Chapter 44: Appendix 3 Part 1/2 – Weapons of the UnderCurrent- By Pierre Havelock (Skippable Bonus Content)

UnderCurrent Appendix 4 - Weapons - By Pierre Havelock
Although much the NTME shows us of the UnderCurrent appears similar in nature to Earth, one thing that is clearly different is the apparent level of technological advancement.
 Of course at present time there is a limit to what the research teams have been able to gather about these marvels of the future, however for our purposes it may be worthwhile to collate some of what has been learned about the weapons of this world.
 Some inquisitive readers may be wondering whether any space-capable fighter air-craft are used in this world or about the clear power discrepancies between the likes of the humble Neo and the mighty Casnels - The following appendix will detail some of what we have learned about these machines, their development and origin - Appropriately starting where it began;

3.1 - Weapons of 'The First War' - Year One;
It is worth remembering that little more than a decade before the current events of 'Operation Deadlight' that this book recounts, the UnderCurrent had never witnessed a true war in space.
 Owing to the extreme costs involved in developing a simple spacecraft, The States Union in the year TA400 owed approximately 95% of all armoured space-fairing vessels - The remaining 5% begin the personal transports of the most wealthy and well connected. In fact almost everything to do with living in space came back to TSU.

It was them who launched and constructed all the Nation-States, as well as colonising the moon and of course Abhaile itself 400 years prior.

 Aside from TSU only the Abhailen government had succeeded in doing anything similar, with one colony of its own, being the massive orbital asteroid 'Ghealach' which became famous for being the site of the 'First-Wars' final battle.
 It is perhaps then no wonder that TSU did not take threats in space all that seriously but instead opted for a multipurpose approach to their naval power.
 The general fighting force in space as of TA410 was made up of divisions containing a single TSU Battleship, a number of TSU Cruisers and half that again in an Aircraft-Carrier class vessel, plus a number of less relevant support craft.
 These fleets where all fairly similar and all saw little action in space - However they did on sea.

This is because almost all TSU Warships were designed to work both in the water and in space with the ability to move in and out of atmosphere with only a little take-off assistance.

 As such the ships of this time probably looked much like what you may have seen here on Earth - Large grey surfaces with all the turrets on one face and a smooth curving underside - Topped off with a raised bridge proudly looking out upon space.

 TSU's fighters also acquiesce to this design philosophy - The 'Tsukaima Mk3' is to this day one of the most produced vehicles in all the UnderCurrent's history, with variants of it being used for literally decades.

 A true all rounder the Tsukaima looked like a fairly conventional 21st century fighter jet - It was equipped with a wide array of weaponry including bombs, torpedoes and machine guns, which could be used in atmosphere or in space.

This was no small feat. The Tsukaima Mk1 had been a reliable but fairly regular aircraft used by TSU much earlier in the Third-Age, relatively cheap and decently effective.
 When TSU came to the contractor to ask for a new version that could operate in space, they jumped at what would become the contract of a lifetime. However it took time with many tragedies occurring around the Tsukaima Mk2, nearly leading to TSU pulling their funding of the project.
 Many experts seem to suggest the Mk2 was actually the greatest fighter-jet the UnderCurrent has ever seen, however its inability to reliably work in two drastically different environments lead to it being discontinued.

TSU almost accepted a rival offer from an Abhailen designer who put forth a humanoid shaped fighter that could theoretically work on land and in ship to ship space combat - However TSU allegedly turned the young man down, based on little more then the not uncommon racial discrimination of the time.

 The Tsukaima after years upon years of development, eventually triumphed and the Mk3 would go on to be the backbone of all TSU operations for decades to come.
 Many saw action alongside the ground forces, including 'peacekeeping' during the 'Ivernia Incident' and others like it, while far more still were sent on carriers up into space.

A conflict in this time period would often play out as follow;
 Some so-called 'terrorists' would stir up revolutionary ideas and a Union fleet would be deployed - The fleet would lower itself into orbit, let loose its Tsukaima battalions, carpet bomb the ill equipped natives - And then simply return back to orbit or any nearby friendly ports.
 It was I'm sure you can tell, a very cruel strategy - And very effective.
The treat of hellfire raining down from the literal heavens above, was enough to deter many counties that might attempt independence and there are even cases of Tsukaima's being deployed through Nation-State airlocks to tactically bombard targets there too.

And yet the TSU fleets of this time had a problem - Sure, they were indeed exceptionally effective at harming ground based targets from above, but they were woefully underprepared for true space combat.

 You might think that strange but really there's a characteristically 'TSU logic' to the whole affair:
 Busy with the massive task of continuing to expand humanities reach with more & more Nation-Satellites and probes being sent out into deeper space - TSU had its hands full.
 A massive fleet that could be moved anywhere amongst their colonialised parts of space, in and out of orbit - Was very cost effective and with no one having the populous or financial economy to even vaguely match up to TSU's empire - Well, why bother planning for the 'impossibility' or a space-conflict?

What TSU didn't account for was the wraith of a certain Abhailen monarch and his people - Or for the difference a few decades of technology might bring even with inferior numbers.

 What TSU didn't plan for was the birth of the very first Vijaik.

 

3.2 - The Vijaik Mk1;
The story of the original Vijaik is one of personal stakes for a young king and an even younger creative.
 A man by the name of 'Archie' once worked for a tractor and construction vehicles firm on the planet Abhaile -  The firm built non-humanoid mechs in various forms used for construction and the like, capable of getting into awkward spaces and clamping their 'feet' to any surface with-in the weak gravity of Abhaile.
 According to his actually autobiography, a digital book Hoki was reading during the NTME's time focused on her - Young Archie was sent on a company trip to inspect some malfunctioning equipment at a Lanthanides mine.
 It should be noted that Abhaile has few native resources, agriculture struggles simply to provide enough for the local populous, trees are rare and all imported and even water has to be strickly controlled - However the exceedingly valuable metal of Lanthanides is abundant on the planet's surface, being the largest export in no small part thanks to the likes of TSU themselves.

Archie tells the story of ending up drinking with the mine's foreman after the inspection - A man who had some wild ideas about the value of the metal he had spent his life extracting. Most of these were the delusions of a half-drunk middle-manager but one off-handed comment apparently inspired Archie and by proxy the next few decades of the UnderCurrent.

 Lanthanides has a remarkably high heat resistance while also being light weight enough to be used as armour plating, something which TSU had long ago discovered and incorporated into their fleets & fighters.
 However the old foremen in his conked out stupor apparently muttered;
"Stuff 'an get so 'ooot I bet even the Hindenburg princip'ill would work!"

It is not for this humble author to try and explain the intricate details of another worlds advanced astrophysics, nor do I understand it enough to try and do so (Though a part of Dr.Firen Shika's team is entrusted with studying this very topic) - However as we understand it the Hindenburg generator was a thought-experiment given to first-year engineering students and the like, to show how an idea might at first seem revolutionary but in reality be impossible - In effective it was some sort of hypothetical power source, perhaps like a miniaturised nuclear reactor, well perhaps.

 Archie believed with Lanthanides he could make the idea work and by proxy open a whole new world of technology. His colleagues did not - Laughing him out of his job and any chance at funding, it was after all a pointless thought experiment, not to be taken so seriously.

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 But Archie was determined (And out of a job) and so began petitioning college campuses and rival industries including one particular States Union - All of which summarily turned him down.

 
Upon returning from these 'interviews' Archie found himself surrounded by secret-servicemen, this he found strange in itself being that Abhaile supposedly didn't have such an organisation.
 He details being afraid they would accost him for speaking to foreign developers, but instead they gave him an envelope and then faded back into the night - The letter was from none other then the Abhailen King himself.

The man now commonly referred to as 'The Last King of Abhaile' was known to be cantankerous, ill-tempered and above all 'patriotic'. It is a story for another time but in exceedingly short summary, while TSU had all but forgotten Abhaile for anything past trade, Abhaile had not forgotten them - 400 years of stories passed through the generations, of the brutal, genocidal founding that was the forced mass-migration to Abhaile in TA001 - More than anyone else the Abhailen royal family held the flame of retribution ablaze.
 In secret much of the planet's mining was used to mask the construction and development of many a warship - Unlike TSU's these ships where to be single-purpose, to fight in space alone, with small crews and forward thinking technology.

The King's mother, the queen before him, had greatly spear-headed this secret project in her youth with Abhailen developers making great strides in energy based projectiles - However in her later years the Queen had grown despondent with the project, realising perhaps that no matter how advanced Abhaile might secretly become, their numbers would always seemingly fail them.

 Even if they could produce an adequate number of ships to face the might of TSU on even footing, they quite literally wouldn't of had enough people to crew them all - An open war of attrition seemed hopeless.
 The King had inherited all this upon his appointment and for a time his youthful nature had driven him forward, but ten years into his reign and he found himself beginning to fall into his Mother's way of hopeless thinking.

In something of a last ditch effort the King began incentivising the research of new and often times extravagant technologies - He came to the belief that in this modern age, surely ship to ship warfare had to consist of more then just warships & fighter jets duking it out - He came to strongly believe there was a missing piece to space-warfare that everyone had either missed or wilfully ignored due to cost.

 Although not his original intention, Archie jumped at the King's very generous order of financing and so the young man was able to walk proudly back to his old place of work, with a letter of recommendation from royalty and a budget he had never dreamed of - So was born the Vijaik.

The Mk1 spent more then a decade in development alongside the Hindenburg Generator and both would ultimately prove crucial to the war.
 The generator not only allowed for a humanoid mech to move at fighter jet speeds but also for warships to be made smaller without losing any power.
 When the war (for still somewhat unclear reasons) finally broke out between TSU and the Abhailen Revolutionary Army, the Mk1-Vijiak would lead the way. Though far from perfected, TSU soon found their multipurpose, 'jack-of-all-trade' ships to be completely outmatched.

It may help to give an example of what made the Vijaik so much more effective than the Tsukaima - For one there is its specs, the Vijaik required only one pilot against the Tsukaima's three - The Tsukaima had petty 30mm machine guns while the Mk1 could carry a 150mm assault rifle.
 If for example a Tsukaima wanted to blow up a ship's bridge, it would have to fly towards the ship, past its defences and then get one shot before having to circle back around and do it all over again - The Vijaik Mk1 could, and often did, literally land atop a ship, crushing a cannon or two in the process and then proceed to simply stand and punch a bridge over & over or fire massive rounds at point blank range.
 The essentially in-atmosphere fighter jet like the Tsukaima has a turning circle, the Vijaik-Mk1 could change direction as fast as you or I can - there was little comparison to be made.

While the Abhailen ships were made with guns on all sides, the old fashioned TSU vessels were defenceless underneath, and while some brave Tsukaima's did succeed in sinking Vijaik Mk1's here and there, generally TSU was helpless to stop these tiny, fast and highly manoeuvrable machines of war.
 All that said the Mk1 was by no means a perfect mech, in-fact most would say it was downright bad in many regards.
 It used what's called a 'generation 1' frame - A large, heavy, angular skeleton - Necessary to support the finicky and sometimes even unstable nature of the early Hindenburg generators, but wholly impractical for combat designs.
 The frame was positioned with the pilot's cockpit underneath, the generator making them unbelievably warm to sit in, further the Hindenburg had a large exploitable weakness;
 If rather then trying to pierce the Vijaik's armour (as many Tsukaima pilots attempted in the early months of the war) - You instead used High-Explosive (HE) rounds targeted at the joints of the machine, you could cause an explosion or even internal fire that would chain react and cause the Mk1 to essentially self-destruct.

Further the Gen 1 frame made the shape of the armour suboptimal to put it lightly.
 Odd curves and sudden angles with little cohesion meant the Mk1 had no real philosophy behind its defences and if TSU owned a mech of their own at the wars onset, they would probably of been able to thrash the Mk1 in equal combat.
 Though none of this is to downplay the mech - Despite its many flaws and obvious weaknesses, the Mk1 changed the field of battle forever and during the first year of the war was used to sink entire TSU fleets, often with only a small warship accompaniment - By the second year of the war the production of Mk1's was halted in favour of the vastly superior Mk2 but despite this Mk1-units would still be in service all the way until the end of the war - There during the counter-invasion of Bhaile, there during the great retreat, and there for the Last King of Abhaile's final stand.
 It may look comically angular compared to even other Gen-1 machines but make no mistake, the Vijaik Mk1 is still the first combat-mecha to ever be mass-produced and one of the most successful - Perhaps only truly bested in its own time period by its little sibling, the 'Sherman tank' of Vijaiks - The Mk2.

3.3 - The Vijaik Mk2 and Vijaik 'Heavy';
 If One were to ask the average citizen almost anywhere in the UnderCurrent what the most iconic and well known mech was, they would probably point you in the Mk2's direction.
 An immediate upgrade to cover some of the Mk1's flaws and technical shortcomings, the Vijaik Mk2 was put into production around the end of the first year of the war and unlike the Mk1, the 2 would remain in production for the remaining duration of the conflict as the primary weapon of the Abhailen Revolutionary Army.
 Additionally more of them were produced then any other mech in the war and further they remained a viable piece of kit even after the war.
 If the Mk1 had been the birth of an idea, the 2 was that ideas maturity.

With iconic rounded shoulder (sometimes with added spikes for good measure) among other pieces of rounded armour to cover the Mk1's self-destruction flaw, larger bulky legs containing massive thruster units and a whole array of new weapons that had been produced in the preceding months - The Mk2 was an improvement in almost every way, despite still being on a Gen-1 frame with the same generator as the 1.
 This was in large part because the Mk1 provided more field data then Director Archie's team could ever of desired for making improvements.
 The 2 first saw mainstream use during the invasion of Bhaile.
TSU having discovered the crippling weakness of the Mk1 were starting to hold their own for the first time in months - As such a Mk2 would lead every group of 1's, piloted by an officer or ace - Cutting a hole in battle-lines and then allowing the Mk1's to flood in behind it.
 Its upgraded armour making it, for a time, next to invincible until TSU came up with new measures.

This armour actually meant the Mk2's, even being at the front of the line, were more likely to survive then the year old 1's - Nonetheless Abhailen command sold it to the troops that their commanding officers were fearlessly leading the charge, a great morale boost that also condoned to the Mk2's celebrity.
 Halfway through the second year and the Mk2 was quickly becoming numerous, the face of Abhaile's brutal invasion of Bhaile. Although Abhaile would continue to innovate and try new designs, including some of the first Fortress types, the Mk2's relative cheap cost and somewhat easy to learn control scheme would lead to it never being superseded as the main machine of the Abhlien army.
 Some Ace pilots even refused newer models in favour of keeping custom Mk2's, one such ace was IAFS's current Vijaik Commander, Lt.Commander Ceathre of the Tradech who was famous for a bronze coloured prototype Mk2, which he piloted long before the mass-production type was made - And saw service for around two and a half years.

This isn't to say there weren't other less populous mass production types - Namely the fifth most produced machine of the war, The Vijaik Heavy.
 The heavy was as the name would suggest, a heavily armoured mech - Unlike the Mk 2 with its interlaced curving armour, the heavy had large moulded pieces that looked almost like medieval plate armour.
 Its head was more triangular than the Mk2's dome and its legs & arms even larger.
These moulded plates would come in especially helpfully against the heat of the energy weapons the First-Casnel would soon bring, but we will get to that in due course...

The heavy was unfortunately quite slow on land, in space it was much faster however the shear size of its limbs and armour did somewhat limit its manoeuvrability making it unpopular amongst veteran aces.
 And yet the brilliant simplicity of a massive heavy duty tank that could shrug off a tactical strike from almost anything, has a certain appeal to it.
 The heavy saw alot of use and while as mentioned not as iconic as the Mk2, it was on paper atleast the superior mech.

Unlike Ceathre, Thee Scarlet Scourge changed mechs many times. Starting as a civilian test pilot years before the war, she taught others how to use the Mk1 for a time before joining the fight when war broke out - By the time of Bhaile's invasion her Mk1 became heavily damaged in the landings and she ended up with a second hand Mk2 - After being one of the few to return to space in the Great Retreat she was given her first Ace's title and a Vijaik-Heavy which would end up accompanying her all the way through the peace years.
 It seems Scarlet was still in possession of this near decade old machine at the start of the current IAFS conflict, it is believed she is currently using one of its shoulder-pads on her Neo-C type.

Scarlet here brings up a poignant difference between the Mk2 and the Heavy - Though a small number of Mk2's and even Mk1's were heavily retrofitted to partake in the Remembrance Incident, in reality the Mk2 was a product of its time - Its Gen-1 frame and generator being rapidly out paced by post-war machines and its armour never being adequate enough to defend against the birth of miniaturised energy weaponry.
 The Heavy on the other hand remained surprisingly relevant - TSU would keep actively using captured ones to bolster their greatly depleted post-war numbers for years after the First-War, Remembrance also used them to much better success then the retrofitted Mk1/2s.
 This is probably down to the fact that thick heavy plated armour remained useful even with energy weapons and the sheer size of the Heavy meant that despite having the Gen1 frame and generator, it could still carry much larger physical ammunition weapons and Calibre blades then the Mk2 could.

TSU-s did attempt to imitate the Mk2 with their mass-production unit, 'The Ogre' - The Ogre is the first Gen-3 mech TSU has mass-produced and is made in the image of the Vijaik-Mk2 as something one can only presume, of an insult towards remaining Abhailen dissidents.
 Internally however the Ogre is very different to the Mk2 and so far has been fairly unsuccessful of a mech, being on average bested in specs and on the battlefield by IAFS's Neo type - The Ogre most resembles the Mk2 in that it is far too outdated for the current conflict.

The Heavy however has been reborn in many ways by TSU, Remembrance and most recently IAFS.
 The MBT-Heavy is an IAFS mech currently in production alongside the Neo, it has very high technical specifications for a production type model and an a decent Goibniu concentration - This however makes it quite costly and so they are made in much smaller numbers then the 'Nemo' and Neo-C's.
 A squadron of these new generation heavies are a permanent fixture aboard the Tradech, IAFS's flagship - There was also a couple onboard the IAFS ship Mithril, under the command of one 'Bela Grimizan' - However this ship was lost with all hands on the 4th day of the war, partially desensitizing IAFS to hand out heavies too often considering the high production cost & risk for loss.

In a way I feel the Sherman comparison really is quite an apt match for the history of these two mechs - Although the most well remembered, the Sherman was not actually a particularly 'good' tank - Its cannon was too small to pierce most German armour of the time and it was prone to breakdown.
 However it was relatively cheap to produce, easy enough to train people on, repairable in the field and the machine the American's ultimately needed for the Second World War in a strange fashion - The comparisons to the Mk2 should be clear.
 Meanwhile the Heavy brings to mind the much less beloved British and even French tanks of the era - Many of which were heavy hulking beasts with large cannons and inches thick armour.
 Like the Churchill tanks of Britain still being used into the 50s, 60s and in some odd cases 70's - The heavy may be less flashy to look at or marketable to the public, but had far more staying power.

And yet for all that we have spoken of just 3 of Abhaile's numerous mechs, fortresses and variants there-in from the First-War - They all pale in comparison to the accidental Demi-God TSU was about to unleash upon the Universe in the final year of the war - The First Casnel.

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