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Pirra pulled the trigger, and the massive weapon in her hands kicked surprisingly lightly against her shoulder.
The cartridge it held, larger than a man’s fist, flew out, not moving quickly, but soaring due to the low gravity. The firing range could not be in the rotation area, not simply for safety but because the spin would impart odd behaviours in a launched shell.
It didn’t come back down in the tunnel, easily achieving escape velocity; and soaring free until it hit the target coming from the ceiling. It then exploded.
The burst was as colorful as a rainbow, a small fireball in slow-motion, as the plasma cloud expanded, quickly losing its energy. It sounded even more fearsome, the whoomph of the gas and roaring of the super-heated air making it sound like a mighty predator.
And the target, once a smiling stick-figure, was gone. Only a stump of it remained, still smoldering.
“Crash the sky!” she burst. “That was incredible!”
“Right?” Davo said excitedly. “I have to tune it down for the micro-grav, of course, but the launcher works even up to 2g, getting a decent distance. The shells are heavy, but – you saw the effect!”
“I did,” she said. “Can I shoot it again?”
“Hell yeah!”
Davo helped her load up another canister. They were big and clunky, but she saw that he’d painted on each of them some witty comment; the current one said “take that” on it.
“Okay – fire in the hole!” she yelled, and clicked the trigger again.
Another smiling target disintegrated with a fiery roar.
She whooped, and Davo laughed. “I call it the Phobos Panther,” he told her. “Ah, I can’t wait to try it out in some real gravity! But the permits to transport something like this are, well . . . let’s just say they’re pretty long.”
“I bet,” Pirra replied. “I can’t imagine anyone could even claim a need for self-defense in this system. And, you know, it’s a bit overkill.”
“What do you think of the ergononomics? I tried to focus on that in this iteration.”
Pirra held the weapon out, giving him some thoughts on what she liked and where it might be improved.
She didn’t want to add, and Davo did not ask, if anyone would actually find some use for it. The weapon was . . . not practical, not by any stretch.
The plasma shells were too large, and plasma itself had minimal military value. The heat potential was good, but it spread out too fast – not to mention how easily it could be deflected with simple magnetic fields.
She was glad he didn’t ask; she did not want to have to let him down.
His research field of plasma weaponry had been considered a dead-end for centuries, even among humans. Among her own kind, she didn’t even know the last time someone had seriously entertained the idea.
The fact, though, that he was building weapons had never sat well with Alexander.
She thought his view was naive. War had not occurred within the SU since its founding. And conflict with outsiders was extremely rare in their history.
But it had happened. And she was Dessei. Violence was not wholly unknown to them. It was just never directed outward.
“You take a shot,” she said.
Davo refused, but she insisted, and he took it, trying to hide his eagerness. He’d said he only had a dozen shells he’d painstakingly fabricated over the last three months. She knew that meant he likely hadn’t shot it much.
He was like a kid with a new toy as he took aim. The gun kicked, and the shell exploded. This one disintegrated two targets.
“What a beauty!” she remarked. “Reminds me of the aurora I used to see on Enope.”
“Oh? I thought it was less angled than Earth. Didn’t know you guys got aurora!”
“I saw them from space!” she said, trilling a laugh. “I was from a moon, too. And I could see the poles glowing when we were on the dark side through a telescope. It was beautiful!”
Davo clicked his tongue. “Amazing – getting such a view. I hear it’s a lovely world, I’d love to go see it someday.”
“I’ll be glad to help you see all the best sights,” she said. “I hope you like beaches.”
“I’ll survive,” he replied with mock gravity. “Mostly archipelagos, right?”
She nodded, as he loaded up another shell. “This should really be the last one. The rest I should save for some more studies. Here, you shoot it!”
Pirra let herself be convinced, and then took aim. This shell flew out, but did not explode on contact, instead one end opened and it began to spin, spraying hot plasma and charring the walls.
Their eyes went wide, they waited for any sound of fire alarms, alerts, the hiss of gas escaping – anything.
Nothing terrible came, and they laughed.
“Okay,” Davo said. “That one doesn’t count, one more!”
Other Terrestrial 