As the sandstorm began to fade away and the wardog ambush party became just a memory accompanied by dust, I examined the ammunition left in my rifle’s magazine and began to load it, ensuring that I would be ready for the next battle that could appear, although I would prefer that this would be the last confrontation I saw on my travel. When I finished the task, I began to examine the members of the native caravan I joined in search of anyone injured, aiming to do my part of work, but my help in that department would only be an annoyance for the locals, who healed their wounded with the impressive properties of the aleph and their mastery over the substance. Another of the reasons that my aid wouldn’t be needed reside in the fact that this group of locals had willingly abandoned their peaceful ways when it came to defending themselves, using their natural capabilities in conjunction with scavenged human weaponry and coordination to survive attacks from human raiders, just as the leader of the rebellious Raiders preached to his compatriots. The thought saddened me, feeling guilty that our arrival and actions had altered their lifestyle and made every one of us forced soldiers, turning the Broken Planet into a hostile planet in which three main forces struggled to gain its control. As soon as I banished these thoughts and returned to the present, every part of my body was screaming that this was an ideal moment to practice my labor as a journalist, so I decided to use my time to document the scene, ordering my loyal mechanical dog, Rusty, to take pictures with the camera incorporated to the side of his body as I annotated the events in my trusty notepad.

“Good boy, Rusty”, I said to my dog while caressing him and offering one of his favorite treats as a reward, a murkul flavored cookie.

Once we finished, I began to search the area trying to find Dorren, the group’s guide and the person thanks to whom I was allowed to join them on this trip. Amongst the busy coming and going of people I eventually found his daughter and partner, with the first one visibly scared from the attack and still trembling. Obviously, the presence of an armed human, this planet’s invaders, with an artificial dog by his side didn’t help feel the white-haired girl more secure. In hopes of fixing that problem, I crouched to her size and began to play with Rusty in front of her and offered the dog a treat afterward, later prompting my companion to sit in front of her. Using gestures, I told the girl to get her hand close to Rusty’s nose, making her look to her mother for guidance, who nodded in approval and even let the dog smell her so that her daughter wouldn’t be scared. Rusty began to lick the mother’s hand after smelling her, moving the kid to try the same, visibly afflicted by curiosity and fear, but the latter was substituted by joy as the dog proved that he was harmless and asked to be pet, ending with both of them playing around. Seeing gratitude in the mother’s eye, I asked her for her partner’s whereabouts and followed the directions she gave me, leaving my companion behind to play with the young local.

While navigating through the swarm of people, I took note of everything I could, their white attires, the alien letters that marked their belongings, the curious gestures they had with each other and any other characteristic from their culture, aiming to learn as much as I could from them and understand their traditions and history. When I finally reached the guide and seized a moment when he wasn’t occupied, I saluted him in the usual manner of his people and received the appropriate response before we began to talk.

“How far are we?” I asked him as I deployed a holographic map in front of us, with a glowing red point indicating the human settlement I wanted to reach.

“Not much”, Dorren answered me after deducing our approximate position in the map and signaling it, “We should be close soon, once we continue.”

“I’m glad to hear that. Thank you”, I said before bowing to him as a sign of gratitude in his custom, but he interrupted me and prompted me to rise again.

“There’s no need for that, you’ve already done enough to pay for your place”, The guide argued, “Besides, this a favor I’m doing you”

“Still, if it wasn’t for you I would have had my fair share of problems to get there, including discussing the terms of passage with the factions, especially now that the Raiders destroyed their leaders”, I answered him, “Also, they already dislike me enough already, investigating their dirty secrets, asking uncomfortable questions and just being a pain in the ass”.

“Can you explain me your task again?”, The native asked, confused by my recent answer, “I think I don’t fully understand it”

“Sure”, I answered him, finding no inconvenient in explaining my local companion what I do for a living, or at least I did back home, “I’m a journalist, a person that follows and investigates events in order to inform the rest of the world about them, and from time to time it requires uncovering things that some people would do anything to keep hidden. As a teacher of mine told me, ‘You know you’re doing your job right when someone important wants you to shut the fuck up”.

“So, you’re then like a combination of storyteller and a troublemaker”, Dorren said while a mischievous smile adorned his face.

“When I’m doing my job right”, I answered him with a proud smile before I wasn’t able to hold a chuckle at the native’s conception of my profession.

“My people and I, we appreciate that you’ve told us stories about our compatriots in the rest of the world and listened to us, so that what we’ve gone through will also be known to others”, The man commented me as he looked back to his busy tribe, deciding that everything should be ready to continue our travel.

“I enjoy listening to people’s stories”, I answered the guide as the pack animals retook the journey with regained strength.

After my conversation with Dorren ended and the caravan continued on its way, I recorded our march and wrote down my thoughts on my notepad. I also talked with the natives, who had grown somewhat accustomed to me and, in most cases, didn’t look at me with a certain disgust born from the actions of the human factions. For part of the travel, I began to think about the consequences of my presence on the planet and how it might have affected the lives of all its inhabitants, both old and new. This line of thought brought me back to the time before the expedition departed, when I used my agency’s connections and a series of favors to gain a seat in one of the ships, being amongst those that would document the incredible story of our journey and the knowledge we would uncover. I was assigned to one of the Hades Division’s transports, indisputably better than the mercenary Umbra Wardog’s ships or the cold and disturbingly efficient Fifth Council’s. It was there where I saw again General Krausher and her right hand, the feared Aneska, since I covered the war on Mars. Krausher seemed to recognize me and saluted me, inviting me to dinner with him and the woman, where we talked about the coverage I did of the past events, especially when it came to the part where I explained the chaos and destruction that Aneska brought down to the enemy troops without sparing any details, bringing hell down from the skies like an archangel sent by a hate-filled god, flaming sword in hand. The General praised me for the way I transferred my emotions from that day into the paper, but the images I saw that day from a secure location at the side of the man still come back to terrify me.

When we reached the Broken Planet and our engines died, everything went south, and the more we knew of the almost magical aleph the more then tensions between the factions grew, until it exploded into an all-out war fuelled by greed to gain dominance over the substance and find a way back to our home system. Of course, when those fuckers began fighting each other they didn’t give a damn about the civilians aboard their ships unless they represented companies like Elite Corp. or increased their ranks. Needless to say, the natives were ran over.

And then, amongst all the chaos, the bullets, and the blood-soaked aleph, Harec’s ragtag group of rebels rose, consisting of a merry band of psychopaths, disgraced soldiers, misfits and more; all of them with top combat skills and exceptional abilities, working under the common goal of liberating the planet from the human oppressors. As their successful missions increased and new members came, their fame spread like wildfire, and the need for interviewing them grew inside of me, their leader in particular. But contacting them wasn’t an easy task, quite the opposite in fact, unless you were either on Harec’s list of potential recruits or one of their targets. Searching them wasn't a possibility, since reliable sources told me that even the Fifth Council, with all their advanced technology, had failed that task, and my limited resources couldn't even be compared to theirs. Instead, the best option was to make them come to me, and I recently came in possession of something that would allow that, Lycus Dion’s music collection. I had to call old favors with my contacts in the Hades Division to obtain it, which they gladly did since the seemingly immortal soldier was extraordinarily vicious with their forces. Many things could be said about Lycus Dion, few of them nice, but I had to admit the bastard had a good taste in music.