Upon a ship belonging to the T'au Empire, a diplomat sits at her desk in a room, typing away to drive the proposal to the Ethereals on a nearby planet as to the best way to deal with a current famine that has struck the planet.
Nothing exciting has happened in the past few days. Diplomatically, she has been very successful, and for that, she is grateful that her confidence in the Greater Good has served her well. But excitement would be nice—something, anything, really. Unfortunately, excitement came rushing through her door in the form of one of her assistants.
Her assistant, for a moment, was stunned for words. Her mouth opened but could not speak, simply out of shock. There was no way for her to express the horror of the still coldness in the voice that she heard. There was no word that she could find in any language that she knew to express it. She did not hear much of it, but there was something chilling about it. It was not a T'au voice. It was a human voice. She could only stare at her charge for what felt like an eternity before speaking.
"I so humbly apologize for interrupting your work, but we just received a transmission that you must listen to now. I did not listen to the whole message, but whatever this voice message is, it sounds desperate. There's something horrifying about the way this human is speaking."
The Water Caste simply bowed her head and did what she needed to do to bring the message to her workstation and begin playing it. The voice on the other end was human and sounded like it had a naturally gravelly tone, and yet there was lifelessness to the voice as it spoke.
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"We are sending this message out through every means possible to reach as many people as possible. And, if you would be so gracious as to send this out to any Craftworlds, Imperial worlds, or even T'au worlds, you would be aiding the galaxy.
Prima Alxeria is a planet doomed and infested with a Genestealer cult that would stagger the imagination of the most strategic mind and would break the morale of the most battle-scarred soldiers.
We, the Dead and the Damned, go forth to do the impossible. We, the Dead and the Damned, are about to do what appears to be a suicide mission. We are under no orders to do this. We are choosing to do this because we know what must be done to save our people requires us to risk life and guarantee our deaths for the safety of others. We are a small team—a White Scar, a Catachan Devil, a Fire Warrior, a Pathfinder, a Storm Guardian, and a Corsair. Our alliance is not out of diplomacy but rather desperation. Valor and honor and dignity are no virtues here. There is only a means to an end. There is no glory in what we do here, and we know that our efforts, no matter how successful, will go unsung, and our lives will never be avenged.
There is no trust amongst us. We are not fighting as brothers and sisters but rather as enemies understanding the larger threat. There is no one here that trusts the other, but alone we shall die. Together, we may just survive long enough to pull off the impossible. We have no hope that we will succeed. Our best hope is to delay this monstrosity of flesh and machine that we have witnessed with our own eyes.
This message comes to you all as a warning. We know that we stand here on the precipice of death, and we know what will come next. This is a warning to everyone.
We are not asking for reinforcements, for we know there are none to give, and by the time you listen to the words of this message, we will either be too deep in the hive or dead. Do not send for our retrieval, for there will be nothing left of us to retrieve, even if we do succeed.
Do not act like fools and believe that you can simply destroy this planet, because they have eyes and ears everywhere. And hopefully, by the grace of whatever entity exists in the universe, or perhaps through the intervention of our ancestors, we will discover where they already are, where they are now, and where they are going to get the things necessary to complete their plan here. They will simply move their operations. And that much we can confirm is true.
You may call us traitorous, heretic, fools, mad, or simply say that we gave up far too easily to get off this planet. We are far beyond redemption. This alliance of ours is not based upon trust. There is no one amongst us that does not despise the other for the sins their kind committed against another. The situation we find ourselves in has made monsters of us, no matter what the circumstances were that brought us here.
We, the Dead and the Damned, act as sovereigns, separate from kin and our oaths. For the protection of our kin matters more than any oath we have ever made before this moment. We only ask that you remember not our names, but this act of absolute defiance in the face of an enemy that outnumbers us, outgrows us, and can out-hunt us."