Contact Beam

The C99 Supercollider Contact Beam, known simply as the Contact Beam, was a heavy engineering tool built to pound and soften hard, raw minerals into smaller pieces. A miniaturized particle accelerator, it was made for splitting the toughest rock and meteors, and survivors such as Isaac Clarke repurposed its charged kinetic discharge against the strongest of the Necromorphs.

Function and design#

The Contact Beam was built for the heaviest extraction work. Precious ores and minerals are sometimes locked inside large, toughened rocks that defeat smaller mining equipment, and the C99 was made specifically to split and obliterate such tough materials and meteors so the ore inside could be reached. As its name indicates, it was a miniaturized particle accelerator. Like the Force Gun, it was an energy projector that worked through kinetic energy rather than heat.

To do its work the tool had to be charged for a brief period. When fully charged and fired, it delivered a huge kinetic discharge that obliterated anything it came into contact with; uncharged, it served only as a weak short-range tool. Its secondary function released a small radial, ground-based shock wave that knocked objects and creatures away from the wielder in every direction. In a later configuration the focused charged blast was moved to the secondary function while the primary projected a continuous beam of energy, drawing on its charge over time. Accounts disagreed on its weight: it was heavy enough that a user leaned under it, yet on at least one occasion a man wielded it one-handed after losing his other arm. It was the first of the mining tools that could be recognized by its firing sound alone, the charging note that preceded each shot.

Use in the outbreaks#

Carried as a weapon, the Contact Beam was prized against the toughest Necromorphs. Its charged discharge was powerful enough to bring down nearly any creature with a single hit, which made it the tool of choice against heavily built foes and the large tentacled beasts encountered along the way. It came with real drawbacks: it had to be charged before each shot, its capacity was small, and ammunition for it was scarce, so a missed shot was costly and a survivor had to make every charge count. The secondary shock wave was less a weapon than a means of buying room, clearing the space around a cornered user so he could escape, though it reliably destroyed the smallest swarming Necromorphs outright.

The wider canon recorded its industrial nature plainly. In one account an engineer used a Contact Beam to dig slowly through rock and complained that the tool was meant to clear piles of rubble, not solid stone; it managed to reduce several feet of rock to rubble before burning out. Another log from a mining deck described a miner who used the tool to take his own life, firing first to blow off his legs and then again to destroy his upper torso, the charging sound heard before each blast.