TK-34 Battle Rifle

The TK-34 Battle Rifle is the service rifle of the Imperial Tekkelien Military. One of the most widely mass-produced firearms in history, it is made by the state-owned corporation Imperial Armory. Having served for over 100 years, it still has a positive reputation for simplicity and ruggedness. It is also the service rifle of several other minor countries aligned with the Empire, and is popular in the civilian market, where higher-quality models are available, despite being rather overpowered and hard to control.

Design
The TK-34 was designed with the Imperial Ground Forces' doctrine in mind. With the infantryman being the center of Imperial ground warfare, it was essential to have a weapon rugged enough to keep up with their rapid pace of advance, and powerful enough to take down armored enemies and light vehicles. Equipping each rifleman with so much firepower enabled them to do disproportionately more damage against armored infantry and even vehicles, but the weapon was practically worthless in automatic fire, even with a recoil reduction system, and took more training than other rifles to master.

The TK-34 fires a 7.62x60mm cartridge made of wrought iron coated in a plastic jacket to reduce barrel wear. To counter some of the felt recoil, the elongated magwell has a moving counterweight system that cancels out some of the change of momentum. The rifle uses a straight blowback system for reliability, where the power of the shot throws part of the chamber backwards in order to load another round. The chamber goes along rollers which begin in a dip to slightly delay the movement while the first bullet is still leaving.

The rifle is expected to work in all conditions, including in space or celestial bodies where there is no atmosphere. This creates a serious problem for cooling since air convection is the primary way that guns remove heat from the barrel. The TK-34's barrel is lined with a heat exchanger that is linked to a radiator panel on the side of the handguard. This does not work forever, and still requires the gun to be periodically cooled, but is seen as superior to many firearms in service with other countries.