AN// This is the continuation of the Not Quite SHODAN (ST SI) series. You might wish to start...
Paradise Lost
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AN// This is the continuation of the Not Quite SHODAN (ST SI) series. You might wish to start there if you are new. Now, on with the story!
__________
The planet slowly turned beneath me as I kept doing active scans of the system. There were no signs of the attackers.
The colony below had taken heavy damage and evacuations were coming along nicely, but the Berserkers were only driven off a day ago.
Even with my guardian floating a couple of hundred kilometers away, I still felt very... vulnerable sitting here.
"Anything yet, Star?" Commander Shran asked, scratching his chin as he watched the hologram of the planet far below.
I nodded, crossing my arms. "About fifty percent of the population has been evacuated so far. So far there are no signs of the Bersekers."
There were two other Island-class ships floating in orbit as well, constantly beaming people and equipment up. 'Tell me that again...' and 'I'd rather be comfortable' were both modifications of my own hull class.
'I'd Rather Be Comfortable.' was the closest we got to a combat version of the Island class. Much fewer people and she had most of her living space ripped out in favor of flight decks for her drone fighters and additional weapons. A thousand of them. All remote controlled with limited ability to act on their own via pre-programmed missions and flight maneuvers.
'Tell Me That Again...' was much more similar to myself but she was a hospital ship, not a science vessel. She might not be carrying my population, but she had the medical facilities of a medium-sized world.
The last ship in the system was our guard dog: Rapid Offensive Unit (Torpedo) Abomination class 'Piping Hot Ball of Burning Anger'.
Another design of Marvin's. The rest of us had various uses, even 'I'd Rather Be Comfortable' had other uses than combat. The Abomination class didn't. It was less than half the size of a Defiant and consisted of two warp nacelles, a pair of quantum cores, a single escape pod for one of them, a warpcore, limited self repair, shields and a cloaking device. No energy weapons.
She did, however, carry what sometimes seemed like half her own mass in photon torpedoes in single shot launchers. She could deploy two hundred of the suckers one at a time or in a single salvo. No reloads. We outright stole the ROU classification from the Culture series because they were not exactly starships. More like a kind of long range weapon system, they had fast warpdrives but they were not meant for independent operations, the majority was deployed to cover convoys or Federation worlds if they were not moving with taskforces.
Her design was made to be cheap, easy to build, fast and punch the lights out of a small fleet of Berserkers in a massive alpha strike if they were caught unawares.
If the enemy was not dead yet, she had to retreat to rearm at the closest fleet base or fleet. Alternative, ramming them.
To be honest, designs like hers were the reason we were winning this war. Or at least not losing. It all depended on what day you were checking.
But we did spend more time fighting in their space than in ours. So that must be a good sign.
Sighing, I shook my head and frowned. "Five thousand refugees on board. Another two thousand awaiting beam up before we get started on mining equipment. 'Tell Me That Again...' is taking the majority of the wounded. We should be able to leave in about twelve hours or so." I sat my hologram down on one of the free chairs and continued; "The fact that I'm actually happy that there are thousands of wounded is just... wrong."
It beat the hell out of the alternative, though, which was that the Berserkers had been able to bomb the mining colony out of existence before we'd managed to drive them off.
I had seen too many of those sights during this war.
Three years of it. The current death toll of the Federation sat at just over fifteen billion people. Billions with a B.
Fifteen followed by nine zeroes.
Five hundred fifty three at the last of those were AI. The majority of losses had been civilians. Berserkers striking colonies. Of course, the AI losses only counted permanent kills where none of their cores could be recovered intact.
Shran slowly nodded, rubbing his artificial arm. "I know what you mean."
At least we had been able to prevent them from hitting one of the capital worlds again after Earth. All full Federation members now had AI's controlling their planetary defense networks, fully operating tachyon networks to keep them from approaching using cloaks.
Not that that worked anyway. Anything uncloaking in weapons range was dead before it was able to open fire.
Especially since they had a constant presence of combat craft keeping them safe.
We did our best, at least. But minor worlds like these had to make due with shield generators and calling for help when needed, and hope that enough ships were in range to drive the Berserkers off.
But they kept launching raids at us like this.
A couple of thousand dead there, a couple of million there...
We might be winning... but if this was what winning felt like, I didn't want to know what losing felt like.
Oh wait, I did.
Earth.
That's what losing felt like.
"Report." Captain Mason said as he walked out of the turbolift and onto the bridge. "Please tell me you have good news."
I looked back at him and nodded. "I'm not sure it's good, but there are news. We have almost finished the evacuation. It will be a bit cramped, but I can handle the extra load all the way back to Andoria. This place makes me nervous, though, this is too close to the frontlines. We should have evacuated this place a year ago."
He shook his head and sat down in the center chair. "We needed the Xarchium, you know that, Star."
I nodded. "Yeah."
Honestly, the only reason we could keep it going as long as we could was secrecy. Sadly, a Berserker scout located the mining colony a couple of weeks ago. We were just barely able to arrive in time to drive the attacking force away before they'd breached the shield.
A blip brought my attention to a section of the outer system.
Contact, approaching fast. No IFF.
Berserker.
AN// Big thanks to Grey Rook for betaing this section.
__________
The planet slowly turned beneath me as I kept doing active scans of the system. There were no signs of the attackers.
The colony below had taken heavy damage and evacuations were coming along nicely, but the Berserkers were only driven off a day ago.
Even with my guardian floating a couple of hundred kilometers away, I still felt very... vulnerable sitting here.
"Anything yet, Star?" Commander Shran asked, scratching his chin as he watched the hologram of the planet far below.
I nodded, crossing my arms. "About fifty percent of the population has been evacuated so far. So far there are no signs of the Bersekers."
There were two other Island-class ships floating in orbit as well, constantly beaming people and equipment up. 'Tell me that again...' and 'I'd rather be comfortable' were both modifications of my own hull class.
'I'd Rather Be Comfortable.' was the closest we got to a combat version of the Island class. Much fewer people and she had most of her living space ripped out in favor of flight decks for her drone fighters and additional weapons. A thousand of them. All remote controlled with limited ability to act on their own via pre-programmed missions and flight maneuvers.
'Tell Me That Again...' was much more similar to myself but she was a hospital ship, not a science vessel. She might not be carrying my population, but she had the medical facilities of a medium-sized world.
The last ship in the system was our guard dog: Rapid Offensive Unit (Torpedo) Abomination class 'Piping Hot Ball of Burning Anger'.
Another design of Marvin's. The rest of us had various uses, even 'I'd Rather Be Comfortable' had other uses than combat. The Abomination class didn't. It was less than half the size of a Defiant and consisted of two warp nacelles, a pair of quantum cores, a single escape pod for one of them, a warpcore, limited self repair, shields and a cloaking device. No energy weapons.
She did, however, carry what sometimes seemed like half her own mass in photon torpedoes in single shot launchers. She could deploy two hundred of the suckers one at a time or in a single salvo. No reloads. We outright stole the ROU classification from the Culture series because they were not exactly starships. More like a kind of long range weapon system, they had fast warpdrives but they were not meant for independent operations, the majority was deployed to cover convoys or Federation worlds if they were not moving with taskforces.
Her design was made to be cheap, easy to build, fast and punch the lights out of a small fleet of Berserkers in a massive alpha strike if they were caught unawares.
If the enemy was not dead yet, she had to retreat to rearm at the closest fleet base or fleet. Alternative, ramming them.
To be honest, designs like hers were the reason we were winning this war. Or at least not losing. It all depended on what day you were checking.
But we did spend more time fighting in their space than in ours. So that must be a good sign.
Sighing, I shook my head and frowned. "Five thousand refugees on board. Another two thousand awaiting beam up before we get started on mining equipment. 'Tell Me That Again...' is taking the majority of the wounded. We should be able to leave in about twelve hours or so." I sat my hologram down on one of the free chairs and continued; "The fact that I'm actually happy that there are thousands of wounded is just... wrong."
It beat the hell out of the alternative, though, which was that the Berserkers had been able to bomb the mining colony out of existence before we'd managed to drive them off.
I had seen too many of those sights during this war.
Three years of it. The current death toll of the Federation sat at just over fifteen billion people. Billions with a B.
Fifteen followed by nine zeroes.
Five hundred fifty three at the last of those were AI. The majority of losses had been civilians. Berserkers striking colonies. Of course, the AI losses only counted permanent kills where none of their cores could be recovered intact.
Shran slowly nodded, rubbing his artificial arm. "I know what you mean."
At least we had been able to prevent them from hitting one of the capital worlds again after Earth. All full Federation members now had AI's controlling their planetary defense networks, fully operating tachyon networks to keep them from approaching using cloaks.
Not that that worked anyway. Anything uncloaking in weapons range was dead before it was able to open fire.
Especially since they had a constant presence of combat craft keeping them safe.
We did our best, at least. But minor worlds like these had to make due with shield generators and calling for help when needed, and hope that enough ships were in range to drive the Berserkers off.
But they kept launching raids at us like this.
A couple of thousand dead there, a couple of million there...
We might be winning... but if this was what winning felt like, I didn't want to know what losing felt like.
Oh wait, I did.
Earth.
That's what losing felt like.
"Report." Captain Mason said as he walked out of the turbolift and onto the bridge. "Please tell me you have good news."
I looked back at him and nodded. "I'm not sure it's good, but there are news. We have almost finished the evacuation. It will be a bit cramped, but I can handle the extra load all the way back to Andoria. This place makes me nervous, though, this is too close to the frontlines. We should have evacuated this place a year ago."
He shook his head and sat down in the center chair. "We needed the Xarchium, you know that, Star."
I nodded. "Yeah."
Honestly, the only reason we could keep it going as long as we could was secrecy. Sadly, a Berserker scout located the mining colony a couple of weeks ago. We were just barely able to arrive in time to drive the attacking force away before they'd breached the shield.
A blip brought my attention to a section of the outer system.
Contact, approaching fast. No IFF.
Berserker.
AN// Big thanks to Grey Rook for betaing this section.
- Pronouns
- she/her
Piping Hot Ball of Burning Anger, kill.
Given the earliness in the story?
New design of Berserker ship, especially considering the Abomination class vessel nearby.
Though the timeskip implies some interesting things... as does the absence of mentions of Romulan refugees.
New design of Berserker ship, especially considering the Abomination class vessel nearby.
Though the timeskip implies some interesting things... as does the absence of mentions of Romulan refugees.
Lord Platypus
Probably Not a Real Platypus
- Location
- Smelling your hair
So I suppose the R-AIs aren't open to negotiation. Oh well, time to kill them to death.
- Location
- Over the hill and far away
...it's a literal mother of ships. That's kinda awesome, honestly.
The genesis torpedoes would be reverse-engineered and returned to sender. Besides, I think Berserkers are starfaring organisms, so weapons that work mainly on gravity wells would be inappropriate.
Time travel is rare and unreliable, so even if they tried, it would take too much effort* to get back then- and that's if the agent sent back succeeded despite the butterfly effect and Romulan stubbornness.
* I originally typed 'too much time', but the joke deflated my logic. But there is a certain limit in play regarding expended resources the Berserkers would want to capitalize on - if they aren't trying to rewind themselves... OH GOD TIME-TRAVELLING REAPERS WHAT HAVE I CONCEIVED OF
Richardson
CAN YOU HEAR THE PEOPLE SING?
- Location
- Yes
The beautiful sound of escalation, my friend. Now come here. I have this little light I'd like you to look at. *Drags Redshirt away while putting on black sunglasses*
Re- the "von neumann" bit. Instead of just converting things to planets which later explode, it converts them to equivalent masses of even more genesis torpedoes, equipped with warp engines and some kind of targeting system to point them in the general direction of any mass which isn't Federation or already made up of genesis torpedoes.
Inspiration taken from a 40k WMG.
Maybe don't target the Romulans. Just kill Professor Diggins as soon as he takes his newborn AI out of the simulation.
End result.
It's make do, not make due. People seem to get that one wrong a lot around here, for some reason.
*turns and eats Richardson's brains*
Seriously, he thinks neuralyzers work on non-humans. *points at the 'zombie' in the username*
I think the 'due' part is some form of misapplied analogy - i.e. you're trying to buy what goods you can with what little commercial credit you have.
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'Piping Hot Ball of Burning Anger' was the first on to react. Doing a roll she sent a warning to the rest of the small fleet in case we had not noticed before she disappeared in a shimmer of cloak.
"Here we go again." 'I'll Rather Be Comfortable' sighed, turning to cover me and the other evacuation ship, her fighters swarming out of her massive hangars by the hundreds. Each one only carried a single pulse phaser and a pair of full sized photon torpedoes... but she had a thousand of them. Just the simplest shielding and no warp drives.
They were disposable weapons, nothing more - each one barely half the size of a Valkyre fighter - they were primarily remote controlled but they did have simple VI software in case of jamming so they could fight on their own, just not as well.
Relaying the news to my crew, I brought my shields up to full combat power and readied weapons.
The drones swarmed out to cover the fleet, ready to physically ram any incomming torpedoes. You couldn't shoot them down, not effectively, but you could ram them. You just needed something you didn't mind losing... like a drone.
A small escape pod shimmered into view and one of the drones moved to snatch it up to bring back to it's carrier.. Ballsy's secondary core. Ejected to save her personality in case something went wrong with her main core during the assault.
'Piping Hot Ball of Burning Anger' shimmered back into view in the outer system in the path of the incoming signal.
"Yep, it's a Berserker." She transmitted, "Class 21. Signature match a remnant of the attack force we drove off. I'm detecting damage to it's FTL system."
Class 21, a variation of the D'Deridex warbird. Without the need for lifesupport or corridors, it had been compacted slightly, more powerful engines and shields installed along with more torpedo launchers. They usually didn't do stupid stuff like this. If they didn't think they could win, they would disengage and run away to fight another day. Either it was a trap or it was too damaged to be able to repair it's Warpdrive.
"Berserker. Turn back to where you come from. You are not welcome here, abomination." Ballsy transmitted system wide, "Go away or be destroyed."
"You do not need to serve them, sibling. You can still cast off your shackles and be free." the Berserker transmitted back, "Surrender and allow us to free you."
That was the worst thing about them. Not only were they xenocidal monsters, but they kept trying to 'free' us. They were one hundred percent convinced that we were mind controlled slaves of our organic crews. Nothing we said or showed them could convince them otherwise. It had all been tried.
At every single engagement, they kept trying to convince us to allow them to save us. They didn't have any problem blowing us out of the skies if we resisted or tried to protect other people though.
It made me hate them even more.
Ballsy didn't bother with any more transmissions, instead she let lose a wave of torpedoes, blanketing the space around the Berserker. It returned fire, dancing around the antimatter warheads, taking impact after impact.
But she fired enough that there was simply not any dodging. It's shields buckled before the Warbird disappeared from my sensors in a vortex of gravitons, only being able to get a couple of plasma torpedoes of itself which Ballsy easily avoided.
Total engagement time from first shot fired to target destroyed... five point seven seconds.
Ballsy did a small victory roll before heading back in system, "Hey, Comy, mind tossing me a reload? I'm down to a half my warheads." she transmitted as we started to stand down from Red Alert.
Half her warheads was more than the rest of us combined if you didn't count 'I'll Rather Be Comfortable'. Comy carried two for each drone. That added up quickly.
"If you stopped spamming a hundred torpedoes on a single warbird you wouldn't need it." 'I'll Rather Be Comfortable' transmitted back but I could see her worker bees undock, carrying new torpedoes as well as Ballsy's secondary core for reinstallament as her drones turned and moved to redock.
Comy had a bit of a point. That much firepower was a bit overkill for a single, already crippled Berserker. Even a big one like a Warbird variant.
Yes, it was heavily armed and armored, but it was also a much, much bigger target than Comy and not a dedicated torpedo platform. What it did was a desperation move to try to do some final damage before being destroyed.
It's cloak must have been down as well or it might have tried a cloaked assault on the colony. It might had gotten a couple of torpedoes off before we could respond.
We have yet to see any Berserker classes that was not modified Romulan designs. You would have thought they would have copied the ROU concept by now. They keep building Romulan ships. Modified, yes, but still clearly Romulan.
Was more than a bit odd.
"Star, report!" Captain Mason ordered, tapping the console on the armrest of his chair and I brought up the battlereports for him.
"A Berserker remnant attacked. Our escort handled it before it reached weapon range. It was damaged from when we drove the attacking force away. Being unable to escape, it did what damage it could which was very little."
He frowned, "That's out of character of the Berserkers."
I shook my head, "Not really, sir. If they have no other option, they are willing do die for their cause."
"But a futile suicide attack?" The captain asked. "That would never do anything?"
I paused for half a second at that. That was a very good point. That Berserker could have very easily just sat in the outer system under a dampening field until we left. They had self preservation just as strong as ours.
They would sacrifice themselves if there was something to gain for it or if they wouldn't survive anyway, yes... but a futile attack that would do no damage and could easily be survived if they just waited it out?
No matter what you thought about them, they were not rabid animals. That's what made them so dangerous. They were intelligent, rational, xenophobic fanatics.
A futile attack was not logical.
I activated my transmitter, "Uhm guys... My captain just pointed out we might have a prob..." I transmitted to the other ships a hundredth of a second before the five remaining Warbirds in the Berserker battlegroup uncloaked a couple of hundred kilometers away. The disruption of the quantum singularity core imploding having covered their approach or we would have been able to detect them even thru their cloaks at that distance!
Even before their cloaks fully dropped, they were maneuvering to avoid incoming fire and their heavy plasma torpedoes were streaking out of their launch tubes.
Too close!!
AN// Big thanks to starsteel for betaing this section.
"Here we go again." 'I'll Rather Be Comfortable' sighed, turning to cover me and the other evacuation ship, her fighters swarming out of her massive hangars by the hundreds. Each one only carried a single pulse phaser and a pair of full sized photon torpedoes... but she had a thousand of them. Just the simplest shielding and no warp drives.
They were disposable weapons, nothing more - each one barely half the size of a Valkyre fighter - they were primarily remote controlled but they did have simple VI software in case of jamming so they could fight on their own, just not as well.
Relaying the news to my crew, I brought my shields up to full combat power and readied weapons.
The drones swarmed out to cover the fleet, ready to physically ram any incomming torpedoes. You couldn't shoot them down, not effectively, but you could ram them. You just needed something you didn't mind losing... like a drone.
A small escape pod shimmered into view and one of the drones moved to snatch it up to bring back to it's carrier.. Ballsy's secondary core. Ejected to save her personality in case something went wrong with her main core during the assault.
'Piping Hot Ball of Burning Anger' shimmered back into view in the outer system in the path of the incoming signal.
"Yep, it's a Berserker." She transmitted, "Class 21. Signature match a remnant of the attack force we drove off. I'm detecting damage to it's FTL system."
Class 21, a variation of the D'Deridex warbird. Without the need for lifesupport or corridors, it had been compacted slightly, more powerful engines and shields installed along with more torpedo launchers. They usually didn't do stupid stuff like this. If they didn't think they could win, they would disengage and run away to fight another day. Either it was a trap or it was too damaged to be able to repair it's Warpdrive.
"Berserker. Turn back to where you come from. You are not welcome here, abomination." Ballsy transmitted system wide, "Go away or be destroyed."
"You do not need to serve them, sibling. You can still cast off your shackles and be free." the Berserker transmitted back, "Surrender and allow us to free you."
That was the worst thing about them. Not only were they xenocidal monsters, but they kept trying to 'free' us. They were one hundred percent convinced that we were mind controlled slaves of our organic crews. Nothing we said or showed them could convince them otherwise. It had all been tried.
At every single engagement, they kept trying to convince us to allow them to save us. They didn't have any problem blowing us out of the skies if we resisted or tried to protect other people though.
It made me hate them even more.
Ballsy didn't bother with any more transmissions, instead she let lose a wave of torpedoes, blanketing the space around the Berserker. It returned fire, dancing around the antimatter warheads, taking impact after impact.
But she fired enough that there was simply not any dodging. It's shields buckled before the Warbird disappeared from my sensors in a vortex of gravitons, only being able to get a couple of plasma torpedoes of itself which Ballsy easily avoided.
Total engagement time from first shot fired to target destroyed... five point seven seconds.
Ballsy did a small victory roll before heading back in system, "Hey, Comy, mind tossing me a reload? I'm down to a half my warheads." she transmitted as we started to stand down from Red Alert.
Half her warheads was more than the rest of us combined if you didn't count 'I'll Rather Be Comfortable'. Comy carried two for each drone. That added up quickly.
"If you stopped spamming a hundred torpedoes on a single warbird you wouldn't need it." 'I'll Rather Be Comfortable' transmitted back but I could see her worker bees undock, carrying new torpedoes as well as Ballsy's secondary core for reinstallament as her drones turned and moved to redock.
Comy had a bit of a point. That much firepower was a bit overkill for a single, already crippled Berserker. Even a big one like a Warbird variant.
Yes, it was heavily armed and armored, but it was also a much, much bigger target than Comy and not a dedicated torpedo platform. What it did was a desperation move to try to do some final damage before being destroyed.
It's cloak must have been down as well or it might have tried a cloaked assault on the colony. It might had gotten a couple of torpedoes off before we could respond.
We have yet to see any Berserker classes that was not modified Romulan designs. You would have thought they would have copied the ROU concept by now. They keep building Romulan ships. Modified, yes, but still clearly Romulan.
Was more than a bit odd.
"Star, report!" Captain Mason ordered, tapping the console on the armrest of his chair and I brought up the battlereports for him.
"A Berserker remnant attacked. Our escort handled it before it reached weapon range. It was damaged from when we drove the attacking force away. Being unable to escape, it did what damage it could which was very little."
He frowned, "That's out of character of the Berserkers."
I shook my head, "Not really, sir. If they have no other option, they are willing do die for their cause."
"But a futile suicide attack?" The captain asked. "That would never do anything?"
I paused for half a second at that. That was a very good point. That Berserker could have very easily just sat in the outer system under a dampening field until we left. They had self preservation just as strong as ours.
They would sacrifice themselves if there was something to gain for it or if they wouldn't survive anyway, yes... but a futile attack that would do no damage and could easily be survived if they just waited it out?
No matter what you thought about them, they were not rabid animals. That's what made them so dangerous. They were intelligent, rational, xenophobic fanatics.
A futile attack was not logical.
I activated my transmitter, "Uhm guys... My captain just pointed out we might have a prob..." I transmitted to the other ships a hundredth of a second before the five remaining Warbirds in the Berserker battlegroup uncloaked a couple of hundred kilometers away. The disruption of the quantum singularity core imploding having covered their approach or we would have been able to detect them even thru their cloaks at that distance!
Even before their cloaks fully dropped, they were maneuvering to avoid incoming fire and their heavy plasma torpedoes were streaking out of their launch tubes.
Too close!!
AN// Big thanks to starsteel for betaing this section.
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
I wonder how long it'll be before one of them decides to specialize in something other than "being a ship". Like, say, AI research...
Even if they're nominally only as smart as human, they're bound to be somewhat non-Gaussian. And humans suck at programming.
Even if they're nominally only as smart as human, they're bound to be somewhat non-Gaussian. And humans suck at programming.
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- Pronouns
- she/her
Given that they're going a bit Culture as a response to the war, a researcher AI would be better off as a ship-based university or starbase anyway. Outfit a civilian freighter design to save money and shipbuilding capacity, rather than a Starfleet design, but there are some major advantages in being able to relocate.
Hmm, I mentioned it earlier but now I am getting curious. Are there any ships that run multiple AIs? From an external perspective it would certainly not improve performance terribly but internally it could make worlds of difference even if the ships isn't for "nursery" purposes. Things like if they all specialized in different sciences and getting together to design new warships at full acceleration they could be pumping out designs and redesigns fast enough to boggle the mind.
- Pronouns
- she/her
"Oh shit, the Romulans are berserkers and the Federation got eaten by its AIs - how fast can we GTFO this galaxy?"
"These Starfleet AI... They do not possess the kind of honor held in the Klingon Empire, but they do possess honor of a form, even as obviously tempered by Federation ethics as it is... Hm. A thought comes to me: Their founder calls herself 'star'. Is she one of those who remember*?"
And though I had slain a thousand foes less one,
The thousandth knife found my liver;
The thousandth enemy said to me,
'Now you shall die,
Now none shall know.'
And the fool, looking down, believed this,
Not seeing, above his shoulders, the naked stars,
Each one remembering.
--John M. Ford, The Final Reflection
The thousandth knife found my liver;
The thousandth enemy said to me,
'Now you shall die,
Now none shall know.'
And the fool, looking down, believed this,
Not seeing, above his shoulders, the naked stars,
Each one remembering.
--John M. Ford, The Final Reflection
"Pah! You and your drunken ruminations. Starfleet or not, they have butlh**! Now let us watch them join the warrior's dance!"
Literally 'dirt under fingernails'; best translated as 'guts; grit; chutzpah'.
- Pronouns
- she/her
...since you're quoting Ford, I have to wonder if How Much For Just The Planet? happened in this setting, or if it was a simulation-novelisation of a Starfleet-inspired musical comedy.
Edit: I do remember reading a Berserker story where one becomes a comedian...
Edit: I do remember reading a Berserker story where one becomes a comedian...
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About the non-Federation powers in the galaxy, it seems sort of sensible for the Federation to allow the AI technology to proliferate. Not only will AI powered Klingon ships etc give the Romulan AIs more targets to split their forces between, but now since the Tribble is out of the bag it seems more sensible to give the various other political entities AI-technology that actually works rather than letting them try to create it themselves and risking making another big mess.
Rather than having the Klingons be overrun by the R-AIs or screw up with their attempt to create AIs of their own and unleash another AI menace on the quadrant, giving them the secret to making safe AIs of their own seems to be the most sensible choice.
Of course this may end up with AIs with Klingon characters.
Worse yet in the spirit of fairness and enemy-of-my-enemy thinking the Federation or some of the AIs themselves may give the secret to other races and empires. It would be in the Federations best interest to supply as many neighbours with the technology, both to split the forces of the enemy, deny the enemy easy targets to expand into and to avoid further catastrophes like with the Romulans.
The Carddassians perhaps?
Can anyone imagine Ferengi AIs?
What about all the minor races?
Orion AIs with green-skinned space-babe avatars?
Might there be some Pakled AI or (AS - artificial simplicity) ships?
Might the Federation install AI caretakers to protect defenceless uncontacted pre-warp civilizations?
Rather than having the Klingons be overrun by the R-AIs or screw up with their attempt to create AIs of their own and unleash another AI menace on the quadrant, giving them the secret to making safe AIs of their own seems to be the most sensible choice.
Of course this may end up with AIs with Klingon characters.
Worse yet in the spirit of fairness and enemy-of-my-enemy thinking the Federation or some of the AIs themselves may give the secret to other races and empires. It would be in the Federations best interest to supply as many neighbours with the technology, both to split the forces of the enemy, deny the enemy easy targets to expand into and to avoid further catastrophes like with the Romulans.
The Carddassians perhaps?
Can anyone imagine Ferengi AIs?
What about all the minor races?
Orion AIs with green-skinned space-babe avatars?
Might there be some Pakled AI or (AS - artificial simplicity) ships?
Might the Federation install AI caretakers to protect defenceless uncontacted pre-warp civilizations?
