Gun oils and graphium lubricant were familiar smells. Silvana was not herself a combatant but she had been around enough gunmen in her inquisitional career for the minutiae of arms. She ignored Heironymus' lecture about weapons, all of which was old information to her. The young interrogator probably didn't mean to be insulting. The powersword he wore swept though the air with a soft his. Unusual weapons for Arbites, Ortega clearly believed in equiping his people well. That or the Governor was supplementing his budget. That wasn't in and of itself a problem, nor technically improper, unless of course she were trying to buy the Arbite's silence with generous contributions in order to cover up her own incompetence. Silvana pictured Ortega's thorny aura. She could not imagine the Arbite reacting well to even an oblique attempt to bribe him.

" I don't need to point out to you the dangers of giving a blind woman an automatic weapon," she commented dryly. Reaching into one of the packing crates the lifted a plasmagun from its packing crate and hefted it experimentally.  She could not imagine needing such firepower, even in the hive. There were a trio of plasma cells nestled among the packing straw. Smiling she slipped the cells into her pouch, they made the leather bag bulge awkwardly. She took the third cell back out of the bag and slotted it home in magazine well built into the stock. For a moment nothing happened, she couldn't see the lights but she didn't hear the distinctive hum of charge flowing into the weapon. She murmered a mechanics mantra and slapped the mechanism with the flat of her hand, it hummed gratifyingly.

"I suppose the worst thing that can happen is it misfires and kills us all," she said dryly.

"Are you always this upbeat?" Heironymus asked as he completed his own preparations. 

"You pear too much into the future, tends to dampen ones disposition," she replied. It was partially intended as a joke, though there was a kernel of truth in the statement.

"So what do you intend to do? Drive around the slums and hope to spot something before we are gunned down?" the words contained no emotional loading whatsoever.