Title: In Their Shadow - Chapter 9
Author: Robert Cox (smeghead_76@dodo.com.au)
Disclaimer: Buffy is owned by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy productions. The Night's Dawn trilogy is owned by Peter F. Hamilton. At least until the copyright runs out, anyway. Since that won't happen for a long time at the least, I've just gotta hope that no-one takes offence.
Summary: Xander has been transported to the 27th century. Can he adapt to life in the future? Can he ever return home? And, more to the point, can the guy stay out of trouble for once?
Rating: M-15+ (Australian system)
AN: Thanks to Grossclout, who volunteered for beta-ing duties in the later parts.
AN2: There are a couple of non-standard methods of communication used in this story, represented as follows: Affinity and {Datavises}
Distribution: FF.net and XanderZone. Anywhere else, please ask first.
Feedback: Yes, please! After all, it's the only recognition a fanfic author gets...
Ione looked at Xander with a somewhat bemused expression on her face. What would cause him to... Then it hit her. Of course! Gen bears a more than passing resemblance to Dawn Summers. Seemingly of its own accord, an image emerged from the cluster of specialised cells that was the bitek equivalent of a neural nanonic memory index. Taken from the information supplied by Xander's debrief nanonics, it was an image of Dawn Summers' face.
Superimposing the images of Dawn and Genevieve in her mind, Ione noticed a few differences, but they only served to highlight the incredible similarity between the two teenage girls. She also remembered the emotion-analogue that had accompanied those memories - affection, as if she was his little sister. Dawn had also been one of the few people in Xander's life that had shown him any sort of respect.
Oh, this is going to be interesting, Ione thought wickedly. "Xander?" she asked, snapping him out of his astonishment. "Why don't you tell them where you're from?"
Xander gave her an odd look for a second, before apparently realising the likely effect that information would have. Grinning wickedly, he answered, "Sure, Ione. I'm from a small town near Los Angeles called Sunnydale."
"North American-ethnic planet?" Joshua asked. He didn't bother running the name through his neural nanonics encyclopaedia - there were more than one hundred and fifty North American-ethnic planets in the Confederation, and no set of neural nanonics could store the names of all the towns and cities on that number of planets.
"Nope," Xander replied, shaking his head, still with that evil little smirk on his face.
Joshua looked puzzled. "Surely not Earth? There haven't been any small towns on Earth in..." He broke off as his intuition belatedly started yammering away in his skull. Shooting Ione a hard glare, he asked, "Okay, when are you from?"
Damn. He figured it out, Ione thought, with some small regret.
"The last time I looked at a calendar, it was the year two thousand and one," Xander replied, seeming to relish the likely reactions.
Joshua disappointed him, though. "Oh," was all he said.
"You took that rather well," Ione said.
Joshua started ticking points off on his fingers. "The possessed. The Kiint observers. The Sleeping God. Teleporting to Riynine. This is weirder than any of those how, again?"
"Time travel?" Ione pointed out.
"For starters, Ashly Hanson does something similar. In fact, he's about due to go back into zero-tau for his next fifty-year jaunt." Joshua assumed a hurt expression. "And secondly... I'm hurt, Ione, that you don't remember."
"Remember what... oh." When Joshua had inherited the Lady Macbeth from his father, it had been in terrible shape, requiring millions of fuseodollars' worth of repairs. When asked how the Lady Mac had acquired that damage, he'd told any one of a number of outlandish stories that he'd seemed to have stored in his neural nanonics, just in case someone asked. The story he'd told Ione had been the most outlandish, though, involving terrorists searching an asteroid belt for fissionable materials for nuclear weapons, a crashed xenoc starship - with technologies such as artificial gravity and molecular-level matter synthesisers - and, stretching credulity way past breaking point, a wormhole that had held stable for thirteen thousand years.
A wormhole that was capable of being used to travel both forwards and backwards through time.
"You mean that story was true?" Ione asked in amazement.
"Of course," Joshua replied. "Have I ever lied to you?"
That was a point in the story's favour, Ione reflected. Joshua had never lied to her - which made her just about the only person that he hadn't lied to at some point. Then an idea hit her. "Joshua, would it be possible to use it to..."
"No," Joshua said, cutting her off at the verbal knees. "Oh, sure, Xander could use it to return to the twenty-first century, but he'd still be well over a thousand light-years from Earth."
"Bugger. Oh, well, it was just a thought, anyway. But I'm still not best pleased that you took all of this so easily."
Xander nudged Ione with his elbow and pointed. She looked in the direction he was indicating and felt a small surge of gratification when she saw the expressions of utter stupefaction worn by both Louise and Genevieve. Joshua grinned and cleared his throat, causing both of them to start slightly and start not-quite-staring at Xander in amazement.
"Oh, Louise, dear," Joshua said in an amused tone of voice. "Have I ever told you how beautiful you are when you look like that?"
Louise's expression of amazement hardened so quickly that the only way it could have gone quicker was if she had had micro-valency generators implanted under the skin of her face. "Joshua Calvert..." she began warningly.
Joshua held up his hands in a gesture of supplication. "Hey, I didn't know this was going to happen, either," he said in a not-quite-pleading tone of voice.
Reminded who the architect of her embarrassment really was, she turned on Ione. "Ione Saldana..." she began in a similar tone of voice, before trailing off. It wasn't as if she could threaten Ione the same way she could Joshua.
Joshua chuckled, and wrapped an arm around Louise's waist. "As charming as this discussion is, I think it'd go better over the rather large lunch that is being prepared right now. So, if you'll follow me..." He started off towards where he'd parked the farm ranger he'd used to drive to the station to meet Ione and Xander.
That was all true, wasn't it? he asked Ione via affinity. It wasn't some sort of elaborate wind-up for some devious and evil purpose known only to you Saldanas?
Have I ever lied to you? Ione shot back.
No, but there have been times when you haven't told me all of the truth.
That's not the same thing.
"Errr..." Xander asked, "what about the luggage?"
"Don't worry, Xander" Joshua reassured him. "It's been taken care of." Just then, the farm ranger came into view. "Jesus, I think I'd better check the load-carrying capacity of the ranger," he added, seeing the rather large mound of bags and cases piled into the vehicle's rear.
"Don't look at me," Xander objected. "I was in zero-tau when she bought all of that stuff."
"Well, he needed clothes," Ione said defensively. "And the plan is for him to go directly to the Sol system straight from here, so bringing along everything he was likely to need for an extended stay on Earth seemed like a good idea."
"A lot of things seem like a good idea at the time," Joshua said, shaking his head. "Most involve vast amounts of alcohol, though."
Ione remained silent, refusing to dignify that comment with an answer.
You've got some explaining to do, Saldana.
I'll tell you the story on the drive to Cricklade, Ione replied. But only you. After all, it is Xander's story to tell, and he should be the one to tell it.
****
Cricklade Manor, Stoke County
Kesteven Island, Norfolk
8th June, 2614
True to her word, Ione had shared Xander's story with Joshua - via affinity - during the drive to Cricklade, forcing him to bring a vehicle-control program on-line as the implications of the story had sunk in.
Jesus, and I thought the possessed were bad enough.
What makes this worse is the fact that people have willingly ignored this for thousands of years, forcing those who fight vampires and their like to do so anonymously, without so much as thanks.
Yeah.
Conversation over lunch was limited to fairly basic background information about Norfolk - particularly the Norfolk Tears which played such a vital role in the planet's economy - and basic background on the Confederation, starting with the different between Edenists and the majority Adamists.
The difference boiled down to this - Edenists have affinity. Adamists don't, ever since Pope Eleanor issued a decree against it in the late twenty-first century. The only other major difference was that Edenists tended towards biological systems wherever possible. Starships, implants and body enhancements were all biological, as opposed to the technological solutions favoured by Adamists.
The reason why the lunchtime conversation was being kept deliberately light was that both Ione and Xander refused to give details about Xander's story, claiming that it definitely wasn't suitable for mealtime conversation. A strangely subdued Joshua had agreed with them.
So, Xander's story had had to wait until after the meal had been finished. Fletcher had been taken to play in the rolling grounds of the manor, and everyone else had retired to the sitting room with a bottle of Norfolk Tears.
Once drinks had been poured, and everyone settled, Xander asked "Where do you want me to start?"
"At the beginning would be considered traditional," Louise pointed out.
"All the way from the beginning?" Xander asked with a devilish gleam in his eye - which apparently went unnoticed, since everyone nodded. "Okay, then. But remember, you asked for it."
Pausing for a moment to collect his thoughts, Xander started, "Millions of years ago, Earth was a planet of darkness..."
****
Xander cast his mind back to when Giles had told the story. It had been a few weeks after the Mayor-demon had been blown into bite-sized chunks, and as a consequence, it had been very quiet on the vampire and demon front.
They had been at Giles' apartment, cataloguing and indexing his surviving reference library, checking to see exactly what they had been able to move from Sunnydale High School's library before it's explosive farewell.
It had also been a time before Buffy and Willow had started to actively push him away, so the task, while boring, had gone fairly quickly. Faith and Dawn had managed to evade the job completely, and were off shopping somewhere, giving the whole occasion a slightly nostalgic air, as if it was a meeting of the Original Scoobies.
After about two hours of book-related work, Giles had declared that it was time for a break. Xander had performed his customary task of fetching the appropriate snacks and once he had returned with various pastry delights, Willow had asked for the full story of the origins of demons and vampires.
Willow had listened attentively because of her passion for learning. Xander had done the same because Giles had managed to make the story interesting.
As for Buffy, well, her mayfly attention span had kicked in and she had wandered off to the room where the surviving training equipment was stored, looking for something to hit. The story went something like this...
The first known demons had appeared on Earth about one hundred million years ago.
Xander had interrupted at this point, wanting to know exactly how the Watcher's Council had known this.
Giles had explained that those demons had long since lost all interest in seeking power on the material plane, which was a good things, because if one of those demons ever emerged, there would be virtually nothing that could stop it, possibly up to and including a direct hit with a thermonuclear warhead.
He'd gone on further to explain that these demons had been eager to take the chance to tell their story, since most demons showed little or no interest in recording things for posterity - apart from the usual, such as how to best torture a human, how to bring about the dominion of demon-kind, that sort of thing - and if there were no other interruptions, could he get on with the story, please?
Living along the dinosaurs had not been easy, they'd explained. Sure, most types of dinosaur had been little more than several tons of meat walking - or swimming, as the case may be - but nasty experiences had taught them a number of things.
"Avoid the sauropods," had been one, for the simple reason that fifty to one hundred tons of animal stepping on a demon was a real show-stopper, not to mention a particularly embarrassing way to be banished back to the lower regions. Oh, and their tails? A sauropod really could get the tip of its tail moving at supersonic speeds, which inflicted hideous damage when it hit. A hiding to nothing, that was.
"Avoid the carnosaurs," had been another, particularly Tyrannosaurus Rex. The "tyrant lizard king" had been aptly named. Eight tons of muscle and bad attitude, it had been equipped with sufficient offensive weaponry in the form of fifteen centimetre long, razor-sharp teeth to give all but the most powerful demon a nasty shock.
And later, there had been one type of dinosaur in particular that had earned the fearful respect of the demons.
Utahraptor.
It had been Willow's turn to interrupt at this point, asking how the demons had known the modern names for the various dinosaur types. Giles had replied that they hadn't, they'd described the dinosaurs to the members of the Watcher's Council that had been questioning them, who'd promptly sent off for palaeontology books and shown the demons illustrations of dinosaurs until they hit on the correct types. The demons had even corrected a few minors errors in colouring and provided some interesting - but not very useful - information regarding dinosaur behaviour. Willow had nodded, accepting the explanation, and Giles had continued with the story...
Even though Utahraptor had been much smaller than the T-Rex, in some ways it had been much nastier. Despite a surprising turn of speed, T-Rex had not exactly been the most silent of hunters, whereas Utahraptor had been the "stealth dinosaur". And although its weight had been a 'mere' two hundred and fifty kilograms, pound-for-pound it was the most heavily armed predator in history. Not only was it lavishly equipped with razor-sharp teeth, but it also had wickedly sharp claws at the end of all four limbs, particularly the sickle-claw on the middle toe of each foot.
And if all that wasn't bad enough, Utahraptor was a pack hunter. A co-ordinated pack hunter. That meant that any demon who saw one of these killing machines charging it would be best advised to flee, because if it stayed to fight, it would find itself under attack from the three that it had never known were there, from both sides and the rear. Simultaneously.
Given Utahraptor's propensity for fast, slashing, crippling attacks, one pass was generally all that was required before the demon was crippled, virtually disembowelled, and vainly trying to regenerate the gaping wounds inflicted on it. Then the Utahraptors would feed. Thirty million years of sharing the same planet meant that by this time, dinosaurs had evolved a high level of resistance to the corrupting influences of demon flesh, so even a last act of vengeance hadn't been possible.
Xander had interrupted again, asking if the Utahraptor had been the smart dinosaurs from 'Jurassic Park'. Giles had somehow managed to resist rolling his eyes before nodding. Xander had sat back and listened to the story continue once more, happy to have his question answered...
Then a near-Armageddon had come, and it had been all natural causes.
A ten-kilometre lump of rock had smacked into the Earth at a speed of sixteen kilometres per second, producing a yield equivalent to one hundred million megatons of conventional explosives and scoured three-fifths of all species from the planet, mostly from the top end of the food chain. The most famous of these victims had been the dinosaurs, and the asteroid had been dubbed by later scientists the "Dinosaur Killer".
Demons had suffered as well. Not only were large numbers killed in the initial impact, but when weakened species had perished during the decade-long "cosmic winter" that had followed, bringing the total casualty toll to three-quarters of the total number of species, demons had died in still larger numbers as their food supplies dwindled to the point of non-existence.
As many as ninety-five percent of Earth's demon population may have died during that decade.
Whatever the exact number had been, the demons had never really recovered, at least not for millions of years, anyway. During the geological ages that had followed, new species arose, flourished for a relatively brief time, and died out. All throughout this time, the demon population of Earth, decimated and struggling to survive, had changed.
Gone were the complacent "originals". The new breeds taking their place knew that even if they found perfect safe havens on the planet, there was always the possibility of more Dinosaur Killers. This attitude was reinforced by the fairly steady stream of much smaller rocks - on average, two per century - that proved that Earth was still a target in the cosmic shooting gallery. The brightest among them considered this situation, and came to a conclusion that seemed appropriate.
Leave.
Get off the planet.
However, this was impossible. Not only were they tied to the energy of Earth so intimately that any attempt to leave would result in death - permanent death, not mere banishment to the lower regions - but there was an insurmountable obstacle.
Gravity.
No breed of demon could fly well enough to gain sufficient speed to escape Earth's gravity well. So the demons had persisted - not that they had any choice in the matter, really - and watched evolution take its course as the title of "top species that wasn't a demon breed" had jumped from species to species. After dinosaurs came the birds, then mammals - particularly in the oceans - had started to claw their way to the top.
Then, seven million years ago, a new species had arisen. One whose descendant species would one day truly shake the galaxy.
Austrilopethicus.
At the time, it didn't seem like much. A new sub-species of primate, not much different from its cousins, except that it spent more time foraging on the ground for food, rather than in the trees.
But it prospered, passing on its new genes to those species that followed. Homo habilis - Handy Man - was next, followed by Homo Erectus - Upright Man, the first true bipedal primate. Much later, heated debate would rage as to whether these species were true tool-users, creating stone, bone and wooden tools, or whether they had simply picked up sharp stones and sticks and used them. Both sides to the debate would agree, however, that the fact that these earliest ancestors of man had been intelligent enough to recognise their value.
The primate revolution hadn't stopped there, however. There had been Java Man and Peking Man, evolutionary dead ends, but still with their contributions to make. Then had come the first of the two Homo sub-species that would start the long journey to the stars.
Homo Neanderthalensis.
Neanderthal Man.
And the Human-Demon War began in earnest.
Because the Neanderthals were considerably more intelligent than their ancestors. They were true tool-users, making both tools and weapons from wood, bone and stone - the first two causing considerable distress to the now-recovering demon population, as they were effective as weapons as their kind. And Neanderthal Man was intelligent enough to realise this. Also troubling was the advent of religion. Neanderthal religion was a crude affair, but that didn't matter - the Neanderthals believed in their religions, and that was enough. This, combined with the equally crude but equally effective magics that Neanderthal shamans were starting to wield, reduced to demons' options to two stark choices.
Fight, or die.
They threw themselves into the fight with the desperation of those that have no choice. From the very start, the human population was under intense pressure, fighting a holding battle for their very existence.
It was a war that lasted for over two hundred thousand years, and would probably have resulted in the extinction of humanity, just one more on a long list of species that went the way of every other species before them.
Then a new Homo sub-species arose.
Homo Sapiens.
Wise Man.
For the first five thousand years of their existence, Homo Sapiens - also called Cro-Mangnon Man, after the first recorded fossil discoveries - did not get overly involved in the War, but that did not mean they were easy pickings, as several demon breeds found out to their dismay when they had attacked Homo Sapiens settlements. Not only was the new sub-species of humans even more intelligent than Neanderthal Man, but they had refined their weapons and magics to a degree where their effectiveness was an order of magnitude greater.
After that initial period of building up their defences, humanity struck back... and only averted disaster by the narrowest of margins.
Over the course of a century Neanderthal Man vanished, ninety percent of their numbers killed by demons and the rest absorbed into Cro-Mangnon Man, whose numbers had been reduced by slightly over a half. The only reason humanity survived was that they had managed to inflict sufficient casualties on the demon population that the demons also needed time to recover. Over the next twenty thousand years, both humanity and demons built up their numbers - humanity faster than the demons - and fought several inconclusive skirmishes. Skirmishes only on the scale of previous fighting, of course, since many of these "skirmishes" lasted for years.
And then a new player entered the arena... on the side of humanity.
The Powers That Be, the unseen guiding hand behind evolution, did not enter the fight directly at first, but their first "indirect" contribution would leave a legacy that would last for millennia.
The Slayer.
The early Slayer was different from those that would follow. For starters, there wasn't just one Slayer - there were many, depending on the need. And at the start, the need was great.
The initial Calling was a dozen Slayers, each the strongest young woman of her tribe. This selection was quite deliberate, relying on the female instinct to protect her young - and part of the Slayer set-up was to ensure that the Slayers saw all of humanity as in need of protection.
Their ranks bolstered by the addition of the Slayers, humanity renewed the offensive - and immediately, the demon population was placed on the back foot for the first time since the age of dinosaurs, their numbers under pressure like no other time since the Dinosaur Killer. But this time, it was not natural events causing them their difficulties.
The demons' response was three thousand years in the making, and brilliant in its planning and execution.
They corrupted one of the Powers' most trusted lieutenants - Lucifer, or Sammael as he was known in some circles. The Light Bringer, the Morningstar, one of those who had provided humanity with their greatest hope in the form of the Slayer.
They greatest betrayer in history.
The brilliance in the method was in its simplicity. Lucifer had given up part of himself to create the Slayer Spirit, and had received virtually nothing in the way of acknowledgement or thanks. The demons simply encouraged the doubts and resentment this created, and eventually they succeeded in fanning the fires of rebellion. Gathering an army of those who thought as he did, Lucifer stormed the citadels of the Powers That Be.
The War of the Powers raged for three hundred years, both on Earth and in other dimensions. In the end, though the Powers were triumphant. Deciding to take an active part in humanity's future, they drove demons from the Earth into a neighbouring dimension, and sealed it so that no demon would ever walk the Earth again.
That was the plan, anyway.
The demons launched a two-pronged counter-stroke at the crucial moment, however. The first part relied on little more than sheer brute power - attacking the dimensional seal before it had been fully put in place. Fortunately, the attack failed, but not completely. Several ruptures were created along with numerous other areas of weakness.
The ruptures would come to be called "Hellmouths".
The second part was more subtle, and a complete success. One of the last demons on Earth mixed it's essence with one of the humans its group had seized as of combination of prisoners and food source. The results was that the demon took over the human body, expelling the human soul and killing the body, but inserting itself to replace the soul. One unanticipated side-effect of this was the fact that the demon was now forced to rely on blood for subsistence.
On the plus side, however, was the fact that it could now reproduce, summoning others of its kind into human bodies by draining virtually all of the human's blood and forcing the intended human host to drink some of its own blood.
Thus were vampires created.
Another disturbing - from the viewpoints of both humanity and the Powers - discovery was the fact that the Hellmouths could be opened from Earth, releasing the demons that had been sealed away, not to mention that, with sufficient preparation, demons could be summoned virtually anywhere. The only thing the Powers could do in response was to ensure that only one Hellmouth was active at any one time, and as for the other... well, summoning demons away from the Hellmouth was extremely difficult, but still possible, so it was necessary to extend the range of gifts offered to a select few. These were the Champions, of which the Slayer was one.
Unlike the Slayer, however, a Champion was not always a particular type of person. A Champion could be anyone. In fact a person could be a Champion and not be aware of it.
And then the previously unknown third element to the demons' counter-stroke became apparent.
They had turned humanity on itself.
Whereas previously, humanity's effort had been focused on fighting the demon threat, divisions became more apparent - and more violent. There were still those, of course, who were dedicated to fighting the demon threat, but this relative handful were now forced to operate in secrecy, as things that should never be forgotten gradually became the province of myth and legend.
And throughout this, the surviving demons from the early stages of the Human-Demon War plotted and planned, determined to one day launch the final counter-offensive that would win them the war.
At this stage, both Xander and Willow had noticed that Buffy had left. "Gee, where'd Buffy go?" Xander had asked.
"I have no idea, Xander," Giles had said, noticing the absence of a certain blonde Slayer.
"She's probably gone home," Willow had pointed out. "After all it is... ohmygod, look at the time!"
"Don't panic Wills, it's not that late. And yes, I do know that it's almost dusk, but we should manage to get home before it gets dark. C'mon we'd best be going," Xander had said, rising from his chair and heading for the door. "Nice story, G-Man," he'd added with a grin before exiting.
"Don't call me..."