M-3 Predator: Heavy Pistol

The M-3 Predator was a heavy pistol manufactured by Elanus Risk Control, a sidearm valued across the galaxy as powerful, deadly, and relatively inexpensive. Reliable and accurate, effective against armor but weak against kinetic shields and biotic barriers, it was not generally deployed by professional militaries, where kinetic barriers were common. In the Terminus Systems, where such defenses were rarer, it became one of the most widely carried guns in circulation. From the mercenary bands of Omega to the bridge locker of a quarian ark bound for another galaxy, the Predator appeared wherever cheap, dependable firepower was wanted, and it armed Commander Shepard at two moments when nothing else was at hand.

Design and manufacture#

Elanus Risk Control built the Predator as a working sidearm rather than a prestige piece. It was a reliable, accurate, semi-automatic heavy pistol, and buyers valued it as a powerful and deadly weapon that cost far less than most guns in its class. Its rounds performed well against armor plating, but the design gave little answer to modern energized defenses: against kinetic shielding and biotic barriers the Predator was weak.

That weakness shaped where the pistol sold. Professional militaries, whose likely opponents fielded kinetic barriers as standard equipment, did not generally issue the Predator. Buyers in the Terminus Systems faced a different battlefield, one where such defenses were less common, and there the pistol's mix of stopping power, dependability, and low price made it very popular. The result was a weapon rarely seen on a parade ground and constantly seen in a back alley.

A sidearm of the Terminus Systems#

The Predator's cheapness made it the default arm of the galaxy's irregular soldiery. The Blood Pack issued it to its troopers, rank and file fighters regarded as cannon fodder by their more powerful krogan overseers, alongside M-8 Avenger assault rifles and M-23 Katana shotguns. Eclipse posted security guards equipped with nothing but Predator pistols, sentries meant to deter intruders rather than repel an assault. When the mercenary companies of Omega put out an open call for hired guns to bring down the vigilante known as Archangel, the freelancers who answered arrived carrying Avenger rifles, M-9 Tempest submachine guns, or Predators.

The pistol drifted just as readily into hands outside any company roster. Batarian gunmen fought with basic Predators and negligible protection. Looters scavenging through lawless districts went armed with the heavy pistol, and when prisoners broke out of their cells aboard a Blue Suns prison vessel, the weapons they managed to procure included Predators, which they turned on their jailers. For all these users the calculation was the same: the Predator was the deadliest gun its price could buy, in places where the enemy was unlikely to be shielded.

In Shepard's service#

Commander Shepard's own history with the Predator began in captivity of a kind. When the commander woke aboard a Cerberus research station under attack and had to fight clear of it, a Predator recovered from a weapons locker at the outset of the escape served as the first arm at hand.

The pistol returned at a darker moment. When the Reapers reached Earth and their invasion opened the Reaper War, Admiral David Anderson gave Shepard a Predator amid the assault. The commander began the war for Earth with the same inexpensive sidearm carried by half the mercenaries in the Terminus Systems, a measure of how completely the invasion had stripped away preparation and left only what could be grabbed.

The voyage to Andromeda#

Milky Way militaries generally avoided the Predator, but the Andromeda Initiative saw a use for it. The Initiative obtained several hundred of the rapid firing pistols and adjusted them for its expedition, adding a cheap, reliable, quickly reloading sidearm to the arsenal it carried toward a new galaxy.

The quarian ark Keelah Si'yah kept an M-3 Predator in the small weapons locker on its bridge, stored for contingencies beside an Arc Pistol, a Reegar Carbine, and an M-7 Lancer. During the crisis that swept the ark in transit, the drell analyst Anax Therion drew on that habit of caution: noticing that someone was approaching her group, she tossed an M-3 Predator to Senna'Nir vas Keelah Si'yah just in case, moments before a sick batarian, Jalosk Dal'Virra, stumbled into their midst and was accused of sabotage. Even the dark space between galaxies had not put the Predator out of reach of a wary hand.