CASE-2XC: Mod 2 Backpack WIP

Work in Progress: not glued together, which is why the gun barrel is on the ground.

I'm in the process of making up a third variant of Tachikoma's Dog. This is based on the description of her combat armour in the Gate Walkers book three, Ghost Dog. I started the project knowing I wanted to add an over the shoulder mount.

This third Dog is "loaded for bear," mounting a large rifle, as well as sporting a rocket pack.

Work in Progress: showing barrel fabrication.

As you can see I took a backpack from a Stone Mason twin-set which I had bought a while ago from Dream Pod 9, when you could only get the Stone Mason in pairs. So, this leaves me short for making up the other model.

Look at this lovely, pity it was the wrong type of recoilless rifle.

I started to make up a recoilless rifle using a Dream Pod 9 part, called a very light field gun. I even added exhaust ports. I was feeling very pleased with the work, but thought the barrel was a tad long and needed shortening. Which I did.

However, I'd forgotten what I wrote in my novel, wrongly remembering I'd said she used a recoilless rifle, whereas in fact I wrote recoilless gauss rifle.

The gauss being the important part of the description.

There was some cursing. A gauss rifle is an entirely different beastie, and more to the point a design that I have already made on two previous occasions.

Moving on.

After discussions with Fritz, one of my specialist Beta readers, I realized I needed to think more about Corpsman Keith's role. As a result, I'm putting him in a Corpsman's combat armour suit , which will appear in book five; Dead Dogs (provisional title). So I've started to make up Marine Engineer combat armour suit, which I've teased elsewhere.

Before then though, I need to finish writing Two Moons, which has an Army engineering combat armour suit, which I'm also currently designing.

More will be revealed in due course.

NB: You can see how the models are used to inspire the cover art for my novels here.