Katia was relieved to see that Zeb seemed to be healing well. It was difficult, given their role, for commissars to have friends but the Gudrnite was as close as it came. It also had the practical benefit of giving her someone who could relay orders to other, technically speaking she was a political officer and outside the chain of command. That worked fine when she was back at the regimental CP sipping recaf, but less ideal out here in the field.

 “Why does the colonel want see us?” Zeb asked as they exited the main school building and crossed what had once been a scrumball pitch towards what appeared to be a large gymnasium. The air shook overhead as a trio of thunderbolts crossed overhead several thousand feet up, so fast they were little more than streaks against the sky. A few moments later they felt the crump of distant ordnance detonating and the clattering back wash of anti-aircraft fire.
 
“I’m not sure,” Katia admitted. At the Scolam they had suggested it was usually a bad sign when senior officers actually wanted to see Commissars whom they viewed at best as a nuisance and at worst as a magic bullet they could use to deal with a truly ruinous collapse in morale.
 
The gymnasium was a large oval shaped space ringed by layers of bench seating. In other times students would have played sports and exercised here but the demands of war had converted it completely. The main floor was covered with a map of the town and its environs in wax pencil. Katia was somewhat shocked to discover that the scale appeared to be accurate, so much so that uniformed men and women were measuring distances and calling out ranges. There were even notations on elevation. The positions of units were marked with pieces of flack board with unit name and specialty marked on them as well as vox frequencies.  Surrounding the map were dozens of chalk boards on which the staff, mostly PDF, were recording information as it was called out to them from the dozens of vox operators who sat on the first tier of benches, hunched over their transmitters. As Katia watched an aide drew a line through an inbound air strike, and then added an ETA on the next item, a flight of hellfire heavy bombers. Here and there, red robed acolytes of the Cult of Mars were at work, smearing cogitators with sacred unguents, or adding seals to the thick trunks of cables which rose from the vox transmitters up through a holes that had been knocked in the ceiling to allow a forest of antennae to be fed through. A buzz of conversation and crackling vox transmission hung over it all, completing the impression of frantic but organized export. Every few minutes a runner, either PDF or from one of the Guard remnants burst through the doors, where they were stopped by PDF troopers before the desk of an officer with captains flashes on his shoulders. After exchanging a few words the runner was routed to one of the stations, or sat on the benches to wait while juvies in school uniforms bought them water in large clay mugs.
 
“They are doing all this without cogitators?” Rikkard asked, familiar enough with Guard command posts to be surprised. Katia didn’t respond, the captain acting as traffic control was waving her over and she moved to him with crisp precision.

 “Commissar, Colonel Brae left instructions that you were to be passed through,” he told her making a gesture to a large desk beneath a score board at the end of the gym. Some PDF trooper had adjusted the board so the score read ‘13 and not out’. Katia nodded her thanks to the captain and moved to the table, her black coat cutting a path through the thronging troops and aides as effectively as a sword blade.
 
“I don’t care how close they are!” Colonel Brae was snapping, “Better we burn a few of our own men then the Orks break through, tell Lieutenant Crow he is to mark his positions with smoke and take cover. The Emperor Protects.” Brae slammed an old fashioned bakerlite vox line down with a musical clang.

 “What the devil do …ah apologies Commissar,” Brae muttered, pulling round rimmed spectacles from his nose and polishing the lens furiously with a white cloth in what Katia recognized as a habitual gesture. He was a small man, as bald as an egg, with an immaculately waxed moustache that seemed to compensate for his lack of top cover. His uniform was equally well presented, clean and starched to razor sharpness along the seams. He seemed an almost comical figure, a ridiculous little man who had pulled together scattered units from the PDF and a half dozen regiments to hold this salient against all odds for the last thirteen days. Thirteen and not out.
 
“What can we do for you Colonel?” Katia asked, formally polite. Contempt for the PDF and especially for their officers was axiomatic among the Imperial Guard. As often as not those officers were the bored sons of the local aristos who wanted a nice uniform to wear at a ball. Katia was, for once, happy to be proven wrong.
 
“Ork fighter bombers in sector 3, casualties…” a pimply faces adolescent fell silent as Brae held up a hand to quite the boy who seemed on the verge of swallowing his tongue as he realized his report had interrupted a real life Commissar in mid conversation.
 
“Commisar, as I am sure you appreciate our position here is precarious,” Colonel Brae continued, bravely blunt with what might be interpreted as a statement of weakness. Katia could well appreciate his position. The town was only holding on because of air and artillery support from behind the lines. The longer he held out however, the more orks would be drawn to the fighting. Their numbers would grow with the certainty of a crystal forming in a super saturated solution and pretty soon they would begin to contest the air, or attack other parts of the Imperial force. In either case the support that was keeping Brae in the fight would be diluted, and the odds were good he would be overrun.
 
“We are prepared to do our duty to the Emperor of course,” Brae continued, placing his glasses back on his face and looking up at them. He suddenly had the aspect of a well meaning school teacher about to ask a favorite pupil to redo her homework.
 

 “But there are…” he paused and picked up a sheet of flimsy and glanced at it, “something over two thousand civilians, tech adepts, auxiliaries and the like still in the town.” Katia nodded her head acknowledging the statement.
 
“In order to preserve the morale of my men, and deny potential slave labor to the enemy, Id like you to coordinate evacuation,” Brae concluded. Katia could understand his predicament, the majority of the PDF here would be locals, which meant that these civilians were their family and friends. If they were still in the area when the orks began to break through the static defenses, no amount of executions would stop men from running home to try to defend their wives and children. Of course that raised the question of how Katia and Zeb could possibly get several thousand non-combatants out of the siege.
 
“We will see what we can do Colonel,” Katia replied, earning a grateful nod from Brae.

 “If you will excuse me…Calvin, are those earth movers in position yet? We need to get those hydra batteries…”
 
“He doesn’t want much does he?” Rikkard asked as the Firing Party moved away from the beleaguered Colonel.
 
“I am open to ideas,” Kaita replied as she watched the organized chaos unfold around them.