The Gun

An exploratory crew lands on a planet turned to fused slag by a past fission event and finds no obvious inhabitants, yet an automated artillery emplacement survives and suddenly fires, crippling their ship and wounding their leader. Stranded with limited provisions, the survivors weigh repairing the vessel against investigating nearby ruins and a pale stone city that appears to be the gun's origin. The story traces their cautious excursions across blasted farms and ruined streets while probing why lethal machines outlast their makers, and it frames practical survival pressures alongside unsettling questions about the persistence and ethics of autonomous weapons.