M-25 Hornet: the Cerberus burst-fire submachine gun

The M-25 Hornet was a long range submachine gun created by Cerberus, the human paramilitary organization that rose to open warfare against the galaxy during the Reaper War. Issued as standard equipment to Cerberus troops, the Hornet fired controlled three round bursts and was engineered to conserve ammunition while providing cover fire through prolonged engagements. It became one of the most recognizable pieces of hardware in the Cerberus arsenal, carried by the organization's foot soldiers and shock troops alike, and its story did not end with them. Hornets surfaced on the open market of the Citadel, figured in a bloody act of betrayal inside a Cerberus research station, and crossed dark space in the holds of another galaxy's colony fleet.

Design and doctrine#

The Hornet was conceived as a long range submachine gun, an unusual ambition for a weapon class normally confined to close quarters. Cerberus built it around a three round burst, a firing pattern that traded raw volume for discipline. The bursts produced recoil sharp enough that Cerberus troops were specifically trained to handle it, and that training was part of the point. The organization designed the Hornet to conserve ammunition and to provide cover fire during prolonged conflicts, a specification that revealed as much about Cerberus doctrine as about the gun itself. Its soldiers were expected to fight extended engagements far from resupply, holding positions and suppressing enemies without burning through their reserves.

The weapon also reflected the broader character of Cerberus manufacturing. The organization produced its own proprietary weapon and armor systems for the exclusive use of its operatives, and that equipment held a reputation for the highest quality. Soldiers outside the organization prized any Cerberus hardware they could capture intact, and the Hornet sat in a catalogue that included the Cerberus Harrier, the M-13 Raptor, the M-22 Eviscerator, the M-358 Talon, the Arc Projector, and the M-333 Particle Beam. Among these the Hornet was the workhorse, the weapon placed in the hands of the ordinary trooper rather than the specialist.

Standard issue of a private army#

When Cerberus took the field openly during the Reaper War, the Hornet went with it everywhere. Assault Troopers, the standard soldiers of the Cerberus military machine, were outfitted with custom designed armor and weapons and fought with determined precision and practiced teamwork. In battle they carried M-25 Hornet submachine guns as their firearms, supported by electrified batons for close work and powerful grenades used to kill entrenched enemies or flush them from cover. The Hornet's burst discipline suited soldiers drilled to fight as coordinated units rather than as individuals.

The weapon was not reserved for the rank and file. Dragoons, the heavily armored shock troops who hurled themselves at enemies behind biotic lashes, also carried the M-25 Hornet, pairing its fire with brutal close range biotic attacks. From common infantry to elite combatants, the Hornet served as the connective tissue of Cerberus's ground forces, a single standard weapon binding together an army that fought across the galaxy at the direction of the Illusive Man.

A shootout on Lazarus Station#

The Hornet also armed those who worked for Cerberus in the shadows. Maya Brooks, the infiltrator once known as Rasa, carried one as her personal weapon, and it featured in her final break with the organization. When Cerberus decided to terminate the project that had grown a clone of Commander Shepard, Brooks resolved to leave and to take the clone with her. She arrived at the clone lab of the Lazarus Research Station accompanied by a LOKI mech, intending to have the clone handed over cleanly by presenting an authorization order. One of the people present recognized her, and the plan collapsed.

Brooks switched to her contingency. The LOKI produced an M-358 Talon, she drew her M-25 Hornet, and the two opened fire on everyone else in the room. To slow the pursuit that followed, she planted a crippling virus in the station's surveillance and other systems, applying skills she had learned from Miranda Lawson, and subverted the programming of the station's mechs. The episode showed the Hornet in its other role, not as a soldier's issue weapon but as the sidearm of a Cerberus operative turning the organization's own tools against it.

Beyond Cerberus hands#

For a proprietary weapon, the Hornet proved difficult to contain. When Cerberus struck at the Citadel itself in an attempted coup, its troops brought their Hornets into the station's corridors, and the fighting scattered the weapons among the defenders. Amid the battle a Hornet was recovered from the body of a fallen officer of Citadel Security Services, left behind in a hallway of the embattled station.

Commerce moved the weapon as surely as combat did. Batarian State Arms, a store run by its namesake manufacturer in the Docks: Holding Area of the Citadel, offered the M-25 Hornet for sale from its kiosk in Cargo Hold: C, the section of the docks populated by batarian refugees. The kiosk's prerecorded message warned that caste restrictions might apply to what certain batarians could purchase, but the stock itself told the larger story. In the middle of the Reaper War, a weapon designed for the exclusive use of Cerberus operatives could be bought over a counter in refugee docks.

Passage to Andromeda#

The Hornet's reach ultimately extended beyond the Milky Way altogether. The Systems Alliance seized a stockpile of Hornets from a Cerberus base, and the Andromeda Initiative purchased that stockpile at a semi legal auction before its departure. The weapons crossed the intergalactic void with the Initiative's fleet and entered service in the Heleus Cluster, where the design was regarded as a heavy weapon compact enough to be carried in a sidearm's place.

In Heleus the Hornet remained what Cerberus had made it, a heavy submachine gun firing three round bursts, its origin with the Milky Way paramilitary group still noted in Initiative records. Field assessments in the new galaxy continued to rank its raw stopping power above that of most assault rifles, with the burst mechanism the chief restraint on its output. Far from the war it was built for, and stripped of the organization that built it, the Hornet ended its history as salvage turned settler's tool, one more piece of Cerberus's legacy that outlived Cerberus itself.