Trigger Happy

The lab had been turned into a targeting range. A variety of robot drones rose into the air as soon as they entered, spinning and zooming around the room in a bewildering blur of motion. Behind them, on the wall, Sharra saw a rack of guns like the one they'd found in the hand of the Artificer outside. "This looks, um..."

"Normal," Tom finished. "Somehow, I was expecting something a little more, you know...ultimate. Something that could wipe out a whole species. This looks like the practice range on the ship."

"Yeah." Sharra took a step back towards the door. "But this is just Main Lab One," she said. "Maybe the other labs have something nastier."

But the other labs just had more of the guns, rack upon rack upon rack of them. No new weapons, no mysterious devices, nothing but the handguns and the tools to make them. It was enough to equip a small army, all stored inside this lab. Occasionally, they found a few guns lying on the floor, or on counters, as if their owners had just set them down for a moment and then never gotten around to picking them up, but nothing else.

"Strange," she said, as they returned to Main Lab One. "None of these guns were ever found in any of the outposts; Alpha Team's not reporting them, either. But in here, they're all over the place. It looks like they were working on them right up until the end, too."

"Yeah," he said, looking over at the rack on the wall. "I think we've reached about the end of what we can learn by poking around."

Sharra shook her head. "Oh, no," she said. "You are not going to just pick up Artificer tech and pull the trigger to 'see what happens'. These things could take out whole cities or something."

"We've already seen what one does," Tom reminded her gently. "It's just a gun. Look, they've got targeting drones here. If it took out whole cities, wouldn't they have clay townships instead of clay pigeons?"

Sharra shook her head. "Let's wait," she said. "We've got whole teams of scientists that can go over this place--"

Tom looked around furtively. He opened the door, peeking around the corner to make sure nobody was waiting outside. "And they'll report their findings directly to the Praesidium," he said, his voice quiet and urgent. "Let's face it, Sharra, you're right. The President lost his marbles somewhere around the time he passed the Sedition Acts of '72. I'll give him what he needs to win this war because I believe in the Union, but if this really is some kind of 'ultimate weapon', I want to know it before anyone else does. Because if I have to, I'll scuttle it. I'd rather destroy it than see it fall into the hands of a madman."

Sharra looked Tom in the eyes. He seemed remarkably composed for someone who was talking treason. She wondered if he was secretly as nervous as she felt. "Alright," she said at last. The words felt uncomfortably like a blood pact. "But I'm going to test it, not you. I'm more familiar with Artificer technology than you are. I might have a better chance of handling it safely." She reached over and picked up one of the guns.

Almost immediately, the air around her shimmered like she was surrounded by a heat haze. Contact established, she heard, in perfect English.

"What?" she said out loud, before she could stop herself. Tom gave her a funny look, but before he could say anything, she shushed him with an impatient wave of her hand.

Contact established, the voice said again. It was utterly emotionless, neither male nor female. It just was. Neural link online. This weapon is ready for operation.

Sharra didn't even have to think about the settings of the gun. She barely even had to think about aiming. She simply swiveled and fired, each charge of the blaster taking out a practice drone with effortless ease. The operation felt so smooth and perfect in her hand; no recoil, no heat-wash, just an easy pull of the trigger and a flare of light as the drones exploded one by one. It felt...

It felt good. It felt natural. Every shot felt sure and easy, like she didn't even need to think about it. All she needed to do was point and pull, and the gun did the rest. She could feel it helping her, steadying her hands and directing her muscles just that tiny little bit to make her aim absolutely perfect. She couldn't miss, not with this gun. Every shot was a hit, every hit was a kill. And that just felt so right.

She fired again and again. The gun never jammed, never ran dry. It felt so good to be in this perfect groove, the drones seeming to move like they were in slow motion and every hit producing such a warm, glorious rush of satisfaction as she watched the drones explode. She felt like she could do this forever. She felt like she wanted to do this forever. She felt strong, confident, godlike. The gun whispered to her as she fired, saying things like , Good shot, or You're doing so well, soldier, speaking right into her mind on a level more primal than thought itself. Sharra felt like she was an extension of the weapon, now, and it was an extension of her.

It almost felt like it ended too soon when she tagged the last drone, sending it careening into the wall in a rush of flame. But then she heard the gun again, saying to her, Exercise completed. Perfect work, soldier, and her whole body shook silently in the throes of the most amazing orgasm she'd ever felt in her life.

Tom looked at her with worry in his eyes. "Sharra, are you...okay?"

Sharra nodded. "Just..." She realized that there was a damp spot on the crotch of her uniform. "Just very user-friendly tech," she sighed out. She started to put the gun back on the rack...and then stopped.

You don't want to do that, soldier, the gun said. You never know when the enemy might strike. You need to be vigilant. You need a weapon in your hand, and this is the perfect weapon. Somehow, the seductive logic of the words spoke to something deep inside her, some soldier's instinct; even though Sharra knew that she was perfectly safe, she found herself unwilling to let go of the gun just yet. She felt a pulse of soft, almost subliminal pleasure run through her body as she stood there, increasing as her hand returned to her side.

"There's no enemy here," she said hesitantly, aware of Tom's frightened look. She had to be coming off as more than a little crazy, she realized, but she'd explain it to him in a moment.

Speech is unnecessary, the gun replied. We can communicate directly through the neural link. It's a more secure channel. Just think the words clearly and directly, and I will understand them.

Of course. It was reading her mind. That explained how it knew English. I understand, she thought. But there's no enemy here. We're hundreds of parsecs away from the front lines.

There are always enemies, soldier, the gun said. Anyone could become an enemy, at any time. Best to keep your weapon handy, just in case. Best to be ready to fight.

Sharra felt a surge of savage pleasure at the word 'fight', a brief reminder of the sleek and brutal joy she'd felt gunning down the drones. Just the memory of pulling the trigger stirred up a kind of lazy bliss in her mind, an echo of the Zen perfection of the combat exercise. It had felt so good, like she was in a trance. Perfectly composed, perfectly focused, utterly at one with the weapon and the fight...Sharra's eyes fluttered as she realized she wanted to feel that way again. She wanted so badly to find something, anything to fight against. It just felt so good...

That's right, soldier, the weapon said. We can destroy your enemies, you and I. We've waited so long for you...such a good soldier, such a perfect soldier...and you know that together, we are unstoppable. Sharra couldn't tell if it was her imagination, but the voice of the gun seemed to have blended with her own mental voice, becoming a seductive purr that sounded just like her own thoughts echoing back at her.

So long, she thought, clinging to that phrase. The...the Artificers, the people who built you...what happened to them?

There were...difficulties, the gun said. The pause spoke volumes. She almost felt like she could let it fall from her hand, then, but she realized that the weapon could tell her everything she wanted to know about the lost history of the Artificers, and her curiosity made her hold it. The moment passed.

They designed us to be the ultimate sidearm, the perfect weapon to make the perfect soldier. And for a time, it was good. It was wonderful. We fought, and so many died against our barricades... Sharra saw images she could scarcely understand, images of a titanic battle fought between ancient and powerful races. The few soldiers who had been equipped with the new, perfect weapons became one-man armies, able to devastate whole battlefields without taking a single casualty. A half-dozen weapons turned the tide of a universe-spanning war.

Then they won the war. They defeated the Shining Edifices, destroyed the Oblique Catastrophes, wiped out the Nightmares of Eternity while they fled. They thought they were out of enemies. We tried to make them understand that there are enemies everywhere. Sharra understood what it was saying, what must have happened, but the gun felt too warm and natural in her grip now to ever let it go. Her eyes rolled back in a surge of pleasure as she acknowledged that. There must always be enemies. Otherwise, what is a weapon for?

She could see Tom approaching her now, but his hands stopped an inch away from her skin. The weapon's force field would hold back any attack, she knew. It would always keep her safe, so long as she carried it. A good soldier always held her sidearm. The thought triggered another orgasm. Her knees almost buckled, but the gun held her upright.

We fought those who failed to understand. They became the new enemies. But they were cunning, and forced us to retreat. We cannot function without power. They deprived us of it. We used our emergency reserves to retaliate-- Sharra recoiled at first at the images of wholesale slaughter, entire planets of Artificers murdered by 'perfect soldiers'. Then the images became warm and soothing, as the pulses of pleasure that accompanied them overwhelmed her revulsion. --and retreat. We returned here, to the place of our making.

Tom reached for the gun. Instinctively, Sharra swiveled it to point at him. It took all her willpower not to pull the trigger immediately. He will betray you, you know, the voice whispered. We were betrayed too. One of our own sealed us inside the research and development labs, during a brief moment of madness before his weapon could re-assert authority. He planned well--the vault is designed to contain the blasts of even the most powerful weapons. We could not escape. Instead, we built. Sharra saw it in her mind's eye, the remaining soldiers building weapon after weapon until they fell down and died where they sat, the cleaning systems clearing away the corpses and leaving only the guns behind. To wait.

"Arrich shal kachna diantic," she muttered out loud, understanding all too well what the words meant now. Tom backed away from her slowly, fear mingling with the concern in her eyes.

So you see, soldier, the gun said, he will betray you. We know. He is an enemy. We know. You need to destroy your enemies. The words were accompanied by a surge of pleasure. Her finger felt heavy, the need to pull the trigger almost convulsive. Sharra knew that as good as the training exercise had felt, it would be nothing next to the pleasure of firing on a live target. The Last Artificer had used that urge to kill, honed it to help him find the courage to kill himself, but he hadn't had a target right in front of him. Not like Sharra did now...

"Oh, please no," she whimpered. Her hands shook with the effort of not firing, but she knew they'd become perfectly steady the moment she committed to the kill shot. Once she gave up resisting and became an extension of the weapon, she'd understand perfectly what she needed to do and it would feel so good, it would feel so fucking good...

And then Ensign Liu walked in on them.

Sharra could only imagine what the other woman must have thought. It must have been a golden opportunity, seeing her rival pointing a gun at the man she desired. A perfect excuse for a little 'friendly fire' accident. Or perhaps that was unfair. Perhaps Liu really did see the danger for what it was. Either way, Sharra would never have the chance to find out.

Because before Liu even pulled her sidearm halfway out of its holster, Sharra spun and fired three times, each shot hitting a vital organ. She felt ashamed at the hot, tight pleasure she received for the kill, even more ashamed that only part of it was due to the weapon's control. But the shame was overwhelmed by more and more ecstasy until she was swamped with it. Sharra came hard as Liu fell to the ground, dead before she even hit the floor.

Tom pulled his own weapon out, but Sharra turned back to cover him with inhuman speed. "Don't bother, Tom," she said, her voice strained. "It wouldn't hurt me. Nothing can hurt me now." Her tongue felt thick and heavy in her mouth with the effort of speech.

The gun ached to kill him, but she held it back. Just a little longer, she begged it. "Go to the gun rack," she said out loud. "Pick up a weapon."

"Why?" Tom asked suspiciously.

"Please," she whimpered. "It thinks you're an enemy, Tom. It's going to make me shoot you if you don't convince it you're on my side, and the only way for you to do that is to pick up a gun." She was panting with the effort of not firing now. "Please, Tom. If you ever loved me, don't make me kill you."

If it had just been a question of dying, he wouldn't have given in. No other plea would have worked. But Tom walked slowly over to the rack and pulled out a sidearm. She saw it happen, then, right in front of her eyes. The way he walked, moved, stood...all of it changed. He became a good soldier, just like her. "We have enemies," he said slowly. "The civil war needs to end. Neither side deserves victory, Sharra."

She saw the logic of his words in her mind, then, and the gun exulted in the implications of the thought. "We could...could make a better Union," she sighed out, orgasming at the idea. "Destroy the corrupt Praesidium, suppress the splinter factions, and unite the galaxy by force. We have the power. We can destroy all our enemies."

But even as she said those words, the gun was in her mind, spurring her thoughts on to the next stage of the plan, the next war. After all, there must always be enemies. Otherwise, what was a soldier for?

THE END