The Moab is an almost perfect example of Caprician walker vehicle engineering. It is a four-legged walker vehicle powered by twin V-engines located at the rear of the main hull. The latter sits on a universal turreted mount, to which a hip block is attached. Four powerful legs come out of the block, two on each side, which give the vehicle a somewhat insect-like appearance. The long legs are segmented for maximum mobility and equipped with claw-like feet for traction on the tough Caprician surface.
The sloped hull holds two crew stations, placed one behind the other and slightly off-center. Both cockpits are protected by heavy armor plates and are fully pressurized for operations anywhere on the surface, though the internal reserves are limited to a few hours. Sensor blisters placed all around the vehicle provide the crew with a detailed view of the outside world.
The vehicle’s firepower is provided by a pair of weapon pods attached to either side of the main body. To reduce maintenance requirements and augment the machine’s versatility, the pods are completely self-contained and can be readily exchanged between vehicles. Most of the Moabs observed so far have been equipped with twin laser cannons, often slaved to a single fire control computer, but railgun-armed walkers have been reported as well.
This type of vehicle is mainly deployed in the wastelands outside the Cat’s Eye trench, primarily around corporate mining outposts where they serve (with typical Caprician pragmatism) as both security and emergency engineering vehicles. Liberati scouts report that crane and A-frames attachments have sometimes been adapted to the weapon pod hardpoints for just this purpose, though no such vehicle has been reported by the Talon teams yet.[1]
References
↑Black Talon - Mission to Caprice (2000) DP9-059 pg. 98
