Post by Geneva on Jun 27, 2014 6:07:17 GMT
Hey, Hive, how ya doin'?
I wrote another spat of dumb 40k fan fluff. Nothing special, just a five minute spur of the moment sort of thing. Hope ye like it all the same. I should get back to writing that horror story sometime soon too...
“I frakkin’ hate ‘nids.”
“Is that so, Ratchett?”
This was the third time they’d had this conversation since the morning. Lydia wasn’t quite sure whether it was Ratchett’s genuine hatred for bugs or his lack of imagination that had him repeating himself again. Probably both.
“Know why I hate ‘em?” the scruffy guardsman asked her.
Lydia sighed and responded without lifting her eyes from the lasgun she was reassembling. “No, Ratchett. But please inform me; why do you hate ‘nids so much.”
“Cos there’s so bleedin’ many of ‘em,” Ratchett spat.
Ever the wordsmith was Private Ratchett. Lydia chuckled a little despite herself. “Aye, Ratchett, there’s a fair few of them all right. I can’t argue with you on that.”
“Makes it hard to be angry at ‘em, y’know?”
Lydia didn’t know but she nodded anyway. Asking Ratchett what he actually meant was just an easy way to get him confused. At least this way one of them had a handle on the conversation.
“I don’t like that,” continued Ratchett, “A man I can be angry at. I can hate his stupid face. A group of ‘em I can hate all the same. Not hard to hate people who kill your friends. Not hard to picture their faces when yer stickin’ ‘em. But ‘nids... There’s so many of ‘em. And they’re all the same. Ya kill one and there it is again, the same bleedin’ thing, right behind it. Like ya never even killed it at all. Like he was waitin’ to be killed just to come back again. They never look afraid of dyin’. Not like us.”
“Oh it’s fierce annoying all right,” said Lydia rolling her eyes, “Kind of like relatives you can’t get rid of.”
The joke left Lydia with an empty feeling in her stomach as soon as she said it but she shook it off and worked harder on her gun.
“They’ll never go away, will they? They’ll keep coming back. They always do, every time. We smash ‘em and they come back just like that. It’ll just keep going and going. We don’t get to come back like them. We stay dead and that’s proper but them...”
Lydia paused. This part of the conversation was new. She grunted and focused on her work again. Ratchett was a simple fellow but a determined lad all the same. It unnerved her to hear him upset.
“But you smash them anyway, don’t you Ratchett?” She asked, “You kill them one by one for the Emperor and all that. Ain’t any ‘nids nasty enough to tangle with you.”
She heard Ratchett groan, “The Emperor ain’t watchin’ me. I wish he was. I wish he knew how important it was. But I guess he can’t be watchin’ everyone can he? He has a hard ‘nuff job as is.”
“The Emperor watches over all of us, Ratchett,” Lydia said halfheartedly, “He knows what’s going on.”
A pause. There were only two left of them atop the bastion. Lookouts at the rear guard. They were far from the action but not for the first time Lydia began to wish there were more of them here. She couldn’t talk to Ratchett like Gus had. The sergeant had had a much better way with words. Instead she just couldn’t think of anything to say. Ratchett wasn’t usually the one who needed cheering up.
“I think I’m done,” sighed Ratchett. Lydia eyes widened.
“Aye, but not for long,” Lydia tried to say encouragingly, “They’ll need every soldier they can get on the front in a few days I reckon. We’ll have a good rest here and then earn ourselves some medals, right?”
Lydia looked up at Ratchett but his gaze was fixed on the sky above them. Lydia avoided looking at the sky. They all did. But now she followed Ratchett’s eyes to the twisted mass above them. A black pit with twisted tendrils reaching out to every horizon, the patches of sky between blood red, and the flickering of thousands starships dotted all around it as they vanished silently dozens at a time into the thick void.
“Just spores,” she said, less confidently than she would have liked. Gus had looked at the sky a lot as well over the last few days.
“What do you think they be thinkin’?” murmered Ratchett, “The ‘nids, I mean.”
Lydia forced a laugh, “You know what, Ratchett, I don’t think they be thinking much at all. They’re like animals, y’know?”
“I had a dog back home.”
Lydia tore her eyes from the sky and finished working on her rifle, “I mean different animals to dogs, Ratchett. You know that.”
“Yeah,” said Ratchett, “I know.”
There was another short silence before he finally looked down again and smiled. Lydia breathed a sigh of relief.
“I frakkin’ hate ‘nids,” he repeated for the fourth time that day.
“Yeah,” replied Lydia, admiring her work, “I frakkin’ hate em’ too.”
She handed him the rifle and patted him on the back. “But best not think about it too much, aye?”
