Judas Unchained

She looked down at her own abdomen, resting her hand lightly against it. Her stomach was still perfectly flat, not that she’d been to the gym for weeks now. “You’re going to be born before your uncle,” she said softly. “He’s going to be surprised about that.” Along with an awful lot of other people.

With her real hand resting contentedly above the baby, her virtual hand touched Paula Myo’s icon.

“Yes, Senator?”

Does she ever sleep? “I have some unpleasant news you should be aware of. I was just ambushed in the Security Oversight Committee. Senator Valetta Halgarth asked for your immediate withdrawal from Senate Security.”

“On what grounds?”

“Very shaky ones. Fortunately. She cited interference in navy intelligence operations, claimed you were misusing government resource to pursue personal goals.”

“The observation on Alessandra Baron.”

“Precisely. I managed to delay the vote on a procedural point about the agenda. But it is only a delay. It looks like Columbia really has got it in for you.”

“I know that. Thank you for covering for me.”

“I’ll talk to the other senators, rebuild my strategic support in that committee. I should be able to pull a majority onto my side. Right now there are several people who are unhappy with the Halgarths. They’re not my family’s natural allies, but I should be able to swing them around.”

“I understand. This could be very revealing.”

“How so?”

“Do you have any indication which way the Sheldons intend to vote? It goes against the Starflyer’s interests to have me remain in Senate Security.”

“Good point. I’ll try and find out.”

***

MorningLightMountain was annoyed with humans. It had known they would strike back after its preliminary incursion into the Commonwealth; such a move was inevitable. What was less welcome was the manner of the response. It had been expecting wormholes to open above the captured planets, disgorging quantities of ships and missiles to assault its new installations. So it had dutifully prepared for that scenario, building the strongest force field generators it had over the factories and refineries it was constructing on the new worlds, placing thousands of ships in orbit armed with powerful weaponry.

With all the knowledge it had gathered about the Commonwealth and its abilities, MorningLightMountain was certain this would be enough to ward off the human attack. There was an astonishing amount of information left behind amid the wreckage of the abandoned human cities; storage crystals that contained entire encyclopedias, scientific theories and research, engineering designs, economic and industrial statistics on each of the Commonwealth worlds, and a truly endless supply of “entertainment.” For the first time MorningLightMountain was grateful it had animated the Bose memories; without that small insight into human thinking it would have been extremely difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction. And humans produced an astonishing amount of fiction to amuse themselves.

To its disappointment, there was little information available on the SI. There was no verifiable record on any of its new twenty-three worlds as to the exact location of Vinmar. Once the Commonwealth worlds were converted to Prime life, it would have to search all the star systems within two hundred light-years of Earth. Some files speculated that the SI was no longer physically based, but had transformed itself to an energy-based entity. MorningLightMountain could not decide if these, too, were works of fiction.

It also had humans to extract information from. There were tens of thousands of discarded bodies lying buried in the rubble or trapped in smashed vehicles. Removing their memorycells was an easy operation. Living humans presented more trouble; they struggled and fought the soldier motiles. In the end MorningLightMountain simply shot them all, and recovered their memorycells that way. It learned that there was very little useful information recorded in these personal units; they only ever held memories, and human minds were not reliable. After animating a few inside isolated immotiles, it found that most were even more unstable than Bose. Even more surprising, few were as knowledgeable. MorningLightMountain had always assumed Bose was an inferior human specimen.

As it tapped into more and more databases, so its picture of the Commonwealth strengthened, building on the original loose interpretation that came from the Bose memories. It began to reclaim and modify human cybernetic fabrication systems, turning the machinery to producing components and machines of its own design. Buildings were modified to house its facilities, roads were used for vehicles. Bridges rebuilt.