Title: In Their Shadow - Chapter 11
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 Naked God' - the third 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, 'Was Quinn Dexter *really* a raging psycopath?' 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.
AN4: On a number of occasions, there are direct quotations from the book, used as 'Flashback' scenes. They were just too good to resist :)
As Xander was polishing off the last remnants of his meal, he asked Ione, "So, where did Tranquillity end up?"
"In orbit around Jupiter," Ione answered. "Which caused some stir with the Jovian Consensus, I might add," she added with a grin.
"Why's that?"
"A habitat that's able to carry out a swallow manoeuvre?"
"Good point," Xander conceded.
"The people living in Tranquillity were understandably happy that it was possible, though..."
"Actually, given how heavily fortified the Jovian habitats were, dropping by unexpectedly like that might not have been that good an idea, in hindsight," Ione said thoughtfully. "Consensus had deployed one-point-seven million combat wasps in a defensive minefield, and over fifteen thousand voidhawks had been assigned as a Home Defence fleet."
"Fif-fifteen thousand?" Xander spluttered, eyes wide.
"Only the Edenists know for sure how many voidhawks there are,Xander," Ione explained. "And they're not telling anyone. Hundreds of thousands, certainly, maybe even millions. So using fifteen thousand to protect the heart of Edenism and the energy supply of Earth sounds reasonable, particularly when you take into consideration the fact that Consensus was worried about the possibility of the Alchemist falling into Capone's hands."
"Needless to say, Capone was not amused by the affair," Joshua put in. "And now would probably be a good time to return to the sitting room."
Once they'd returned to the sitting room and made themselves comfortable, Ione picked up the thread of the story. "There was also one other unexpected event. One of the many things the Kiint hadn't revealed about themselves was their ability to... well, basically, teleport. When Tranquillity came under attack, but before Tranquillity swallowed to Jupiter, all of the Kiint living in Tranquillity suddenly teleported out. Haile - the young Kiint we mentioned earlier - was one of them, and she did something unexpected.
"After Joshua returned from Lalonde with the children that had been rescued from the possessed, I'd befriended one of them, a young girl named Jay Hilton. I'd also introduced her to Haile, and the two had become good friends.
"When the Kiint used their teleport ability to evacuate Tranquillity, Haile took Jay with her to the Kiint home system. She defied her parents, all because Jay was her friend," Ione explained.
"Woah," Xander said softly, amazed at the show of friendship. "And what were you doing when all of this was going on, Joshua?"
"I decided to go to Avon, more specifically, Trafalgar - the asteroid that serves as the headquarters for the Confederation Navy - to let the First Admiral decide what to do next. There was one little hitch, though..."
*Flashback*
Sarha grinned round phlegmatically. "How many medals do you think they'll give us apiece?"
"Uh-oh," Liol grunted. "However many it is, we might be getting them posthumously. I think one of the frigates has just realised our antimatter drive is ever so slightly highly radioactive."
*End Flashback*
"... given that as far as the Confederation knew, only the Organisation was using antimatter - combined with the fact that, even at the best of times, antimatter is highly illegal - we were expecting to be shot at at any moment.
"However some fast talking, especially from Samuel - the Edenist Intelligence operative who'd tagged along since Nyvan - ensured that we were allowed to approach and dock." He paused and grinned before continuing, "I can still remember the look on Samuel's face when he told me the approach vector and added, 'And Joshua, don't deviate from it. Please.'"
Xander started chuckling as his imagination pictured the serious-shading-to-pleading expression that must have been on the Edenist's face. The chuckles turned to outright laughter when Joshua added, "Of course, my response was to wink and say, 'What, Lagrange Calvert fly off line?'"
After allowing Xander to stop laughing and regain his breath, Joshua continued more seriously, "Of course, that wasn't the end of it. Once everyone had disembarked from the Lady Mac, we were separated and ushered to what was basically a VIP prison, with Ashly, Liol - my brother - and me sharing a very comfortable room."
Meanwhile, events were picking up pace in the rest of the Confederation. On Earth, Quinn Dexter was seeking out the Light Bringer sects, starting in the New York arcology. His goal was simple - he intended to seed the arcologies with possessed, and as he'd used to belong to a Light Bringer coven in Edmonton, they were the logical place to start. The fact that he was also seeking vengeance against Banneth, his former Magus, was simply a bonus.
With sheer brutality, he'd found the sect headquarters for the New Manhattan dome and taken over. Of course, his arrival on Earth had not gone unnoticed, and a shadowy Govcentral Internal Security Division agency known only as Bureau Seven - B7 for short - decided that Dexter posed a threat to the safety of Earth, and began planning to eliminate him, although they expressed concern about a new ability that he'd learned on Nyvan... the ability to become invisible.
Hearing that, Xander spluttered incredulously, "How the hell did he manage that?"
"Apparently, he was able to enter something called the 'ghost realm', which is not quite another dimension, but close. The reason that it's called the ghost realm is that it's populated by... well, ghosts," Joshua replied.
"Funny, that," Xander said with a perfectly straight face, causing the others to chuckle lightly.
"That was how Dexter managed to get past the security checks on Earth," Joshua added.
"How did B7 know what Dexter'd been up to?" Xander asked.
"While in the O'Neill Halo, I was implanted with a set of debrief nanonics, though I didn't know it at the time," Louise replied.
"So that's why you took the news that Ione had implanted me with a set of debrief nanonics badly," Xander said in realisation.
Louise nodded, and said to Ione, "I'm sorry about that. I didn't mean to snap at you."
"Don't worry about it, Louise," Ione said, waving aside Louise's apology.
"So, let me make sure I've got this straight. Quinn Dexter wasn't just a superpowered psychopath, he was an invisible superpowered psychopath who intended to do nasty things on Earth on the scale of some of the nasties I faced alongside Buffy."
"Something like that," Ione agreed.
"Buh-loody hell," Xander muttered.
"B7 were planning to lure Dexter into a trap," Joshua said, getting the story back on track. "And, like all traps, they had bait."
"What was the bait?" Xander asked.
"Me and Gen," Louise replied.
Xander looked appalled at the callousness of that decision, so Joshua explained it. "Remember, they had an entire planet of forty billion people to protect," he said.
Reminded of comparisons to the Acathla situation, where he'd lied to Buffy in order to safeguard six billion lives, Xander rethought his opinion. "Okay, so maybe they thought they had no real choice," he said. "But that doesn't mean that I'm going to like it."
Joshua shrugged. "It's in the past now, Xander."
After being thoroughly interviewed by CNIS investigators, Joshua was taken to see the First Admiral, who confirmed that he wasn't under arrest, and laid down some conditions; the first that he wasn't to discuss the Alchemist with anyone.
"But you just told me what it was and what it did," Xander pointed out.
"Whoops," Joshua replied with a grin and a shrug.
"It's not as if I'd tell anyone, anyway," Xander continued.
Joshua mopped his brow theatrically. "Whew. At least I won't get into trouble with the First Admiral."
Xander grinned and asked, "What were the other conditions?"
"Well, I wasn't to put myself in a position where I'd encounter the possessed again. Which wasn't a problem, as that was the last thing I wanted to do," Joshua replied. "And third, I was to take Mzu to the Sol system, and stay there with her."
Realisation dawned on Xander. "Tranquillity?"
Joshua nodded. "Tranquillity."
"I bet you were happy to find out that Tranquillity was still around."
"You have no idea," Joshua said with a grin. "In fact, none of us could stop grinning as we docked, and when Ione met me at the starport..."
*Flashback*
...as soon as Joshua air-swam out from their airlock tube, Ione was in front of him, toes pressed with ballerina grace on the compartment's stikpad. Doubts about Liol vanished. She was wearing a simple maroon polka-dot summer dress, ruffled gold-blond hair floating daintily. It made her seem girlish and elegant all at once. The sight of her like that summoned up memories warmer than any neural nanonics catalogued recollections could ever be.
She grinned knavishly, and held out both hands. Joshua caught hold and let her gently secure him. They kissed, a tingle lost somewhere between just good friends and old lovers. "Well done," she whispered.
"Thanks, I..." He frowned when he saw who was waiting behind her. Dominique. Dressed in a tight sleeveless black leather T-shirt that was tucked into white sports shorts. All curves and blatant athleticism. As overt as Ione was demure.
"Joshua, darling!" Dominique squealed happily. "My God, you look so divine in a ship-suit. So well packaged. What can those naughty designers have been thinking of?"
"Er, hello, Dominique."
"Hello?" She pouted with tragic disappointment. "Come here, gorgeous."
Arms that were disproportionately strong wrapped around him. Wide lips descended happily, a tongue wriggling into his mouth. Hair and pheromones tickled his nose, making him want to sneeze.
He was too embarrassed to resist. Then she stiffened suddenly. "Oh wow, there's two of you."
The embrace was broken. Dominique stared hungrily behind him, long fronds of blond hair writhing about.
"Um, this is my brother," Joshua mumbled.
Liol gave her a languid grin, and bowed. It was a good manoeuvre considering he wasn't anchored to a stikpad. "Liol Calvert, Joshua's bigger brother."
"Bigger." Dominique's eyes reflected slivers of light like coquettish diamonds.
In some way he couldn't quite work out, Joshua was no longer between the two of them.
"Welcome to Tranquillity," Dominique purred.
Liol took a hand gently and kissed her knuckles. "Nice to be here. It looks spectacular so far."
A small groan of dismay rumbled up from Joshua's throat.
"There's plenty more to see, and it gets a whole lot better." Dominique's voice was so husky it was almost bass. "If you're willing to risk it, that is."
"I'm just a simple boy from a provincial asteroid; of course I'm looking forward to the delights of the big bad habitat."
"Oh, we have several bad things you'll never find in your asteroid."
"I can believe it."
She crooked a finger in front of his nose. "This way."
The two of them levitated out of the hatch together.
"Hmm." Ione smiled with sly contentment. "Eight seconds total; that's pretty fast even for Dominique."
Joshua looked back from the hatch to her amused blue eyes. He realised they were alone. "Oh, very neat," he remarked in admiration.
"Let's just say I had a premonition they might hit if off."
"She'll eat him alive. You know that, don't you?"
"You never complained."
*End Flashback*
By the time Joshua had finished recounting Liol and Dominique's meeting, Xander was slumped in his seat, nearly helpless with laughter. "Oh man, that's priceless," he gasped. "Dominique makes Faith look like a shy girl." The laughter stopped abruptly as something Ione said earlier clicked in his mind. "And you want to introduce me to her?" he asked incredulously. When Ione nodded, he said, "Ione Saldana, you are a cruel, cruel woman."
With that, everyone else started laughing. "Don't worry, Xander," Ione said with a huge cat-with-a-flock-of-crippled-canaries grin. "I'll tell her to go easy on you."
"Why doesn't that make me feel much better?" Xander muttered, which set everyone else off again.
"Probably because you're a suspicious, cynical person who might be slightly paranoid?" Louise asked innocently.
"You say that as if it was a bad thing," Xander replied with a grin, which caused a new round of snickers. "What was happening in the rest of the Confederation?"
"Gen and I were released from custody in the O'Neill Halo, and deported to Earth. After riding the African orbital tower to the surface, we decided to head to London. I never knew one place could be so crowded. But then again, I suppose it was inevitable, given the fact that I was in one of Earth's busiest transport hubs, combined with Earth's population."
What they hadn't known - at the time, anyway - was the fact that they had been protected by GISD agents working in the shadows, who had killed any local criminals attempting to take advantage of the Kavanagh girls' naivety.
While Louise and Genevieve were making their way to the London arcology, Quinn Dexter was consolidating his control of New York's sect covens
Al Capone had come up with a new strategy, which would be implemented while he was waiting for his antimatter stocks to be replenished. Instead of all-out invasion, he would seed worlds with possessed. This had the added benefit - for him, anyway - of ridding the Organisation of those possessed who disagreed with his ideas of how to progress.
On Ombey, the Mortonridge Liberation was about to get underway, with hundreds of thousands of serjeants, Marines and combat-boosted mercenaries deploying all around the peninsular. The opening shots were electron-beam weapons fired at the red cloud over Mortonridge, de-focused in order to cover the maximum possible area, a move designed to exploit the possessed's vulnerability to electricity. It was a spectacular success, as possessed throughout the Confederation felt the effects. Incidentally, it also caused Dexter's first setback on Earth, and Govcentral was alerted to his presence. In a fit of paranoia, he'd fled to the Paris arcology.
As the possessed lost control of the cloud, and thunderstorms began to build up, the second phase of the opening assault commenced, as one a half million kinetic harpoons were fired, eliminating Mortonridge's communications network. However, because the possessed lost control of the cloud, all of the water they'd packed into that cloud now began falling as rain and storms. Over three thousand serjeants who were part of the amphibious assault were lost as their assault transports sank.
Despite that, the serjeants eventually landed, and began slogging their way towards the centre of the peninsular. Resistance from the possessed was non-existent, as they had pulled back from the coast. However, that didn't mean that there wasn't any resistance to the advance; the possessed had set up booby traps in the coastal towns, which slowed the advance on top of the mud.
In London, Louise and Genevieve took the time to marvel at the sight of the ancient city huddled under the armour-crystal Westminster dome - even the cluster of four 'original' domes erected at the end of the twenty-first century and were now items of historical interest - before deciding on a hotel to stay at. They'd decided on the Ritz.
"How'd you come to that decision?" Xander asked.
"Well, I wanted somewhere safe and comfortable," Louise answered. "So I... basically went by price," she added, slightly sheepishly.
Xander snickered briefly. "Why am I not surprised?" he asked the universe in general.
Louise glared at him briefly, before relenting and smiling herself. "I know, but I'd never even been off Kesteven Island before then, let alone off Norfolk," she said. "It seemed like the correct thing to do at the time."
Once they'd settled in and unpacked, Louise spent an hour wrestling with Earth's datanet, trying to find any references to Banneth, in order warn her about Quinn Dexter, and turned up lots of nothing. So she made a decision - she'd buy a set of neural nanonics. Gen immediately wanted a set as well, and only pointing out that she was too young for a set prevented a tantrum when she'd been forbidden a set of her own - which was why Gen was so happy when Joshua and Louise had bought her a set for her birthday.
But first came buying some clothes - both normal clothes and formalwear - a trip to a beautician, and a couple of toys for Gen. Oxford Street had certainly been an education, particularly the advertisements. Of course, Xander just had to know, and when Louise haltingly described them, his eyes glazed over momentarily before he started laughing.
"I think it'd be safe to say that those sort of ads will still be around," he said. "Y'know, all of a sudden, I'm kind of keen to get to Earth."
Ione and Louise refused to dignify his comment with a response, Gen tried to look innocent - and failed dismally - and Joshua merely chuckled and shook his head.
"Okay, now that we've had that little side-trip to the gutter, courtesy of my imagination," Xander said. "We now return you to your regularly scheduled story." After another brief round of chuckles, the story continued...
Louise bought neural nanonics; being computer-illiterate, she went straight for the top-of-the-line equipment... and found out about the nanonic bugs that had been implanted in both her and Gen while they were in the Halo.
"Don't forget about Andy," Gen said, rolling her eyes.
"Andy?" Xander asked, while Louise blushed, Gen giggled and Joshua smirked.
"The sales assistant who sold me my neural nanonics and implanted them," Louise replied, still blushing. "He was very... attentive."
"Instant crush, I'm guessing," Xander said speculatively. The way Louise's blush deepened and Gen giggled proved him right. "I assume this was before you married Joshua?"
Louise nodded, but didn't say anything. Xander decided not to torment Louise any further. Apart from anything else, it was too easy. Instead, he asked Joshua, "So, what were you doing during all of this?"
"Well, Ione had just lumbered me with another crucial, humanity-is-depending-on-it type mission; to wander through unexplored space, looking for something called the Sleeping God," Joshua said, and Ione jabbed him in the ribs with an elbow.
"The what?"
"Back on Lalonde at the start of the crisis, Kelly Tirrel had recorded a scene where the Tyrathca colonists were building an effigy of something they called the Sleeping God.
"You see, about fifteen thousand years ago, the original Tyrathca homeworld's star - Mastrit-PJ - was going to expand into a red giant. Not wanting to become extinct, the Tyrathca - or rather, the Mosdva, a species they essentially enslaved - hollowed out over a thousand asteroids to flee the system and start new colonies. One of these arkships was damaged entering an empty system, which turned out to be not so empty, after all.
"There was something in that system, which moved the arkship over a hundred and fifty light-years to a system with an inhabitable planet. Awed by the power this object displayed, they dubbed it the Sleeping God," Joshua explained.
"Okay, I can understand that. But what did that have to do with the possessed?"
"Not a lot... until the Kiint became interested enough to visit Kelly and buy the fleks of her recordings. Anything that interested them to the extent that they would visit a starscraper apartment - which is something they normally never do - was considered important enough to investigate."
"And you were picked," Xander realised.
"Yep. In fact, there was just enough time to get the Lady Mac repaired - again - before we headed off to Hesperi-LN, with a side trip to an antimatter production station to load up the antimatter drive, with a voidhawk for company and a scientific team as passengers."
"Syrinx and Oenone, right," Ione recalled.
Seeing the question forming on Xander's face, Joshua pre-empted it by saying. "Oenone was the voidhawk that intercepted me in the Puerto de Santa Maria system. And to answer your next question, yes, Syrinx was - and still is - the captain. In fact, voidhawks and their captains are linked for life, hell, a voidhawk captain gestates for a year inside the voidhawk."
"Damn," Xander said.
"In fact, Syrinx had just as much experience with the possessed as I did," Joshua continued. "She was captured by the possessed on Atlantis and tortured so that the possessed could try to capture Oenone."
"Ouch," Xander winced, then thought for a moment. "Weren't you still one crew-member short?"
Joshua nodded. "I still needed someone to handle fusion," he replied. "Fortunately, an opportunity presented itself. I'd just shared a meal with Syrinx, and was having a couple of drinks with her, when..."
*Flashback*
They downed the remained of their Norfolk Tears. Syrinx blew heavily, and blinked the moisture away from her eyes. Then she frowned at the figure standing at the bar. "Jesus, Joshua. I didn't know there was two of you."
The enjoyable surprise of hearing an Edenist swear in such a fashion was quelled with pique when he saw who she was talking about. He stuck up his hand and waved Liol over.
"Delighted to meet you," Liol said when Joshua introduced them. He polished up the Calvert grin for her benefit and kissed her hand.
Syrinx laughed, and stood up. "Sorry, Liol, I'm afraid I had my inoculation some time ago." Joshua was chuckling.
"I'll leave the pair of you to it," she said, and gave Joshua a light kiss. "Don't be late."
"Got her edress?" Liol asked from the side of his mouth as he watched her walk away.
"Liol, that's a voidhawk ship-tunic. Syrinx doesn't have an eddress. So how are you?"
"Absolutely fine." Liol reversed a chair, and straddled it, arms resting on the back. "This is party city for me, all right. I think I'll move Quantum Serendipity here after the crisis."
"Right. Haven't seen much of you since we docked."
"Well, hey, no surprise there. That Dominique, hell of a girl." He lowered his voice to a throaty gloating growl. "Game on, five, six times a night. Every position I know, then some that's got to be just for xenocs."
"Wow."
"Last night, you know what? Threesome. Neomone joined in."
"No shit? You record a sensevise?"
Liol put both hands down on the table, and stared at his brother. "Josh."
"Yep."
"For Christ's sake, take me with you."
*End Flashback*
Once again Xander was reduced to helpless laughter. "Too much of a good thing, eh?" he wheezed.
"That's it, Xander," Ione said mock-threateningly. "I'm definitely going to introduce you to Dominique now."
Xander gulped. "Errr..." he began, then his shoulders slumped. "I'm doomed, aren't I?" He stood up and declared in a loud voice, "We who are about to die, salute you!" before sitting back down while everyone else chuckled.
Back to the story once more... the Mortonridge Liberation was bogging down in the mud - at least it had stopped raining - and the situation wasn't helped when the possessed managed to pull off a successful ambush with mortars in the Catmos Vale, near the town of Ketton. The counter-strike involved using kinetic harpoons again, this time to create a ripple pattern in the boggy ground the destroy the fortifications at Ketton.
The fortifications were destroyed - along with most of the town - but the operation backfired when the possessed panicked and removed Ketton and the surrounding area from the universe.
"That's what I meant when I said that the only requirement was that there be enough possessed on a planet, Xander." Ione said.
"Gotcha. Obviously there weren't enough possessed to remove the whole planet, though, or even the entire peninsular," Xander said. "Otherwise, they would have."
"That's right."
In New York, GISD tactical teams launched an assault on the possessed in all of the domes in the arcology. There was little, if anything, in the way of tactical finesse, simply sheer brute fire-power. The operation was successful, but at a high cost - it was estimated that ten civilians were killed and another ninety wounded for each possessed eliminated.
Quinn Dexter had moved on to Edmonton, leaving behind him cadres of possessed in Paris, Johannesburg and Bombay. Gathering followers, he began to put in motion his plans for vengeance against Banneth, starting with the messy slaughter of acolytes of the Light Bringer sects.
Louise found that even neural nanonics didn't make finding Banneth any easier. And to top it off, she'd gotten no response to any of the messages she'd sent to Joshua at Tranquillity - at the time, she didn't know that her messages were being blocked. Instead, she hired a private detective to try to track Banneth down.
Oenone and the Lady Mac had arrived at Hesperi-LN, and the scientific team boarded the arkship Tanjuntic-RI in search of any data on the Sleeping God's location. Despite interference from a hellhawk that had followed them from the antimatter production station - it had been Capone's production station - and the Tyrathca themselves, the mission had been semi-successful.
They managed to find the co-ordinates of the Sleeping God... but they were in the Tyrathcan system, which they couldn't translate, even with Oenone's help. Not wishing to return to Hesperi-LN - their departure had been hairy enough, with Oenone being forced to swallow inside the arkship to pick up the team, who were being pursued by Tyrathca soldiers.
So they decided to head to Mastrit-PJ, instead, with the hopes that something had survived long enough to be able to translate the co-ordinates into something that could be entered into the Lady Mac's navigation computer, and be used by Oenone.
On Earth, Dexter had come to an alarming - for him - realisation. The sects which he had devoted his life to, and on whose behalf he had been sent to Lalonde as an Ivet... were being run by a branch of the government in order to keep the lowest levels of society under their control. Thoroughly alarmed, he'd made an effort to leave the Edmonton arcology, only to find that the vac-trains had been closed down.
In London, Louise had taken delivery of the search engine software from Andy - who'd lied to her when he said that it had had to be delivered - along with a near-desperate dinner invitation. She made his day when she agreed, and crushed his hopes when she brought Genevieve along. Strangely enough, it had been an enjoyable evening anyway, although threats of dire consequences unless Gen behaved herself probably helped.
After the dinner, she received at datavise from Robinson - the private detective she'd hired - which led to a meeting in the hotel lounge, where she was given a very watered-down version of both Dexter and Banneth's background. Reluctantly, Louise decided to travel to the Edmonton arcology, in order to deliver her warning in person, as her one attempt to datavise Banneth had been ignored. Despite Robinson's protests, she took Gen along as well.
While they were on the vac-train, she received a news update. Dexter had assembled all of the possessed in Edmonton, and hurled them at the Light Bringer sect headquarters. The Edmonton Police reacted rapidly, surrounding the area with heavily-armed AT squads.
But Dexter had been expecting that. In fact, that was what he wanted to happen. He badly needed to get out of Edmonton, but the vac-train routes would only be re-opened if Govcentral officials - not to mention the 'supercops' running the sects - thought that the possessed in the arcology had been eliminated.
In short, it was a massive diversion.
By the time Louise, Gen and Robinson arrived at Edmonton, the battle was over, with the possessed being wiped out, and the Light Bringer cultists suffering heavy losses. To her surprise, they were met by an AT Major, and escorted straight to Banneth. After delivering her warning, Robinson suggested that Banneth accompany them back to London. Shrugging indifferently, she agreed.
Once back in London, Banneth wandered off, to be met by representatives from the local Light Bringer coven, while Louise and Gen returned to the hotel, where Louise tried to get approval to travel to Tranquillity, which was refused.
Meanwhile, Capone had pulled off a brilliant strike against the Confederation Navy headquarters. He'd blackmailed a naval officer into having some antimatter implanted in his abdomen with threats against his family. The officer then made his way to the Avon system, where the plan was to do to Avon what Dexter had done to Nyvan.
However, the antimatter was detonated outside Trafalgar, which meant that it stayed in orbit, but the damage was still catastrophic. The surface of the half of the asteroid facing the blast was reduced to molten rock, destroying everything attached to it; counter-rotating spaceport, thermal-dump mechanisms... everything. The heat seepage from the molten rock would also render the asteroid uninhabitable, at least without functional thermal-exchange equipment, which couldn't be attached until the rock had cooled down, which wouldn't happen before the asteroid was rendered uninhabitable.
That wasn't the extent of the damage, though. Over two hundred and fifty Adamist warships were destroyed or damaged beyond repair, and fifty-two voidhawks were killed. Ten thousand people were also killed or badly injured.
All this meant that the Confederation Navy headquarters was forced to relocate to Avon. Enraged by this, the Confederation Assembly decided to eliminate the Organisation fleet, along with the Strategic Defence networks of both New California and Arnstadt, accepting that both planets would be removed from the universe in return for eliminating Capone as a threat. By this time, Capone had abandoned Kursk as not being worth the effort to keep.
In London, Dexter was looking for a source of bodies to open to possession. The sects were out, for obvious reasons, but he found a new supply without too much difficulty.
Older wealthy people had set up a zero-tau mausoleum, where they would wait until the possession crisis had been resolved, in an attempt to avoid the beyond. Acting with the cunning that rats and weasels are famous for, he simply marched in and snatched all four hundred of the zero-tau refugees.
He also grabbed a couple of more people - someone who was about the same height and build as him, and another victim, for other reasons. By a stroke of good fortune, the second victim had also been a qualified nurse, which made what Dexter was doing easier.
Needing to throw the 'supercops' - B7 - off his trail, he had the first victim's facial features modified to resemble Dexter's own, and dragged him through the ghost realm to where Banneth was holed up. The victim was then produced, and Dexter lingered in the ghost realm to see what would happen next. In a staggering display of overkill, a SD X-ray laser was fired into the dome, killing Banneth, Dexter's double, and virtually everyone else in the building. Naturally, Dexter escaped unscathed, and slightly impressed at the lengths that would be gone to to get rid of him.
The strike against Arnstadt's SD network went off without a hitch. Deploying grossly overwhelming fire-power - five hundred voidhawks and eight hundred Adamist warships - the Confederation strike force simply fired their combat wasp salvoes before jumping clear. The hellhawks and Organisation ships didn't even bother to try to stop the onrushing horde of missiles, choosing to flee. Voidhawks followed the fleeing Organisation ships, which meant that very few survived to return to New California.
With Arnstadt's SD network - and virtually everything else in orbit - gone, the planet was taken from the universe. The strike force then went on to New California, intending to repeat the process, but Capone managed to broker a deal. He would turn over New California's SD network and all of his remaining ships, and in return the Navy would allow him to evacuate his followers to the planet, and they would remove in from the universe. Of course, the evacuation process would take some time - about a week.
"So New California was taken from the universe as well?" Xander asked.
"Nope," Joshua replied. "The crisis was resolved before then. But you're going to have to wait to find out how."
"Damn."
Oenone and the Lady Mac were approaching Mastrit-PJ. Expecting to find an uninhabited system - but with remnants of a civilisation that could be searched for Tyrathca starcharts and co-ordinate system - they were surprised to find that the system was inhabited, the locals living on immense structures - diskcities - orbiting the red supergiant's equator.
"So, who was living there?" Xander asked.
"At first, we thought it was the Tyrathca. After all, the system was the Tyrathca home system, and the messages we received were in the Tyrathca language, so we could be forgiven for drawing that conclusion. So, imagine our surprise when we met not Tyrathca, but Mosdva, instead."
"You mean the enslaved species that built the arkships for the Tyrathca?"
"That's them. Apparently, since there was no way that all of the Tyrathca could be evacuated in arkships, the Mosdva were also set to work building asteroid settlements for the Tyrathca. They were also the ones who would decide where the inhabited asteroids would be placed."
"So, they were the brains of the outfit."
"Pretty much, yeah. With hindsight, I'm amazed that no-one suspected that something like that had happened. After all, the Tyrathca breeders are the only fully sentient members of their species, and for as long as we'd been in contact with them, they'd made no major innovations. In fact, they were still using kit that was pretty much the same as they'd been using for the last fifteen thousand years."
"Why?"
"Because it worked. They took the saying 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' to the extreme."
"Sheesh. So what did the Mosdva look like?"
"Think man-sized sea-horses, and you'd be pretty close."
"Gotcha." And Xander did have a pretty good idea of what Joshua had meant. "So, what happened next?"
"We started negotiating to exchange information; after all, some of the technology being used by the Mosdva was pretty impressive. And we exchanged histories, as well. Apparently, there had been another species which had lived there before the Tyrathca and the Mosdva - the Ridbat, who had enslaved the Mosdva, before wiping themselves out with thermonuclear weapons, along with most of the other life on the planet.
"The Mosdva managed to survive, and developed technology that was based on sustainability - after all, the Ridbat didn't leave much behind for them to use - and started a civilisation. It was about this time that the Tyrathca developed sentience. The important thing to remember here is that the Tyrathca are a caste-based herd species, and one of the castes they evolved was a warrior caste. So, the Mosdva were placed under heavy pressure, and were in danger of becoming extinct, when they discovered that Mastrit-PJ was about to expand into a red giant.
"So the Tyrathca enslaved the Mosdva, and set them to work to find a way for the Tyrathca to survive, which ended up with the arkship concept. Since there would never be enough arkships to carry all of the Tyrathca, the Mosdva were also set to work building asteroid habitats for the Tyrathca. The only reason the Mosdva were kept around afterwards was that they would be needed to maintain the asteroid settlements' technical systems, and to build more as needed.
"After the expansion was complete, the Tyrathca became more and more dependant on the Mosdva technical ability, which gave the Mosdva a window of opportunity, which they seized; over a period of a thousand years, they took over control, sealing the Tyrathca into their asteroids, while they built the diskcities to live on."
"That's pretty impressive," Xander admitted, trying to maintain his mental equilibrium after seeing the mental image that conjured.
"That's what we thought at the time. But that didn't alter the fact that we needed the Tyrathca stellar co-ordinate system. We assumed that the Mosdva would use a similar system, or at least know about it, which made sense, given their shared history," Joshua continued.
"How'd you go about it?"
"We didn't want to seem to keen to get it," Joshua explained. "After all, the Mosdva are as smart as us, and would have figured out that something was amiss if we'd offered the ZTT drive schematics in return for a ten thousand year old almanac. So we had to build up to it gradually..."
Unfortunately, it had not gone that smoothly. The Mosdva negotiator - Quantook-LOU - had seen through Joshua's approach and demanded to know precisely why he had made the long voyage, and why he was negotiating with the Mosdva when he had expected to meet the Tyrathca.
"So, I went with the story that we were trying to find out how far Tyrathca-controlled space extended, and casually dropped the ZTT drive into the pot. Quantook-LOU's reaction was first amazement, saying that we'd offered his species salvation. Trouble was, in the very next breath he offered to launch a crusade to wipe out the Tyrathca - using the technology we'd offered him - in revenge for enslaving them. Not what we had in mind."
"What did you do next?" Xander asked eagerly.
"Well, there was some debate as to whether or not we should still turn over the ZTT drive. Liol came up with a good suggestion, though, when he said, 'It's not that stressful. We can give Quantook-LOU any old file full of shit. Hand over the schematic for a deluxe, ten-flavour ice-cream making machine if you want. He's not going to know the difference until we're long gone.'," Joshua replied with a grin.
"That's just beautiful," Xander chuckled.
"I didn't do that, though, tempting as it was. I just insisted on the map of Tyrathca space, along with the stellar co-ordinate system they used, or I'd go somewhere else. Eventually, Quantook-LOU gave in and admitted that, although his dominion didn't have the data, he knew where it would be stored."
"Where?"
"One of the Tyrathca enclaves. Because the situation on the diskcity was starting to head south - in fact, a war was about to break out - we had to fly Quantook-LOU to the enclave in the Lady Mac. Once we arrived, two of the serjeants we'd brought along - with Ione's personality in charge - went with him to ensure no funny business.
"After a brief stand-off, we eventually managed to get the information we wanted, but the situation was not helped when other Mosdva dominions started to attack the Tyrathca enclave. Oenone managed to prevent any invasion by cutting the transport links, and then cut the enclave loose, before using the antimatter drive to push it free while the negotiations were concluded.
"But, of course, a complication showed up in the form of two of Capone's hellhawks. A brief but nasty skirmish broke out, which ended in a draw with Oenone maintaining a stand-off. I offered to help Syrinx break the stand-off, but she declined, saying that it would take too long and that we should go straight to the Sleeping God."
"Did you?"
"Yep, but before I tell you what happened there, I need to wrap up the rest of the story."
"You mean we're getting to the end?"
"Yeah."
On Ketton Island, in another dimension, things were becoming pretty grim. Food, which had been in short supply to start with was approaching critical levels. To make matters worse, the air was steadily becoming more and more polluted with carbon dioxide, as there were no plants to recycle it. The possessed had started to disperse, abandoning their leaders and joining the serjeants who had been caught up in the area transported to the other dimension.
Then they made an incredible discovery.
The dimension was inhabited.
The beings weren't native to the dimension, though; they were an incredibly ancient race, who had transferred their consciousness to crystal structures - akin to an Edenist Consensus. They, too, had faced their own possession crisis, like the Laymil and the Kiint, but they also insisted that an overall solution to the crisis must come from humanity itself. However, they were willing to provide assistance for the possessed on Ketton Island.
The options they presented were these; they could remove the possessing souls and allow them to disperse, resulting in permanent death, or the possessing souls could join them in their quest for knowledge. These options didn't appeal to the possessed, but most of the serjeants were willing to join the crystal entities. This opened up a third option; which was that the possessing souls could take over a serjeant body, and enough serjeants joined the crystal entities to allow every possessing soul to have a body of their own.
The crystal entities then opened portals back to Mortonridge, allowing the serjeants and the possessing-souls-in-serjeant-bodies to return to their own universe. There was a brief moment of confusion, but eventually things were sorted out.
There were still pockets of possessed under siege on the peninsular, but the Mortonridge Liberation was effectively over.
On Earth, Quinn Dexter had put his plans to take over the London arcology into action. He sent the possessed from the zero-tau mausoleum to create more possessed, with a goal of fifteen thousand by the next morning. Once that goal had been achieved, those possessed would then fan out across the arcology, knowing that the police simply didn't have the resources to deal with all of them, and gambling that Govcentral wouldn't fire SD weapons into the arcology.
Then something happened to alert B7 of Dexter's survival. While on patrol, two police officers nearly had heart attacks when a body was dropped in front of their patrol car. The body showed signs of having been killed by white fire, and was one of the possessed from the zero-tau mausoleum. Shocked into action, B7 ordered the inspection of the other zero-tau pods in the building... and they were all empty. Since some of the people in those zero-tau pods had arrived after the supposed death of Dexter, that proved to B7 - the Western European supervisor in particular - that he was still alive and at large.
It was time to play the last trump.
The arcology was now under curfew, so it was a surprise when Robinson arrived, along with an invitation to meet 'someone in authority'. Agreeing, Louise and Gen packed their belongings, and were taken to a large garage, where they switched to a large vehicle suitable for travel outside the arcologies in Earth's then-turbulent environment.
The state of the ecosystem had come as a shock to the sisters - there were no trees, just a dense green grass that was everywhere. This was tapegrass, a cross between grass and moss, designed to prevent soil erosion.
After a four-hour trip, they reached their destination, a geodesic crystal dome that was a smaller version of the domes that Earth's arcologies sheltered under. Inside was a scene taken straight from pre-armada storm days, with parklands and small woods. They were taken to a manor house that make Cricklade seem gaudy and pretentious, where they were met by a young man who introduced himself as Charles Montgomery David Filton-Asquith, Western European supervisor for B7.
It turned out that he'd been alive since the early twenty-second century, having used affinity to transfer from one cloned body to another. At the start, he and his colleagues had been corporate magnates on a scale previously unheard of. As Earth's environment started to break down, governments started selling off services to acquire more resources to try to combat the destabilising environment. Charlie and the others had taken advantage of this to garner unimaginable wealth - which they ended up needing, since they were the ones who actually paid for Earth's security forces - and eventually consolidated all of Earth's national governments into Govcentral.
Another point of interest was that they'd also been indirectly responsible for Edenism. Intending to keep bitek for themselves, they began to turn public opinion against bitek, starting with religious condemnation. On the verge of success, their plans had been derailed when Wing-Tsit Chong transferred his personality into Eden's neural structure. Religious leaders, their hands forced, issued their declarations too early; there was still too much bitek in general use on Earth, who emigrated to Eden, which had achieved independence. and thus Edenism was born.
It was it this point that Charlie confessed to manipulating them, much to Louise's dismay, and revealed that bring them there was his last gambit to lure Quinn Dexter into a confrontation. Despite her frustration - mainly self-directed - she found herself enjoying the comfort of the dome's facilities, even if the attitudes of the other people living there were quite daunting at first.
The next morning, reality returned with a thud.
Charlie and the rest of B7 were preparing to abandon Earth, as the possessed were starting to gain the upper hand, particularly in New York, with Govcentral considering firing SD weapons in a circle around the arcology's perimeter, in the hopes that New York's possessed would remove only that arcology from the universe. If that didn't work, the options were limited to go along for the ride when Earth was removed from this universe, or the SD weapons would be fired into the arcology, destroying it.
At that, Xander's face went pale. "Destroy an entire arcology?" he asked in a near whisper. "How many people live in one?"
"In New York? About three hundred million," Joshua replied.
"And Govcentral was willing to sacrifice that many of its citizens?"
"It was the same sort of logic that saw the Confederation willing to sacrifice New California and Arnstadt to eliminate the threat posed by Capone," Joshua pointed out.
"Still, I can't believe that Govcentral was willing to slaughter millions of its own citizens," Xander repeated.
"And that's without taking the situation in London into consideration," Louise added. "It was then that Charlie told me that SD weapons might have to be used on the arcology to stop Dexter."
"Jesus," Xander muttered, looking vaguely queasy.
"But there was still one last chance. Apparently, the Confederation Navy had developed what they called an anti-memory weapon, which destroyed a person's soul by wiping out their memories. Charlie intended to find a way to use it on Dexter."
And there was a way. When Louise bemoaned the fact that Fletcher Christian was unavailable to perform that task, Charlie surprised her by saying that he was. Apparently, instead of being put straight into zero-tau, he was still in the Halo, helping GISD scientists try to understand the physics of possession.
Louise agreed to ask Fletcher for his help, on one condition - that Gen was taken to Tranquillity. Gen was furious, but eventually she agreed. With Gen safely on her way to Tranquillity, Louise and Robinson returned to London, where they met up with Fletcher - who was accompanied by a trio of GISD agents from the Halo - before starting to track Dexter down.
Unfortunately, he found them first.
Making their way through buildings, the group encountered the possessed. After a brief chase and a nasty fight, Fletcher had been captured, the GISD agents had been killed, and Robinson had given his life to cover Louise's escape.
Louise had fled, heading for the one safe place knew knew of - Andy's flat. She ended up spending the night there, but she didn't go into details, despite Xander's prying.
"Fine, don't tell me, then," he grumped.
It was then that the red cloud began to form under the centre of the Westminster Dome. Getting in touch with Charlie, she warned him that this cloud was different to the one that had formed over Norfolk and the other worlds the possessed had gotten a foothold on.
Charlie had more bad news for her; the Govcentral Senate had granted the President authority to use the SD weapons against the arcologies to eliminate the possessed, despite the billions of casualties that would be the inevitable result. Appalled, Louise had determined to make one last appeal to Dexter's humanity. Andy had been too frightened to leave the flat, and so Louise had gone by herself.
Xander looked at her, his expression a mix of appalled and amazed. "Jesus, and I thought some of the things I did were crazy enough."
"I didn't have much of a choice at the time, Xander," Louise protested. "Which is something you can agree with, surely."
"Yeah, but still..." Xander's voice trailed off as the comparison to when he'd dragged Angel along to the Master's lair rose in his mind. "Fair enough, I guess."
"Even Charlie tried to talk me out of it, so you needn't feel too bad about it, Xander," Louise said with a slight grin.
"So, what happened, then?"
Louise's anger hadn't lasted very long, but the determination to face Dexter had remained. In fact, it hadn't been too long before she encountered a group of possessed, who had taken her to Saint Paul's Cathedral, which he was using as a base of operations. It was there she was reunited with Fletcher, who'd been tormented and tortured throughout the night.
She delivered her warning, but Dexter had reacted poorly, knocking her off her feet and threatening her quite graphically. This time Xander didn't ask for details, as the expression on Louise's face gave him an idea of what sort of threats he'd made.
Dexter then began exerting his energistic strength, along with that of the other possessed within the cathedral, prying at the very fabric of reality itself, weakening it.
Before too long, he'd prised a hole in the universe, and the first of an invading army of monsters from another dimension had started to emerge. His followers fled screaming, and Louise was beaten, waiting for the true torment to begin, when...
"I hate to interrupt," Joshua cut in, "but I think I'd better say what happened at the Sleeping God at this point."
"Why do I get the feeling that this is where everything gets wrapped up?" Xander asked.
"Because you know how a story should go?" Joshua replied with a grin.
"Probably something like that," Xander agreed. "Get on with it, smart-ass."
The trip from Mastrit-PJ to the system where the Sleeping God was located had been made quickly, due to an indefinable sense of urgency that was filling Joshua. When they arrived, and scanned the system, the science team found that there was only one object orbiting the star. No other planets, no asteroid belts, no cometary halo... nothing. Not even the normal dust that was found in most star systems.
Jumping to a distance of a million kilometres out, a closer scan revealed the first anomaly - the object had no darkside, as light from the star was being bent around it by its mass to illuminate the whole object evenly.
The next fact to jump out at them was the fact that the object was a naked singularity - the point at which all the physical laws of the universe break down. And it was stable - and had been for at least the last fifteen thousand years. This was not just anomalous; it was impossible. But there it was.
The singularity was also emitting a torrent of gravitational wave vacuum fluctuations - tiny ripples in the fabric of the universe - which led to the next anomaly/impossibility; the fact that they were regulated and manipulated to form patterns. Equally impossible, but equally real.
Some near-frantic discussion among the science team came up with the theory that that was how the Tyrathca arkship had been moved a hundred and fifty light-years in an instant, as the vacuum fluctuations had a similar energy state to a voidhawk's distortion field. In effect, it had opened a wormhole for the Tyrathca.
"We were wondering how to get in touch with whatever was controlling it," Joshua said. "So I was pretty damned surprised when the singularity itself datavised me, with a simple message: 'You ask'."
Xander stared at Joshua in shock. By itself, it was just another amazing event in an equally amazing story. But when piled on top of everything else he'd been told...
"I managed to contain my shock, though," Joshua continued, which caused Xander to snap back to the story, "and I asked it if it knew of any solutions to the possession crisis. As it turns out, it did, but we had to decide for ourselves..."
One of the Intelligence operative who'd accompanied the expedition asked the Sleeping God why it was helping, to which the reply had been that that was what it had been created to do, by a race that used its abilities to move themselves to another dimension.
"The crystal entities on Ketton Island?" Xander asked, still somewhat awed and bemused.
"Not that particular device, but one similar to it," Joshua replied.
"You mean there's more than one of them?"
"Yeah, but there's only one per group of galaxies. In fact, we were pretty lucky that there was one so close to the Confederation, as it turned out."
"So, why did it help?"
"A simple answer would be because it could. In fact, that was pretty much the answer it gave us as well," Joshua replied. "However," he added, "it also raised the point of taking responsibility for deciding to intervene. Considering the level of our intervention at Mastrit-PJ, it made an impression on us."
"Does that mean that it didn't help everyone all the time?"
"That's right. It could have, but then that would mean that it would, in effect, be everyone's ruler, and it had had a restriction placed on it to prevent that from happening. With that out of the way, we were poised to ask for the list of solutions, but there was a hitch - we couldn't decide how to decide which solution to use."
"Bloody hell," Xander muttered, something he'd done a lot during the course of the story. "The future of the human race hanging in the balance, and the people picked to save it unable to decide how. Why does that not surprise me?"
"Well, it was eventually sorted out, obviously, since we're still here," Joshua pointed out. "Although it did come as a bit of a shock - I was picked to make the decision."
"Yeah, that would be a bit of a surprise."
"Not to mention quite humbling..."
*Flashback*
He datavised the singularity: {Is that acceptable to you?}
{I cannot take responsibility for your decisions, collective or otherwise. My only constraints are that I will not permit you to use my abilities as a weapon. Other than that, you have free access.}
{OK. Show me what happened.}
*End Flashback*
"Of course, I should have realised that my statement was just a tad too general," Joshua continued. "A fact that was driven home when the Sleeping God dumped the whole story of everything that had happened, from Lalonde to London, straight into my head."
Xander tried to imagine what that would feel like, but failed dismally. "So that's how you knew what was going on in places you hadn't been," he realised.
"Something like that, yes," Joshua agreed. "It even showed me the beyond, and told me how to get past it."
"How?"
"Well, it has no distance, only time. That's the direction you must travel in."
"What does that mean?"
"Well, the universe will end one day, what the Sleeping God called the omega point. What happens after that will depend on what the souls of everything that has ever lived and what they bring to that point."
"Okay, I can go with that," Xander said slowly, and to his surprise, he could. "So, if the beyond is so simple to get through, then why did all those souls stay there?"
"Because they were afraid, basically. Afraid to head off into the unknown, preferring to suffer endless torment rather than risk leaving everything they had ever known and which was still so close to them."
"Yeah, but sill, surely people would be curious enough to go see what lies ahead of them," Xander protested.
Joshua shook his head. "Afraid not, Xander," he responded. "As pointed out by the fact that the possession crisis happened in the first place. Quite a few people lack the sufficient faith in themselves to explore the unknown, and even those who do have enough self-belief suffer moments of doubt and uncertainty. I know I do."
Xander couldn't help but agree with what Joshua had said. "What happened next?"
"The last thing the Sleeping God showed me was what was happening at Saint Paul's at that moment. Seeing what was happening to Louise, I started the Sleeping God, and... well, basically I teleported to her side," Joshua admitted.
"Teleported?" Xander blurted. He'd heard some pretty unbelievable things during the story but this was the limit.
"Well, maybe not so much teleported as had a one-man wormhole opened for me to London. But the net effect was the same," Joshua replied, with a certainty that meant that he was either telling the truth or a perfect liar.
Somewhat reluctantly, Xander believed him. "What do you mean, started the Sleeping God?" he asked, in lieu of pursuing that line of inquiry.
"Put into motion the solution I'd chosen," Joshua replied. "The first step was opening a wormhole big enough to cover the entire Sol system - about twelve billion kilometres across - and shifted it to its new home. I even managed to leave Quinn Dexter behind, as well as getting rid of all the possessing souls."
"How'd you manage that? And where is Earth's new home?"
"I was able to arrange the internal structure of the wormhole so that the possessing souls couldn't stay in their host bodies," Joshua explained. "Quinn Dexter, I wanted to stay behind. And it wasn't just Earth I moved; it was the entire Confederation, along with the planets that the possessed had removed from this universe.
"The new home for the Confederation is outside the Milky Way galaxy, twenty thousand light-years out from the core, and ten thousand above the plane of the ecliptic. The view is spectacular," Joshua added with a grin. "Hell, I was even able to repair Earth's environment."
It was at this point that Xander just decided to accept everything he was told. "But surely it'd be wrecked again before too long."
"No, not really, since I also moved the forty-six stage-one colony worlds to share Earth's orbit. That means that Earth's population can be dispersed among them - about three-quarters of a billion each - and have a comfortable standard of living without causing too much damage."
"Okay, that sounds reasonable," Xander said. "So, what happened to Quinn Dexter?"
"Well, he was floating through space, when I made him an offer: take all the lost souls to the end of the universe. Of course, since I told him the wormhole that the Sleeping God created was to the time of God's Brother, he couldn't agree fast enough. Pity that he was possessed not by only one soul, but by one hundred billion," Joshua said with a grin.
"That's just too damn bad," Xander responded with a chuckle. "Serves him right for not reading the fine print."
"When Joshua appeared beside me, I was astonished," Louise said, picking up the story. "I was amazed and overjoyed to see him, so I hugged him and refused to let go. That's when I found out that Joshua had got rid of the possessed, except for Fletcher, so that he could thank him for looking after me throughout the crisis. And I got a chance to say good-bye to him properly."
Xander watched the emotions play across Louise's face. "From what you've told me about him, Fletcher seemed like a nice enough guy. I'm starting to wish that I got the chance to meet him."
Louise brightened at that. "I think you would have gotten along well with him, Xander," she said. "It's a shame that we'll never get the chance to find out, though."
"After Fletcher left," Joshua said. "I took Louise to Tranquillity."
"The way we arrived there was quite surprising," Louise said with a smile.
"Lemme guess - you teleported?" Xander asked.
"Got it in one," Joshua replied. "It seemed like the thing to do," he added with a grin.
"Once they arrived," Ione put in, "I gave Louise a chance to freshen up, and that's when I found out that Joshua was now affinity-capable."
"It seemed like the thing to do," Joshua defended himself. "And besides, I had to pass on the new co-ordinates to the Jovian Consensus somehow."
"It wasn't a criticism, Joshua. In fact, I'm still amazed that you showed such restraint in letting go of the Sleeping God's power when you did."
Joshua shrugged. "Eh. The responsibility that would have come with it didn't really appeal to me. But I have to laugh at what Liol said to me when the Lady Mac docked at Tranquillity. 'Fine bloody captain you make! You abandon us there to have fun all by yourself, and the next thing we know we've got Jupiter's SD Command screaming at us.'
"Of course, the only possible reply was, 'I brought you back, what more do you want?'"
Xander couldn't help but laugh at that. "What else did you do?"
"Well, I shifted all the inhabited Dorado asteroids to the New Washington system, and to the habitats from that system to Jupiter and put the Mosdva there in their place. It seemed like the thing to do."
"A nice reward for the almanac information," Xander agreed. "So, that's it, crisis over?"
"Crisis over, yes, but not the story. A couple of loose ends yet. First, there had to be a party. You can't do something like that without throwing a massive party."
"It was fun," Gen recalled. "The best bit was watching Liol try to avoid Dominique for the entire party," she added with a giggle.
Xander added this little titbit to everything else he'd been told about Dominique. "Oh, man... I just hope she doesn't do anything like that to me," he muttered before sighing. "I suppose it'd be pointless to resist, then?"
"You bet," Joshua said with an evil smirk. "The only bit of advice I can offer is to go with the flow. Trust me, it'll be safer that way."
"That doesn't make me feel a whole lot better."
"That was when I left the party with Louise... and proposed to her. On bent knee and everything."
"How'd she take it?"
"Well..."
*Flashback*
He dropped down on one knee, and held her hand. "Marry me."
From the expression on her face she could have been in agony. "That's very kind, Joshua, and if you'd asked that day you left Cricklade I'd even have eloped with you. But, really, you don't know anything about me. It wouldn't work; you're a starship captain, and unutterably famous, I'm a landowner's daughter. All we ever were was a beautiful dream I had once."
"I know everything there is to know about you - thanks to the singularity I've lived every second of your life. And don't you ever call yourself someone's daughter again. You're Louise Kavanagh, nothing else. I had one exciting flight, which was the result of thousands of people backing me up behind the scenes. You walked right up to Quinn Dexter and tried to stop him. It is not possible to possess more courage than that, Louise. You were astonishing. Those drunken buffoons in Harkey's bar look up at me. I stand in awe of what you did."
"You saw everything I did?" she enquired.
"Yes," he said firmly. "Including last night."
"Oh."
He gently pulled at her hand, making her kneel beside him. "I don't think I could marry a saint, Louise. And you already know I've never been one."
"Do you really want to marry me?"
"Yes."
"But we'd never be together."
"Starship captains are a thing of the past now, just like landowner daughters. There's so much we have to do in our lives."
"You don't mind living on Norfolk?"
"We'll change it together, Louise. You and I."
She kissed him, then smiled demurely. "Do we have to go back to the party?" she murmured.
"No."
Her smile widened, and she stood up. Joshua stayed on one knee. "I haven't had my answer yet. And this classic routine is killing my leg muscle."
"I was taught to always keep a man waiting," she said imperiously. "But your answer is yes."
*End Flashback*
Ione and Gen were smiling after Joshua finished telling of how he proposed to Louise. Xander couldn't help being impressed, and said so.
"After that, I used the Sleeping God's teleport ability one last time to visit the Kiint homeworld, and to pick up Jay. Oh, and to get the Kiint to stop spying on us, and the medical help they agreed to provide once the crisis was over."
"Huh? The Kiint were spying on the Confederation?"
"Not so much spying as observing," Joshua replied. "More like collecting information for historical archives, perhaps. But they agreed to stop, anyway."
"And the medical help?"
"Was sent straight away. The Kiint even helped reconstruction efforts, which was good of them."
"And that's the end of the story?"
"Pretty much," Joshua admitted.
"So, what did Jay get up to in the Kiint home system?"
"You'll have to wait until tomorrow to find that out," Joshua replied. "At least you'll be able to hear Jay tell her story herself."
"Hang on," Ione interrupted. "Why tomorrow?"
"I was hoping to keep this a surprise, but... tomorrow's Haile's birthday, and guess what?" Joshua replied.
Ione thought about it for a moment, before it dawned on her. "You don't mean..."
"Yep."
"What?" Xander asked curious.
"It would seem that Haile's coming to celebrate her birthday here," Ione replied. "Haile's the young Kiint we were talking about earlier."
"Oh," was all Xander could say, before rallying. "I don't know how you guys could be impressed with anything I ever did," he continued. "Most of the time I was Support Guy for someone who did most of the work. Louise, you tried to stand up to a total psychopath on your own, and Joshua, you saved the human species. Sure, you had a lot of help, but it was you who made the decision in the end."
Both Louise and Joshua shrugged, almost in unison. "That's as may be," Joshua said. "But you've got a 'saved to world' to your credit as well, plus at least one assist. That's pretty damned impressive, and you should never doubt that. In fact, when you get home, give Buffy a swift kick in the arse for me for not recognising properly what you've done to help her."
"Me, too," Louise added, closely followed by Ione and Gen's, "And me."
"Don't you mean if I get home?"
"No, when," Joshua replied. "And I've got a pretty good idea about how to make it happen, too. Gen, can you do me a favour, and show Xander to his room? We won't be too far behind you."
"Sure, Joshua," Gen replied. "C'mon, this way," she added to Xander as the two of them left.
Once they had, Ione turned to Joshua and said, "I think I know how you're going to get Xander home - the Sleeping God."
"Sure," Joshua said. "After all, it allowed me to open a wormhole to the end of the universe, which is a few billion years in the future. Sending someone back a few centuries shouldn't be too much of a problem for it."
****
Gen led Xander to the door to his room. "Here it is, and your stuff is already taken care of," she said.
"Thanks, Da- Gen," he said, correcting himself.
Gen caught the slip. "What were you about to say?" she asked.
"You remind me a lot of someone back home," Xander replied. "Buffy's younger sister, as a matter of fact."
"Oh. Well, when you get back, don't forget what we said, alright? I think you're a hero like my sister and brother-in-law," Gen replied, before hugging Xander tightly.
Caught by surprise, all Xander could do was return the hug. "'Night, Gen."
"Night, Xander."