"Well," Katia asked, "what is your plan?" They were walking back to their requisitioned offices, the firing party spread out ahead and behind to give them some privacy. Maybe more than just privacy, it was an open secret that many Commissars were killed by enemy fire a surprisingly long way from the front. Katia didn't think she had aquired that much animus yes but she had been handing out disciplinary actions to Catachans, an activity not likely to extend ones life. 

"My plan?" Zeb asked as they crossed what had once been the scrumball pitch, weaving their way between a nest of cabling and vox gear that had been set up in the open space.

"I'm a morale officer," Katia pointed out, "it isn't the roll of the Commisariat to be leading troops." Zeb grinned slightly at that, given that was most of what she had done since they had met back on Pavonis. They entered the principals office. The rest of the firing party stacked gear and stat down at a table in the waiting room and began to play cards. Rikkard and another man opted to rack out, curling up in the corner against shelves stuffed with copies of the encyclopedia Imperialis. Katia and Zeb went into the main office and the Commissar unbuckled her sword and pistol and hung it off a corner of the desk. Zeb went to the corner and took a carafe of caffeine from the burner and poured them both a cup. Katia sipped at it, controling the instinctive grimace that Astra Millitarum caffeine induced in anyone with a body temperature above ambient. 

"Well," Zeb responded thoughtfully, "We have shuttles, if we could knock out the greenskin AA for long enough, maybe with smoke..." Katia was already shaking her head.

"They'd rush us if we occluded our fields of fire like that. I know the colonel wants to get the civies out of here, but better they stay here and die than we rout and then they die, or go to the ork slave labor force." They were hard words, but she had no doubt her scholam tutors would approve of her priorities. Zeb nodded, his face a little tight at her casual condemnation of a two thousand or so civilians.

"Well spiking Orc anti-air is out of the question, even if it could be done, wed lose to many in the sally and we'd break," he pondered.

"What we really need is some kind of a corridor..." Katia trailed off, peering down into her cup.

"What?" Zeb demanded, pausing with his caffeine halfway to his lips. 

"I have an idea."



Zeb and Katia lay on the roof of a local bulk distribution store, peering out over the ork lines through an ampliviser. It was a seething mass of rice paddies and ork field positions, a muddy hell of seething green skins. In the distance Katia could make out crude seige guns being constructed, another testament to the creatures barbarous and inexplicable ingenuity. At the precise moment they had arranged, a pair of Imperial thunderbolts dived from the low scudding cloud, howling down on angled turbofans, their exhaust cutting bright white contrails in the sky. The orks opened fire at once and the sky blossomed with dirty black smoke and the distant boom of detonating anti aircraft shells. Like stooping eagles the thunderbolts came down, plunging towards the earth at an incredible speed until, when collision seemed inevitable, they yanked on their sticks and vectored their engines, seeming to leap upward like seedpods over an air vent. The range was too far to see the bombs fall, but there were suddenly two great geyzers of flame, water and mud shooting skyward like the muzzle flash of vast guns. Katia tuned the ampliviser to observe the effect, clods of dirt were falling into the patties like rain, as were piece of greenskins unlucky enough to be close by. Water was already rushing over ruptured dykes from the higher patties.

"Two hits," Katia observed, thousands of gallons of water were rushing from the higher field filling the lower ones that bordered the town. A few hours and they would have nearly six feet of water in a few of the fields. She wriggled backwards and looked down into the ferocrete parking lot of the store. Enginessers were hard at work, welding empty promethium drums to thin metal outriggers. Dozens of boats had already been constructed. They were painfully simple, two pontoons and a powerful fan, mostly industrial cooling units with their limiters stripped out by the few tech adepts Katia had been able to scrounge up.

"It is still going to be tight, even if it works," Zeb observed, "But I think we might just pull this off."