Chapter 416 (1/2)
The M-318A2E5 General Purpose Heavy Machinegun.
A 20mm barrel. Frangible link belt fed. Each box of ammunition containing 200 rounds of variable munitions, from standard soft alloy ball rounds to armor piercing incendiary to self-correcting guided armor piercing discarding sabot fin stabilized warsteel jacketed density enhanced shell mass reactive antimatter core with tracer.
Maximum rate of fire 2,000 rounds a minute. Maximum effective rate of fire at 350 rounds a minute. Recommended rate of fire at 100 rounds per minute. If can be altered on the fly with an advanced firing system or manually fixed by the unit armorer or Weapon Engineer trained green mantid.
A crew served, warborg, or gunnery heavy combat frame (or parity system). Alternatively mounted in a fixed position or on a light armored combat vehicle. Often used as a light weapon on warmechs. It has also been used as a bludgeoning weapon against particularly aggressive and insistent enemy and proven to be more resilient then the body of the enemy.
Single barrel with heat shroud, magnetic rail accelleration with magnetic coil stabilization and variable munition effects, with thermal bloom heat sink option. The bare minimum moving pieces after thousands of years of being steadily shaved down. Stripped down there is not a single extraneous piece of hardware entirely on her body.
Capable of air defense, point defense, anti-armor, anti-infantry, anti-vehicle usage depending on deployment and selected munition type. If you can see it, if you can hit it, if you can maintain fire upon it, you will, inevitably, kill it. Rather, she will kill it, if you are skilled enough.
Able to be resupplied by a Class-II nano-forge with only built in heat sinks and radiator fins, it is capable of resupplying itself with nearly seven hundred rounds per minute and stay within heat tolerances for an unaltered Class-II nano-forge using only atmospheric mass intake. A Class-I nano-forge can produce four hundred rounds per minute within heat tolerances. A Class-III and higher can produce ten thousand rounds per minute with little to no heat or nanite stress and is only limited by the amount of mass it has access to.
A standard ball round without nano-forge fabrication costs the Confederate tax payer 125 credits. An advanced round like the Confederate military uses as its standard loadout would cost the Confederate tax-payer 14,200 credits per round. As the Confederate tax payer has graciously supplied you with a nano-forge, each round only costs the Confederate tax payer one credit worth the nanites and mass.
You will not waste the Confederate taxpayer's money.
Able to be attached to autonomous firing points or carried by a warborg, the M-318A2E5 does not have to rely on fancy virtual reality, virtual intelligence assistants, or even holographic targeting. At times the M-318A2E5 has been stripped down to the basic components with a hollowed out ration tin as a sight. With the weapon entirely made from Gen-Zero Warsteel without any fancy laminates, molecular circuitry, or even necessarily having to rely on electrical primers and firing systems, the M-318A2E5 is resistant to gravity, radiation, electromagnetic pulses, and can survive inside the fireball of a 10.25 megaton nuclear blast and still be servicable to kill the enemy.
Basically unchanged, with the exception of the nanoforge ammunition supply system (NASS), since prior to the Diaspora the M-318A2E5 General Purpose Heavy Machinegun System has killed more of the enemy than even planet cracker class weaponry. It has tasted the blood of dozens of species, some without even names, and sent them wailing to afterlife.
From the shores of Iron Fence to the blasted sands of Anthill to the deathlands of the Niven Rings, the ”Three-Eighteen” has been the infantry's knockout punch since before Terra managed FTL travel. Like her mother, the Ma-Deuce, she proved that mass infantry charges are not militarily feasible if you wish to have any males left to rebuild your nation or species. Carried by Chromium Saint Peter on Anthill, this weapon has felt the touch of the Digital Omnimessiah and killed men during the Burger Wars of Prediaspora while mounted on armored fighting vehicles.
This weapon is one of the grand old dames of warfare, up there with the Gerber Ka-Bar Mark III and the M-9A2 Bayonet and her mother, the M2A6E2 Fifty Caliber General Purpose Heavy Machinegun, and you, recruit, will treat her, treat all of them, with respect, as she has earned it, unlike every one of you sorry sacks of shit.
Take your places next to your assigned weapon and we will begin familiarization with the bare bones stripped weapon.
I do not agree with the sentiment that you are worthy to touch her.
Time will tell.
--Advanced Individual Training, Infantry, Heavy Weapons Familiarization, Day One.
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This is the M8271E5 Heavy Weapon Specialist standard basic gunner's frame.
Twenty-eight pounds of advanced hyperalloys, a foamed battlesteel core, and a warsteel laminate jacket, the M8271E5 will enable you to carry and effectively use, while mitigating endurance and fatigue, the heavy weapons of the Terran Confederate Army.
Designed initially to allow ammunition specialists to work with heavy munitions in a timely manner, the frame was adapted for heavy gunner work prior to the Great Glassing. It has gone through repeated redesigns until the version in front of you was settled upon during the Lancaster Nebula Wars.
This frame can be supplemented with smart-frame capable offensives and defensives, including battlescreens and eVI warboi assistance, as well as have modular armor layered onto it for additional protection from vacuum, radiation, battlefield hazards, or just because you are so ugly we would prefer not to look at you.
Costing the Terran Confederacy taxpayer twenty-two thousand credits in mass to create, the Gunner's Frame is worth more than any of you mouth breathing ballsweat huffing morons in front of me.
At my command you will step forward, place your big lump clumsy feet into the pedals, and reach forward with your dick skinners and cloacae rubbers and grasp the handles. You will not mistake my command and lodge any important parts of this device into your rectums or other waste orifices. You will not fall down. You will not embarrass me or your instructors or I will personally make your existence a living hell due to the fact that you are too stupid to walk and breathe at the same time.
MOUNT THE FRAME!
--Advanced Individual Training, Infantry, Heavy Weapons Systems Familiarization, Day Five
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Your warboi is a custom grown enhanced virtual intelligence who's basic core seed was grown from one of the scans of your neural tissue base motor reflexes. This means the two of you think to some extent alike.
Currently your warboi is undergoing the final phase of personality gelling before they will hatch from their digital shell and, for their sins, be assigned to you for a training period of two years, after which they will move on to other soldiers just as you will be assigned to different units.
Warboi integration has proven to increase your combat effectiveness by handling the complexities of the modern battlefield and modern wargear. They will largely handle your electronic warfare systems, your battlescreens, heat and slush levels, graviton generator balancing, and many other systems that the modern soldier has to worry about.
Gentlebeings, integration with your warboi is a necessary section of your training. If you cannot integrate with your warboi you will have failed from this course and will be cast down into the masses of non-combat personnel. No, below them, down to where the un-wired work, counting how many tires are on the General's personal grav-lifter and vainly trying to remember if three comes after four.
A fate worse than death, gentlebeings, for honed killing machines such as yourselves.
Currently, your warboi is dreaming learning dreams. The 'cyber-egg' has been mounted on your Combat Frame so that you can move through simulations and get your warboi used to how you move. Move slow and steady, follow your training, and teach your warboi how you move.
MOUNT THE FRAME!
--Advanced Individual Training, Infantry, Warboi Familiarization, Day One
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When forced with reacting at a subconscious level or taking your warboi's advice, you must remember that your warboi is a digital semi-sentience without the millions of years of predator evolution that turned you into the top tool using land dwelling predator of your worlds. You have dedicated neural systems within your brain, that you have head since the only sound that you knew was your mother's heart or the egg tender's singing, that enabled every single one of your forebearers to not only survive long enough to pass on their genetics to the female or xirmale of your species, but that gestator sex to survive long enough to give birth to those young.
Your three to six pounds of neural wiring enabled your forebearers to overcome everything from giant lizards to crystalline hunters to avain predators until your species was the dominate one of the entire planet.
The warboi has what he was been programmed with and what he has learned.
Your instincts will, 80% of the time, trump the warboi's protests or suggestions.
In the other 20%, you will either recognize that the warboi's suggestion is superior or everything will come apart on you.
You must remember, gentlebeings, that your warboi understands your electronic warfare systems and their operations in the same way that you understand how to run across a field. Training and practice.
Before you protest that your people are a peaceful, cooperative people, and that you are an outlier, that you were conquered by the Lanaktallan or had your faces smashed in by the Terrans, you must remember one thing: You were, or are, the dominant predator on your planet.