I DON’T WANT TO DIE, NOT EVEN TO KILL DRACS

[DeJaVu]

18 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.
There’s a group of Dracs between us and the mine. Maybe twenty of them, but they’re camped at the crossroads between Harwell and Gould. It’s a good thing we’d just run out of gas and were hoofing it. Otherwise we’d have driven right into them.
Hakama wants to kill them. I don’t blame him—I want to kill them, too, and every other living Drac in existence. They’ve declared war against the people of the Federated Suns here—not just the state, not just war between armies and generals and ’Mechs. It’s genocide, if that’s the right word. They’re exterminating us.
I just don’t want to die killing them, and there’s only six of us, and our guns. They’ve got a half-track truck with some kind of big gun mounted on it. We found some rations in a smashed armory in Gould, so we’ve got food. We can wait them out. We can get back, deliver the map I’ve made. We found more food than we could carry, and we’re carrying all we can, about forty kilos worth each. My legs hurt more than I thought they ever could.
But I don’t want to die, not even to kill Dracs. I just want to get back to the mine.
If there’s still anyone there.