Walkers

Captain Seth Jechsen strode through the large main hold of his planetary lander, the Excuse Me Coming Through.  It was, in reality, simply a large empty space suitable for a number of different purposes.  The mercenaries took that to heart and used it in precisely that fashion.

Gantries along both sides housed giant Walkers, both those combat ready and those in various stages of repair and refit (or, occasionally as fortune permitted, even construction).  Crates of supplies floated in zero gravity near various Walker bays; others were stored more securely in chain netting towards the command side of the large hall.  Various bits of machinery sat on one of the three floors - in zero gravity, every direction was "down" - or moved about on weak ion differential thrusters, puttering about to repair or remove or reload some piece of equipment.  Pilots and technicians floated about, busy with pre-drop maintenance, each pilot trying to get some last bit of performance squeezed out of his or her Walker, and each tech adamantly stating it would be impossible.

Of course, all the necessary work would get done; but first, ritual had to be observed.

Seth floated on back towards the command side of the hall, having just done his usual pre-mission tour of preparations.  It would soon be time to brief his lieutenants and pilots, but first the head technician had requested a meeting.

Head technician Endon Gantz had been a rare find; the world class engineer had been fired from one of the Walker Mega Corps for tinkering on one too many company prototypes.  He was forever curious and looking for ways to improve upon Walker systems and weapons.  Where his blatant disregard for safety was frowned upon by corporate executives, his talent and iingenuity found deep appreciation in the mercenary company.  His paycheck was substantial, but he made sure he earned it, and those on the engineering staff earned their keep as well.  He was well respected, and next to Captain Jechsen, his word in the EMCT's hold was law.

Seth found him beside his own Walker, Askar.  Endon had a number of pieces of munition floating beside him as he watched technicians finish maintenance on Askar's gauss rifles.

"Captain, I thought you'd ike to know that I've finished work on the specialty munitions; we have a limited amount available of each type, but I thought I'd go over the dangers of each before you make allocations."

"Dangers?" asked Seth.

"Yes, each of these variants is more dangerous than carrying standard equivalents for the user.  For example,' Endon held up a large, red tipped shell.  "These are the incendiary HVAC rounds.  We have them in a few different calibres, suitable for short range anti-personnel machine guns, long range gauss rifles, and everything in between."  Seth examined the shell, intended for a high velocity auto cannon, while Endon continued.  "The tip is designed to fragment on impact, releasing the payload, a napalm-like gel.  Feel the abrasive surface?  That will reduce the maximum range and affect accuracy somewhat; however, it allows use to avoid using a primer or some other kind of chemical stimulant to ignite the gel - the tip fragments will do that with friction-sparks when striking Walker armor.  it should also reduce the amount of collateral damage and wild fire danger in urban and forest combat settings."

Captain Jechsen handed the round back.  "You mentioned a downside?"

"Well, it's an incendiary round.  Lacking a primer makes it safer to carry, but a hit to the ammo storage compartment, or even high enough temperatures, could set the entire magazine off.  This stuff will not only increase operational temperatures, it will melt through Walker armor plating in time.  Short of fully submerging the burning area, you wont get it off.  Speaking of which," Endon continued.  "You'll want your close combat Walkers to be especially careful if these rounds are in use.  Ramming, striking, pushing an affected Walker could easily transfer the gel from Walker to Walker - and the gel doesn't know friend from foe."

Jechsen nodded thoughtfully.  "We have these for the missile systems too, right?"

Endon nodded matter of factly.  "Of course.  But you'll want to consider this baby for missiles too." He hefted a blue striped missile.  "We can refit the warheads on a limited number of missiles, but it wont really matter if they are short range straight-fire or long range swarmers.  These are the EMP warheads you asked for a while back.  It took a while to finangle a working EMP burst into the warhead space; in fact, I'm still working on designs for gun shells.  In the meantime though, we've got these."

"What's the effective area? How long of a knock out can we count on?"

"Little less than a cubic meter; half a second to a second at best."

Jechsen frowned.  "That's not going to do much..."

Endon laughed, a short raucous bark.  "No, you're right.  It's not going to do anything meaningful to weapons, targetting, or even comms...." his voice trailed off.

"Balance.  Balance and movement!"

Endon smiled.  "Bingo.  It's enough to momentarily throw a Walker off balance.  At best, a good salvo will disable a Walker pilot with vertigo feedback, or make him fall over.  At worst, you're going to upset his balance for a moment, which will likely disrupt his aim and battle focus.  Could be just enough to make a difference." Endon paused.  "Of course, like the incendiary rounds, a stray hit could set off the magazine.  And that could fry our pilot.  At the least, it will almost certainly shutdown a Walker until we can get a full technical team to do a full once-over.  You'll also want to be careful at point-blank range: there's always the chance of being caught in the same EMP blast."

"Well, to start, let's load incendiary rounds into the Horseless Headsman, and make sure you tell Jair about it; nothing else for trine 3.  Divvy the EMP missiles between Askar and Miracle.  Let's also put the incendiaries in Banshee. As for trine 2," Seth took a breath to consider his tactical options.  Trine 2 was long range support;  under normal circumstances, they would open up at long range, and then continue to maintain their distance in between salvos, using trine 3's scout skirmishers and trine 1's assault walkers as interference if necessary.  "If you have enough left over, put incendiary rounds in Fantoccini; unless Isabella wants missiles.  Ask her which she would prefer, with a slant on area denial."