Brief Encounters

Title: Changing the Guard
Author: Peter Hansen
Length: 7,500 words
Publisher: Storm Moon Press
Genre: m/m Futuristic SciFi
Rating: B

Blurb: Tomi Vuorela works security in a frozen off-world outpost. The terrain is unforgiving, especially when it comes to maintaining any semblance of a social life. Any guest is typically a welcome one, provided they’re cleared for a refueling or part of IntelServ. Tomi knows his machinery, however, and when a suspicious landskimmer heads toward the his remote access node, Tomi must determine if the interloper is a harmless workman or a dangerous terrorist.

Andile Harper introduces himself as an engineer, but Tomi would rather play it safe than turn his back on a hacker in disguise. When Andile’s story doesn’t check with his own records, Andile’s in for a world of trouble. Normally, keeping a man at gunpoint until backup arrives would be out of the question. But when Andile starts to play with fire, Tomi finds he’s more than eager to hold a gun to the intruder’s head and make his own personal set of demands.

Review: I’ve been having quite a good time reading these gun kink stories that came from the Weight of a Gun anthology. I’ve also been looking forward to reading more by this author ever since I read and reviewed First Watch last year. This story solidifies my opinion that his writing is strong, though this story is very different from that one.

Tomi is a man who speaks his mind and it usually doesn’t do him any favors. He’s been shunned to a frozen outpost on IntelServ. Technology has advanced into space colonization and off-world outposts are tuned into supercomputers, a part of which Tomi currently guards alone. His solitude is interrupted by an unknown visitor named Andile, who says he’s an engineer who has come to fix some circuitry. Tomi isn’t sure he believe him, though. It’s very possible that he’s a hacker trying to get into the system. When he scans Andile and finds that he isn’t really supposed to be there, he has to hold him at gunpoint until backup arrives.

This is quite a short story and doesn’t leave a lot of time for more than the initial scene between Tomi and Andile. Of course, anyone who might have difficulty with guns in a sexual situation might not find this scene as sexy as I did, but I enjoyed it. The tension created from being natural adversaries and cornered in a stalemate, while also having such a wicked attraction to one another fires up the heat. The use of the gun might make some uncomfortable in this story, since it is used quite lasciviously

There’s a nice little surprise in the end that brings the ending together nicely. A little possibility is left up in the air as well. I wouldn’t call this a romance, more of a prelude to one. As kinky erotica it works nicely, but the story isn’t overwhelmed with sex. Even with such a short length, the story took the majority without the sex, though the sexual tension is constantly prevalent. It’s well written and as long as guns don’t bother you as a reader, this is definitely a story I’d recommend. I’m looking forward to more by Peter Hansen.