Free Steel Beneath the Skin by Niall Teasdale

luck.’
    Aneka headed out of the hibernation suite and back toward the rear section of the ship. The cargo hold was a big, open space, largely empty since it was supposedly going to be filled with things they found at their destination. Most of it was also unpressurised, but there was a small pressurised section, and that was where she found Bashford.
    He smiled at her as she walked into the room. ‘I figured we would kick off with something interesting.’ He waved at a packing case at the side of the room and she looked over at it. Three black cases were sitting on top of it and she recognised them immediately.
    ‘Those are the weapons cases from the xinti ship.’
    ‘Uh-huh. I cleared it with Gillian. We figured they were essentially part of your personal effects and xinti weapons are pretty well known so there’s no real scientific value. If that pistol is the kind of thing I think it is, it has a non-lethal setting so you can use it for target practice.’ He nodded down the hold to where he had set up a couple of paper targets. ‘I took the liberty of charging the power cells.’
    ‘Okay,’ Aneka said as she flipped open the cases. The pistol was big, but not excessively heavy. She lifted it from its case and hefted it, feeling the balance. It was slightly front heavy until she slotted one of the large, cylindrical cells into the hole in the back. Almost immediately a display opened up in her vision field showing power remaining, range to target, and an image of the wall. She turned the pistol around and the image shifted. There was a camera mounted under the large barrel. ‘Huh,’ she grunted. ‘Heads-up display. I’ve got picture-in-picture aiming.’
    ‘A lot of modern weapons have a system like that. Most people have to wear something to display it on.’
    Aneka gave him a grin and turned her attention back to the display. There was, indeed, a power setting, currently showing as “lethal.” A thought switched it to “pacify.” She aimed down the hold, lined up one of the targets in her sights, and pulled the trigger. A pulse of energy burst out from the muzzle and hit the target dead centre. There was a sharp electrostatic ripping sound and the paper target shredded.
    ‘Holy shit!’ Aneka exclaimed. ‘Sorry. It says it’s on pacification mode.’
    ‘Oh, I think it is. It’s just damn powerful. I think that’s a pulsar pistol. They fire anti-matter pulses in lethal mode. The acceleration field is usually more powerful than a typical blaster. The Xinti used them extensively, we’ve never quite figured out the physics.’
    Aneka looked down at the weapon she was holding. ‘I don’t know about the physics, but I can build and repair this thing.’ She moved the pistol up and snapped off a shot from her hip, watching as the target disintegrated.
    ‘Perhaps on your off time you could draw up some schematics,’ Bashford said. ‘Might be another little money-spinner for you if they can be manufactured.’ He pulled two rolls of paper out of a box. ‘And don’t worry, I have more targets.’
    Aneka grinned at him. This was certainly more fun than reading textbooks.
     

Part Two: Where Men Once Walked
    FScV Garnet Hyde. 25.9.523 FSC.
    One of the things Aneka had had to learn was the standard calendar. The federal authorities had set about defining a standard time system early in the life of the Federation. Jenlay, apparently, were more anal about that kind of thing than the other races, so jenlay standards had been used for a lot of things. A second was a second, defined using some aspect of a caesium-133 atom, a minute was sixty of them. A day was the same length as she was used to, but divided into twenty hours of four thousand three hundred and twenty seconds each. The year was three hundred and sixty days long, divided into twelve, thirty day months. Of course, each world had its own local calendar as well, and it all sounded very confusing. Her computer, however, did not consider it a