Alliance Military Technology

Alysha and Taylitha sparring

Personal Weapons

Why not, we've seen at least a handful.

• Lances/Staves (what did I name these)
  • Shock staff: is intended to knock out one's opponent without killing them, though its effect on alien biology may be unpredictable. Shock staves can have their shock-fields turned off, at which point they are simply staves.
• Claw-knives: widely regarded as street weapons, and outlawed across most of the Alliance; "a law dating back to the Pelted escape from Earth and their bitterness toward their creators. They had not wanted humans to have facsimiles of their own natural weaponry, and so every form of finger-mounted knife had been outlawed."
  • Lisinthir Nase Galare has a set, sent to him in the Jackal Chest provided by Jahir. It came as part of a glovelike structure, with the gloves mounted above each finger but concealed beneath a layer of black fabric. Splaying his fingers with enough force made the claws extend to their full two-inch length. The glove was made of something resembling leather but probably made of something synthetic.

Holoblades

Taylitha's Holoblade

See also Fencing.

Holoblades are manufactured with a safety that needs to be turned off for the sword to slice flesh.

• Can simulate a variety of different types of blade.
• Produce a visual representation of a size and shape, colored to provide an additional visual indicator for the wielder's benefit. What the colors represent, however, varies. For example, in one case, purple was a filament-thin blade; in another it was the bluntest setting. Other possible colors are gold, scarlet, orange, and yellow.
• Produce a pitched hum.
• Uses a magnetic field that provides its illusion of mass. In addition to conveying the force behind the blade's strikes, it allows the wielder to feel this as the "weight" of the blade in their hand.
• Swordplay is taught in Fleet; there is "an old tradition of knowing how to hold your own in an honor duel, though no one does that anymore."
• Holoknife (possibly a cheap one; used by Liset Line Insendere in an attempt to self-harm): has a 'malignant hum'
• Practice blades are made of plastic.
• In addition to configurable size and sharpness, holoblades can mimic specific sword parameters, such as a bastard sword or a claymore.

Armor

• Chest plates (seem to be similar to bulletproof vests, sort of thing?)
• Dampeners; Dylan Brushnie was given a dampening armband to protect him during the bombing of the governor's mansion. Produces a 'scintillating mist.'
• Fleet security wears light armor.

Palmers

typical base model palmer

A small, personal ranged weapon. They have multiple settings: they can stun or cause pain; they can burn on a high enough setting; and, set to max, they can kill, though setting palmers to max is unusual in Fleet. Legal ones squeak; illegal ones are (or can be) silent, so you may not know that you're being shot at until you're down. Consumer-grade palmers have warning labels. When they hit solid matter, they make a hissing sound, "like heavy rain on stone." They are visible as a filament-thin beam of blue light.

Fleet-issue

He followed her, and stopped there at the threshold, startled at the racks of weaponry: not just the small hand-sized palmers in military-grade editions, but larger rifles, stun and snare weapons, grenades, body armor and shields.

• Fleet itself has always issued its command officers swords.
• "You're issued a pommel based on which service you're in, and your specialty. So I would have a Fleet Intelligence design, with the dark stars and our motto, but someone from Fleet Naval would have the hawk and stars, and theirs."
• "Consumer models are far prettier to look at. But the Fleet model can recharge by kinetic energy, when you're swinging it, through induction in a gem grid, via solar power, or by batteries, and the solidigraphic generator is so efficient I've never heard of one running out of power. That's not a weapon that will fail you." Aria demonstrates some of the features of the typical rifle used by special forces, ground forces, and snipers on Escutcheon: Aria calmly finished swapping out the power pack on her rifle. She doublechecked the phasing chamber and flipped it from maintenance to live mode.

Ship Weapons

Offense

• Lasers: Generated by energy converters; when they fail, they simply stop working, and are not capable of blowing up their own ship like physical ordnance.
• Entropy packets: React with halo shields, but are inert against anything else (though throwing them hard enough can do some physical damage)
• Grazers.

Defense

• Halo shields: Produce a barely noticeable gold glitter. Not designed to deflect large physical objects such as missiles.

• Dusters: Capable of cloaking people, locations, or ships. A Duster small enough to hide a door "isn't all that expensive", but for a pirate to have a Duster capable of hiding their entire ship would be considered unusual.

Sensors and Displays

• Remote sensor arrays for picking up biohazards in planetary atmosphere.
• Planetary scanners
• Various sensors and recorders<ref name="esots-02">
• Displays of planetary information, including live viseos of the surface, topographic maps, and tagging of locations of note and people on the surface. Tags are color-coded. Procedure dictates storing the data in two places, and packets twinning when they hit a redundant relay.