Taz O Tok Third of His Name - Covenant
These are the messages of Taz O Tok, third of his name, of the Kig-Yar, blessed be the homeworld, bless be the forerunners. I dedicate what time I have left before my spirit is amongst the blessed to our covenant and the forerunners who have blessed us with prosperity. I am currently trapped behind enemy lines, I do not know how long I have before I am dead so I will gather up what information I can upon the enemy and share them with you.
I, like many people, was picked to fight in the Death Lands.
The Death Lands are occupied by the Heretic's Nobles. We have learned the hard way that their strange machine spirits can swallow up and slaughter entire fleets if we come out of higher space too close to them. The space that is unsafe constantly changes. My people, the Kig-Yar, scouts of the empire, do this hard work porting in. If we survive we tell the fleet so their attack can have a prayer of victory. A lot of us have made the great journey during this process.
After that, a fleet must get through the Nobles' defenses where missiles, lasers, plasma, the occasional X-ray laser, and sometimes even atomics are used. A fleet must get through the automated defense systems first and many ships are lost along the way. Once you have passed them everything is covered in forcefields. Entire planets? Covered. Space stations are covered, asteroids, everything.
Then you fight the fleet and their ships simply will not die. Even if you take down their shields their armor can take so much damage that the shields often pop back up after they have refocused and repaired themselves. Sometimes our machine spirits fail us and our shields die for no reason or our guns stop working. Meanwhile, we must move towards the enemy worlds because that planetary shield can not be broken by anything we have tried... but it can be crossed. While you move through their planetary shields your own shields stop working and you are attacked, usually from above and below at the same time.
This process will often kill 98 to 99 percent of a fleet, simply getting past everything to fight. From there their cities are, of course, shielded. Something afforded to only the most important cities in the empire is done to every city in the Noble areas, such is their obscene wealth. Even if you take out these shields, which is no easy feat, many individual buildings are also shielded.
And the enemy fleet and defenses go after you the entire time, it is thus no wonder that the vast majority of operations end in failure and the death of the entire fleet, with the occasional lucky escape. Some people have taken to religion, others deal with impending doom with fleeting pleasures.
The most popular refuge is Pagida, a website for consorts that give the men succor and shows of flesh to satisfy them. Military men are given a discount, something other consort sites refuse to do, so their patriotism has made them the most popular site. I have a mate on my homeworld thus I do not indulge, but I do not judge the unattached men for taking care of their needs.
I miss my family. My ship was destroyed and I survived the crash. I am ashamed to say this but when I came to I ran and I hid in a cave, I watched as the enemy shamen arrived and destroyed what remained of our fleet with their magic. What I did was shameful, I admit that, but I will try to survive and try to relay what I know of these Nobles to our great imperium.
Maybe I can atone for my cowardice by sewing the seeds of victory? Still, despite it all, give my regards to my family and tell them I love them, for I doubt I will survive long.