The sight of the arsenal took Kira aback. “That’s an awful lot of guns.”

Falconi grunted. “Better to have them when you need them. Like today. Never know what you’ll run into in the outer reaches.”

“Rim runners,” said Nielsen, pulling down a short rifle with a mean-looking muzzle.

“Wireheads,” said Vishal, opening a container of bullets.

“Large toothy animals,” said Falconi, shoving a rifle into Kira’s arms.

She balked, remembering what she’d heard on the news. “Aren’t blasters more effective against the Jellies?”

Falconi fiddled with the display on the side of her gun. “Sure. They’re also more effective at punching holes in the hull. Don’t know about you, but I don’t want to get spaced. Outside the ship, we use blasters. Inside, we use firearms. Bullets still do a hell of a lot of damage, and there’s no chance of them getting through our Whipple shield.”

Kira reluctantly accepted his reasoning. Every spaceship had a Whipple shield built within the outer hull: staggered layers of differing material that served to break up incoming projectiles (natural or artificial). Micrometeoroids were a constant threat in space, and as a rule, bullets moved far slower and contained far less energy per gram.

“Also,” said Vishal, “lasers bounce, and we have our passengers to think of. If even a small part of the energy from a laser deflects into person’s eye—” He shook his head. “Very bad, Ms. Kira. Very bad.”

Falconi straightened. “That, and bullets don’t get fuzzed out by countermeasures. It’s always a trade-off.” He tapped Kira’s rifle. “I linked this to your overlays. Everyone on the Wallfish is marked as friendly, so you don’t need to worry about shooting us.” He flashed her a grin. “Not that you should need to do any shooting. This is just a precaution.”

Kira nodded, nervous. She could feel the Soft Blade molding itself to the grip of the gun, and a terrible sense of familiarity came over her.

A targeting reticule popped up in the center of her vision, red and round, and she experimented with it by focusing on different objects within the armory.

Nielsen handed her a pair of extra magazines. Kira stuffed them into the side pocket of her pants.

“Do you know how to reload?” Nielsen asked.

Kira nodded. She had gone shooting with her father on Weyland more than once. “Think so.”

“Show me.”

So Kira removed and replaced the magazine several times.

“You’ve got it,” Nielsen said, appearing satisfied.

“Here we go,” said Falconi, unshelving the largest gun of them all. Kira wasn’t even sure what it was: not a blaster, that much was for sure, but the barrel was nearly as wide as her fist. Far too large for a rifle.

“What the hell is that?” she said.

Falconi burst out with an evil laugh. “It’s a grenade launcher. What else? Bought her at a militia surplus sale a few years ago. Her name is Francesca.”

“You named your gun,” said Kira.

“Of course. It’s common courtesy if you’re going to be trusting your life to something. Ships get names. Swords used to get names. Now guns get names.” Falconi laughed again, and Kira wondered if Gregorovich was really the only crazy one on the ship.