“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.”