IT WASN’T A JAVELIN

[DeJaVu]

30 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.
A ’Mech walked out of the forest this morning. I had the watch, and I thought it was Richie. I stood up, waved. The ’Mech stopped.
Then I realized it wasn’t a Javelin.
They’ve found us. The ’Mech didn’t wait… it raised some sort of cannon on its arm and blasted the mine entrance. I managed to get back far enough that the collapse didn’t get me, but in hindsight that may not have been the best move. The entrance has collapsed for at least a dozen meters. There’s no way we’ll clear it, and we’ve never found anything wider than a bore hole that lead out any other way.
We ate the last of the food last night. We’d been saving the wine and the booze—the alcohol was too useful as medicine to drink—but we drank it. There are twenty-four of us here left, all those alive who didn’t go off with Richie and George to get more food.
The air was thick this morning, when I woke up. Old Man Fuller didn’t wake up—Marley told me, but I can’t go and look at him. I’ve come up here, back to the minehead. I can’t hear if the Dracs are trying to dig us out—don’t know why they would, when the mountain and our own lungs are going to kill us just dead as they could. I don’t want to suffocate. I don’t want it to hurt.
I’ve still got ninety-eight rounds for my rifle. I just counted them. That should be enough.