Breakers Docs Typed up by Digital Monk TABLE OF CONTENTS ABOUT THIS BOOK 5 THE BEGINNINGS OF BREAKERS 7 PART I: The Borgian Rifts 9 PART II: Happy Hour 15 PART III: Counting Stars 21 PART IV: Be Here Now 29 PART V: All About Borg 37 PART VI: The Fugitive 45 ADVENTURER'S DIARY 49 HOW TO TALK TO BREAKERS 61 ABOUT THE AUTHORS 71 WARRANTY INFORMATION 83 (From here on out, I'm going to include page numbers due to the fact that in order to start the game, you will face a message that says, "Enter the 1st word of the 2nd line on page 15". You will obviously not be able to get very far if you don't know what is on what page.......D.M.) For those of you who have 80 columns, and you are wondering why I might have one word on a line and then a new line, this is because the ware asks for a certain word on a certain line on a certain page in order to start the game. Well the one word is included in the line above, know what I mean??? pg.5 ABOUT THIS BOOK The book you're holding is not a computer manual. You don't have to read every word before you boot the disk. In fact, you may want to play for a while then browse these pages. Use the Reference Card packaged with your disk if you want to get going quickly. This book is really a tour guide and survival manual in one. The idea is to give you some handy background infor- mation before you find yourself in the center of the action. The chapters in The Beginnings of BREAKERS set the scene and introduce the characters before you meet them on your computer screen. You'll find out how to move around through the terrain of the adventure, and you'll get some ideas for dialogue with characters in How to Talk to BREAKERS. Relax and have fun with the book, but as you read, be on the lookout. In BREAKERS, clues - like magazine pages behind a metaplast wall plate - can be anywhere. pg.11 Starlight on naked rock: a phalanx of meteors charges through space - fan mail from some dead planet, hurtling across the universe like blazing pinballs to flame out, rock by rock, in gravitational fields along the way. After eons of tumbling through darkness, the last meteors veer toward two stars and the golden planet lopping around them in an endless figure-eight. Borg turns regally in its atmospheric envelope. High off the surface the air thins out, refraction stops, the light fades into a dome of ever-deepening cobalt, streaked with sudden fire as stellar debris arcs through. Turquoise leaves twitched a mile below the surface in a deep, mist-bound rift. Seven pairs of golden eyes checked a clearing for danger before one of the group stepped into the open. The creature was slight, unclothed, with a large hairless head, a small round mouth and wide eyes that gave it an expression of solemn astonishment. Its skin had the same luminous golden sheen as its eyes. It carried a document in one hand. After a moment the six others emerged from the jungle, and the seven golden beings stood looking straight up through a gap in the mist at the narrow band of dark Borgian sky. pg.12 One of them pointed. "The Creator!" The constellation they beheld was like a benign face, with one golden eye and one blue eye gazing down into the rift. Something like a drop of blood gleamed in its forehead - a red dwarf pulsing irregularly. "Something is wrong", said one of the golden creatures. "A dark cloud hides the Creator's face - the evil mask of prophecy!" Indeed, the constellation seemed dim, and even the brightest stars were slightly obscured by the shadow, darker than space, creeping over them. "When the Creator shall be masked", intoned one of the seven, and the others chanted, "then the world will die..." "When the mask shall fall away", chanted the first, and the others responded, "then the world will live again..." The first one said, "The darkness quickens - it is the time of renewal. When the blood star vanishes, the dark storm will scour the planet clean. All our people must be returned to Borg. And then we must perform the ritual of the elements, to recreate the Creator so that the Lau may live". Another murmured, "All our training has brought us to this day". In reverence and awe, the seven gazed upward at the stricken constellation. Suddenly they heard rough voices drifting up the path, then creaking leather, rattling chains and thudding boots. "Breakers!" Terrified, the golden creatures fled into the jungle. Oaths broke out behind them, followed by blades flashing in the dim violet light. At the edge of the jungle, one of the golden creatures fell - two bone-handled knives in its back - and lay twitching as the Breakers, cursing and joking, surrounded it. Their leader had a face like a peeled carrot, scarred down one side. With a raspy chuckle, he yanked his knives out of the corpse and gowled, "Like Mulcahy says - pg.13 they're no good dead, but it's better than letting 'em get away!" He wiped the blades on his filthy leather pants amid guttural laughter. Nobody saw the luminous golden mantle that rose from the turquoise jungle and wafted up out of the rift, billowing into the sky until the bright spots in its midst, like pale eyes, winked out one by one. pg.17 Far above the planet, a shiny fleck hangs in the blue-black band of shallow space. It flickers intermittenly in fixed geo- graphiclal orbit over scars on the surface left by a large ore- mining operation. The industrial space colony's age is revealed by the obsolete spherical design, with antiquated solar power panels, reflector and shields spread over its translucent dome: picture a round blown-glass sculpture hanging in a dark void - a dirty yellow glow inside - its outer surfaces, points and spires dusted with fairy light from distant fireballs. A vagrant meteor smashes through one of the solar panels, blows a dish antenna to junk and bounces off the colony's hull. Then it wobbles on into eternity, leaving the hull plates ruptured and gaping behind. The luminous golden mantle rolls up from the planet and drifts toward the colony, surrounding it and seeming to stare in through the dome with shining eyes as the colony shud- ders in the meteor's wake. The lights inside dim and flicker for several moments. Hovering outside the dome, the vapor- ous eyes peer into the colony's heart. A universal intelli- gence feels along the maze of corridors, through the residence modules, the shopes and bays, across the rotting hydroponic vegetable beds and rusting transport pods to the administration module, and out again, sensing every- thing. Except for a skeleton mining crew, a handful of drift- ers and a large force of security mutants, the colony seems abandoned. pg.18 The mind feels its way to a barroom on one of the utility levels. Under garish colored lights, entities of every descrip- tion are killing time, drinking, fighting, planning trouble. Ouch! The sordid violence in these entities' brainwaves is painful to the probing awareness. It recoils, and the dusty glow outside the colony hull seems to intensify briefly. Then, tentatively, the intelligence touches some of the more acces- sible minds in the barroom... "Haw haw! The look on that thing's face when eight thou- sand volts whipped into its face! Haw!" The Cirdonian smacked the bartop, spilling drinks and shaking the floor. Since he was a Cirdonian, nobody complained. Buying a new drink was easier than buying a new head. "Sounds pretty funny", said a huge boxlike entity next to the Cirdonian. He sounded dubious, or maybe just depressed. "Haw haw! Face turned to jelly, lookin' surprised as livin' karg - haw haw haw!" The Cirdonian, gasping with mirth, clacked his beak and glared up and down the bar. Everyone laughed along obediently. Panface nodded to Betty the Bartender and gave up his place to another Breaker. Even the Cirdoinian pulled back slightly as he left. Panface was known for his sweet, melan- choly disposition, but he had also been know to drink too much of Betty's lava and convulsively tear three-inch meta- plast plates into confetti while in the throes of some unknown grief. The big solemn guy rolled across the clamorous room, tilting his occipital bulge this way and that while his dark, sad eyes searched for a familiar face among the walking flotsam of a galaxy. A diabolically lousy musician began belaboring an electric lute. Somebody threw a cup of lava toward the stage, and it splattered all over the wall. pg.19 "Panface!" The massive frame trundled around, and some- thing like a smile lit his aptly-named visage. "Bobo", he grunted, extending a cloven ham. A tall blond Terran woman shook it heartily and slapped Panface on his shoulder. She glanced around furtively and, looking like a Chan-Lockheed MX99C hauling the oldest subzone barge in the system to a scrap orbit, tugged him into a corner. She brushed a mess of hair out of her eyes, but it fell back immediately. "I found something out just now", she intimated out of the side of her mouth. "See that geek about to fall on his face over by the supply locker hatch? Been pourin' Betty's lava down his pipe to loosen him up. Know what he said?" Panface shook his head, intent on her long face, watching the expressions flit across like starlight on a moonscape. "He said - get this, he said - " holding the hair out of her face so as to pin him with both ice-blue eyes, "and this is no goof, he looked me right in the face and said real clear, but don't worry, nobody else was listening, he - " "What did he say?" rumbled Panface. Bobo whispered, "Casey Jones". "What about Jones?" "He's here!" Panface looked quickly around the bar, scrutinizing the motley crowd losers and thieves from every dim hole in the Slug Nebula. "Where?" "Not in the bar," hissed Bobo. "But here on Nimbus Colony. He's working out of the shuttle bay, dealing with Mulchay and his Breakers on Borg. Mulcahy sells him slaves and hijacked goods, and Jones runs'em out from here. he's even using UMC shuttles. The geek heard it from a buddy on the Essex when it stopped here, and it goes along with what that guy Delbert Riggs said." "Hmm." Her immense companion thought it over. "I'd like pg.20 to meet Jones, just to see what kind of guy could do the things they say he's done." "Meet him? You want to do more than that. Panface, listen - Jones is our ticket. He can get us to Borg! Then we can find the subterrranean violet sea with all the jewels - we can buy our own planet and retire!" She watched the broad face, saw something like a supernova behind the occipital bulge. The small eyes blazed for a moment. "I get it," he said slowly . "All we have to do is get to the shuttle bay and pass a little gold to Casey Jones. Only one problem, Bobo - we're broke." "Not for long". Bobo slid an object to Panface. "Hide this. It's an extra VBX I got off that drunk ensign from the Essex. All we have to do is sell it off, then we can go to Borg". "But who can we sell it to? All these derelicts in here are broke". "Don't worry", laughed the blond adventurer. "Some sucker will come our way with a few coins. But we have to work fast - word is out that Mulcahy and Jones are trying to knock each other off for control of Borg and the booty." Panface nodded dubiously and the two adventurers, scheming over their future, drank lava and watched the mystic sage named Beekanavskemich do tricks with green rubber balls. pg.23 The great eyes blink outside the hull. The intelligence probes back into the corridors. Sudden viciousness makes it recoil briefly. what's this? A gang of uniformed mutants, hanging around their armored mobile in a utility corridor station. Apparently the Breakers are being strictly controlled. Other Gaks are patrolling the corridors, looking for trouble. The curious mind slikes along corridors, around corners, through hatched, into dark places. The colony, an industrial support operation for mines down on the golden planet, seems nearly deserted. A few hundred workers are perform- ing maintenance tasks, but the colony appears to be disintegrating. Probing the administration module, the intelligence watches a tall young Terran stroll along a corridor, read a doorplate and jauntly enter an office. A far-world reception- ist of indeterminate gender interrupts filing its nasal flanges to buzz another office, then directs the young Terran through a door. An older, slightly-built Terran with shifty eyes stands to greet the youth with a nod and the ritual hand clasp. Then the two sit down on opposite sides of a desk and begin talking. The glowing spots outside the hull seem to blink; the intel- ligence focuses on the office. Ubiquitous Terrans, infesting the galaxy! Such messy little minds on the surface, but capa- ble of such devious complexity. Reading one from the out- side is like crossing a room full of Breakers in the dark, but the intelligence grimly reaches out, touches one of the minds and then the other... pg.24 Nate Grey had a funny feeling the moment he saw the guy. "Welcome to Nimbus Colony", he said cordially. "Thank you", said the guy. He didn't aseem like a bad guy, really. Nate Grey could have liked him in another situation, on a free planet maybe, or a mission to the swamps of some nacreous moon where they'd be on the same team perhaps, a colonization or something. grey tensed his eyes. "Don't mention it." What was the guy's game? What was he after? Look at those duds - gold fake noogahide, thumbs hooked in his asteroid belt, smiling. What's he up to? "Nice office." They both lookied around the office. It was a lousy office, the kind they give you when they don't care whether you quit or not. But not as bad as the kind they give you when they want you to quit. The UMC logo was everywhere. Except for that, Grey didn't mind it. "Thanks," he said. "Miss yours?" "Oh, I don't have an office," said the guy, flexing his aster- oid belt. "I'm a little too mobile for that." "Out there counting stars," nodded Grey. counting stars. that's what they called it when you were young and on the move, out there in deep space, arcing through atmospheres too strange to breathe, maybe landing on some paradise where everything was perfect for life but no life existed, or landing in parasitic slop and barely escaping, rousting from colony to colony, adventure to adventure. And during the voyages you'd sit in the observation bay for years, counting stars." "See any new ones you could name after yourself?" The guy smiled, an honest smile. "Riggs? What kind of name is that for a star?"