“Your head could fit in the muzzle of this thing,” Vik said, awestruck. “Seriously. Come on and let’s see.”

“I’m not sticking my head in a cannon thing. Stick your own head in.”

“I have highly temperamental hair. It’ll get nestlike. You don’t care when your hair gets nestlike, Tom. You can’t possibly.”

Tom wasn’t listening, because he was reaching out to pick up another intriguing weapon of terrible death. His neural processor informed him it was a miniature electromagnetic pulser. For some reason, the knowledge this thing could fry a neural processor made it all the more exciting for him. Visions of firing it at Karl Marsters danced through his head.

Then Vik lifted a small, rounded object with a flattened base that Tom recognized from the infirmary. “What do you suppose this thing does? It was on the floor, not on any of the racks.”

Tom quashed his smile. “Oh, I know what it is. Press that button on top.”

Vik pressed the button. Confusion furrowed his brow when the device started beeping.

Tom drew a deep breath, then bellowed, “IT’S A GRENADE!”

Vik gave an earsplitting shriek and jumped so high, he crashed back into the wall, sending the device clattering to the floor. Tom cackled gleefully and scooped the device up, then flipped off the beeping. “Just kidding. It’s a timer thing. I’ve seen them in the infirmary.”

Vik snatched the rounded timer from him and peered at it suspiciously. “I am going to put you in the infirmary now, you gormless cretin. Find something we can duel with in here so we can launch eons of dynastic Raines-Ashwan warfare.”

Joy filled Tom, and he scoured around, hoping for some knives or something similar, but just as he claimed his gun, Wyatt joined them. She looked at Tom with one gun, Vik with another, and halted in her tracks.

“Are you guys seriously messing around with real weapons?” she exclaimed. “It’s like you want Darwin Awards!”

Tom flushed, and set his gun back on its hook. “It’s not like we were going to start a dynastic war or something.”

“Yeah,” Vik said guiltily, returning his own weapon.

Wyatt bit her lip. She threw an uneasy glance around them, looking daunted by the sight of all the weapons, right there for the taking. Tom spoke as casually as he could. “What did Blackburn want?”

Wyatt reached out and poked at a piece of armor with a finger, like it was some animal that might snap at her. Then she poked it harder when nothing bad happened the first time. “He found out about something I did during my vacation, and he said it was good work.”

“What?” Vik said.