textfiles/apple/DOCUMENTATION/breakers.1.of.3

                           Breakers Docs

                      Typed up by Digital Monk



                        TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABOUT THIS BOOK                                 5
THE BEGINNINGS OF BREAKERS                      7
PART   I:  The Borgian Rifts                    9
PART  II:  Happy Hour                          15
PART III:  Counting Stars                      21
PART  IV:  Be Here Now                         29
PART   V:  All About Borg                      37
PART  VI:  The Fugitive                        45
ADVENTURER'S DIARY                             49
HOW TO TALK TO BREAKERS                        61
ABOUT THE AUTHORS                              71
WARRANTY INFORMATION                           83

(From  here  on  out,  I'm going to include page numbers due to the fact
that in order to start the game, you will  face  a  message  that  says,
"Enter  the 1st word of the 2nd line on page 15". You will obviously not
be  able  to  get  very  far  if  you  don't  know  what  is   on   what
page.......D.M.)


For  those of you who have 80 columns, and you are wondering why I might
have one word on a line and then a new line, this is  because  the  ware
asks  for a certain word on a certain line on a certain page in order to
start the game.  Well the one word is included in the line  above,  know
what I mean??? 

pg.5

                ABOUT THIS BOOK

The book you're holding is not a computer manual. You
don't have to read every word before you boot the disk. In
fact, you may want to play for a while then browse these
pages. Use the Reference Card packaged with your disk if
you want to get going quickly.
This book is really a tour guide and survival manual in
one. The idea is to give you some handy background infor-
mation before you find yourself in the center of the action.
The chapters in The Beginnings of BREAKERS set the
scene and introduce the characters before you meet them
on your computer screen. You'll find out how to move around
through the terrain of the adventure, and you'll get some
ideas for dialogue with characters in How to Talk to
BREAKERS.
Relax and have fun with the book, but as you read, be on
the lookout. In BREAKERS, clues - like magazine pages
behind a metaplast wall plate - can be anywhere.

pg.11

   Starlight on naked rock: a phalanx of meteors charges
through space - fan mail from some dead planet, hurtling
across the universe like blazing pinballs to flame out, rock
by rock, in gravitational fields along the way. After eons of
tumbling through darkness, the last meteors veer toward
two stars and the golden planet lopping around them in an
endless figure-eight.
   Borg turns regally in its atmospheric envelope. High off
the surface the air thins out, refraction stops, the light fades
into a dome of ever-deepening cobalt, streaked with sudden
fire as stellar debris arcs through.

   Turquoise leaves twitched a mile below the surface in a
deep, mist-bound rift. Seven pairs of golden eyes checked a
clearing for danger before one of the group stepped into
the open. The creature was slight, unclothed, with a large
hairless head, a small round mouth and wide eyes that gave
it an expression of solemn astonishment. Its skin had the
same luminous golden sheen as its eyes. It carried a
document in one hand.
   After a moment the six others emerged from the jungle,
and the seven golden beings stood looking straight up
through a gap in the mist at the narrow band of dark
Borgian sky.

pg.12

   One of them pointed. "The Creator!"  The constellation
they beheld was like a benign face, with one golden eye and
one blue eye gazing down into the rift. Something like a drop
of blood gleamed in its forehead - a red dwarf pulsing
irregularly.
   "Something is wrong", said one of the golden creatures. "A
dark cloud hides the Creator's face - the evil mask of
prophecy!"  Indeed, the constellation seemed dim, and even
the brightest stars were slightly obscured by the shadow,
darker than space, creeping over them.
   "When the Creator shall be masked", intoned one of the
seven, and the others chanted, "then the world will die..."
   "When the mask shall fall away", chanted the first, and the
others responded, "then the world will live again..."
   The first one said, "The darkness quickens - it is the time
of renewal. When the blood star vanishes, the dark storm will
scour the planet clean. All our people must be returned to
Borg. And then we must perform the ritual of the elements,
to recreate the Creator so that the Lau may live".
   Another murmured, "All our training has brought us to
this day".
   In reverence and awe, the seven gazed upward at the
stricken constellation. Suddenly they heard rough voices
drifting up the path, then creaking leather, rattling chains
and thudding boots.
   "Breakers!"  Terrified, the golden creatures fled into the
jungle. Oaths broke out behind them, followed by blades
flashing in the dim violet light. At the edge of the jungle, one
of the golden creatures fell - two bone-handled knives in its
back - and lay twitching as the Breakers, cursing and joking,
surrounded it. Their leader had a face like a peeled carrot,
scarred down one side. With a raspy chuckle, he yanked his
knives out of the corpse and gowled, "Like Mulcahy says -

pg.13

they're no good dead, but it's better than letting 'em get
away!"  He wiped the blades on his filthy leather pants amid
guttural laughter.
   Nobody saw the luminous golden mantle that rose from
the turquoise jungle and wafted up out of the rift, billowing
into the sky until the bright spots in its midst, like pale eyes,
winked out one by one.

pg.17

   Far above the planet, a shiny fleck hangs in the blue-black
band of shallow space. It flickers intermittenly in fixed geo-
graphiclal orbit over scars on the surface left by a large ore-
mining operation. The industrial space colony's age is
revealed by the obsolete spherical design, with antiquated
solar power panels, reflector and shields spread over its
translucent dome: picture a round blown-glass sculpture
hanging in a dark void - a dirty yellow glow inside - its outer
surfaces, points and spires dusted with fairy light from
distant fireballs.
   A vagrant meteor smashes through one of the solar panels,
blows a dish antenna to junk and bounces off the colony's
hull. Then it wobbles on into eternity, leaving the hull plates
ruptured and gaping behind.
   The luminous golden mantle rolls up from the planet and
drifts toward the colony, surrounding it and seeming to stare
in through the dome with shining eyes as the colony shud-
ders in the meteor's wake. The lights inside dim and flicker
for several moments. Hovering outside the dome, the vapor-
ous eyes peer into the colony's heart. A universal intelli-
gence feels along the maze of corridors, through the
residence modules, the shopes and bays, across the rotting
hydroponic vegetable beds and rusting transport pods to
the administration module, and out again, sensing every-
thing. Except for a skeleton mining crew, a handful of drift-
ers and a large force of security mutants, the colony seems
abandoned.

pg.18

   The mind feels its way to a barroom on one of the utility
levels. Under garish colored lights, entities of every descrip-
tion are killing time, drinking, fighting, planning trouble.
Ouch! The sordid violence in these entities' brainwaves is
painful to the probing awareness. It recoils, and the dusty
glow outside the colony hull seems to intensify briefly. Then,
tentatively, the intelligence touches some of the more acces-
sible minds in the barroom...

   "Haw haw! The look on that thing's face when eight thou-
sand volts whipped into its face! Haw!"  The Cirdonian
smacked the bartop, spilling drinks and shaking the floor.
Since he was a Cirdonian, nobody complained. Buying a new
drink was easier than buying a new head.
   "Sounds pretty funny", said  a huge boxlike entity next to
the Cirdonian. He sounded dubious, or maybe just depressed.
   "Haw haw! Face turned to jelly, lookin' surprised as livin'
karg - haw haw haw!"  The Cirdonian, gasping with mirth,
clacked his beak and glared up and down the bar. Everyone
laughed along obediently.
   Panface nodded to Betty the Bartender and gave up his
place to another Breaker. Even the Cirdoinian pulled back
slightly as he left. Panface was known for his sweet, melan-
choly disposition, but he had also been know to drink too
much of Betty's lava and convulsively tear three-inch meta-
plast plates into confetti while in the throes of some
unknown grief.
   The big solemn guy rolled across the clamorous room,
tilting his occipital bulge this way and that while his dark, sad
eyes searched for a familiar face among the walking flotsam
of a galaxy. A diabolically lousy musician began belaboring
an electric lute. Somebody threw a cup of lava toward the
stage, and it splattered all over the wall.

pg.19

   "Panface!" The massive frame trundled around, and some-
thing like a smile lit his aptly-named visage.
   "Bobo", he grunted, extending a cloven ham. A tall blond
Terran woman shook it heartily and slapped Panface on his
shoulder. She glanced around furtively and, looking like a
Chan-Lockheed MX99C hauling the oldest subzone barge in
the system to a scrap orbit, tugged him into a corner. She
brushed a mess of hair out of her eyes, but it fell back
immediately.
   "I found something out just now", she intimated out of the
side of her mouth. "See that geek about to fall on his face
over by the supply locker hatch?  Been pourin' Betty's lava
down his pipe to loosen him up. Know what he said?"
   Panface shook his head, intent on her long face, watching
the expressions flit across like starlight on a moonscape.
   "He said - get this, he said - " holding the hair out of her
face so as to pin him with both ice-blue eyes, "and this is no
goof, he looked me right in the face and said real clear, but
don't worry, nobody else was listening, he - "
   "What did he say?" rumbled Panface.
   Bobo whispered, "Casey Jones".
   "What about Jones?"
   "He's here!"
   Panface looked quickly around the bar, scrutinizing the
motley crowd losers and thieves from every dim hole in
the Slug Nebula. "Where?"
   "Not in the bar," hissed Bobo. "But here on Nimbus Colony.
He's working out of the shuttle bay, dealing with Mulchay and
his Breakers on Borg. Mulcahy sells him slaves and hijacked
goods, and Jones runs'em out from here. he's even using
UMC shuttles. The geek heard it from a buddy on the Essex
when it stopped here, and it goes along with what that guy
Delbert Riggs said."
   "Hmm."  Her immense companion thought it over. "I'd like

pg.20

to meet Jones, just to see what kind of guy could do the
things they say he's done."
   "Meet him?  You want to do more than that. Panface, listen -
Jones is our ticket. He can get us to Borg!  Then we can find
the subterrranean violet sea with all the jewels - we can buy
our own planet and retire!"  She watched the broad face, saw
something like a supernova behind the occipital bulge. The
small eyes blazed for a moment.
   "I get it," he said slowly . "All we have to do is get to the
shuttle bay and pass a little gold to Casey Jones. Only one
problem, Bobo - we're broke."
   "Not for long". Bobo slid an object to Panface. "Hide this.
It's an extra VBX I got off that drunk ensign from the Essex.
All we have to do is sell it off, then we can go to Borg".
   "But who can we sell it to?  All these derelicts in here are
broke".
   "Don't worry", laughed the blond adventurer. "Some sucker
will come our way with a few coins. But we have to work fast -
word is out that Mulcahy and Jones are trying to knock each
other off for control of Borg and the booty."  Panface nodded
dubiously and the two adventurers, scheming over their
future, drank lava and watched the mystic sage named
Beekanavskemich do tricks with green rubber balls.

pg.23

   The great eyes blink outside the hull. The intelligence
probes back into the corridors. Sudden viciousness makes
it recoil briefly. what's this?  A gang of uniformed mutants,
hanging around their armored mobile in a utility corridor
station. Apparently the Breakers are being strictly controlled.
Other Gaks are patrolling the corridors, looking for trouble.
   The curious mind slikes along corridors, around corners,
through hatched, into dark places. The colony, an industrial
support operation for mines down on the golden planet,
seems nearly deserted. A few hundred workers are perform-
ing maintenance tasks, but the colony appears to be
disintegrating.
   Probing the administration module, the intelligence
watches a tall young Terran stroll along a corridor, read a
doorplate and jauntly enter an office. A far-world reception-
ist of indeterminate gender interrupts filing its nasal flanges
to buzz another office, then directs the young Terran through
a door.
  An older, slightly-built Terran with shifty eyes stands to
greet the youth with a nod and the ritual hand clasp. Then the
two sit down on opposite sides of a desk and begin talking.
   The glowing spots outside the hull seem to blink; the intel-
ligence focuses on the office. Ubiquitous Terrans, infesting
the galaxy!  Such messy little minds on the surface, but capa-
ble of such devious complexity. Reading one from the out-
side is like crossing a room full of Breakers in the dark, but
the intelligence grimly reaches out, touches one of the minds
and then the other...

pg.24

   Nate Grey had a funny feeling the moment he saw the guy.
"Welcome to Nimbus Colony", he said cordially.
   "Thank you", said the guy. He didn't aseem like a bad guy,
really. Nate Grey could have liked him in another situation,
on a free planet maybe, or a mission to the swamps of some
nacreous moon where they'd be on the same team perhaps,
a colonization or something.
   grey tensed his eyes. "Don't mention it."  What was the guy's
game?  What was he after?  Look at those duds - gold fake
noogahide, thumbs hooked in his asteroid belt, smiling.
What's he up to?
   "Nice office."  They both lookied around the office. It was a
lousy office, the kind they give you when they don't care
whether you quit or not. But not as bad as the kind they give
you when they want you to quit. The UMC logo was everywhere.
Except for that, Grey didn't mind it.
   "Thanks," he said. "Miss yours?"
   "Oh, I don't have an office," said the guy, flexing his aster-
oid belt. "I'm a little too mobile for that."
   "Out there counting stars," nodded Grey. counting stars.
that's what they called it when you were young and on the
move, out there in deep space, arcing through atmospheres
too strange to breathe, maybe landing on some paradise
where everything was perfect for life but no life existed, or
landing in parasitic slop and barely escaping, rousting from
colony to colony, adventure to adventure. And during the
voyages you'd sit in the observation bay for years, counting
stars."
   "See any new ones you could name after yourself?"
   The guy smiled, an honest smile. "Riggs? What kind of
name is that for a star?"