The Wastelanders
Prologue
Agria, a Terran colony established nearly seventy years ago in the star system of Vega. The planet was once a paradise, almost just like Earth and thus millions of people flocked to it, eager to make a new start and in other cases a nice profit. For a good fourty years humanity thrived on Agria, utilizing the planet's untapped resources for immense wealth and attracting more people to live on the colony. It wasn't until April of 2064 that humanity realized that they weren't the only ones intent on making Agria a new place to live. It was on Agria that we made first contact with the race known as the Dukni.
They were not happy in the least to see that the Terran's had gotten to Agria first and so a long war ensued. Better fortified and better prepared the colonists were able to hold the planet easily, that was until ten years into the war. The Dukni were running out of patience and a change in their leaders made the urge to end the war quickly even more pressing. With one fateful decision the Dukni decided that if they could not have Agria for themselves, then no one would. An entire fleet of cruisers and destroyers hovered over the planet for three days before sending their payloads onto the planet's surface.
Hundreds of thermonuclear warheads barreled at the planet at supersonic speeds and when they hit it nearly wiped the entire surface of the planet clean. Agria was no longer a lush, green paradise, it was a bleak, rocky wasteland. Many of the cities that had formed were now ruins and those humans who survived the bombing had to make a choice. Head back home, where they would certainly suffer on the dying planet, or stay on Agria and fight to regain what civilization had been lost. Many of the businessmen and those who fed off capitalistic systems left immediately, but the ones who knew how to survive and knew they could still thrive stayed behind.
Twenty years after the bombing of Agria, humanity still squanders about here forging new towns in the wastelands and expanding slowly back to the roots of the colony. Though the planet, without major Terran government funding and time, might never regrow into a lush paradise, those of us who stayed here make the best of it. Between occasional Dukni scouting and raiding parties which are now commonly referred to as Snatchers or Scavengers, and fighting against the mutated creatures its a hell of a living. Most people don't give anyone trouble, unless they absolutely deserve it. Justice is fair and everyone is willing to help out everyone else, especially if you don't have the money for some of the services you might require.
Hard work is just as good as cold hard cash, and knowing how to kill a mutated creature or two can definitely keep you alive. The panzies that still live on Earth think that our lives are deprived and miserable, but that's not true...well sometimes it's not. It's true that we have our share of hardships when a march of Snatchers or Scavengers come along, or we're short on water or food, but it's no different from when the Pilgrims settled in North America. Humans, we can adapt, and that's one thing that the Dukni never could really foresee.
The year is 2095 in the perky month of June, which on Agria is springtime and an equivalent of April. Due to recent reports sent back to Earth a few people have come back to re-colonize the planet after realizing that all was not lost in the bombings. Where I live there's a shuttle bringing the little outpost of Garrison a couple of scientists. Apparently they're part of some group called 935, and their mission is research. From what I gathered, (or hacked into) what they really want is to find some odd energy source that they believed the planet had.
In all honesty I don't mind the science-types too much, but when they go around and dabble in crazy mysticism like that it makes me wonder about the fields of science as a whole. Whatever they were here for and whatever they were going to be doing I just hope that it isn't too drastic, at least not to cause a whole upstart in the nice society we created on the planet.
