Combat Frame Data: XCD3 Sandalphon

Technical Data

Model number: XCD3
Code name: Sandalphon
Nickname: XSeed
Classification: prototype Three-series combat frame
Manufacturer: Ehud Red with MRV, PAX, and Saeculum support
Operator: PAX
First deployment: CY 99
Crew: 1 pilot in cockpit in chest
Height: 18. meters, 19.8 meters with wing nacelles
Weight: 88 metric tons
Armor type: “1D” carbyne laminar armor enhanced with fractal diamond isomers
Powerplant: internal TC/D gate, output conjecturally equivalent to the total energy of a universe
Propulsion: Gravity drive: 480,000 kg thrust; top speed 3800 kph, 180° turn time 0.38 seconds; with dual EM booster: top speed 5800 kph, 180° turn time 0.28 seconds; legs: top ground speed 198 kph
Sensors: radar, thermal, gravitic, optical array; main binocular cameras mounted in head
Fixed armaments: x2 modulating gravitic autocannon, shoulder-mounted, rated at 2.4 MW each, transforms into x2 graviton saber, output rated at 0.88 MW, hand-carried in use, and hilt of polyphase claymore, hand-carried in use; x2 polyphase wing, back-mounted, transforms into x2 polyphase katar, forearm-mounted, and blade of polyphase claymore, hand-carried in use.
Special equipment: ion field generator, polyphase cloak, TC/D drive, Saeculum A.I. operating system, QuaSt endec
Pilot: Marcus August

General Notes

The XCDS-00M0 Metatron had served as the MRV’s flagship combat frame for almost sixty years prior to the Battle of Earth. Despite a heavy armor upgrade, the powerful CF had already started showing its age before it was shot down in Earth orbit by Ynzu Controller Barbarossa, resulting in the critical wounding of Martian Crown Prince Ash Red.

In a tragic turn of history, Ash’s brother Ehud had begun work on a CF to succeed the Metatron as the crown prince’s throne, which remained unfinished at the time of the disastrous battle. It wouldn’t be until after the UCP occupation of Mars forced the MRV remnant to ally with PAX that the King of Nouvelle France would fund the new XSeed’s completion.

Striving to distinguish the new princely throne from its predecessor while increasing its might for a new era, Ehud sought a synthesis of traditional and bleeding edge elements in his design. His main inspiration came from Astraea’s legendary Heavy Team, specifically their yin-and-yang Heavy Armors X and Y.  Deciding that trying to beat the Metatron at its long-range power game would be a redundant folly, Ehud hit upon a combination of supreme defense and melee attack capabilities.

For the new unit’s main armament, Ehud looked all the way back to the original XSeed Emancipator and his royal patron’s own CCF-09V Veillantif, even marrying those units’ gray and burgundy colors. The venerable XSeed’s transforming energy weapons were combined with the dueling CF’s close-combat focus to achieve maximum effectiveness and versatility. As with Veillantif, the new XSeed’s weapons were merged with its propulsion and maneuvering systems. Ehud supplemented a main gravity drive even more powerful than Metatron’s with a pair of outboard EM boosters attached by short pylons to the backs of its pauldrons. A spade-shaped diamond/graphene fin emerged from each booster pod’s ventral midpoint, sandwiched between dual rows of thruster banks. This arrangement made the new unit faster and more maneuverable than the Metatron, while falling just shy of the Grenzmark IV’s speed.

Besides serving as wave guides, the boosters’ fins could extend and retract like switchblades, allowing the CF to strike opponents attacking from behind. Gravitons channeled from the propulsion system lined each blade, effectively weakening the atomic bonds of any matter it struck. Further, the unit’s pauldron backs could hinge downward, attaching the back half of each booster pod and pop-out blade to the XSeed’s forearm. In this configuration, the wave guides doubled as large katar capable of delivering armor-penetrating slashes.

Acknowledging the need for at least some ranged offensive ability, Ehud added a pair of shoulder-mounted autocannons to his design. Intended mainly to keep foes at a distance, the cannons had total output on par with an MCF-Re124’s plasma autorifle. But upgraded with Metatron-style graviton focusing and a frequency modulation algorithm Ehud wrote to bypass ion fields, the cannons could punch through most current units’ armor and energy protection.

But the weapon versatility didn’t stop there. Like the Emancipator, Ehud’s new design could draw out its plasma cannons’ barrels. Each could be wielded as a graviton-focused energy blade comparable to a Defender XSeed’s hyper plasma swords. Or both barrels could combine to form a two-handed hilt. The booster fins could be fully ejected, joined into a single massive blade, and mounted to the elongated hilt for use as a CF-scale claymore. A cable running from the claymore’s pommel to the cannon housing in its right shoulder powered a graviton envelope that limned the blade, enabling it to slice through even 1D carbyne and fractal diamond armor. Like the original Combat Frame Type Zero, Ehud’s CF could block incoming energy attacks with its two-handed sword.

Still dissatisfied with his brainchild’s defensive capacity, Ehud looked to another One-series XSeed, the XCD-104. Eschaton and its Phantom descendant had used optical cloaking devices to avoid attacks altogether with great success. But Ehud resolved to build a cloak capable not only of making a CF invisible, but invulnerable. He developed equations describing an electro-gravitic field capable of creating phase variance with surrounding matter. A polyphase cloak employing those principles would make an object undetectable by any known means while rendering it impervious to kinetic attacks. The sole wrinkle was that Ehud’s equations assumed an amount of energy that no reactor could generate.

These technological limits frustrated the prodigy’s dream until the real secret of TC/D was revealed. Since he needed a power source that didn’t exist in the universe, Ehud looked elsewhere. Using an appropriated QuaSt endec and an advanced A.I. furnished by the Saeculum, Ehud fashioned a micro-TC/D gate which he built into his design in place of a standard fusion reactor. This gate could siphon energy from a parallel universe, providing the CF with power that, while not quite infinite, wouldn’t conceivably be exhausted after millions of years of continual use.

The unit’s internal gate also facilitated the cloak’s function, using TC/D to place its matter slightly out of phase with its environment. As a result, the XSeed could pass through any solid object as if it were a vacuum. And while energy weapons of sufficient output could damage the CF while cloaked, the shooter had the unenviable task of finding his undetectable target first.

Cloaking left the CF’s main array of solid bladed weapons ineffective. But it could still dish out damage with its dual autocannons or graviton sabers, or even selectively de-phase parts of its frame for limited interaction with matter, such as reaching through a solid wall to grab an object behind it. Since cycling their edges through phased and normal states while uncloaked helped its blades ignore armor, the unit’s primary tactic remained staying phased until it closed with a target and then decloaking to launch a decisive surprise attack.

Completed at Elias station just before PAX fled that compromised base, the new XSeed was declared the first Three-series combat frame by its designer. Ehud further dubbed his interuniversal masterpiece Sandalphon.

Marcus August, who claimed the new throne intended for Mars’ crown prince, simply called it XSeed.

See Sandalphon in action! Read the XSeed saga’s explosive conclusion now: