Lore Post 3 (Patreon)

P.S.R Report: Objekt 463 Szarańcza.

We've been encountering corpses of these things on the front a lot these days. Built on the chassis of a T72, with some sort of hydraulic leg system installed. A lot of them are just laying in ditches or scuttled under the sand, it's hard to tell if they were shot out during the war or just hidden. 

The Second Union had a habit of that, burying entire fields of MIGs or other equipment, sometimes whole battalions of automated tanks would be placed just under the surface of the ruined Eastern dustbowl.

Remotely activated, we lost a lot of good guys that way. One second you're searching for an abandoned domkulturi to spend the night in, the next an entire brigade of the Motor Rifle Divisions buried corpses are descending on you. It's lucky that the armor on a lot of them is old, worn out, rusted through, or just thinner in general. The armor isn't as important on mass produced drones, so old Stalin left us a gift in the Anti-Tank Rifle. That's how the 421st Anti-Mechanist Battalion began anyhow. 

These Szarańcza-things are different, a lot of them don't even have guns on their turrets. We've never seen one move yet, only sit waiting in the dust. The mounds around them often seem unnatural, like they built a shelter for themselves. We had a real scare when we peeled back the eye-compound-barrier on one. Some soldier took his bayonet and jammed it between the ocular-shielding, peeled it up. Underneath it was some sort of oversized human eye, it met his gaze. 

We tore that one down, had our mechanics autopsy the chassis. Most of it was standard stuff for an autonomous T72, with exceptions for the hydraulic legs. Strangest thing was it had a kind of concrete mixing plant inside of it, and an extruder nozzle on the bottom. Some of the guys have started calling them net-spinners, but locust or Szarańcza remains the standard name.

Regardless, liberation of this sector is coming along smoothly. Reports say we've captured a manufacturing plant outside the walls of the city. I'll keep Warsaw informed of any developments.

P.S: Send more rations, these captured ones are terrible.