Chapter 7: The Day After Part 2
Glen Larson Productions Offices, Los Angeles, California – 11:00 A.M.
Jack along with the rest of SG-1 sat in the office of Glen Larson. "Colonel," Glen Larson said. "No one gave me the stories I turned into Battlestar Galactica or its sequel Galactica 1980."
"And the fact people claim to have seen a ship similar to that of Battlestar Galactica last night in orbit?" Daniel asked.
"I have no idea," Larson stated. "It's possible it could have been a big publicity stunt done for a revival that Richard Hatch has been trying to get off the ground. But I have my doubts that is the case since I am sure Richard would have mentioned such a thing to me."
As SG-1 left they didn't notice the strange flat grey stone on the windowsill in Larson's office...
Onboard the Edenian First Fleet Flagship Burning Away the Shadows – Same Time
Joyce looked out the viewport of the battleship she and her mother flew in at what lay ahead of them; several starships and a space station. All of which she knew should not have existed inside the atmosphere of Jupiter. "Where did they come from?" she wondered.
"I don't know," Sindel said. "But I am beginning to believe that Buffy and Dawn may indeed be part of this somehow. The question is how did they get out here? And how did this all come into being."
"The only being that could create all of this is a god," Joyce said. "No mortal power could have had the power to do this. That said though, one of our own was the trigger. Last night I put an end to a chaos spell calling upon Janus. A chaos spell by an old adversary of yours, Etan, though he goes by the name Ethan Rayne now."
"I would have thought Etan would know not to mess with divine magic," Sindel said with a shake of her head.
Suddenly their communications unit crackled to life. "Unidentified cloaked vessel this is the Battlestar Valkyrie, please decloak yourself and state your business or you shall be considered a hostile force."
"Battlestar," Joyce said. "Battlestar. That sounds familiar."
"I don't recognize it," Sindel said. "Which means it could be something from Earth."
"Of course," Joyce said as she remembered an old television series that aired around the time that her daughters were born. "Battlestar Galactica. It was a television show twenty years ago. Now only one of those ships resembles it as kind of a distant cousin. Like someone built a real life ship and militarized it. Regardless it would be from a work of fiction. So would that ship over there." She pointed toward the Prometheus. "That if I am not mistaken looks like a ship from another television show called Star Trek. And like the Battlestar is a work of fiction."
"Not anymore," Sindel said with a shake of her head. "Which means you are likely right that the spell you ended, that called on Janus, caused all this to come to being, but for what purpose?"
"Janus is a god of chaos, doorways and a few other minor things. The translocation of those ships and that station would bring a lot of chaos especially where the Goa'uld are concerned."
"We repeat unidentified vessel this is the Battlestar Valkyrie, please decloak yourself and state your business."
Joyce motioned to a comm officer to open a channel, "Battlestar Valkyrie this is the Edenian Imperial starship Burning Away the Shadows, we are on a mission of surveying, mapping, exploration and retrieval. We were informed of the existence of your vessels and the station within this gas giant and have come seeking the heirs to the Imperial throne who have suddenly vanished with like say magic. We will be decloaking presently."
With those words a massive starship more stunning than they had ever seen suddenly appeared not far from the groups of ships docked at the Star Forge. It was as if someone had grown a ship out of seamless living crystal pulsing with a dozen different colors before settling on a bright stellar blue. The ship had no apparent engines, bridge, or any discernible weapons. It was however a flawless spheroid that screamed of speed, high technology, stealth and pure efficiency..
Onboard the StarForge – Same Time
Buffy looked to the others, in particular Dawn; she and Dawn recognized the voice of their mother, however the ruthless, snarling, and ice cold tone was certainly uncharacteristic of their normally bubbly artist mother. But what was their mother doing onboard a massive unknown starship….
"I think that is mom," Buffy said having heard the relayed communication with the unknown ship.
"Agreed," Dawn said.
"I think Dawn and I should return to the Valkyrie, while everyone else heads back down to Earth to talk to the parents. We should meet in the library at school after it lets out," Buffy said.
"Do I have to say, be careful," Giles said.
"No," Dawn said. "We plan on having a group of armed people with us when we have mom come aboard the Valkyrie."
"Very well," Giles said. He looked to Jenny. "Maybe we should leave them a communicator so they can contact us."
"Agreed," Jenny said. "In fact everyone here should be given one. In fact I think we should officially consider ourselves part of Starfleet, with Buffy, myself and Cordelia continouing to be the face that the people from Stargate Command deal with, should we have further dealings with them. We can work out any other details once we have things settled on Earth."
Onboard Battlestar Valkyrie – 11:15 A.M.
"Open a channel to the Edenian ship," Buffy said.
"Channel opened," came the comm officer.
"Put it on speakers," Buffy said as she picked up a microphone and handed another to Dawn. "Burning Away the Shadows, this Commander Buffy Summers of the Battlestar Valkyrie. Please acknowledge you have Joyce Summers onboard."
"Elizabeth, dear?" came Joyce's voice over the speakers far less strident in tone than before. "Are you alright, is Dawn with you?"
"I'm here too, mom," Dawn said. "And we're fine. How did you get here?"
"Your grandmother, the Empress of Edenia, brought me. This is most certainly not how I wanted to reveal this girls. I'm not human, I'm Edenian from the planet Edenia in M31 or what Carl Sagan famously called the Great Galaxy in Andromeda."
"Commander," the XO said. "In light of what you told us. We should still be skeptical, we don't know for certain that is your mother out there."
"I know," Buffy said. "Mom, if it's really you. I am going to give you permission to dock a shuttle in our port flight pod and Dawn and I will meet you there."
"Acknowledged Shadows out. "
At a Diner in Los Angeles – Same Time
Samantha Carter had downloaded, before leaving the SGC, the data of when the ships had appeared last night. She was now going over that data, her meal so far largely untouched.
"Carter," Jack said. "You can eat you know."
"I know, sir," Sam replied. "But I just found something interesting. She turned her laptop so that the others could see. "This is footage from when the ships appeared." She hit the play button. One moment the Valkyrie, Cylon Basestar and Prometheus were not there and the next they were. "They simply appeared, they did not exit hyperspace."
"You are correct Captain Carter," Teal'c agreed. "No hyperspace window was formed prior to their arrival."
"Which would lead to the possible explanation of them being from another reality," Sam said. "But with the fact that these people here are fictional and Glen Larson had no idea who they are or where they are from. I did some checking, the ships appeared in the night sky directly over one town in California a small city on the coast roughly two hours north of here. A town called, Sunnydale. I feel that is where our next step should be."
Onboard the Battlestar Valkyrie – 11:30 A.M.
Buffy and Dawn, along with several armed members of the Valkyrie's security detail entered the port flight pod just as the Edenian shuttle landed and they waited quietly for Joyce and Sindel to disembark.
"Hello, girls," Joyce said.
"Mom," Buffy said hesitantly.
Joyce noticed the guards flanking Buffy and Dawn and she nodded in understanding. Her daughters wanted proof. "Elizabeth Sera Anna Summers-Raiden and Dawn Michala Mara Summers-Raiden."
Buffy and Dawn looked at each other and nodded. They knew that only their family knew about the hyphenated last name. On official records it showed only the Summers name, but their mother had always used the hypnated name when scolding them. They never did get an answer on why their mother used the hyphenated name or where the word Raiden came from.
Buffy nodded to the men flanking her and Dawn. "It's alright." The guards relaxed a little but not completely. "Mom, I have to ask why didn't you tell us about not being human?"
Joyce let out a long sigh as she looked at her fraternal twin daughters. "To give you both as much a normal childhood as I could give. Eventually I knew I would have to tell you the truth, that your grandmother was Empress of Edenia and that I being the eldest of my sisters is therefore the heir to the throne of Edenia. Which makes the two of you my heirs, and once you knew that truth you would have likely wanted to go to Edenia and take your rightful places. Once that happened your normal childhood, your normal lives would be over. Of course I never figured your human side would rape one of you into becoming a Slayer."
"You know of the Slayer?" Dawn asked shocked.
"I learned of the Slayer on one of my first trips to Earth, five thousand years ago."
"Five … thousand," Buffy said slowly as if trying to comprehend the fact that her mother was over five thousand years old. "You are over five thousand years old?"
"I actually just passed my twenty thousandth birthday," Joyce said.
"As interesting as that is," Buffy said with a sigh. "And we should discuss this more later. There is an issue of your ship. Our little Starfleet is a little scared of your ship. The Prometheus did a scan, your ship is extremely powerful, definitely more so than the Valkyrie or the Basestar. To put my people and the Cylons at ease we are going to ask that either your ship leaves or stays to protect our small fleet."
At this Sindel's seemingly kind countenance became suddenly wrathful. With her voice low she stated "Princess,while your mother is far more familiar with this galaxy than I am and I have let her take the lead on this day, in the final analysis Edenia and it's assets are mine alone to command, especially when I am present and in direct command. I am the Empress of an intergalactic star empire with all that entails in terms of responsibility and symbolism. Their are simply codes of behavior that you seemingly were never taught about how to properly react to the unknown. On a ancillary note as you and your sister are through your mother my heirs that means all that you command belongs to me as well."
"I don't know if your my grandmother or not," Dawn interrupted. "All we have on that is mom's and your claim to that fact. I personally am willing to accept you are our grandmother as we have never met anyone from mom's side of the family except Aunt Arlene and Aunt Lolly and their families. Regardless, the people on this ship will not recognize your claim over this ship nor will they recognize you as their monarch."
"They recognize me as their Commander," Buffy said. "Just as the Cylons recognize our friend Cordelia as their leader. And the Prometheus answers to its command crew. None of them know you. If you try and assert your control over them, we will respond in force. Or did you not notice there are multiple ships here as well as a space station? And you brought only one. Do you really want to fight over this?"
Sindel let out a long sigh and then shook her head. What her granddaughters said was true she knew. The people of these vessels and the space station would not recognize her authority. "Princesses," she said,."by interrupting me you both revealed your biases. As I was saying since you two are my heirs the starship that brought us here is hardly "alien" in terms of allegiance as in the stead of myself, your mother and aunts it is yours to command and that due to the fact as I was emphasizing when you interrupted me in terms of law and custom the citizens of these three ships and the space station is seen as yours already under our law as a form of personal royal kingdom."
"What about …" Buffy started to say.
"Very well," Sindel said. "This ship is yours and the others are allied with you. Anyways we aren't fighting with you or attempting to establish control over the people of these ships or that space station because we don't need to nor want to, but simply meeting our legal obligations and moral imperatives in this case. Also, remember to me you both are first and foremost teenage Princesses who despite gaining what to me is a minor level of experience and a small Kingdom in less than a day. You have no basis to demand anything of your mother or I in an official manner since we are not only your mother and grandmother respectively we possess earned and inherited titles, life experience, knowledge and wisdom that dwarfs yours, and are in the final analysis unlike in most petty kingdoms where plotting and battles over succession and assassinations occur within Imperial houses we are absolutely only concerned for your well being and that of your sister nothing more and nothing less."
"We don't care." Buffy said. "You have no rights onboard this ship. You are the one making demands here. I can have you thrown into the brig, and yes I am aware it would be a prelude to a decleration of war. And we might lose. But I doubt the people of this ship, the Cylons or the Prometheus would stand by while you try and assert control."
Joyce looked to her mother and sighed. "Mother, we have to take into account the people on these ships. They are now considered to be survivors of a civilization that is now gone. Until this situation is fully clarified we should approach them as we would any other very young and seemingly non-hostile spacefaring civilization. Conflict especially the way we have learned to wage it would make for a perhaps the greatest and most asinine cautionary tale about avoiding unnecessary and completely pointless conflict in our long history."
"Once we have discovered the how and why of all this happened," Dawn said, "I think Buffy would be in agreement that we will explain the situation to the people of these ships and the logical benefits of being part of your empire."
"Our Empire, Princess, Our silent and hidden and unspoken of Empire and our trust held for those to come and worry not when the time comes I shall speak for myself because again not to do so is another breach of protocol and standards of behavior." said Sindel quietly with a small smile.
Harris Residence, Sunnydale – Same Time
"So boy," Tony Harris said as he looked at Xander, Willow and Giles. "Where have you been?"
"That's what Giles is here to explain," Xander said. "But the short version is, in space."
Tony laughed. "In space. You expect myself and your mother to believe you were truly in space."
Xander looked to Giles pleadingly. This was not going as well as he had hoped. Of course he shouldn't have been surprised.
"This world is older than either of you know," Giles said as he looked at Tony and Jessica Harris. "Contrary to popular mythology, it did not begin as a paradise. For untold eons demons walked the Earth. They made it their home, their...their Hell. But in time, they lost their purchase on this reality. The way was made for mortal animals, for man. All that remains of the Old Ones are vestiges, certain magicks, certain creatures..."
He went on to tell them what he had told Willow and Xander months ago. And it was clear the Harris's didn't believe him. Calling Giles a delusional fool who was peddling lies, the drunken Tony and Jessica Harris proceeded kick their only son out of their home and disown him.
Willow's House - Same Time
Willow walked into her house calling out, "Mom, Dad I'm home and I've brought a friend," she said as Jenny came in behind her.
"Who is this?" Ira Rosenberg asked as he looked at Jenny.
"My name is Jenny Calender," Jenny replied. "I teach at Sunnydale High School. And I was chosen to reveal to you what occurred last night." She told them everything Giles had related to her. She mentioned magic, the concept that the world was older than they knew and that how demons had ruled it for eons beforehand.
Ira, who was a trained Rabbinical scholar, stated that the world in the Biblical sense actually was created from nothingness via the will of God as a blank slate for his chosen and favored creation humanity and while the Garden of Eden was a Paradise the rest of the world outside definitely wasn't, therefore it didn't need to be older than the roughly 4.5 billion years they knew. Meaning of course Jenny's entire argument was based upon a false premise, also adding to that orally transmitted tales could easily be corrupted, lost and manipulated and since human language and written language at that was only 100,000 years old and 10,000 years old respectively at best her sense of the passage of time was not accurate either.
Therefore if magical and "demonic" creatures did exist they had been here a lot shorter of a time than Jenny was emphasizing with her less than specific tale unless of course aliens had lived on Earth before man.
Sheila chimed in stating that Jenny's eyes had never moved in a direction indicating she was making up what she was telling them.
They paused to allow for Jenny and Willow to explain their space adventure caused by the deity Janus' empowered spell.
The Rosenbergs did want to see proof that everything was true and Jenny promised that was possible.
Sunnydale High School - Library, Sunnydale – 12:30 P.M.
Cordelia sat on the living room couch across from Xander who sat in a chair five feet away from her.
"How did your parents take it?" Xander asked.
"They were skeptical at first. But Oz, Harmony and Willow went with me to show them that I was indeed telling the truth," Cordelia said. "Afterwards …"
"My parents didn't believe me and threw me out."
"I'm sorry that happened. Mine had a request," Cordelia said. "They want to see the Basestar. I wonder if Ms. Calender might be willing to beam them up?"
"I don't see why not," Xander said. "She's doing the same for Willow's parents. They can go up
at the same time."
It was at that moment that Giles walked in with Jenny. "I have to wonder," he said, "how, or by who, the spell that summoned the ships and gave us the memories of these other people was ended."
"That was my doing."
Xander, Cordelia, Giles and Jenny turned to see Buffy, Dawn, Joyce and Sindel enter the room.
"That was my doing," Joyce repeated.
"Mrs. Summers?" Giles said confused.
"My true name is Kitana Raiden," Joyce said. "I am from the world of Edenia in the Andromeda Galaxy. The one who summoned Janus was named Ethan Rayne, he …"
"Ethan Rayne?" Giles interrupted.
Buffy looked at Giles and she could see recognition in his eyes. "You know him?" she asked.
"I do," Giles replied. "We traveled in some of the same circles when we were younger."
"Etan, or as you know him Ethan," Joyce continued, "is or was a citizen of Edenia. He is in exile. Till I met him in his costume shop I did not even know he was on Earth."
"He was the one who called upon Janus?" Giles asked.
"He was," Sindel said.
"If the spell was ended," Jenny said, "by you Mrs. Summers. That might explain why the ships remained."
"Actually it doesn't," Giles said. "Janus is why they remained and why they were created to begin with. Why I have no clue."
"I do," Joyce said, "The Goa'uld. A parasitic race that believes themselves to be gods."
"We know," Jenny said. "Buffy, Cordelia and I met with a branch of the military dedicated to defending Earth from them. Poorly I might add or they wouldn't have needed our assistance last night."