VRDF – Kannon Medical Armor

"MAN DOWN! Medic needed at..."

Those words over his radio triggered an unconscious response from Sergeant Pierce, the closest medic. He jumped from cover, and dashed with myomer-powered speed across the battlefield, ignoring the flying shots and bursting shells. An explosion threw him sideways; he rolled with it as shrapnel pinged off his white-painted Kannon armor, came quickly to his feet and kept moving with long bounding strides. When he reached the area called on the radio, he had stop and look around. He knelt as tracers and missiles crisscrossed past him, trying to determine which foxholes were just craters and which craters were manned foxholes. A man waved, and he was there in three swift steps.

The situation was easy to see as Pierce dropped into the small trench. Two men had been manning this position, a heavy weapons team. One was one his feet, the one who had made the call. The other lay on the bottom of the trench, blood soaking his uniform. His gritted teeth and heaving chest showed that he was still alive, even before Pierce activated his medicomp. He slapped a pain-killing patch on the man's neck, right over the pulse point, and slowly scanned his sensor-laden right hand over the man while he opened the bloody uniform with his left.

Inside his helmet, Pierce saw a wireframe outline of the man's body. The area around his hand was delineated on the outline, showing bone structure and blood flow. In just a few seconds, he had a complete picture of the man's basic internal situation, a picture that matched with what his experienced eyes told him from the outside. The man had taken a round (most likely a support machinegun, he thought) through the upper left chest, breaking ribs and scapula on the way through and resulting in a sucking wound. He quickly sat the man up, and covered both holes with his armored hands. He looked over at the man's terrified companion...Mother of God, Pierce thought. The boy couldn't be much over twenty years old. A new recruit seeing his first real casualty.

"Come here, I need your help."

The soldier didn't move.

Pierce turned on his Sergeant's voice. "NOW, Private! Unless you want to stand there and watch your friend die!"

That got the young soldier's attention. Pierce directed him to hold the man's wounds, keeping the holes covered so the man could breathe. The boy was clearly upset by the feel of the bloody flesh under his hands, but complied. With his own hands now free, Pierce dug into his medical supplies for what he needed. The boy watched silently as Pierce then went to work, stuffing the soldier's wounds with coagulant and antiseptic, then applying airtight dressings. Pierce talked as he worked, explaining what he was doing as he went, trying to keep the lad calm.

"Sucking wound," he said. "Machinegun, right?" The boy nodded. "He's lucky, it was a clean hit, one round hole straight through. If it had been shrapnel, the wound would be more ragged and harder to deal with." A shell screamed overhead, and Pierce quickly covered the wounded man with his armored body as the explosion boomed behind them. He kept talking as he went back to work. "I know you're upset about this, but you have to keep your head on. Out here, this is for real. When someone is wounded, you can't hesitate, you can't panic. There isn't time for that. All you can do is react, or your friend will die. It's that simple."

The sounds of battle were growing more distant now, as the tread of marching Mechs pushed the enemy lines back. Pierce finished up his work as an ambulance screeched to a halt nearby, come to pick up the wounded soldier. The boy watched in a silent daze as the medics loaded his friend into the back of the swift little hovertruck. Pierce patted him gently on the shoulder. "He'll live." He then stepped up and latched on to the side of the ambulance with his magnets, taking the easy ride back.

Finally, the boy spoke. "Thanks for your help, Sergeant."

Pierce looked at him. "Thanks for yours." Then he got a sudden idea, and added it as an afterthought. "If you learned anything here today, you might be interested in my job. The medical corps is always taking transfers; let me know and I can put in a good word for you."

The boy nodded. "Thanks, Sergeant."

Pierce waved, and the ambulance pulled away, accelerating towards the MASH units to the rear. Another life saved, another job done.

And he had a feeling, he would be seeing that young boy again.

Code:

BattleTech Battle Armor Technical Readout
                        * CUSTOM EQUIPMENT

Type/Model:    Kannon Medical Armor 
Tech Base:     Inner Sphere / 3062
Chassis Type:  Humanoid
Weight Class:  Light Battle Armor
Rules:         Level 3, Custom design

Maximum Mass:  750 kg
Ground Speed:  32.4 km/h
Armor Type:    Standard

==Overview:==
In Japanese mythology, Kannon is the goddess of mercy. The light
armored suit that bears her name is designed for use by combat
medics, rescue teams, and others who go into harm's way to help
others.

==Capabilities:==
The Kannon is swift on its feet, and has good armor protection for
its size. It has no built-in weapons, leaving the choice of
whether to carry arms to the medics; most do not.

The most impressive part of the Kannon is its built-in medicomp.
This complex electronic unit is built into the Kannon's right arm,
and uses a suite of sensors in the Kannon's right hand to feed
data to the helmet's display. With only a pass of its hand over
the patient, the Kannon can take vital signs and do simple
diagnostics, such as finding broken bones, locating bullets and
shrapnel, and determining more obvious soft-tissue injuries, like
internal bleeding.

Besides its medicomp, the Kannon is equipped for a variety of
medical and rescue missions. Using its magnetic clamps, it can
travel by vehicle or Mech, and can easily climb metal structures
like buildings and bridges. A cutting torch in the right arm is
useful for access work, and the left arm can be fitted with a
powered manipulator for extra strength when needed. Finally, a
searchlight aids in reduced visibility.

The Kannon also has large amount of space devoted to mission
equipment, allowing it to carry a wide variety of medical and
rescue gear.


==
Battle History:==
The Kannon has proven highly successful both on and off the
battlefield. It can scale a Mech and retrieve an injured pilot
from the cockpit, extract wounded infantry from a firefight, or
dig civilians out of a collapsed building, all with equal ease.

==Deployment==
The Kannon is built only in the Veiled Republic. As a gesture of
goodwill towards humanity, that normally isolated faction has made
the Kannon openly available via outside channels, through the new
Star League in the Inner Sphere, and through Clan Goliath Scorpion
to the Clans.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Type/Model:    Kannon Medical Armor
Equipment:                                          Slots    Mass
Weight Class:  Light Battle Armor                     0       100
Motive System: Ground Movement (3 MP)                 0        60
Armor Type:    6 Points Standard                      0       300

Manipulators:
  Left Arm:    Modular Equipment Adapter              2        10
               Armored Glove                          0         0
  Right Arm:   Armored Glove                          0         0

Weapons and Equipment                Loc     Shots  Slots    Mass
------------------------------------------------------------------
Medicomp*                            RA               1        65
Cutting Torch                        RA               1         5
Searchlight                          Body             1         5
Magnetic Clamps                      Body             2        30
Mission Equipment (175kg Capy)       Body             1         0
------------------------------------------------------------------
TOTALS:                                               8       575
Slots & Mass Left:                                    0       175

Calculated Factors:
Total Cost:     264,000 C-Bills
Battle Value:   16 (64 for 4)  Weapon Value: 4 (Ratio=.26)
Cost per BV:    16,500.0
Damage Factors: SRDmg = 0   MRDmg = 0   LRDmg = 0
BattleForce2:   Class: IB   MP: 3   Armor/Structure: 2 / 0
                Damage PB/M/L: -/-/-   Overheat: 0
                Point Value: 1    Specials: xmec, car4

CBT:RPG Data:   Armor Value (M/B/E/X): 8/7/6/6    Coverage: Full
                IR: 0,  ECM: 0,  Camo: 0
                Melee AP: 0,  Target Size Modifier: 0
                Movement Modifiers:
                  Walking: +4,  Running: +8,  Sprinting: +12
                Attribute Modifiers:  STR: +2,  DEX: -1,  RFL: -1
                Equipment Rating:  E/E/E

                Created by HeavyMetal Battle Armor



CUSTOM EQUIPMENT NOTES: The medicomp is based on the canon Improved Sensors. It takes up one slot, and weighs 65 kg. It does medical diagnosis at close range. The sensors are in the right hand, the computer itself is in the upper arm and it displays inside the helmet. It can't do specialized details of soft tissue (like an MRI, for example) but it can find broken bones, shrapnel, moderate levels of internal bleeding, and stuff like that. It also reads out vital signs; it can do temperature, heart rate, blood pressure (by grasping a pressure point), and so on.