“The bomb lives only as it is falling.”

Iain Banks. Use of Weapons. 1990

Torpedo 72901c12 was a MK 48 MOD5 ADCAP (Advanced Capability) munition that had been born only some three hours previously.

A standard configuration casing, possessing the typical smooth black -lozenge shape that was ubiquitous to be able to conform all Starfleet – designed standard – gauge torpedo  -launcher tube assemblies, Torpedo 72901c12 had emerged from the industrial replicators alongside it’s siblings and like most new-born – it was left wanting and wondering who it really was and what was to be the purpose of its existence?

Most of those that shared its limited production run went on to become Photon torpedoes – the venerable workaday workhorse of the Starfleet arsenal that with its matter/antimatter warhead that would streak forth on its tiny warp – capable propulsion system and effectively relay the Federation’s extreme displeasure at whatever it happened to be aimed at, at the time.

Others still would go on to realize their potential as the potent Quantum torpedo – the very cutting edge of their kind – their deadly payload – at its heart a similar matter/antimatter warhead, but there the similarity with its purely photonic cousin ended. Relying upon rapid energy extraction from zero -point vacuum, enshrouding the warhead was an 11-dimensional space-time membrane, twisted into a Genus-1 topology string, housed inside the ultraclean vacuum of a 1.38-meter-long teardrop shaped zero-point field reaction chamber.

The net result was as different as night and day – with a much bigger emphasis on the brighter – aspects of ‘day’, as it were.

No, neither of these impressive yet incandescently doomed futures awaited Torpedo 72901c12.

For aboard the ship where she had come into being, was a man being held against his will.

Some might say (and they would be decidedly right) that this man was one of the most dangerous people in the entire Galaxy. This is ostensibly why he had been locked away by a succession of jailors and was likely to remain so indefinitely if the Galaxy had any say in the matter.

What made this man so dangerous, however, wasn’t just what he could do or what he had done (and some of those things were just too awful to recount), because at the end of the day bad people can just direct other bad people to do bad things, so locking up just one bad person is a concept that is always doomed to failure.

No, what made this particular man so dangerous that people had to know where he was at all times, was his ideas.

The man had been born without the moral certitude that was typical to most civilized persons. He was bereft of the capacity for guilt and even the most liberal of ship’s councilors would cheerfully concede defeat and categorize the man as a textbook – sociopath with no chance of redemption.

So it was that one of the ideas that the man had had, was put into the heart of Torpedo 72901c12 and thus it gained a unique purpose that set it completely apart from its siblings.

Of course, it felt no warm rush of pride for being chosen so, to be apart and individual amongst a nameless, faceless magazine of proles. It was a torpedo, a weapon. It felt nothing. It cared for nothing. It would fulfil its purpose without grace nor judgement and when its time came it would go on its way and simply do the thing it had been designed to do.

Leave the moral – quandaries for those with their fingers on the launch – button.

And of course, after a short period of waiting, snug against the smooth, cold carapaces of its fellow torpedoes, the extractor assembly gently lifted it from its cradle and it effortlessly slid along it’s slick maglev track and entered the tube, where it would finally be given birth to and take flight.

And find out what it was truly made to be.

A moment of tremendous acceleration as it blurred down the intimate passage of the torpedo – tube and then Torpedo 72901c12 issued forth from the starboard burst – launcher of the Odyssey in a neat linear progression, following a bright necklace of destruction that was the more ‘conventional’ of its brothers and sisters – all lancing enthusiastically away towards their target.

Last in the train, Torpedo 72901c12s fate would not be to impact upon the massed and arrayed concentric layers of gauzy field enclosure that made up the powerful defensive shields of their target – a broad kilometer long disc that was rapidly approaching.

No, it’s Photonic – kin would serve the role of attrition, degrading the efficacy of those shields as one by one, lemming – like, they sacrificed their payloads and weakened the ability of the Blackout Platform to retain a stable and uniform shield harmonic to protect the platform from harm.

Then, like shining blue knights, the proceeding Quantum torpedoes in their van would exploit that weakness and detonate their own photon torpedo warheads. Enriched with fluoronetic vapor, inside the torpedo powering a continuum distortion emitter – the expansion of the membrane would pinch it out of the background vacuum – the membrane forming into subatomic particles accompanied by a high-explosive energy release.

Which would open the way for Torpedo 72901c12s to decisively penetrate the shielding of the Vaadwaur platform and deliver its own, wholly unique, payload.

This is why, apart from the countless torpedoes in the spread that even now flashed past the underside of the gargantuan Gaul-class Juggernaut, that kept station at the mouth of the singularity within which the platform was nestled, Torpedo 72901c12s was the only such torpedo that had been christened with its own name.

“Trojan Arrow.”

Slipping deftly through the rift torn in the Blackout Platform’s curtain wall of shielding, a countermeasures package secured in the nose of Torpedo 72901c12s activated and went to town – doing its thing.

Studded along the surface of the disc, banked arrays of point – defense cannons went about the merry – business of doing their thing, which was to acquire and pick off any object that had managed to penetrate the shield enclosure and do so with lethal precision.

Things like Torpedo 72901c12s.

The countermeasure package kept up finding things far more interesting for the Polaron – cannons to shoot at and a passive transmitter busied itself by helping the defensive screen target and destroy its fellow torpedoes in an act that, if they had been sentient, would have almost certainly been judged a shocking betrayal.

But form defines purpose and there were no hard feelings beside.

What was hard, incredibly hard in-fact, was the heavily re-enforced depleted triterium nose – cone of Torpedo 72901c12s, that was designed with the express purpose of protecting the remainder of its specialized payload from the extreme G – loading that would be imparted from the immense kinetic forces that would be generated when the casing physically slammed into the surface of the Blackout Platform and firmly wedged itself some feet within the wrecked hull-plating.

Which it promptly did.

The countermeasure suite subtly encouraged the point – defense cannons with the impression that Torpedo 72901c12s was, in fact, a dud and what poor manufacturing and quality control standards these Federation weaklings really did have etcetera and the cannons swiftly lost interest and swiveled away to continue fragging more attractive incoming.

It’s peculiar mission nearly complete, Torpedo 72901c12s had just one more magician’s trick to perform before the curtain came down on its short, but admittedly eventful time on stage.

Deep within its core, a system powered up and activated a miniaturized, but very powerful point – to – point Transport pattern – enhancer.

On the surface of the Vaadwaur Supremacy’s Blackout Platform, in a neat circle of real – estate that the defensive net of the Platform paradoxically was telling it’s turrets that was completely threat – free, the swirling golden miasma of concentrated beams of photonic energy began to focus and realize the forms of 18 separate figures, all clad in extremely capable-looking Hostile Encounter Suits.

Hazard Team Leader Lieutenant Keishara Dolan, crouched in a tight circle with her team, her mag – boots adhering to the warped – hull plating that was still cooling from the residual thermal transfer of energies from Torpedo 72901c12s arrest, trained her MKIVa Phase Carbine outwards and squirted a highly encrypted, tight – beam message back to the Flag Bridge of the far distant USS Hikaru Sulu, a message that simply read.

“We’re in.”