Galaxy Corps Interactive Fiction: An Old Friend.

Technology and Vehicle Design - An Old Friend.

Back to 'Adonis and Heartbreaker Siege meks'

An Old Friend. (08/03/00 )

Here's a weapon which you might not have been expecting to be used against a mek: the 9mm automatic.

But wait! Consider this: a shield, such as that used by the mesh-mek, has two primary defense mechanisms. First, against energy damage such as lasers, &c., it has both the powers of reflection and of dispersion, thus diffusing an already weakened force or beam. Second, against metal objects or charged objects such as swords, plasma, or even other meks themselves, it can employ careful manipulation of magnetic fields to weaken, deflect, or even reflect the objects. But what about a small, high-velocity, non-conducting and non-magnetic substance? For example, a heavy, high-impact plastic bullet? The only way of stopping it would be to throw a whole bunch of nanos in its path and hope that they stopped it without destroying too many of them. Now consider what it would be like if the shield was being hit by hundreds every minute. At the very least, the shield would sustain such a high rate of impacts that it would be unable to fully block other, more powerful attacks. And if one or two bullets did slip in due to momentary disarray of the shield after multiple consecutive hits in the same spot, a target such as the mesh-mek has comparatively little secondary armour to stop the bullet from hitting the pilot.

As for the gun itself, a non-conducting and non-magnetic slug obviously cannot be fired using an EM driver, such as those found in railguns and plasma units. Thus, chemical propellents must be called back into service. Also, while it is true that a larger slug than the 9mm, such as a .50 caliber, would do greater damage, it would also take longer to fire and have heavier ammunition. Although it does not do much damage against solid armour, a 9mm round or three can effectively jam some equipment if it is lucky and enters the mechanism itself. The chances of having such a lucky hit, and of having it multiple times in a row, increase exponentially with a greater fire rate. The reason for having such an old-fashioned slug size is that old designs from the 20th and 21st centuries were the first to be tested for usefulness, and the 9mm performed admirably, giving a fair mass compared to a nanotech unit while still being small and lightweight from the gunman's point of view.

This is, obviously, not a weapon with a wide range of uses, although it still works fine against "soft" targets, as it always has. Therefore, the gun and the special plastic ammunition and chemical propellants are somewhat rare and expensive, though not prohibitively. Also, large quantities of ammunition must be purchased and carried due to the high ROF (rate of fire) of these weapons. For this reason, they are usually sold with a carrying case much like a briefcase, either soft- or hard-sided, with a shoulder strap. It is also heavy to carry with the ammunition, and therefore is not for general issue unless the presence of a suitable target is confirmed.

The guns themselves come in all shapes and sizes, as one might expect. They are either clip or belt fed, and other factors, such as kickback suppression, also vary.

Thanks to ZBS productions, the creators of Ruby, for first pointing out
this flaw in EM shield systems in Ruby 3.