On the next few pages are images and data of weapons regularly used by Without Fate and myself; this section in particular deals with machineguns.
On this first page are pictures of my own personal weapon, "Death Penalty". She's a real monster, inspired by the minigun used in the movie Predator by Jesse Ventura's character, Blain. While things have changed a bit and Death Penalty is a bit more advanced than Blain's "Painless", there are still a few problems with the weapon, let me tell you!
Normally miniguns like this would be mounted on a vehicle, but this is a special version for infantry use. Death Penalty is a modified GE XM214 minigun; she has six barrels that are powered by an electric motor putting out about 3.2 horsepower. DP can be set to fire bursts between 30 and 1000 rounds; the barrels spin at speeds between 1000 and 10,000rpm. This gives the minigun a top rate of fire of about 166 rounds per second! DP is shown here without the heavy metal shielding that surrounds the motor, feed intake and part of the barrels, including the heatshroud. Death Penalty is a very heavy gun, way too heavy for me to fire it unaided. Even modified, she still has some serious weight issues: The gun itself weighs 30lbs unloaded; damn heavy, but managable if you're built like a dump truck, or say, Jesse Ventura. Problem is, that I'm not. The big backpack with a thousand rounds of ammunition and a linkless belt to the minigun weighs in at around 35 pounds; that's starting to push most people's endurance just a little! Backpacks with two thousand rounds weigh in at 65 pounds, and are totally unrealistic in size. Just the gun and the ammo weighed in at 65 pounds at this point. Now switch to the 2000 round model, and try lugging around close to 100 pounds of gun and ammo, plus all your normal gear... But that isn't even the total weight of the minigun! Batteries not included?
That's unfortunately accurate. We now have to find a way to power this beast. In Predator, Painless was fed with two truck batteries. Since those batteries weigh some 30 pounds each, I could carry only one (in addition to all the ammo, armor and the weapon I would already have to carry). Thus, the weapon could never be fired at its full rate of fire. Which isn't so bad, come to find out. Even at "only" 1000rpm, the gun produces about 11 kg of recoil constantly! And this amount of force increases geometrically in proportion to the rate of fire. Firing a large burst would result in me being yanked around by my own gun, and spraying everything around me indiscriminately with bullets. Including, unfortunately, my own comrades... Not good. That is when I found a rather unusual solution to the problem. But first, the issue of the massive powersource has to be addressed...
Death Penalty is powered by four NiCad batteries contained in an armored belt, part of my armor. They weigh 7lbs each, and that adds up when you take into consideration the weight I'm already toting. Each battery will power the weapon for one (1) 1000 round burst- that's enough bullets to reduce most enemies to a fine gooey paste. Of course, I can only lug around 1000 rounds at a time, but the ammunition is stored in a relatively light kevlar bag that I can drop and exchange for a new one if I need more ammo. Unlikely, I know... DP weighs 30lbs, and has a range of 1000 feet. I'm currently doing research on caseless ammunition to replace the .223 NATO rounds I currently use. Of course, that will require a Death Penalty II, but I've got the money for another monster.
But what about recoil and the weight of all that junk, plus body armor? For that, I have accquired the prototype of an exoskeletal framework, which is mounted inside my armor. It's based on DARPAS' Human Performance Augmentation project, which is being handled by Sarcos; Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and the Human Engineering Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley. The secret in powering the ES suit was found in human muscle- if you took all the muscle on an adult human male and put it in full contraction, it could lift 20 tons! The result are very small pistons, each not providing much power, but together they form very strong "muscles", or actuators. Each of the "muscles" of the ES has a seperate powersource, which consists of a hydrogen-fueled piston with a memory chip. The lifting system allows me to comfortably heft 400 lbs and walk, run and jump with it on. I don't want to strain the system too much, so I'm not going to add much to the ammo/powersupply for my baby. I have other guns for more discreet work; DP is mainly for massacre-type stuff- wiping out hordes of virus-created zombies; mowing down screaming guys with no heads and large bombs attached to their arms; and of course, taking an entire landing-zone for Without Fate single-handedly.
Yeah, I'm a real menace... I wonder how I could possibly still be single?!
This is a pretty crude version of what helps me do what I do... Mine's covered up by body-armor and spray-painted in pretty camo-colors, though.