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.

MMOCrunch declared DUST 514 as Most Innovative MMO in their E3 2011 awards, acknowledging that CCP is challenging the established shooter paradigm by introducing persistence and world impact to gameplay. Read all about it here

DUST 514 was named as Most Anticipated Project in Massively‘s E3 2011 awards. Massively Editor-in-chief Shawn Schuster writes, “With so many great MMO projects out there, this was a particularly difficult category, but what CCP is doing with DUST 514 is nothing short of astounding.”Read what Massively has to say about DUST 514 here.

E3 2011 was an important event for CCP, as we revealed more about what DUST 514 is going to offer console gamers and EVE Online players alike. That vision was recognized byMMORPG.com, who named DUST 514 the Most Innovative game of E3 2011. Read more about it here.

I should have stayed down.

A long ago thought. An unwelcome memory worn thin by time. I shake my head and the memory drifts loose. I let it go.

Every story has a beginning, says the voice. But yours, Traveler, is a story of beginnings.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” is what I want to say, but can’t seem to think of the words. This bothers me, I think, but the thought disappears before it can fully form. Around me, the darkness shifts restlessly. It seems impossibly tight, the air too thick. Thoughts slip by unnoticed. I want. I want… my brain scrambles for something, anything to latch onto. The memory floats up out of the darkness, like a bloated corpse bobbing to the surface. And this time, like a drowning man, my mind grabs on and doesn’t let go.

I can taste my blood. Can feel the grinding murmur of station machinery beneath me. The metal is cold against my skin. I need to get to my feet. My head feels impossibly heavy. I try to move, but every cell in my body screams in protest. Their laughter chases echoes around the corridor. They’re lost in the moment. High on victory and adrenaline and whatever else is coursing through their veins. It won’t last long though and when it does they will end me. Get up! Get up! Get up! I lift my head in time to see him turn and start running toward me. The moment comes on slowly, moving with the singular inevitability of an iceberg.

He doesn’t expect me to move. Not with the injuries they’ve given me. So when he kicks out, I grab his ankle and twist. He yelps, I suspect from surprise more than anything else, and then again, this time in pain, as he comes down hard on his hip. I’m up and moving then. The pain is a demon harpist, plucking at nerves that sing in agony. I reach the first of them, a tattooed Civire, just as he raises his weapon. I reach up and grab his wrist, punch him in the throat, and yank down hard. The weapon falls loose and bounces out of reach. Shit. But he goes down, choking. The other two have to move around him, which buys me just enough time to throw up a loose guard. I ride the first wave of blows – fire erupts across my chest – and kick out hard, hoping for a shin. I feel bone shift, something gives and then he’s down and screaming, clutching his knee. I turn, too slow, and a punch snaps my head back.

The world flashes black then white. Too bright. I squint and duck instinctively at a shadow, a swing that glances off my shoulder. I move for position, almost slip on something – spit or blood maybe, I wonder absently if it’s mine – but somehow manage to get in close enough to lock up an arm. Our eyes meet for a second and I see understanding there. I smile through bloody teeth, then jerk his arm straight and bring as much weight down on it as I can muster. His elbow shatters, the sick sound of it swallowed by his screams. To his credit, he doesn’t go down. He staggers back, cradling his arm. When he turns and runs, I almost chase after him in spite of my wounds.

The capsuleer is back on his feet. I wonder how long he’s been watching. He is tall and lean and his skin impossibly smooth, except for a designer scar along his jaw. What he does next unnerves me more than any threat or slur ever could. He starts to laugh. The same free, unburdened laughter I first heard back in the bar.

I don’t want to be here. Not in this station. Not in this bar. And not chasing ghosts. At first, the raucous laughter is grating, but before long I’m listening intently to what’s being said. What was it Tanvalin used to say? The truth of the world can be found at the bottom of a glass. Even from a booth half-way across the room, I can hear the man’s drunken boasts.

“It was a suicide mission and I knew it. But the payout was too good. No way was I going to let someone else have a crack at it.”

“Fucking capsuleers,” mutters a man too young to look that old. “Think they’re so special.” He raises his glass and then drops it back down, cursing me under his breath when I don’t reciprocate. I’m in no mood to talk. I’m more interested in listening to the conversation that I and most of the bar are being subjected to.

“And your crew?”

“You know,” he says, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I’d completely forgotten about them.”

Laughter.

“So you jettisoned your pod and left them to die?”

“And what kind of man would I be if I did that! Of course not! I went down with my ship like any proper captain should.”

At that the table erupts in laughter.

I’m surprised to find myself pushing my way through the crowd even before he’s finished talking. I wonder if this is the sort of person Tanvalin worked for. Was it a quick death? No, I don’t believe that. That’s not how the world works. Tanvalin suffered. He dared to dream of a better life. Was arrogant enough to believe that hard work and determination would get him out. And for his hubris he suffered. When the ship’s shields failed, and the armor was gone. When all that was left was a wafer-thin hull, naked and exposed, did he panic? Or did he trust in the skill and judgment of a single person to save them all? A capsuleer into whose hands he and the rest of the crew had placed their lives. A capsuleer like this one. Tanvalin always trusted people.

Like most, I know little about capsuleers beyond the stories and rumors. But I know they bleed.

“You were a fool, Tan.” I mutter to myself, and charge the capsuleer. He stops laughing then.

He is trained, but not well. He is slow and predictable. I brush aside a few half-hearted strikes, break a hold, and smash my forehead down into his face. It hurts so badly that for a second I think I might pass out, but the satisfaction of feeling bones break keeps me going. He throws a few jabs, short, tight motions, catches me in the ribs with one that makes me wheeze. I feel something wet in my lungs and the taste of fresh blood in my mouth. He steps in and follows up with a knee, but rage and grief have long since carried me over the edge and I barely register the hit. I tackle him to the ground. He says something then, but I’m already punching and barely hear it.

I imagine Tanvalin in those final moments. I want to think of him helping others to lifeboats, screaming orders or sealing a breach, working defiantly to the last. But all I can see is my brother’s face twisted in pain and fear as round after round tears through the ship’s hull, venting metal and bone and blood into space, wondering if the next strike will be the one that finally takes him. A faraway klaxon screams in my ears, hollow and keening. Tears sting my eyes. I can barely see the capsuleer but every punch comes away sticky with blood. I don’t know how long it goes on for, but when I open my eyes his face is pulp, and my knuckles raw. It’s only then that I hear the klaxon’s ringing for what it really is: the sound of my own screams bouncing off the metal walls.

The memory fades and for a single moment my senses are my own. I’m back in the darkness when I hear the voice again.

You have come a long way, Traveler. But your journey is only beginning.

And then the darkness swells once more, like the hitched breath of a great beast. I feel it rise up, pouring into my mouth and lungs, feel the pressure behind my eyes and the sick sensation that I’m being crushed from within.

Sitting in the transport, staring at the stony faces around me, wondering what lies ahead, I can’t help but think that I should have stayed down. Maybe things would have been different then. Maybe I’d be with Tanvalin again. Maybe one day. The restraints cut into my ankles and wrists. In the end the choice had been a simple one: prison or the Valklears. That was how I found myself enlisted in the most elite fighting force the Minmatar Republic had ever produced. That was how I found my life’s calling. And all I had to do was kill a man.

Intrepid Pioneers of the EVE Universe,

I just recently finished my walk-on at the Sony Press Conference just before E3 Expo, where I had the privilege to announce that DUST 514 will be launching exclusively on PlayStation 3 in Summer 2012.

The hyper-observant amongst you probably figured it out months ago. Others might have been following along at www.dust514.com and counting down with us. Others still might have found news through EVE or a Facebook link not long ago. Undoubtedly though many of you missed it live though thanks to time zones, so we’ll be putting up a recording of it on our YouTube channel as soon as possible.

During the short presentation we showed the “Pale Red Dot” video, which will be hosted at the DUST514 page.

If you have ever been to EVE Fanfest or watched the presentations, then you realize that I could have gone on to no end on stage. It was not the venue for that so it’s good to have a chance here to go a bit deeper.

CCP would like to thank you for bringing us to this point.

We would more importantly like to thank you for bringing the EVE universe to this point.

A long time ago, when EVE was just launching, you immediately began inspiring us to take the concept of EVE much further than we originally thought made sense. We have seen amazing emergent game play birthed from core features and lend power to giant leaps forward–like Incarna and now DUST. It’s amazing to see what subtle musings of “Wouldn’t it be cool if there were armies on these planets beneath us?”—or—“I would love to add a dropship or two to my hangar… “ can turn into.

Atli Már Sveinsson (now Creative Director for DUST 514) and pilots of a similar, combative mindset have been gently nudging us since EVE’s alpha. In fact, he co-founded one of the first EVE player alliance and credits that for the premise for DUST 514. He was not alone in his bloodlust–at Fanfest we gathered countless ideas from EVE fans, an effort that continues to this day.

The inspiration grew further as the history of EVE stacked upon itself and the friendships and conflicts both great and small continued to thrive and grow bolder. In the beginning, the EVE universe was a vast empty space full of possibility and not long into it all, as migrations happened and wars swallowed regions whole over and over again, each system harbored countless real, visceral memories. Soon shooting people in the face seemed like a good and natural complement to shooting them in the ship.

And because of that history, the close knit, oft-times defiant and always unique culture of EVE’s community has allowed us to grow the EVE universe even more. The war theaters of DUST 514 exist because you have poured the sweat, cried the delicious tears and returned from the clone vats again and again with blood refreshed.

You have given the EVE universe real meaning.

We appreciate your patience with us this past Fanfest as we so desperately wanted to talk more about DUST 514’s development as we did at Fanfest 2009, but we could not due to this impending announcement and all that goes with it.

Soon ™ has now become SOON and the time looms where EVE will take another massive leap forward through the addition of DUST 514 and mercenaries dying in droves at your financial command, crushed beneath your orbital bombardment or even fighting back when you least expect it. DUST 514, like the other sandbox-style features in EVE, is designed to add true and meaningful experiences to play through persistency, human interaction and the simple mechanic of “choice”.

DUST 514 is a unique technical and design endeavor to be sure, that CCP—in particular our Shanghai office—has been laboring tirelessly and expertly for years to create. I could not be prouder of them.

Perhaps more importantly, the endeavor is an equally unique social one. You made EVE into such an amazing game that we had to make another game to supplement it.

Now that the mercs are out of the bag, we hope you will join us as we unveil more about DUST 514 in the lead up to launch.

A few good places to start learning about DUST 514:

• The PlayStation.Blog post about DUST 514. CCP Shadow has been answering player questions there since the announcement took place.
• The Official DUST 514 website
• The DUST 514 Facebook and Twitter Pages
• The ”A Future Vision” trailer we showed at Fanfest which portrays where we are headed with the EVE universe
• The discussion thread attached to this blog

With Sony as a partner we can make the fullest use of PlayStation 3’s technical arsenal (including PS Home and the whole Sony ecosystem). Furthermore, exclusivity brings the powerful ability to design for the highest common denominator by sticking to one platform and all of its strengths.

We are all, as in the day of EVE’s launch in 2003, poised to grasp the potential energy of the EVE universe and once again mold it in our image.

Again, thank you for bringing us all to this point. I look forward to shooting you in the face soon.

Hilmar Veigar Pétursson

CEO of CCP

Balac woke with a scream boiling in his lungs and the world on fire. The heat of it bit into his skin, raw and feral, and the sudden, molten pain turned his vision white. The smell of burning flesh choked the air inside the dropship cabin. Balac had been in the field since the beginning. He had, as Krin was fond of saying, “seen some shit.” Images of Krin’s smiling face being torn apart by a plasma round. He stared at the inch of air that now separated his lower leg from the rest of his body. Yeah, some shit, he thought, numbly. The flesh on his upper thigh bubbled softly. It was a clean cut. No blood. Whatever had chewed through his leg had cauterized the wound instantly. Already the nanites in his bloodstream were converging on the trauma site, and as they worked, the pain subsided to a steady thrum.

Balac sat mesmerized by the severed limb sprawled in front of him. For a mad moment, it seemed that he could just reach out and put it back on, slip it on as easily as an old shoe. The click-whir of movement snapped him alert. He looked up. The drone looked down. For a long moment they stared at one another before, slowly, its front limbs detached from the roof of the dropship and its segmented body arched downwards. It hung there, waiting, dangling in a way that seemed idly threatening, possibly curious, and then with stop-stutter grace pulled itself up and out of the hole it had made in the dropship’s roof, the skitter-scratch of its movement echoing in the empty cabin below. Seconds later, a viridian beam sliced through the hull, paring apart a section of metal that clanged to the floor no more than a few feet from where Balac sat. His thigh twitched, in fear or recognition he didn’t know, but Balac was already moving. Kicking and cursing, he dragged himself over the edge, grunting as he dropped the last few feet to the ground.

Outside, cords of smoke twisted into a broken sky. Balac watched as, in the distance, dark shapes swam through a haze of smoke and settling dust. Hundreds of them trawled back and forth across the wide, arid bowl.Skitter drones were among the first wave of Reclaimers sent in after the fighting died down. Cutting, grinding, and tearing, they reduced anything left on the battlefield into manageable waste, ready to be collected by the swarms of Harvesters that followed in their wake. With single-minded focus, they erased the battlefield, making sure nothing of value went to waste. Behind him, Balac could hear the drone going busily about its work. In a few hours, he thought, it would be as though the battle had never happened. As though they had not fought and died and bled here. It was then that the gnawing unease that had been growing inside him burst into realization. The battle was over! And yet for some reason he was still here.

He ran two fingers across his forearm and the embedded display reacted instantly, conjuring a shimmering topographic map of the area. In any given battle, the map would be overlaid with dozens of blinking bio signatures pinpointing the location of his fire team and any enemies within scanning range. Now, it was empty. Balac blinked. He was alone.

Hotswaps were common in areas of the galaxy where the fighting was particularly intense. There was seldom time to pack everything up. Far more efficient to redeploy on the frontlines and let the Reclaimers do the cleaning up. Somebody in operations would hit the kill switch and every clone keyed with the proper ident would drop dead where they stood. Seconds later they would wake up on the other side of the planet or half a galaxy away – the exact location seldom mattered anymore – ready to fight. This time Balac never made it.

He drew his sidearm. A Minmatar-designed weapon, the weight of it felt good in his hand. Familiar. Like a warm breeze on the Matar plains. Like the smell of wild Rikmal at dawn. It felt like home. He wondered idly if he would ever see it again.

“Your body is worthless,” said a long ago voice.

“Equipment can be replaced. Your knowledge is what’s important. Your experience is what matters. Whatever happens, you get back into the fight by any means necessary.”

“Standard operating procedure,” Balac finished for the voice, lifting the weapon to his temple. The metal felt cool against his skin. There was no-one around. No CRUs and no waystations that he knew of. And definitely no MCC. If he died, would he even wake up in his clone body? Probably. Maybe. He couldn’t be sure. His hand trembled slightly. On his worst nights, he had prayed for death. The true death. To join Kali and The Hundred as they rode across the Sky Road for all eternity. His finger tightened on the trigger.

I need your help, Traveler.

It was as if someone had breathed the words into his ear, and Balac almost blew his brains out from the sheer surprise of it. Instead, he jerked the weapon around and leveled it at the space where he expected to find the person who had somehow crept up on him. His sudden movement caught the drone’s attention. It twisted its torso in his direction, but detecting only Balac, chirped indignantly and resumed its methodical dissection of the dropship, prying it apart with the care of a mother and the precision of a surgeon. Balac almost fired on it out of spite.

You must listen.

This time, Balac felt the voice more than he heard it. Felt it in the knit of his augmented bones, in the slow turn of his genetics. He wondered absently if this was what insanity felt like.

He tried to stand then, but overbalanced and landed on his freshly amputated limb. Pain clawed up his spine and his pulse slammed in his ears.Instinctively, he grabbed at the wound, which only made the pain worse.

You are here for a reason. There is something you must see.

Through gritted teeth, he grunted, “Sorry, but I’m a little busy right now. Maybe another time.”

You must head south. There’s something you need to see.

“Yeah, you said that already.”

The voice pressed on. It must be you, Traveler. Only you. You must come quickly.

Balac glanced down at his stump. “Sure, I’ll get right on that.”

And then the voice was gone and Balac felt silence seep back into the world, the kind of thick quiet that comes from exhaustion. From a world that, in the aftermath of such sudden explosive violence, had grown numb. He pushed himself upright and went back to studying the map. One way or another, he decided, he was getting off this planet. But it quickly became obvious that the map was hopelessly out of date. His suit’s built-in sensors were severely limited, and the last global refresh – each fire team was supported by a networked TACNET augmented by ground- and air-based surveillance units – had been hours before. If he’d had any doubt he was alone, the absence of reliable telemetry was proof enough.

He picked and prodded his way across the virtual terrain for what seemed an interminably long time and was about to shut off the map to conserve energy when he saw it. A communications outpost five hundred clicks from his current position. Radio for help. As plans went, this was pretty straightforward, but he didn’t have much else going for him just then. It was his best shot. The biggest problem was getting there. He didn’t much like the idea of dragging himself across five hundred kilometers of rocky terrain on his stomach. He started crawling anyway.

It didn’t take long to find what he was looking for: a C12-KLK sniper rifle. It leaned against a blood-soaked rock, as if it had been waiting for him all along. The Kaalakiota-manufactured weapon was a favorite among mercs. Using microscale railgun technology, it effectively weaponized velocity, placing an otherwise inert round accurately downrange in excess of 2,500m/s. It could easily penetrate two-inch-thick depleted uranium plating from over a thousand meters. It would also make a fine crutch. Using the rock for purchase, Balac pulled himself to his feet and tucked the upended rifle under his arm.

Finding transport proved a good deal harder. What hadn’t been wrecked beyond repair had already been pulled apart. All around him, white-hot sparks flashed in the quickly settling dark. The Reclaimers were nothing if not efficient. He stood there for a moment, unsure of where to go.

Balac tried to make sense of the rock and sand and shadow. In the dying light, it all looked the same to him. The wind had started to pick up, and flecks of sand stung his face. He couldn’t imagine the sort of weather that had hewn the ragged, awkward columns… And then he saw it, a shape that was less than the ghost of a memory. He turned toward it, moving with more certainty than he felt. He picked his way up a short slope of loose gravel. It was hard going, but in the hours since he first set out, he’d become quite adept at using the upturned rifle to pick his way across the shale and loose rock of this world. He crested the small peak and saw it just as it had been in his mind’s eye.

His heart leapt in his chest at the sight of the smooth-curved Light Attack Vehicle, exactly where he had left it. And then fell to his feet as he saw the familiar shapes of Skitter drones moving towards it. He counted two. Without hesitation he dropped to the ground, ignoring the pain that fleeced up his half-limb, tucked the rifle neatly into the crook of his arm, and fired. The lead drone crumpled in a heap, and even as it did the second was turning and heading for the slope and Balac. Reclaimers were not designed to fight. But they were programmed to protect themselves and their salvage, and as Balac knew all too well, they were more than capable of doing that.

The Skitter drone moved quickly across the uneven terrain, closing the distance with alarming speed, its long legs a blur of motion. Balac fired and missed as the drone cut between an overhang, the round pulverizing the shale outcropping just as the drone disappeared behind it. He adjusted his aim, tracked just ahead of its zig-zagging path, exhaled, and fired again. This time the round tore through the drone’s torso, which shattered, pieces twitching horribly, in some unfelt caricature of pain. Then he heard a familiar noise and realized his mistake.

The skitter-scratch sound reached his ears an instant before the third drone – the one he never saw – mounted the ridge and reared up, pincers stabbing and tearing at the air in front of it. Balac dropped the rifle, simultaneously pulling his nova knife, and with practiced skill slammed the blade up and in, the white-hot edge activating on contact, cutting into the soft underbelly, the buckled metal tearing at his flesh as he buried his hand into the drone’s abdomen. Blood, his own, poured from the drone’s wound. It practically shone against the brushed metal luster of the drone. The momentum of the strike carried him forward but, without a leg to steady himself with, fell over, teeth gritted tight as he collapsed on top of the drone. It flailed frantically beneath him, one of its limbs catching and tearing open his armor, gouging a deep red line along his side. In response, Balac leaned heavily on the knife, driving it in up to his elbow. The heat of pain and then, after, the warmth of blood flowed along his arm. The drone’s twitching grew slower and then stopped altogether. When he was certain it was dead, Balac pushed off it and rolled onto his back, breathing heavily and grasping for his rifle.

Working quickly in case more Reclaimers showed up, Balac pulled a corpse free from the driver’s seat, got in, touched his hand lightly to the dash – the vehicle’s onboard systems synced immediately with his suit – stalled, cursed his missing leg, restarted the engine and peeled out, the tires spinning then gripping as the four-wheel-drive Methana accelerated out of the loose gravel. Balac didn’t look at the corpse as his high beams flashed across it, pale features defined briefly and then gone, swallowed in the black of night. He didn’t need to. He already knew the dead body was his own.

He hadn’t been driving long when the voice spoke again. You said you would come immediately. You lied. Balac thought it sounded genuinely hurt.

“I promised nothing. Look, I’m sorry. I can’t help you. I’m getting off this planet. Tonight.”

You will not find what you seek.

“Well, then I guess one way or another one of us will get what they want tonight.”

Balac didn’t.

The communications outpost was nothing but a crater, a half-kilometer-wide wound of rock and metal. Billions of ISK obliterated. Balac could only guess at what happened. For all their greed, for all their talk of bottom lines, the corporations were a spiteful breed. Whoever lost this location must’ve decided that if they couldn’t have it, then no one else would either. Or maybe it was a warning. Whatever the reason, it no longer mattered.

“You win.” He said, knowing the voice was listening. “Tell me where to go.”

Balac drove through the night in silence. Perhaps sensing his mood, the voice spoke only when it needed to.

Follow the river bed east 40 kilometers. Continue due south for 10 kilometers.

And so it went until, just as the light of a freshly cracked day seeped in over the horizon, the voice simply said, Here.

It looked no different to Balac than any of the sparse dryland he had traveled across over the course of the last six hours. He wondered, not for the first time that night, just how insane he really was.

Now dig.

“I have a better idea,” he said and fished around in the vehicle’s stow crate. He came up smiling, his hands filled with Tri-nine explosive.

“Hope there’s nothing fragile down there,” he said to no one in particular, and started digging. After he had dug a small hole, placed the shaped charge, refilled the hole, and retreated behind the cover of the LAV, Balac pressed the remote trigger.

The earth sighed, a deep sucking in of air, and then bellowed as it spat a tower of dirt into the sky. Balac felt an odd sense of petty satisfaction as clods of soil rained down.

When the smoke and dirt and dust cleared, Balac lowered himself down into the hole, which was far larger and deeper than he had anticipated. He had, he guessed, tapped into an underground cave of some kind. He coughed, choked on the millions of dust motes that clung to the stale air, and wished he had thought to bring a light. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he noticed the thin outline of a shape, an obsidian surface discernible only by how much darker it was than the black around it. Balac had almost walked into it before he realized it was there. He ran a hand across its ice-cold surface, which, despite being directly underneath the blast, didn’t appear to have a scratch on it. He was still marveling at how impossibly smooth the surface was when an opening appeared and the voice spoke.

Welcome home, Traveler.

Dust 514 – E3 2011: Official Trailer

Some New Screeshots

Northern UK studio from Eve Online dev to be headed up by engineers from Wheelman house; will focus on console development of upcoming MMO game Dust 514.

The developer of Eve Online has taken the wraps off its latest game development studio, CCP Newcastle. The new outfit is being headed up by former Midway engineers and will focus on console platforms. The team’s first project will be Dust 514, which is being developed in collaboration with CCP Asia.

Dust 514 will now be getting the Geordie touch.
The acquisition brings CCP’s total worldwide studio count to four, with Newcastle joining Atlanta, Shanghai, and Reykjavik in the US, China, and Iceland respectively. Midway’s Newcastle studio once formed part of Midway Games, which was bought up by Warner Bros. after it hit bankruptcy in 2009. However, that deal did not include the Newcastle studio, which subsequently closed after announcing that its solo project Necessary Force had been canceled.

The former Midway engineers heading up the new CCP studio are said by the new owners to be “console developers with unparalleled Unreal Engine expertise.” In 2005, Midway announced that all its future games would be powered by the Unreal Engine, which followed news that it would be publishing Epic’s Unreal Tournament games.

In addition, CCP has teamed up with Cambridge-based middleware provider Geomerics and will be integrating its Enlighten technology into Dust 514. This will allow for the use of real-time radiosity lighting, making Dust 514 the first console title using Unreal 3 Engine to feature fully dynamic lighting, according to the Icelandic firm.