Tundra Viper: Overview

Often used when the firepower of a Frostpick isn't adequate, the Tundra Viper is a common battle rifle that's issued to squadrons during high intensity engagements. Considered the future replacement for the Frostpick, the Tundra Viper has seen widespread adoption by Vanguard Squadrons due to its stopping power, ease of use, simplicity of maintenance and record of accuracy.

I’ll clear something up, cause a lot of people think we’re phasing out the Frostpick for the Tundra Viper.

Nah, not happening anytime soon.
Right now the Frostpick serves its purpose without any issue, so there’s no reason to go around replacing it just yet. If operational requirements change then sure, but that isn’t happening last I checked and I’m the one in charge of that shit. That said yes, the Tundra Viper would be a candidate for becoming our new standard issue rifle should that ever be required.
Also bear in mind that by the time that comes around, we’d likely have more advanced tech and options to choose from but whatever, let’s get into it.

While the Frostpick is good for any situation, it’s simply that: good.
At times, there are situations where we need the rifle to excel.
We found this out the further we got into the Celestial Throne when creatures, entities and all kinds of unfriendly fauna were starting to shrug off the first one or two 7.62 PTT rounds. Using our Nerve Harnesses would solve the problem, but we wanted to have insurance in the event we had a legionnaire who wasn’t at an adequate proficiency level to do that. This actually ended up being one of the first cases of us performing weaponry research in the middle of an expedition (was the 3 ^rd one I think, whichever was the first time we’d taken Glacier for a proper spin).

To fix this problem, I felt that the best way to get results was to get a team on it that had a personal investment in the project. Meaning, I requested that Acris find someone who had a chip on their shoulder about the Frostpick, and then put them in charge of the Tundra Viper’s R&D. Lemme tell ya, it was a sound strategy because within seconds I got a reply that said “Abraham Lewis” and not much else. Knowing nothing about this, I absolutely had to delve deeper into figuring out why this was the ideal candidate for our little project. _{Nahli, stick to writing about the weapon for God’s sake. – Hansuke}

I pulled aside a few weaponry researchers and discovered that Abraham used to be one of thelead weaponry researchers for the Unified Empire. The kind of person they send off to blacksites and labs that “don’t exist” after your entire identity has been erased. I don’t know how he ended up in GDS, but that’s the kind of position you don’t walk away from without the government suiciding you with ten gunshots to the back of the head. I gotta remember to ask Iza how that even happened.
And as to why he was perfect for this role?
He and Acris hateeach other. _{Only in the same way that I detest finding a roach in my kitchen. – Dr. Baddarick}

I don’t mean “Tee hee oh you silly idiot” or some shit, like they will straight up shoot at each other if you put them in the same room for more than five minutes. Acris makes a smarmy comment, Abraham pulls a handgun and gets tackled by Security Legion boys.
Abraham makes a smartass remark, Acris pulls a handgun and gets manhandled by the viziers.
There’s a legit regulation that doesn’t allow them to both be in the same research sector without prior approval and supervision. Knowing all this, I think it was the absolute perfect choice because Abraham hates the Frostpick almost as much as he hates Acris.

When I tracked him down in his lab on Glacier and told him about the project, the first thing he said was “Wonderful, the sooner we can expunge this cancerous notion of 7.62 being an acceptable battle rifle caliber, the sooner we can stop being the laughingstock of a modern society that’s grown past such deliberately obstinate ignorance.” Or something along those lines.
I was gonna ask what the timeline was for the upcoming R&D to get this all kicked off, but Abraham walked over into an armory, then walked out with a rifle that reminded me of a light machinegun in terms of size. He said “Here, take this and the blueprints down to Fabrication. We can have everyone rearmed within the week.”
He'd already designed, manufactured, and tested his replacement for the Frostpick out of sheer goddamn spite.

I had to reiterate that we weren’t doing a full replacement of the Frostpick, but took it to the lab’s range to give it a test drive.
And uh… I prefer it to the Frostpick. _{Congrats, you’re irredeemably wrong. – Dr. Baddarick}

Like the Frostpick, the Tundra Viper uses iron sights but it also comes with rails for whenever scopes, holo-sights, IR lasers or other peripherals that connect with a legionnaire’s helmet are called for. With the Frostpick the rounds are all held in compact en bloc clips, so it still wins out in terms of space economy but the Tundra Viper has magazines with a larger capacity. An edge case there is the reliability of the magazines versus en bloc clips (which are literally just folded metal) but that’s me nitpicking.
The Frostpick also still wins out in terms of maintenance ease and repairability, which is one of the main reasons it’ll remain our standard issue rifle for the time being.
But, the Tundra Viper absolutely excels in terms of killing shit.

Let’s compare the two in terms of caliber and ammo, we’re gonna do all of this based around “out of the box” specs. We can use larger magazines, there’s ammo extender rails for Frostpicks, we can adjust Charged Shell capacity, whatever. We’re interested in what the baseline weapon is like, because that’s what has to be issued out to legionnaires on a massive scale. Legionnaires (you) are free to modify weaponry (within reason) once it’s been issued to you, but here’s the freshly unwrapped specs.
The Frostpick uses 7.62 PTT rounds, 15 per en bloc clip.
The Tundra Viper uses .30-06 PTT, PTT Hollow Point, and PTT Explosive rounds, 20 per magazine.

The Frostpick’s Charged Shell is good for 1500 shots before being spent.
The Tundra Viper’s Charged Shell is good for 2000 shots before being spent.

The standard amount of ammo a legionnaire carries for a Frostpick is 750 rounds, 50 en bloc clips.
The standard amount of ammo a legionnaire can carry for a Tundra Viper is 480 rounds, 20 magazines.

The Frostpick can fire about 150 rounds per minute if you’re being an idiot and not aiming.
The Tundra Viper can fire about 240 rounds per minute if you’re shooting the dirt or whatever.

A Frostpick weighs, on average, about 5.4kg.
A Tundra Viper weighs 6.5kg, cause she’s a big ol gal.

A Frostpick costs about ¥120,000 to manufacture.
A Tundra Viper costs ¥210,000 to manufacture.

Lots of pros and cons between the two, with the Frostpick coming out ahead for our operational requirements and current doctrine.
BUT.
You can’t even compare the two in stopping power and ammo variety. A Tundra Viper can blow the head off a 7 ^th Ascension Wraith with ease, can load in PTT Explosive rounds to wipe out large hordes, and when used with an Illit field it’ll keep our legionnaires on par with most threats all the way up to the 22 ^nd Ascension Layer.

The day I shot it for the first time, it felt goooooood. The sights kept their zero, no wide variations in shot placement after 30 mags, trigger was amazing, recoil was a non-issue, absolutely no cycling issues, just 10/10 across the board. _{Incredible, you mean the exact same goddamn traits of a Frostpick without the needless excess? – Dr. Baddarick}
What this called for was some field testing, and apparently Abraham had already done that himself by leaping off Glacier and disappearing into the treeline or whatever every couple of weeks. But I felt it needed a far more thorough shakedown, so I had Fabrication crank out a few Tundra Vipers and then issued them to my Kingsfall squadron.

I had Azan give them a transport, cleared their schedules, and sent them off in a random direction with the task of not coming back until they felt they’d properly given the Tundra Viper a shakedown. How they went about that was totally up to them.
My fucking bad, because they didn’t come back for three goddamn months which meant I had to cover all their work for them. _{You’d swear some of us would have warned you that’d happen beforehand. – Ye-Jun}
They came back with terabytes of data full of video, photos and combat data that the Science Legion could comb over for months. Nearly snapped their damn necks when they thanked me for the “hunting trip” while I was looking like a withered corpse held upright by substance abuse.

Our final verdict was that the Tundra Viper suited our needs better than the Frostpick, but only during expeditions, and only from the 15 ^th Ascension Layer upwards. That means once we cross the line, everyone gets issued a Tundra Viper while their Frostpicks get mothballed until further notice. Standard issue rifles using .30-06 PTT rounds is necessary at that point, and we’re willing to make multiple tradeoffs in return for legionnaires being able to drop threats without relying entirely on their Nerve Harnesses.

You can imagine how much fun everyone has when we shove them all into Glacier’s firing range to become as acquainted with their new Tundra Viper as they were with their Frostpick. At least the bitching stops for a few days when we break out the PTT Explosive rounds, hand them a few extended mags, and introduce them to the concept of an officially sanctioned giggle switch.

-FrW Nahli Lok-Riveria