Title: In Their Shadow
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}
AN3: This is basically a summarisation of 'The Neutronium Alchemist' - the second part of the Night's Dawn trilogy - dressed up as Joshua telling his story to Xander. If anyone's feeling keen enough to read it, I can't recommend it enough. Questions like, 'Why was Louise so keen to get to Earth?' will be answered. Be warned, though - it's not for the faint-hearted, as it runs to something over 1200 pages. By comparison, 'The Lord of the Rings' tops out at just over 1000.
Joshua paused to take a sip of his drink, and Xander said, "Woah... that's some story."
"You ain't heard the half of it," Joshua responded. "It gets worse from there."
"Hang on, I do have one question, though."
"Shoot."
"Well... it's this. You say that when people die, they go to this 'beyond' thing you mentioned. But when Angelus was trying to open Acathla, what was on the other side certainly wasn't empty nothingness. And I'm pretty certain that that's the case for the other side of the Hellmouth, as well."
Ione fielded this question. "They probably connect to other dimensions that are separate from the beyond. After all, the beyond proves the existence of other dimensions, and who said there can't be more?"
Xander nodded. "Good point. On with the story, then."
"Well, when we got back to Tranquillity, we didn't exactly get the warmest of receptions. Paranoia was the order of the day, which wasn't surprising, considering..."
****
Even before they docked, they found out an awful truth - that the possessed had already left Lalonde and were spreading throughout the Confederation. That had dampened their moods even more. After all they'd been through, the possessed were on the loose.
In fact, they'd already left their mark in two significant places.
On Atlantis, an ocean world and the only planet colonised by Edenists, they'd taken over one of the bitek islands germinated by the Edenists. Laton's body had been one of those possessed, but he'd managed to transfer to the island's neural structure, where he wrested control back from the soul who'd been possessing him. In the end, though, he'd been forced to destroy the island in order to prevent the possessed from overrunning the rest of the planet.
And in the habitat Valisk, the possessed had quickly gained control there, although the habitat personality was still in charge of the neural structure.
The bad news didn't stop there, however. Valisk was where the first blackhawks had been gestated, and although Tranquillity had become the premiere blackhawk base in the Confederation, considerable numbers of the bitek starships had been based there.
The possessed had captured the lot of them, and had managed to possess the blackhawks themselves, renaming them hellhawks.
Even the praise that had been heaped on the crew of the Lady Mac for their 'heroic' rescues of the Edenists from Aethra and the children from Lalonde hadn't improved their moods to any great extent as they came to terms with both the loss of a fellow crew-member and the implications of the possessed. Not even the lavish praise heaped on Joshua for the amazing piloting skills he'd shown in pulling off the Lagrange point stunt - along with a new nickname, 'Lagrange' Calvert - had raised his spirits to any great degree. After all, he'd known what would have happened if he'd made even the slightest mistake, been off-course by even a fraction of a degree.
Events outside Tranquillity began to pick up pace as well. Louise told Xander of the arrival of Quinn Dexter at Cricklade, and the horrors unleashed as he began to open the inhabitants for possession. The rest of Kesteven Island had been racked by the same sort of civil disturbances that had troubled Lalonde - and it was now obvious that the possessed were loose on the world. Louise and Genevieve barely managed to escape the clutches of the possessed at the manor, and met up with one of the Romany who worked at Cricklade, whose name was Carmitha.
For a moment, it seemed that they were about to be caught anyway, as they'd encountered another group of possessed, but then help had come from an unexpected source.
One of the possessed had stepped forward to defend Louise and Genevieve, who'd been insulted by another of the possessed. Through sheer strength of will, he'd managed to back the rest of the group off. Introducing himself as Titreano, he'd sworn to help Louise and Genevieve reach the planetary capital, Norwich, with the first stage of the journey being to the aerodrome at Bytham, where it would be possible to obtain transportation for the remainder of the journey to the capital.
It had been an eight-hour voyage, and nerves rubbed raw by what had already happened, and further stressed by the uncertainty of might happen before they arrived at Bytham, had snapped more than once, resulting in an unhappy trip.
But they'd reached Bytham in safety, and had managed to take off, heading towards Norwich. Carmitha had decided to remain behind, and head for where the rest of the Romanies were going to seek shelter.
During the flight, Louise had quizzed Titreano about his true identity. It turned out that 'Titreano' had simply been a name that he had assumed late in his life. His true name had been Fletcher Christian, naval officer and second-in-command of the sailing ship HMS Bounty.
Mutineer.
This was were Joshua picked up the thread of the story again, telling of how, in the mad rush to evacuate the Kulu embassy staff from Lalonde, three possessed had managed to get to Ombey, which was the nearest Principality of the Kulu Kingdom to Lalonde, and where the Lalonde embassy staff had been evacuated to. He told of the fierce opening skirmishes - the police still not knowing exactly what they were facing - as the possessed increased their numbers. Two of the three had been eliminated - at a steep cost in the terms of numbers of lives lost - but the third had escaped... and the possessed were at large on the Mortonridge peninsular of the Xingu continent on Ombey.
The focus of the story then shifted to New California, where the possessed had been building up their numbers stealthily, with the police and intelligence agencies working themselves into a lather trying to get a handle on them, let alone stop them. Once again, the defenders had been hampered by their lack of knowledge about what they were facing.
The situation had been precariously poised until the possessed gained a leader - in the form of Al Capone.
"Woah, woah, woah. Waitaminnit. Are you trying to tell me that the leader of the possessed on New California was Al Capone?" Xander interrupted. "Chicago gangster, had quite a few movies made about him, that Al Capone?"
"You bet," Joshua replied. "Remember, the only qualification required to get into the beyond is to be... well, dead. So, it was inevitable that someone like Capone would come back. I'm just glad it wasn't someone like Napoleon Bonaparte, Erwin Rommel or Richard Saldana." At the mention of her ancestor's name, the man who'd led the expedition to Kulu, Ione shot a mock-glare Joshua's way, and in response Joshua shrugged.
"Oh, okay," Xander said. When he thought about it, it made sense. "It was just a surprise, that's all."
"Don't worry about it, Xander," Ione said. "It came as a nasty shock to us at the time, as well."
"There's one thing I haven't really mentioned yet," Joshua added. "And that's what the possessed could do. You see, the beyond is pretty much pure energy, and each possessing soul still kept their connection to the beyond. The difference in energy levels bled through that link, allowing the possessed to do some pretty amazing things."
"For starters, they mucked up anything electronic around them," Ione added.
A penny dropped for Xander. "Which is why the trip from Lalonde to Norfolk was so trouble-plagued," he said. "Which would mean that Quinn Dexter was possessed when you met him."
"Exactly," Joshua said. "Of course, I didn't know it at the time, and later, he managed to overcome the possessing soul, but retain control of a possessed's abilities."
"Which were?" Xander asked.
"Well, they could throw this white fire," Joshua said, rubbing his right hand as if it itched. "They could change their appearance, heal just about any wound that wasn't instantly fatal, mould matter to their will - simple things only, without moving parts, and certainly nothing too technological - and shrug off fire from energy weapons, up to a point, that is."
Xander was amazed. "How?"
Joshua and Ione shrugged, almost in unison. "No-one knows," Ione said. "The best answer anyone has come up with is that the same energy that make up our souls is present in just about everything else - in much smaller amounts, obviously - and because the possessed could manipulate that energy, that meant that they could also manipulate whatever was containing that energy."
Xander thought about that for a moment. "That makes sense, I suppose," he said slowly, and a little to his surprise, it actually did make sense. Maybe all those years of listening to the G-man's lectures paid off, he thought. A slight pang struck him as he wondered how the gang was coping with his disappearance.
Joshua continued with the story. "Well, Capone displayed the same sort of strategic flair that saw him become top gangster in Chicago when he went straight for the top."
Capone had decided that the problem with how the possessed were going about things was that they lacked organisation, thus giving the government a chance to pick them off piecemeal. Gathering a select few of the possessed in New California's capital, San Angeles, he'd infiltrated City Hall before the bulk of the governmental employees arrived for the day's work, and possessed the handful of workers who were already there.
Summoning the other possessed in San Angeles, Capone swiftly seized City Hall, and the first major government within the Confederation had fallen to the possessed.
Meanwhile, on Ombey, the government had reacted, declaring a state of emergency and martial law across Mortonridge, and having discovered the exact nature of what they were facing.
"Hang on," Xander protested. "Why all the jumping around?"
"I'm trying to tell the story in roughly the same order as it happened," Joshua pointed out. "That means that shifts are going to have to be necessary."
"Fair enough, I suppose."
Mortonridge was put under close surveillance by orbital Strategic Defence satellites, and any vehicle that left a town would be directed to a holding area, where they would be searched. Failure to comply would result in the orbiting SD weapons platforms firing on the vehicle. Once in the holding area, the passengers would have to wait until they could be tested for possession. Once again, failure to comply would result in SD fire.
"That seems a bit harsh," Xander commented.
"Well, remember what they were up against," Louise pointed out. "The authorities on Ombey thought that was the only way they could handle the situation."
In the towns themselves, a curfew would be enforced, with no-one apart from the police - who would enforce the curfew, assisted by the SD satellites - allowed on the streets. If anyone was caught breaking the curfew, they would be given exactly one chance to surrender, with weapons engagement authorisation given to the police.
"Basically, shoot to kill," Xander commented.
"Well, they'd seen what the possessed were capable of. To them, it seemed like the only thing they could do," Ione said.
Once that was in place, the evacuation of Mortonridge began. The plan called for Kulu Marines to encircle each town, along with police reserves, and a house-to-house sweep conducted, with each person tested for possession. Non-possessed would be relocated, whereas possessed would be given a stark choice: surrender the body they were possessing or go into zero-tau.
"Huh?" Xander said, perplexed. "What's so bad about going into zero-tau?"
"Well, Xander, when you... went into zero-tau, you didn't notice a thing until the pod was powered down," Ione explained. Xander nodded at that, leaving alone the issue that he hadn't gone into zero-tau voluntarily for the moment. "But for the possessing soul, it's the worst form of sensory deprivation. You see, the possessing soul is fully aware of the passing of time, but all their other senses are cut off. To them, it's worse than the beyond, as bad as that was for them. Although the beyond is a sensory wasteland, they could at least... acquire... memories and experiences from the other souls they encountered there."
Xander nodded, accepting that. "So, they were basically faced with two nasty choices," he said.
"That's right," Joshua confirmed. "They could go back to the beyond of their own accord, or get put into zero-tau, where they would eventually crack from sensory deprivation and go back to the beyond anyway. Not much of a choice, really."
"Wasn't anyone trying to solve the problem in other ways?" Xander asked.
Ione chuckled mirthlessly. "Just every man and his dog, Xander. The churches were trying to figure out what the existence of souls and the beyond meant in their terms, and the scientists were trying to figure out the physics behind it. Even I was supporting efforts." When Xander shot a confused glance at her, she clarified by saying, "It turned out that the electronics stack that Joshua found was crammed full of recorded Laymil memories, and a lot of them showed that they were in the throes of a similar possession crisis. In fact, the habitats around Mirchusko had chosen suicide of submission to the Laymil possessed.
"And even stranger, it turned out that the Laymil home planet had been located in the same system after all. It... just wasn't there any more."
"What? How?"
"There's one more ability the possessed had. When enough possessed got together, they were capable of cleanly removing a planet from this universe, and taking it to another dimension." Xander shot her an incredulous look, and she continued, "Don't look at me like that, Xander. That's what happened to Unimeron - the Laymil homeworld - and to quite a few planets in the Confederation, as well."
"So, this sort of thing didn't just apply to humans, then," Xander said,
"Nope," Joshua said. "Apparently, the Kiint went through something similar as well, but they wouldn't say what the way was to deal with it."
"Why not?" Xander asked. "Oh, and what's a Kiint?"
"To answer your first question," Joshua replied, "they said that we had to come to our own solution, which was true, as you'll discover later in the story. And to answer your second question, the Kiint are a xenoc species. An adult Kiint is about eight metres long, two high at the shoulder, and walks on eight legs. Their heads are roughly triangle-shaped, with eyes at the sides, and six gill-like breathing slits instead of a nose. It's assumed that their mouths are behind their chins, as no-one's ever seen them eat.
"They don't speak - any sort of language, although they can use processor blocks to communicate with humans - instead using something like affinity to communicate amongst themselves, and they can use affinity to communicate with Edenists and other people with affinity."
"They're also extremely intelligent and dignified, which is not surprising when you take into account the fact that they've been civilised for something like two hundred thousand years," Ione put in.
"T-two... hundred... thousand... years??" Xander stammered, unable to wrap his head around the concept.
"Something like that," Ione agreed. "But that's a guess. It could be longer, it could be shorter."
Xander's mouth opened and shut a few more times without making any sounds, as he struggled to come to terms with what he'd heard.
"But it's only the adults that act dignified and solemn. Young Kiint are much more playful, and well... just damned cute," Ione added with a grin.
"You mean Haile?" Joshua asked with a chuckle. "Yeah, she could get excitable."
"She sure enjoyed swimming at the beach in Tranquillity," Ione recalled. "But, back to the story. Where were we again?"
"The efforts to find a solution," Xander reminded her.
"That's right. Anyway, after finding out what had happened to Unimeron, I sent the Laymil Project to Avon to report his findings to the Confederation Navy which, out of necessity, was taking the lead in fighting a holding action against the possessed until a proper solution could be found. I don't really know what happened, but he came back with a team of Navy researchers to help speed up the search through the recorded Laymil memories, because some of the memories showed the Laymil possession crisis."
On Ombey, the evacuation had gone fairly well, except in one place - the small town of Exnall.
A journalist, bitter about the lack of prospects in the town, had learned about the curfew and had datavised everyone in the town, resulting in a mob of people descending on the police station, demanding to know what was going on. Naturally, several possessed had been in the crowd, and things had gone pear-shaped from there.
Unfortunately, this had happened before the Marines were able to deploy around the town, and the possessed had managed to break out again, moving through the forests surrounding Exnall, skirmishing with the Marines, who were now just arriving.
Then the third of the three possessed from the embassy staff had revealed herself and, after proving that the possessed were now in a position to control the entire Mortonridge peninsular, offered cease-fire terms until the crisis was resolved, one way or another. With some reluctance, terms were agreed to, and the military pulled out of Mortonridge, with no other alternative than to essentially abandon the peninsula's two million inhabitants to be possessed, although some had managed to escape.
Then a brand new crisis had erupted. Doctor Alkad Mzu, a Garissan scientist, had escaped.
"What's so bad about that?" Xander asked.
"Well, to answer that question, you need to know a little background," Ione replied. "Thirty-three years ago, scoutships from two planetary systems, Garissa and Oumta, discovered a star system which contained asteroids with an incredible metal purity - the Dorados. The trouble was, they immediately started squabbling over who discovered them first and would thus have the development rights."
"Couldn't they share?" Xander asked, perplexed. "I mean, there was enough to go around, wasn't there?"
"Oh, sure," Ione replied. "More than enough, in fact. But both governments got greedy. It started off with development ships being attacked by 'pirates', then asteroid bases in each system were attacked, and then Omuta upped the stakes by using antimatter on a Garissan asteroid."
"From there, it went downhill rapidly. Doctor Mzu, who was working at a university at the time, designed a doomsday weapon, which she called the Neutronium Alchemist."
"What did it do?" Xander asked, intrigued.
"No-one knew at the time... and you'll have to wait to find out," Joshua answered. "But anyway, she was on a mission to deploy it, when the Garissan ships carrying out the mission were ambushed in interstellar space by Oumtan blackhawks. Of the three ships, one was destroyed, and the other two crippled.
"It got worse from there, as at that moment, the Omutans were launching their own attack, dropping a dozen antimatter planetbusters on Garissa. To give you an idea of how much devastation that caused, each planetbuster was equivalent to one hundred million megatons of ordinary explosives, about the same amount as the asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs on Earth. And the Omutans dropped twelve of them."
"Jesus," Xander said, looking vaguely queasy.
"It was genocide - in fact, that's how it's known in the history books; the Garissan Genocide. Out of a planetary population of ninety-five million, there were about three hundred thousand survivors."
"Holy shit," Xander whispered. "Antimatter can do that?"
"You bet, and not to mention that the entire planet was strerilised... down to bacteria," Joshua said gravely. "To put it another way... okay, back in your time, nuclear weapons were the biggest, baddest things around, right?"
"Right."
"Well, antimatter leaves nukes for dead. Hell, civilian craft - such as the Lady Mac - can be armed with nuclear warhead-equipped combat wasps... missiles, Xander," Joshua explained. "So, nukes aren't uncommon."
"But if antimatter's so bad, why is it even available?" Xander asked.
"Well, the first commercial production of antimatter in the early twenty-third century was an attempt to break the Edenist Helium-3 monopoly - after all, there was still some uncertainty about how the Edenists would wield the clout that that gave them in times of crisis. Earth, especially, was dependant on the Helium-3 mined from Jupiter for all of its energy needs. Because antimatter could also be used as a fuel for starships, it was seen as an alternative energy supply.
"But then someone used it as a weapon of mass destruction," Joshua continued. "Soon after, antimatter was outlawed - for anyreason. If a starship was caught using it, the captain was shot on the spot, and the crew sent to a penal planet. No exceptions."
"Ahem," Ione said, looking pointedly at Joshua.
"Oh, all right... one exception. But that's going to be told in its own time," Joshua corrected.
Xander thought about this for a moment. "Hang on," he said. "If antimatter was - and I'm assuming, still is - outlawed, how did the Omutans get their stash?"
"Criminal syndicates set up production stations in uninhabited systems," Ione explained. "Sort of like the drug cartels in your day."
"Okay, but that doesn't answer the question about why her escaping - and why did she 'escape' rather than simply leave? - was such a bad thing."
"Well, after she simply reappeared, she came to Tranquillity. By this time, various governments had discovered the Alchemist's existence. No details were know, just that it was very bad. So they set up observation details on her, to ensure that she didn't try to retrieve it," Ione said. "But all that changed in a heartbeat.
"You see, the method of her escape was quite brilliant. A blackhawk actually swallowed inside Tranquillity, retrieved her, and swallowed out again."
"I thought you said that blackhawks and voidhawks couldn't operate in a gravity well," Xander objected.
"They can't, but what's inside Tranquillity isn't true gravity. Sure, it works just like real gravity, but it isn't. That's what allowed the Udat - the blackhawk that carried out the escape - to swallow in and out," Ione explained.
"Okay," Xander said. "That makes sense. Then what?"
"All of the Intelligence agencies set off in chase, activating assets all over the Confederation in the attempt to find her. Of course, it was assumed that she'd head for the Dorados, but they wanted to intercept her before then, if possible," Ione said. "I decided to send someone after her, as well."
"Yeah. Me," Joshua grumbled.
"Who else could I have sent?" Ione asked gently. "You were - and still are, for that matter - the person I trusted the most."
Louise rolled her eyes, but her grin showed that she wasn't worried. Joshua mock-scowled, and said to Xander, "See what I have to put up with?"
"Trust me, I know the feeling," Xander said with a smirk.
The focus of the story now shifted to the Sol system, where more detailed information was arriving, and a general Consensus called to deal with it. After Laton's last message was played for the Consensus, several decisions were made.
The first was to impose a similar quarantine to that the rest of the Confederation was imposing on interstellar flight, including assigning armed voidhawks recalled from commercial duties to the Confederation Navy.
The second was to direct the impressive scientific resources at Edenism's disposal towards finding the causes behind the crisis, and to finding a solution.
The third, and final, decision, was to prepare a fallback position - just in case the possessed achieved the upper hand.
Meanwhile, on Norfolk, Louise had reached Norwich in safety, and had taken refuge at her aunt's house. "Honestly," Louise said, "if I'd had any other choice, I wouldn't have gone there. Aunt Celina was such an airhead, and as for her son..." She shuddered at the memory, and Joshua drew her into a comforting hug, while an expression of extreme distaste crossed Genevieve's face.
After a talk with Fletcher, she'd decided to leave Norfolk and head for Tranquillity, to find Joshua. Drawing on the estate's funds, she'd obtained a Jovian Bank disc, and made arrangements to secure passage on one of the naval ships in orbit around Norfolk.
"Jovian Bank disc?" Xander asked.
"Like the one I gave you, Xander," Ione replied, causing Xander to fish his own credit disc out of his pocket.
You gave him money? Joshua asked Ione.
Yes. Ione replied.
How much?
Five million fuseodollars.
Why that much?
Compensation for the debrief nanonics, mainly, plus a reward for the information.
"What are you two talking about?" Xander asked, breaking their train of thought.
"How did you know we were talking?" Ione responded, curious.
"Louise told me a bit about affinity," Xander said. "How it's basically telepathy, plus a couple of other details."
"Erm... I told him how much money I gave you," Ione said sheepishly.
"How much?" Genevieve asked, curious.
"Five million fuseodollars," Ione mumbled.
"Why?" Louise asked.
"Well... I kinda implanted him with a set of debrief nanonics," Ione replied, still mumbling.
"Why?" Louise repeated, shaper this time.
"Hey, I did just appear from out of nowhere in the middle of Tranquillity," Xander said in Ione's defence. "She didn't know who or what I was. No harm, no foul."
Both Louise and Genevieve nodded, so Joshua resumed the story. "At that time, the Confederation Assembly was meeting to formalise the response to the possessed. It was decided to formalise the quarantine on interstellar flight, and to proceed with the scientific investigation. It was then that the Tyrathca - another xenoc species - decided to break off all contact."
Once again, the story switched locations, this time back to New California. Capone had consolidated his control of the planet, and now switched his attention to clearing out the rest of the system. He already had control of half of New California's navy, along with combat-capable independent traders.
The operation was a complete success, and all of the asteroid settlements were occupied by the possessed, who also captured all but a handful of New California's navy ships.
Louise took over the story once more, shifting the story back to Norfolk. At Bennett Field, Norwich's aerodrome, she - along with Genevieve and Fletcher - was trying to find the spaceplane pilot for the Far Realm - the ship she'd bought passage on - when she encountered Quinn Dexter again.
"It was terrible," she said, shuddering a little as the memory bore home. Beside her, Genevieve shook as well. "He was going to do terrible things to Gen and me, and when Fletcher tried to help us, Quinn attack him - hurt him badly." For some reason, Xander had no trouble picturing some of the things that Quinn Dexter might have done to Louise if he'd gotten the chance. Rage started to pound in his head. Louise continued, "He was about to... start hurting me, him and his cohort Lawrence, when someone intervened. I don't know who it was, but he saved Gen and me."
After that, they'd managed to find the Far Realm's spaceplane, and lifted into orbit. However, Quinn Dexter and Lawrence managed to seize control of the spaceplane from another frigate, the Tantu, and then he seized control of the frigate itself.
"This Quinn Dexter guy sounds like a real raging psychopath," Xander commented. "And nasty, to boot."
"Xander, you have no idea," Ione said in all seriousness. "You haven't heard half of the stuff he did. I won't tell you exactly what he did, but I'll just say that he made Angelus and Spike - put together, no less - seem like nice guys. They may have terrorised a continent, but Quinn Dexter terrorised entire planets."
"Woah," was Xander's only response. It was hard to believe, but... he found himself unable to doubt Ione.
On Ombey, a plan had been devised to expel the possessed from the Mortonridge peninsular, but since the plan called for the use of Tranquillity serjeants in the front lines, the approval of Alistair II, King of Kulu was required.
When Ralph Hiltch, the ESA officer responsible for the plan, arrived on Kulu, he discovered that not even the heart of the Kulu kingdom was safe from the possessed, although the possessed on Kulu hadn't been able to consolidate their position like they head on Ombey. Having obtained approval from the King to acquire large numbers of serjeants, Hiltch was sent to Jupiter as part of a diplomatic mission to seek the Edenists' support, while another diplomatic mission was sent to Tranquillity to obtain the DNA sequence for the serjeants.
The Edenists, while reluctant, had decided to throw their weight behind the Liberation, and Ione had handed over the DNA sequence.
Back to New California... Capone was trouble enough as it was, but now he'd been told the location of an antimatter production station. To add to that, he also decided to attack the Edenists of the New California system, orbiting the gas giant Yosemite, with the intention of seizing the Helium-3 production systems.
Fortunately, the Edenists had been warned, and the thirty habitats mounted a vigorous defence with their armed voidhawk squadrons. The warships crewed by possessed were hampered enough by malfunctioning equipment, and when the fact that the Yosemite Consensus had been forewarned enough to lay combat wasp minefields was added, the result was inevitable.
The Organisation warships were massacred, in most cases without even managing to get a target lock on the attacking voidhawks, let alone return fire.
"So Capone wasn't much of a threat after that, then?" Xander asked.
"Hell, yes he was," Joshua replied. "Even though he didn't capture the Helium-3 cloudscoops around Yosemite, there was still years' worth of supplies on New California and the asteroid settlements. Also, deuterium can be used by itself as a fuel. Sure, it does bad things to the drive tubes, but it'll still work."
Louise picked up the story again, telling of how she, Gen and Fletcher had watched as the red cloud had spread over Norfolk.
"Red cloud?" Xander asked.
"It was something created by the possessed," Ione explained. "When it covered an entire planet, it meant that the possessed were in control, and could remove that planet from the universe. Of course, that wasn't really necessary, just enough possessed on a planet."
"Hey!" Joshua protested. "No getting ahead of the story."
"Sorry," Ione apologised.
While the Far Realm was still in Norfolk orbit, the Confederation squadron received a message about the nature of the situation on the planet, and the squadron commander decided to leave one ship in place to enforce the quarantine, thus allowing the rest of the squadron to be deployed to other tasks. The Far Realm was released from its contract, and allowed to return to Mars.
Arriving at Phobos - one of the moons of Mars, now used as an industrial station - Louise and Genevieve bought new clothes to replace the possessions they'd been forced to abandon on Norfolk, along with processor blocks to allow them to fit in to more technological societies than the one on Norfolk. Due to the interstellar quarantine, they couldn't secure travel to Tranquillity - their intended destination - so they decided to go to Earth, instead.
Another problem was the fact that none of them had passports. This was easy enough to solve, although there was a nasty moment when Fletcher was revealed to be a possessed. Some quick thinking by Louise managed to retrieve the situation, and before too long, they had passport fleks, and were on an interplanetary ship on their way to Earth.
Louise's upbringing on Norfolk had been quite sheltered, which probably explained why she hadn't properly thought through the possible consequences of bringing Fletcher - a possessed - to Earth. Arriving at the High York asteroid, all three had been arrested and confined to separate cells.
The repair and refit of the Lady Mac was now complete, and Joshua set off in chase of Mzu, having found a new crew-member to replace Warlow. "She found me, I should say," Joshua said. "The fact that she just walked up to me about a minute after the memorial service for Warlow and the mercs had finished was a bit jarring, though. Since I was somewhat pressed for time, all I could really do was take her on."
"Her?" Xander asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Beaulieu's a cosmonik, Xander," Joshua replied with a grin.
"Oh." Joshua had explained cosmoniks to him, how they were people who spent prolonged periods in free-fall, but weren't geneered to withstand its effects the way that most people in the space industry - such as Joshua - were. As their bodies started to deteriorate, they first supplemented body parts with artificial enhancements, then supplements became replacements, until virtually the only organic tissue remaining was the brain. Since body shape was optional, more than a few cosmoniks abandoned human form altogether.
Carrying on, Joshua told of how he tracked Mzu to the Dorados, where he made a startling discovery - he had a brother.
Xander started chuckling at that. "Oh, man... he anything like you, Joshua?" he asked between snickers.
"Too much like me," Joshua sighed. "We didn't get off to the greatest of starts, since the first thing he did was to slap a legal claim on the Lady Mac, but we sorted things out eventually."
Meanwhile, Quinn Dexter made an attempt to infiltrate Earth, and was only stopped by the lack of an Armed Ship Authorisation code.
"What's that?" Xander asked.
"There's so much stuff in Earth orbit," Joshua explained, "that Govcentral - Earth's government - is terrified of what would happen if even one hostile ship was to launch a combat wasp salvo. So every ship that jumps into one of Earth's emergence zones has to have a code number authorising their presence."
"Wasn't the ship's captain possessed? I mean, wouldn't the possessor know what the code was?"
"Yes, and no. You see, Dexter didn't know about ASA codes, and neither did the soul possessing the Tantu's captain, so they didn't try to extract it. Making a hasty exit, Dexter had to find somewhere to go to get a new ship. He decided to go to Nyvan, one of the earliest multi-ethnic colony worlds. And just to make it interesting, that's where Mzu was heading as well. And to make it even more interesting, Capone had found out about the Alchemist as well, and had sent three ships after her."
"Multi-ethnic?" Xander asked.
"When the first terracomp planets were discovered, it was decided that the colonists sent to them would have a balanced proportion of all of Earth's ethnic groups," Ione explained. "Great idea, but after the initial excitement faded, all of the old hatreds resurfaced, and the four multi-ethnic worlds fragmented along the lines of ethnic groups. In the end, there were four new Earths, with all the tensions between ethnic groups being imported. When California sponsored a colony world for Californians only, it was controversial at first, but was soon taken up as the model of all new colony worlds, which kicked off the Great Dispersal."
"Getting off Ayacucho wasn't easy," Joshua continued the story. "The battle at Lalonde had been hairy enough, but that was where I had my first personal encounter with the possessed." He shuddered slightly at the memory before continuing. "Hearing the voices in the beyond, knowing that they would promise you anything to be let in..." He broke off and rubbed his right hand again.
Something went click in Xander's mind. "How badly were you injured?" he asked.
"Some nasty burns on my hand," Joshua replied. "But the worst bit was knowing that unless help came soon, that my choices were death or possession. Fortunately, help did arrive in time."
There was a brief silence as everyone contemplated this. Then Xander asked, "What was happening in the rest of the Confederation during this?"
"Capone's Organisation invaded and conquered another planet, Arnstadt, and I found out that Norfolk had been overrun by the possessed," Joshua answered. "My first instinct was to head straight for Norfolk, but I managed to stick with the task at hand, something that was made harder when I heard that Norfolk had been removed from this universe."
"There was some worry that Capone would spread and conquer the entire Confederation," Ione added. "One estimate said that he'd do that in six months if he captured enough industrialised worlds."
Xander thought of some of the Big Bads he'd faced at Buffy's side over the years. None of them had possessed that level of ability. Mayor Wilkins might have, but they'd managed to stop him before he could put his plans beyond Ascension into action.
One more question occurred to him. "How did Capone find out about the Alchemist?"
"One of the possessed on New California had worked with Mzu designing it," Ione answered. "And once Capone found out about the Alchemist's existence, he found one of the ship captains from the deployment mission, who knew where it was to be found. Another possessed - one of the Udat's crew - knew where she had gone. He only sent ships to the Dorados to try to capture Mzu herself."
"How did the Udat's crew end up in the beyond?"
"Mzu destroyed the Udat after it dropped her off," Joshua replied. "As a security precaution, and the fact that the Udat was one of the blackhawks that intercepted the deployment of the Alchemist was a nice bonus."
"Oh."
"Of course, the overall situation wasn't helped much when the Organisation invaded a third system, Kursk."
"Jesus."
"Yeah, that was pretty much the general reaction, as well."
On Nyvan, Dexter had taken over three of the planet's handful of orbiting asteroids - a planet's prosperity was able to be gauged by the number of asteroids in orbit - and found a ship that would suit his purposes. Of course, he didn't simply take the ship and leave. Oh, no.
While all this was going on, Joshua finally managed to track down Mzu. Unfortunately, so had the Organisation. After a dramatic rescue, which included being picked up by Ashly just in time to dodge a rock hurled down from orbit by the Organisation ships - following the principle of "if we can't have her, neither can you" - he managed to reach orbit.
However, in the process of escape, he'd lost another crew-member, Melvyn Ducharme.
Given that, the fact that there was now a small war in progress in orbit seemed almost anticlimactic.
Breaking away from the conflict, the Lady Mac was headed for a jump point when Dexter's plan revealed itself. Apart from seeding the nations on Nyvan with possessed, he'd also rigged the three asteroids he controlled with nuclear warheads. As the Mount's Delta left Nyvan orbit, headed for Earth, he detonated the nukes.
All three asteroids split apart, showering the surface of the planet with debris, and rendering the planet uninhabitable.
"Jesus," Xander said again, looking somewhat queasy. "I was right. That guy is a raging psychopath."
Joshua nodded. "That's right. And to make matters worse, he was a smart psychopath," Joshua said. "He didn't make too many mistakes, and the grand finale he was building up for? Well, let's just say that 'apocalyptic' would have been a good way to describe it."
"He was stopped, though, right?" Xander asked.
"Yeah, but it wasn't easy," Joshua replied. "And no, I'm not going to tell you how, either. You're going to have to wait until the story ends."
"Damn," Xander mumbled. "So to sum up so far; the souls of the dead were busily taking over the living, Louise and Gen were locked up in the O'Neill Halo, a superpowered psychopath was headed towards Earth with the intent of doing something nasty - and you won't tell me what - and you were about to head off in search of a doomsday weapon, leaving a dead world behind you," he continued in a more normal tone of voice.
"Something like that, yeah, but Dexter actually managed to get to Earth's surface," Joshua replied. "And there wasn't much searching involved. I went straight to where the Alchemist was located. What had happened was that, after the Alchemist deployment mission was intercepted, the survivors managed to get one of the surviving ships up to jump-capable status, while the other one was loaded up with as much antimatter as its confinement chambers could hold, and pointed at the nearest star, while the crew went into zero-tau to wait until help arrived."
"Bloody hell," Xander muttered, awed at the prospect of flying interstellar distances at sublight speeds.
"It took them twenty-eight years to make the trip," Joshua continued. "When we showed up, they were pretty suspicious at first, but I managed to talk them out of doing something stupid."
The rendezvous with the Beezling - the ship carrying the Alchemist - was fairly simple, but the decay caused by thirty years of exposure to space had complicated docking.
And to make matter worse - almost as if to prove that the universe had a sick sense of humour - two Organisation frigates had shown up. Once again, Joshua was pinned against a planet by enemies in a higher orbit. His first idea - firing the Alchemist at the two frigates - was physically impossible, and simply brute-forcing the navigation computer wasn't turning up anything useful... not even a Lagrange point.
Deciding to accept the consequences for knowing how the Alchemist worked, Joshua decided to use it against the gas giant they were orbiting, and his crew started the process for loading it on one of the Lady Mac's combat wasps.
"What was so bad about knowing how it worked?" Xander wanted to know.
"That was one of the reasons behind the whole chase. Not only was I to prevent her from deploying it, I had to make sure that no-one else - especially the possessed, particularly Capone - found out how to build one," Joshua replied.
"Fair enough. Is this the time when I find out what it did; why it was so dangerous?"
"The Alchemist used a combination of zero-tau technology and a ZTT node to warp space-time around it, creating a pocket of ludicrously strong gravity," Joshua explained. "Depending on the setting, it could either suck a star into a small black hole, or make it go nova."
"Make it go... you mean, explode?" Xander asked, incredulous.
"Yep," Joshua replied, before continuing with the story. "While the Alchemist was being loaded on a combat wasp, some of the antimatter was loaded into the Lady Mac's antimatter drive."
"I thought you said that antimatter is illegal," Xander protested.
"Owning antimatter is," Joshua agreed. "But owning a ship with an antimatter drive isn't - so long as you don't use it."
"Which is what you were doing," Xander pointed out.
"There didn't seem to be much choice at the time," Joshua said. "Using the antimatter drive, the Lady Mac can hit forty-two gees acceleration and, as it turned out, I really needed that."
By the time the Alchemist was loaded, the Organisation warships were starting to get perilously close. Abandoning the Lady Mac's spaceplane and MSV - Multifunction Service Vehicle - the crew prepped the ship for high gees. Once that was complete, Joshua fired a combat wasp salvo at the gas giant. Since the Alchemist was on one of those anonymous combat wasps, intercepting and retrieving it was impossible.
Joshua activated the antimatter drive and the Lady Mac crossed the terminator at one hundred and fifty kilometres per second. The two Organisation frigates exploded behind them, caught in a superheated torrent of hydrogen - so hot that it was almost plasma - spewing from the tortured inner layers of the planet.
Just as the Lady Mac jumped clear of the system, the gas giant went nova.
Arriving back at Tranquillity, Joshua learned that the worst wasn't over yet.
"What do you mean?" Xander asked.
"While Joshua was chasing Mzu," Ione replied. "The Confederation learned that Capone planned to invade a fourth system, Toi-Hoi. Since Tranquillity was fairly close, I was asked to allow it to be used as a supply base and rendezvous point. Unfortunately, Capone learned that the Confederation Navy had learned of his plans, and sent his fleet to Tranquillity instead. Since only some of the Confederation forces had arrived, Capone's fleet outnumbered them. And since the Organisation fleet had antimatter combat wasps, the Confederation squadron was grossly outgunned, as well.
"To make things even worse, Valisk's hellhawks had joined Capone."
"Ouch," Xander muttered. "But you got away, right?"
Ione nodded. "The Organisation ships fired off a massive salvo of combat wasps, aimed at Tranquillity, and I was forced to reveal Tranquillity's secret - the fact that it could make swallow manoeuvres."
"You mean like a voidhawk or blackhawk," Xander asked, amazed. "How?"
"The same way as a voidhawk or blackhawk does, Xander," Ione replied. "There's a lot of energy-patterning cells at Tranquillity's southern endcap. My grandfather thought it'd be a good idea, in case whatever destroyed the Laymil came after Tranquillity. He wanted the ability to run away if necessary."
"Good idea," Xander said, still a little awestruck at the concept.
"Yeah, but I didn't know that at the time," Joshua muttered. "So imagine how I felt, arriving home only to find a whole lot of combat wasp debris, but no Tranquillity - not even as wreckage."
Ione didn't reply to that comment, but simply smiled sweetly at him. Louise rolled her eyes, and glanced at the clock on the wall. "It's time we took a break for dinner," she announced. "The story can be finished afterwards."
Reminded of the existence of food, Xander's stomach growled. "No arguments from me, Louise," he said, rather sheepishly.