Pagan Software have most certainly been busy, heres another game that they currently have in development.
Introduction
"It all started a few weeks ago, a simple cargo shipment from one system to the next. I was carrying a "special" shipment bound for the Cassian system. No questions asked, head down and keep out of the main shipping lanes. The usual. It all came in closed titanium boxes, no markings, no ID numbers. Strange, I thought, that the boxes had no markings. It's not the first time I or my crew had taken on such a secret cargo, but what happened later nearly cost me life and my ship!
Along the way we did some salvaging. We found a derelict freighter. Missile blasts had riddled the old girl with holes. By the looks of it, it had been recent too. I called up her details from her ID hub that was still active. The Cassandra, she was called. We claimed our rights, logged it into the Net and boarded the ship. We headed straight for the bridge and the logs. Carter was with us, that tech head from Mars who had cracked the Corporation's code and now had a price on his head. No one much liked him, he was quiet, liked his solitude but like the rest of us, had a grudge against the Corporation so was an outcast and took whatever job came his way, legal or not. If the Corporation ever caught up with him, well, I wouldn't like to say what those bastards would do to him.
Carter cracked the log codes easily but the files were empty, erased he had said. He even said that by the log dates that he could retrieve that the logs had been deleted after the attack. Now that was strange...
We gave up with the logs and headed for the cargo bays. Our environment suits kept us alive as we carefully run the rifts and tears in the hull. When we reached the cargo bay doors, we found them locked. Pulse laser blasts and titanium bullet holes littered the doors. None had broken though but a fierce fight had happened here nonetheless. Someone had tried to hack the door codes, the panel had been ripped off, the optic wires hanging limp like severed veins. It took Carter awhile but he managed to get in using his handheld computer as a hub. The doors creaked and shuddered then stopped. A small gap had been opened and we knew the bay beyond had been left open to space, as there was no decompression as the doors had jutted their little way open.
I called Dawg and to bring the pneumatic arms to force open the doors. Now Dawg's a big man to say the least, one of those GeneScan babies that had been breed in the early 50s. His parents had wanted a strong, athletic boy and had ended up with an emotional knucklehead. Damn gene splicing was banned not long after that, the Corporation crushing it with its huge boot. We found him about ten years ago, in a bar fight, he must have killed over a hundred men that night, single handily. Running from the Corporation, we took him on board. He seemed to fit in perfectly with us, and only tends to eat the hull from time to time. Nah, I'm joking, he's a good man, just tends to have outbursts from time to time, but we are able to control him, most of the time.
With a grin from ear to ear, Dawg set about setting up the pneumatic arms on the floor. Soon he had the doors wedged open enough for us to get in...That’s when it all started to go wrong.
Among the debris of crates and metal floating in the bay, we saw bodies, lots of them...by the looks of it, colonists. Whole families had been exposed to the vacuum of space, their eyes frosted over, most of them with exploded chests or stomachs from the decompression when the hull had been breached by the missiles. This was not what we had expected and we were not sure what to do! Who in hell would have attacked a ship full of colonists? Carter, the stupid bastard, threw up in his helmet. We had to guide him the rest of way since he couldn't see past the puke that had smeared the inside of his helmet.
Suddenly my intercom beeped into action. The ship called me, warning me that it had detected another ship approaching...a big one. I didn't want to stay around to see who it was, in case they thought we had something to do with the Cassandra.
We left the derelict friegther quickly and by the time we were back abroad our own ship all the alarms were ringing.
"Who is it?" I called Macker, our gunner.
"Gawd, damn bastards!" he cursed. "It's a Corp ship, boss. A gawd damn cruiser!"
That's when I knew the shit had hit the fan. I fired up the engines and as soon as I had hit the co-ordinates into the onboard navigation, the dull monotone voice of the Corporation filled our ship's intercoms.
"You will surrender and be boarded. Resist and you will be disabled and jailed. Corporation Rule, 32.4."
We were already gone, the interstellar drive kicked into action. No ship, even a cruiser could keep up with us but it meant that our ID had been sent throughout the Corporation and all Corp ships would now be looking for us. A minor problem, we have been chased by the Corp many times before and still survived.
We reached our destination a week later. We kept off the main shipping lanes, taking the long route and dodging the Corp outposts and military bases. The Cassian system was a small one, only 4 planets in the system, the outer one able to support life. We hailed our contact there, no answer. In fact, there was no traffic at all. The only things we saw orbiting the planet were weather satellites and communication hubs.
"Debry, boss," Macker noted. "Lots of it, looks like the remains of a station. Gawd, damn - I'm picking up human remains!"
We needed this payment, we were getting desperate and it was a huge payment. So I took and gamble and we moved the cargo into the lander ready for transport to the planet. I left Carter and Macker on the ship, taking Dawg with me planet-side.
We reached our rendevouz point and waited...for a long time.
"No meeting, Boss. No money, boss?" Dawg muttered in his deep, slow voice.
I was beginning to think that too. My intercom beeped and Macker's distressed voice greeted me.
"Boss! Boss! Corp ships, gawd damn it! A whole fleet centring on our location!"
"That's it, Dawg! Screw this shipment!"
We fired up the lander's engines and returned to the main ship. The Corporation was close, nearly on our tailgate. This time there were no words, the bastards fired at us! We ran, kicked the engines into life and was gone.
"Captain," Carter said. "While you were planet-side, I managed to hack what was left of the planets Net. The colonists were under attack, by the Corp - "
"The Corp!" I shouted.
"They fled, on a freighter -"
"Don’t tell me," I already knew the answer. "The Cassandra."
The Corp followed us for days until we finally lost them by back tracking our route then heading out into open, uncharted space. We hid for a long time.
I decided it was time to check our cargo. See what all the fuss was about. See why the Corp wanted the Colonists dead and this shipment so badly. We forced open the lids and Dawg reached inside. He pulled out a long tube, about as wide as small person and about the height of a child wrapped in a heat resistant covering. He placed it on the floor and I ripped open the covering.
"Gawd - damn it - boss! That ain't human!" Macker shouted.
I looked at the contents of the tube. A small, child sized...creature...lay suspended in the bubbling preservative liquid. It was grey with gaunt skin. It was human shaped, in that I mean it had arms and legs that looked shorter than our own - alien like with huge hands and long fingers. It's huge oval eyes were open, at least I think they were, the black pools of its eyes staring at us blankly.
We opened more boxes and sure enough, we found more aliens but also artefacts which looked like some kind of alien technology that Carter immediately tried to link to his hub but with no success.
"Fascinating," Carter said. "To think that someone has actually found life in space!" He stood up excitedly. "You know what this means, don’t you? There is life besides us in the universe! Think about it! For hundreds of years people have theorised about alien life, and here we are with the proof! Us! Scavengers!"
"Not for long," I answered. "We're selling it. To the first bidder. The sooner we dump this cargo, the better!"
"But Captain - !"
"No!" I shouted at Carter. "The Corp want's this shit badly! They want us badly! If we can get rid of this cargo, we can deny ever seeing it! Think, Carter! What will the Corp do if they catch you and then realise you had tampered with this cargo?" I saw Carter's face pale. We all knew this cargo was dangerous, it would cost us as much as it had cost the colonists fleeing on the Cassandra, and the Corp would kill to get it.
Now we needed to find a buyer, some one who would keep their mouth shut from telling who they had bought it from. I told everyone to leave the cargo well alone, but I knew Carter couldn't resist at least trying to interface with some of the alien devices, it was the only way to stop his increasing nagging.
So, here we are, broke, salvaging what we can to survive, trading what we can to buy supplies to keep us alive and trying to find that special buyer to buy our secret cargo. And all the time, the Corporation are looking for us...
Plot
Boldly explore strange and beautiful planets where no man has gone before - and pillage them for valuable mineral resources and rare livestock; Marvel at the wonders contained within the remains of ancient alien civilizations - but beware because they might not be far away - and watching you; Travel through space with your band of desperadoes and outcasts, fighting pirates or becoming one, trading with or ravaging space stations... like everyone else in the galaxy, you're just trying to make a living.
Scavengers is an action adventure game based on a strong cinematic storyline and a state of the art real time 3D environments. There will be no compromises made; you get the hardware, we give you the graphics: full screen cut scenes, voxel based landscapes and space battles, and fully textured isometric real time time locations to explore and fight in, high quality full surround sound effects and CD music tracks.... wether you have AGA, PPC or a GFX card, you can rest assured we'll make full use of it, and you'll never ask yourself wether Quake II will come out on the Amiga again. With its stunning visuals the virtually unlimited playability offered by our higly flexible landscape generation engine, Scavengers is the one game you'll never want to stop playing, over and over again.
Why is the Corporation out for your blood?
What could ever be in that cargo you just salvaged that they need so desperately?
Find the answers to those questions along with some even more troubling interrogatives in the full version of Scavengers - by Pagan Software.
Expect a fully playable demo at the World of Amiga Show 1999
Estimated Specs
Format: CD / Hard Drive
Processor: 040+
Memory: 8/16meg FAST
GFX: AGA / RTG
Audio: CD / FSG / AHI
More Information:
jason.hayman@virgin.net
