Judas Unchained

Not a sound or an image, at first, more a mélange of feeling—to those who knew how to interpret it. The complex electronic song saturated the air waves, broadcast from every direction to engulf the valley. Together the harmonics that surrounded Bradley had a unity that was remarkable in its complexity. The tunes rose and fell, meshing into a cohesive mind. Bodies, alien and human, sharing every part of themselves: memories, thoughts, sensations. He moved among them, receiving their extended cognizance, drinking it in. Watching the three humans in armor suits running along the road as we chase after them—concern that the human warriors should not be able to interfere with the launch. Observing the many technological facets of the refurbished starship, adjusting the systems as they interact with each other—eager for the long exile to finally end. Maintaining the force field around the ship—determined that no weapon would penetrate. Reviewing the sensors covering the valley—alert for transgressions.

The location and purpose of each body were individual, yet their thoughts were homogenized, replicating their originator. Direction, purpose, came from only one source: the Starflyer.

It moved from the gantry lift into the starship, awakening the giant machine in its entirety. Soon it would leave to vanish amid the stars. Safe. Free.

Bradley told the force field around the starship to admit him. Compliance was a logical thing to expect, given the Starflyer’s ultimate origin. The immotile rules all, nothing deviates from that. However, as the Starflyer was more sophisticated than a standard Prime immotile, it didn’t have the same reticence in allowing electronics to have governing functions over machinery. Electronics were subsidiary to it in the same way as motiles; it programmed them, it set their parameters. They obeyed it.

That was its flaw, Bradley knew, the same as every Prime. It did not understand independence nor rebellion. Its motiles, whether grown in congregation pools from its own advanced genetically modified nucleiplasms, or humans whose brains had been surgically and electronically subsumed to host its own thought routines, were a part of it. Their thoughts were its thoughts, copied and installed from its own brain. None of them deviated. It couldn’t conceive deviation or betrayal, so neither could they.

Security was a one-dimensional concept for the Starflyer. It took precautions to guard itself physically and politically from native humans as it insinuated its human motiles within their Commonwealth society. That was the level of safety it determined it required to insure its survival, a strategy that had been successful.

No human could hack into the electronic network of the Institute valley; as the processors were an extension of the Starflyer’s own mind, they only acknowledged orders that had an internal heritage. What the network and its processors did not have was the ability to discriminate between an order from a genuine motile and a human who remembered the neural “language” of the Starflyer.

In front of Bradley the force field protecting the Marie Celeste realigned its structure to allow him through. He jogged along the bottom of the deep grassy scar that the vast alien ship had scored as it slid along the ground before finally coming to an ignominious halt. Several soldier motiles were patrolling the base of the starship. Their minds told him where they were, the direction they were looking in, where they would look next. Their sensors and eyes never saw his suit’s stealth coating as he hurried into the shadows cast by the big fusion rocket nozzles. Proximity alarms watched passively as he told their processors his presence was legitimate.

The ship had been lifted gradually out of the scar by motiles and civil engineering machinery. A wide pad of enzyme-bonded concrete had been laid underneath to support the weight. Cradles gripped the lower fuselage, holding it off the ground. Bradley walked up the metal stairs on one of the cradles. An access hatch to the fusion engineering bay opened for him, and he ducked inside.

The initial findings on the Marie Celeste published by the Institute were accurate enough. It was comprised of fusion rockets, their fuel tanks, environmentally maintained water tanks containing an alien amoeba-equivalent cell, and the force field generators. From that, public perception remained locked on the knowledge that there was nothing else inside; certainly it possessed no life-support section, no “crew quarters.” A more detailed examination showed (unpressurized) access passages and crawlways remarkably similar to those humans would design into any ship. No maintenance robots were ever found. The first conclusion was that the passages were used only for construction.