When the Word of Blake annexed Asuncion into their protectorate, they gained control over extensive military production centers, including several battlemech production lines. Though hardly the most eye catching prize, among these was a plant that specialized in producing the Flea. Not particularly wowed by the design, the Word of Blake maintained production of the Flea regardless, shipping off completed mechs to the forming Protectorate Militia forces, but initially decided to put no effort into producing a new variant.
The Blakists took a second look at the Flea in 3072, following a series of raids against Protectorate worlds by forces of the renegade Duchy of Bordon (A world that broke away from the Free Worlds League following Paul Marik's Coup). Coloquially known as the "Flea Circus" due to their prolific use of the highly mobile model 16 Flea, their fast battlemechs allowed them to strike targets and quickly withdraw, usually before their opponents could respond. The Blakists found these raids more annoying than threatening (annoying enough to unleash a tailored bioweapon against Bordon, but not enough to commit forces to hunt down the Flea Circus), but at the same time, they found the tactics of the Flea Circus worthy of emulation, with a particular Blakist twist. Thus, they ordered the old molds and tooling used to produce the model 16 out of storage, and quickly whipped up their own variant of the design.
The first thing to obviously stand out is the new variant's speed. The Model 16 was already a very fast mech even by modern standards, but the Blakist variant takes this to excess by dropping in an extralight powerplant originally intended for a Rifleman. Though the result isn't quite the fastest production battlemech in existence, the number of mechs that can keep pace with it, much less overtake it, is extremely short. Due to its speed alone, this made the Flea a potentially lethal harrasser, however, the Word of Blake didn't want another harrasser (they actually had one already with their similarly nimble Locusts). They were seaking a weapon to cause disruption, and more importantly, terror, on a broad front with virtual impunity. With this in mind, the original weapon load was completely scrapped and replaced with a trio of improved flamers. On the attack, these mechs would identify viable soft targets (supply stations, repair depots, medical centers, concentrations of people, civilian housing, towns, infrastructure) and then set everything on fire, relying on their exceptional speed to quickly move from target to target while simply out-running any foe that presented a serious threat. Though these tactics were very similar to those employed by the Flea Circus, they proved significantly more destructive, as the Flea Circus strived to avoid collateral damage, while for their Blakist counterparts, the collateral damage was the whole point.
Though these terror tactics proved extremely damaging, they ultimately did nothing to prevent the Word of Blake's ultimate downfall. By 3074 the Word of Blake had deemed such a highly specialized "terror" mech as an extravagance they could ill afford and ordered a change in the design to produce a more well rounded machine. Asuncion and its battlemech plants were liberated in 3078, with the Blakists successfully sabotaging the Flea plant as they withdrew off world. With so much other damage to repair, the plant that manufactured the Flea was deemed low priority and not reactivated until after the Liberation of Terra, and even then, the Blakist variants were not returned to production.
Variants:
A test variant developed alongside the 16W replaced two of the flamers with four improved single shot SRM packs. Though of dubious value in a standup engagement, these missile packs were intended to be loaded with gas munitions for deploying chemical agents. In this case, the one shot nature of the missile packs was intended to be a feature rather than a bug. It limited the amount of chemical agents the mech carried and thus might be captured by an enemy should it be disabled in combat.
With the original purely incendiary version having less of a military affect as hoped, the Word of Blake switched production to the 16W2 variant in 3074. This model simply removes the arm mounted flamers for a pair of extended range mediums. Following the liberation of Asuncion, several of these Fleas fell into the hands of Coalition forces, who awarded them to the forces of Duchy of Bordon (which pledged their support to the Coalition following the biological attack against Bordon). The Flea Circus made excellent use of these mechs throughout the rest of the campaign, though their refusal to disarm after the war, or accept the Republic of the Sphere's eventual control of their ancestral homeworld, has made this gift something the Republic deeply regrets. Despite their transition from freedom fighters to rebels to outright pirates, the Flea Circus has managed to keep these mechs in operation, and has even converted most if not all of their remaining Fleas to the 16W2 standard, and have managed to remain a consistent nuissance to every power in the region, be they Free Worlders, Republic, or even Wolves.
Flea FLE-16W
Base Tech Level: Standard (IS)
Level Era
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Experimental -
Advanced 3072-3080
Standard 3081+
Tech Rating: E/X-X-E-D
Weight: 20 tons
BV: 458
Cost: 3,259,200 C-bills
Movement: 12/18
Engine: 240 XL
Double Heat Sinks: 10 [20]
Gyro: Standard Gyro
Internal: 33
Armor: 59/69 (Heavy Ferro-Fibrous)
Internal Armor
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Head 3 7
Center Torso 6 8
Center Torso (rear) 4
Right Torso 5 6
Right Torso (rear) 4
Left Torso 5 6
Left Torso (rear) 4
Right Arm 3 5
Left Arm 3 5
Right Leg 4 5
Left Leg 4 5
Weapons Loc Heat
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ER Flamer RA 4
ER Flamer CT 4
ER Flamer LA 4
