Imp Star: Overview

A fully plasmatic sniper rifle, the Imp Star makes use of extreme pressure and acceleration to fire a plasmatic lance shot across vast distances and through most types of armor. While lacking truly destructive capabilities found in other plasmatic weapons, the Imp Star is the ideal weapon for when a heavily protected target needs to be eliminated with pinpoint accuracy.

Yay a fully plasmatic weapon for once, no tungsten rounds or retardedly dense projectiles to be found.

You’re rightly wondering what the hell an Imp Star is for when we’ve got stuff like the Brain Dagger and Nerve Knife. So think of it like this; what happens when you shoot someone with a .308 PTT round?
Whatever it hits tends to erupt in a fiery gore-splosion of some kind. I mean have you seen what a .308 caliber tungsten round will do to the average human torso or skull?
Generally, it tends to make a partially cauterized mess.

The Imp Star is how we pick someone off with less of a mess, but with far greater armor and cover penetration. Way back when… like… shit was it five years ago? Eh I don’t care.
In ancient times, we wanted to do more pure plasmatic weaponry to check out how far we could develop the tech. The unsaid part of that was we wanted to see what our options would be if we ever ran out of tungsten for our usual ammo. Given the tungsten deposits we own and mine, that isn’t too terribly likely anytime soon, but we’re the same chucklefucks that keep fielding guns with a 4000+ round per minute firing rate.
As part of that research push, someone had the bright idea of creating a sniper rifle that used only plasmatic matter. Sounds great, but it required solving one particularly big issue. In a semi-plasmatic weapon, the plasmatic matter is “transferred” from the gun to the target by hitching a ride on a tungsten projectile. That holds true for both PTT and PSS rounds.
How the hell do you do that, minus the tungsten?

Option 1: Just throw that shit with a discharge from a Charged Shell.
I like to believe our weaponry researchers already knew the results of this test, but felt it was their obligation to at least write down the results while they were fucking around. Whaddya think happens when you activate plasmatic matter, then apply a massive amount of force to a substance with the consistency of molten glass?
Goddamn mess is what.
The plasmatic matter barely cleared the barrel, left some behind in the firing chamber, and shot outwards the same way you’d hock a loggie out. Some of it hit the target, and yeah it burned it to hell, but that was at most 30% of the original mass. Accuracy isn’t even in consideration with this set up, so with that result noted down they moved onto…

Option 2: Ephemeral plasmatic matter vehicles.
The idea was that the plasmatic matter would be coated onto a projectile that would dissolve or get vaporized by the plasmatic matter as it traveled towards the target. Someone said “…and we’re back to using projectiles.” but it was agreed that the concept was worth a few tests regardless. It’d tell us how pure plasmatic matter would fare and provide a sort of middle ground should it ever be required.
First test firing was with 7.62 caliber synth rounds towards a ballistics gel target so we could check basic penetration.
Gun fired, plasmatic matter shot out like an arrow, and it actually did decent. It’s a bullet with the consistency of molten glass and a temp of 2300 C, of course it was gonna go through a gel target. In fact, it zipped right through the damn block. But then it was tested against a bulletproof vest, and that’s where the problems started.
The Charged Shell was tuned to fire a 7.62 caliber PTT round from a 610mm test barrel, so the projectile was hauling ass at around… Christ where’d I put that chart… okay well it was going at least1000m/s. _{There’s a ballistics calculator on your info slate you dipshit. – Dr. Baddarick}
A molten glass-esq projectile, moving at 1000m/s, tends to expand outwards upon impacting anything rigid. The resistance it meets exceeds the physical tolerance for the projectile to maintain its shape, ergo it deforms. _{That’s a rather odd way to describe it, but I’ll give you credit for at least trying. – Dr. Baddarick}
End result was no penetration of anything rigid, but the sheer force of the impact and the fact it still set the target alight were pretty neat. Was kinda like a high impact napalm launcher, but not quite what they were looking for, so it was set aside for the time being.

Option 3: High pressure directional shaping.
Next question, if pure plasmatic matter has issues maintaining a cohesive shape when fired without a delivery vehicle, how might that issue be solved? Ideally by the weapon itself?
There were a few proposed ideas that involved a whole lot of moving parts, but that introduced too many points of failure into the weapon. What really caught some attention was the idea of using high pressure gases to shape the plasmatic matter both in the firing chamber and as it shot through the barrel.
Doing that involved… some stuff… okay I know just the person for this part.
“The Imp Star uses argon to compress the plasmatic matter both prior to firing and during the firing sequence. Since argon is an inert gas, it won’t react to the plasmatic matter on a chemical and thermal level while being capable of handling the pressure required for the shaping process. This is all listed in the specs document for the Imp Star on page 3 under the firing mechanism summary. Why the hell are you always sending these messages at 03:00?” _{Ah. – Dr. Baddarick}

As you’d guess, option 3 ended up being the answer.
When the plasmatic matter was compressed using argon, and then shape appropriately as it exited the barrel, the test weapon ended up firing it in a lance-like format. Why this matters is because the plasmatic matter was shaped and compressed, it took on new “physical properties” as the lab rats would say.
What was once the consistency of molten glass, now exited the barrel with the rigidity of red-hot steel in the shape of a sharpened lance. On the second test, the plasmatic matter was able to zip right through fabric armor, metal plating, and like ten different types of alloy.

Weapons lab took that and just went to town with the concept.
It ended up getting an internal magazine that you can load with a plasmatic matter block or cylinder or whatever. The gun’s loading mechanism will shave off the required plasmatic matter from the block, load it into the Charged Shell and presto you’re in business.
Within a month I was sent some footage of the first fully operational Imp Star, and it was just the weirdest damn thing. Half because there was no actual bullet being fired, half because of how the completely unnoticeable the end result was.
The demonstration showed a marksman lining up a shot with a ballistics dummy about 1km away, and when the trigger got pulled I was all sorts of confused. There was some backblast from the pressure release and the Charged Shell discharging, but the ballistics dummy barely moved. Either I was looking at someone recording a legendary whiff for me to laugh at, or I was too retarded to tell what was happening.
So I zoomed in on the ballistics dummy head and wouldn’t you know it, the problem was me all along.

When the gun fired, it shot out a super thinlance of pure plasmatic matter that hit the target nearly instantly. Even in the video the projectile was so hard to see that I had to spend minutes trying to pick it out from the background. When it penetrated the sim-skull, the plasmatic matter burned a hole through the “brain” and immediately fried it in an instant.
Couldn’t see a damn exit wound on the video, so I sent off a message asking how much evidence it left behind.
0.7mm entry wound, 0.7mm exit wound.

And best part is, this thing is extremely good at piercing armor. Now bear in mind, it has low destructive capabilities because it’s a super thin plasmatic lance, but that lance is capable of punching through all kinds of shit. Someone in an exo-suit? Blast them in the chest with an Imp Star and it’ll ignite their heart.
Tank got you pinned down? Have a marksman send a few lances through the tank’s armor to take out the driver, commander or even try to set off the ammo.
That’s the great benefit of the Imp Star; it ignores armor and cover so you can take out high value targets without needing to wait for an opportunity. Downside is it takes awhile to arm the next shot, you have to be absurdly accurate given the size of the projectile, the gas system is fragile, and it has a limited distance of 1.5km at best before the plasmatic matter becomes too malleable for the forces required.

In the right hands, an Imp Star could be used to pick off a high value target with minimally noticeable carnage to keep it nice and quiet. Not my cup of tea in terms of theatrics and “fun” but it makes for one hell of an armor piercing, all weather, all conditions stealth killer.
It was a good start, and one that we absolutely improved on later.

-FrW Nahli Lok-Riveria