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."