Name: Splitter Charges, "Kyrciao" (literally nihilai for fire disc) Description: A hirin lays down suppressive fire through a ruined cityscape when it spots a naian soldier from the other side lying wounded on the ground. Out of a sadistic sense of self righteousness it raises it's foot with the intent of crushing the soldier. In his momentary distraction, the pilot fails to notice as another soldier leaps from a nearby building and onto his hirin. The second soldier pulls the pin on a large, circular object which begins beeping and whirring, before planting it between the hirins shoulder plate and torso and leaping off. The hirin pilot is barely able to react before its arm is torn off by a rapidly expanding disc of superheated plasma. Splitter charges, in their most common form, are usually a series of small fuel canisters surrounding a battery and wrapped with a hollow metal ring, known as a reaction chamber. On the top is a carry handle and on the bottom is a firmly attached safety pin. Wrapped around the metal ring is a series of either magnetic or adhesive strips designed to allow the contraption to stick to surfaces. There's also usually a bright red or yellow stripe painted across the entire ring. At the heart of the contraption there is a DE battery, as well as a small explosive charge. Overall, the device weighs around four to six pounds, and is around eight inches in diametre. Abilities: Precision cut: The splitter charge excels in infantry versus armor combat, as its surgical precision is able to cut off key points of weakness such as mech limbs, turrets et cetera. Sticky bomb: Around the charge are a series of adhesive and magnetic strips, designed to allow the charge to stick effortlessly onto surfaces. Once a charge sticks, it is notoriously difficult to remove, especially if it is finagled into a hard to reach spot. Limitations: Obvious: Once a splitter charge is planted it is hard not to notice. The charge begins ringing and beeping, as well as glowing red hot and whirring loudly. In addition, it takes a full 10 seconds from when the pin is pulled until it detonates. Ferozium: Due to its innate resistance against plasma, ferozium is able to mostly deflect the blast of a splitter charge. Limited angle: Splitter charges only damage things that are horizontal to the charge itself and don't explode spherically like traditional explosives. How does it work?: As soon as the pin is pulled the charge begins the process of priming and detonating. Condensed gaseous fuel, usually a mix of deuterium and tritium, is injected into the reaction chamber where it starts spinning and heating up much like it would in a fusion reactor. Due to its small scale however, the entire device starts heating up rapidly, as there’s insufficient heat dispersal, though this is by design. After around 10 seconds the charge is now glowing hot, and the fuel inside the chamber has become a dense plasma, hot and fast enough to fuse at a small scale into helium atoms. The intense thermal energy starts melting and vaporizing its containment, eventually ripping holes in the reaction chamber. A small explosive charge, at the heart of the device, detonates at the peak of the plasma's temperature. This violently expels the plasma from the device and, due to the centrifugal force of the rapidly spinning plasma, it is ejected across a mostly flat, circular plane, horizontal to the splitter charge. The hot, dense and fast plasma rapidly expands to cover an area around three meters (ten feet) in diameter, cutting through any material that isn’t ferozium like its a hot knife through butter. Past this point the plasma begins cooling and expanding, eventually dissipating into a mostly harmless cloud of hydrogen and helium gas. Additionally, there is a well known and documented event that sometimes takes place after a splitter charge has detonated in an oxygen rich atmosphere. Known as a “backblast”, this is when the cooling hydrogen gas is ignited by some of the remaining hot plasma and reacts with the oxygen in the atmosphere to form water vapour. The result is that the plasma disc quickly expands, reddens and billows into a cloud of fire. This fire is usually relatively cold however and dissipates quickly, meaning it rarely deals significant damage the plasma hasn’t already caused. Flavour text: A curious piece of ordnance that was originally developed and applied in the asteroid mining and shipbreaking industries. During the naian civil war, vanguard soldiers originally saw its virtues as a potential anti-armour weapon with surgical precision. After its introduction to the battlefield however the core and even dynasty adopted the ordnance, and developed special military versions. Some would now go so far as to raise the splitter charges as the turning point in the infantry versus armour scene of the naian civil war. Attainability: ( O p e n ) - The technology is fairly accessible, and common among many different industrial sectors such as mining, shipbreaking and demolition. Tags: [ I n d u s t r i a l ] Category: Tools
