Judas Unchained

Part Two of the Commonwealth Saga

Plot

Judas Unchained, the second part of the Commonwealth Saga, picks up where Pandora's Star's abrupt ending left off. The story begins with the small human resistance that exists on what remains of the Commonwealth worlds attacked by the Primes. Human resistance forces have found two ways to fight back: using the Prime weapons (primarily directed-energy weapons) against the invaders, and disrupting communication between the slave caste (motiles) and the commanding caste (immotiles) of the Primes. Meanwhile, the humans in the remaining Commonwealth pursue other plans: to develop a set of weapons and warships to defend against the next Prime invasion and force the conflict back into Prime space; to develop a "quantumbuster superweapon" based on technology supplied, unbeknownst to most humans, by the Starflyer; and to prepare for the evacuation of known space altogether if necessary. Eventually, the human forces decide that there can be no other solution to the conflict than to commit genocide and destroy the Primes entirely. However, it is revealed that the Primes are planning a much larger invasion, which humanity will be all but powerless to stop. As the war rages, the human forces begin to build much faster, better armed, ships and fitting them with new "quantumbuster" weapons. These weapons function by converting the entire rest mass of an object into energy, and are thus capable of destroying an entire planet. Later on, a more advanced quantumbuster is deployed, which is capable of inducing a main-sequence star to go nova via a feedback loop where the energy from the conversion is used to further expand the radius of the effect field. Despite the original plan to use it on the Dyson Alpha star and thus kill the entire prime race, a modified field version of a normal quantumbuster is eventually deployed on the Dyson Alpha forcefield generator, destroying the mechanism that was interfering with the generator's systems. This allows the mechanism to reactivate, trapping the Prime aliens inside and avoiding genocide. Meanwhile, it has emerged that the Starflyer is in fact a rogue Prime alien. The human forces engage in a desperate chase to prevent the Starflyer from escaping the Commonwealth. After defeating the Starflyer's army and encircling the Marie Celeste, The Guardians of Selfhood destroy the Starflyer with a massive directed hurricane, freeing humanity from its thrall.