Beginnings
Events in Sunnydale had set the stage.
The spell that had activated all of the potential slayers put people of power in a position to drive back the forces of darkness and helped create the peace needed in the wake of the crash of the alien ship. However, as time wore on, the slayers began to have visions of the coming conflict. The International Watcher's Council's (IWC's) carefully preserved copies of these girl's dream journals show just how much advance information they were able to assemble, but in the end they could be boiled down to one simple statement. Fire would rain from the sky and only a few places were shown to be safe.
The return of the lost council was the signal. The rain of fire was coming. It was time for them to move. When the slayers pulled out of so many cities the vampires thought they were going to have a field day. Of course, they had not been graced with the warning.
Not all the slayers had received the same guidance with their warning either.
In the confusion of the Zentradi attack, neither side noticed the disappearance of the majority of the friendly demon species who had made their hidden homes among humanity. Nor was it noted at the time just how many of our fellow humans went with them.
-Introduction from Reigns of Fire: Slayers and the First Robotech War
Macross Island Arrivals & Customs
Xander Harris stood outside customs at the Macross International Airport waiting for the last arrivals. The survivors of Sunnydale were all now on the island, even Giles with a library of books that had required a dedicated container box to deliver. Wrapped up in their own war at the Hellmouth, the arrival of the alien spacecraft had gone virtually unnoticed, except by Xander and Andrew. In the wake of the final battle with the First Evil however, Faith and Buffy's slayer dreams had made sure the new Council knew exactly what was coming. Time was short and the newly activated Slayers needed to be trained up swiftly. Though the decision to relocate headquarters to the Island had been made quickly the survivors had first scattered to the four corners of the globe to rebuild the support network the first evil had destroyed.
In the fifth year after landing, Faith and Xander had been the IWC advance team, getting a feel for the city that had sprung up around the crashed alien ship. The slayer had immediately gone to ground, connecting with the seamier side of the burgeoning community. Xander had parlayed his construction experience into a position, first expanding the military base, then helping to build the ever growing city. Willow and Kennedy had arrived next, Kennedy slipping seamlessly into the local social scene while Willow got herself hired as a research assistant to a Dr. Lang.
Xander chuckled as he thought about how excited Wills had been lately. She couldn't say much due to security restrictions, but one thing she had hinted at was that the alien technology had at least as much to do with magic as it did with mechanics. So much so that she had revealed her wiccan background to her boss. What she hadn't been able to tell her best friend was that they were now working on a unified theory incorporating magic to bridge quantum mechanics with relativity and thus explain the properties of the flower of life and protoculture. The Lang/Rosenberg theory was rapidly gaining traction among the technologists working on the alien craft.
"Xander!" A brunette blur wrapped herself around his waist. "Where's Willow?"
Blinking tears from his good eye he pulled the girl into a hug. "Nice to see you too, Dawn Patrol."
The growl from within his arms let him know how Dawn felt about that particular nickname. In spite of being 23, she still didn't look a day over 16. Then again, the magics that seemed to be a constant companion had kept all of them looking incredibly young.
"I'd tread carefully Xander. I've got scars as proof of her teeth."
Extracting an arm, he included the blond in the hug. "Hi Buffy. Wills' boss called a late meeting. She's stopping for Chinese on the way home later. Lets get your luggage and settle the two of you in."
One Year Later - Launch Day
IWC Headquarters
Andrew stood at the door of the emergency shelter, counting the heads of the Slayer Council. As the last girl dove through the opening, he and Giles threw their shoulders into the steel barrier, dogging it closed and then chasing down the stairs to the second door. The boom of the coming battle's first shot echoing down the shaft as Buffy sealed the second door.
At the back of the shelter sat hundreds of boxes holding the council's library. The girls had spent the last week carefully cataloging and crating the texts. There were also large quantities of non-perishable food and water. In fact, their shelter had sufficient supplies to support five times their number for several months. But the real treasure, the one that would earn the IWC access to the highest levels in the days to come were the seeds and seedlings. Slayer dreams were not required to signify the importance of the seed stocks. Once it became clear that the dreams were pointing toward a large population being trapped on a spacecraft far from home, the need to produce foodstuffs became abundantly clear.
Xander pulled a crate of seed corn up to the make-shift council table and sat down. With a long-suffering sigh he looked over at the older man showing the beginnings of gray in his brown hair. "That's it Giles. Everyone except Willow is here."
"I do hope you are right that she will be safe aboard the ship."
"As do I G-man." The one-eyed construction worker answered.
Buffy walked up to the table. "First order of business. We should break out the mattresses and get folks settled. It will be a while before we're out of here."
"Agreed."
SDF-1 Main Engineering
"Rosenberg!"
Dizzy and nauseous, Willow Rosenberg, PHD (quantum mechanics) tried to clear her head and respond intelligibly. "I have no idea, Doctor Lang. It's like the ship had an instinctual response." Willow bit down on her lip to stifle the urge to babble. The sudden release of energy from the reflex furnace had caught the entire team unawares. While the others were in shock at the behavior of the systems, Willow's unprepared and virtually unshielded magical senses had been nearly overwhelmed.
The chief robotechnologist looked around the room at the assembled experts and technicians. As he opened his mouth the combat alert klaxon sounded. "All engineering teams to your combat stations."
Someone on the bridge patched the battle frequency through the 1mc system
"Mayday mayday! SDF-1 this is Armor 10. Mayday!"
"Armor 2 is destroyed and Armor 10 is heavily damaged Sir."
With a thick Slavic accent, the quiet, introspective voice of Henry Gloval, the ship's Captain, then came over the speakers.
"I had hoped this day wouldn't come in my lifetime. After we had finally achieved peace on our planet, now we face annihilation by alien forces whose power is beyond our imagination. I had hoped that war was a thing of the past, but here we go again.
"All right! MOVE OUT!"
"Yes Sir!" The voice of the duty officer repeated the order. "All forces... MOVE OUT!"
"Rosenberg! Hot start the anti-gravity system. Carter! Bring the thrusters to standby. Everyone else, connect main power to the defense grid then prepare the primary drive systems!"
Willow swiftly strapped into her station and began keying in the startup sequence for the anti-gravity generators. Slipping on the station headset she elbowed the computer voice address system on while her left hand typed in the command links to the lift station on the bridge. "Computer, divert main power to the anti-gravity system. Bring the flywheels to rpm 600 and maintain in hot standby mode."
"Roger. Bringing Gravity Control systems 1 through 48 online. RPM 600k. Hot standby. Bridge command link enabled."
As more of the ship's systems were brought online, Willow's senses began to thrum in time with the rhythmic pulsing of the ships protoculture power source. Her nerves sang as the magical properties of the unleashed flower of life leached into the environment. With her immediate assignment accomplished, she took a moment to meditate and center herself against the overwhelming beat generated by the rising power levels in the reflex furnace. With a mental snort, she thought some shields against another flush like she had been nearly overwhelmed by when the main guns fired might also be in order. Her mediation soon focused on erecting those barriers.
GCS Station 23
Heavy vibrations rattled the deckplates of GCS Station 23. The two technicians reached out to grab the workstations in front of them.
"Ssonya, stattus."
"Fflywheel hooolding stteady aat ssix hunndred thhoussand RPM." She looked over at the other technician. "Wwhat abbout the vvibbrations, Rrolf?"
"Tthey're wwithin sppec. Bbarely." He threw the switch indicating their station was ready for activation.
In seven other stations similar discussions were held. None of them downchecked.
All of them should have.
SDF-1 Main Engineering
"Louise!" Willow screamed. "I can't compensate."
Eight of the anti-gravity generators were located in sections of the ship that had to be extensively rebuilt. Unfortunately, human metallurgy was not up to the specifications of the alien equipment. With wrenching screeches, six of the eight generators tore completely free of the ship shortly after the bridge had commanded the lift. The remaining two wedged in the hull and suffered catastrophic cascade failure resulting in rapid unscheduled disassembly events. The remaining forty units were incapable of supporting the ship's mass.
"We're going down. Impact in 20 seconds. All hands brace for impact."
"Firing thrusters," Louise Carter replied. "I can slow us, but there's not enough time to fully compensate."
"Impact in 5 seconds! Brace! Brace! Brace!"
A/N: And here is the first real chapter. My updates are generally not going to be this fast. I happened to have this chapter complete and the next chapter mostly complete. My rule of thumb is to usually have at least 1, preferably 2, chapters almost done before posting the next element. That way, if I need to backtrack to incorporate changes or to establish background for an event I don't have to rewrite posted material. Still looking for a beta reader (not a copyeditor). I need someone who will ask the right questions (what color was that bulkhead? What does protoculture smell like?) The kind of things that make a scene live for the reader. One other note, I will be following the Robotech timeline and using material from the books (such as 'Thinking Caps' etc) to backfill the technology side when the time comes.
Disclaimer: standard disclaimer =D /standard disclaimer
