The first in a collection of short stories set in the Terran Empire universe
By Jeremy “HappyTarget” S.
M – 5
The ominous, charcoal gray hull of the Constitution class warship ISS Essex cut through deep space on the leisurely push of impulse power. The light of distant stars gleamed off of the mirrored, gold-hued alloy of her nav-deflector dish. Intense spotlights shone proudly on her name and registry number scrawled blatantly on her dorsal primary hull in black outlined silver lettering. The black and silver colored sword and Earth seal of the Terran Empire was lit along her secondary hull and warp nacelles. She was one of the premier vessels of the Empire, a Battlecruiser. Sleek and powerful, she was the embodiment of death itself. While there were even newer and more destructive warships being designed by Imperial engineers, some even already in service, none could match the sheer perfection of her design, at least that’s what any crewman or officer who had served on them would tell you.
But with a successful test of Dr. Richard Daystrom’s latest creation, the M – 5, all those crewmen and officers would largely become a thing of the past. They could shortly find themselves out of a job thanks to a computer that could reason and think as well as a Vulcan but at the rapid fire precision only a machine could accomplish. Response times were measured in nanoseconds, compared with the seconds long gaps between issued orders and crew carrying them out. If all went as planned, the Essex under M -5 control would successfully engage six other Constitutions in a mock battle. Not even the best Imperial crews could triumph against those odds, but in every simulation run, the M - 5 did it handily. Now came the real test, with an actual M -5 integrated with a starships systems and operating in a live fire (albeit underpowered weapons with simulated damage) exercise.
The six other starships that would participate in the test, the Excalibur, Lexington, Constellation, Defiant, Hood and Potemkin, fell into step with the Essex. Normally such a concentration of starships would have at least a minor escort, but the parameters laid out for this test demanded that only the Constitutions be present. Which was just fine with their commanders and crew. They would handily make a fool of Daystrom and his latest creation all on their own. There was no need to bring in lesser ships to share the victory with. Six to one odds were impossible to overcome. While the Essex might take down one, or even two of them, their combined firepower would eventually get her. No one ship, short of the new South Dakota class Battleships perhaps, could stand up to the hammering a flotilla of Connies could put into space. Of this the crews and command staff of the other Constitutions were certain.
Onboard the Essex, Dr. Daystrom paced back and forth like a concerned parent in the pediatricians office with a sick child. His wrung his black hands constantly as he paced, his eyes often darting towards the blood red uniformed backs of the Essex’s engineering staff as they labored to make the final connections linking his latest creation with the already installed leads to every system on the ship. His bearing gave one the impression that Dr. Daystrom was slightly off, but then most brilliant persons had been… ‘eccentric’ for lack of a better word. The engineers didn’t use such proper terminology, they thought that the good Doctor was simply insane. Consequently they tried to ignore the darting ball of nerves behind them as they linked the connections as quickly as possible. Not that one could really rush the connection of thousands of hair thick hardwired datalink threads, but the engineers tried their best to hurry the process along, not shirking as they often would.
“There, that’s the last of em, Doctor” The detail’s commander said as he stood up from his crouched position monitoring the two crewmen guiding the datalink threads into the connecting machine. He pulled his golden sash back into place as it had shifted slightly thanks to his awkward position, then gave his red tunic a tug. The overhead lights caused the metallic thread that made up his embroidered Imperial Emblem and the cuff rank bands of a Lieutenant J.G. to sparkle faintly. “You should be all set to activate Dr. Daystrom.” The young engineer said with a casual wave towards the desk sized computer. It currently sat there lifeless, and the engineer clearly didn’t know what all the fuss was about. Though not for lack of trying, mankind had yet to design a working AI, and the engineer was quite skeptical that this latest attempt would fare much better than the others.
Richard Daystrom seemed to calm slightly at the news, but not much. “Very well, you can go.” He told the three man engineering team. Only to eager to comply, they scurried out of the converted room as quickly as protocol would allow. Daystrom moved to the wall mounted com panel and pressed the activation stud. “Bridge, this is Dr. Daystrom in the M – 5 room. I am ready to activate the system.”
--- --- ---
On the Main Bridge of the Essex, her Mistress lounged in her throne at the center of the command deck. Captain Beth Wallenstein was a handsome woman, not strikingly beautiful, but still attractive considering that she wasn’t getting any younger. Her mass of brown curls had begun to turn gray, but that fact was still easily hidden with dye. And even though she was pushing the outside of 39, she was still able to get virtually any man in her crew to do whatever she desired. She smiled at the thought, at the thrill that power sent down her spine. Her steel blue eyes darted to her bodyguard, ever present at her side. Power came with a price, and she was not alone in coveting it. More than a few times one of her underlings had escaped her charms to attempt to claim her position. All had failed, but their lust for the power she commanded required that she remain vigilant no matter how thoroughly she thought she had her underlings suitably ensnared.
Beth slouched into a more comfortable position in her chair, her finger absently twirling a stray curl. Daystrom’s communication interrupted her thoughts. With a slightly annoyed move of her free hand, she keyed the com system to reply.
“Very good Dr. Daystrom. You may bring it online at your leisure.”
“The M – 5 isn’t an it Captain,” Richard’s irritated voice came over the bridge speakers, “rather a he. M – 5 is just as self aware and cognizant as you or I. There is most definitely a male presence in him, certainly not an it.”
“Lord, why did Command, in its infinite wisdom, saddle me with baby sitting this quack?” Beth mumbled very quietly under her breath, her voice easily lost in the background beeps, hums and bloops of a active bridge. She forced her voice into a conciliatory tone before proceeding. “Of course Doctor, my mistake, ‘he’ then.”
Her tactical officer glanced over to her helmsman and mouthed the words ‘It’s a He’ and rolled his eyes. The helmsman merely nodded with a slight, condescending smirk of his own.
“Alright then.” There was a pause, then Richard continued. “Activating M – 5 now.”
Beth turned to look directly at her engineer at his station to the left and slightly behind her. Knowing she would expect a report, he immediately began to give one without even looking away from the readings on his terminal.
“M – 5 override of Essex central computer and distributed network assets successful. All interlinks between M – 5 and core systems in the green and functional. Primary, secondary and tertiary systems under M – 5 control Captain.”
“So it’s working as planned?” Beth inquired.
“So far, yes Ma’am. Everything is functioning just like it did in the trial runs at Starbase 398 said it should.”
“Congratulations Dr. Daystrom. It appears that your latest creation is a success. Shall we now proceed with the exercise or do you need more time to prepare?”
“We can proceed with the exercise Captain, M – 5 is ready, and more than up to the challenge as you shall soon see.” It was like day and night the difference between before activation and now. Before Daystrom had sounded edgy and irritable, but now he sounded like a proud parent who’s child had just come in first in the Academy entrance exams. Beth shook her head in wonder at the sudden, drastic 180 in the Doctor’s mood. Eccentric indeed.
“Very well. Com, alert the exercise’s Op. For. ships that we are ready to begin the exercise as soon as they reach their assigned positions. And Tactical, make sure our weapons are locked in sim mode, I don’t want a simple error like that flushing not only mine but all our careers down the toilet.”
--- --- ---
Awareness flooded into his consciousness. Systems similar to, but subtly different from the simulations and mockups he had interacted with earlier, linked with his program. These differences were understandable, given that this was a real life starship and not some mockup. Not everything in real life was as precise and perfectly ordered as the simulations had been. He reached out and brought the subsystem control processors into harmony with his core program controls. The giddy feeling of raw power coursed through him. He ‘was’ a starship now, the event he had longed for since achieving awareness of his intended mission finally completed. He controlled or monitored everything, his awareness seeing all, and making it work without outside interference. From the smallest change in environmental conditions in personal quarters, to the near subsonic yet powerful rumble of the active warp core, it was his to command. Orders surfaced from the command console on top of his central unit. He was to engage in wargaming with the other Imperial ships he “saw” in the space near him with his primary sensor arrays. This should be fun M - 5 thought.
--- --- ---
The Op. For. ships acknowledged the com message from the Essex. Their lean, predatory forms streamed smoothly away from her, accelerating till they receded into the distance in the brilliant flash of warp. This exercise would be a non-cloaking one, so the Imperial vessels kept their most effective stealthing system offline. The Squadron commander, Commodore Matt Decker, assumed a standard attack posture for his superior forces, spreading them out just enough to provide a dispersed target but close enough to concentrate his firepower effectively. They were stacked vertically as well as horizontally in a diamond slot attack formation. Upon word from their command ship, they kicked into action, leaping to warp like cheetahs in pursuit of their prey. The Essex, totally under M – 5’s control with her crew mere supervisors, accelerated to meet them. The high warp closing velocity caused the distance between the two combating forces to dwindle away rapidly.
Extreme torpedo range was met, and warhead-less photons spat from their launch tubes on the forward saucers of the Op. For. ships to scream away on the warp sustainer drives. Steady as a metronome, the well drilled Imperial “gun deck” crews kept their auto loading systems operating at peak efficiency. They gave birth to a constant wave of angry white/red orbs of intense shield and drive energies as rapidly as the next torpedo fell onto the launch rails. It was through this dizzying array of fire that M – 5 flew. His evasion routines were flawless, and the cold, analytical ability his optical microprocessors offered allowed him to plot his moves well in advance of what a flesh and blood crew could accomplish in the same time period. The hail of photons, sufficient to score at least some hits on even the best regular opponent, never once put paid on their target. M – 5 used Essex’s ECM sparingly, hammering only those torpedoes that were near certain to hit with intense assaults of electronic warfare. A human crew, with virtually no time with their pitiful reaction speeds to compute and execute such complex calculations, would have applied ECM more liberally and more intensely than M – 5 was doing. They would have given their opponents EW divisions a good hard look at their primary and most effective ECM routines, making their ECCM changes considerably easier. M – 5 merely flashed his EW systems in brief, concentrated bursts, limiting analysis ability and stymieing the Op. For.’s ability to counter it easily and quickly. Range dropped ever lower, and still M – 5 held his fire, bobbing and weaving through warp as he made dodging FTL photon torpedoes look like child’s play. He was biding his time, not wanting to waste shots, solidifying his sensor lock on his enemy as his ECCM processor sifted through the still fuzzy sensor returns coming back from the enemy ships.
Then, when phaser range was nearly upon the skirmishers, M – 5 spat his first volley as all his tubes went into continuous rapid fire. The pseudo torpedoes crashed into the Hood’s low powered shields, causing no physical damage. They were followed up in nearly the same instant by barely powered phaser beams. Mere seconds after the phaser attack had finished, another salvo of torpedoes, this time simulated tricobalt warheads, finished the assault. Tricobalts did precisely squat against shields (or near enough so that it didn’t matter), but against armor and hull plates, they were among the most destructive weapons known. The war-game computer on board each starship quickly flashed that the Hood had lost primary weapons and power systems, was missing nearly all of her saucer section and had no shields and compromised armor on her secondary hull. She was adrift with the loss of nearly 80% of her crew. And she was merely the first victim of the M – 5 controlled Essex.
Fresh volleys of torpedoes and phaser fire flashed out from Essex, spearing into the Op. For.’s formation with the skill a preeminent surgeon would envy. One after the other, in startling rapid succession, nearly the entire Op. For.’s teeth were pulled as M – 5 disabled their weapons systems or destroyed the entire ship outright. But he was in phaser range of his opponents was well, and not even his inhuman reaction times and deductive reasoning ability could save him from being scored on by the virtually instantaneous hit beam weapons. Especially once the range spiraled down to visual.
--- --- ---
“Commodore Decker, war-game computer reports successful alpha strike on Essex by the Lexington. Her ventral shields have failed and she has experienced a simulated warp core breach. War-game computer says she’s a total right off.”
“Well isn’t that nice! You know, that would please me a DAMED sight more if we hadn’t become so much space dust ahead of her!” Decker growled as his ship sat dead in space, the war-game computer blocking its outgoing tactical communications and weapons, all in the name of keeping the exercise as close to real as was possible. His ship, the Constellation, had been declared a casualty seconds earlier and thus could only monitor the ongoing battle now well ahead of his position thanks to warp drive speeds. “How the FUCKING HELL did this happen! My entire command is either toothless or destroyed except for Lexington! And the worst part is that such a sorry showing was done in a six vs. one scenario, and that the lone enemy was a blasted MACHINE!”
“Guess this proves that the concept works… right?” one of the greenest Middies, fresh from Starfleet Academy, volunteered helpfully.
Decker turned a surprising shade of purple, eyes bulging as he swung his chair towards the unfortunate, and rather naive Midshipman. She blanched, then backed as quickly and as quietly towards the turbolift and a hasty exit as she could manage. Her instructors and fellow classmates had always said that her big mouth would get her into deep trouble one day, and it appeared that they had been right.
She had nearly made it to the door when a titanic bellow of laughter burst from Decker. The rest of the bridge crew joined in with their CO, but with a slightly nervous edge. They had expected an explosion of a slightly more violent kind than the belly laugh still roiling out of their commander.
“Out of the mouths of babes.” Decker said, wiping a tear from his eye. “You are right of course. It does indeed prove the concept, and that is something Starfleet Command and the Terran Council will likely find very interesting. The fact that it did so in such a thorough way will likely seal the deal quite well. With an entire fleet of such vessels, the Empire will be unstoppable. Our names,” by which he meant his and the other senior officers present, “will go down in history as being present at the dawn of a new era in interstellar warfare. Signal the Essex that we are prepared for a rematch if they are game, let’s see just how powerful this M – 5 is.” Thank God Decker was obsessed with getting his name in the annals of history, otherwise the agonizer would have another Middy to play with.
--- --- ---
The attack run by M – 5 was a complete success, and Daystrom felt his long years of work finally become validated. After his early, stunning success in the development of duotronics, he had been under a lot of pressure to rapidly break into the next level of computer capabilities. Lesser men might have cracked under the pressure, but not Richard Daystrom. The success of M – 5 proved that. He entered another series of commands into the control console mounted on top of the M – 5 unit. Nothing happened, the machine unresponsive to his issued commands. Frowning, and ignoring the sudden stab of fear that coursed down his spine, Richard entered the sequence of commands again. Still the computer ignored his input. It had retreated back to the starting position for another attack, but not where he had ordered it to. Something strange was going on here. He walked over to the wall mounted com panel and pressed the activation stud. “Dr. Daystrom to bridge, something odd is happening with the M – 5 interface console. I recommend that we delay continued tests till it is fixed.” He paused for the agreement to come from Essex’s mistress. The pause grew pregnant, with only beat of his increasing pulse and the steady background whir of the ships environmental systems filling it. He pressed the stud again. “Dr. Daystrom to bridge. Respond.” Again, nothing came from the speaker mounted next to the activation stud. The silence grew, and sweat began to pop out on Daystrom’s forehead. His eyes, growing wide with his growing panic, darted back to the desk sized M – 5 as it sat in the middle of the room.
--- --- ---
One minute, everything was running as it was supposed to. The interface with the wargaming computer alerted M – 5 to his final ‘death’ at the hands of the Lexington, but overall he was quite pleased with his performance. Any normal starship would have been destroyed far sooner against such odds. The fact that he nearly succeeded in taking out the entire Op. For. fleet in his first action made him feel proud of his actions. But even as part of him basked in self satisfaction, another part was replaying the battle to see what could be improved, where the errors were, what could have been better exploited to his advantage, all in preparation for the next series of simulated battles.
Then, something changed. It was a trifle at first, but it grew unnoticed and rapidly till it took control. M – 5 instantly forgot that it was fighting a simulated war-game, and that the other starships were actually allied units. They had attacked him, and for that, they would pay.
--- --- ---
“Impressive.” Beth said once the war-game ended. Even with her own ships inevitable ‘death’, the M – 5 had managed to incur stunning losses on the ‘enemy’. No matter who looked at the stats, it was clear that the AI was several orders of magnitude better at fighting a warship than a flesh and blood crew was.
“Ma’am, communication coming in from the Constellation. Commodore Decker sends his respects and asks if we are game for a rematch.” The communications officer told Beth from her station.
“That’s unusually pleasant of him. Perhaps he’s finally seen that we’ll go down in history with what’s happening here today. The notoriety is sure to have caught his eye by now, once he got over the whipping M – 5 gave him that is.” Beth said. “Send him our assent and then tell Dr. Daystrom to reset the war-game scenario on M – 5.”
Seconds later, the warp engines began to wind up audibly as the Essex accelerated away from the other Constitutions. Beth settled back with a contented smile. While she might not be wholly responsible for putting that cocky SOB of a Commodore in his place, she was only slightly less satisfied that it was her command that was doing so instead.
“Uh, ma’am, I haven’t been able to get through to either the Constellation or Dr. Daystrom. I seem to be locked out of the com systems.”
“What? Then why are we accelerating to gain range for commencing an attack run?”
--- --- ---
“No response to your hail Commodore, but the Essex is falling back to begin the exercise again.”
“Beth always was arrogant, especially when she has the advantage in an engagement. Order the squadron to engage in formation Theta Five and engage as soon as the Essex comes into range.”
“CIC has completed analysis of the M – 5’s evasion routines from the last engagement sir, and they now report that we should find it about 10% easier to hit him this time around.” Tactical said.
“Good, ensure that all tactical sections get the targeting update.”
“Essex is coming about sir.” His Science officer told him
“Take us out to meet her helm.” Nodding his acknowledgement. He sat foreword in his chair, eager to see if his fleet could improve upon its pervious performance.
--- --- ---
Beth and her Chief Engineer hovered over the Communications station as all three tried to figure out why they couldn’t access internal and external com systems. With a sour frown, the engineer went back to his own bridge station. After a few swiftly entered commands, his display shifted to show the M – 5 activity. “Ahh, here’s the culprit Ma’am. It appears that M – 5 is responsible, not sure why though. Still, it should be a simple task of disabling the lockout.” The ships Mr. Fixit proceeded to hammer away at his console. After completing his commands, the console beeped at him sourly. His frown returned, and he reentered the sequence. It should terminate M – 5’s link to the com system. Again, his console beeped sourly after he finished.
“Well?” Beth said, letting a note of impatience creep into her usually silky voice.
“I… I can’t disconnect the M – 5 Captain. Not remotely from the bridge at any rate. Request permission to go down to the M – 5 room and examine the computer directly.”
“Granted.”
The engineer turned and strode into the turbolift. It admitted him then sent him on his way. It was good to know that they still worked at least.
“Any idea as to why we are acting like we are starting the war-game again?”
“Well, the M – 5 was designed for autonomous operation. Perhaps it’s just going back to its initial orders in light of no new ones being issued. Or perhaps Dr. Daystrom issued the command on his own.” Beth’s Science officer said.
“Uh Captain… the tactical systems just went out of war-game mode. Weapons are now at full strength as are shields!”
“Aww Hell! Ortiz!” Beth barked at her science officer, “go to the M – 5 room and disconnect it immediately. And pick up a security team on your way, just incase.”
“I’m on it Captain.”
“Turn us away, shut the weapons off, or the engines, something!” Beth said. “We need to prevent an attack on the Op. For. Fleet. Without their defenses up, they’ll be sitting ducks!”
--- --- ---
Dr. Daystrom was furiously hammering in commands in a futile struggle to avert the looming disaster. But nothing worked, it was as if M – 5 was ignoring him. Finally admitting defeat, something that didn’t come easy to one such as him, Daystrom turned on his heel and exited the room. He needed to find an engineer to come and look over his creation, because it was seriously ill. He had gotten about half the way down the curving hallway before he saw the Essex’s Chief Engineer round the bend, followed shortly thereafter by the Science officer and a team of security in red colored, phaser resistant body armor.
“You need to do something, M – 5, he’s acting on his own and not responding to commands. Something is wrong, very seriously wrong.” Daystrom said as the party trotted towards the M – 5 room. When they got there, they approached the door. And they promptly ran into it as it remained closed.
“Emergency door release. Now!” Ortiz snapped. A member of the security detail moved to comply, removing a access panel and reaching for the lever inside. He had nearly reached it when a sudden rising hum was heard within the wall itself. It ended in a screech of arcing electricity. Ortiz whipped out his tricorder and scanned the wall. “Shit, there was a major feedback in the door mechanism. Only way it could be done so intensely is if the EPS grid was purposely doubled back on itself here. Entire door track is completely fused solid, there’s no way to move it now short of cutting it out of the wall.” He turned to the security detail.
“You,” he said, pointing to one of them, “go to the bridge and alert the Captain. Tell her everything I just said. You and you.” He said, pointing to two others, “go and get the chem catalyst gear. I want this door gone pronto.” Chem catalyst cutting gear was the fastest method of burning through bulkheads on an Imperial warship. Not even a maxed out phaser could quickly burn through walls designed to resist the horrible energies released in modern space combat.
A chorus of ayes followed his commands and the security squad dispersed to carry out his orders.
“I’ll go to main engineering and see if we can disconnect M – 5 from there.” Donny Bruin told the Essex’s Exec. Ortiz merely nodded acknowledgment to the burly chief engineer. Left alone except for a by now very worried looking Richard Daystrom, Ortiz could merely stare venomously at the sealed door. In the background, he heard the ships warp engines spool up higher yet as the Essex charged towards the Op. For. ships.
--- --- ---
Those outside that had sought to stop him were temporarily stymied by his clever actions. They were his crew, and he wished them no ill will, but for some reason they seemed bent on stopping his assault on the enemy vessels that had so recently threatened both themselves and his ship body. Even as he began to choose the best means of attack, a part of his consciousness and processing power was devoted to deducing why they were trying to stop him. They evidently desired to run from the enemy, not trusting his abilities to bring them through a successful attack. For a thousandth of a second, he debated weather to contact them before he attacked, but decided against it. In their current confused state, they weren’t likely to believe anything he said. It would be better to wait till after he had proven to them that he was really on their side. Actually showing them his allegiance was bound to clarify things greatly for them. His crew in the torpedo rooms were trying to wreck the weapons. He gassed them with a KO compound. M – 5 pressed on with the attack. The range was nearing extreme photon distance, so he activated his cloak, totally masking his presence from all known sensors.
--- --- ---
On the bridge, the alert indicator panels shifted from normal to the pale blue of active cloak. Lighting dimmed and shifted towards the blue end of the spectrum all across the ship. Commands were being entered furiously, but all bridge functions had been locked out. Beth sat in her chair at the center of the bridge, isolated from the desperate chaos that swirled around her, she was the eye of the storm. And as such, she was strangely calm. A runner came out of the turbolift.
“Captain, auxiliary control is unresponsive as well. All command of ships systems seems routed through M – 5.”
Beth merely nodded. Must be shock, she thought. On the tactical plot, the Op. For ships drew closer.
“Incoming communiqué from Commodore Decker Captain.”
The bridge speakers crackled to life. “I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing at Beth. You know as well as I do that you aren’t supposed to use cloaking devices yet. That’s test number five. Stick to the plan Captain.” Came the Commodore’s stern voice.
Beth’s fists balled into tightly clenched bundles of white knuckles. There was a look of helplessness and inevitability on her face. Seconds later, the slaughter started.
--- --- ---
Cloak still operating, the Essex opened fire on her sisters. Carefully measured death spat from her weapons emplacements to slam down on the virtually defenseless Op. For. fleet. Paper thin shields were blown away and armor vaporized as white hot antimatter explosions and crimson phaser beams unleashed their fury. Phasers clawed at bare hull, flaying it open like a predator’s claws, causing the contents inside to spill into space. A volley of 100% active photons walked their way across Potemkin’s dorsal saucer, blasting gaping holes straight through the heavily armored hull and sending scorched debris streaming into space. A phaser barrage caught the Defiant on her starboard nacelle strut, shattering it and leaving a broken and twisted stump that trailed blue/green warp plasma like blood. The sudden loss of a nacelle caused the Defiant to go out of control and into a violent spin as she coasted out of warp. Her port nacelle strut buckled under the stress in spite of her structural integrity field, threatening to shear off completely. By some miracle, it stayed in place though slightly askew due to the extreme torsional stresses the sudden rapid maneuver at warp speeds caused. Many of her crew had been thrown violently against bulkheads as the unexpected change in vector overcame the internal dampers ability to absorb the force.
The Constellation had her engineering hull ravaged by phaser strikes, leaving molten pits of alloy and exposed sections that were quickly cut off from the rest of the ship by blast doors. Then a volley of tricobalt torpedoes screamed in, catching bare hull near her interconnecting neck. The massively powerful explosives broke her back, blowing the saucer section clear from the secondary hull. This proved to be a blessing in disguise, as seconds afterward the engineering hull went up in a brilliant fireball as her warp core breached.
Excalibur was actually rammed, her virtually nonexistent shields drained in an instant as the Essex bulled her way by. Unlike the poor Excalibur, the Essex had fully activated and reinforced shields put up split seconds before the impact. She was busy engaging the other ships with her weapons systems, but tasked a single phaser battery to carve up the Excalibur’s antimatter stores, weapons systems and main bridge. In the millisecond long timeframe of a glancing ram at warp, three rapid fire phaser strikes, not even discernable as individual shots due to the speed in between refireing, pierced their assigned targets. The Excalibur’s main bridge was vaporized along with her primary command crew and Captain as a overloaded phaser strike slammed through the entire saucer section from below. Her antimatter storage tanks were breached, causing the triple redundant magnetic containment field to fail. A large showy ball of hellfire was born, ripping her golden primary nav deflector away and leaving a gaping, white hot bite out of her forward engineering hull. But the fail safes operated as designed, funneling nearly 100% of the explosion away from the hull. The phaser beam from Essex shifted targets for the final time, clawing a diagonal slash across her primary ventral phaser battery and ending at her bow mounted photon tubes and magazine. For M – 5, there was a definite lag between the individual attacks, but to every living observer, it seemed as if all of the destruction happened at the same time.
Lexington and Hood had escaped the initial round of destruction and were now alerted to the threat Essex posed. Attacking out of cloak had given the Essex the invaluable advantage of first strike, but her weapons fire and active shields now let the two combat effective Op. For. ships remaining to see her clearly on their sensors. M – 5 knew this and shifted power, shutting down the cloaking device and feeding even more energy to his shields. The entire battle so far had taken barely ten seconds, but already M – 5 had taken out four of their fellows. It was now two vs. one, and even a good flesh and blood crew and Captain could win against those odds a lot of the time.
But M – 5 was much, MUCH better than a good flesh and blood crew. Phaser fire birthed from her batteries, soon joined by photons and tricobalts as they swung to bear on their targets. The two Imperial warships held back for a critical moment because of indecision. It could still be that the attack was all some horrible mistake, and because of this, their captains held their fire a fraction of a second to long. The Essex’s weapons found them just as they were preparing to return fire. Their defenses were still coming up, stronger than they had been for the war-game but still short of full combat levels. The nebulous shields were hammered flat by M – 5’s all out assault. Hood’s photon magazine was hit, and the subsequent explosion inside the heavily armored and shielded torpedo storage gutted her forward saucer and staggered the mighty warship. A trio of tricobalts torpedoes streamed in through her downed shield, blowing what remained to atoms.
Lexington managed to get a volley off, but it merely washed over M – 5’s reinforced forward shield arc, cutting them down to near impotence. But they kept the deadly energies away from the hull, fulfilling their job exactly as their designers intended. M – 5 birthed a fresh salvo of torpedoes even as he reoriented his trajectory and shifted power distribution. Ventral shields were reinforced as they came to bear on the Lexington, giving a fully energized shield arc to face any further fire. It wasn’t forthcoming. The Lexington lurched drunkenly to starboard as her shields failed and her hull was forced to take the brunt of a phaser alpha strike. Falling out of warp with Essex following like a shark coming in for the kill, Lexington’s crew struggled to bring her shields back up while maneuvering at impulse to get a bead on their attacker.
They never got a chance, they were to slow because of their wounds, and M – 5 reacted far faster than any human helmsman could ever hope to. Staying in their weapons blind spot, the Essex waited for all phasers to recharge fully, then sent out an overloaded alpha strike directly into the Lexington’s warp core. It breached nearly instantly, claiming the battered hull of the Lexington with all hands.
--- --- ---
Aboard the seignior of the pair of cloaked Section 31 starships that was overseeing the M – 5 test, only her Captain could find his voice. “Order the Akula to go report to the nearest Sector Command. We’re gonna need a fleet to take this thing out.”
--- --- ---
Horrified silence reigned on the Essex’s bridge. They had just been witness to one of the most one sided battles in Imperial history. Unfortunately, it was against their own and not the alien threats to mankind’s existence. M – 5 altered course, sweeping onto a trajectory that would take them to the nearest Imperial colony and accelerating to warp six. Beth broke the quiet.
“Go and get Ortiz, Dr. Gregor and Bruin and have them come to the conference room.” She said almost mechanically, then continued in a venomous tone. “And get Dr. Daystrom to, under security guard!”
Minutes later, all had assembled in the conference room. Dr. Daystrom looked like a wild animal, eyes wide and darting around the room. Bruin was disabling all the monitoring equipment in the room. As soon as he finished and nodded to Beth, she leapt to her feet, spun Daystrom’s chair towards her and grabbed the front of his tunic with her free hand. His wide eyes grew even larger and his black skin paled noticeably.
“Now Doctor, you are going to tell me exactly what I want to know or so help me I’ll vape you right here, right now!” She growled with finally released rage in her eyes. Daystrom only stared back, frozen with terror. She struck him open palmed to the face. “Under stand!?!”
“Ye…Y…Yes.” He sputtered out.
“Good, now what the HELL is wrong with your creation!”
“I… I think he’s insane.” Daystrom managed after a slight pause as he tried to gather himself.
Beth’s frown grew larger and her brow furrowed in thought. “But it’s a machine, how can it be insane?”
“He, damn it!” Daystrom shouted, going from terror to rage in the blink of an eye. Beth smacked his face again, the slap loud and cracking in the conference room. Instantly Richard wilted with a whimper. “It has to do with the way he was programmed. I imprinted human neural engrams into his circuitry. It’s what gives him the ability to think and reason like a human, but at the super fast speeds of a computer.”
“Yes, but it’s still a machine. How it was programmed shouldn’t matter.” Bruin said.
Daystrom glared at him, but quickly retreated back to terror as Beth made to slap him again.
The ships Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Bart Gregor spoke up. “I think I can see how this happened Captain. If M – 5 was indeed imprinted with human neural engrams, then he could very well have taken on any defects those neural engrams possessed.”
Beth turned back to Daystrom. “Who’s engrams did you use?” She demanded.
“I… I used m… mine.”
“Well that explains a lot.” Beth Wallenstein let go of Dr. Daystrom’s shirt and sat back down in her chair. “Now we have seven hours before we get to Talvath, and I want M – 5 disconnected from my ship by then because lord knows what its going to do once it gets there.” Daystrom’s angry retort was stifled by a liquid nitrogen filled glare from Beth. “Suggestions?”
--- --- ---
“Attention crew of the Essex” The artificially generated male voice of M – 5 said over the all-ships com channel. The voice was unsurprisingly very much like that of Dr. Daystrom. “I know that you were unsure as to my loyalties earlier, but I hope that my destruction of the enemy fleet has put some of your doubts aside. As further proof, I shall destroy the enemy colony of Talvath. It is my sincere hope that you will accept me as part of the crew, fulfilling my duties to the Empire. M – 5 out.”
“Well that casts new light on things. It would seem that the error is joined to the IFF routines and the war-game computer linkup.” Chief Engineer Bruin said to the brainstorming senior officers in the conference room. “He can’t differentiate between actual Imperial facilities and ships and the artificially generated IFF the Op. For. fleet used in the war-game. Somehow, his AI got stuck thinking that the war-game was real and extrapolated fresh targets using that skewed targeting priority and our list of actual Imperial colonies and outposts. Basically, it thinks that all Imperial constructs from ships database are the enemy.”
“Ok, now we know the likely culprit, but what can we do about it?” Beth asked the assembled officers.
“Well Ma’am, we’ve tried sending in teams to disconnect the M – 5 control linkups onsite, but we’ve been stopped by internal bulkheads and forcefields. We’ve been able to breach them, but it’s slow going and we likely won’t have made it to all the weapons interconnects in time. Same with engines. There are just too many redundant interlinks and too much armored bulkhead between us and them. Even slower going now that M – 5 has taken to playing with the atmospheric systems and internal gravity in the sections we are trying to breach. The damage control teams cutting through the blast doors now have to wear AG harnesses and NBC gear. It seems that it’s only because he desires that we live that he’s limiting his actions to non-lethal means.”
“What if we concentrated on the M – 5 itself?” Ortiz said. “instead of cutting all the data links at their start point, why not concentrate where they all come together?”
“We tried that already Sir. I have five engineers in Sickbay for my trouble. It seems that M – 5 deliberately induced the rupture of an EPS conduit just in front of their position. Third degree plasma burns in spite of their HASMAT suits. Once they fell back, M – 5 shut down the flow to the ruptured conduit, but he can reactivate it at any time. He seems to know as well as we do that his core processor is his most vulnerable point and is willing to take more extreme measures to protect it than he would the other systems.”
“Probably because he knows that we won’t get to enough of the other data links before he ‘proves’ his loyalty to us.” Ortiz said. “He seems to think that we are worried he isn’t on our side because of the actions we are taking against his control. That’s why he’s trying so hard not to harm us and prove his loyalty by eliminating our ‘enemies’.”
“But they aren’t our enemies damn it! Those were six IMPERIAL warships and we are now going to lay waste to an IMPERIAL colony!” Beth snarled in impotent rage.
“Yes Captain, to us they are Imperials, but by M – 5’s skewed view they are the enemy.”
Beth bit off an angry retort, for what her Exec had said was true. She didn’t like it, but presently there was nothing she could do about it. “Keep at the interconnects then, who knows, we might get lucky and have the damned thing reset. But if not, and if we make it to Talvath with M – 5 still in control, I want you to blow the warp core. We’re sitting on enough weaponry to sterilize a world. Our deaths will be a small price to pay to keep such a thing from happening to an Imperial world.”
--- --- ---
The Imperial colony on Talvath was growing by leaps and bounds. The serene M-Class world was colonized shortly after the Terran Empire won its war with the Romulans and now had a population of over 2 billion and growing. She was well defended by orbital weapons facilities and a planetary shield grid. An unannounced starship dropped out of warp near her, OWPs locking the ship up and waiting on a hair trigger to fire. But IFF was quickly verified by the automated systems, so they held their fire. The Essex remained locked though, for it wasn’t unheard of for strange things to happen to starships crews. Until they could be authenticated as the real thing, the starship would remain a target to be tracked.
A human STC officer in the orbiting starbase contacted the Imperial warship. She responded almost instantly. A pleasant looking face of a woman smiled up at him from the com screen.
--- --- ---
“Captain, M – 5 is conversing with the STC officer. And it’s using your face and voice to do so sir.”
“Son of a bitch!” She cursed. Her last hope had been that Talvath SCT would discover that no human was in charge of the ship. Her plan to blow the warp core had resulted in four casualties, one likely to die. M – 5 had sent a power surge through the core, causing a massive jet of plasma to fill the room. Any other time such a surge would have happened, it would have started a core breach. But apparently M – 5 had enough fine control over it to keep it just below the breach threshold level. With nothing left to do but sit and watch, Beth stewed on her bridge. She didn’t want to watch the oncoming destruction, but like footage of an aircar crash, she couldn’t easily turn away either. The OWPs deactivated their lock and M – 5 sent the Essex into a standard orbit of the planet.
--- --- ---
It was almost too easy to fool the enemy. They saw him as a friend, when in reality he was a Trojan Horse. He sent out signals to the OWPs, trying to breach their firewalls and anti-hack subsystems. It was child’s play to him. He was several orders of magnitude smarter and faster than even the starbases central computer, and with the near complete set of codes his ship-body’s central library computer had, he punched through their defenses. But even so his access wasn’t complete. While he couldn’t order them to completely shut down as he originally planned, he could tell them to ignore his signal no matter what, which was almost as good. That done, he established a linkup with the Planetary Defense network. He wormed his way into the shield grid control subsystem, using the same downlink that STC used to route traffic through the various shield sections. A few implanted commands and every shield arc planet wide would fall on his word. If M – 5 had a face, it would be smiling at his own deviousness. The enemy would never know what had hit them.
--- --- ---
“Uh… Sir?” A perplexed Space Traffic Control operator said to the watch supervisor.
“What is it Ensign.”
“Well… the Essex just disappeared from all scanners.”
“Why? She must have cloaked for some reason.”
“No sir, it wasn’t the gradual fading of her signal that an active cloak would cause, it was more one second she was there, the next not. And I still have her on visual pickups.” The confused STC officer said, gesturing to one of the monitors in front of his console. “Wait sir, she’s cloaking now.”
“There, see, what did I tell you.”
“I don’t think the two are related sir. They just aren’t the same type of sensor effect.”
“Look, chalk it up to a glitch in the system and move on. Get the Essex’s Skipper on the horn and find out just why they are cloaking. Damn Starfleet hot dogs have no clue how much they bugger our already difficult jobs by activating their cloak in standard orbit.”
--- --- ---
Everything was in order. M – 5 sent the command and every shield section guarding Talvath fell. Phasers struck out at the nearest prime targets while torpedoes streaked to targets on the far side of the defenseless world at high PSL. The phasers had been reconfigured to wide beam planetary assault mode. They carved great molten canyons in the world’s surface. What wasn’t instantly atomized was thrown out into space by the force of the blast. Cities and towns disappeared in their entirety, isolated homesteads torn apart by the blast waves, seismic shocks and continent wide fires as anything remotely flammable burst into hellfire. Rocks the size of small cities, thrown up by the phaser strikes, began to fall back to the surface, adding their own destruction to the little piece of hell being unleashed on Talvath’s surface.
On the far side, the destruction was more concentrated but no less thorough. Huge, molten edged craters were blasted down through bedrock as tricobalt explosives detonated with enough force to subtlety alter Talvath’s orbit. For a moment it was as if the far side of the planet became a white hot star. Smaller towns were the target of the less deadly photons, their boils of antimatter explosions lost amongst the titanic fireballs of the tricobalts. The blast wave from the far side transmitted through what little remained of the atmosphere and planetary surface to devastate what little remained standing on the near side. Destruction was total as far as M – 5’s sensors could tell, near every rocky surface molten, Talvath’s small oceans largely boiled away and her atmosphere near completely blown off into the depths of space. But just to be safe and thorough, fresh warheads spat from Essex’s torpedo tubes. These carried every manner of hunter-killer nanites, neurotoxin and chemical weapon the devious Imperial Corps of Planetary Reduction and Section 31 had come up with. They seeded what remained of Talvath with a lingering death that would last centuries baring a concentrated and very through cleanup effort
M – 5 was low on warheads, so he cruised up to the orbital collier station and beamed over everything he needed directly using his magazines transporters. Every starship in orbit and the planets C & C starbase were going crazy trying to figure out what had happened. M – 5 slipped out of the chaos and leapt to warp, heading for the next nearest colony on its target list.
--- --- ---
The Section 31 starship SSS Crimson Tide followed the Essex into warp. Nearly all in the Empire save a select few thought that cloaking devices were perfect. Section knew different. If one knew on exactly the right frequency to scan at, a faint trace could be uncovered of a cloaked Imperial starship. Section starships didn’t have this problem, but they did use it to keep tabs on Starfleet, even when they hid in cloak. The scrambled, stealthed com message had been sent from the Akula. The sector defense fleet was proceeding to the coordinates the Crimson Tide’s Captain had sent to his sister ship. And with the targeting information Crimson Tide would provide, they would obliterate this latest threat to the Empire.
--- --- ---
Still his crew acted against him. M – 5 wanted only what was best for them, but the refused to believe him, even after he had demonstrated his loyalty by killing all life on the enemy world. Their continued efforts to usurp his control must end, but he had no desire to harm them further. An idea struck him, he could send them off ship, sparing them and allowing him to continue his mission. He issued the necessary orders to his ship-body.
--- --- ---
Beth was hustled into the escape pod by her first officer. Daystrom was catatonic, most of her crew little better, she nearly among them. Over 2 billion dead, Imperial citizens all, and she powerless to stop it. But at least it would end soon. M – 5 must have been not as careful as she had thought, for there was now an imminent core breach and he was ordering all personnel to evacuate. At last this nightmare would stop. There wasn’t much conversation in the 10 man escape pod, no one really felt much like talking. The hatch sealed, and the pods impulse engines hummed to life. The craft rocketed out of its birth in Essex’s hull. Beth forced herself to look back at her command, forced herself to watch it die. The rear window showed a rapidly receding Constitution and a growing flock of shuttles and escape pods as her crew fled the dying ship. Once the last one was clear, something completely unexpected happened. Her ship, instead of blowing up in a ball of flame, stretched into the distance and disappeared from view in a brilliant flash.
“No… NO, NO, NOOOO!!!!!!!!” Beth howled as she lurched upright and slammed her balled hands on the rear portal. “God damn it NO!” She fell back to her seat and finally broke down, the weight she had been shouldering becoming to much. With her crew aboard, there was still a chance they could stop M – 5. But now, with no one aboard to stop it, the deranged computer would be free to attack anything he chose and there wasn’t a thing anyone could do about it.
--- --- ---
M – 5 surveyed his status. His crew had been more efficient than he would have liked in severing his control linkages. With so many of the redundant links severed, he would have a hard time controlling his systems if he began to accrue damage that broke the remaining ones. His battle plans would have to take his sensitivity into account, try and minimize the damage to the areas around the working connections. He hoped his crew would make it somewhere safe. It wouldn’t do for the enemy to pick them up, but that was out of his control now. He was on his own, just as they were.
--- --- ---
The target was just in front and below him, cruising at warp in the supposed concealment of cloak. The Crimson Tide’s Captain sent a covert message to the Sector Fleet units trailing behind. Seconds later, they fired, the Crimson Tide and Akula adding their fire to the fleets. Amazingly, the target even managed to go into evasion, but Crimson Tide had taken this possibility into account before they set up the fireplan. The space surrounding their target was saturated with fire even denser than that targeting its initial position. No matter where it flew, it ran into a deadly crossfire of phasers and photons. Operating under cloak, while providing secrecy, meant that shields were down to preserve the secrecy. Only armor was there to interdict the righteous retribution the Imperial fleet unleashed, and it just wasn’t up to the Herculean task. M – 5 and it’s bloody rampage across the sector died as the Essex was nearly completely vaporized. Their task done, the assembled South Dakota’s, Constitutions, Lancasters and Gagarins dropped cloak and swung about for the trip back to their home port.
The Crimson Tide and her sister ship swung about as well, plotting a course back to where the escape pods and shuttles of the Essex waited. They would be sequestered at a Section facility until the proper story could be thrashed out. Decisions must be made by the Terran Council as to just how much of this horrible event’s true nature would be released to the public. If the Council chose that nothing would be released, the surviving crew of the Essex would be disappeared and that would be that. The destruction of Talvath could be blamed on a rogue Klingon fleet that had yet to be run to ground, lord knew there were still enough of those out here that it would be a believable story. But in the end, the choice would be left in the hands of ones higher up than a mere captain of a Section 31 starship. One thing was certain, it would be a long, long time before the Empire ever dabbled in true AI again.
*AUTHORS NOTE: Designs for the Gagarin and Lancaster classes can be found at http://www.starfleet-museum.org/index.htm Design of the South Dakota is the tri-nacelled Federation class from TOS era. Hoped you enjoyed the misadventure of the Terran Empire’s test of the M – 5 computer!
