Roddy awoke with a start.
The world resolved itself into a giant headache, spinning red lights and noise. A horrible and familiar noise that heralded nothing good. The deployment alarm.
Now, a Ratling Barracks is nothing like a normal Imperial Guard Barracks. It is, in fact more of an enclosure. With lots of interesting things in it to keep the Ratlings occupied. Lots of nooks and crannies to hide in and climb over and under, so as Donny awoke to the alarm, he smacked his thick skull off of the roof of his personal, scent marked hidey-hole and scurried out to grab his kit and sniper-rifle.
He felt like hell, having managed to get a hold of some contraband mind-rot last night but that didn't stop him from kicking the rest of his pack into some sembelance of Imperial discipline. Any complaints were dealt with in the time honored fashion of a few bites to the neck and a good kicking, which serves to assert the dominance of the Honcho Ratling over his inferiors. Roddy was, for a Ratling ... a natural leader.
The rest of his pack trooped out after him to await the orders of the Regimental Captain, via his Ratling handler. The orders given to a Ratling are usually fairly simple. The trick is having a human who knows how to speak Ratty to them.
The handler arrived and loomed over Roddy until Roddy lowered his head and bared his neck in supplication, then saluted... almost shamefully. The other Ratlings sniggered amongst themselves before imitating him, mockingly. He glared at them from his stooped position, vowing retribution.
"Sergeant Roddy, your deployment orders." The Handler was a gruff old veteran, ranked Lieutenant and went by the name, Summers. He was responsible for the actions of the little Rat-men, to a greater degree than the Ratlings themselves; and ensured that they were fed, watered and kept in just enough chems and booze that they wouldn't feel compelled to steal more, but not so much as to compromise their effectiveness. This, he did rather well as he took care and attention to understand their body-language, needs and customs. "His" Ratlings were amongst the best disciplined in the imperium. He was proud of them.
Roddy accepted the orders from the outstretched hand of Lt Summers and made a show of reading them in front of his troop, before ripping off a more disciplined, almost human ... nearly parade ground salute.
His pack looked at him in wonder. They were always in awe of him when he read orders, especially as he could do it without moving his lips. Summers had made sure that Roddy learned the valuable skill years ago. It had paid dividends in the young Ratling's rapacious lust for knowledge and interest in map-reading.
"You are to deploy from Sergeant Moreno's troop carrier as it crests the rise to the west of our destination and deploy in scout formation ahead of our advance column. Radio back with any unexpected movement you see but do not engage targets, if you should find them. Await further orders. Understand?"
Roddy muttered and twitched his acquiescence... before attempting another salute to indicate his certainty. Ratlings are always under the impression that officers like salutes and want to see them as often as possible. The immediate submissive body language exhibited by inferior ranks whenever officers are near is hard for Ratlings to ignore. Salutes make up a great deal of their dialogue with superiors. It's usually only with normal run of the mill, dog soldiers that Ratlings ever get conversational.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
They deployed expertly and efficiently, their training and disicpline would have been evident to any watcher ... if the watcher could have spotted them, that is.
They spread out to a distance of up to 100 meters apart, ten of them in all covering a kilometre line ahead of the advancing column. They could call to each other in a variety of local animal noises in lieu of radio communication, which they would save for communicating with HQ. As the leader, Roddy kept himself in the center of their formation, as dictated by the Imperial Sniper Command Protocol. Thus he would be directly ahead of the column and be able to respond quickly to a threat on either side.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was some time spent, picking their way through thick brush down into valleys before Roddy spotted the first sign of a viable target, although he had been smelling the foul odour of Chaos Taint for some time. He signalled back to base with static bursts on the radio and whistled out to his flanks to curve in and around the center position, heading for line of sight.
There were figures emerging through the forest. Cultists, wrapped in rags and wearing marks of Chaos, armed with autoguns and shotguns. Roddy signalled to his pack to pick targets, knowing they would now be in position, then he moved far enough out of earshot to use his comms.
"Sar-gent Roddy ... Rep-oar-thing ... Cultists to ye Weste. Bay-sic amr-ram-mentes, rec-weste pre-mi-shoon to de-spatch? Cone-firme, Ow-ver." His basic was flawless for a Ratling.
"Captain Reever, Receiving. Roddy, pick viable targets take your shots and withdraw to allow armour to deploy through, giving covering fire. Confirm, Over."
"Ayes, Ur!" Roddy chirrupped then scurried back to his line. The cultists were still a few hundred yards ahead, moving slowly and covered in the brush. Roddy sighted the most corrupt and graven looking of the advancing cultists through his scope then whistled high to his pack. As his lungs emptied, they all fired within miliseconds of each other.
His target popped and he switched position before whistling again, this time, sighting as he whistled. His pack would be doing the same. His lungs emptied, they fired. Another target burst, but he'd already dropped his sights and was moving to another position.
Another two rounds of fire and he called to withdraw. The cultists were bringing up heavy weapons emplacements and were assembling them rapidly, looking to fire directly ahead of them indiscriminately towards the unseen snipers. Roddy's pack would have split into two groups by then allowing a channel for armoured units to roll through, soaking up heavy fire, while the Ratlings skirmished the flanks, picking off the gunners. Textbook Imperial Tactica.
The action went to the Imperial forces within an hour, the Ratling squad once again affirming their kin-ship with the forces of Man and winning affection and tolerance of their mischevious ways amongst the regiments that were lucky enough to have a squad deploy with them.
Roddy could go back to drinking and gambling with the rest of the regiment, happily subservient to the forces of the Imperium. First he needed to go and scent mark his Pack-Mates' bedding, to make up for their mocking attitude and further ensconce their sense of obedience to him.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Within a few months, the Imperial Planet, Greca was cleansed of practically all Chaos taint and the remaining pockets of resistance were not enough to warrant the continued presence of such a large Imperial force. The Campaign would continue on another tainted planet, after a stop off to pick up a new founding from the Necromunan hive world. They left behind a small team of officers, adepts and advisors to train and direct the PDF units in rounding up the last traces of taint from Greca.
Roddy had heard about Necromunda, though he had never visited a hive planet. He had heard that they were dirty places, filled with crawl-spaces, vents that were virtually un-navigable and which led to each and every corner of the massive Hives, so large that they pricked out of the planetary atmosphere and had to be stabilised with shields and suppressor fields to prevent them from being ripped apart under the stress of the planetary rotation.
Roddy liked the idea of a hive. It sounded like a Ratling paradise and he couldn't wait for planet-fall. Leave was rare in the guard regiments and when his cycle came up, he preferred to save it for planetfall, rather than spend weeks on the ship with nothing to do. His pack did the same, preferring not to be split up from their cousin.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Necomunda turned out to be everything that he'd dreamed about in the weeks leading up to planet-fall. As he saw the towering hives from the orbit they were in, he vowed to do some serious exploring.
Ratlings are theives. They just are. There's nothing that anyone can really do to stop them stealing and previous attempts have resulted in the needless deaths of many of the little Rat-men before xeno-adepts worked out their psychology. Their larceny is an ingrained genetic make-up. They hoard and store things, consuming what they can, when they can, in order to survive. The only way to curb their activities are to provide distraction and plenty of stuff for them to do.
Roddy was educated ... at least for a Ratling. He'd read books, battle-reports and had access to computers. He'd learned to navigate computers and found that he had an instinctive, logical understanding of how they operated. He didn't steal or hoard nearly as much stuff as his pack mates did. Instead, he pried into things, listened to the humans for snippets of information and read things that people thought were beyond his ken. He hoarded data, because he had learned the relative value of data compared to things. He understood that you could swap the same piece of information for many different things to many different people... and that you would still own the information at the end of the transaction. So while he rarely stole, he had more belongings than his pack-mates by far and he never had to hide them, because no-one was looking for them, having been freely given.
He left most of his stuff, electing to take only his basic kit with him. His sniper-rifle was left back on the ship. Nothing other than a holstered pistol, worn as a side-arm was allowed for non-commissioned officers on planet-fall and even as a sub-human, Roddy qualified and took his standard issue las. because Necromunda had a reputation.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Of his pack-mates, Roddy was closest to Twitch and Senior. They were the beta-males of the pack and helped Roddy enforce disipline. Twitch was smaller than Roddy and practically feral. He moved quickly and furtively, which got him his name, but was vicious, swift and cunning. Senior was an older, grey Ratling. Slightly bigger than Roddy, he would be considered powerful by his ilk and his experience and attitude helped the pack survive long transitions between planets and fights. On the battlefield he was a keen scout and Roddy's most trusted pack-mate.
The three of them wandered through a bazaar somewhere in the center of Hive Primus, after disembarking from the drop-pod. The other Ratlings begged, whined and pleaded with Roddy to let them stay at the lounge bar, which Roddy let them do. They were keen to get Ratted.
The smells and sounds were almost overpowering for the little Rat-men who, started needing to eat and establish a temporary camp, to feel safe. Roddy led them to a bar that had rooms available. To get eye to eye with the counter-jocky, Roddy clambered up onto Senior's shoulders. The counter jocky laughed at the request, but reconsidered when he found Twitches knife pricking him in the valuables. The Ratlings promptly paid in creds and promised themselves the pleasure of rifling the till on the jocky's next shift.
Twitch was sent to round up the rest of the lads while Roddy sat with Senior to plan out their leave. They would have two weeks available to them while the fleet re-fitted and barracked the new founding.
"Roh-dee ... Ss'be-like a long tiem foar us be heer. What aer wee do heer foar all-time?" Senior was worried about the Commisariat or the local Enforcers taking unkindly to the Ratling's mischief. Having been in the guard for a long time, he knew that humans were less forgiving of their nature when they hadn't served with the Ratlings.
"Wee goe exploar. Up-hiev. Many s'weerd Man-things to find aowt. Much trinkets to snaffle. Not staey in one plaece foar longishtime. Ss'be lee-ving and fiending awl-terr-nae-tive hack-omm-oed-ae-shun... quicktime! Look-smart! N'warries Big 'Un!" Roddy smiled and scrabbled Senior's hair to calm his worries.
Placated, Senior crawled under the bed provided to get a good spot in the corner, by the wall. Roddy climed into the top of a cupboard and awaited the return of his Pack, before falling asleep.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A smash and a splinter of wood. The whole pack was awake and on it's feet in seconds. Roddy saw the Enforcers rushing in and panicked. There was no way to fight them. No way they could fight them without bringing down the wrath of the Emperor upon them. Roddy screamed, as did the others as a shock maul smashed into the head of Barrow, knocking him flying and spasming across the room.
Roddy opened fire from his cupboard as his training took over. The Enforcers, surprised at any form of resistance, fell back out of the room to re-organise. Roddy took the only chance available to him and jumped straight out of the window, the glass bursting around him as he fell. It was a long way down ... further than he'd hoped ... He hit the ground with a smack and the world went dark.
The world resolved itself into a giant headache, spinning red lights and noise. A horrible and familiar noise that heralded nothing good. The deployment alarm.
Now, a Ratling Barracks is nothing like a normal Imperial Guard Barracks. It is, in fact more of an enclosure. With lots of interesting things in it to keep the Ratlings occupied. Lots of nooks and crannies to hide in and climb over and under, so as Donny awoke to the alarm, he smacked his thick skull off of the roof of his personal, scent marked hidey-hole and scurried out to grab his kit and sniper-rifle.
He felt like hell, having managed to get a hold of some contraband mind-rot last night but that didn't stop him from kicking the rest of his pack into some sembelance of Imperial discipline. Any complaints were dealt with in the time honored fashion of a few bites to the neck and a good kicking, which serves to assert the dominance of the Honcho Ratling over his inferiors. Roddy was, for a Ratling ... a natural leader.
The rest of his pack trooped out after him to await the orders of the Regimental Captain, via his Ratling handler. The orders given to a Ratling are usually fairly simple. The trick is having a human who knows how to speak Ratty to them.
The handler arrived and loomed over Roddy until Roddy lowered his head and bared his neck in supplication, then saluted... almost shamefully. The other Ratlings sniggered amongst themselves before imitating him, mockingly. He glared at them from his stooped position, vowing retribution.
"Sergeant Roddy, your deployment orders." The Handler was a gruff old veteran, ranked Lieutenant and went by the name, Summers. He was responsible for the actions of the little Rat-men, to a greater degree than the Ratlings themselves; and ensured that they were fed, watered and kept in just enough chems and booze that they wouldn't feel compelled to steal more, but not so much as to compromise their effectiveness. This, he did rather well as he took care and attention to understand their body-language, needs and customs. "His" Ratlings were amongst the best disciplined in the imperium. He was proud of them.
Roddy accepted the orders from the outstretched hand of Lt Summers and made a show of reading them in front of his troop, before ripping off a more disciplined, almost human ... nearly parade ground salute.
His pack looked at him in wonder. They were always in awe of him when he read orders, especially as he could do it without moving his lips. Summers had made sure that Roddy learned the valuable skill years ago. It had paid dividends in the young Ratling's rapacious lust for knowledge and interest in map-reading.
"You are to deploy from Sergeant Moreno's troop carrier as it crests the rise to the west of our destination and deploy in scout formation ahead of our advance column. Radio back with any unexpected movement you see but do not engage targets, if you should find them. Await further orders. Understand?"
Roddy muttered and twitched his acquiescence... before attempting another salute to indicate his certainty. Ratlings are always under the impression that officers like salutes and want to see them as often as possible. The immediate submissive body language exhibited by inferior ranks whenever officers are near is hard for Ratlings to ignore. Salutes make up a great deal of their dialogue with superiors. It's usually only with normal run of the mill, dog soldiers that Ratlings ever get conversational.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
They deployed expertly and efficiently, their training and disicpline would have been evident to any watcher ... if the watcher could have spotted them, that is.
They spread out to a distance of up to 100 meters apart, ten of them in all covering a kilometre line ahead of the advancing column. They could call to each other in a variety of local animal noises in lieu of radio communication, which they would save for communicating with HQ. As the leader, Roddy kept himself in the center of their formation, as dictated by the Imperial Sniper Command Protocol. Thus he would be directly ahead of the column and be able to respond quickly to a threat on either side.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was some time spent, picking their way through thick brush down into valleys before Roddy spotted the first sign of a viable target, although he had been smelling the foul odour of Chaos Taint for some time. He signalled back to base with static bursts on the radio and whistled out to his flanks to curve in and around the center position, heading for line of sight.
There were figures emerging through the forest. Cultists, wrapped in rags and wearing marks of Chaos, armed with autoguns and shotguns. Roddy signalled to his pack to pick targets, knowing they would now be in position, then he moved far enough out of earshot to use his comms.
"Sar-gent Roddy ... Rep-oar-thing ... Cultists to ye Weste. Bay-sic amr-ram-mentes, rec-weste pre-mi-shoon to de-spatch? Cone-firme, Ow-ver." His basic was flawless for a Ratling.
"Captain Reever, Receiving. Roddy, pick viable targets take your shots and withdraw to allow armour to deploy through, giving covering fire. Confirm, Over."
"Ayes, Ur!" Roddy chirrupped then scurried back to his line. The cultists were still a few hundred yards ahead, moving slowly and covered in the brush. Roddy sighted the most corrupt and graven looking of the advancing cultists through his scope then whistled high to his pack. As his lungs emptied, they all fired within miliseconds of each other.
His target popped and he switched position before whistling again, this time, sighting as he whistled. His pack would be doing the same. His lungs emptied, they fired. Another target burst, but he'd already dropped his sights and was moving to another position.
Another two rounds of fire and he called to withdraw. The cultists were bringing up heavy weapons emplacements and were assembling them rapidly, looking to fire directly ahead of them indiscriminately towards the unseen snipers. Roddy's pack would have split into two groups by then allowing a channel for armoured units to roll through, soaking up heavy fire, while the Ratlings skirmished the flanks, picking off the gunners. Textbook Imperial Tactica.
The action went to the Imperial forces within an hour, the Ratling squad once again affirming their kin-ship with the forces of Man and winning affection and tolerance of their mischevious ways amongst the regiments that were lucky enough to have a squad deploy with them.
Roddy could go back to drinking and gambling with the rest of the regiment, happily subservient to the forces of the Imperium. First he needed to go and scent mark his Pack-Mates' bedding, to make up for their mocking attitude and further ensconce their sense of obedience to him.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Within a few months, the Imperial Planet, Greca was cleansed of practically all Chaos taint and the remaining pockets of resistance were not enough to warrant the continued presence of such a large Imperial force. The Campaign would continue on another tainted planet, after a stop off to pick up a new founding from the Necromunan hive world. They left behind a small team of officers, adepts and advisors to train and direct the PDF units in rounding up the last traces of taint from Greca.
Roddy had heard about Necromunda, though he had never visited a hive planet. He had heard that they were dirty places, filled with crawl-spaces, vents that were virtually un-navigable and which led to each and every corner of the massive Hives, so large that they pricked out of the planetary atmosphere and had to be stabilised with shields and suppressor fields to prevent them from being ripped apart under the stress of the planetary rotation.
Roddy liked the idea of a hive. It sounded like a Ratling paradise and he couldn't wait for planet-fall. Leave was rare in the guard regiments and when his cycle came up, he preferred to save it for planetfall, rather than spend weeks on the ship with nothing to do. His pack did the same, preferring not to be split up from their cousin.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Necomunda turned out to be everything that he'd dreamed about in the weeks leading up to planet-fall. As he saw the towering hives from the orbit they were in, he vowed to do some serious exploring.
Ratlings are theives. They just are. There's nothing that anyone can really do to stop them stealing and previous attempts have resulted in the needless deaths of many of the little Rat-men before xeno-adepts worked out their psychology. Their larceny is an ingrained genetic make-up. They hoard and store things, consuming what they can, when they can, in order to survive. The only way to curb their activities are to provide distraction and plenty of stuff for them to do.
Roddy was educated ... at least for a Ratling. He'd read books, battle-reports and had access to computers. He'd learned to navigate computers and found that he had an instinctive, logical understanding of how they operated. He didn't steal or hoard nearly as much stuff as his pack mates did. Instead, he pried into things, listened to the humans for snippets of information and read things that people thought were beyond his ken. He hoarded data, because he had learned the relative value of data compared to things. He understood that you could swap the same piece of information for many different things to many different people... and that you would still own the information at the end of the transaction. So while he rarely stole, he had more belongings than his pack-mates by far and he never had to hide them, because no-one was looking for them, having been freely given.
He left most of his stuff, electing to take only his basic kit with him. His sniper-rifle was left back on the ship. Nothing other than a holstered pistol, worn as a side-arm was allowed for non-commissioned officers on planet-fall and even as a sub-human, Roddy qualified and took his standard issue las. because Necromunda had a reputation.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Of his pack-mates, Roddy was closest to Twitch and Senior. They were the beta-males of the pack and helped Roddy enforce disipline. Twitch was smaller than Roddy and practically feral. He moved quickly and furtively, which got him his name, but was vicious, swift and cunning. Senior was an older, grey Ratling. Slightly bigger than Roddy, he would be considered powerful by his ilk and his experience and attitude helped the pack survive long transitions between planets and fights. On the battlefield he was a keen scout and Roddy's most trusted pack-mate.
The three of them wandered through a bazaar somewhere in the center of Hive Primus, after disembarking from the drop-pod. The other Ratlings begged, whined and pleaded with Roddy to let them stay at the lounge bar, which Roddy let them do. They were keen to get Ratted.
The smells and sounds were almost overpowering for the little Rat-men who, started needing to eat and establish a temporary camp, to feel safe. Roddy led them to a bar that had rooms available. To get eye to eye with the counter-jocky, Roddy clambered up onto Senior's shoulders. The counter jocky laughed at the request, but reconsidered when he found Twitches knife pricking him in the valuables. The Ratlings promptly paid in creds and promised themselves the pleasure of rifling the till on the jocky's next shift.
Twitch was sent to round up the rest of the lads while Roddy sat with Senior to plan out their leave. They would have two weeks available to them while the fleet re-fitted and barracked the new founding.
"Roh-dee ... Ss'be-like a long tiem foar us be heer. What aer wee do heer foar all-time?" Senior was worried about the Commisariat or the local Enforcers taking unkindly to the Ratling's mischief. Having been in the guard for a long time, he knew that humans were less forgiving of their nature when they hadn't served with the Ratlings.
"Wee goe exploar. Up-hiev. Many s'weerd Man-things to find aowt. Much trinkets to snaffle. Not staey in one plaece foar longishtime. Ss'be lee-ving and fiending awl-terr-nae-tive hack-omm-oed-ae-shun... quicktime! Look-smart! N'warries Big 'Un!" Roddy smiled and scrabbled Senior's hair to calm his worries.
Placated, Senior crawled under the bed provided to get a good spot in the corner, by the wall. Roddy climed into the top of a cupboard and awaited the return of his Pack, before falling asleep.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A smash and a splinter of wood. The whole pack was awake and on it's feet in seconds. Roddy saw the Enforcers rushing in and panicked. There was no way to fight them. No way they could fight them without bringing down the wrath of the Emperor upon them. Roddy screamed, as did the others as a shock maul smashed into the head of Barrow, knocking him flying and spasming across the room.
Roddy opened fire from his cupboard as his training took over. The Enforcers, surprised at any form of resistance, fell back out of the room to re-organise. Roddy took the only chance available to him and jumped straight out of the window, the glass bursting around him as he fell. It was a long way down ... further than he'd hoped ... He hit the ground with a smack and the world went dark.