Code name: χ/0RN
Nickname: Xorn, Hellmouth, Tripod
Classification: subterranean combat frame
Manufacturer: Ynzu
>Operator: Ynzu
First deployment: Unknown
Crew: 1 pilot in full-immersion cockpit
Height: 26 meters
Weight: 120 metric tons
Armor type: Fractal diamond isomer armor
Powerplant: cold fusion reactor, max output 6815 KW
Propulsion: atomic tunneler: top speed 230 kph; gyro-balancers 17, 180° turn time 0.79 seconds; x3 legs: top ground speed 200 kph
Sensors: gravitic, radar, thermal, seismic, pressure, radiation, optical array; main compound
cameras surrounding triradial “eyes”
Fixed armaments: x3 gravity claw, mounted on arms; atomic furnace, can metabolize any matter including plasma, aperture placed atop main body
Special equipment: full-immersion cockpit, ion field projector, rotation system, internal nano-singularity, TC/D drive
General Notes
The first Ynzu attack revealed the woeful inadequacy of all known human defenses but the XSeeds themselves. ISBC’s planned Extrasolar Colonization Project faced the challenge of how to protect colonists light years away from XSeed reinforcements.
UC Arms offered a solution in the form of dual-purpose colony ships/bunkers deployed on every colonization voyage. Holding tens of thousands of people each, the roughly puffball mushroom-shaped craft were equipped with their own TC/D drives for rapid travel to distant systems free of the Ynzu threat. Upon arrival at its destination ExSol, the colony ship would plant itself in the ground. With half its enormous bulk ensconced beneath the surface, the fortified hull would house the colonists as they built up the area around the landing site and serve as an emergency shelter should the worst occur.
Testing proved the bunkers’ 20-meter-thick armor capable of withstanding attacks from all standard Ynzu units. Unfortunately for the defenders of Cassone colony, the Ynzu deployed a then-unknown combat frame straight out of humanity’s collective nightmares.
Unlike all previous Ynzu war machines, which attacked by air or on land, the new units burrowed beneath the battlefield. Their near-undetectability gave them a distinct combat advantage; against bunkers, which they could begin compromising before the occupants were alerted to their presence, and against intervening CFs that couldn’t see the tunneling Zues coming until they were underfoot.
Once these strange new Ynzu CFs were under a target, or in contact with a bunker’s hull, they would attack with their main weapon: a molecular furnace burning at each unit’s core. Able to break down any matter that passed through the grinding diamond blades ringing its fiery aperture, the furnace aided in tunneling by letting the Zue “eat” anything in its way. Ordinary rock and soil were atomized instantly. And even the bunker’s “impenetrable” armor was consumed at a rate of 5 meters an hour.
Forces from the UCS Sovereign Protector deployed to prevent a bunker breach had difficulty not just targeting subterranean bogeys, but defending themselves when the hunted turned hunter. The Zue tunnelers would emerge directly beneath a target, which they would hold fast with three arms ending in diamond claws. The victim would be pulled into the Zue’s flaming maw feet first. Not even XSeeds’ laminar carbyne armor could withstand the hellish heat within.
Counterattacking posed its own problems. UCP forces soon discovered to their sorrow that each of the bogeys carried an internal singularity capable of generating irresistible gravitational fields. Not only did these fields pull anything near a tunneler’s maw into its furnace, they could draw return fire – including hypervelocity linear rifle rounds and even plasma bolts – away from the bogey’s main body and into its mouth for harmless consumption.
Members of the SP’s 07th Joint Task Force, the Guardian Angels, finally devised an effective strategy for countering the new Zues’ tactics. Surrounding a single bogey with multiple XSeeds and firing from multiple directions, they discovered that at least one attack would escape the overburdened gravity field and hit home. Thanks in part to this approach, the invading Zues were defeated and Cassone colony saved – though at great cost.
Guardian Angel Thatch Drummond nicknamed the triradial burrowing machines Xorn, based on BEC nomenclature using the Greek letter “χ” to denote a CF variant, a “0” for a prototype, and “RN” for “Refined Nidulans.” Drummond’s niche hobbies are also suspected of influencing the designation.
See the χ/0RN in action in Combat Frame XSeed: S! Read it now!
