Judas Unchained

MorningLightMountain had never given the alien mega-structure much consideration. Not that it ignored the strange artifact. It had noticed the structure almost as soon as the barrier withdrew. Ships sent to investigate found a planet-size machine with incomprehensible mass properties. Given its scale, MorningLightMountain concluded it had to be associated with the barrier; in all probability it was the generator or a part of it. According to the Bose memories, that was what the humans considered it to be. It did not understand why they called it the Dark Fortress. Something to do with combining fiction and humor.

The investigation that followed was as methodical as MorningLightMountain could be. Its primary attention was of course directed first toward eliminating its rival immotiles, then the conquest of the Commonwealth. Even so, it kept worrying away at the enigma. New sensors were fabricated and sent out. Ships ventured through the giant webbed carapace and began to map the properties, energy patterns, and geometry of the interior. Over the months this became more difficult as the internal energy secretions grew in strength while becoming more frenzied. Eventually the artifact resembled a caged star.

Data extraction on several Commonwealth worlds revealed the human physicists were equally puzzled by the Dark Fortress. They, too, did not understand its functionality. They also had no idea who constructed it. MorningLightMountain suspected the human SI could build such a thing. The Silfen aliens might also have the ability, but according to the associated mined data they didn’t have the psychology. MorningLightMountain didn’t trust that analysis. The galaxy was full of non-Prime life, all of it was an enemy, all of it was suspect. One day it would find its greatest enemy and eliminate them.

As its investigation progressed, the greatest puzzle came from the errant quantum signature emanating from somewhere deep inside the alien artifact. MorningLightMountain could not understand why it matched its own corona-rupture weapon. Logically it implied the humans on the Second Chance had deployed it against the Dark Fortress. They had the technology, but they appeared to be as bewildered as it was by why the barrier had failed—assuming their records were accurate, and not disinformation.

Such questions were abruptly pushed farther down its priority list when the humans turned the staging post star nova. MorningLightMountain realized it had seriously underestimated human scientific resourcefulness. It was now facing the very extinction event it had begun its expansion campaign to eliminate. Humans would move swiftly after their initial success. They only had one ship, one nova bomb when they attacked the staging post star. It was probably a prototype. If they had more, they would have used them. Right now, their smoothly efficient manufacturing machinery would be producing more ships and bombs. When they had enough to guarantee a successful attack on its home star and all other outposts, they would come.

With its own survival now paramount MorningLightMountain dispatched more ships and equipment through the wormholes already linking it to new, uninhabited star systems where its settlements were establishing themselves. There were over forty now, which would hopefully stretch human resources to locate and destroy them. It also began to install wormhole generators in its largest ships, modifying them for FTL flight. They were nothing like as efficient and fast as the human FTL ships, but they did work. It started to send them through the giant wormhole it had originally built to bridge the gulf between its home system and the Commonwealth, scattering them across interstellar space hundreds of light-years away. Eight had been completed when the immotile group clusters researching the barrier generator detected a wash of sensor radiation. It was coming from a point in space without any physical origin.

MorningLightMountain’s primary thought routines immediately recognized the reason. The advanced human ship had been undetectable. The navy-class humans had arrived to turn the home star nova. Every ship researching the generator launched an attack against the intruder, missiles aiming for the elusive emission point.

It didn’t understand why the human ship had appeared at the generator. Probabilities were examined. If they were here, why had they not simply bombed the star? It would never have known until the moment the star erupted.

Humans were weak, they would avoid a direct confrontation if at all possible. The ship must somehow be attempting to restart the generator. MorningLightMountain feared that as much as it did extinction. With itself cut off from the freedom of the galaxy, it would ultimately die inside the prison of the barrier as the star slowly burned out. This would become its tomb.