Ker Assault 'Mech Stomps Some Heads

While TME Industries' TEAM MELTA design team developed the Mahat light harasser for sale via Clan Diamond Shark, The War Profiteers, another design team, started work on another design for the Clan market. Never particularly known for originality, the Profiteers were a rarity in TME Industries in that they were considered a 'form over function' group. Assuredly their high integration with the Marketing Department and high number of transfers from that group made them few to no friends amongst the 'purer' technologists in the Engineering Department. Leery of the potential of MELTA's 'knife fighter,' now close to main production, Management authorized the Profiteers to hedge TME's bets by making whatever they thought would sell best.

With the obviousness of the Clans' Kerensky worship highlighted by how jealously Clan Wolf guarded its Orion IIC design and knowing that Nicholas Kerensky was an Atlas driver, the Profiteers came to the conclusion that something Atlas-like would be appropriate. If it were too Atlas-y, that could pose both a copyright risk and offend sensibilities, given that there were much fewer Atlases in the Clan toumans than would be expected. Close enough, however, and it could evoke the Founder's chosen 'Mech and thus become quite popular.

The resulting Ker--as in the Greek Keres that were the personifications of violent death--was, effectively, a Clantech Atlas in profile. Using an extended range laser in the left arm as a primary weapon and backing it up with four extended-range medium lasers, the Ker could strike powerfully at all ranges and exploit holes made by its weapons with the twenty rack of long-range missiles in its right torso and twin short range six-racks in its left torso. While lacking a knock-down weapon equivalent to an Atlas' assault autocannon or Gauss rifle, the Ker moved thirty-three percent faster and, perhaps most surprisingly for a hundred-ton 'Mech, jump one-hundred-twenty meters. Visually, it retained the Atlas' distinctive segmented 'shoulderpads' (albeit smaller and jointed differently to improve flexibility) and a low-set spherical head; instead of the death's head, however, the Ker took a slitted-visor approach more akin to a Black Knight. The Ker's feet were stubbier, again for agility's sake, and its elbow joint was protected by an extension of the forearm similar to older Phoenix Hawk models.

With the Jihad moving into full swing, TME Industries became more cautious with its merchant fleet, sticking to uninhabited systems during transits. In July 3068 the first delivery of Kers were made to Clan Diamond Shark without incident. As the Jihad progressed the Sharks were unable to ship any more equipment to the Homeworlds (for reasons they'd never readily explain) so the market for TME Industries' Clan goods under the Diamond Shark label turned to the Spheroid Clans. While the production of Tinker's World could never keep up with the losses suffered by various Clan toumans and Inner Sphere militaries, it did help and TME products, while always rare, weren't invisible.

Unbeknownst to TME, the first shipment of Kers actually did see action in the Wars of Reaving on the Pentagon Worlds and in the Kerensky Cluster. They were popular with Invasion Clan solhama left to fight rearguards as those Clans became entirely Spheroid, and they were popular less for their Nicholas Kerensky attributes than for their Spheroid ruggedness. The 'purer' Clans were not well accustomed to assault 'Mechs that, when zellbrigen was nullified and grand melees started, suddenly ran up to them and punched them in the face or, worse, dropped down from the skies and buried them under a hundred tons of war machine.