. Sizzling energy cut from the entry way and down from above. The dying leader was struck five or six times before tumbling off the causeway with a splash. Any human force would have been checked by the sudden ambush. Not so the orks. With a defeaning cry of ‘WAAAAAAAAGH!” the survivors charged the human position, choppas waving. Even for Orks it was suicide. Point blank las fire cut into them from two directions. Bodies flopped to the causeway or tumbled into the lake, crude clothing shouldering with flash burns. Even so they came on, screaming and frothing at the mouth to reach the humans, great yellow fangs snapping with excited fury. The last of the beasts fell not ten meters from the doorway, dragging itself forward by the finger nails until Katia emptied its brain pain with a close range bolt pistol shot.



“Do you think…” Prax began, but his question was answered immediately. “WAAAAAAAAAAGH” echoed from the darkness as dozen of other orks rushed down the slope to join the deceased scouts. Katia pulled the clip from her pistol and replaced it with a fresh magazine with mechanical precision.

“Get the door closed!” she shouted at Prax. The non com looked around in confusion, but another trooper grabbed a crank and began to turn it. The great brass cogwheel began to lower from the celling like an ancient portcullis, sinking down to seal the building with a clang.



“Better get these troops topside so they can defend the causeway,” Katia said grimly, “it appears we are under siege.”

"Get those supplies on you balls of shit!"

"Move move! Go go!"

Zeb and Grimdal hauled up the last crate of the ammunition the groundcar would take. Across the road, the other men were finishing up their cargo along the way. Guardsmen were already cranking their vehicles, the exhaust rippling the morning air as the sun peeked over the horizon. The loud clacks and racking of turrets and ammo filled Zeb's ears as he hopped into the passengers seat, taking hold of the groundcar's handle and stood above the driver and passengers, lasgun held in the air.

There were eleven of them, popularly called Outrider Scout Vehicles or OSV's, favored by PDF or mercenaries that needed fast, sturdy, and reliable transportation without wanting to spend their weight in imperial credits for a true military vehicle. Found at an old abandoned depot five miles east of the landing zone, Emperor's grace, they had only found a score of Orks loitering about between there and here. The men outnumbered them and fought in ranks. None of them had even been touched, and once they made it to the hollowed out depot, the steel grate garage had a small supply of PDF equipment, mostly taken or looted by the Orks. Luckily, the groundcars' seats were too small for an ork to fit, so they left them relatively untouched. Four of them had heavy stubbers mounted on their backs. Not boltguns, but large caliber, gas powered, fully automatic turrets. Drum fed, they had four drums for each gun. Corporal Batte, the de facto leader of one of the squads, had used them before in the Second Agrellan Campaign in the Ultima Segmentum.

During the night, Specialist Rikkerd had intercepted a communique from headquarters and had managed to patch Zeb through to the nearest major, giving them a good idea of the current happenings in the area which coincided with a basic map they were provided with at landfall. There were mountains to the north and east, sweeping west until they stopped at the sea. The large town of Malfonte was currently under siege in the north, Du-retour being the largest rendezvous point and strong position for the wayward astra militarum drops that had been meant for a flanking attack. So far, the best they had been able to do was kill ork stragglers and divide the main xenos horde's attention, but no decisive operation had yet been conducted. They would wait another ten days before attacking north in force. To the south there were naught but wandering orks and holdouts of low-priority PDF troops. First Landing was still holding strong a few hundred kilometers to the south, but if Malfonte collapsed, there would be nothing to stop Gorbad from sweeping across the land and surround First Landing from all sides.

Zeb and the men weren't going north, south, or east, however. Katia's shuttle had been confirmed to be shot down sixty kilometers west of their position. At first light, they had gathered what food and ammunition they could, and as Zeb raised his hand, the corporals had given him the all clear. Even as he looked behind him, the horizon awash with smoke, flame, and specks of light flying like comets across the sky and hitting unknown targets in the atmosphere, the last door of the last OSV was closed.

Hagman smiled and cranked the car into gear, taking the radio mic from its holster and holding it up for Zeb to take. He did so, at once still amazed anyone was following his lead. On both Lorn V and Pavonis, he had been naught but a grunt, and he knew as soon as they found a Lieutenant or Emperor willing, Katia, he wouldn't lose complete authority just the same. But at the moment, he hoped he could lead well enough to save a few lives.

"Hope you all ate and took your piss breaks. We're not stopping until we get to that shuttle." He told them, the timbre in his voice unreservedly confident. "At fourteen hundred hours, I expect to rendezvous with Commissar Katia and whoever follows her, and at that I give up my claim on you, and we follow her lead. Conserve ammunition, mind the roads, and no heroics. We fight as a unit. Keep the guns trained to the outer edge of the perimeter. Now let's give 'em the wrath of the guard."

The men cheered, the OSVs now rolling out of the depot's broken fence and turning left over the broken road. The OSVs began to pick up speed, and due to their lack of roofing, the wind began whipping through the hair of the men who had lost their helmets. Thirty...forty...fifty kilometers an hour. Had they a straight road to the last known location of the shuttle, they would make it there before lunch, but nothing was guaranteed. Every farm looked blasted by artillery or ork wartrukks.

"You got a lot of dedication to that Commissar, Zeb. She must be quite the lady." Hagman called to him. Zeb blinked and was glad the radio channel hadn't remained open. The car went over a dip in the road, causing the men in it to jump as they conversed.

"Dedi- what?"

"Giving up your authority and all. Are the rumors about you two true?" He inquired curiously, eyes switching from the road to Zeb's face.

"She's a fucking commissar!" Zeb barked as if that answered all questions from then until Emperor come. Dedication!? He didn't want to get shot when they met up! Yeah, there was a camraderie and maybe a certain fondness, but Katia still had the authority to dome him at a moments notice, and any hint of insubordination was certainly grounds for that! What sort of rumors were being spread, exactly? "I'm a sergeant, if you take my word over hers I'll shoot you myself."

"Well, I wasn't thinking that. But the fact you had to say it, ya know?" Hagman added, which made absolutely no sense to Zeb. "Is it true she fights like a vengeful Valkyrie?"

Zeb opened his mouth to tell him off, but he was caught off guard with the lack of insanity in his latest question. "Uh... Yeah, I guess that's true." He admitted.

"Can't wait to meet her," he said back to Zeb. At that moment, the first artillery strikes of the day went underway. They were far off, but the men were intensely aware that the shells flew over their position.

Katia was learning rather a lot about orks. The information wasn’t bringing her a lot of solace however. By now the defense of pump station Epsilon-Phi Three-Seven was entering its sixth hour. Intermittent rain continued to fall in cloud bursts even as the eastern horizon began to brighten with the coming dawn. The causeway itself was illuminated by powerful floodlights mounted on the pump station. Initially there had been four but bolter fire from the orks had put two of them out of commission. The surviving two floods painted the causeway well enough. A carpet of green bodies lay across it with other green masses floating in the gently sloshing lake water on either side. Cabel and Vance were down there now, dragging bodies up against the entry port in a grisly barricade. Each cadaver they approached was made sure of with a quick bayonent thrust, a lesson they had learned early on when one of the orks had enough life left in it to bite a chunk out of a troopers leg. They were then added to the pile that lay stinking against the side of the pump station, making it that much harder for the orks to reach the brass entryway. With a cry of WAAAAAAGGH! A dozen of the orks on the lake shore charged the causeway, brandishing their axes. The Imperials opened fire as Cabel and Vance scrambled back up the ropes by which they had decended. It wasn’t a furious storm of fire, rather a patter of carefully aimed shots. They were running low on powercells, and despite the enginseers best efforts, attempts to recharge spent packs were painfully slow. Katia calculated that they would be completely dry in another hour if things kept up at the current rate. She settled the sights of her las gun at the hip joint of a charging ork, exhaled, held the stasis and squeezed. The weapon cracked and a smoking crater appeared between leg and pelvis. The ork howled in rage as its leg buckled and it tumbled into the water with a mighty splash, the weight of its gear dragging it under the brackish water. Occasionally they were able to drag themselves up, but more frequently not. There was a bright flash on the shore line and Katia looked up to see an ork with a shoulder launched missile tube shiloutted by the back blast of his weapon. The missle streaked towards them for a second before some mechanical failure caused it to veer upwards in a flaming loop which ended as it smashed into another group of orks who had been jeering on the shore with a vast sooty explosion that scattered green bodies and body parts in all directions. The roar of orkish laughter rang out from several places, including the survivors of the abortive missile attack. Learning a lot. Not much of it made her feel any better. Despite the las fire raking them the charging orks were only a dozen yards from the corpse barricade. Prax gave her an urgent look and she nodded. Trooper Klave didn’t wait for an order, he squeezed the trigger and the orkish bolter, ripped out of the capture battle wagon, roared to life. Every time it fired the noise of it took Katia by surprised. Flecks of gravel sparked up through the air and gouts of water sprayed as the weapon hosed the causeway. It was so inaccurate that even at a range of only a few dozen feet, most of the rounds went wide, high, or otherwise failed to hit the target. Katia suspected that the noise of the thing was the point and that any actual damage it did was purely incidental. The orks, staggering and wounded by las fire, jerked and collapsed as bolts detonated, severing arms and pulping internal organs.

“Down!” Katia shouted and every imperial dropped below the cover of the parapet. Gunfire erupted from the shoreline. Bolt guns, pistols, vehicle mounted auto-cannons, even flame throwers despite the distance all returned fire an instant later. Shells rang off the ferocrete and sparked off the pipework above, gouting steam in whistling shrieks that faded as quickly as they began. As far as Katia could tell the gunfire was instinctive, a desire simply to increase the noise and ‘dakka’ in the air. This time it had the effect of cutting down the last few orks before they reached the barricade. It was puzzling that the orks didn’t use their crude firearms more frequently, in fact if they had they would have taken the human position hours ago, but the glandular desire to rip their enemies apart in close combat had thus far been nothing but an advantage to the eighteen surviving troops of second platoon. That would probably hold true until the ammunition ran out and then the orks would be able to rip to their hearts content. Katia pulled the power pack from her las gun and thumped it several times against the ferocrete, an old guardsman’s trick to coax a few more rounds out of a dying pack, and then reseated it with a click.



“Commissar,” one of the Enginseers called as Cabel and Vance threw their lines over and prepared to scale down and savage for ammunition among the bodies. They hadn’t yet tried to use the captured ork hand weapons, Katia was privately skeptical that such a thing was possible given the ridiculous size and recoil of the things, but it helped to be doing anything other than thinking about the fact that their own weapons were about to be useless. Katia stood up, stretching the ache of kneeling at the firing stoop out of her legs and headed to the specialist. His grim face didn’t promise good news.



“We finally were able to get through to command,” the Enginseer told her. Katia didn’t understand the techno-theology of it, but they had been trying for several hours to use the pump stations pipework as an antenna to boost the range of their squad comms.



“Good news,” Katia said, though there was a question in her tone. The enginseer shook his head glumly.



“Most of the landing sites are engaged, they said the soonest anyone could get here is this afternoon,” the trooper reported. And we will never last until this afternoon he didn’t report. Katia nodded. Commisariat training prepared a person for a situation very much like this.



“Very well, spread the word that we got through to command and that aid will be forthcoming,” Katia ordered. The enginseer blanched.

“Ma’am I…” Katia cut him off with a sharp look.

“We got through to command and aid will be forthcoming,” she repeated firmly, her hand strayed almost unconsciously to the flap of her pistol holster.



“Uh…. Yes Ma’am!” the enginseer stammered. Katia nodded her face solem. She could not afford to let morale collapse now, if they were going to die, let it be on their feet with hope in their hearts.



“The Emperor protects specialist,” she assured him.

"On our 6!"

The OSV's were not terribly fast, built by the Imperium for reliability rather than speed or armor. Top speed on a flat surface with enough time, they could reach up to about 125 KPH, and that was without passengers or ordinance. The body is constructed from lightweight and rust-resistant aluminum, instead of conventional steel, at least in it's most common variant. Small caliber rounds from autoguns and the occasional lasbolt or three wouldn't take the vehicle out of action. You'd really need to hit it in the right spot with a bolt pistol or high powered rifle to damage it. However, they were pretty much just moving targets for Orks with their heavy armor and high caliber guns.

"Jumpers!"

"Where did they come from!?"

Zeb should have expected this, his lasgun raising with his head as the drivers nearly lost formation from the surprise flanking. Behind them, heavily armored wartrukks had erupted out of a gulley, ork boys screaming to their twin gods and guns firing sporadically. Men cursed or cried out to the Emperor, but to their credit they recovered well, Zeb ordering them to fire even as ork stormboyz clinging to the grills of the wartrukks screamed and leaped, their jump packs roaring to life just as gravity was about to take them, flinging them towards the convoy of OSV's. A few orks flew into the distance, unable to take proper control of their equipment, but a few managed to land in the midst of the trucks. A stormboy landed in front of the left wing of the convoy and was hit full on by one of the vehicles, cracking the windshield and breaking the bumper, knocking the ork flat. A testament to its species, it was still alive until the third truck ran it over.

Zeb had the misfortune of his stormboy landing atop the hood of his OSV, the xenos' choppa nearly decapitating him with a vicious swing. Zeb blocked with his lasgun, the choppa biting into the butt of the weapon and knocking it out of his hands, flinging Zeb back into his seat. He kept his wits about him and reached for the backseat, taking out an autopistol. Normally it wouldn't be very effective against a hulking Xenos like an Ork, but seven rounds fired in quick succession to the face was enough to take it out, breaking its goggles in spurts of blood and sending it falling off the truck. Zeb just managed to grab his lasgun from the choppa before it fell onto the road.

Relatively small rounds (for orks) erupted from the forward machine guns from the three ork wartrukks behind them, biting into the back armor of the OSV's. Heavy stubbers burst into life, roaring like carnodons. One man to Zeb's left lost his head, the shrapnel from his skull killing the man beside him, the bone fragments slicing into his neck. Another OSV was hit by a stormboy, the ork landing in the midst of the men and cracking open the driver's skull with its cleaver. The truck veered, hitting another OSV and nearly running it off the road, but it kept its course and instead the ork one suddenly spun to the right, flying into a ditch that threw the ork and the men out at terrible speed.

Zeb's lasgun cracked, firing at full auto at the orks in the wartrukks, one of the vehicles nearly punctured like swiss cheese and another with a blown wheel. Shotguns roared, slugs slamming into the orks, taking off chunks of their meaty shoulders. The next minute was naught but a furious exchange of shells and lasers, until there were only eight OSVs left, and the last wartrukk was dismantled, its tires blown out and the orks pitching childish fits.

Zeb wiped the sweat from his brow, a dozen men or more under his command were now dead. He gave a quick prayer to the Emperor to guide their souls, about to shoulder his lasgun when the call came over the vox that a shuttle had been spotted ahead, and lasguns were being fired from within. The only shuttle that could be out here as far as he knew was Katia's, but even if it wasn't, they had a duty to help.

"A hundred greenskins are assaulting their fortified position, sergeant."

"Hit them hard from behind, now!" Zeb ordered, and the heavy stubbers were hastily reloaded as the OSVs moved into position to hit the Orks in a lightning strike they wouldn't soon forget.

Katia had never felt thirstier in her entire life, which was kind of ironic considering she was about to die in a water reprocessing plant.



“Fire in the hole!” Prax shouted and lobbed a bundle of hessian cloth at the orks charging down the access way between two immense water tanks. The leader of the group swung his choppa at the bundle but Katia and Prax both ducked back before the thing detonated with a thunderous crash. The improved explosive was cored by a krak grenade, and packed with as many ork bolter shells as could be made fit. The resulting detonation began with a sharp crack and roared into a score of secondary explosions as the sub munitions cooked off. Pieces of shrapnel clanged off piping and storage tanks with surprising musicality. Their supply of frag grenades had been expended in the desperate minutes following the fall of the gate, and they were down to whatever they could cobble together. For a while it had seemed they might hold the facility at least till their ammunition ran out, but just after dawn the Orks had changed the game. A warbike, painted entirely red, had gunned its way across the causeway, plowing into the gate at full speed before a load of explosives had gone off. The gate house had been vaporized, as had four out of the five troopers defending it at the time. Katia herself had been on her way up to check on the troops excited reports about the approach of the bike and had only been spared by the fact one of the troopers, whose name she had never learned, had shoved her back into the stairway the moment before the bomb went off. It was only by the grace of the God Emperor that she hadn’t been killed, either by the blast or the fall. It had been chaos after that, as the Gudrenites tried to rally and retake the wreck of the gatehouse, but it had been useless. Three more guardsmen had been killed, literally cut to pieces by blood crazed orks, before the survivors had managed to pull back into the interior of the pump station, trying desperately to make some kind of defense among the twisting masses of pipework.



“Waaaaaghh!” a single ork voice roared, and it was picked up by the others that were hunting the Imperials through the maze of tanks, pipes, ducts and reclamation stations that made up the pump station. Katia stuck her head out and saw that all but one of the orks was down. The survivor had lost a hand, an eye, and most of a leg, but was still dragging himself forward. She leaped at him, spinning her powersword and driving it down into the back of the orks neck with a satisfying sizzle. Bolter fire crashed out, hitting the tank above her and spraying sparks in all directions. Fragments clanged and whined across the convex metal surfaces of the tanks, echoing and redoubling as they went. Katia spun towards the threat, four orks rushing from a machine shop, close packed but she had no ammunition left for her bolt pistol. Another of the improvised explosives lofted from the shadows, tossed in the peculiar overarm manner many of the Gudrenites seemed to prefer. It burst with a flash of dirty smoke and eye searing light and all four orks were down, one grabbing angrily at its own spilled entrails. Muddy water poured from a tank where the crack warhead had punched the thin plate, spilling down over the offal like a cleansing rain. The air stank of mud, cordite and hot metal. More cries of Waaagh echoed through the facility. Katia had given up on any coherent defense, it was hide and seek among the tanks now, just trying to hold out a few more minutes. Those too badly wounded to fight, the dying really, had been pulled back to the inner sanctum of the Mechanicus. That would be their last stand, a courtesy that Kaita felt was owed to the Clockwork Emperor given that his facility had kept them alive a few hours longer than they had any right to expect.



“Commisar!” Prax called and las fire cut past Kaita, she whirled and lit her powersword, just in time to parry a great rusted axe that arced down to split her in two. A trio of orks had appeared from the level below, leaping the six feet up onto the working floor with whoops of excitement. Katia fainted left and then cut back right, taking the leg out from under the first ork with a sizzle of burning flesh. The remaining two drove her back, looping cuts coming too fast to even parry, her only option was to fall back away from the still firing Prax. The non-coms shots struck the back of one of the orks, blowing steaming chunks of flesh and armor away. The ork spun with unexpected grace and fired his bolter from the hip. Like all ork marksmanship it was pure wildfire, but if you through enough dice eventually you got boxcars. Prax’ arm flew off in a spray of blood that splashed up the side of a tank, his las gun clattering to the ground. The veteran fell to one knee, tried to steady himself with an arm he didn’t have and screamed as he mashed the bloody stump against the tank, before pitching onto his face. Katia shouted in frustration and tried to step in to stab the second ork but it whipped its axe around with unexpected speed, Katia tried to catch it in a block but the power of the blow lifted her off her feet and flung her into a relay lectern with a crash that jarred her bones. The creature loomed forward and lifted its blade to cut her in two. Katia jammed the point of her blade into a nest of piping and a great gout of steam burst forth with a scream like a storm siren, engulfing the orc from knee to crown in scalding cloud of boiling vapor. It howled and staggered back, stinking of cooked flesh and boiled blood. Pain burning through her body, Katia pulled herself to her feet and lunged after it, plunging her glowing blade through its sternum and bearing it over with her weight. She landed atop it with a splash and felt the disgusting mix of burned ork flesh and blood beneath her free hand. Twisting the blade she yanked it free and came unsteadily to her feet. The ork which had shot Prax was charging her, spittle flying from its gaping, yellow toothed maw. Katia tried to raise her blade, but it was so heavy, she felt slow and ungainly and there was an unpleasant ringing in her ears. The Ork’s mouth exploded in a spray of teeth as two las bolts punched into it at a steep angle. The beast staggered and tripped forward and Katia whipped her blade up, taking its ruined head off its shoulders. She glanced up to offer her thanks, but the steam made it impossible to discern which one of the guardsmen it had been. Several were up in the pipework, firing down where they could. Katia staggered through the stinking steam, by now the muddy water was sloshing around her ankles. Prax was lying face down and she pulled him up only with an effort. His face was very pale and his breathing rapid. Bright arterial blood still pulsed from the stump of his right arm, but the rhythm was slow and the output meager.

“The Emperor…” he began in a reedy voice, but he died before he could complete the aphorism.

“Grant you rest,” Katia replied, letting the dead corporal sag into the film of waste water. Katia pulled the canteen from the dead soldiers webbing and emptied it in a gulp. She almost sprayed it out of her mouth as she realized it was cheap joylik.



“I should put you on report,” she told Prax’ corpse sadly and placed the canteen down on his chest. Orks were shouting all around her now, and the steam wouldn’t hide her for long. She sheathed her powersword and picked up Prax’ lasgun. It was wet but a standard issue las gun would fire under almost any condition imaginable. The power readout showed empty. Almost any condition. She pulled open several pouches on the dead corporals webbing, but this had been his last powerpack. She lay the rifle beside the canteen and pulled herself to her feet. It was getting time for that last stand she owed the Omnissiah. Suddenly the timbre of the ork shouting changed. The cry of Waaaaagh! still predominated, but it was interspersed by the guttural barks of their speech in what sounded like interrogatives. A pair of brutes charged passed Katia, not even noticing her in her dark greatcoat as they splashed through the ankle deep water, rushing back towards the entrance and howling for blood. Katia shook her head and pushed herself to her feet. What in the Emperor’s name was going on?

The high rise in the earth behind the Ork mass were barren save for a few shootah boys who were unceremoniously rammed from behind and trampled into the wet soil as the caravan of OSV's burst into the xeno's view. The engines revved and a few of the vehicles got a good amount of air, not slowing a bit, the men in the seats bouncing, holding on for dear life even as the lasguns began to crack and the enormously loud pounding of the stubbers filled the air. Orks fell by the dozen, thick green bodies now scorched from lasburns or filled with apple sized holes as they tried to get their bearings. Zeb knew Orks did not route as easily as traitors or other xenos, for when the unit collapsed, they were still individual warriors that rarely backed down from a scrap.

That's why Zeb had briefed the men to hit the biggest and loudest Orks. Every break in the chain, every dismantling shot to the WAAAGH effect took away their courage. The vehicles broke apart, forming a perimeter as the horde scattered to try and better hit the guardsmen. A few burly Orks with choppas launched themselves in front of vehicles, potentially sacrificing themselves to disrupt the OSV's trajectory and send them flying. It worked on one, launching two of the brave men off their seats into the mass of xenos to be hacked away, blood spraying into the air. The driver was strapped, regaining his senses as he found himself waking up in a vehicle on its side. The man operating the heavy stubber had been shot, his corpse leaning against the still firing gun as it went wild.

Normally Zeb would have tossed a frag or krak at the downed vehicle, to stop the rampant firing and destroy any approaching Orks, but the driver who was very much alive unhooked his seatbelt and grabbed for a shotgun. Zeb recognized him.

"Rikkerd!" He cried, flipping the firing mode of his lasgun to full auto, pointing at the downed OSV with his free hand. "Hagmen! Over there!"

Across the gulley, two explosions rang out, sending vehicle parts and greenskin limbs across the battlefield. Every death hit Zeb like a Commissar bullet to the skull, but it was clear their blitzkrieg, mobility, and heavy weaponry were killing seven orks for every guardsman. If they kept up the heat, they would send them to hell. Zeb pulled the trigger on his lasgun, bright crimson flashes filled his vision as they bit and then punched into the neck and shoulder of an ork that was charging at Rikkard, cutting down the legs of another xenos that followed it. Grimdal swiveled the heavy stubber to where the sergeant had indicated, uncomfortably aware there were only forty eight more rounds in the gun. He pressed both triggers on the mounted machinegun and cut through a swathe of greenskin's tramping over to Rikkerd's position, the guardsman taking cover behind the glass windshield of the vehicle and firing his shortgun when applicable.

Across the battlefield, another OSV rounded the corner of the processing plant, approaching Rikkerd's position and hammering away at the orks, the two OSV's now performing a pincer move. The bullets and lasbolts relentlessly cut down the xenos, another OSV across the way hammering into a stumbling grouping of the xenos as a third had a guardsmen dropping frags like depth charges. Zeb's OSV skidded to a halt, spraying mud over the exhausted but very alive specialist Rikkerd.

"Get in!" Zeb cried, and as the specialist approached, he looked around tentatively.

"If that's an order sir, I will but...I think we're good." He said, lowering his shotgun. Zeb turned to look at the field, seeing the few dozen orks left now fleeing for the hills. May the God Emperor protect them, there were only five OSV's left. Less than a day and half of the men were dead. But they could claim they killed over twice their number of Orks, which was no small feat for non-astartes. Zeb winced, looking down at his shoulder to realize some shrapnel the length of a pencil had wedged itself into the meat of his upper arm. He grunted and pulled it out, pressing on the wound by bunching his uniform up against it and holding it there.

"Sergeant! Survivors over here!" A voice cried, Zeb turning to see one of the men at a sundered hole in the side of the plant. Hagman didn't need to be told to drive over.

It was a battered and bloodied group which filled out of the Mechanicus pump station. Katia led the surviving six. Walking erect and straight as befitted the position of a regimental Commissar despite the dull pain that stabbed along her left side with each step. Two of the survivors were too badly wounded to walk, one having taken a fragment of a bolt round in the chest, the other having lost a hand to an ork chopper before the brute had finally been brought down. Field stretchers had been rigged out of lengths of piping and fertilizer stacks. Not one of them was free of wounds. Actually crossing the causeway posed some problems, the ork’s breaching tactic having blown six feet of the gravel rise away and allowing the pond water to rush in. It took only a minute to throw several beams across and make a precarious bridge.



“Zeb!” Katia called, realizing after she said it that it bordered on improper to call a trooper by his first name in public. The new minted sergeant was waving a greeting even as he spoke into the vox. Positioning his vehicles in a loose line to screen the direction from which the orks had come.



“Commissar,” he responded, clearly relieved to see her alive, though the expression lingered on his face only a hearbeat.

“Are their more survivors inside?” he asked, peering back towards the smoking entrance of the pump station. Katia made the sign of the Aquilla and then twisted her hands to make the cogwheel of the Mechanicus as she shook her head.

“But there was a whole platoon…” Zeb began cutting himself off. Katia turned to order the survivors medical attention but they were already being loaded onto the vehicles, a field medicae already hanging a bag of IV fluid above one of the worst hit.



“Most of them went in the crash, the rest the ork’s did for,” she admitted, pulling herself up and into the passenger seat beside the corporal. Her whole body hurt from bruises and contusions she had taken during the fight and she felt like she might never be able to stand again.

“How did you come to get here so quickly?” she asked, knowing there was no way this fast attack group had arrived so soon after they had gotten through to command.



“Oh you know…” he began but cut off as one of the auspex operators shouted something.

“Frak!” Zeb cursed, looking down at his own unit.

“Incoming…” with shocking suddenness an aircraft burst over the ridge line trailing a vast plume of smoke. It nozed down and dived towards them. Katia had a momentary vision of something red with gold stripes as it streaked towards them. Shells flickered from its wings and ripped up a twin track of impacts in the ground, racing down over the pond where it lifted similar spouts of water. There was a sudden chunking sound and something heavy and black fell into the pond before an explosion ripped through the water lifting a hundred meter plume of water into the sky. The ork aircraft made a half roll and dived down out of line of site as imperial las fire, more hopeful than effective, followed it. No one had been hurt by the inaccurate attack. A haze of prometeum fumes and fisolene hung in the air like summer heat haze.



“Explains what got the dropship,” Katia said, “whomever prepared our tactical briefing somehow failed to mention ork air superiority.”

Most men had their eyes on the skies at that point, except the field medics that did impeccable work. Ten men were under careful supervision, some had IV drips and catheters whilst others received stitches when the blood loss was contained. Zeb did not know many of the intricacies of field medical knowledge, but by the end of the day, only one man died. Samson. Zeb would remember that name as the war continued.

For now, he was just glad they had gotten there in time. The vehicles were getting refueled and restocked with what fuel they had carried and whatever scraps they could find amongst the dead and ruined. Stubbers were reloaded and power packs replaced. What precious water and food they had was rationed and everyone consumed their portions. Two men with flamers walked amongst them Ork bodies, igniting whatever green flesh they could to make certain the greenskins were dead whilst simultaneously purifying the ground from the micro-spores that would have landed on the soggy ground.

"Is this what's left of your drop?" Katia asked Zeb as he finished his rations, in the midst of taking a long draught of water. He looked at her, closing the container up and placing it back in the OSV's compartment.

"No, but I can't say we made it out full strength, either. About half the regiment was killed or wounded. These were just the crazy bastards that decided it was a good idea to follow a green sergeant to find a commissar that was likely dead." He said. Katia didn't change her expression except for what he imagined was the slightest hint of a smile, though whether because they had relieved her or Zeb's gung-ho description, he couldn't tell.

"Praxidii's dead." She told Zeb, which killed Zeb's momentary bid for hope. Zeb looked at her for three long seconds, and then closed his eyes, taking a moment. He didn't shed any tears, but he let the fact and grief wash over him for a few precious moments. Once he opened his eyes, he gave a stoic nod. "He fought well. Hell of a trooper and a friend."

"Thank you," was all Zeb could say, gathering his thoughts. He would deal with it later. Some troopers would think she reported it coldly, but he had heard tales of the Valhallan Ice Warriors. He doubted anyone else could have held off the orks and kept their sanity. He needed to ask her sometime how she became a commissar. The lineage and the rank were a hell of a combination. "To that effect, I think we should keep going to Du-retour. There's men there that are under attack, and these men here need to get proper direction and cots. With your permission, Commissar."

Zeb cleared his throat, awaiting her consent or new orders. He hoped De-retour was a haven for any civilians that had escaped the worst of it as well. Agri-worlds had just, hard working folk. Hagman sat in the driver's seat as well, just listening to their conversation. If it was just Zeb he would have interrupted thrice by now, but a Commissar always brought a bit of danger to that sort of thing.

It would not have been strictly accurate to call Du-Retour a siege. The word ‘siege’ implied levels of organization that were sadly lacking on both sides. The hamlet was one of the large tithe centers the administratum used in order to gather crops before lifting it out via large hydrogen filled airships for transhipment to the star ports. It was perhaps three kilometers onto the alluvial plain that drained the mountains, situated on a slight rise where subterranean bedrock made farming impractical. The buildings of the town were low, perhaps three stories at the center of town and lower as they spread to the out towards the outskirts. Imperial forces had reached the town first and were dug in at a series of sandbagged redoubts at the major road entrances. Improvised barricades of farm machinery and hasty earthworks provided a rough perimeter, with outlying buildings converted into makeshift strongpoints and block houses. The orks were already here in force, some thousands perhaps though it was hard to tell. The area infront of the town was a sodden mush of crushed grain crops and mud. Some enterprising officer had obviously flooded the towns irrigation dykes to slow the green skin attack. Judging by the sprays of mud and surging mud covered orks that was proving somewhat effective. Four orkish dreadnaughts of the so called ‘killa-kan’ design were trying to forge their way through the muck. One was obviously sunk to the knee joint and going nowhere, despite the large ork atop it furiously whipping at the gretchen slaves working to dig it free. Las fire cracked out and a pair of heavy bolter emplacements hosed the thickest concentration of orks with their rattling fusilade. Frustrated by their slow advance, the orks were attempting to flank the town, more in the way water will flow around a rock than in any tactical sense. One of their war buggies growled through the crop fields only to erupt in flame a moment before the report of a lemn russ main gun announced the shot.

“What a mess,” Zeb muttered, handing the amplivisor to Katia. She lifted it to her eyes and scanned the scene.

“Looks like they are holding…” Katia trailed off as a whistling sound began to build and build. The orks began firing wilding into the sky a moment before a pair of thunderbolts ripped overhead, spilling munitions in drizzle that looked surprisingly graceful, right up until the promethum bombs went off and ten acres of ork infested farm land went up in a roiling hell of red black flames.



“For now maybe, but they must have two thousand civilians in there,” he explained pointing eastward to a burning swathe of farms and woodland.

“Looks like they tried to use the hydrogen lifters to get them out,” he finished glumly. Katia could only imagine the halocaust when ork gunners had ripped the blimp out of the sky. Their little convoy was nestled in a shallow valley behind the first line of foot hills. They were out of sight for now, with the orks focused on the town, but they couldn’t wait here forever. Either they had to give up on Du-retour and make for the coast, or they had to find a way in. That meant skirting the south side of the town and avoiding the flooded fields, or else making a charge across one of the causeways formed by the dykes.



“Well sergeant, I think if we are going to make our way in, we had better wait till dark, and we better make damn sure we can raise someone on the vox so our own side dosent blow us to frak on the way in."

Night had fallen, and aside from the piggish squeals and guttural warcries over a hundred meters away, most of the fighting had been reduced to flashes in the dark like lightning, as well as more distant rumblings from artillery and large looted tank shots. Katia had cordoned the force off into squadrons and set each of them a ground car. As it was, Zeb was with her, along with Colonel Hagman, Grimdal, and Specialist Rikkard. Their team would spearhead the group into the enemy line from behind in a clear form of leadership, which was a risky gamble but if it paid off, it would be invaluable for morale. Rikkard needed to be with them. If anyone could get the vox working, he could.

The night air was cool, a nice release from the heat of the day. Zeb's burn marks enjoyed the air kissing his skin, though going into Du-Retour was only going to be a temporary reprieve for the tired band. Like as not most men in there were as exhausted as they were, or would at least claim to be so. He shoved the thoughts of rest aside, or he might fall asleep on the spot. He came back to his senses, and evidently he looked particularly brooding because the men cast glances his way as if they felt he had the balls to rush whatever gap they could find without backup. Zeb stifled a groan, still not understanding the stories that coalesced about he and Katia. The Commissar maybe, he could see her inspiring loyalty and doing insane feats of heroism. But he was just a grunt that was lucky enough to still be alive.

A lithe form approached from behind them, Grimdal holding up his lasgun warily before an artillery flash revealed it to be Katia. The woman was equal parts attractive yet intimidating, but in the shadows there was a lupin fierceness to her sharp features. Zeb had gotten used to her, mostly. Emperor only knows what universe a lowly sergeant was comrades and even friends with a commissar, but it had happened.

"Get ready to move." Katia told them, hefting her bolt pistol and placing a strong hand on the hilt of her sheathed sword. "Hagman, you're driving. Rikkard, stay low and get that vox working. How close do you need to be to catch their frequency?"

"Hard to say ma'am," He said, worry evident in his voice. "Maybe half a click to be sure, but a kilometer could work if I can get some feedback."

"The further away the better," Zeb said, though he felt his words were entirely obvious. "I think we should go in dark, Kat. There's enough light by shot to see a few meters ahead and the dykes are straight forward. The only thing we would have to worry about is running into Ork armor and I doubt they would be just sitting there in the way. They're unpredictable but Orks are usually moving, and they aren't as stupid as you'd think. They wouldn't leave machinery lying there in range of gun batteries."

The others looked at him strangely, and he glanced around, wondering what the deal was. He had been the only man here to fight Orks before back on Lorn IV. Then his mind rewound his words and he realized he had called her 'Kat.' For Katia's part, she decided to save him by not acknowledging it in the first place. "Sound advice, sergeant. Anyone else? Good. Now let's move or we'll be dead by sun up."

The ATV engines were whisper quiet compared to the background noise of engines, guns, and artillery fire. Katia clung on to the running boards, black coat fluttering in the warm night wind. They had the dykes mapped and rolled along them keeping slightly off to one side to avoid being siloutted. Star flares popped at irregular intervals, throwing the shadows on the far side of the dike into sharp relief. Periodically tracer fire skipped over the top of the dykes, kicking up sparkling gravel in sprays. Katia found herself in the strange situation of worrying that her own side was going to shoot her. That was a fate that befell many Commissars of course, the iron hand of the Emperor was not always well admistered or much appreciated, but in her case it would legitamately be an accident. Rikkard was in the back of the atv, head covered by a tarp which had been rigged as an improvised light shield, fiddling frantically with the vox. So far the only sounds coming through was the weird warbling of empty vox waves, intercut occasionally with snatches of chatter, and something that sounded like a weather report.

As the dyke began to curve towards the Imperial lines, ork fires began to appear. For the most part these were looted promethum drums, the dregs of which were mixed with gravel. The orks were feasting and in a couple of horrifying cases, singing. Some of them glanced towards the vehicles but for the moment they seemed to be assuming the ATVs were their own buggies.

"I've nearly got it," Rikkard said, his voice a little too loud with his excitement. A trio of dark small objects popped up beside the road, dropping a human arm they had been gnawing on. Their large eyes all but glowed yellow in the dark, the blood dripping from their fangs oily black.

"Humies!" one of them shrilled, so loud it literally hurt Katia's ear drums.

"Go!" she yelled and the ATVs leaped forward, throwing rooster tails of gravel out over the fields where they fell like rain drop amidst the patties. Katia tried to bring her borrowed las pistol to bear on the gretchen but they were all ready lost in the darkness. The vehicles bumped up onto the top of the dykes and roared forward at something like their top speed.

"Frak! FRAK!" Rikkard was screaming, but that scream was rapidly drowned by the mighty 'WAAAAAAAAGHHH!' that came up from the greenskins who, moments ago, had been feasting. Violence errupted everywhere all at once but at first, not much of it was directed at the Imperials. One mob of orks charged into another, choppers biting into each other. One crashed into a fire barrel and turned it over in a spray of embers. The ork rose, crude clothing burning, and continued his attack without paying the slightest attention to the flames. Gunfire spread like a ripple from a dropped stone, dozens of gun battles breaking out within a few heartbeats. The Imperial forces joined the fray immediately, las fire cracking blindly into the night. Katia heard the whump whump of distant mortars lofting illumination flares a moment before they burst overhead, painting the night in merciless white light. The orks could see them clearly now and hail of random bolter fire began blasting divots out of the dyke and sparkling of the thin armor of the ATVs.

"Open fire!" Katia shouted, suiting words to action and blazing away with her las pistol. The others followed suit, firing indiscriminately into the mob. An ork with a rocket launcher stepped onto the dyke and aimed directly down the throat of the onrushing ATVs. Katia stared in horror at his massive learing grin, mirrored in the cartoonish painting on the rocket's warhead. The ork lost cohesion in the blinding beam of a las cannon blast a moment before the ATVs hit him. The crumped over the legs with a satisfying crunch. Grimdal gave a savage cheer. Katia didn't join, the las blast had been aimed at the vehicles, but she saw no need to damp the guardsman's enthusiasm.

"Rikkard!" she yelled, "If you don't get us on comms..." The guardsman popped up from beneath his tarp, the need for light discipline long since passed. He shoved the bakerlite handset at her.

"General push!" he shouted as she snatched it from his hands.

"All units this is Regiment S1, Commissar Lubydenko, approaching vehicles are Imperial, say again vehicles approaching across the dyke are Imperial! All units fire to..." before she could finish the words a massive shape stood up from behind the dyke. THere was a sudden roar as a massive rotary blade engaged and smoke belched from behind it in clouds. The xenos machine, a profane mockery of a dreadnaught, stood and swung its blade down. The weapon bit into the rear of the ATV, clearly severing the rear fender of the vehicle. The blow knocked them off course sending them careening down into the mass of orks.

"By the golden throne..." Zeb said in horror as they spun off the path and barreled into a mob of the green xenos. The grill of the ATV hit a bulky ork, sending it to the mud. The vehicle bucked like a horse and landed on a smaller ork, shoving it to the ground. Hagman had the wherewithal to keep the foot on the gas, but it only lurched forward a few meters, crashing into another xenos.

"Full auto! Go for the head!"

Zeb's cry set them into action. Katia dodged a flailing choppa and sliced through the thick arm of the ork with her sword. It's limb hit the floor of the ATV with the weight of a heavy branch. The ork howled, but his cries were silenced by Zeb shoving his lasgun in its face and firing five shots through its eye and into its tiny brain. He did not let up, firing into the crazed crowd as Grimdal and even Rikkard open fired. If they were shooting into a mass of men, it would have been like scything through wheat. Orks were unfortunately made of sterner stuff, and most of them were more injured than dead. A huge bullet ripped through the front windshield, and a choppa cut four inches into the door in a crude attempt to cut Zeb in half. Behind them, one ork grabbed the bumper and ripped it off with strength beyond any man.

Over the mob of Orks, more ATV's rolled in. But they kept to the dyke as they were told, firing into the Orks with their lasguns as the roudy xenos attempted to elbow past one another to get them. One ATV, the third one in the vanguard, burst into flame and careened forward, before swerving into a mass of orks much like Katia and Zeb's, only it exploded on impact. The orks around it had been so busy fighting one another, they were engulfed in flames before they even realized it. Zeb only saw the spectacle for a moment, just before a bullet punched into his side. He gave a wordless cry, the sergeant's vision going white as he hit the dash of the ATV. He was vaguely aware of Katia firing into the ork mass as they bore down on them, and a voice saying. "Take him! We can't all live."

"What?" Zeb croaked, shaking. He felt cold, and yet there was hot wet on his stomach. He gritted his teeth and tried to rise, but he found he had little strength in his arms. The thrumming in his head drowned out all of the sounds of battle, and he looked up to see Katia standing over him, screaming in his face. Her voice eventually penetrated into his mind.

"-UP! THAT'S AN ORDER!" She said, and amazingly, he feebly reached out to take her hand. She took it, and lifted him up with impressive strength for one so slim. She must have been muscled like a greyhound. He felt the numbness of his body give way to pain, and every breath was agony. But it was a blessing by the God Emperor, for it woke him up.

Katia covered him in her cloak, and just as his hearing came back, there was an intense sound that broke his ears again. White hot flame erupted from very close, and before he knew it he was dragged forward, stumbling with his feet and a multitude of hands on him to keep him steady. Looking back and forth, he saw blearily saw Hagman and Rikkard. When he looked at the sweating specialist, he saw the looted stompah rise from the dyke, raising a hand that spun a buzzsaw the size of a man's torso. It looked as if it had seen them, but there was a terrible arc in the sky and a whistling. Zeb slowly realized it was a missile, and the explosive struck the ork mech directly, shattering half of its body and sending the rest tumbling into the mud.

Lasbolts flashed overhead and Orks fell dead at their feet. Zeb coughed from the smoke.

"Kat, give me a gun." He said hoarsely, stubbornly.

"Shut up, Zeb." She told him, and it was good hadn't listen. He lost consciousness mere moments later, fading into darkness as the battle raged.

Zeb opened his eyes to find himself laying in a busy medicae unit. All around were wounded soldiers and medicae personnel, some guard, others clearly civilians pressed into service. Men were laid out in rows, bags of fluid, healing incense and the other tools of the Emperors aid hung above them. Somewhere a Ministorum preacher was droning the last rites, though that seemed to be in another room, perhaps reserved for the more seriously wounded. The whole place smelled powerfully of counterseptic.

"You are finally awake," Rikkard's familiar voice came from nearby. Zeb turned his head to see the voxman sitting in a chair beside him. Bloody gauze was wrapped around his chest, though he seemed to be mobile.

"What happened," Zeb asked, his voice parched and croaking.

"You don't remember?" Rikkard asked, then grunted. "Things got a bit hairy after you got hit."

Six Hours Earlier.

Katia strained with all her might to lift Zeb, hauling him up into a fireman's carry by force of will more than muscle. It could only be moments before the end. Orks were closing from all directions now the ATV's had been cut off and every ork the guardsmen cut down was replaced by three more, often times hacking at each other to get at the Imperials. Katia was trying to think of something inspiring to say before she went to the golden throne, when her vox bead suddenly crackled to life.

"...repeat, Commissar, if you can hear me, get all your people to the Imperial side of the dyke now!" Katia struggled for a moment to make sense of the message and then heard the distant roar of turbo fans closing at astonishing speed.

"Other side of the dyke!" she screamed, turning to lurch up over the small hill, ignoring the ork bolts that plucked at her coat.

"Move! Move! Danger Close!" she yelled. The ork side of the dyke two hundred feet away exploded in sprays of blood and gravel. The blasts raked along the dyke like the Emperor's own sowing machine as an Imperial thunderbolts screamed overthem, so ear splitting loud that even the ork's warcries were blotted out. Katia stumbled on something and then rolled over the top of the dyke with Zeb. Behind her munitions went off in the wake of the strafing run, rocking the world. Bits of gravel and ork rained down into the flooded field beyond like rain. Katia rolled on top of Zeb and pressed him down, though there seemed no chance of the sergeant trying to push himself to his feet. A second thunderbolt went over after the first, its huge autocannons hosing a line of death that swept the greenskins from the far side of the dyke, then a third. Katia's bones felt like jelly from the continual impacts of the stacked aircraft as they carved a bloody shield to stop the orks from closing. Even the Greenskins seemed stunned, though perhaps they were just appreciating the sheer amount of dakka on display. The comm bead in Katia's ear was buzzing, but she couldn't understand the words. Strong hands gripped her and hauled her to her feet. Rikkard and another trooper were pointing towards a vehicle speeding across the flooded field. It was some kind of hovercraft, air cushioned skirts riding the muddy water. She hauled the unconscious Zeb to his feet and dragged him to the waters edge. The air stank of fioslene and corite as well as the rank mushroom smell of burned ork. Another thunderbolt went over, so low Katia actually felt its down draught. Something touched off on the far side of the dyke, lifting a fireball a hundred feet into the air.

"On you get," Rikkard encouraged, heaving Zeb over the side of the hovercraft like a sack of grain. Katia followed him, half pulled by his weight. Rikkard grinned and took a step up when blood exploded from his shoulder throwing him forward. Katia grabbed him and pulled him over the side. A half dozen orks had crested the dyke, somehow fighting their way through the wall of fire the flyboys were laying down. She lifted her hand only to discover she had lost her pistol somewhere in the battle. A trooper whose name plate read 'Edwin' but had been scratched out to read Ed, appeared beside her. He rested a foot on the side of the vehicle and lifted a massive shotgun that certainly hadn't been issued by the munitorum. It roared like an artillery piece and blasted one ork back over the dyke. He racked the slide and fired again, then again, sweeping the monsters back as heavy shell casings clattered to the deck. The hovercraft was turning now and racing back towards the Imperial lines. Two more thunderbolts went over and fire bloosmed into the sky as they dropped their payloads of jellied promethum, turning the night into a brief bloody day. Katia slumped down and looked at Rikkard and Zeb, both battered and bloodied from their wounds.

"Medic!" she tried to call, and then slipped into unconsciousness.

"For a moment there, we thought they might have to use the resuscitrex on you, but you were lucky. The bullet went clean through, didn't shatter bone... Other than loss of blood, you'll be fine. Though the medicae says you'll need to take it easy as long as possible. Still got a hole in you." Rikkard explained.

"It feels like it," Zeb admitted, hoarse. He looked down at his bare torso, white bandages wrapped tightly around his stomach. He placed hand on it, and felt an immense ache. The soldier rubbed his eye and tried to unmuddy his mind, but it seemed like he might need more rest. "Where's the Commissar?"

He looked up, only to see Rikkard stand up from his seat, looking at the curtain. Zeb turned to see it moved aside, and a tan man stood there. To say he was ripped was an understatement. He looked to be made of pure scars and muscle, with a strong jaw but graced with high cheek bones. He wore camo pants and a single, sleeveless top on. Around his close cropped hair was a bandana. In his hand, he held Zeb's catachan fang. It looked far more comfortable in his grasp, seeing as there was no mistaking him as one of the fabled jungle fighters of that legendary death world.

"You know, you don't look like much. Especially for a Commissar dog." The fighter said, taking his eyes off the fang and settling them on Zeb. Even if the guardsman was at his best, he didn't think he was up to taking this man in a fight. But maybe it was just the mystique of the death worlders that had him thinking that way.

"Did that fang belong to you?" Zeb asked him. The catachan shook his head, frowning for the merest second. Zeb then said. "Then you have no claim on it. So I assume you're here to give it back to me."

The catachan looked him with a neutral, almost harsh gaze. But eventually, he gave an amused smile, and flipped the short sword and caught it by the blade. Rikkard stiffened, as if he was going to go for his weapon. The catachan ignored him. "I've heard of you, and I saw the racket you started last night. You've got balls, you and the woman."

"Commissar," Rikkard corrected him. This time he did shoot the wounded guardsman a black look, before returning to regard Zeb. Surprisingly enough, he held the catachan fang out to him. Zeb took it gingerly, thinking it was a trick. But he took it without any mischief.

"I don't like Commissars, or their dogs. Remember that if you get back up. And once you're dead, I'll take that fang off you. I'll lend it to you for awhile, though."

"Thanks," was all Zeb gave him, and the fighter only stood there for another heartbeat before disappearing behind the curtain, as if he never was. Well, hopefully that didn't overly complicate things. Zeb turned to Rikkard. "So specialist, where's the Commissar?"

"I'll get your crutches. She's awake but she's not enjoying being off her feet."