"And it turned out that if you dumped pure oxygen and kerosene into the combustion chamber the torpedo would travel at fairly high speed... just instantaneously in all directions at once. Disassembling itself and any nearby people with considerable enthusiasm."
"Explaining that this was entirely unacceptable behavior for a torpedo that was designed to smite the Emperor's enemies... didn't really tend to work out that well. Since they hadn't yet invented the machine spirit and in any case working out which bit of the torpedo you were supposed to talk to or possibly scrape off the wall was somewhat difficult once it had decided to launch a several hundred meter search into the realm of the honorable ancestors."