Oh - right. [ He's surprised, though he shouldn't be. He clears his throat. ]

Uh - I guess best I can explain is that they're projectile weapons. Powered by very small explosions to push a small piece of metal outward at incredible speed. The old ones were basically like hand canons - by my time, we figured out how to make rounds that will piece human flesh but not go through the hull of a ship - which I tell you, is an important distinction.

The ones I use are the main guns attached to the ship, and those - well. Those do pierce hulls. We got two type of guns, PDCs - Point Defence Canons - and those fire a lot of small projectiles really fast, in order to stop a missile or some other debris from hittin' the ship. Then you got rail guns, which - well. They're only meant to kill, or severely disable, another ship.

A round from one of those can take someone's head clean off.