I have watched these monsters come for us three times now.

For three mornings in a row these beasts have descended upon our district bringing fire and death. Thousands of us have died already. Our sorrow threatens to overwhelm the will to resist. How can we fight for our families in the face of such hopelessness?

They kill indiscriminately, the damage inflicted upon us as much psychological as it is physical. After a few minutes, when we begin to close in on one of them, he runs like the most worthless of cowards. Each time we have killed one in pursuit, and yet each time more return the following morning. We still do not know how many there are. The villagers are panicked and confused by each assault and offer unclear, contradictory accounts of the attack. Some have reported as many as five men, others have said they’ve only ever seen one at a time.

It is almost as if they goad us with these deaths, as if they allow us our retribution only to spite us, because when they reappear the next morning, we are all reminded of just how futile our resistance is. Right before more of us are culled like diseased cattle.

Our children, their mothers, everyone has become a target. Yesterday they appeared in the school district. We lost nearly two hundred of them before anyone realized something was horribly wrong. Over eight hundred dead children: That was the final cost before one of them was taken down. The rest must have fled afterwards, like they always did.

I cannot see any greater purpose to these murderous rampages. I cannot see any reason, no matter how sinister, in their lust for death. I only feel the fear and despair that they have planted in our hearts. I wonder if that is why they have come here. I wonder if revenge is what brings these monsters out here to the deserts and dust, far from anywhere of significance.

Our lives are ones of quiet worship lived in service to God alone. We serve no other purpose here, and so their presence among us is as revealing as it is terrifying. The villagers have spoken of the ones we have killed. They are Minmatar. They are brothers, even. It suggests, in dark whispers to our souls, that these men have come for their own reasons.

Three times we have sent these demons back to hell, and three times they have returned. Today will be no different. Today we will sit and wait as more suffering is visited upon us, God’s chosen. There will be no school and no markets in the square. Today there will be only Church. Here we will sit and with heads bowed, humbly asking of God, what can drive a man to such things?

As the sirens of border defense systems are tripped for the fourth time, I fear we will get our answer. I fear God will tell us what we already know in our hearts. These are not men: They are the Beast.

“For all life is holy, and if a man revels in his own death he is become the Beast,

And that man will come before the Beast after death, and stay at his knees forever.”

– Apocryphon, Lost Passages

For sixteen days we fought beneath a merciless sky, slogging through mud and stench as rain pissed down on our heads, cold and vile and never-ending. It filled our packs, our clothes and our weapons. It filled our mouths. For sixteen days we fought, on little food and even less sleep, an enemy that was better equipped, better prepared and almost certainly better paid than us. And for sixteen days we died.

“Dead end!” Gastun shouts, his voice barely audible over the roar of the storm. It’s our third day in the mountains, already more than a day behind schedule. We’re tasked with securing a forward site for CRU deployment – clones aren’t much use to anyone if they’re miles away from the frontline – but the fighting has pushed us north, out of the burn zone and into the mountains.

I peer over the edge. Gastun’s right. Fifteen feet below, the narrow trail we’ve been following tapers off into the rock face. A steady stream of rainwater rushes past our feet and over the edge. There is no way we’re getting down that way.

“We’ll have to double back, find another way down.“ Gastun nods, a tightening of his jaw the only indication of his growing frustration. We turn and, in single file, start back along the path that brought us here.

“What the hell do they expect us to do?” Krin up ahead, shouting against the storm.

“Our job.” Even here, now, Cala can’t resist starting an argument.

“We’re outnumbered. We have no support. And now we’re stuck on a mountain in the middle of nowhere. Don’t you get it Cala? We’re expendable. They don’t give a shit what happens to us!”

As we walk their argument becomes nothing but white noise, another layer mixed into the sound of rain and wind and thunder. I focus instead on our surroundings. We’re exposed and vulnerable, on a path barely wider than a man, snaking our way through a cleave of rock sixty feet wide and much, much deeper. Walls of sheer rock leer at us from above, white and rain smoothed and… and that’s when I see it. Bent over the edge of a cliff, a smudge of darkness so intense that it seems to collapse the air around it. Watching, motionless, untouched by the rain. The shadow stalker. The black presence that has followed me since Khabi VIII.

Cala’s scream pierces the heart of the storm. I turn in time to see the last bit of ground give way beneath her feet and drop her over the edge. Krin has his back to her and is the slowest to react. Gastun is in the rear, too far away to do anything. That leaves only me. I jump, plunging my arm over the edge, and for a terrible moment feel nothing but air between my fingers. Then skin, fingers. I have her. I try to reach out with my other hand but feel the rock start to give way underneath me as I do. We’re slipping, going over, but then Gastun and Krin are on us and together we pull her, heaving and swearing – she has the body of a 200-pound male after all – to safety.

“We need to get the hell out of these mountains.”

It’s the first time I’ve heard Gastun complain. In later years I would learn that Gastun was afraid of heights. This was as close as he ever came to showing it.

“I couldn’t agree more,” I reply, looking back at the spot where, moments before, the shadow had been.

After that we walk in silence, water-logged and weary. Everything feels heavy. My body aches and every step seems to take twice the effort, as though the rain has soaked into my bones and is weighing me down. There is no joy when we arrive at a small cave; the remnants of a fire the only evidence that we had been here the night before. Inside, tendrils of rock cling to the walls in patches like the misshapen teeth of an old Sitari hag. But at least it’s dry.

Exhausted, sleep comes easily, but it is not peaceful and when I open my eyes the shadow is staring at me, inches from my face. Beyond, at the cave entrance, Gastun keeps watch. How did it get past him? Slowly, so as not to draw attention, I reach for my sidearm. It opens its mouth, a wound that rips and stretches and closes in on itself all at once, but no sound comes out. Darkness oozes around the edge of my vision. My hand closes around the pistol, but it’s too late. The darkness takes me.

There is nothing but silence. Silence and gut-wrenching despair. My chest aches with a grief and guilt so intense that I cannot breathe, cannot feel anything but sadness and fear and confusion. A tumbling helplessness. The pure unchained fear of a child. Then, just as quickly, it’s gone. I feel the rain on my face and wonder how it got inside the cave. I realize then that I’m weeping.

Outside, the deep gray of what should be night is starting to give way to the lighter gray of day, and still it rains. We’ve seen neither sun nor night since we got here.

Gastun appears at the entrance to the cave. “I’ve found us a way out of here!” Buoyed by the thought of getting off this mountain, the rest of us follow.

He can’t keep the smile off his face as he points it out. A ridge, no more than a foot across, cut so close to the face of the mountain that we’d have to hug the wall and inch our way across.

“It’s no wonder we never spotted it the first time.”

It’s a dizzying view, one with barely enough space to stand. Slip and you’d fall. Lean back even slightly and you’d fall. I can’t help but stare at the broken talus slope below. It would not be a pleasant death.

“It widens out further ahead.” Gastun anticipating what, by the looks on our faces, we were all thinking.

“How do you know?” says Krin. It sounds more like an accusation than a question.

“Because I’ve already done it, it’s not that hard.” But something in his face tells me that’s not the whole truth.

“Are you insane!” Krin says, already backing away. “There’s got to be another way down into that valley.”

“I’m with Krin on this one.” We all look at Cala, but no-one seems more surprised than Krin. I guess there’s a first time for everything.

“Look on the bright side,” I say. “If we fall, we get to hike all the way back out here and try it again.”

***

It takes most of the day, but we make it down. After we had struggled and twisted our way along the outer rim, we wound our way down through the scree, eventually coming out onto the wide, flat plain that we could always see, but until now could never reach.

“Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. If we’re attacked out here, we’re as good as dead.” Gastun observes.

“Then we’d better get to work,” I reply.

The ECCM tower takes longer to put together than I’d hoped. Without the mountain to block it, the wind is stronger down here. It tugs at cables, and drags tools underfoot, and if you’re not careful a sudden gust of it will knock you off your feet. It pushes and pulls like a petulant child desperate for attention while the rain lashes at our backs. With the tower online we’d be able to punch through the interference blanket that covers the area, giving us a foothold in the region and the support we need.

“How much longer, Cala?”

The enemy appears then as though conjured into life by my words. They come in numbers we hadn’t anticipated, in tanks and on foot. They aren’t immortals, but they don’t have to be. They’re an army.

“We’ll hold them off,” I say, but we all know how this will go down. It’s over faster than I’d hoped. The shells destroy the ECCM tower and scatter us. They advance in long columns, walking and firing like some automaton army. We cut down those that get too close, but there are too many of them. Before long, I’m all that’s left.

And through it all, the shadow figure walks unharmed. Bullets pass harmlessly through it before striking and killing someone on the other side. Smoke seems to move around it, the wind doesn’t get near it.

It stops some distance in front of me, oblivious of or unconcerned about the battle being waged around, and at times, through it. It opens its mouth, and this time I hear it. The voice that at this exact moment has me trapped below the earth’s surface. The voice that has forced me through one memory after another. The voice and the shadow that are one and the same.

“They lied to you, Traveller. Are still lying to you. In the worst way possible.”

Suddenly, I’m standing outside of it all, untouched by the rain and the fighting. I look back at the memory of me lying in a pool of my own blood, at the soldiers advancing. Minmatar soldiers; my own people. At the empty husks that once housed Cala and Krin and Gastun.

“Come, I will show you what really happened this day.”

Daemon Hatfield from IGN writes, “Of the many games I’ve seen here at Gamescom 2011, DUST 514 may be the most ambitious.” IGN previewed socialization and combat in DUST 514 and wrote about the experience here.

Joystiq’s Ben Gilbert met CCP at Gamescom for a preview of DUST 514. He writes that DUST 514 is “without a doubt the biggest surprise for me of Gamescom. At the end of a long week of previewing dozens of games, I didn’t expect to be blown away by the little hyped game from the Icelandic devs at CCP, but here we are.” You can read about Joystiq’s time with DUST 514 here.

What is the greatest resource in a universe of 5,431 systems and in excess of 65,000 planets? It’s people. The players that populate New Eden are far and away the single most important resource it contains. They are as durable as Morphite, as beautiful as Zydrine, and as volatile as Isogen-5. Without them, New Eden would be a poorer place. Which is why socialization is so important to us as both developers and players. We want players to be able to communicate in-battle and out; to be able to easily find and play with friends; to have the tools to meet and make new friends (and enemies) while they’re sitting in front of their PS3 and even when they’re not. Games are fun, but life is meaningful. And you can’t live without interacting with other people.

Of course, the fact that we’re trying to get two completely different demographics across two completely different platforms to not only communicate, but to compete, cooperate and, ultimately, generate conflict makes all of this that much harder. But we have faith that with the right tools, the players themselves will figure it all out. Here’s a brief introduction to some of the features and tools you’ll have at your disposal.

EVE GATE

Starting out, EVE Gate will be the communal hub for EVE pilots and DUST soldiers. This is where players from both games can manage their contacts, check in-game mail (when not actually in-game), post on forums, check their calendar for upcoming events or post new events of their own to the calendar. We’ll be adding functionality to EVE Gate over time. Some of it will be DUST-specific, like battle heatmaps, but most of it will be shared across EVE Online and DUST 514. EVE Gate is, after all, for all of the EVE setting.

CORPORATIONS

In EVE, the cornerstone of all serious space operations is the corporation. It allows players to manage funds, organize long-term activities and have a persistent venue to communicate with your fellow members. We are working hard on making EVE corporations completely seamless between EVE and DUST 514. This means that from the point of view of all corporation functionality, it shouldn’t matter whether a corporation member is a DUST player or an EVE player. There are of course certain functions that only make sense for EVE players and others that only make sense for DUST players, but for everything else there should be no difference. The idea is that a corporation staffed with members from both EVE and DUST 514 should be able to access all available functions. Common functionality includes creating corporations, managing membership, managing finances, and joining alliances. For some of these functionalities, we will be providing a native UI on the console client, while others that are deemed to be less immediately critical will be available on EVE Gate to start with. Currently, the biggest limitation will be inventories, as EVE items don’t really have any functions on the DUST client and reciprocally, but this is something that might change in the future when we will observe even more convergence between EVE and DUST.

VOICE / TEXT CHAT

Using voice chat, DUST and EVE players will be able to communicate with one another in realtime.

Text chat is of course supported too. The PS3 supports standard USB and Bluetooth keyboards right out of the box and so we don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that players will grab their PC’s keyboard for use in DUST 514. Believe me, it’s far easier than trying to use a software keyboard to keep up in a chat channel. The keyboard will be usable for chatting only. There will be no in-battle mouse + keyboard support.

Socialization is more than just tools. It’s about bringing people together. The nature of any FPS means the mechanics of socialization are a little different than your typical MMO. In an FPS, squads are the atomic building blocks of socialization. You jump into a quick battle, are randomly assigned to a squad, you fight with a bunch of strangers and maybe, somewhere amidst the mayhem and the carnage you decide, “Hey, that guy shotgunning people in the back, I like the cut of his jib!” Voice chat makes it easy enough to speak to him, but the ability to stick with him at the end of a battle and then jump together into subsequent battles is vital. Because at the end of the day, that’s how long-lasting relationships are formed. Of course, if you already have a group of friends (lucky you!) you can easily invite them into a battle or stick with them as you move between battles. After all, the family that slays together, stays together.

THE WAR ROOM

The life of a mercenary is about fighting, but taking over a planet is no small task, so players will find themselves spending a lot of time in the War Room – a 3D lobby where players can go over their vehicle and character fittings; stock up on items from the corp inventory or the marketplace; chat with fellow corp members or once-off hires; scrutinize potential strategies and just generally get ready for the battles to come. Each War Room supports a maximum of 32 players at once. Players navigate the social spaces in DUST (of which the War Room is the first) in third-person.

The merging of EVE and DUST provides opportunities for socialization far beyond what most MMOs are able to offer simply by virtue of the fact that New Eden will soon be populated by players with vastly different roles, but similar agendas. And, we believe, the universe will be better  for it. Because, for better or worse, every minute spent in the EVE setting should mean something.

When they come for me, I am alone in my room picking through a madman’s conspiracy. Shipping manifests, eyewitness accounts, email correspondence, hacked security footage. All the information I’d copied from the reporter’s datapad. Data that at first seemed completely random had, in the days since, started to make a lot more sense. Like one of those children’s puzzles, an optical illusion hiding a picture within a picture, the longer I stared at it all, the clearer everything became. The noise faded and, slowly, a pattern took shape.

The room fills with light. The brightness is overwhelming. Backlit by the stark, narrow-banded lighting in the corridor, three large shadows step through the opening door. I rub at my eyes. A thick, oily tear greases my face. Darkness leaks into the room, a roiling mass of black tar that comes bubbling through the walls, the floor, the ceiling. The men don’t seem to notice it. They keep on coming.

I try to blink away the liquid, and my eyelids almost stick together. I wipe at my face and my fingers come away black. I feel the tar ooze from my nose. I start to cough, hocking up thick fists of it. The darkness continues to rise, drowning the room in the tallow black of a thousand midnights. And through it all, they keep coming. The light from the doorway shrinks to a pinprick, and then everything is gone and I’m surrounded by nothing. Not for the first time, I throw up.

“Do you remember now, Traveller?” The voice is soft and expectant, almost pleading.

Fighting back the nausea, the smothering heat of this place. “What are you talking about? I know all of this.”

“Knowing is not the same as remembering.” Disappointment in the voice now.

Why is it so hard to think? Fuck you, fuck this place. I want out. By way of response I pull my sidearm and fire into the dark. It barely makes a sound and I keep pulling the trigger long after I run out of bullets. Somehow, somewhere in the dark I hear the soft plink of metal. I move towards it.

“Did you give them up willingly or did they take them from you?”

After a few steps I reload, fire until I hear the sound again, re-orient myself, and keep moving.

“You must remember.” Anger.

A lance of pain stabs behind my eye. The nail-scrape sensation of something fingering my brain drops me to my knees and, slowly, the memory puts itself back together.

A rust-red wall appears first, followed by a table, squat and square, and then floor panels smeared a darker hue than the wall. Dried blood, something in me intuits. Pieces continue to fall into place and the room starts to take shape. But even before it comes together it’s clear that this is not my room. Armed guards stand at attention around me. They wear the red and black trim and blank stares of special forces.

After the room, the next thing I notice is how badly my jaw hurts. I touch it and pain erupts across my face. I remind myself not to do that again.

“Sorry about that. But you can be a little stubborn.”

A voice behind me. Its owner leans into view. He is brown-skinned, black of hair and eye, with tectonic features that crack and spread awkwardly as he smiles.

“Vantus Torin,” I say.

“General Vantus Torin,” he corrects.

“You’re a general now?”

“And you’re a cripple.” For a Krusual, Vantus is unabashedly direct. He never tip-toes around the truth, which is why I’ve always liked him.

He smiles. “Come, I have something to show you.”

Glaring at the guards, wondering which one of them hit me, I guide the chair out into the passage and pull up alongside him. The passageway leads out onto an enclosed overpass, transparent sections of which give a spectacular view of the intra-station terminus below. Trams come and go as we walk in silence. Mostly, I’m trying to figure out how to get out of this alive. It is Vantus who speaks first.

“After what happened on Khabi VIII we thought we’d lost you. Then I read the report of the attack on the Ingress and I knew it had to be you. So I sent some men to look into it.”

I punch the panel and the chair slams to a halt. Vantus steps briskly to the side to avoid tripping over it. “You ordered the attack? You’re responsible for putting me in this?!”

“Yes. And no. That”-he points at the wheelchair-“you did all by yourself. The men we hired were under strict orders not to do any unnecessary harm to the people on board that ship. But then you show up and damn near wipe out half their team. I’m surprised they didn’t kill you.”

I wish they had. Something shifts in the mountain of knowledge I’ve built up over the last few days, collapsing under the weight of a hundred facts, the clear surface of understanding exposed beneath. “You stole your own shipment.”

To his credit, Vantus doesn’t deny it. “In a way, yes. What we took belongs to all Minmatar. Not just those who believe they make decisions for all of us.” He hesitates for a moment, chooses his words carefully. “They want to hide it away. Study it. I want to use it.”

“And what is it, exactly?”

His dark eyes shine. “Our salvation.”

“The Republic needs an army, Berlin. Now more than ever. And with this we finally have the means to create one. An entire army of immortals. An unstoppable force.”

He leans on the armrests of my chair, his face inches from mine. In it I see the haunted stare of a people, an entire nation’s pain bubbling under the surface. I think of Neera. Eyes moist with suffering and hardship so intense that it is carried in the DNA of each generation. And I wonder why I don’t feel the same way.

“We can save all of Minmatar. Us. Not Skymother. Not the Elders and their empty prophecies. With this we can lift our faces from the mud and shit the rest of New Eden has cast us down into.”

I finger the knife hidden in the smooth side-mould of the chair. Everyone underestimates the handicapped. I could kill him right here. Or take him hostage. Use him to get a ship and get the hell out of here. A tram zooms overhead, the muted rumble of its passing shakes the entire overpass. And go where? I’m tired of having to look over my shoulder. I see Neera and all her dreams and hopes for our people. I let go of the knife.

“Immortal soldiers, huh?” I say finally.

Vantus pushes off and steps back. He seems visibly relieved.

“I thought it would take more to convince you.”

“I haven’t said yes yet,” I remind him. “If you have all of this”-I gesture around myself-“what do you need me for?”

“We can create an army, but we can’t manufacture experience. You’re a decorated soldier, one of the finest I’ve ever worked with.”

“Ex-soldier. Last I checked deserters got the death penalty, not a medal.”

Vantus waves it away. “As far as I’m concerned, Berlin Ansacre is dead. You no longer exist. But what you’ve seen, what you know, what you remember, that will live on.”

“And,” he says it almost as an afterthought. “We can give you your legs back.”

Thinking back, that was the precise moment Berlin Ansacre died and Balac was born.

She found him in a small, sparsely furnished room in a quiet part of the station. She had gotten lost on the way down. Twice had to double-back down narrow passageways lined with doorways identical to the one she now stood outside. On the shuttle over, through the checkpoints and past the graffiti soaked walls, she had thought about what she would say and how she would say it. But now, standing here, listening to the rusty shunt of the door lock disengage she wasn’t so sure. She should leave. Go back home and pretend that none of this ever happened. But then the mechanism sighed and the doors pulled apart and there was nowhere to go but inside.

He was well-built with long hair that draped across sweat-slick olive skin pulled taut by the muscle underneath. Exactly as her informant had described. Well, almost. He hadn’t mentioned the wheelchair. It looked small and awkward beneath his large frame. She stared a little too long, but if he noticed her discomfort he didn’t say anything.

“Mr. Ansacre? Berlin Ansacre?”

He said nothing so she pressed on.

“My name is Adriel Ghislaine,” she said, just as she’d practiced.

“I’m a reporter with The Scope,” she continued, feeling only slightly guilty about the lie. “I understand you were on board the Thukker caravan that passed through here a few days ago. If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you some questions.”

“I do mind. But we both know that’s not going to stop you.” His voice was like bottled thunder. Even in a wheelchair, he practically crackled with pent-up energy.

She tried to sound desperate, which wasn’t hard because by now she really was.

“I know the caravan was attacked. What I don’t know is by whom or why. I need to know what you saw.” She moved closer, touched him lightly on the arm. “Please, it’s important.”

Later, she would remember the look of cold purpose in his eyes. How he had grabbed her arm, and with a single firm tug, pulled her off her feet. His left arm a blur from somewhere behind, locking her in his lap and the feel of the blade pressed in tight against her neck. Right now though, all she felt was the insect swarm of panic buzzing through her head.

“Please. No.”

“Who sent you?” He hissed into her ear. “How did they find me?”

“No-one sent me. Please, oh, please… I’m sorry.”

“Who sent you!” The knife cut into her skin.

“No-one, I swear! I came alone. Please, no-one knows I’m here.”

She bit her mouth closed on the words but it was too late. No-one knows I’m here. She felt the knife start to move and she knew she was as good as dead. But then he did something she would never have guessed. He let her go. She crawled across the room, a table-top vidscreen flicking to life then fading as she scrabbled past and onto her feet.

“I believe you.”

“Oh, now you believe me?!” A cocktail of adrenaline and fear and anger rinsed through her voice. “You couldn’t have decided that before sticking a knife to my throat!”

“Because a minute ago you were lying. For a reporter, you’re not very good at it.”

Adriel felt her face flush red, but whether it was the anger or just embarrassment at being caught in a lie, she wasn’t sure. She was a reporter, after all, and it was only a matter of time until she would be working for The Scope. All she needed was one big story. This story.

Quiet seeped into the room, hung there for uncomfortable seconds.

“Still, I’m sorry. I should’ve known just by looking at you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She said, momentarily forgetting the thin line of pain across her neck.

“It means I’ll tell you what I know. But, first, I want to hear what brought you all the way out here.”

She sighed, but it caught in her throat. Folded her arms over her chest, put them at her sides, folded them again. Eventually, she settled on the edge of a wide metal shelf, gripping it tightly to stop her hands from shaking. A coarse fabric was bundled at the far end. His bed, she guessed. But she didn’t care. It was as far from him as she could get and still be in the same room.

“Two months ago I was contacted by a man named Malon Shircore. He claimed to be a member of a research team working on a top secret program-“ she held up a hand “-yes, I didn’t believe it either, but then he started sending me proof. Bits and pieces mostly. Files and research notes, a lot of which I didn’t understand, but it was clear that his team was working on fullerene-based biological applications. Specifically, nanite-infused blood plasma. They even got as far as a first-generation prototype.

“Interesting, but not exactly news. Why contact you? He dissect one too many small animals and suddenly grow a conscience?”

Adriel managed a smile. “Something like that.”

“His team worked for a small subsidiary. They received specifications, raw materials and funding and then simply handed over whatever they had when the deadline was up. Sweatshop science at its finest.”

He nodded slowly, listening.

“The teams were kept small and isolated. No-one knew what the others were working on, but somehow Malon found out. And he didn’t like what he’d found. So much so that he contacted me.”

“A little far-fetched don’t you think? What could possibly have been important enough to risk his career, maybe even his life, by selling out company secrets?

“This.” She pulled a datapad from her jacket pocket, thumbed the biometric scanner and held it out to him.

“You’re going to have to get a little closer than that,” he said, gesturing at the wheelchair.

“Uh-uh. This time you come to me.” She spoke slowly, trying to keep the tremor out of her voice.

Adriel thought she saw him smile, a flicker of amusement gone as quickly as it appeared. He worked the arm panel and the wheelchair quietly closed the space between them, then he leaned forward and, never breaking eye contact, snatched the datapad from her.

He stared at the image for a long time. She watched as his brow furrowed, the muscles in his jaw tightened and relaxed, his eyes narrowed and then widened. As though his face couldn’t decide what emotion to express first.

“A corpse?” He shook his head. “Whatever it is, it’s not human,” he said at last, handing the datapad back to her.

“Not unless someone changed the mould,” she agreed.

“What the hell was your scientist working on?”

“That’s what I was hoping you could help me with. What did they take from that ship?”

He thought for a moment, then said, “I don’t know.” He sounded almost apologetic.

“Wait-what do you mean you don’t know? You fought the raiders. Apparently, the only person on board that did. Why would you do that if you weren’t trying to stop them? You had to have known something the others didn’t.”

“Sorry to disappoint you. But I don’t.”

“Unbelievable. You threaten me, almost kill me, and all you have to say is ‘I don’t know’. Thanks for nothing.” She got up to leave.

“They were professionals, that much I can tell you. They knew exactly what they wanted. An entire ship of cargo and all they took was a single crate. No bigger than a coffin-”

They stared at one another.

“You don’t think…” Adriel began, but she was already moving towards the door.

“I think your scientist friend has a lot of explaining to do.”

“He would,” she said. “If he wasn’t already dead.”

***

She got lost on her way back to the shuttle. She’d been so busy thinking about what Berlin had said that she hadn’t been paying attention to where she was going. And then she was so busy looking for a sign or a map or something to get her out of here that she didn’t notice the man until she almost walked right into him.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, and smiled meekly. It was a pretty smile. It had gotten her out of trouble many times before. And into it more times still, she thought sourly.

He smiled back. And then pulled a gun from his coat.

“You’ve been asking entirely the wrong kinds of questions.”

Two short coughs. And then he was gone and she was falling.

It hurt less than she’d imagined. Bullet wounds look painful on the dead, she supposed, precisely because the body was already cold. A moment’s pain frozen and stretched into eternity. What must it be like, she thought, to have your life anew? Would it change anything, or would you still be the person you always were? Would you have given up when you had the chance?

Her fingers traced a path of blood, obscuring the datapad’s screen. Dabs and streaks, all different shades of the same crimson. It was all here. Everything she had pieced together over the past weeks. She wondered if she should have told Berlin about the weapons. It didn’t matter. She hadn’t figured it all out yet, there hadn’t been enough time, and she realized just then that she never would. Still, the implications were clear. And the possibilities terrifying.

She clutched the datapad tightly. An anchor when every part of her wanted to drift away, dragged into oblivion by currents beyond her control. Alone in the darkness she cursed the scientist for finding her, for choosing her to confide in. Cursed him for being a coward. No. She was the coward. The one who was afraid of giving up, of admitting she was scared. The one who would follow a story to the bitter end, in this life or any other. Adriel Ghislaine, fearless reporter. The tears were warm on her face and the pain tore at her insides.

And then she was floating. The station’s gravity control must be malfunctioning, she thought. The technicians would have it fixed in no time. And with that she closed her eyes and drifted into the darkness.

I hate space. Even the word is a misnomer. There’s nothing vast or open about it. Two years on board this ship and it’s still all I think about. I feel it pressing against the hull, cold and heavy. Hear it in the thousand creaks and moans of the Ingress as she pushes deeper into the smothering black.

The corridors on the way back to my compartment are empty, but elsewhere on the ship people are busily going about their work. There is no room for passengers on board a Thukker caravan. Everybody contributes. Outsiders, as I’ve come to learn, doubly so.

Fatigue hangs over me like a lead jacket. But even tired, I know when I’m being followed. I glance back. Nothing. During the downshift cycle the strip lighting in the corridors is turned low. Good for saving power, great for sneaking up on someone. I keep walking. The day Neera died – The day you killed her – I left. When I was done mourning, I stood up, walked outside and just kept going. I guess I always knew someone would come for me.

As I walk, the fatigue burns away, replaced with the savage anticipation of the fight to come. I round a corner, then immediately turn and step back into the corridor just in time to see a silky shadow disappear into the darkness of a small maintenance alcove. A shiver of familiarity crawls up my spine. Run. Something uneasy in the movement. Fear scratches at the back of my mind, frantic as a caged animal. Run. The shadow moves again, and this time the oil-slick motion triggers a star burst of understanding. The lab on Khabi VIII. The fight flushes out of me. RUN! I turn to run just as the heat of the explosion surrounds me. Scorching tongues of it licking my face and then gone, sucked out of the gaping hole in the corridor wall into the suffocating emptiness. And me along with it.

***

I wake in darkness. Gasping for air. Sucking in hungry mouthfuls that hammer spikes of pain through my brain. Lights spasm and arc across my vision. Dizzy. I reach out a hand to steady myself, but only succeed in falling over. I throw up. I lie there for a moment, floating in the center of my own spinning universe. Slowly, in the faraway galaxy of my mind, nebulous recognition forms. The spinning slows and confusion coalesces into anger.

“What the hell did you do?” I scream the words, but they wither in the darkness and barely reach my own ears. I try to stand, but the spinning starts again and so I lie back down. “That’s not how it happened!” I yell. Again, the darkness swallows the sound of my voice.

I feel numb. Every part of me heavy and slow, like being underwater. My mind slams into my skull as though it’s had enough of all this and wants out. I want to die. Instead, I focus on the ground. The ground is solid. The ground is real. Need to keep moving. But where? Forward, chintaku. People should always move forward. Even in my head, the sound of her voice is enough to make me cry. I start walking.

The darkness pushes against me. I lean into it. I’ve fought in heavy gravity before, but never felt anything like this. It tugs at my arms and leg. Clings to my ankle like a desperate lover. I walk for hours (Days? Minutes?), but each step feels no closer or farther than the first.

“Well, you would know, Traveler. They are your memories after all.”

I bow my head into the invisible storm and press forward.

“You can’t outrun them you know. Not forever.”

The darkness rises. A wave of shimmering heat and pressure, the tide of it carries me back to the ship and the fire and the screams.

***

The corridor is just the way I remember it. Burning, but intact. Up ahead, a woman runs past, a cloak of flame billowing behind her. She doesn’t scream. As the fire swallows her, she simply hunches closer over the small bundle she’s carrying in her arms. I turn away from the sight. There are some things even I don’t want to see. Thukker caravans carry entire generations on board. Families live and die without ever leaving the ship. But most live longer than this.

An arm reaches out of a darkened doorway and pulls me inside. The door’s still sliding shut as I reach around and twist the wrist on my shoulder, and in one smooth motion pinion my attacker’s arm and slam him into the wall.

“Hey! No, wait!”

He tries to turn around, but I apply more pressure and he grunts in pain.

It’s me! Jet!”

Jita. Calls himself Jet. I remember now. Strong kid. Worked a couple shifts down in the Skews together. His parents named him after the system he was conceived in. Parents can do shitty things to their children sometimes.

I let go.

“What’s going on?”

He squeezes his shoulder. “You almost broke my arm!”

“You’ll live.” I say, knowing I’ve hurt his pride more than his arm.

“We’ve been boarded.” He says, finally. “I was running a diagnostic suite when the entire board lit up. They blew a hole into the maintenance bay on Deck 4.”

“What! Who?” I imagine Valklears storming through the corridors. If this is my fault… If I brought this on these people… I shut the thought down before it can go any further.

“Does it matter?”

“Yes!” I say a little too loudly. “Yes it does.”

“Well, sorry, but I didn’t stop to ask. Vartigin says he heard you were a soldier before. Is that true?”

I ignore the question. “How many of them?”

“I don’t know. Maybe ten?” Still rubbing his arm.

“For a ship this size? They’ll need a lot more. And I’m going to need a weapon.”

Jet walks across the room, does something with a panel that I can’t quite make out and comes back holding what might as well be a rock for all the good it’ll do me. A Gistii-10. Small, compact and horribly inaccurate at range.

“Where did you get that?”

He shrugs. “This isn’t the first time something like this has happened.”

“Stay here.” I say, and snatch the weapon from him before he can object.

***

I count sixteen. They’re armed and efficient – in ten minutes the entire sub-section is locked down – but they’re not Valklear. Dressed head-to-toe in black. No insignias or markings of any kind. Whoever they work for, they don’t like to advertise. Everything about them is low-key. Everything except the weapons they’re carrying. Shiny, hi-tech. I look at the aging Gistii in my hand. With no better option, I wait.

Eventually, they split up. I watch as the larger group disappears around the corner, give it a few minutes just to be sure and then, with a silent thanks to whichever miser son of a bitch insisted on the low lighting protocol, move round the corner in a bent-knee run, closing as much of the gap as I can.

Twelve meters out someone sees me, but three shots center-mass puts him down before the others even turn. I get one more shot off, tagging one of them in the ribs, before the shouting erupts and the shooting starts. The corridor boils with the hungry hiss of gunfire. A wild spray of shots. The sick sizzle of metal to my left. I ignore all of it, focus instead on the nearest target. The Gistii jerks in my hands. Once. Twice. And then he’s falling back, grabbing at the wall, collapsing. One of them is screaming into his headset, but as the others go down he pulls a rifle and rakes it across the corridor. The stutter-whine of impacts all around me, metal shards sting my face and arms. I blink something warm and wet from my eyes. Focus. I get the Gistii back on target and empty the clip. He jolts, staggers, still firing wildly, and then is down on the ground, bleeding over his friends.

If they didn’t know I was here before, they do now. Jesus, the whole ship must have heard that. I need a new weapon. I need to find cover. I know what I should be doing, but instead I’m screaming into the face of the only raider I can find alive.

“Who sent you?”

“Damnit! I said tell me who se—“

Something slams into me from behind and a warm wetness blossoms across my chest. I sink to my knees.

A voice, from what seems far away, “How did this Thukker trash get in here? Fuck. Look at this mess.”

Lying on my back, looking up at the ceiling, the corridor seems suddenly very bright. “I won’t let you take me.” I try to say, but my tongue feels too thick for my mouth and it comes out like a groan.

The voice looks down at me, weapon still in hand. “There’s always one isn’t there? Way to go, hero.” Then he turns back to his men.

“C’mon. Get that container on board and let’s get the hell out of here. G’dammit! Be careful. He wants it undamaged.”

I watch them leave through the makeshift hole in the wall.

Out into the crushing dark.

You’ll have to pay a one-off fee to play PlayStation 3-exclusive MMO shooter Dust 514, developer CCP has confirmed.

A payment of between $10 and $20 will be converted into in-game currency.

“In the beginning you have to pre-buy credits, so you pay something like $10-$20 to enter the game and you get the equivalent number of credits in the game once you do that,” CCP boss Hilmar Veigar Pétursson told Eurogamer sister site GamesIndustry.biz.

“We call this the cover charge.”

Despite the payment, CCP insists gamers are getting Dust 514, which ties into PC-exclusive MMO Eve Online, for free.

“We might go fully free-to-play down the line, but in the beginning we have a cover charge just to manage the initial launch of it.”

What, exactly, you’ll be able to spend your virtual money on is yet to be decided.

“We have some initial assumptions but we’ll put it out there and see how the player base during the trials reacts to it,” CCP said.

CCP showcased the Unreal Engine 3-powered game during Sony’s E3 press conference last month. A closed beta will happen at the end of the year ahead of a full PlayStation Network download-only release in spring 2012.

The console shooter directly connects to the PC MMO Eve Online, which launched in 2003. Dust 514 and Eve Online will share one “vibrant universe” – one single-shard super computer server.

“Sony allows us to use our systems,” CCP CTO Halldor Fannar explained to Eurogamer.

“Microsoft has Xbox Live. They’re very strict on that. There are a lot of issues we run into. It may be a basic thing people don’t realise, but with Dust and Eve on Sony’s network, we can allow them to chat together. Voice chat, text chat, that’s all one world.

“One of the reasons for the partnership with Sony is because they’re opening up new ways to do these things.

“We’re going to be managing most of it. We’re using PlayStation just for credentials, stuff like that. Then it’s all our stuff.

“With our agreement with Sony they seem to be fine with our three month expansion cycle. They’ve been looking at the MMO space for a while, trying to understand why something like that hasn’t still happened on the console. They’re coming to terms with it. There are certain things they have to relax just to allow these things to function.”

They call us “Kilm’ach.” The Lost. We are the demons of their Scriptures.The Beast made real. We scare them, and they hate us for it. Or perhaps we simply remind them too much of the past. Of the heritage they’ve forsaken and the people they betrayed. More likely, though, the Ammatar who live here hate us because we came to take their planet.

Whatever the map says, New Eden ends at the borders of the great empire. Outside of the hisec systems, civilization does not exist. Not the way most people would like to believe anyway. Out here, you see the true face of humanity. And it is the face of madness.

By the time I arrive on Khabi VIII, a fringe planet in a highly contested corridor bordering Ammatar space, I have been in the Valklears for seven years. I’ve paid for my training in scars and nightmares. The past is a glove-skinned awareness, barely felt. Old memories numbed by the fresh pain of new wounds. These days, I find the pain comforting, a convenient distraction. It might not be peace, but it’s a good enough substitute.

We’re moving slowly, stepping across a carpet of bodies. Tanvalin ghosts through my head. This is what you do now? Kill civilians. Through a series of small, interconnected rooms – scattered equipment, more dead scientists – labs by the look of it, and into a long, empty corridor: the perfect place to get shot. I motion for Neera to stay close, and together we crouch-run to the end of the corridor. We’re halfway there when the door at the far end slides open. Neither of us misses a step. There’s nowhere to go but forward, straight into whatever’s waiting for us on the other side.

Inside, the rib-vault is twice as high as it is wide. Dirty light spills in through aging windows, filling the room with a sick, yellow glow. Cracks trace elaborate patterns across filigreed sections of the walls and floor, wrap around a statue, like decrepit fingers searching for something to strangle. Blood-red rust feeds on the faded gold surfaces. There is nothing quite as depressing as Amarrian architecture.

We move forward, glass shards from the shattered work terminals crunch under foot.

“It’s beautiful,” gasps Neera, either ignoring or having not seen the bodies, one of which is slumped at my feet, just inside the door. This must be what triggered it to open. Poor bastard.

“It’s a dead end. We should keep moving.”

But Neera’s not listening. She’s lost in whatever place she goes to. The same empty look on her face from a few nights before as we sat outside enjoying the cool night air.

“What are we doing here?” she asks. A light breeze tugs at her hair, dragging a rebellious strand across her harsh-boned face. Large, gray eyes stare through me, like distant stars shining in an ebony sky.

From my puzzled look, she asks, “Here. On this planet. Why are we fighting?”

I want to tell her that we have no choice, that we’re just following orders. But the truth is that I don’t care why we’re fighting. And I don’t want to stop. Because stopping means having to think. I say nothing.

“Of all people, the Minmatar should understand the importance of freedom. We should know better. But here we are. At the end of the day we’re just like everyone else. We take what we want and damn anyone that stands in our way.”

“I don’t think—“ I start to say.

“No! We’re worse than everyone else!” A flicker in her eyes. Rage maybe, or yearning. It’s all I see in her eyes lately. “At least the Amarr have something to believe in. They work for the future, while the past defines everything we do. We use it to justify our actions. But we’ll never be better than we are now, because we’ll always be chained to what we once were.”

“I want nothing to do with the past,” I say, and mean it. “But what the Republic is doing is important. What we’re doing is important. And as long as we keep doing it, the Republic will be free,” I lie, wanting to make it better, to fix whatever’s broken inside of her, and knowing that whatever I do, whatever I say, it’s not enough.

She looks away from me then. “You’re wrong. We’ll never be free.”

“We’ve got nothing, Sarge.” Squawks my headset, snapping me back to the present and a room full of bodies.

“Alright.” I reply. “We’ll finish up here and meet you in twenty.”

“You’re the boss.”

Shadows pool in the gaps between shafts of light. The darkness shifts, a twitch of alarm and the animal knowledge that something is watching. A wrong thing. Unseen, but felt on the edge of awareness. Watching. Waiting.

“C’mon. We still have two more floors to check out.”

Leaving, we both glance back, each of us looking for something we’ll never find.

It takes us hours to search the rest of the facility. We scour it room by room, but each one is the same. Dead bodies. No sign of the prototype. Occupation of the planet began months ago, and clearly, the fighting got here long before we did.

I’m almost ready to call it off when the dry cough of gunfire booms through the corridor.

“In here!”

Neera’s voice.

I kick into a sprint, but Lesik is through the door first. There’s another deep cough, and then a spray of gore blows back out into the passageway. Shredded tissue, long, wet strands of it, flies past my face and coats the wall opposite. Lesik, what’s left of him, is dead before he hits the ground. I step over him, weapon tucked into the crook of my arm. And what I see stops me cold.

Neera standing in the middle of the room. Daraket at her feet, wide-eyed, his hands tangled in his own viscera, the red of it gleaming brightly under the artificial lighting.

“I was hoping you’d be first through the door. I thought that if I didn’t see you, I could go through with it.”

Her words flush the adrenaline right out of me. My limbs suddenly feel very heavy. “Drop the gun, Neera.”

“I can make it better! I-I finally know what to do.”

“Drop the gun, Neera. Please.”

“Don’t you want to know why I did it?”

“The ‘why’ doesn’t matter. It’s what you do that matters, whatever the reason. And you just killed two men.”

“I freed them, chintaku.”

“Don’t call me that. Not anymore.”

She stiffens at that. Then drops the gun and spreads her arms at her sides, palms open. To the casual observer it might look like surrender, but I know what the gesture really means. Have seen it a hundred times in the sparring chamber where we practice. It’s a challenge. And I always accept.

Neera is all soft technique, always has been. But she catches me with a backfist strike to the side of the head that seems to surprise her as much as it does me. She smiles then and for a moment she’s the Neera of long ago. I smile back, in spite of myself. This is insane. Then draw my knife and drop into a combat stance. After that, things fall into a familiar rhythm. She moves like a liquid whirlwind. Punches slide off her as she slips in and around everything I throw her way. It looks effortless, but the sheen of fresh sweat betrays the concentration it requires.

The Sikan style she practices is all about redirection. Using the attacker’s force against him. But I’m giving her nothing to work with and the frustration is starting to show. She gets too eager and comes forward when she should be retreating. I catch her with a lateral chop that knocks her back, but even off-balance she falls into a leg sweep that catches me just above the ankle.I’m back on my feet in a single motion, blocking and countering with adrenaline speed. We could go on like this forever, a geometric blur of limbs locked together for the rest of our days. Some part of me wishes that we would. The rest of me wonders how I’m going to live without her. I make my decision and then wait for my chance.

When it comes, I see it in the tilt of her shoulders, the subtle shift of her stance. The memory of it wired into muscles through countless hours of practice. I telegraph the move, knowing she’ll see it and slide right by. Past my outstretched arm, hooking and then snapping my wrist, taking my weapon and then, while I’m off-balance, killing me with it.

The moment spreads out in front of me. I lunge forward.

Except this time she doesn’t move. The knife goes in easily. The cold knowledge of it shatters and pierces my heart. She pulls me close, a gasp escaping her lips as the knife slides deeper. I can feel the life beating out of her, warm and wet. She kisses me and I can taste her blood on my tongue.

“Thank you, chintaku.” My love.

She goes soft then, the weight of her sinking into my arms. I squeeze her tight, hoping that if I can just hold her close enough, that if I wait long enough, she’ll open her eyes again. That everyone will stand up and together we’ll walk outside, laughing and joking and everything will be like it was. As I wait, time falls away and I lose myself in grief.

The faint awareness of movement snaps me awake. Daraket’s corpse stares accusingly at me. You knew what she was. This is your fault. Neera is lying on my chest, her arms around me like so many good mornings before. Suddenly, her grip tightens, and I feel the muscles in her neck stiffen as her head lifts itself and fixes me with gray, dead eyes. And a voice that isn’t Neera’s speaks from a face that is no longer hers.

“Why do you try to forget? Memories, Traveler. They’re what make us who we are.”

The darkness swallows me.