Mortarcycle

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## Tactical Analysis

* **Grenade flurry!:** Though the Mortarcycle takes its name from its heaviest weapon, PSD sidecar gunners tend to favor using an automatic grenade launcher for hit-and-run attacks, since this allows them to fight without slowing down. Their namesake can lob explosive shells with great accuracy and rate of fire, thanks to PSD burst-fire modifications, but the vehicle to come to a halt. These are all too effective at punching through stationary defenses, though the mortar cycle crews need to make the first shots count. But unlike its iteration (briefly) used by the Soviet, the gunner has been trained to switch both weapons on the fly, instead of being ordered to switch.

* **Furiously fast:** Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the Mortarcycle is its top speed. In the hands of a capable driver, a mortar cycle can literally drive circles around enemy forces. Supposedly, in order to practice handling their vehicles at high top speeds (and to lift the spirits of their comrades), mortar cycle drivers often conduct races against Soviet terror drones to see who's fastest. And thanks to PSD modifications they can switch to using magnetic repulsion o move, slowing down but letting them drive over unpassable terrains such as mountains.

* **Watch the road:** It must be stressed that the Mortar Cycle is just an up-gunned motorcycle, and would barely survive anti-infantry fire at most, and best not to think about facing anti-tank weaponry.

* **Fresh from the academy:** Mortarcycles with enough experience can request special disruptor warheads. These warheads create an disrupting blast that stuns infantry, vehicles, and structures hit.

## Taken for a ride

The Soviet Union once was home to the world's fastest, most efficient bike messenger service. Everything from telegrams, to cakes, to toiletries, to ammunition shipped from city to city, from republic to republic, via the Krasny Motory motor-bike fleet. While other nations scaled their delivery services and began dabbling in international trade, the Soviet Union held fast to its motorbikes, until these bikes' guttural engines and sooty exhaust became synonymous with the sound and smell of any typical Soviet city. Once war came to the Union, however, the motorbikes steadily grew quieter. For one thing, supplies turned scarce.

For another, the Soviet propaganda machine started filtering all interpersonal communication and began delivering such messages in bulk on a quarterly basis. In the end, Krasny Motory went out of business because of all this. Ironically, its fleet of motorbikes stood idle for months in a number of makeshift hangars, until it was already too late for the Soviet regime to absorb these assets into their military. But as the Union wallowed in the truce, forces desperately in need of equipment uncovered the stash of motorbikes and began converting them into fast-attack vehicles that could cover a lot of ground quickly. The result was a vehicle known as the mortar cycle.

In some ways, the mortar cycle bears little resemblance to the Krasny Motory motorbike, due to all the modifications, upgrades, and after-market parts applied to make the vehicle combat-ready. In addition to its souped-up engine and light armour plating, the mortar cycle features a reinforced passenger sidecar with two weapon compartments. The first is a flame-retardant trunk that can safely transport dozens of unlit Molotov cocktails, all within arm's reach of the sidecar passenger.

And the second is a collapsible mortar that uses the passenger sidecar as a stabilized base. Because the Soviet military largely ignored the use of mortars during the war, and favored heavy artillery instead, mortars were in relatively good supply when the rest of the Soviet military lay in shambles. In practice, these cheap weapons are surprisingly accurate and have an effective range greater than that of typical perimeter defenses.

The characteristics of the mortar cycle's weaponry are well known due to the growing number of violent incidents they've caused, for the Soviet resistance to the delay of the World Revolution is well known. Mortar cycles may be heavily outmatched by Allied armour divisions or peacekeeping units, but they can be very elusive, and pack even greater top speeds than the Allies' own Multigunner infantry fighting vehicles.

These scroungers did not count on one thing: conscripts tend to overdo things commonly. This might be encouraged as a foot soldier, but not as a driver. Drinking vodka while driving is discouraged, even in the Soviet Union. Due to several accidents with Mortar Cycles and the loss of 2 Commissars, the Mortar Cycle is considered not worthy, especially when only Conscripts want to drive them. The idea has been abandoned as better military equipment has been made available; all the bikes have been retooled for various civilian purposes.

## Pimp my ride

As the PSD fighting against R.U.N and HAF began to intensify, leading to unacceptable casualties due to their lighter units running circles around their forces. The PSD began looking to old and/or rejected Soviet plans to find something to fill the weaknesses in their forces. Thats when they came across the Mortarcycle.

Realizing that the issue was simply the driver and gunner being untrained incompetents, combined with the Soviet's laziness in not even bothering to actually train said Conscripts discipline and/or actually training a corp to drive these bikes (a solution so simple and brainless that the PSD can't help but call the Soviets being retarded to abandon such a promising unit over petty reasons).

Seeing the Mortarcycles potential (unlike their brainless superiors), and wanting to show them how they wasted such an opportunity, the PSD began buying as much Krasny motorcycles as they could and began modifying them to return to glory. The major modification was replacing its Molotov cocktails with an automatic grenade launcher since a Molotov was considered too dangerous to use within friendly urban terrain and R.U.N and HAF were fast enough to dodge said cocktails, the second was adding a magnetic repulsion device that lets the Mortarcycle hover, letting it overcome any terrain. And its driver and gunner are a lot more responsible and better trained compared to a conscript, and have been drilled to use both weapons in tandem, rather than needing to be ordered to switch between. Though this came at the cost of the Mortarcycle now being too complex to be built within a barrack, a worthy tradeoff in the PSD opinion.

Now the Mortarcycles became one of the best PSD vehicles to use within low-level urban skirmishes, its small size and weaponry letting it keep up with R.U.N and HAF units and blowing them up. With the PSD themselves taking particular pleasure in rubbing the success of ***their*** Mortarcycles in the Soviet's face.

## Behind the Scenes

The Mortar Cycle, as with any Uprising unit, will be re-implemented into other PEQAN PIES factions, mainly the more grey/evil counterpart of the original three.
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