I’VE NEVER EVEN HELD A GUN BEFORE

[DeJaVu]

4 January 3073 FSN is pleased to publish this fifteen-part excerpt of a journal recently unearthed on Kentares, dating from the Kentares Massacre itself. In these dark times, the knowledge that we have always fought against the darkness is comforting as we fight against the encroaching zealotry of the Word of Blake.
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[A group of militia and their people joined us yesterday, a couple dozen shooters and about a hundred women and children. They’re pretty bad off—most of the women are still screaming and weeping and a bunch of the kids are worse—medicated so they’ll sleep or just staring off into space. It’s like they don’t even see the world any more.
I talked to one of the shooters—he’s almost as bad as the women, except he’s quiet, at least—and he told me their story. They were on the other side of Harwell last week, and a battalion of Drac motor infantry rolled in. He told me the kinds of tanks they were riding in and the kinds of rifles they had—light tanks and lasers, I think it was—and how they rolled right through the militia positions and began burning the town. With the people still inside the buildings. And they shot anyone that came out.
“They’re just killing us,” he said. “A couple of the officers tried to surrender. They wanted to negotiate the town’s evacuation. I don’t think they got what was happening.” Like any of us do, I thought, but I didn’t say it. “The Dracs let them walk right up to the lead tank, white flag and all, and then they just gunned them down.”
He gave me a pistol that night. Told me I’d know what to do with it. I’ve never even held a gun before.]