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The letter was almost certainly from my younger brother, Manny. His actual name is Jason, but as far back as I can remember, I've called him Manny. I'd left him and Karlov just over two years ago at that point. I might as well tell how it happened, now that you know something did happen.

Back in the day, I drove landships for my family's company. What is a landship? Well, its a 10,000 ton land vehicle. It runs on tracks, just like a tank, but it's as tall as a 6-story building and as long as a small container ship. They used to be driven in Karlov because the ground is too soft and unstable for railroad tracks, and the roads were too small and dangerous to take big rigs. It was my job to drive them to a copper mine in the mountains, fill up with ore, then drive down to a smelter in the city, unload, and then head back again. The leg I usually drove was about 120 miles, a two day trip for the cumbersome landships.

Now, let me give you some background. My great uncle was the CEO of Balenko & Mercer (B&M) mining company, run by our family for 7 generations. When this happened, there were some hard times. I had chosen not to join the family enterprise, but instead I wanted to be an artist. Real funny, ain't it? "Aspiring artist" is probably the last thing in people's minds when they see me.

Anyways, my family, sour over my desertion of the business, wouldn't pay my tuition, and when the recession hit and I lost my day job, I got kicked out of the school. So I swallowed my pride and asked my brother Manny - who had become manager of the aforementioned copper mine - for a job. The reason I asked him was because he seemed to be the member of our family permanently assigned to deal with me, as if my relatives didn't even want to acknowledge my existence. Not that that made him any kinder to me.

To spite me, he gave me the most difficult job he could find - landship driver. Driving a 10,000 ton tracked vehicle isn't the same as driving a truck, a tank, or even a ship. If you hit anything except possibly a mountain, it's gone. You'll constantly be worrying whether anything or anyone is going to end up as a red stain on your 20-foot-wide caterpillers. Because it was a recession, they really cut back on staff, and assumed that a single person could control one of these things for two days straight. They were right. But you should've seen me at it. It the most difficult, stress-inducing thing I've ever done - except possibly the fighting that I've gotten into on the Altama.

But jobs were awful scarce, so I kept at it. After a few months, the stress took its toll, and I started drinking. Not a lot, just enought to keep troubles off my mind. I could usually drive the ship anyways, I have a pretty high tolerance for alcohol. It also happened that the Copper mine I hauled ore from was very close to the border of the Altama plain, and just as I began my career as a driver, the Altama exploded into conflict.

Gunshots were not an uncommon sound during this time, and I saw explosions and forest fires more than once. Coyotes and other Altamans also started sneaking over the border, looking for food, peace, weapons. The border patrol cracked down on these guys pretty hard, but they were still all over the place. Three months after the conflict began, the company issued rifles to us drivers. Supposedly, it was to defend ourselves, and the landships, as if one person could drive the thing, keep lookout, and aim and shoot a rifle at the same time.

I did see Coyotes often. Most stood well out of the way, and simply stared at my massive machine. Sometimes they waved. I was usually to busy with the controls to wave back. Occasionally though, an adventurous Altaman would grab hold of the Lanship, and hitch a ride. Usually they would be out of my sight, but every once in a while, I would see a gray and black figure dart past just below the cab's glazed windscreen.

One time I remember, one of them somehow climbed onto the drivers' cab itself, and poked his head over the window rim. He scared the hell out of me, as you might imagine. He just looked in at me and smiled, while I looked back, bewildered. I imagine I looked quite awkward, trying to decide what to do while simultaneously keeping the Landship on the quarter-of-a-kilometer-wide path that had been cleared for it (The ship itself wasn't that wide, it was made that way so you could spot anything in the way a long ways off).

And one time, I'm certain the ship was robbed. On the journey from the town back to the mine, I hauled food, supplies, and mail for the miners who lived there. I guess someone forgot to lock all the outside hatches before I pulled out, because when I reached the mine, all the food, as well as a piece of heavy machinery, was missing. It's beyond me how they managed to get a 5-ton industrial bore mill out of the landship's hold, let alone while it was moving, and without me noticing.

I was getting a bit stressed out about all this, as I assumed that if the conflict escalated, the Coyotes might get more desperate, and possibly more violent. Then, one night, I lost it, quite literally. I lost control of the landship while pulling into the smelter's offloading facility. I don't really remember the trip there, or what happened before I set out. My guess is that I drank some bad whiskey and passed out just as I came near the terminal. In any case, I plowed through the smelter facility, a warehouse or two, and very nearly an apartment block. At that point the landship threw a track, and the accompanying tumult knocked me back to my senses. I was later told that my insensibility had caused the death of one person, and wounds to eight others, not to mention the millions of dollars in property damage.

A coverup, some bribery, and a few expensive lawyers later, my family avoided embarrassment to their name by quietly getting my sentence reduced from life in prision to life in exile, and burying all traces that the incident ever happened. I was so disgusted by the lengths my family had gone to in order to banish me that I swore I would change my name. They had paid off the judge to make it a private hearing, and the press had been paid not to mention my name in any of the news articles about the incident. They also got the papers to print the articles way in back, probably in some obscure section nobody reads.

Originally, I planned to leave the country for a little while and then sneak back in under a new name, and start a new life. I at first headed for the Altama, as Balfor had far from consolidated their grasp on the troublesome territory. I assumed that nobody would notice me in a still-wild land of outcasts and outlaws, but I stood out like a sore thumb. People avoided me, my guess being that they thought I might be working for the border patrol. There was a lot of work available, but, I think that the working-class, male populace was more interested in stealing and fighting than working and paying. I was taken in by a family of Coyotes for about a year, working on their farm. There was no patriarch in the family. I highly suspect the father was out fighting the Balfor army. They were good people, They let me sleep inside, on their couch, and shared meals with me for about half a year. I was a rather tall person, and the work I did built some good muscles on me, too. I got to be an impressive man in the first part of my exile.

Ironically, I think they kept me as a watchdog of sorts. As I said, there were thieves rampant in the country, and my hulking, unfamiliar frame was usually enought to scare off any intruder, as most Coyotes on the Altama were unfamiliar with - and thus afraid of - Humans like myself.

I often heard the mother of the family - I can't remember names - crying at night for her missing husband. There were four pups in the family as well, one girl, three boys, who usually had to help out with the work. This was my first time living with non-humans, so I naturally was bewildered at first, especially by the pups. At first I tried to remain aloof, but as time passed, I began to warm to them. But it was by no means a good, refreshing life like you might be thinking.

The work was hard, and there was little help. I might have scared away other potential farmhands. But, as I said, I think it was because everyone was out fighting. Balfor patrols came around to ask questions every once in a while. The Coyotes were deathly afraid of them, and always told me to stay hidden when this happened.

But one day, I went into the woods to get some firewood, and a Balfor scout spotted me, asked me what I was doing there, where I lived, who's side I was on, who I was, etc. I answered "Chopping wood" "Nowhere" "Don't have one" and nothing, respectively. Eventually, I guess they found out where I was staying. A few wolves busted down the door and dragged me out of there, though I gave one or two of them a nice black eye before they managed to get me in cuffs. The real thing that sticks with me though, is that the pups were begging the Wolves not to take me away, begging them to let me go, really crying. I wasn't sure whether this was a gesture of affection or simply because I was integral to the farm's operations. I'll always remember that family though, because of that.

Anyways, I was forced to march, with a dozen other non-canids, to work as labor on a road crew. The way they did it usually involved driving an Urbane tank behind us, with gun loaded and machine guns at the ready.

I had learned a lot about machines during my stint as a landship driver, and when the road crew's bulldozer broke down one day, it was no problem for me to fix it. Soon I was fixing their tanks. I was transferred out of the road crew, and for a month or so, I rode around with a tank battalion as a mechanic. At first, technically it was illegal for me to be working with the Balfor military, (because I was not a Canid and thus certainly not an official citizen) but eventually the laws were relaxed slightly, and non-canids were allowed to get Balfor work cards.

I applied immediately, at the urging of my comerades, and by some strange loophole in the law, I was soon allowed to join the Balfor military. I did so, and after an unusual training period, I became a tank Driver. The pay was good, but the people I met were better. It was not long before I came to be in my current unit, where I met Kent, Scott, Stokes, and Oquendo.

It may seem odd, that I went from one side of the conflict to the other, but Kent and the crew really made me feel at home, like I had a family again. And this time, a family that really cared about my well-being. My real family never seemed to provid that, and it was different with the Coyotes; I wasn't the father, though I filled his role, and I always knew I wouldn't be with them forever. But now, I'm with them until I die.