"I fucked up.
“I overestimated myself. Typical.
“Managed to drag my ass into this watch tower. I don’t think I’ll be able to make it down the mountain with my legs like this, but I can see a dreadnaught from here. It’s maybe a mile, mile-and-a-half off. Trees are grown in the gouge, so it crashed here at least a couple decades ago. Looks Colonial… If it hasn’t been scuttled, it’ll have a dozen drives. We only need two to get off this fucking planet as long as Romeo is still alive when you get this.
“If anyone gets this, I mean.
“Fuck…
“When I get back, I promise I’ll explain, but…
“I barely believe it and I saw it with my own eyes.
“This place is wrong. The things in it are wrong! There was a reason they abandoned this place. Even the autocrats back on Caldero won't wanna touch this can of worms with a ten-lightyear pole…
“Which makes me wonder, again, why the Colonials didn't just glass this place from orbit when they left.
“If they… left… Fuck me.
“He shouldn't have brought us here, I know that. Logically, I can’t undo anything, but it’s hard not to imagine… to hope… it should have gone differently. If only I'd killed him back on Vicce Kha. Maybe none of this would've happened.
“I even wonder if Kurage… What was that?
“I’m fucking losing it. I don’t know if it’ll be safe for us to leave. Not without plugging up the hole they made in this godforsaken world. But how the fuck do you kill something you can’t see until it’s too late? How do you kill something that’s only real when you think it’s real? What even is real?
“But… I think about infected wounds. I think how sometimes… Sometimes it's better to let something bleed clean before sewing it back up. Maybe that dreadnaught is the answer. All roads lead to Rome, but every crater with pissed off monsters bleeding out of it leads to this Colonial crash site.
“Fuck. I'm thirsty… I do sort of hope I'm wrong…”
[Sniff.]
“I’m sorry.
“For everything.
“And I know that doesn’t change anything.
“But I am. Sorry.”
ns 15.158.61.20da2
