Gerrick looked at Thomas. From what I could tell of human emotion, he looked like he was contemplating something. He faced me, now with the rifle held pointed down.

“I have no problems with you trying some of these, but I think we should start with a handgun first. They have less recoil.”

Normally I would have scoffed at the idea that I would have any trouble with a hand weapon. However, having seen and felt the power of just one human firearm, I wasn’t so sure. I was excited to try, but I also became plagued by visions of the recoil breaking my arms.

Sergeant Gerrick moved over to what looked like lockers for storage. This was the first quiet moment I had, so I took the time to examine his military dress. He seemed to be wearing a uniform designed for combat. He was wearing a light undersuit with soft patterns of different shades of green and brown. He looked to be wearing black, heavy boots. By far the most interesting part of his dress is the plate armor. They are numerous. Two plates for each leg, moving halfway up. The plates connect to the boot, with a joint halfway up for the knee. The largest plate or set of plates is the chest piece. It covers his entire chest and back, with a few intersecting plates, most likely for flexibility. There are plates for each shoulder, which are made up of two pieces connected by a joint so that the arm can move up and down. Two small plates rested on the human’s arm joints, which makes sense, joints are famously fragile. Finally, the human has two metal sleeves on his forearms which connect to a small plate covering the back of the hand. The human also had black fabric coverings over his manipulators, or hands. There looked to be a hard material covering the many moving parts on his fingers. He is wearing something around his waist, that is connected together with a clasp at the front. Multiple items were connected to it, a holster for his sidearm, some large pack on the back, and many pouches on the front which looked to be the right size to hold the magazines they mentioned. These same pouches exist on the front of the chest plate, so much ammunition storage. I assume that, if in combat, he would also be wearing the full-face cover helmet that I saw, but now he was wearing some sort of hard fabric article on the top of his head.

“You can start with one of the 9mm handguns. If you have no problems with this, then we can move up to the larger ones.”

“That sounds like a good idea, I’d prefer to not seriously injure myself just trying to satiate my own curiosity.”

As he rummaged through the locker, I took a look at the other human, who was now writing something down on a rectangle electronic device about the size of his forearm. This individual is obviously not military. He is wearing a long white overcoat, in fact, the majority of his clothing is white aside from light blue pants. They just seemed like something a civilian would wear. I had been so mesmerized by the weapons that I hadn’t noticed how every piece of clothing the humans were wearing seemed to have a function. He has some kind of glass pieces in a frame over his eyes. I think I will ask about them.

“Mr. Thomas?”

He, a little startled, looked up from his device. “Yes, Ozis?”

“What are you wearing over your eyes?”

“Oh, you mean my glasses?”

“Yes, the two lenses you’re looking through.”

“They correct my vision. Humans often are born with relatively good vision, but many of us are born with various conditions that limit vision. I myself have one called hyperopia, which means I can clearly see things far away, but not so well things that are close up. These lenses fix my vision, so I’m able to read.”

Confusing. They had clearly very advanced technology, but they resorted to the simple, fragile glass to fix it? I must take a mental note that vision problems are a common problem among humans. My own species has what I can only assume is much better vision.

“Are there any other ways you can treat vision conditions?”

“Oh yes, many ways. Glasses are just the easiest way and I think they’re comfortable. Additionally, many people wear them to supplement fashion. The second most common way is called contacts, which are lenses like those on my glasses except much smaller. They are pressed directly onto the eye. Lastly, there’s something called laser eye surgery. Which involves a laser directly manipulating the shape of the cornea in order to correct whatever mutation caused the bad eyesight.”

“You- You have a laser go directly into your eye? One that is powerful enough to “manipulate” it? How is that a good idea? How could that possibly help anything?”

“Look, Ozis, I’m not a medical doctor. I cannot explain exactly how that works. If you’d like, we could have one of the ship’s medical staff come to talk to you.”

After saying that, Thomas went back to writing something down on his piece of tech. Gerrick had appeared to find what he was looking for and walked back to me. He had what was clearly a firearm in his hand, but smaller than the others. In his other hand, he had a magazine.

“Okay, so I’ll explain how to use it. Firstly, the safety rules. Rule one…” Gerrick paused as he looked at my hands, they were different from his. I only had three manipulators to their five and mine were longer. “... always keep your… finger… off the trigger until you are ready to shoot. Do not aim the weapon at anything you are not willing to destroy. Always treat the weapon as if it is loaded. Be aware of your target and what is behind it. Treat the weapon with respect, it is more than capable of killing everyone here.”

I’m fascinated, all of these rules were clearly premeditated. No doubt the same as what he had been told the first time he used a firearm.

“Now, how to use it. First, you take the magazine and insert it into the bottom here. Then, what you do is pull back on the slide, which is the top section of the pistol. This puts a round in the chamber. Once this happens, it is ready to shoot. You do not need to pull the slide back for the subsequent shots, as the energy released by the expanding gasses of firing pushes the slide back and loads another round. In order to shoot, you flip this safety switch here, then you aim, and pull the trigger. Do you understand?”

“Yes, it all makes sense. How do I aim?”

He held the weapon up and pointed to three raised pieces, two at the back, one at the front. “You line up these three dots in your sight so that what you’re trying to hit is in the middle. Rifles are easier to aim, but you can try them when we know they won’t hurt you.”

He handed me the weapon. It was lighter than I expected. We walked over toward the target range. I did as I was told, although slightly awkward, it was clearly not made for my biology, I was able to load it. I pulled the slide back, which was more difficult than I expected, and brought it up to shoot.

“Hold on, try leaning forward a bit. You want to be in about the same position you’d be in if you were preparing to get pushed by something.”

I braced myself, held up the weapon, tried to aim at a target, and pulled on the trigger.

I didn’t fall over, my arms didn’t break, but Gods this thing kicked hard. I also missed the target, but I’m not too concerned. The chemical propellant burned my eyes and nose, it hurt my wrist joints, and it was awkward for me to use, and I loved it. So exhilarating, it felt like you were actually throwing the projectile. Plasma weapons had no recoil. I had never experienced anything like it.

I looked over at Gerrick, who had his teeth bared, although I had learned that this was how humans communicated they were happy. I wanted him to know how much I enjoyed it, so I attempted to replicate the smile. He laughed.

“Enjoyed that, huh?”

“Very much so, it's incredibly satisfying to shoot.”

“You can keep going if you’d like, it has nine rounds left.”

“I want to try that one.” I gestured at the rifle on the table.

Gerrick smiled, “Alright, I’d recommend you keep it on semi-auto when you try, full-auto causes more recoil.”

“What’s full auto?”