First Contact

Chapter 416

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.

Trust your warboi, but trust your instincts also.

The course you are about to enter is designed to cause your warboi to make the wrong suggestions or attempt to countermand your orders. It is as much a training exercise for him as it is for you.

MOUNT THE FRAME!

---Advanced Individual Training, Infantry, Warboi Familiarization, Day Twelve

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This is the pinnacle of modern infantry warfare. The M894 Powered Assault Armor. A man sized piece of equipment that will allow you to fight anywhere within this universe and most of the other known universes. It is, in effect, as self contained combat spaceship with modular systems, capable of allowing you to fight, without any support, for up to five years without needing resupply. With the onboard nano-forge even critical system replacement is possible.

The record for unsupported operation in power armor is twenty-three years, with a grand total of time in direct combat of nine years, three months, fourteen days, three hours, sixteen minutes, forty-two seconds.

That pilot survived.

That, gentlebeings, is not recommended.

--Advanced Individual Training, Infantry, Power Armor Familiarization, Day One

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The M9E7 Orbital Insertion Pod is used to insert Confederate Forces onto a hostile surface, often directly into battle, from far orbit. Capable of acting as an emergency life support pod, complete with manuevering thrusters, the M9 OIP carries a thirteen man infantry squad and all of their equipment from the troop ship or warship to the surface of the planet, asteroid, or Niven Ring. Capable of withstanding more than one orbital defense hit, the OIP is a safer environment for the infantry than the inside of those cobbled together rust buckets Space Force and the Navy wander around the universe in.

With a built in Class-V Nano-Force, the M9E7 OIP is returning to the previous Confederate Army doctrine of each squad is capable of operating from a fixed position with everything they need from the drop pod. Loaded with templates to create everything from rapid strike grav-lifters to standard side-arms, the Drop Pod is not only how you get to the ground, but how you hold it once you take it.

Unlike the Marine Corps pods, the M9E7 is designed to be disassembled and used as the core of a forward operating base that will enable you to withstand anything the enemy can throw at you, given enough time and mass.

This training unit will teach you how to use the OIP to the best effect to kill the enemy, break his possessions, and take his territory.

MOUNT THE FRAME!

--Advanced Individual Training, Infantry, Orbital Insertion Pod Familiarization, Day One

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Undrat sat on his bunk, the dataslate in his hand, going over the standard combat maneuvers for the umpteenth time. They were ingrained in his memory now, but he still felt the need to examine them again for anything he might have missed.

His people weren't the brightest out there, but they were persistent and enduring.

Once he had read it, he took the self-quiz, answering questions and moving the icons around to show his work. After that he went over proper radio procedures, despite the fact that he had been warning repeatedly that proper radio procedure often ended when the munitions were being expended or after a sufficiently long period of time in a combat zone.

A new section had been added while he was in training, and Undrat wanted to make sure he had it memorized by going over it again and again. The Terran Confederate Army had begun training its soldiers in radio wave frequency communications, based on bands most races had long abandoned.

Several times sidebars warned Undrat that the supposed un-jammable quantum and strange matter linkage communications had recently been completely jammed and rendered unusable by an enemy through unknown means in a combat theater.

The communications procedures book now contained how to even use flashing lights or waved cloth to signal others, as well as flares, smoke, and fire.

He was in his room, which he shared with three other soldiers as part of Second Platoon, Bravo Company, Ninth Battalion, Second Brigade, Fifth Regiment, Twenty-Third Infantry Division, XII Corps, 14th Army.

Undrat liked the long label. It let him know exactly who was in charge of him, which made him more comfortable. He could recite the names of every commander of each unit, as well as the Executive Officer and Master Enlisted and knew them by sight from their pictures. He had even listened to recordings of their speech over and over until he was confident he could remember them by their voice if he ever heard it.

It was good to remember things.

He sat in his adaptive camouflage uniform, the rank of Private Grade Two on his sleeves. He had been promoted once he had finished his training, arrived at his new unit, and passed the basic tests to ensure he had retained the knowledge outside of training.

Of course he had. Once he had learned it, he would not forget it.

When he heard it, he raised his head from his book, frowning.

YOU BELONG TO US

Sighing, he turned off the dataslate and got up, setting it on the desk. He grabbed his hat and headed for the door.

He doubted that the scream was friendly.

As he trudged toward the armory he heard it again.

YOU BELONG TO US

This time he heard the scream back from every Terran around him.

EAT A DICK!

Terrans were running by, heading toward the armory. Like Undrat's people, the Terrans had evolved as pursuit hunters, persistence hunters, on a high gravity world.

Undrat wasn't worried. He knew he would get to the armory in time to sign in and make formation.

He looked forward to protecting his former Overseer.

After all, the Overseer had protected Undrat and his people.

It was only fair.