Page 119 - PC Gamer - UK (February 2020)
P. 119
E X TR A LIFE
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N OW P L A Y I N G UP D A TE H OW TO MOD S P O T L I GHT DIAR Y REINST ALL W H Y I LOV E M U S T P L A Y
Without honest work though, the soul gets sick: that’s
THE RULES very boy at business school dreams of what my shift with Spacer’s Choice has taught me, and
Byzantium. The city where the space
Never do your own E doors whoosh open instead of screech. that sickness is made manifest on Groundbreaker. The air
1 dirty work. Where you can see your own face in the conditioning is on the fritz. The residents are boiling like
floor and the lifts are gilded with gold. lobsters in the pot.
Cut costs and
2 turn a profit for Golly, do they need lifts! Some of those offices go all “I’m required by Board bylaws to use excessive force,”
the company. the way up to the 62nd floor, which is a handy a guard warns loiterers on the embassy steps, but doesn’t
shorthand for hierarchical rank. What use is status if bother my entourage as we pass. Perhaps it’s the air of
Live by the
3company’s values. others can’t see it? business I carry with me. Or maybe it’s the gigantic Moon
Man mask Vicar Max carries on his head, representing
Byzantium is the residence of The Board, unlike Spacer’s Choice wherever we go, like a football mascot.
Edgewater, which is merely the residence of The Bored. The embassy is, as one local suggested, a “glorified
That’s the joke I plan to make at the bar once I arrive. shoebox” – terribly grand yet awfully small. Bedford’s
But first I need to prove myself to the consortium of office scarcely fits his computer and three bodyguards. All
corporations that run the Halcyon colony. the better to make room for a luxury stateroom in the
My current predicament is less than glamorous. I’m back, reserved for Chairman Rockwell’s use should he
grounded on a docking ever visit, which he won’t.
station, my ship Bedford himself is a
impounded by the complex figure – a
same Board I’m seeking I OFFER WELLES, sentimentalist whose proud
to impress. But the red moustache conceals a
flag on my passport has WANTED TERRORIST, wobbly bottom lip. Still, I
granted me one can smell Byzantium on his
advantage: an urgent IN EXCHANGE FOR suit. I offer Phineas Welles,
appointment with the wanted terrorist, in
Board’s local ambassador, A NAVKEY exchange for a navkey to
Udom Bedford. the capital.
As I step through The ambassador’s eyes
customs into the great rusty cavern called Groundbreaker, widen. Welles is his white whale – or as he pronounces it,
the face of Phineas Welles comes through on the codec. ‘hwhite hwhale’. The travel ban is gone in an instant. But
His frazzled haircut does not mark him out as a serious turning Welles in, and passage to Byzantium, will require
person. “Remember,” he says. “Don’t trust the Board. Bedford’s official Board seal, which he’s pawned to fund a
They’ll try to win you over with promises of wealth and series of self-produced adventure serials.
power…” I don’t hear the rest. What’s so wrong about It’s an unforgivable lapse in professional judgement,
wealth and power? Welles might have unfrozen me from and worse, it’s going to cost me money: 8,000 Bits, to be
cryostasis, but he’s proven to be a shocking business exact. Not likely, since parting with company cash is
partner since. It’s time to trade him in for another. against my moral code. If only there were a way to pay for
The embassy for the Halcyon Holdings Corporation the seal with something belonging to somebody else – like
Board sits in the back corner of Groundbreaker’s the trade secrets of rival corporations.
promenade, a shred of class among the scrap merchants
and pirate boozers. Back when Halcyon was colonised, INSIDER TRADING
Groundbreaker was the first ship to arrive. But its crew The search takes me back to Terra 2. Last time I was here,
decided it didn’t fancy putting in the hours and declared everybody was shouting. I’d switched all the electricity in
itself an independent port – even as it breathed artificial Emerald Vale over to Edgewater, pushing a community of
air courtesy of the Board. Ever since, the corps have deserters back to town and their jobs with Spacer’s
tolerated Groundbreaker, allowing it to skim off the top of Choice. It was good for their souls, and they’ll thank me
their interstellar shipments. eventually, but I don’t much fancy returning in the
meantime. Fortunately we’ll be
landing on the opposite side of the
There’s prefab beauty to be found in
corporate colonies. planet, far enough away not to hear
their screams. Specifically we’re
visiting Roseway Gardens, a big
pharma R&D station run by the
Auntie Cleo corporation. It’s been
thrown into chaos by anti-corp
terrorism, and out of that question
mark comes profit. For me, at least.
Roseway Gardens is beautiful,
after a fashion – its green trees
blending into a blue sky padded by
pink clouds. It’s starkly multi-
coloured, like a strip of toothpaste,
which incidentally is what they
manufacture here. The streets are
less than minty fresh though, littered
by the corpses of corporate cops.
Many of them have chunks missing,
which I’m pretty sure constitutes
theft of company property.
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