“Hello, I am O3 Weapons Officer Lieutenant Ivan Brightsky, and this is my weapon. Her barrel spans 5 kilometers. She is fed by 10 particle colliders and fires a high energy antimatter beam that travels at 50 light seconds per minute. It costs $40,000 galactic standard credits to fire a single collider activation for 5 seconds.”

Ivan sits in his chair which is situated in front of a panel that contains a set of telegraphic displays and keys. He scans the room to inspect his crew, each member at their own station, and then turns back to you.

“I’m surprised. They usually never let civies like you in this part of the ship, did you wander off from the tour? Oh well, while you’re here let me explain what you are looking at. The lever above me is the safety. On the wall ahead of me are the telegraph displays and buttons which communicate with the targeting command stations. On the desk ahead of me are the telegraphic keypads which communicate with the collider control rooms. Meanwhile my crew in this room do various tasks regarding power supply, range setting, and beam angling and take my direct orders. When we get everything set up I relay the info to targeting command and then they send me the signal to pull the trigger.”

Ivan rolls his eyes.

“The system is full of all these redundancies because upper command is afraid that if we knew what we were shooting at we might refuse the order. But I can say for certain after a while you get the feel of everything and can accurately guess what your target is 99% of the time anyways, so they might as well just let us select targets, we’d probably be better at it. Oh well, I guess it also makes sure it’s impossible to fire this thing accidentally. We wouldn’t want that, now would we?”

Ivan chuckles with a devious grin.

“I find it funny, ever since I was a little cub I always knew I wanted to blow shit up with the biggest guns around: I’d set up explosive targets in the forest and shoot them with my rifle and just see what I could do. Of course my folks didn’t care for it, my father worked in a nuclear power plant and wanted me to follow in his footsteps. You see, my species has a long culture and tradition of living with nature and advancing without wrecking the planet, something I know you humies were not exactly good with before you got to space, so my dad decided to break my habit and pushed me to get a quantum physics and engineering degree hoping I would go on to develop better civilian reactors or some crap like that.”

Ivan shrugs.

“Eh, it wasn’t my thing. I dropped out of the program with an associates in quantum physics. Lied to my folks and said I was looking for a job. But of course they found out and my dad forced me to either join the military, go back to school, or get kicked out. I joined the navy as soon as I saw the navy was hiring personnel with quantum physics degrees as weapons officers for some brand new weapons system. Went through the officer academy, trained under the former head gunner who didn’t renew her service term over ‘ethical reasons’, I was promoted, and here we are. 20 years later I am still doing the same gig: blowing shit up with the biggest gun in the known galaxy. Funny how fate works out, I guess the gods love me.”

Ivan’s face lights up.

“Wanna know how it works? The colliders use quantum tunneling to source strange astral particles from Jumpspace. Particles from Jumpspace initially have no mass in realspace but gain mass the longer they exist on our plane for as long as they are stable. This makes it easy to accelerate the particles to relativistic speeds and generate antimatter with great efficiency. A beam of antimatter and energized particles is then focused by a laser and accelerated down the barrel of the cannon to near lightspeed. At a half single collider activation it can turn a Gronican superbattleship into a new star at 3 light seconds, when all 10 colliders are fully activated… well do you like to watch the sunrise? Have you seen the sunrise come up from the north, east, south, and the west all at once? But perhaps I should stop rambling, I am just passionate, you know?”


Ivan then sighs.

“But regardless we hardly get any thanks down here. The big-shot pilot over in the Starfighter Corps is the golden boy of this ship and gets all the glory. But can’t say I am surprised, being the son of a war hero from the last war will get you places, damn nepo cub. But whatever, I don’t require glory. I just love doing my job. Hanging with the boys and pressing the keys makes it worth being stuck down here wearing this stupid, shitty, hot, human-designed lead uniform.”

Suddenly a red light starts flashing and a buzzer sounds through the room. Ivan looks at the displays in front of him and sees numbers appear on the displays.

“That’s my call,” Ivan mutters. “We got an order from Targeting Command. Initiate main firing sequence!” Ivan called to his crew as he presses keys to relay his response back to Targeting Command. “Range: 1,050 clicks, angle 0-5, one and a half collider activation.” The other crewmembers in the room began working at various switches and levers. Ivan entered his passcode into a keypad at his station which unlocked a key switch which he then turned using a key he kept on his person. Ivan then pulled down the safety lever and held it down as he pressed the collider telegraph keys ordering a single collider to prepare to fire at full power and a second collider to fire at half power. He pressed various keys to relay and confirm orders over the next few moments.

“I love this part!” Ivan says as he hovers his hand over the firing switch smiling like a giddy cub on their first hunt. He then puts on a black helmet with a tinted visor and looks over to you, “for Kra’s sake, kid, get yourself behind as much lead as possible!”

A sound plays over the telegraph console, nearly instinctively Ivan presses down on the switch and through a previously dark window in the room an awe-inspiring beam of intense energy bursts into life erupting into a nearly-divine light that was blinding even through the tinted glass.

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A new Arpine OC of mine introducing himself to you! >:3

As you can see he is kinda… eccentric. But what can you say? He is the head gunner for the superweapon on board the star dreadnought ASN Hurricane and he just loves his job!

Ivan Brightsky, Arpines, and Art © Me

Tools used: Clip Studio Paint.