Bird of Prey

**Dev. Status** | Conceptual

 **Key Features** | »» Lightweight titanium frame»» Ion treated armour coating»» Teleport homing beacon»» Retractable composite jade claws»» Nuclear propulsion system (leaking)

*"They are tearing their way into the command deck! Get us out of here! "*

- Recorded Log of a Kirov Captain, recovered from crash site
## Tactical Analysis

* **Dogfight**: As the Atomic Kingdom's primary (and only) aerial superiority fighter, the Bird of Prey may appear to be unarmed at first glance. However, it is armed; with no less than a pair of jade-tipped claws. Such weapons, though unorthodox, are quite effective, capable of completely slicing an Apollo in half in a single run. With its planar making it rather tough.

* **Ow, ow, that hurts!**: Since claws don't use up any ammunition of any sort, this means that the Bird of Prey can theoretically continue to fight long after other fighters are forced to return to base to rearm. In practice, however, crashing a plane into another plane tends to damage both planes, and this means that the Bird of Prey can only attack a certain number of targets before its shield goes down and/or suffers critical damage.

* **Beamed away**: In the event that the Bird of Prey is damaged (quite a common occurrence), it can activate a teleport beacon, allowing the nearest Celestial Depot to lock on to its signal and teleport it back to safety.

* **Close range only**: The Bird of Prey's weaknesses are considerable; its melee range puts it at a disadvantage up against other fighters, which can damage the Bird of Prey before it even reaches them. The claws aren't exactly usable against ground targets, meaning that the Bird of Prey must leave such targets to other planes better equipped for the task.

## Operational History

From the earliest records of any known civilization it has been a well documented dream for mankind to take to the sky and soar. To see the evidence of these desires one only has to look back at history and one can find countless documents ranging from poems, fables and paintings to painstakingly detailed designs. Now, mankind has finally fulfilled its dreams. From the sleek and speedy Apollo fighters, to the slow and ponderous Kirov airships. Not only has mankind conquered the skies, but they've also taken their oldest tradition, warfare, to it.

When the Atomic Kingdom rose from the ashes to take control of China, the need for a dedicated aerial superiority fighter was apparent. The air forces of both the Nationalists and Communists had been virtually wiped out in the atomic bombs, but even the few aircraft both powers could muster was better than the Kingdom's nonexistent air force, and the officers of the Royal Guard knew that it would be suicidal to go against a power like the Allied Nations, which possessed a massive and powerful air force, without even a proper fighter to keep the skies above Kingdom forces safe.

This was one of the first tasks the Tian Jiang Aerial Engineering facility was presented with. The facility was required to design an effective fighter that the Atmospheric Divisions could adopt as their own. After a month, the facility finally unveiled their prototype; a strange and diminutive ornithopter that had a compact cockpit and soft folded wings. Despite initial criticism, the new **"Bird of Prey"** silenced all opposition during its initial test flight.

The chassis is built out of lightweight titanium and then further protected with ion-treated armour. The wings are made from carbon fiber weaving: while soft and flexible these fibers will tighten and become as hard as steel when struck. The Bird of Prey also contains a teleport beacon within its belly, which is remotely linked to the emergency teleport recall engine at a Celestial Depot. When the beacon is triggered, the depot's teleporter detects the signal and is activated, transporting the Bird of Prey back to the safety of its base.

The biggest surprise, however, comes in how the Bird of Prey attacked; once within range, it extended a pair of large jade-tipped claws from its abdomen, set its engine to full thrust, and dived at its target, literally ripping out chunks of the enemy on collision. It was later explained that the miniature nuclear reactor inside the Bird of Prey generates radiation that is strong enough to kill, but doesn't do so quickly enough for it to be weaponizable. Plus, this radiation also affects most unshielded electronics. Since the bird's tiny internal compartment is already filled with shielding against the generator's radiation and the complex flight locomotor, it is simply not possible to mount any ranged weapons along with ammunition while shielding it against the nuclear reactor's radiation without a large reduction in speed.

Despite its rather unorthodox, bordering suicidal, method of attack. The Bird of Prey weapon proved to be extremely effective, in part due to its heavy planar shielding, that every Kingdom aircraft built afterward was to use the ornithopter design, completely abandoning the use of fixed-wing and rotor-based aircraft.