Nerve Knife: Overview

The standard issue rifle used by Intelligence Legion operatives. With integration tech that ties into the user's armor, and a number of Gray Conduits built into the rifle’s receiver, the Nerve Knife is capable of severing a target's spinal column at the base of the neck from up to 25km away. Can also be loaded with explosive PTT rounds, allowing the rifle to drop highly armored targets with ease.
_{I’m questioning if we should even include this entry, if not heavily redact it. Stating that it’s issued to the Intelligence Legion is enough of a tip off to imply the existence of assassination work, and the effective range of the rifle is classified. – Ye-Jun
I’ll leave that up to the authority on those matters. – Iza
Understood, I’ll reach out and we can abide by whatever guidance is returned. – Hansuke}

Since we aren’t doing these in chronological order (fuck that) we can take a gander at one of our more modern weapons. It’s one of those rifles that every goddamn Vanguard keeps bitching about due to not having easy access to it, since we only ever issue them to specialists from the Intelligence Legion.
That said I amthe armory master, and I caaaaaan make exceptions, so do drop by sometime and I’m sure we can find one that fell off a truck.

The Nerve Knife was created to be an assassination weapon, something that would allow an Intelligence Legion sniper to pick off a high value target in a single shot from an absurd range. We had a lot of “unique” contracts being sent our way that were proving hard to pull off, so we needed a solution to that problem. Y’all always tell me that you like having high class housing and chow, so don’t go complaining about the work we do in order to make that a reality.
_{And there it is, this needs to be removed or highly redacted before publication. – Ye-Jun
Nahli, those contracts account for 5% of our revenue at most. You’re far overblowing the impact hit jobs have on our income. – Iza
Arbiter, this is not helping. – Hansuke}

One time during the development I was asked to come give it a whirl since I was in the area. They said the effective range was like 25km or something ridiculous, which made me laugh cause I thought they were joking. Max effective range on .308 PTT rounds is 4km at most, and that’s on a good day with favorable weather. Even less so when you use a traditional FMJ .308 round.
They said they upped the discharge power of the charged shell, and integrated Gray Conduits into the weapon to add stuff like Illit acceleration and such to ensure it reached the target. I can’t even begin to describe the optics on this thing, I mean holy fuckI was able to pick out individual snowflakes on the other end of the Frostfall firing range, and that was only at 5x magnification. Someone is gonna correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe even the optics have Gray Conduits built into it, so the routine maintenance required for a Nerve Knife is solidly in the migraine category.

I asked about the sound and the engineering team said I wouldn’t even need ear protection since it handles noise suppression via Gray Conduits on top of suppression systems within the gun itself. Between the Gray Conduits in the rifle, the tech in the optics, and now the suppression system, I wonder how much trouble I’d be in for breaking one of these things.
_{The cost of a Nerve Knife is such that if I found out you broke one, I’d kill you with a rock. – Iza}

So I settle into the bench they had set up, aimed at a target 20km out, absolutely failed to notice they set the rifle in a super weighed down sled, failed to notice the bench was bolted to the concrete, failed to notice the recoil exhaust system on the gun was far larger than normal, and absolutely failed to hear the words “ Be sure to engage your Nerve Harness before firing Walker”.
I pulled the trigger and broke my fucking shoulder.

Never in my life have I had such a rapid, easily understandable answer as to how someone can send a bullet so far downrange. Damn thing was so quiet that we all heard the bones shattering like someone had snapped a wet tree branch. I can safely say I had to stand up and walk that one off, also didn’t help that the Combat Surgeon we had at the range was too busy laughing her ass off the entire time she was fixing me up. Couple days of chem therapy and we were back to normal, even got a nice bottle of soju delivered to my office for the trouble.
That’s another reason we categorize weapons into classes; so we can easily differentiate between guns that’ll fuck you up as much as they’ll fuck up your enemy.

Outside of my adventure, I’ve only had the chance to use these (correctly) a handful of times. They’re absolutely fantastic for handling extreme threats that cannot know you’re there, and when it come to counter sniper operations it makes the job almost laughably easy. At some point the engineering team did… something… that removes the tracer like trail that PTT rounds produce, making it near impossible to figure out the shooter’s position. I know how to do that with my Nerve Harness, so I’m imagining it required an extensive amount of Gray Conduit training, which probably jumped the rifle’s cost and production time x10.

Back during the… 4^th? Yeah, 4 ^th expedition, we ran into some kinda armored creature that kept pelting us with acid barrages from a couple kilometers away. Nothing seriously dangerous, but it was flaking the paint job on Glacier’s armor and prevented everyone from easily going outside. Rather than expending ammo from Glacier’s reserves we sent an Intelligence Legion marksman topside with a Nerve Knife, a magazine of PTT explosive rounds, and waited till we heard the all clear. Took longer than we expected, so we called them to find out what the holdup was.

We then discovered, through beautifully colorful language, that the acid barrages were keeping this night shift legionnaire up way beyond their bedtime, so they were taking their time picking off the creature’s legs one by one before canoeing its heads. When it comes to blowing apart enemy weak points from absurd distances, whether biological or mechanical, a Nerve Knife is always your safest bet.
Assuming you remember to use your Nerve Harness.

Still don’t know if I ever hit that target.

-FrW Nahli Lok-Riveria