Spiral Dance
The Little Empty
In which Jela gives Cantra a lesson in gunnery.
And Cantra learns that Jela is capable of unnerving her, though she’s careful not to let him know it.
There are some nasty surprises lurking in Dancer‘s armory, and in the accompanying documentation. Garen and Cantra doubtless have had their share of enemies, but it must be one out of the ordinary who could do something like this, and who would if they could.
Cantra is (and Garen was) highly suspicious about their equipment and more than competent pilots. Why are there things that Cantra doesn’t know about her guns or ammunition?
From the way Cantra describes it, Garen was solely responsible for obtaining the guns. Cantra may have felt that being suspicious of them would only have been reduplication of work that she trusted Garen to have already done. I’m also thinking that, if they’re military hardware that’s not available on the open market, there might not have been any way to independently verify what the documentation says: the source of the guns might have been the only source of detailed information about the guns.
She could have discovered the payload by physical inspection, but what reason had she to do an inspection that detailed? As she says, she didn’t expect ever to use them, so all she needed to know about them was that they’d sit in storage and not make a nuisance of themselves.
I see it as a plot convenience. Cantra had to have those J-4s on hand for the sequel. The reason she has them must be slightly explained here, along with her ignorance (otherwise she might appear to harbor genocidal inclinations).
@Jelala alone, in 2016: Plot contrivance, of course. But it wasn’t one that jolted me out of my suspended disbelief. I just went along with it, at the time.