The “Gunne” in Yi Cao’s hand gave off a report like thunder and hammered back against his hand as it fired. Smoke billowed from the barrel and the floating targets at the end of the range disintegrated while Yi Cao staggered back from the blow delivered by the weapon to his entire frame.
The proprietor of the sprawling shop chuckled good naturedly behind him while the girls whispered over a glass cabinet closer to the door and Zihan watched, arms crossed over his chest as he leaned against a cabinet nearby.
“Powder cannons always come with a bit of kick.” The proprietor said. His voice buzzed artificially in his throat while his whole body vibrated and clicked from internal machinery invisible to the naked eye. “Hard to mitigate with nothing but mechanical bits.”
Yi Cao looked at the gun in his hand and felt the warmth from the contained explosion still emanating from the chamber.
“Got three more rounds.” The proprietor told him. “May as well finish it up.”
Yi Cao pointed the gun down range as glowing man shaped targets regenerated at the end of a narrow steel corridor. He closed his eyes and squeezed the trigger for a second time.
The pistol bucked and the targets disintegrated for a second time while smoke from the discharge was sucked away into hissing machines stationed around the bench between him and his targets.
“Keep your eyes open.” The proprietor told him. “It won’t bite you if you keep control of it. These powder babes just need you to remind them who is in control.”
Yi Cao gripped the handle of the technomancer device a little tighter in his sweating palm and shot a glare at the man.
He looked normal enough, for a technomancer. Olive skinned and dark haired. He wore his beard in a long knotted braid from his chin that shone with oil but otherwise might have seemed like nothing more than the stout human being he appeared, if his whole body didn’t vibrate with the half hidden sound of spinning gears, or his eyes didn’t occasionally split to rove in their own separate directions, particularly when the girls weren’t paying attention, as now, one eye climbing over them while the other twinkled at Yi Cao and the pistol in his hand.
“These weapons are force multipliers.” Zihan said, leaning on the counter of weapons to Yi Cao’s left. “But only if you can use them properly.”
Yi Cao turned his scowl back to the gleaming weapon in his hand. He rotated the little cylinder in its center then lined up the sites on one of the regenerating targets as he’d been shown. His tongue inched out of his mouth as he concentrated on keeping his eyes open.
The gun exploded and he bit his tongue as it hammered back into his palm.
Zihan and the proprietor laughed as Yi Cao cursed and threw the weapon back onto the counter alongside a dozen other weapons, two of which he’d already tried.
“Why do I even need one of these things?” He demanded. He touched a finger to the tip of his tongue to check it, but it came away free from blood.
Zihan stopped laughing as the proprietor took the pistol and fiddled with it, dumping pieces from the chamber onto the floor.
“Why do you think?” Zihan replied. His eyes bored into Yi Cao and Yi Cao found his hand going up to the pendant around his neck self consciously. He felt the Ki there tickle at his channels, just tickle, and he pulled his hand away while his scowl deepened. He glanced at the proprietor, then at the girls who sat on benches together over a glass case that displayed cultivator’s weapons and low powered sources next to technomancer’s false hands and augments and vials and bottles labeled things like “Dusk Ablution”, “Midnight Tryst”, and, more troublingly at least to Yi Cao, “Seed of Salamander”, which he suspected didn’t refer to the sort of seeds you typically planted in the soil. They were supposed to be weapons, but he couldn’t imagine what many of them could do.
He turned back to the handheld weapons spread out on the counter for him to try next. “I thought we had a plan.” He muttered. “One that wouldn’t involve this.”
Zihan picked at a bit of something caught between the panes of glass on the cabinet he leaned against. “We do.” Zihan replied. “But it will take time.” He looked up and met Yi Cao’s glare with an indifferent scowl of his own. “You’re weak as a mortal right now, and I won’t have anything happening to you. Better to have some kind of deterrent, just in case.”
Yi Cao sucked on the smarting tip of his tongue and turned back to the weapons at the table. The proprietor clicked and vibrated next to him as he picked up the next weapon in line and handed it to Yi Cao. It gleamed in overhead lights as Yi Cao lifted the blunt thing to examine it.
It looked like a blacksmith’s tool.
“Four By.” The proprietor buzzed at him. “Four shots. Four shots in each shot, though you can get different kinds. This one has them all tied together and electrified so you’ll be incapacitating pretty dramatically. Same sort of thing the piss bots use when they need to get a little more violent with someone.”
Yi Cao found a mechanism along the side of the massive thing and the top of the weapon folded out like petals from a steel flower, revealing spherical projectiles nestled inside like eggs or little seeds waiting to be planted.
Yi Cao grimaced. “Powder again?” He asked.
“Nope. Not this time.” The proprietor shook his head, braided beard waving like a sword in front of his ample gut. “Lightning mostly, and a bit of wire.” He tapped a switch on the side. “Safety is here.”
Yi Cao depressed the petals back into the gun then flipped the safety as he stepped up to the shooting range. He leveled the hefty tool at the glowing target then flinched as he depressed the trigger. Archs of electricity sizzled through the air as something leapt from the barrel of the gun to entangle the target five or six yards away in a web of snapping lightning.
After a moment the target disintegrated, letting the lightning drop writhing to the floor while a new target reformed.
“Not very deadly.” Zihan commented.
“Not meant to be.” The proprietor replied. He retook his position at the side of the case Zihan leaned against. “Not allowed to carry weapons beyond a certain level of deadliness on station, let alone sell them. These are personal defenses. Deterrents, as you said. Can’t do jack to a piss bot with any of this stuff, though most of them might slow the bastards down if you decided to be particularly emphatic with them.”
The Four By snapped again as Yi Cao laid another net of electricity over the glowing target then swiveled and snapped his third shot over a target sitting nearby. He turned the pistol on its side to study it and the tag dangling from its grip.
“There are, black market upgrades, I might or might not be able to get you to up the heat on that thing, if you needed it to kick a little harder, but nothing to let you, say, shoot through a bulkhead or crack pressurized glass.”
The door beeped as a woman muffled all in black folds of cloth entered the store and the vibrating ticking man turned to attend to them while the two technomancer girls pulled their stools against the counter to allow the newcomer to squeeze past them in the narrow store.
Yi Cao watched him go, then he pointed the pistol down the range and sent the last round crackling around the newest target before he dropped the pistol back onto the table.
He looked at the lot. Blunt tools with prices bluntly stated on each of them. Each more expensive than their room for a week, or several weeks, in several cases.
“They’re too expensive.” Yi Cao said.
Zihan pursed his lips and leaned back on the counter. “Price shouldn’t be a deterrent.” He said. “Discomfort should be.”
Yi Cao tried to guess which of the gunnes were powder and which were lightning or plasma, or magnet based as a few of the others he’d tried so far had been. He shook his head.
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“I’m uncomfortable with all of them.”
“Comfort comes with practice.” The proprietor said as he returned through the aisle behind the countertop. His fingers rattled against the glass as he leaned down to pull one of the cabinets open. “You want I can give you a package deal with any of them guns.” He said with a nod to the table full of un-tested pistols. “Get that and you can use the range whenever you want. Get used to how the thing feels before you have to use it.”
The man pulled out a bag labeled “Ragroot Powder – Synthetic” then slid the cabinet shut as Yi Cao eyed him.
“How much?” Yi Cao asked.
“Thirty cred.” The man replied as he straightened his beard. “Small price if you ever need to use it. You’ll have to buy your own ammo though.” He glanced at Zihan, then nodded and moved off again to carry the powder to his cloth swathed customer.
Yi Cao picked up one of the weapons and examined it. The thing vibrated with the same sub-audible hum that seemed to emanate from the store’s owner and a display came to life along one side as he studied it.
“Tutorial?” It burbled.
It wasn’t the first of the guns to speak to him.
Yi Cao followed the things instructions to load and disarm the safety before pointing it down range. This particular weapon turned out to be plasma based and the energy discharge screamed as bright blue fireworks split the targets and splashed across the steel backstop before getting doused in cold steam.
Yi Cao grimaced and flipped the thing back off before he set it on the table.
“Goodbyyye.” The gun told him, powering down.
Yi Cao ran his hand along the handles of the other weapons.
“I’m not going to force you to pick one.” Zihan told him as he watched. “But if you don’t, I will pick one for you. Sometimes just the appearance of being dangerous is enough to keep people from trying things they wouldn’t otherwise.” He gazed levelly at Yi Cao as Yi Cao avoided his eyes. “Do you think he could have hired that kid to try robbing you if you’d been carrying one of these openly?”
Yi Cao looked at him. Then back at the pistols as he shook his head.
He picked up one with a stubby barrel and a massive set of canisters attached to it like balls on a prize bull then dropped it back onto the table and turned to Zihan. “Don’t we already have a gunne?” He asked.
Zihan gave him a look of blank incomprehension.
“From Elleppu. You said you got the cultivator’s spear.”
Zihan reached into his cloak and pulled out the pocket vault. He touched some controls and dialed up an image on the display then held it out to Yi Cao. “You mean this thing?” he asked.
The display showed the spear he’d seen in the hands of the white swathed cultivator up near the roof when his ambushers were ambushed and a part of his mind went blank.
He just stared at the alien weapon displayed on the wallet’s casing.
The door pinged as the black swathed customer left and the proprietor returned behind the counter running a cloth along the surface. “What’s that?” He asked.
“Just something I picked up.” Zihan replied. He flipped the wallet open and the gunne, fully as long as Zihan was tall, spat out into his hands. He braced the massive thing against his hip and raised an eyebrow at Yi Cao. “This thing is way too big to carry around.” He said.
“Say,” The proprietor said, awe in his voice, “is that a colony gun?” He reached for it. “Can I have a look at it? Do you mind?”
Zihan gave him a look, then levered the weapon into his vibrating hands.
The thing was a mashup of wood and steel and black bits that looked like vents and spines extending above the trigger assembly and a massive glass eye attached to its top. The proprietor worked a couple of mechanisms and made noises of fear and awe as he peered into the chamber. “This things still loaded.” He said. He closed the mechanism and looked up at Zihan with a stricken look. “How in the systems own eyes did you get this here?”
Zihan shrugged. “Someone tried to kill my young friend here with it.” he said, gesturing to Yi Cao, “I just picked it up when he was dead.”
One of the proprietor’s eyes roved up and down the weapon in his hand while the other one turned to regard Yi Cao.
“You’re lucky he didn’t touch you with this.” The man said. He hefted it to one shoulder and turned both eyes to peer through the eye attached at the top. He dropped the stock and tapped the huge hole at the top of the barrel.
“See the bore on this rifle?” He asked. “This thing’s no station toy. They build em for killing monsters on the System Colony. Bistu.”
He worked some mechanism along the side and a massive bolt of led popped out into his hand. He held it up for them, both eyes focused on the tip of the thumb sized slug of metal.
“That slugg’d put a hole through a worksuit from a mile away.” He said. “Pop through both doors of an airlock or punch through reinforced glass like it was tissue paper. Blow all the atmosphere out of the station and get you killed is what it would do, using it here.” He shoved the bolt back into the gun through one of the slots on the side and patted the weapon while his eyes, both of them, ran up and down the thing on their own trajectories. “They don’t allow this sorta thing onto the station. Ever. Any station.”
His eyes came together and paused as he studied the thing before he looked up at them. “I’d buy it from you.” He said, eyes glinting as he laid them both on Zihan.
Zihan shook his head.
“How much?” Yi Cao asked.
“A thousand C’s.” The proprietor said. He glanced at Yi Cao then back to Zihan. He waved to the pistols set along the table. “And you can take your pick of the weapons in the store. One pistol, on my dime, plus all the cogs and augments.”
“We’re not looking for augments.” Zihan replied.
The proprietor nodded, one eye going back to the gun while the other checked on the girls. “You’re choice.” He said.
Yi Cao tore his eyes from the gunne that almost killed him on Elleppu station. “We should sell it.” He said.
Zihan looked at him and he and Yi Cao held eye contact for several moments.
“Why?” Zihan asked.
Yi Cao fidgeted uncomfortably and looked away. “Money doesn’t grow on trees.” He said. “And, there aren’t any trees, anyways. Here.”
Zihan sighed and waved at the weapons spread across the table. “Fine then. Find one you’re comfortable with and I’ll sell the man the rifle.”
Yi Cao nodded and turned back to the weapons but barely felt like he saw them. As he ran his fingers across their grips his mind kept taking him back to the moment of the ambush and the way the floor shattered, spraying him with shards of glass. His knuckles still burned where they’d been cut by the shrapnel. His body still ached, every part of him, with more than a few reawakened by the banging of the pistols he’d hoped were gone after a decent night of sleep.
He touched the handle of a pistol tinted orange and silver like the sigils that ran across the floor of Elleppu station when the guardians arrived to tear into the cultivators who’d tried to kill him.
“Something wrong?” Zihan asked.
Yi Cao looked and shook his head, but still didn’t move his hand. How long had it been, he wondered? One day? Two?
He picked up the orange and silver pistol and watched its controls blink to life.
“Hello.” The gun said. “My name is Bojanwuantoang, an autonomous handgun and licensed virtual companion manufactured by the Toang corporation. I am a variable rate of fire gravitic sub millimeter missile launcher commonly referred to as a Pin Gun, currently chambered in two inch point six millimeter rounds with a maximum rate of fire of fifteen hundred rounds per minute and capable of sustained fire anywhere between two point five seconds, for conventional magazine, or six days seven hours and twenty three minutes, at which point my internals will most likely be reduced to slag. For the duration of this test you may refer to me as Bojan. Would you like to enter the tutorial?”
Yi Cao barely heard the thing in his hand. He’d underestimated what not having a consistent day night cycle could do to his sense of time and now the memories of his brush with death rolled into him like a tide, making his thoughts sticky, and his brain slow. It might have been just yesterday that he was running for his life, or a thousand years ago. He couldn’t even say for certain what time it was now. If “time of day” could even be applied to a place that seemed to operate in shifts instead of days.
He remembered Su Xialu eyeing him in the liner with the same predator intent as blinded cultivator who’d grabbed him with his vines.
He carried the pistol to the shooting range and stood staring down at the man shaped targets at the other end, gun still held at the ready.
He remembered the way Muchen fell apart beneath Zihan’s strike and the crushing depths of the whirlpool technique he tried to kill him with. Remembered Zihan’s sword at his throat.
“I am sensing an unusual level of fear. If you are in an emergency situation, please depress my trigger and watch your fears disappear.”
Yi Cao leveled the little handgun and pulled the trigger.
The two inch long pins screamed as they left the barrel in a beam of glittering metal. The gun itself barely vibrated as it spat them out. The pistol laughed maniacally as the target was ripped in half, pins shattering in a roar like breaking glass against the range’s backstop.
A sigil on the back of the gun flipped to “empty” as the jets howled to life to blast the back of the shooting range with cold steam.
“Fun depleted.” the Gun announced. “Please insert more tokens and go again.”
Yi Cao found that he was breathing heavily as he lifted the gun to examine the shredded target slowly regrowing at the end of the hall. He could see how his hands had shaken in the pattern cut into the man shaped silhouette.
“That’s not disturbing at all.” Zihan commented.
“That’s the virtual companions for you.” The proprietor buzzed. “Guild limits their intelligence so they always end up a little… monomaniacal, is probably the best word for it. Nuts, more like.”
Yi Cao turned. “This will do.” He said, setting it on the counter. “I’ll take it.”
Zihan raised an eyebrow. “Really. That’s your choice.”
“Hello.” The pistol told him. “My name is Bojanwuantoang, an autonomous,-”
“A good choice.” The proprietor said over the pistol’s re-introduction. “Living pistols are always better than dumb ones, even if they are a little weird. That one,” he nudged the orange gun so it spun on the table, voice warbling as it turned, “is just smart enough to testify in court, if you ever need to call on it as a defendant, and”, he leaned forward as the gun changed tack to tell them about its legal status, “you can always bring it in to have its memory wiped, if you don’t want it to remember something particular.”
“My name is Bojanwuantoang. I am considered a legal virtual companion. I would like to be your friend. Please do not wipe my memory.”
“Comes with a bunch of fancy piss too.” The proprietor said straightening. “So I can get you set up, if, that is,” One eye turned, disturbingly, to run up and down the colony gun he still carried, “we have an agreement.”
Zihan nodded. “I think that we can.”
“Oh hooray.” The pistol said. “I hope you have lots of enemies. Enemies make for the best of times.”