As I walk around the balcony, admiring the greenery, Brigid approaches me. She grasps my hand and I bend down and give her a brief kiss. Brigid gives my hand a quick squeeze and lets go, then stands back so she doesn’t have to crane her neck so much to talk to me.
“Aldrich.”
“Brigid.”
“I have... a surprise.”
“Oh?”
“Hm, I’m calling her Dawn Garnet.”
There’s a lot I could infer from a statement like that.
“So before I start panicking and asking silly questions, please stop teasing me and let me in on your secret.”
Brigid pouts, “How about this?” Brigid pulls a silver whistle from her pocket. It looks plain, but I can tell it’s stuffed full of electronics. She looks up at me, places the whistle between her lips and smirks, then gives two sharp blasts. Although inaudible to Human ears, my sensors observe the sound waves ripple outwards, carrying location and command data.
There is a sharp crack of displaced air and a cyber mastiff, almost invisible even to me, teleports right next to Brigid. I jump slightly at the sudden noise and Brigid laughs. Conundrum, Laisren’s Grapplehawk, squarks and flies off. A hellfire pistol appears in Maeve’s hands, pointing at the floor, as she carefully scans for threats, but finds nothing. I am surprised that my bodyguards didn't burst in, but I guess Brigid must have warned them in advance.
“Got you,” Brigid reaches out and scratches the top of the dog’s head.
Light ripples around the dog and it reveals itself. It is a red furred logistics dog that comes up to Brigid’s waist. It barks at me once and hidden within the noise is its designation: Dawn Garnet.
“You made an invisible blink dog. Wasn’t the original design crazy enough! How did you even get the Displacer Field to trigger manually and to a specific location? It’s supposed to be random!”
“Alright, calm down, Love. You can peel my secrets in private. Impressive though, right?”
“Yes, it is super fucking impressive. What brought it on?”
“I thought you would be missing Quaani and Thorfinn, so I made a dog to replace them.”
“That statement is as loaded as Maeve’s twitching gun,” I smile, “and your choice in friendly animals is equally as suspect. I am delighted.” I look down at the cyber mastiff, “Hello, Dawn Garnet.”
The dog barks and trots off, going round to each member of Fleet Command and barking once, then returns to Brigids side and sits on its haunches.
“No idea how we’re going to look after a blink dog. At least our Displacer Fencing will stop the stilly bugger from teleporting into space.”
“The displacer field I redesigned is locked down and only works within specified zones of Iron Crane, or when I am nearby. It holds three charges and each charge takes five minutes to recover, so she’s not too difficult to keep track of. The whistle works over vox, so Dawn Garnet can hear us anywhere where there's a connection and will try to navigate towards us.
“On that note, we need to add displacer fencing to the bulkheads as she can actually teleport through them. Bit of a security risk that, and I was quite surprised when I found out. It may have been one of the ways the Eldar slipped through our security.”
Lonceta approaches, “Apologies, but I overheard your conversation about local teleportation. As internal security is now my responsibility, I feel I should step in and mention that I am unsure how we could add the required Field Bracing and Warpsbane Hull technologies into our armoured bulkheads, the two technologies required for the Displacer Fencing to work, without a massive refit. Perhaps we should alert the yard master before he gets too far with the new vessels?”
“That’s a good point, Lonceta,” I say, “Thanks to your warning, I’ve already sent him a message. We’ll have to take another look at the power budget of those vessels too if we’re increasing the area the Field Bracing and Warpsbane hull has to cover.” I turn to Brigid, “First the stealing habits of the crew, and now this. You really do have a knack for uncovering odd problems, Brigid.”
“This one was a complete chance, not a proper study. I won’t turn down a compliment though!”
“Then I’d best be careful I don’t wear them out.”
“Don’t be afraid to try.”
I laugh, “Alright, enough banter. Let’s get back to the meeting.”
We all settle down, save for Róisín, who remains standing, barely stopping herself from jumping up and down with excitement. She tosses a small metallic ball into the air and it hovers just above the middle of the table. A diagram of a Leman Russ appears in the air above.
Róisín claps her hands together once and everyone turns their heads from the holoviewer back to Róisín.
“We have two completed projects, an improved Leman Russ and a Volkite Incinerator.” Róisín points at the tank, “I’ll be going over the tank first. This was a particularly interesting puzzle to solve. I will start with an overview of the issue, before moving on to our solution.”
A triangle appears above the tank and one of Róisín’s mechadendrites reaches over her shoulder and points at the labels on each corner of the triangle.
“Armour, mobility, firepower. These are the vital parameters of a tank. We’ve exhaustively covered the failings of the Leman Russ in our after action reviews, so I’m going to focus on its good points.
“A Leman Russ can pivot on the spot, survive direct multiple hits from anti-tank weaponry and keep fighting, and move up and down a fifty-five degree muddy slope without losing traction or tipping over. The parts are rated for two hundred thousand kilometres at minimum and the engine can run on any combustible liquid.
“Every Leman Russ in the Imperium is identical and a destroyed Leman Russ from one Forge World can be salvaged to repair a broken one from a different world, all with minimal tools while under fire.
“A single person can build a Leman Russ with nothing more than a block of plasteel, a pallet of ceramite plates, a box of electronics, and a pillar drill, lathe, drop hammer, and a forge. It is for all these reasons and more why the Imperium continues to use this somewhat clunky design and why we continue to do so too.
“Our primary issue with the Leman Russ is that it is slower than all the vehicles of the enemies we have faced, even the looted tanks of the Orks. Unlike the grinding attrition favoured by the Imperium, we cannot replenish such losses easily, nor do we have great numbers of troops to call upon. Our combat doctrine favours quick strikes and rapid patrols, for which the Leman Russ is wholly inadequate. It’s fine on the defence, but the point of a tank is to be mobile, not a fixed weapons platform.
“So what can we do? Build a better tank?” The hovering triangle doubles in size. “The limiting factor here is power.” Róisín pulls apart the hovering tanks with her mechadendrites and removes the engine, replacing it with an oval shaped device, embedded in the bottom of its hull.
“Imagine a tank with a fission reactor. You’d only need to refuel it every twenty-five years. No longer would its lascannons be limited to how many powerpacks a tank can hold, or how fast it can recharge them, and powerful electric motors could double its speed.”
The Leman Russ disappears and another model appears in its place, an Executioner Pattern. The triangle above the tank doubles in size again.
“How about one with a fusion based power plant?” says Róisín. “It would have so much power that you could deck it out with field bracing and an energy shield of whatever type you wished. The crew wouldn’t have to swap out dangerous plasma flasks and it would have enough fuel to fire its guns continuously for days on end. Sounds great, right? It would certainly win us battles.”
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The tank and the triangle disappear and are placed with three new triangles, each hovering above a model of the three versions of the Leman Russ. The more advanced models have bigger triangles. The corners of each triangle are labelled: Material Rarity, Manufacturing Complexity, and Deployment Cost.
“Tech burden. The better the tank, the fewer tanks one can have until eventually, our enemies need only be where we are not. An issue our resident Space Marines are no doubt familiar with. Those fancy tanks are unlikely to win us wars.
“Given our limited transport capacity, there is a decent argument for building the best thing we can, and striking as hard and fast as possible. However, like Magos Issengrund discovered when he initially stopped for a brief visit to Marwolv, you can never be sure how many battles you will need to fight. One victory does not mean peace. Thus, we must seek a middle ground.”
Owen raises his hand.
“Yes Confessor?”
“Forgive me for being the least martial minded of us all, but does the Adeptus Mechanicus not make extensive use of the Rhino chassis? The Predator tank of the Space Marines uses it, does it not?”
Róisín grins, “That is the most common question I have received on the issue. The Rhino is an infantry fighting vehicle, an IFV. It is not a tank, as such, the Predator isn’t really one either. Regardless of its role, the Rhino chassis is intended to carry personnel, not shoot stuff, even if it can do as good of a job as a tank at doing so.
“The Leman Russ is the only tank design we have available to us in the Stellar Fleet, otherwise we’d be bulldozing our enemies’ graves with Mecharius heavy tanks and be modifying those instead. For the gleeful pedant, that we only have one tank design is enough of a reason why we should stick to it.”
“I see,” says Owen.
“Don’t take it to heart, Confessor Broin. I am teasing you and there are far more important reasons than mere designation. Do you know how many engines a Rhino has?”
“Four?”
Róisín shakes her hand from side to side, “Sort of, it has four combustion engines and four electric motors as well as a complicated set of gears and shafts that means not only can the combustion engines drive the tracks or charge the batteries, but a single electric motor or combustion engine can propel the whole vehicle. If it was that diminished though, even half speed would be a distant dream on all but the flattest of Imperial roads.
“In comparison, the Leman Russ has one engine, a HL230 V12 Multifuel, and two auxiliary generators for life support and other electronics. That’s a lot less to fuel and maintain, let alone the complex manufacture of the multi-engined drive system of the Rhino. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing to learn from the Rhino design though.”
“The middle ground!” says Owen.
“Correct, Confessor. You haven’t forgotten all your Tech-Adept lessons it seems,” Róisín smiles. With a wave of her hand the images on the holoview disappear and are replaced with a new Leman Russ.
There is an odd seam around the rear of the altered tank. The sponsons have been replaced with ball turrets, and moved forward slightly. There are considerably more gadgets and guns placed around the hull, including four Marowolv II lasguns, one in each corner, and hatches in the top front of the hull for twelve krak missiles. The turret is a standard smoothbore and a pintle mounted multi-laser sits on top of the turret. The multi-laser can track independently around the turret and even fire vertically. Unlike the original, there are no crew hatches on top of the tank or sides.
The front, hull mounted weapon hardpoint is no longer on the left hand side, but placed in the centre. This model has the standard lascannon, mounted on a crescent track, with a much wider angle of fire for close-in targets than the original.
“This is the Leman Russ E,” says Róisín, her voice full of pride. “It has two, one point two megawatt electric motors and the same maximum on and off-road speed as a Chimera: seventy and fifty-five kilometres per hour. One motor can drive the tank at half speed. The Leman Russ E can travel up to a thousand kilometres on its batteries and carries enough fuel to recharge them once using its linear generator. There are also two, twenty kilowatt atomic stirling engines to power the life support and electronics. Technically, they could charge the tank to full, but it would take weeks.
“The main issue with the original engine was that, because it had to generate force to propel the vehicle and generate power, its efficiency could vary wildly between forty and seventy percent, tanking its fuel efficiency if you’ll excuse the pun, depending on what it was doing. The new linear generator only has to create electricity. As such, it only turns on when it’s needed and can run at its most efficient RPM. It is eighty-five percent efficient. While there were more efficient designs in our STCs, like hydrogen fuel cells, this is the only design that was multi-fuel.
“By changing out the powerplant, we’ve doubled the speed and increased the range by more than six times while maintaining the tank’s multi-fuel capabilities. The new drive train, despite its increased redundancy, is actually easier to build and maintain and does not consume any particularly rare resources. The advanced batteries and electric motors do require more than just plasteel and a handful of electronics to build though. We believe this trade off is worth the cost. Even so, despite the improvements, we felt these design changes didn’t go quite far enough.
“What good is a tank that only holds forty shells for its main gun in a galaxy full of enemies? It could fire through that in less than three minutes. While that might be the average lifespan of an Imperial Guardsman on the battlefield, tanks are made of sterner stuff. Six hundred rounds for each of the auxiliary guns doesn't really cut it either and crews alway stow dozens of extra boxes of ammunition on the floor, which is a severe hazard.
“This is where we decided it was OK to spend a little more, especially as we already produce the electronics we commandeered, in large numbers.” Róisín points towards the back of the tank.
“The Leman Russ E only needs three crew, rather than the minimum four, or six if you have sponsons like we always do. We modified some sleeping pods and installed them at the rear. From the pods, the crew can control the tank via their MIUs. Not only are the pods armoured but they can also be ejected horizontally or vertically. There is no parachute as it’s not good to hang in the air when under fire, but rather inflatable bags, so the pods bounce and roll on impact. While unpleasant, the impact bags, void armour, and enhanced skeletons of the crew trivialise the force they are subjected to.
“These pods let us save huge amounts of space, increasing the main gun to one hundred and twenty rounds, the sponsons to four thousand, safely stowed rounds for each gun, and still have space for twelve krak missiles in a far safer armoured box built into the tank, compared to a missile or two is usually mounted on side of of the main turret.
“Two specialised automata scurry around the tank and can patch fuel lines or fix jammed gun breaches. They have no power sources of their own and can only function within the tank, so they’re more advanced than would normally be permitted and are actually the most expensive part of the whole tank. They’re still far from being abominable intelligences though. Any questions before I move onto the final advancements?”
“There’s even more?” I say.
“Yes, Magos!” beams Róisín.
“I think you have us all quite enraptured. Best strike while the forge is hot.”
“I appreciate your attention, all of you. Now, onto the final minor improvements. The Leman Russ E has been updated to properly follow colony redundancy protocols. There are some odd gaps in the STC we had that we think may have held additional components that were cut for cost reasons, or lost to time. That is no longer the case.
“The additional Marowolv II lasguns in the corners are primarily munition swatters: automated guns that can pick out missiles, shells, mines, thrown grenades, or any other large munition, including heavy bolter and pulse rifle rounds. They don’t cost much and make it much harder to sneak up on a Leman Russ in dense terrain. Even if they are easily overwhelmed by moderate amounts of fire power, it still means the enemy has to spend that firepower to even get a chance at a kill shot.
“An additional five tonnes of armour has been added so that the tank is equally as armoured in the front as it is on the sides and rear. The average thickness was increased from one hundred and fifty millimetres to two hundred millimetres. A dozer blade can increase the front armour of the tank even further, if required, and is usually standard equipment for most missions.
“Last is the fuel, and here, we turned to the Eldar. One of the largest uses of space in any vehicle is the fuel tank and it may come as a surprise to some of you that most blends of promethium do not ignite easily and actually require quite high pressures and temperatures to combust.
“Like any liquid, when contained, it makes excellent armour from both radiation and heavy impacts. To make room for the batteries, we had to move the fuel tanks to the sides of the vehicle. As the Leman Russ E does not need to use its fuel a lot of the time, we thought, why not turn the fuel into armour?
“The Eldar provided an additive that can be mixed into most promethium blends. When subject to a heavy impact, like a stubber round, it makes the fuel harden, turning it into a non-newtonian liquid, nor will the fuel ignite without a specific counter agent that is injected alongside the fuel into the linear generator.
“As an additional bonus, the counter agent contains high amounts of oxygen, so tank crews will no longer have to decide between breathing or moving their vehicles in no or low oxygen environments, like Kinbriar V. Nor will we have to store such large amounts of pure oxygen aboard the tanks, in such circumstances, as it is carefully bound within stable liquids. We’re calling blends with this additive, Promethium NN.
“While not much use against plasma or las weaponry, and useless against grav weapons, the NN blend is excellent at stopping more mundane rounds, especially the sabots commonly used by the Tau and Imperium, or the high explosives of the Orks.
“It is particularly effective at preventing armour spalling, often caused by heavy bolter fire, missiles, or mines. Spalling is one of the most common killers of crew, despite the original Russ’s protections against such damage. This is because a lot of anti-tank weaponry is designed to defeat one full set of composite armour, including reactive armour and spalling traps. It then fragments or explodes once it penetrates an open space, like the crew compartment, or for the new Leman Russ E, the individualised fuel tanks. Thanks to the NN additive, and self-sealing fuel tanks, rounds exploding in our fuel tanks are a minor issue, letting our armour catch many more rounds than our enemies should expect.
“NN isn’t good against every weapon but it’s good enough against enough weapons that it’s worth the cost. Most of the alterations we made to the Leman Russ, like NN and the new drive train, are transferable to all our armoured vehicles, though transfer is still in the design phases.”
Róisín lets out a long breath, “That’s it for the Leman Russ E. I hope you like it.”