Rusty
Purveyor of Fine Weaponry
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Intent: To create a versatile carbine tailored for the executive protection market
Development Thread: If necessary
Manufacturer: Rusty's Custom Firearms and Cutlery
Model: EPC-1
Affiliation: Open Market
Modularity: Interchangeable Optics
Production: Mass
Material: Carbon Fiber, aluminum, durasteel, slugthrower components, coil launcher components
Classification: Slugthrower
Size: Handheld
Length: .5 Meters
Weight: 2.5 kilograms
Ammunition Type: 5mm slugthower ammo, microgrenades, light darts
Ammunition Capacity: 50 round detachable box magazine for slugs, 5 round internal magazine for microgrenades/light darts
Effective Range: 200 meters slug, 50 meters grenade
Rate of Fire: Semi, three round burst, or fully automatic. Grenade launcher is semiautomatic.
Special Features: Includes holographic aimpoint sight, grenade launcher, and a rail system. Supports integration with most common HUD brands. Threaded barrel to accommodate a wide variety of muzzle brakes, flash hiders, and suppressors.
Description: The EPC is a compact, lightweight weapon system designed specifically for executive protection details. It was designed as a balance between firepower and concealability, and scores excellently in both categories.
The EPC is designed to fire a proprietary 5x40mm projectile. The cartridge is a standard 5.56 cartridge necked down to handle the slimmer bullet. The cartridge has also been slightly elongated as well, in order to allow for more propellant.
The end result is a substantial increase in muzzle velocity, from an average of 920 meters per second for the 5.56 to 1300 meters per second. Since the round drops in mass from 60 grains to 45, the increase in recoil is negligible.
The decreased diameter and increased velocity gives the round additional penetration power, which was deemed a priority. Oftentimes, executive protection details will be expected to deal with assailants wearing body armor of some kind or another. In situations like that, the ability to defeat the body armor is paramount. While larger pistol rounds such as the .45 ACP offer better knockdown power, they’re easily defeated by even the most basic of body armors. Larger caliber rifle rounds might penetrate armor, but require larger weapons in order to be controllable. If one wishes to reliably penetrate body armor with a compact weapon, a small round moving at extreme velocities is the best bet. Thus, the 5mm was born.
The round is not without its drawbacks. While it can easily penetrate most cloth body armor, it lags behind more conventional rounds in the subject of stopping power. Much like the 5.56, the 5mm has a tendency to tumble and shatter when it hits soft tissue, creating something like a miniature shotgun blast of tiny fragments of metal inside the target, which can cause severe trauma. However, unless it strikes a vital area, it’s not necessarily immediately incapacitating. The wounds are extremely difficult to treat, and the temporary cavitation causes massive contusions around the wound, but that’s not the same thing as an insta-kill.
With that in mind, customers are advised to engage the target with multiple, well aimed rounds in order to ensure the target goes down and stays down. Bullets are cheap. Lives are not.
The EPC was designed to make that easy. The frame of the weapon is made out of aerospace grade aluminum. The barrel is constructed out of a lightweight durasteel alloy. The body panels are constructed out of carbon fiber. The weapon was designed to be as ergonomic as possible, making it comfortable to aim and fire for most humanoid species.
The internal components were machined to extremely tight tolerances as well. The bullpup design allows for a barrel nearly as long as the weapon itself without increasing the weight, and is free floating. The longer barrel imparts additional velocity, and ensures that the bullet will continue on a predictable trajectory for greater distances. While all this does mean that the weapon can be more easily jammed if introduced to dirt or grit, the casing was designed to minimize the chances of that happening. So long as proper maintenance and cleaning schedules are followed, the EPC is guaranteed to have a failure rate of 1 in 10,000 or less for the first three years of its life.
A suite of internal sensors collects data from the weapon, and can be linked with most commercially available and custom Heads Up Displays, or HUDs. Once linked, the customer can choose which stats they want relayed to their HUD. The most common is a counter that displays the number of rounds left in the magazine, both for the rifle and the grenade launcher. A series of precise accelerometers allows the weapon to know precisely where it’s pointing as well. This is translating into a targeting reticle that can also be displayed in the HUD. The reticle is not as precise as using the sights, but it allows the shooter to engage targets in close without taking the time to put the weapon on their shoulder.
This data is fed back to the HUD through a non line of sight encrypted radio channel, much like the ones used by commercial commlinks to link to earpieces or other accessories.
While the 5mm will be more than sufficient to defeat organic assailants wearing most standard body armor, there’s always the chance that a protection detail will have to face off against droids or heavy armor. To that end, the EPC has been fitted with a microgrenade launcher.
The grenade launcher works on the same principle as a coil gun: a series of coils along the barrel are energized in sequence, producing a magnetic field that pushes the projectile along. In this case, the projectile is either a microgrenade, or a light dart.
The microgrenades are 1cm wide by 5cm long. You’ll note that this is the exact size of a light dart. The microgrenade launcher was originally designed with the light dart in mind, and explosive projectiles were commissioned after the fact to make it more versatile.
The grenades come in 4 distinct flavors: High Explosive, Flashbang, Ion, and Thermal Detonator.
The High Explosive, or HE grenade, will be the standard workhorse. It’s not an excessively powerful round, but it can be used to defeat light to medium personal armor, light vehicle armor, and has limited antipersonnel use. It has an effective kill radius of two meters.
The Flashbang grenade allows the executive protection detail to engage targets with less than lethal munitions. Upon detonation, it unleashes a deafening bang and a blinding flash that can disorient soft targets, allowing them to be subdued quickly and safely. It has an effect radius of three meters in the open.
The Ion grenade is primarily for use against droids and vulnerable armored vehicles. Its small size means that it’s not excessively powerful, but against targets that aren’t specifically hardened against ion weaponry, it should do nicely. It has an effective radius of three meters.
The Thermal Detonator grenade is, as the name implies, a thermal detonator. It carries a small baradium charge. When detonated, the baradium creates a ball of burning plasma that can reduce all but the toughest materials to atomic ash. The radius of the blast is 1.5 meters.
The microgrenade launcher, as mentioned earlier, was originally designed with the light dart in mind. No special modifications are needed to shoot light darts, as the magnetic fields produced by the coils are perfectly capable of using the durasteel threading at the base. However, a special cap has been created for this purpose. It’s a single milled piece of durasteel that screws on over it and sits flush with the light dart’s casing.
The light dart, when launched from the microgrenade launcher, has excellent penetration potential against all but the heaviest armor. It’s prone to the same limitations as the bow launched variant, however.
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