Chapter 50: RepliBuffy

Xander activated the light beam on his phaser rifle and peered about him: a corridor, nothing more. Silently, he raised an arm upward and motioned for the others to follow.

Together, weapons at the alert, they moved stealthily toward their destination.

It did not take long for signs of the enemy to appear. Xander approached an intersection and shone his light beam around the corner; he stopped, raising his free hand for others to do the same.

Beyond, the corridor—bulkheads, decks, ceiling— were entwined by the leaden flesh-and-metal of Borg technology.

Xander drew in a sharp breath, not so much in fear but outrage at the obscenity.

At the same moment, Rya'c and his team were stealing down their own section of Borgified corridor. Suddenly to the right he heard a noise. He whirled, rifle in hand, and aimed it at the sound's source, a hatch in the bulkhead.

The others fell into position in a half-circle beside Rya'c, all training their rifles at the hatch, which slowly opened.

Something began to emerge from the shadows. A face came out into the arc of light cast by the rifles beams and became recognizable as Cassandra. She looked up and said in a small voice, "It's only me."

Rya'c relaxed with a disappointed grunt and stepped forward to offer a hand, but Cassandra had already crawled out and was extending an arm to Willow.

"Doctor, Admiral, are you both all right?" Rya'c asked.

Cassandra nodded. "Yes—but we have wounded here."

Rya'c turned to the nearest guard. "Lopez—get these people back to deck fourteen."

Lopez moved forward to the opening and proferred a hand to a nurse, who was already climbing out; the two flanked the opening and assisted the others

Cassandra then turned and headed off with Willow, her patients and her staff.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

Xander led the way down the assimilated corridor. As he rounded a blind corner, he slowed; the others readied their weapons for quick aim. Yet he did not slow quite fast enough. Before he or any of the others could react, two Borg drones walked past them.

Xander stretched out an arm in front of his team as if to literally hold them back. "Wait—hold your fire."

Once again, he knew the inexplicable; the collective had sensed them yet felt no fear, sounded no alarm. The guards watched in frank amazement as the Borg pair continued past the group without the slightest reaction.

"They'll ignore us," Xander explained, "until they consider us a threat."

When RepliBuffy had created the Borg she had modeled them closely on Star Trek's Borg. Or at least what she had seen in the movies and on TV and what Neri herself had remembered of them.

Xander began to walk slowly behind the two, motioning for the others to follow. After a brief time, they came to another intersection and turned the corner Xander knew would lead them straight to the heart of the collective.

The instant he rounded it himself, Xander held up a hand again for the others to stop: some fifteen yards directly in front of them stood the tall double doors marked: MAIN ENGINEERING

The two walking Borg slipped into their alcoves and closed their eyes to sleep the dreamless sleep of the collective.

"Admiral," one of the guards said beside Xander who looked up to see Rya'c and his team approach from an adjacent corridor.

"Okay here is the drill," Xander said. "I'm going in alone. Give me ten minutes. And if I'm not back then come in after me. And remember aim for the plasma conduits."

Xander then turned and walked up to the door. "I know you can hear me, Buffy, let me in."

The door slid open and Xander walked in alone.

The moment the door closed behind him two Borg drones relieved him of his rifle and held him.

"Raakim."

Xander looked around for the sound of the Queen's voice. He noted the Borg attempting to brake Data's encryption. "Your efforts to break the encryption codes will not be successful, Buffy."

"We will and then we will continue with a goal of perfection."

Xander gazed up at the thick, dark tangle of tubing and circuitry that hung from the ceiling, swaying like weeds in a gentle sea. His eye caught a rustle of movement amid them, shining beads of moisture trembling, falling as something both raven and white slithered through the jumble.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

Dawn smiled as she looked at the reactor. It would work for now. She would have to remember to leave Willow a note telling her to replace the reactors with the neutrino ion generators. She tapped her commbadge. "Rosenberg-Summers to Commodore Carter. Reactors back to one hundred percent efficiency. We are restoring power to the station now."

"Good work, Captain."

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

With the power back online that meant Sam now had access to the computer. She moved over to a terminal and accessed the sensors. Her counterpart was largely correct, about the direction. Jack, Daniel and Teal'c were in the Gate Room, not the SCR.

Sam quickly headed down the corridor and turned and entered the Gate Room.

"Carter," Jack said.

"General," Sam said. "I'm not the Samantha Carter you know. I'm from the year two thousand twenty. We came back in time to prevent the destruction of this station and the assimilation of Earth by the Borg when they traveled back in time as well."

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

The Queen lowered herself onto what Xander realized was a torso, hips and pair of legs.

"You've changed, Buffy," Xander said.

"If I was to become the Queen of the Borg," the Queen said. "I had to look the part. You know you and I were very close. You can still hear our song."

Xander realized in that moment. That the Queen had not wanted another drone, a speaker, but an equal, a lover. Something of Buffy had survived inside the Queen. But he had not submitted to her. "You wanted an equal," he said.

"Yes."

"Why assimilate me then?" Xander asked. "Why not Willow?"

"What makes you think I didn't?" the Queen asked.

"Because only I was assimilated. Only I was captured."

"So little do you know," the Queen said. "Yes only you were assimilated. But only because only you could I retrieve. I wanted both of my friends standing by my side as they obtained perfection." She curled her lip up, baring hard, white teeth. "You can't begin to imagine the life you denied yourself."

"That's why you created Raakim—to ease the burden of your lonely existence. But it didn't work; I resisted. And in the end, you had to turn Raakim into just another drone."

A moment of silence passed, one in which the quicksilver gaze swept wistfully over the vast chamber of slumbering Borg, then again fixed itself upon Xander. "You cannot begin to imagine the life you denied yourself," she said, an unmistakable trace of sadness in her voice, her eyes. "Together. . . nothing could have stopped us."

"Together, nothing can stop us," Xander said. "Other than yourself. Do you know what your Borg did before coming back in time. You killed you. If I ever return now to the future, it will be to one where my friend Buffy Summers is dead."

"You lie," the Queen said.

"Release me and I will show you," Xander said.

The Queen looked to the drones that held Xander and they released him.

Xander walked over to a console and pulled up the destruction of the Enterprise on the monitor. "She was on the Enterprise. You killed yourself in the pursuit of perfection."

The Queen watched the replay of the Enterprise's destruction and she let out a scream. "No! She was to join me!"

"And yet she fought you," Xander said. "You believe yourself to be Buffy, but you're not. You're just the opposite of what Buffy is. Buffy valued life, all life, over even her own. You value your own over all others."

The Queen looked at Xander and then down at her body and then back at Xander. "Kill me, Xander, please," she said.

Xander nodded and retrieved his rifle. He climbed up a ladder to the balcony overlooking Main Engineering and he fired at a plasma conduit.

Liquid gas spewed from the resulting puncture.

The Queen stood waiting for the end to come as the gas covered her. Seconds before her head was covered she looked up at Xander. "Good bye, Xander. Tell Willow I'm sorry."

Xander nodded as the gas ceased its roiling and settled into a calm, soft blanket that covered the lower two decks, hiding the carnage there. He hurried to a wall panel, opened it, and struck a control. An enormous whoosh followed as the emergency ventilation system set to work. He then moved to the edge of the deck and peered down.

In that brief instant, the powerful vents had already sucked away all but a few last wisps of plasma coolant, revealing a grisly sight: the stripped metal skeletons of Borg drones, most fallen from their alcoves as they slept, interior metal workings spilled everywhere.

Xander scrambled down the access ladders to the first level, wincing at the slight hiss as his boots met the deck. He found what remained of the Queen; a metal skull and spine. He reached down and snapped the spine. "Good bye, Buffy."

The cranium glowed stark red for a long, agonizing minute ... then abruptly darkened, and the Queen fell still.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

Admiral's log, February 5, 2002:

Deep Space Nine is repaired. So is the Enterprise. All there is left to do is return to our own time. And it is with extreme trepidation that I wonder what will be waiting for me when we return home. We have altered the course of our history simply by admitting who we are to our past selves. Maybe the past can be changed? Maybe Buffy will keep herself from being duplicated. And if she can't I hope that the Replicator that became the Borg Queen will find Buffy's humanity to her liking. And that the Borg will not rise.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

Xander stood in front of Buffy and kissed her on the cheek. "There is so much I wish I could tell you, and so much that I can't. As it is my past is going to be changed just simply by coming here."

"I envy you. The world you're going to," Buffy said warmly.

Xander knew what she meant, the Federation realized. But for him he did not envy going back. For if nothing had changed he would be going back to a word in which she had died. "I'm going to miss you, Buffy."

The smile on Buffy's face disappeared. "I died didn't I?"

"Yes," Xander said. "In the attack that brought us here. The Enterprise was lost with all hands."

"Maybe," Buffy said. "Now that future won't happen? Maybe the future you go to is a far better place than the one you left?"

"I can only hope," Xander said as Buffy stepped away from him. "Harris to Jack O'Neill, one to beam up, energize!"

Buffy watched as Xander disappeared in a transporter beam and then she walked out of her office. "Put the Jack O'Neill on the main screen."

"Yes, sir," her Xander said as she smiled.

They watched as a flash of rainbow light appeared and the Jack O'Neill sailed inside it, then abruptly vanishing into the future.

Buffy smiled and walked back into her office as Dawnara appeared.

"Colonel," Dawnara said. "I have a file marked for your eyes only."

Buffy sat down at her desk and turned to look at the terminal. "Open the file, Enye alpha-tango-whiskey-nine-one-zero."

She read the first line of the file and smiled.

Greetings Buffy, from the future.


Author's Note: The next chapter is Frozen. I am trying to decide what to do with the Ancient. Save her or Not Save her. If I save her, let the disease kill her or clone her. So it might be a bit before its done.