We've received many a question about Terran weaponry. In the interest of public knowledge (and personal interest), we acquired a few. Firstly, a handgun:

> The Nightfall QT47 utilizes Quasar Industries patented energy storage and discharge technology to accelerate tungsten alloy coated slivers of neodymium to high speeds via electromagnets. It has options for semi-automatic, burst fire, or automatic fire at a rate of 1,200 rounds per minute. With a handle that will automatically shift to fit the hand of its wielder, to built-in recoil suppressors, to being vacuum, water, high pressure, low temperature, high temperature, proof, this gun will outlast you and your descendants unless you really try to destroy it. It has 3 levels of capacitor draw available to it, with the lowest able to punch through body armor after plowing through several walls, and the higher settings able to go straight through an armored Union shuttlecraft. Buy one today for only 20,000c! Quasar Industries takes no responsibility for any malfunctions of devices that have been tampered with, and such tampering will void the warranty. Class II personal armament permit required to buy, carry, use, or sell. Prices may vary. Quasar Industries takes no responsibility for the actions of any who buy this product.

We bought one of these and tested it out. If anything its capabilities are understated in the ad. Besides its firepower, we tried crushing it in a hydraulic press. It broke the press. Do note that something like this would be military only for us, whereas, for them, a "class II personal armament permit" is pretty much along the lines of "you haven't committed a felony and aren't dumb enough to shoot yourself in the face with this." The gun isn't actually that much heavier than a handgun we might produce, despite its ammunition, due to how minuscule the ammunition is. Still, a hucerret feather traveling at sufficient velocity will knock over its target, and this does a lot more than that. We were skeptical at first about the claims of it being able to shoot through a shuttlecraft. It went straight through three in a row. We only lined up three.

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We bought a light anti-personnel sniper rifle from one of their sporting goods stores. Upon testing it, the person firing it had both arms broken from the recoil, and the projectile went through the peak of one mountain and got stuck somewhere within a second. Very low bullet mass, very high armor penetration. A rather good thing we had it mounted correctly else the recoil would have done much worse.

Thankfully we learned our lesson and rigged up a remote fire system for the ridiculously oversized block of metal they called a shotgun. We still had those three shuttlecraft from the earlier test. After a single shot they had much larger holes in them, in fact we weren't certain if there was more ship left or more hole. Due to hearing damage we decided to retire the explosive ammunition after only that first test shot, especially since the mount designed for bracing light direct-fire artillery had broken in several places.

As for their actual military equipment, take for example the Hellgoose light attack craft and its ammunition. The shell fired from each of its main guns is a 3.4 kg armor penetrator with a payload set off by timed and or inertial fuses, of antiboron. The "light" craft can fire about 65 of these rounds, per second, per gun. Apparently the ship is built around the two guns. Oh and this fighter craft has shields stronger than most of our battleships because of course it does. Though to be fair, the autonomous-capable "fightercraft" is more the size of a destroyer or light cruiser than a fighter, and most of that shield strength is forward-facing.

When asked why on the eighth ring of Satsaakshul a battleship would need that much firepower let alone a light attack craft, humans generally respond with something along the lines of "because big explosion awesome" or "it's classified."

I think it's safe to say that "if firing it doesn't kill you, having it fired at you definitely will" holds true.