Disclaimer: I do not own one single character of this story. All of the crew of the Enterprise E and the Federation, Star Fleet, and the concept of the Q, all belong to Gene Rodenbery, to whom this story is written for. All characters and story lines from the TV shows Buffy: the Vampire Slayer and Angel belong to Joss Whedon and his companies.
Chapter 1:
The USS NCC 1701-E Sovereign class starship Enterprise, began its mission like all of its missions. Just an ordinary patrol through a somewhat remote region of space that was between several worlds of the Federation, just outside of any Stellar systems. Kind of like a cop patrolling your street for Neighborhood Watch. Just a regular patrol that nothing interesting was supposed to happen on. With this ship's luck, not to mention name, this is anything but a regular patrol.
Which was why Captain Jean Luc Picard, Commanding officer of the Flagship of the entire Star Fleet Military, was being very paranoid, and was actually comfortable with that paranoia.
"Mister Data," Picard spoke to his second officer at the Operations, "Have you finished with the scans of that star cluster we passed an hour ago?"
The yellow-green skinned, brown haired android looked up from his consul and stared straight back at his Captain, as it was in his programming to do so, to show that he was listening and respected the individual he was speaking with. "Not yet sir. The ship's diagnostic was finished only thirteen minutes ago, and therefore the sensors have not yet completed their full sweep of the cluster. It will be completed in approximately 2 minutes, 59 seconds. I will inform you if anything "strange" shows up sir." The android finished the statement with a grin, knowing why the Captain was even asking. It was strange to see the artificial life form show any emotion whatsoever, yet with the development of his emotion chip, it had quickly become a common and welcome sight.
Picard grinned back at his long time friend and nodded, "Very good Mister Data. Have there been any reports of…unusual occurrences?" He directed the question at his First Officer beside him, Commander William T. Riker.
The dark haired officer grinned roguishly at his Captain and did his best to suppress the rising laugh in his chest. Shaking his head, Will answered, "Not in the last ten minutes since the last time you asked sir."
Picard just closed his eyes, sighing in humor over his officer's reactions to his paranoia. "Is there something wrong sir?" the Commander asked.
Smiling warmly, in a fatherly gesture almost, Picard turned to his friend and attempted to order his thoughts around his paranoia. Finally, after a moment or two of thought, he tried, "You know Will, that on just about every single mission that starts out as a normal patrol of some remote region of space, or even just a routine scanning or scientific investigation, that for the first two or so days, everything is completely normal and safe and everything is fine. Then all of a sudden, wham!" he clapped his hands together, "Something nobody could have seen coming hits us and either the ship is in danger, the crew is in danger, one of my officers is in danger or at the very least experiencing something completely unnatural, or we encounter not only some new life, but some stranger that has some unusual talents or powers and it often results in either the ship in danger, or one of my officers in danger, or…"
Smiling like he would burst out laughing louder than a hyena, Will nodded and stopped the run on sentence before it could get started fully. "I get the idea sir," he said, barely holding in the laughter. "So that explains all the ship diagnostics all of a sudden, and the active scanning of the region. Which by the way, I don't think this, or any sector of space has been so thoroughly scanned before. But what's with having everyone go in for medical checkups and psychiatric evaluations all of a sudden?"
Smiling, Picard settled back into his chair some and thought about his answer some before responding. After several moments, "Well, in truth, beyond the paranoia, the medical exams are not only routine, but required by Star Fleet regulations. As for the "psychiatric evaluations", well the dear Counselor has been quite insistent lately on pestering me to send the new crew her way, so that she could at the very least get to know them. You, of all people Will, should understand how…"insistent" the Counselor can be."
Blushing furiously at the reminder of his newfound relationship with his old sweetheart, Riker turned his attention back to his consul, awaiting and actually hoping that some kind of emergency with the crew would pop up on it. No matter what it was, though he never wanted anything life threatening to ever be read upon it, if it was important enough, he just might be able to get away from this embarrassment.
Suddenly, almost in response to his unheard wish, his consul started beeping furiously. Tapping in his authorization code, Riker quickly had the disturbance before him. Knowing instinctively that the Captain's attention was on him as soon as the beep left the consul, Riker spoke while reading the report. "There's been a power surge in one of the quarters. Apparently the Replicator system was activated and then…it blew up? Crew Quarters, aft port section, Deck 27…quarters 2573."
Everybody looked up in shock. Most especially the android at Operations. Because they all knew whose quarters those were. Data's quarters. The Captain looked in curiosity, and mild concern at the android as the golden man stood up from his station.
"Captain, if I may, I would like to go to my quarters to determine the source of the disturbance, as well as the extent of the damage." He respectfully requested.
Picard nodded, ever the professional officer. "Of course Mister Data. Lieutenant, take his station." With that Data hurried to the closest Turbo Lift and Lieutenant Peterson at the Engineering Station quickly got up and took over at Operations. The nearest Ensign, that just happened to be standing around, took over for monitoring the Engineering Bridge station.
Meanwhile…
Out in the middle of space, about a tenth of a Parsec in front of the Enterprise's course, Q1 had been watching the ship on it's path and mission since it first arrived in the sector. He finally knew what he wanted to do with his little prize, the Key portal. During the day and a half that the Enterprise had used to scan what he considered the "front door" of the sector, he had already come up with a plan of how to work out his little amusement.
Yet before the Enterprise could come into range of the portal, Q1 was interrupted from his musings.
"Just what do you think you're doing?" Q2a suddenly asked.
Q1 turned away from the approaching starship to notice that he suddenly wasn't alone. "Oh, hello Q," he commented when he recognized who had come up to his point in space.
Yet the newcomer was not to be distracted from his purpose, and for the moment it was finding out what exactly the omnipotent being was up to. "Answer my question Q! What are you doing?" Q2a asked. The first Q just shrugged and pointed first to the portal, then to the approaching starship, with it's anti-matter warp core.
"I just thought I'd finally do something with this portal I was given. It would be pretty pointless if I were the only one around when it opened, right? And after all this time, this is the only starship that has passed through this space for nearly three hundred years. I don't want to wait around for any other people to show up. Not that it would happen anytime soon! Come on Q! You can't be the only one of us to mess around with this Captain of yours! Well, ok, you are allowed," he added when he saw the elder Q about to make a comment.
"Oh please Q! I would have asked if I knew it would be them, but how was I supposed to know? They just showed up yesterday, and I've already got a plan on what to do. Nothing harmful or even requiring too much interference on our part. I've already masked the portal so they won't detect it, now we just need them to more or less run through it."
"What's this 'we' all of a sudden?" Q2a asked his compatriot, despite himself liking what he was hearing. The elder Q who had more or less been put in charge of the entire human race, had discovered that it was not only the Enterprise that held the fate of the entire race in it's grip, but the Captain of the ship. In this case, one Jean Luc Picard. Q1 had often led other Q2a to interact with the human race, but when it came to the continued survival and evolution of the whole species, he was told, and at the same time told everybody else, that he was directly in charge and the only one to be able to influence any of it. Still…it would certainly liven Jean Luc's spirits a little if his paranoia was certainly and suddenly confirmed.
At the smile (equivalent) of the Q2a, Q1 knew that he had his accomplice, as well as a good companion for the fun. "So, what exactly is your plan?" Q2a asked.
Q1 grinned mischievously as he quickly outlined what he was planning on doing, and how he had planned on carrying it out. Q2a mulled over the entire plan, once he heard it, for an entire length of a full human second. Then he nodded and announced, "I love it! But you do have to take into consideration the adaptation process that whatever or whoever comes out of the portal will go through. I'm sure the Crew would help to the best of their abilities, but they can only do so much you understand?"
Q1 just kept grinning and nodded at the portal. "Take a look inside." At the elder's hesitation, he added, "Oh go on, it's perfectly safe! I've done it myself."
Q2a did so. When he came back from the portal, he too was grinning like an idiot. He even started to laugh. "Oh, now this is just too perfect! Jean Luc is certainly going to have his hands full with this crowd. Hah, hah, hah, hah!" Q2a crowed.
"What's so funny Q?" Q1 asked.
Still laughing, Q2a looked at Q1 and judged his apparent history from his very appearance. "Oh, that's right. You wouldn't really know who they are. Well my dear boy, allow me to introduce you to Buffy the Vampire Slayer!" And then he broke out into a fit of laughter.
"Who?"
Q2a suddenly stopped laughing. "You have got to be kidding me!" he suddenly screeched. At the answering Q's negative response, he just sighed. "And here I thought that just about everybody knew about that girl by now. She's certainly done enough. Not to mention every one of her counterparts."
Turning to Q1, he explained. "Vampires, first of all, are a semi-mythical creature on Earth, made to plague human kind and even destroy humanity. I myself wasn't even aware of their existence until I happened upon a universe where a human friend I had met was killed by one of them. You ofcourse, knowing me, know that I immediately saved his life. While I was about to blow the vampire to residuals of his very atoms, I was beaten to the punch as they say, by none other than the Vampire Slayer. Buffy. I would go on about the whole story, but you can find out about it much quicker by looking into it yourself. After I saw that Buffy was a good person, I even offered to help her and her allies in a battle that saved all of humanity from destruction. I did very little, as we are supposed to do. Then she and her allies even helped me, and only because I asked, nothing more, with that little trouble with my son a few years back, where he had to learn the value of mortal life?"
"Yes, I remember that whole fiasco. So you're saying that this girl and her allies are trapped inside this portal? And we're about to unleash 20th Century demon fighters onto your state of the art 24th Century encrusted Captain Jean Luc Picard?" Q1 asked.
Q2a nodded. "Yep."
Suddenly both Q's were crowing with laughter. "So what are you going to do with the left over Key energy?" Q asked when they had control of themselves again.
Q1, looking perplexed, asked, "What? What 'key energy'?"
Q2a sighed. "You really don't know anything about the demon worlds and dimensions, do you?"
Then he suddenly saw something within the very portal itself. Looking closer, he realized that they were memories. Fabricated, human memories. He accessed the chaotic jumble of pictures and information, at first it making no sense to any kind of mind in its disassembled state. With but a thought, the information was suddenly in it's original form within a tenth of a moment. Reading the thoughts and memories before him, quite literally, like an open book, Q2a's grin quickly grew.
He indicated the memories he had discovered to the younger Q, who when seeing what he saw held a mirror of Q's own smile. Then he nodded and silently the two looked as one at the ship, and then through it. At the same time the two came to the same idea and when they shared a look at each other it was completely identical. A very evil look.
About the time that Data was entering his quarters, about three simultaneous things began to happen. First, Data entered his quarters, only for Spot, his cat, to come running out as soon as the door was open and faster than even Data could track. Raising an eyebrow, and knowing that the feline would come back within a day or so, Data felt a brief flash of concern over his cat and then focusing it back to the concern of his entire quarters.
Entering, he saw something that he had never before witnessed in his time on the Enterprise. Half of his quarters were nothing but blackened soot and scorch marks, originating as he had been told from the Replicator. His bedroom area however was safe, mostly due to the fact that it was in another room entirely. It was also the most likely place that Spot had been staying when the Replicator blew. On the dark side, all of his paintings were gone, little more than ash on the floor, and his work area and desk were completely ruined. Sighing in disappointment, and feeling a strong yet brief flash of loss, Data walked into his quarters and towards the Replicator, intending to discover the cause of the explosion.
Then, on the Bridge, both the Operations consul and the Engineering Station consuls began beeping some sort of emergency. Lieutenant Peterson had enough experience to know what the emergency readouts were telling him, however the Ensign that had relieved him at Engineering had absolutely no clue as to what was happening. Which is why Commander Riker got up from his post and immediately relieved the Ensign to discover what the problem was.
Standing up, even though he was more often knocked off his feet while standing rather than sitting, Picard turned to look at his second in Command. "Number One?" he asked, hoping for the explanation.
Riker was so shocked by what he was seeing that it took him a moment or two to compose himself enough to answer. Yet his answer, from his strong and intense tone, conveyed all the shock that the Crew of the Enterprise ever needed. "I don't know how, and I don't know what sir, but something is drawing power from the Warp Core!"
Silence reigned in the moments following that statement. Until Lieutenant Peterson spoke up his bad news. "Sir! Something…some kind of energy field that was masked from our sensors just passed through our hull! It's headed directly for the Warp Core!"
Picard wasted no time with stating the obvious, instead directing the energy into action. Tapping the metal over his heart, he activated his commbadge and tried to get out the warning soon enough to save the lives of his people.
"Picard to Engineering! Geordi get everyone…" he was however interrupted.
'We know, we know Captain!' came Geordi's voice over the Comm. Though it was partly muffled due to the very loud lightning and thundering sounds that came over with it. Then, about ninety seconds after it had appeared to start…it just stopped. Several moments of total silence later, Geordi's voice came back over the Comm.
'Uh, Captain? You, uh, may want to sent a medical team down here. Some kind of…portal just opened up right in front of the Warp Core and…uh, spat out about six people. Their unconscious, but alive…I, uh think.'
"Picard to Sickbay, we have casualties in Engineering. Picard to Security, send two teams to Engineering to watch over the…patients." Picard rapid-shot out orders.
Riker stood up from the Engineering station. "Security, sir?" he asked. Picard just nodded. Then he seemed to come to some sort of decision and started walking for the Turbolift. "Number One, with…" he began, but he was interrupted once again by another series of emergency beeps coming from the consuls.
Lieutenant Peterson quickly checked the incoming information and relayed it to the Captain, though his complexion was a bit paler. "Captain, there's been another power surge in Commander Data's quarters. And he hasn't been answering the emergency communiqués from Security."
The Captain nodded his head at the information and waved Will after him. "Lieutenant, you have the Bridge. Number One, with me. We'll check on Data on our way to Sickbay."
Once the Turbolift doors were closed, Will turned on his friend and Commanding officer and looked him straight in the eye and asked in a voice just as confused as he was, "OK, what is going on? Security? Who do you think these people, if that's what they are, are?"
Shaking his head, his eyes as honest as they've ever been, Picard answered, "I have no idea Number One. But I get the feeling that all of my fears and suspicions of the past day or so have just been confirmed."
Nodding, and now understanding his Commander's reasons, Riker replied with a simple, "No offense sir, but I hope you're wrong."
"So do I Number One, so do I."
In Engineering, about two minutes ago or so, Geordi LaForge was just walking past the tower that was the Warp Core, the very power source and life of this ship. AKA, his baby. So when just about every readout and consul in the entire Engineering section suddenly starts beeping up a storm about some kind of power drain, directly on the Core, he's more than a little distressed.
Rushing forward to the Diagnostics board, a large desk-like consul in the middle of the walkway, straight out from the Core, Geordi stops just short of just touching it when his Optical Implants suddenly picked up a very high level of Neutrinos, directly in front of the Warp Core. He barely had time to shout out, "Everyone! Away from the Core! NOW!!" Before a tiny dot of light suddenly appeared about ten feet from the Core, about ten feet up from the deck.
It quickly grew, until it was less than a foot from both the Core and the deck. The sound of thunder and energy sounded louder with each second. The portal looked like nothing more than a cloud of pure white energy, and occasionally a spark of lightning, increasing the sound of thunder, would strike out, but not really strike anything.
Before anybody could really react, except to run and stare, the energy cloud, whatever it was, flashed brighter for a moment, and then something came flying out of it. A second later, it flashed again and another body shot out. It flashed four more times. Each time another body was deposited. After that, it kept flashing and pulsing for several minutes after that.
Geordi heard the Captain's warning right after the second flash. 'Picard to Engineering, Geordi get everyone…!'
"We know, we know Captain!" Geordi couldn't help yelling as he directed every one of his crew out of the Engineering section, unsure of what would happen if that cloud of energy actually touched the Warp Core.
Then, not even before everyone was evacuated, the portal just dissolved in the air. Leaving not even a stray neutrino. Everyone just froze when the only indication that anything had occurred was the six naked bodies on the floor of Engineering. Geordi, as well as several other Chief officers, quickly ran to each of them, checking for vitals. Fortunately, they found them.
"Uh, Captain? You, uh, may want to sent a medical team down here." Geordi reported to the commanding officer. "Some kind of…portal just opened up right in front of the Warp Core and…uh, spat out about six people. Their unconscious, but alive…I, uh think." He moved over to a yellow-white haired man, but when he checked for vitals, pulse and breath, he found absolutely none. He sighed, not sure why he was even mourning the passing of what could have been an invader from another dimension. But still, there was the smallest chance that he could have been a refugee running from some unspeakable evil, and these people had just lost one of their number.
"Sir," an Ensign trying to get his attention shouted at him.
"What is it, Mulcady?" he asked, his voice suddenly tired.
The Ensign looked up at him with sad eyes. "Sir, this one's dead," came the answer.
Closing his eyes, Geordi nodded and stood up. Maybe he couldn't help two of these people, but by God, he would make damn sure that the others lived. It was at this point that the Medical team, along with the Chief Medical Officer Doctor Beverly Crusher came in and took over looking after the strangers. Geordi sighed in relief. Nobody died easy on Beverly's watch…in the good way.
But when the two security teams came in and started either helping the Medics or just watching the proceedings, he got real nervous, real fast.
Data had absolutely no idea what had caused his Replicator to explode. He had removed the casing and gone over every remaining circuit, that was still intact and even some that weren't. As far as he could tell, nothing "physically" had been wrong with the device. He supposed that he would have to go over the ships sensor logs with Geordi if he wanted to know what had happened.
And just as he was turning to do that, which just so happened to be but a second after the phenomenon in Engineering had disappeared, a bolt of the same pure white energy, like lightning struck the android through the torso. He froze, like a statue, for several minutes, the energy channeling through him all of a sudden, and then it was like the golden man was having a seizure. The energy stopped flowing out of the Replicator remains and danced around Data for several more moments before he finally just collapsed to the floor, his system shut down from the overload. His eyes, rather than being open, were shut tight and for but a moment there was movement beneath the lids. Like in REM with humans.
Yet the strangest part came in the moments before Captain Picard and Commander William Riker came into the quarters. A strange green energy shimmered across Data's right arm for several of those moments, and then the arm just changed. From the gold/green skinned, strong male arm, to that of a petite, more feminine human arm. Then it changed back right before the door was opened by the Captain's authorization code and the two Senior officers rushed in and to Data's side.