M6/Z magnum

"Machine pistols are sloppy, but when I need to fight Flood Infection forms, sloppy's the best thing on the menu."

- Private Lewis Allen

The M6/Z Magnum is a fully-automatic machine pistol variant of the veritable M6 series of sidearms produced by Misriah Armory.

Design details
The M6/Z is a modified Magnum pistol, designed to support the use of fully-automatic fire - albeit with extremely low accuracy. The weapon features a top-mounted sight and a vertical foregrip.

Usage
The M6/Z was designed for high-risk, close-quarters boarding actions within space warfare. Ultimately, the weapon has not seen much use, due to its low accuracy offsetting any potential rate-of-fire benefits.

Operational history
Misriah first introduced the M6/Z some time before late 2552. It did not see widespread use, but it did find utility against Flood during the UNSC's brief encounter with the parasite towards the end of the Human-Covenant war, particularly against infection forms like pod infectors. The weapon was also present in TACSIM training simulations hosted by Roland aboard the, at some point after December 5, 2557. These simulated a Forerunner location called X-40, and populated it with Flood forms, in order to train Spartans to fight the parasite, should the UNSC ever encounter it again.

Gameplay
The machine pistol, to-date, has only appeared in Halo: Spartan Assault. It is a useable weapon exclusive to the game's co-operative Flood missions.

Production notes
Due to only being available in one mode, in a relatively obscure Halo title, the Machine Pistols that would become the M6/Z went largely unnoticed by the majority of the community, and by 343 Industries themselves. The weapon was not acknowledged in any media outside of Spartan Assault, nor was it mentioned in a Halo Community Update or Canon Fodder around the time of the release of the co-op mode. On one occasion in 2018, when asked, 343 Industries writer Kenneth Peters confessed to having forgotten they existed. Consequently, the weapon became a meme among the Halopedia community, due to the absence of any substantial information on the subject.

Following the release of Canon Fodder issue 128 in mid-2022, Halopedia admin Dab1001 joked on the Halopedia Discord server that Halopedia should collectively band together and all ask questions about the Machine Pistols in the next Canon Fodder Q&A. Canon Fodder writer Alex Wakeford jokingly encouraged this, and so when the next call for Q&A questions was made, Halopedia users made several posts asking various questions about the weapon over both Reddit, and Twitter. Users who submitted questions were awarded the "Machine Pistol Legion" role on the Discord server. Eventually, the Machine Pistols were expanded upon in Canon Fodder issue 133, in October 2022, initially with a humorous fakeout description involving Precursor neural physics, intended to make the reader think the question would not be answered seriously, before progressing to a brief segment establishing the Machine Pistol as the M6/Z magnum, manufactured by Misriah Armory.

"Augmented with fledgling knowledge of the esoteric Precursor science-magics of neural physics, the machine p--"

- Humorous, non-canonical description of the Machine Pistols.

List of appearances

 * Halo: Spartan Assault