Ringworld is property of Larry Niven. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.
She felt the pull of the wormhole die. It felt like a fire had been released from her veins. Buffy was now cool, clear headed and sane. She slumped back against the sofa feeling the compulsion diminish to its normal levels.
"It's gone." Buffy said to Willow. "The wormhole is gone, like someone just flipped a switch."
Willow opened her laptop and began to scan the online database of Hubble images. It would be another thirty minutes before NASA updated. They waited in silence. When the updated jpegs were posted Willow smiled. The wormhole was gone.
"How did you know?" Willow asked.
"I just knew." Buffy said. "One second it was there, the next, gone."
Willow hugged Buffy.
"Looks like we dodged a bullet." Willow said. "Welcome back to the land of the sane."
Buffy grinned back at her.
"I was pretty far gone around the bend there. I really did want to leave Earth and fly to the Ringworld. I realize now, I can't leave the Hellmouth unguarded." Buffy said. Her eyes took on a faraway look. "We've got to save them Wil, they're still family."
"I don't know." said Willow.
"Image a snow storm." Buffy said suddenly animated. "There trillions of snowflakes in a storm big enough to cover a decent size city. Now imagine each snowflake is a person, a dead person. Image each snowflake is someone burned alive when the ringworld brushes its sun. Now imagine Colorado in the winter. We've got to save them Wil!"
Buffy's eyes were wide. Willow knew that Buffy still had the intelligence to imagine fifteen trillion deaths.
"I hate to break it to you Buffy I'm fresh out of spaceships."
"Maybe we don't have to go personally." Buffy said.
Willow looked puzzled.
"The Drake equation!" Buffy said. The Drake equation was created by the astronomer Frank Drake. It was a way to focus on the factors which determine how many intelligent, communicating civilizations there are in the galaxy. It is the number of stars in the galaxy times the fraction of stars that have planets around them times the number of planets per star capable of sustaining life times the fraction of the planets where life evolves times the fraction where intelligent life evolves times the fraction that communicate. There were at least two hundred billion stars in the galaxy. There could be millions of communicating civilizations out there.
Of course, a society of telepathic squids would be pretty useless.
"The Drake equation." Buffy said excited. "All we have to do is send a signal, a cry for help, and let the galactic red cross save the ringworld.'
"Or conquer it." Willow replied.
"Freedom is worthless if you're dead." Buffy concluded. "Besides, we have a big advantage. We're two hundred and fifty years in the past from the Ringworld's point of view. That means that more than one civilization may detect the signal."
Buffy leaned back and exhaled. Willow had known her long enough to know something was on her mind.
"What now?" She asked.
"We've got to send a strong enough signal in the direction of the galactic core. There's a hell of a lot of dust and background radiation. We need a signal that won't be degraded and can only be picked up by someone with the tech to save the ringworld. How in the heck are we going to build a dark matter generator?"
"Too bad the wiccans never learned how to modulate neutrinos." Willow muttered under her breath as she turned back to her laptop.
War was fun.
The Buffy-Protector worked the control panel under the Map of Mars that the Ringworld's ultimate weapon. Embedded in the Ringworld was a room temperature superconductive mesh. The mesh covered the billions of square miles of the ringworld flood just beneath the surface. As the ringworld spun, tremendous currents could be generated as the ringworld intercepted the magnetic lines of flux from its star. Carefully, the Buffy-Protector twisted the magnetic fields generated by the ringworld in order to incite a solar flare. A solar flare rose thousands of miles above the star then lased. Ten to the twenty five joules of energy became a coherent beam of x-rays as it sliced into the Puppeteer assault fleet. She missed three ships. Two of them jumped away into hyperspace and one, in a fit of panic crashed into the ringworld surface. From her observation tower she could see the escape pods landing safely on the ringworld. The Buffy-Protector closed down the flare controls as she grabbed her scythe and a field kit.
She went to hunt down the survivors.