A Legacy of Chaos

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters and universes that I am about to mangle around for my own amusement – sadly Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, Stargate SG-1 and EVE Online remain the property of Mutant Enemy Productions, MGM and CCP Games respectively – I am merely borrowing them and make absolutely no profit from their use. As a result, please keep the legal attack dogs – also known as lawyers – firmly muzzled and on a leash as I have no money to give to anyone.


Chapter Six

Xander's Citadel

A Short Time Later

Xander was feeling distinctly melancholy as he dropped out of warp and the vague wedge-shaped mass of the Fortizar, backdropped by the blue and white pearl of Neptune, came into view. He knew why, he had been hoping to spend far more time with his friends back on Earth than he had ultimately been able to. It would have been nice to see Willow and reassure her that he was still alive as well as to see Kyle and the other former members of The Pack for the same reason. Unfortunately, fate seemed to have had a different plan and he'd had to fob the job of telling the others off to Giles, Buffy, and Ms Calendar.

All because the covert ops cloak had decided to start overheating.

Something that, the more he thought about it, just did not make any sense at all. Alexander's memories kept telling him that the cloaking device module should not, even under the heightened level of strain put on it maintaining a cloaking field while landed on a planet, have started to overheat in the way that it did. That it should have continued to work normally – while primarily meant for use in space covert ops cloaks could and had been used on planets in the past, they were a common tool used by spies, assassins and mercenaries in New Eden as part of the shadow conflicts the great empires often played with one another – though with a slight increase in the power draw due to having to compensate for graviton interference. So why did it start failing the way it did, he thought, what caused the thermal warning to be tripped. Hmm only one way to find out.

"Aura," he thought-called to the artificial intelligence.

"Yes Xander?" Aura asked, sounding surprised that he was calling her directly instead of just activating the docking sequence. "Is there something wrong?"

"Possibly once this bomber has docked, I want you to run a complete and in-depth diagnostic on the cloaking system."

"As you wish did something happen?"

"You could say that," Xander replied before telling her what had happened with the cloaking device and how it had suddenly begun overheating when it was not supposed to do that.

"That is most unusual," Aura commented after he had finished. "It sounds like there is something wrong with the cloaking devices thermal regulator array. Alternatively, the alert may well have been a false alarm triggered by a faulty thermal sensor."

"I am aware of those possibilities," Xander admitted, "however I could not take the risk that the former would be the case not the latter. If the cloak had failed, then the US government and military would have descended on Sunnydale by the legion looking to take this ship and its technology. Not to mention that they would have been in danger at night."

"How so?" asked the curious AI.

"Because it wouldn't be safe. The nightlife of Sunnydale is not of the friendly variety." And isn't that the truth, he thought to himself knowing that the true nightlife who frequented Sunnydale was – aside from the exception of Angel aka Deadboy – distinctly hostile to human life. Regular vampires were bad enough the very last thing that Buffy needed to face was soldiers or other government agent types who'd gotten themselves killed and turned while trying to seize his ship.

"I see. Back to the issue of the cloaking device might I suggest that you eject your capsule from the bomber now. That would allow me to tractor the bomber into a separate maintenance bay so I can more effectively troubleshoot the problem while a separate tractor brings you into the staging area so you can decant yourself." Decant myself it's as good a name as any for the process of getting out of the capsule, he thought knowing there would be a slight amused smirk on the face of his body at the thought.

"Alright let's do that," he replied before giving the command for the capsule to separate from the ship. For a moment nothing happened then his vision flickered and changed as the feeds from the stealth bombers cameras and sensor panels disappeared leaving only those of the capsule, which only gave him the view of the bombers cramped bridge a moment before he heard a dull series of thuds as the docking clamps holding the capsule in place disengaged. Then he was shooting upwards as the pods own antigravity unit engaged and thrust him up through the chute in the ceiling that a few hours earlier he'd come down when he'd boarded the bomber to go to Earth in the first place.

In mere nanoseconds the vaguely egg-shaped pod was clear of the bomber and out in open space.

Which honestly made him feel quite vulnerable. Especially as he understood there were only a few thin plates of carbon-nanotube reinforced tritanium diboride armour between his fragile physical body, floating in the hydrostatic fluid, and the unforgiving vacuum of space. Alexander's memories of how vulnerable capsules were – the whole pod-ship was after all only four meters long, barely the size of a large family car, and more or less defenceless only having weak shields and absolutely no weapons – did not help matters. Some of the more morally bankrupt capsuleers had even been known to take great pleasure in shooting down the pods of their defeated foes after the pod automatically ejected from a fatally damaged ship. Thankfully, he knew there was no danger of that happening to him – unlike Alexander who'd died that way at least twice during his career in the Gallente Federal Navy especially when he'd clashed with Serpents pirates, other unsavoury groups like the Blood Raiders and occasionally the Caldari Navy along the Federation's borders – for the simple reason that to the best of his knowledge, he was currently the only capsuleer in existence in this reality.

Still it was with no small amount of relief that he felt the station's docking tractors lock on and begin bringing him inside.


Several minutes later he was on all fours gasping and shaking as he got his breath back after coughing up all the hydrostatic fluid that had been in his lungs and airway. There really must be something better than having to go through this every time I get out of the capsule, he thought as the shakes subsided and he was able to get back to his feet. He knew that, much as he might wish otherwise, there was no way to avoid throwing up fluid when you got out of the capsule. It was one of those little prices of immortality that capsuleers just learned to live with.

"At least the fluid tastes nice," he said to himself, enjoying the cool taste of peppermint that the hydrostatic fluid had left in his mouth, as he headed towards the showers to wash off the residue of the tank fluid which got literally everywhere.

"Did you say something Xander," Aura asked.

"Nothing Aura I was just talking to myself about how at least the tank fluid tastes nice," Xander replied.

"I believe that was intentional after the first generation of capsuleers complained bitterly to all four of the Great Empires and Concord about how terrible the original fluid tasted," Aura told him. Xander smirked as he remembered Alexander hearing about that on The Scope while undergoing his training to become a capsuleer. Thankfully keen to keep New Eden's elite immortal pilot caste happy it hadn't taken long for someone to change to formulation to taste better, something that had had the surprising side effect of changing the colour of the fluid from its original honey colour to its current pale blue. It wasn't a complete victory for them though as cloning fluid was still honey coloured and still tasted awful.

"Indeed, has anything happened here while I've been gone?" Xander asked as he began walking through the changing room to the showers.

"I have been continuing to explore the station's systems and memory banks," Aura told him as he arrived at the showers and headed for the closest cubicle. "And I have discovered something rather curious."

"Oh?" Xander questioned as he switched on the shower and peeled off the pilot's briefs and chucked them in the receptacle set aside for them that would whisk them off for cleaning. "What did you find?"

"There is apparently a copy of the New Eden technological database present in the memory banks."

"What! How complete?"

"From what I have been able to access so far I would say complete. There is information on technology from all four of the great empires, from Concord, Eden-Com and even indications of some Jovian technology. Much of which is heavily encrypted as well as protected by numerous, extraordinarily complex firewalls. It will be some time before I will be able to gain access to all of it."

"That's… I don't know what to say," Xander commented. Well beyond the fact that I really, really need to have a conversation with Giles about the spell that somehow caused all this to happen, he thought, especially as whoever or whatever caused the spell to go beyond its original parameters like this clearly has given us a complete copy of the New Eden technological database including some of its newest and most powerful technologies.

"It is extraordinary," Aura confirmed, not at all blaming Xander for being stunned near speechless by the revelation. Had she been an organic she was certain she would have reacted the same way he was when she'd made such an extraordinary discovery, as it was she'd been unable to comprehend it for several nanocycles after she'd found it – essentially the AI equivalent of shock. "Though it also puts great responsibility on both of us, especially as we will eventually certainly have to deal with the far more technologically primitive Earth culture."

"True," Xander admitted knowing just how big a responsibility that the technology he already had access to put on his shoulders. Another thing I will need to talk to Giles or better Ms Calendar about as I really need their guidance here, he thought. "Anything else?"

"I have configured a maintenance drone with a fusion torch to burn through the airlock of the recovered alien corvette and prepared a data mining device that should allow us to break through its firewalls and access its databanks," Aura replied. "However, before you attempt access, I would recommend that you don a suit of armour and arm yourself."

"Good point as we have no idea what we'll find inside," Xander agreed as knowing his luck he'd probably find something like a Xenomorph from the Alien series aboard the corvette or worse something like Star Trek's Borg. Though if that were the case he would hurriedly withdraw and get Aura to throw the corvette into space before using the station's defensive weapons to blast it to smithereens. "Alright I'll have a shower and sort myself out before suiting up and attempting to access the corvette. Hopefully, there won't be anything nasty inside."

"Understood Xander."


Dressed in a set of light combat armour and holding a G75 assault rifle Xander arrived in the hanger bay where the corvette was being kept. A drone was floating near the corvette waiting for him, an industrial strength fusion torch attached to its manipulator arm. Nearby on a floating platform was a small device the size of your average PDA that he recognized as a military-grade data miner that once attached to an appropriate computer terminal aboard the corvette would act as a bridge allowing Aura to hack into the system and begin downloading its data.

"Alright Aura I'm ready," he said as he picked up the data miner and slipped it into the part of his armour meant to hold such things. "Move the drone into position and begin cutting through the airlock door."

"Excellent Xander I am moving the drone now," Aura told him. As she finished speaking, with a faint whirr of antigravity units, the drone moved into position facing the alien corvette's outer portside airlock door. For a moment more nothing happened then the visual filters in his helmet automatically polarized to protect his eyes as a bright flare of light erupted from the tip of the fusion torch. The drone then began applying the jet of superheated plasma to the door.

For a few more seconds nothing seemed to happen, whatever the metal the door was made from clearly had an exceedingly high tolerance to directed heat, then the metal started to glow and melt. For the next several minutes Xander just stood there watching, with a patience that he hadn't possessed before the spell, as the maintenance drone cut through the outer airlock doors until with a muffled crash they fell into the compartment.

"Xander I am moving the drone inside to cut through the inner doors," Aura told him. "Given that inner doors are never usually as thick as the outer doors it should not be much longer before you are able to access the interior of the ship."

"Understood," Xander acknowledged as the drone went inside. Faintly he heard the fusion torch start up again a moment before there came a crystalline-sounding crash, almost like the sound glass made when it was broken. "Aura what was that?"

"Interesting. It appears that the inner door was mostly composed of a crystalline material like glass set into thin metal frames. When the drone's fusion torch began cutting through the frame of the door the glass panels fell out and shattered."

"Strange," Xander commented, as the drone came back out of the ship, knowing that on ships in New Eden both the inner and outer airlock doors on ship's were made of dense metal plates reinforced by carbon nanotubes and were frequently reinforced with force fields. It was all there to make a boarding assault through a ship's airlocks – which were naturally weak points in a ship's armour bands – as difficult as possible. So much so that most people who wanted prisoners to interrogate – or take as slaves – would usually just pound the ship to the point where the crew evacuated to the life pods and then just hovered up the defenceless pods with tractor beams. The same was true with cargo, as all cargo was carried in very durable crates – similar in many respects to the shipping containers used on modern cargo ships back on Earth though considerably more advanced as they included things like antigravity units to make moving them around quite easy – that would usually survive a ships destruction with only some slight carbon scoring to worry about.

Thus, he couldn't quite understand why the inner doors on this ship would be any different. Still he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Which was why, after raising his assault rifle to the ready position, he cautiously made his way inside the alien craft. Crystalline debris crunched under his armoured boots as he walked through the airlock into a brightly lit hallway.

Senses, and the suits own sensors, on full alert he cautiously advanced down the corridor constantly on the lookout for any threats or automated internal defences. After a few meters he came to the end of the hallway where a door opened automatically as proximity sensors detected his approach. Stepping through he found himself in a chamber with three possible exits. The one to his immediate left seemed to head off towards the bow while the one directly opposite him presumably led to the starboard side airlock. The final exit was a spiral staircase made of a silver-grey metal that led up to what was presumably the corvette's main deck. Around him the walls were dominated by equipment cabinets with some small benches here and there presumably for the corvettes crew to sit on while suiting up in whatever spacesuits this thing carried.

Though annoyingly there was no sign of a computer terminal of any kind down here for him to attach the data miner to.

Deciding that his best bet for finding a suitable terminal was to find either the bridge or the engine room he carefully ascended the spiral stairs – the sound of his armoured boots echoing in the silent corvette. Sheesh this is more eerie than any of Sunnydale's graveyards in the middle of the night, he thought as he reached the top of the spiral stair and passed through a bulkhead door that was clearly designed to seal off the lower deck in event of emergency.

Stepping off the stair he found himself at a four-way intersection and it was here that he saw the first signs that the corvette had been abandoned in a hurry. Boxes and small crates, presumably taken from a cargo or storage bay, littered the floor along with data pads and a few bits of discarded clothing. Why would someone abandon a perfectly good ship and do so in such a hurry as to create this mess, he thought before noticing the faint sound of voices coming from down the corridor to the right. Is there still someone here?

Cautiously he began moving in the direction the voices were coming from and as he drew closer to the source, he clearly heard a Coca-Cola commercial. Is someone here watching telly, he wondered, though how would they pick up television signals this far from Earth and do so in real time? Also, surely they would have noticed that they were no longer in orbit of Mars as I doubt anyone aboard would have been able to miss the jolt of tractor beams locking on let alone a warp speed tow.

Giving a mental shrug he advanced further and soon came upon where the sounds were coming from. Stepping into the room he realized that he had indeed found the corvette's bridge. Three chairs, each with a workstation in front of them were arranged in a triangular fashion with two workstations on a slightly lower level while the third was level with the door, its solo and central position making him think it was the captain's workstation. At the back of the bridge a small bank of additional consoles were mounted against the wall with a schematic of the corvette above them, a schematic that had a point on it flashing red – a point that corresponded to the airlock his drone had just cut through.

He immediately noted that the bridge, like the rest of the ship so far, seemed to be completely deserted.

He also immediately noticed the source of the voices. They were coming from holographic screens floating above the various consoles/workstations. Each appeared to be tuned to a different Earth television channel, though all were in either American or Canadian English, and were clearly recordings. He recognized one transmission as being a recording of an episode of the soap opera Passions that - Mrs Summers and Ms Calendar seemed to love so much – had been broadcast months ago back when Buffy had spent the summer in Los Angeles with her father.

"Okay this is weird why have monitors showing recordings of Earth transmissions," he said aloud.

"There is only one logical conclusion that I can draw," Aura replied over his helmet speakers, making him jump slightly as he'd forgotten that the artificial intelligence would certainly have been monitoring his progress. "Whoever owned, and ultimately abandoned, this vessel was using the transmissions to learn the language and culture of Earth. Presumably so they can hide from something as they clearly abandoned a perfectly functional vessel and did so with great haste."

"The question then is what were they running from," Xander commented.

"Perhaps an examination of the vessels database will reveal the answer to that question. I would recommend that you attach the data miner to the captain's console as it is the one most likely to have complete access to the ship's database. I will attempt to access the ship's computer network once it is in place."

"On it," Xander replied as slinging his rifle over his shoulder on its strap, there was no threat here, he approached the commander's console and retrieved the data miner device from its slot in his armour. He then carefully placed it against the side of the console and pressed a small button on the side. A faint humming came from the data miner as nanobots came to life and bonded it to the side of the console. In seconds it was completely fused to the console, looking almost as if it had always been there. Indeed the only giveaway that it hadn't been was the fact that it was made from a much darker grey-green alloy than the console which like the rest of the ship's interior seemed to be made from a light silver-grey alloy.

"Okay Aura, the miner is in place."

"Excellent Xander I will begin attempting to hack into the ship's systems at…. Xander I think you had better come to station operations."

"What is it?"

"A spatial anomaly just appeared thirty-five thousand kilometres out from the station. A battleship-sized vessel has just emerged from it and is moving towards us on an intercept course."

"Raise the shields I am on my way."

"Understood raising shields."

As Aura finished speaking Xander turned and raced out of the bridge, heading for the lower level and from there the nearest turbolift that would be able to take him to station operations. As he ran he wondered just who could be approaching the station with a battleship-sized starship as – aside from himself of course – to the best of his knowledge Earth lacked any form of interstellar spacecraft and indeed could barely reach planetary orbit these days with their space shuttles. Which to his mind left only one possibility, that his uninvited guests were aliens. Whoever, or whatever, they were he hoped that the crew of the incoming battleship were friendly but there was a possibility that they were not and if that was the case…

…well he would just have to deal.


The Oval Office

The White House

That Same Time

"What!"

Sitting behind the Resolute Desk, that had been a gift from the British Queen Victoria to US President Rutherford Hayes in 1880, President Julian Marcel stared in shock at his national security advisor standing opposite him. He could not believe what he had just been told, as it was something so shocking, so mind boggling that it outshined even finding out about the Stargate and the Goa'uld.

"Would you care to repeat that please Simon? I don't think I heard you correctly," he said at last. He wasn't the only one who was beyond shocked by what the national security advisor had just revealed. The chairman of the joint chiefs, air force chief of staff and the secretary for defence who were also present in the room were just as stunned by the veritable bombshell that had just been dropped upon them.

Simon Bradshaw grimaced at his boss. "Unfortunately, sir you did hear me correctly," he admitted sounding as shocked as they all were by the information that he was relating to them. "Less than an hour ago simultaneously every single office building owned by the multinational law firm Wolfram & Hart was destroyed. Eyewitness reports indicate that the buildings all collapsed in on themselves, though paradoxically there were no blasts to indicate the use of implosive charges," he replied. "While it hasn't been confirmed yet it seems to have happened all over the world at exactly the same moment."

"How in the world could that happen," Admiral Fairwater asked knowing that taking down a massive global organization such as that law firm simultaneously in every single country in the world would be beyond impossible due to both the sheer logistics of the move and the fact that some of the countries where Wolfram & Hart had offices were distinctly hostile to them. Not that he - and indeed all his colleagues in the senior ranks of the military - hadn't dreamed a few times of being able to do it as he – and they - had had more than one run in with Wolfram & Hart's lawyers over the years. Thus, they knew full well that those assholes lived up to every evil lawyer joke that there was in the world and then some. To say that that law firm had been a firm of ruthless, immoral, and utterly soulless bastards would have been an understatement if ever there was one.

"We don't know," Bradshaw admitted, "to do so and do it simultaneously all over the world would take a level of planning and timing that is frankly quite mind boggling to comprehend. And I am afraid that I am going to have to add to the weirdness of the event."

"Go on," Julian prompted wondering what other strange and weird thing he was going to be told now. Honestly if anyone had told him beforehand that his presidency was going to be this bat shit crazy he would have seriously thought twice about running for the office.

"Yes, sir there is. Within literally minutes of the collapses beginning there was an upsurge in emergency calls from the congressional offices. Dozens of senators and their aides – including Senator Kinsey – began dropping dead in their offices, some for no apparent reason. It appears to be even worse in the House of Representatives offices from the amount of ambulances I saw racing over there as I came in and that's not all."

"There's more?"

"Yes; sir, before I came in, I was given a report that half the chief justices of the supreme court also died at the same time. And just like with the office collapses it's all over the world."

"You think there is a connection," General Rawlings asked from his own seat.

"There has to be. The timings are far too precise to be anything other than one event triggering the other," Simon answered while rubbing the back of his neck. "There is definitely a connection but what that connection is I have absolutely no idea."

"Find out," Julian ordered.

"Could this all be connected to the appearance of the alien space station over Neptune," Rawlings asked.

"At this point I don't think that can be ruled out," Bradshaw admitted, "it is fully possible that whoever is aboard the station caused the destruction of Wolfram & Hart and all the deaths using some advanced weapons tech that we just cannot detect. After all, to be able to build a space station that big, and do so without anyone noticing it before, they would have to be far more technologically advanced than even the Goa'uld. They could easily have weapons beyond our technologies ability to detect."

"Though if it is a weapon it would have to be incredibly powerful to strike from so far away," Fairwater commented. "Not to mention it begs the questions of why the aliens attacked, if they have attacked? Why did they choose to destroy Wolfram & Hart and why did they choose to kill the people who have died? Though speaking of that station have we heard anything from them yet?"

"We have," Secretary of Defence Amanda Waller replied from where she was sitting, "just before I came in here, I was told that all our radio telescopes as well as SETI received an extremely high compression data burst from the station. Unfortunately, our computers are struggling to understand it, as it appears to be based upon quantum instead of binary computing, we're having to convert it as we go along."

"Any progress?" Julian asked.

"SETI has made some progress though it is extremely hard going given the complexity of converting quantum data to normal binary data. They have, however been able to determine that the data burst is a first contact package like the one they've been transmitting to the station ever since it was first detected. However, unless something changes in the meantime it could be days at best, weeks at worst before they can finish converting the message into a format our computers can fully understand."

"So, it could be awhile before we know what the aliens said in their package," Julian commented.

"It looks that way sir. When SG-1 returns from assisting SG-4 in evacuating the inhabitants of P3X-382 I am hoping that Captain Carter might have some idea how to speed up the decryption process. She did after all design the interface we use to control the Stargate."

"I wonder why the aliens would make a first contact package so hard to understand," Bradshaw mused aloud.

"It might not be deliberate," Fairwater replied, "they may simply have assumed that any civilization that they encountered would be capable of using quantum computers. It might never have occurred to them that a world like ours would not have that technology yet. You have to admit that to a civilization capable of building such a large space station we must look incredibly primitive."

"Yes, but surely they would know about the Stargates and from there how civilizations at different cultural and technological levels can interact and design their package accordingly," Bradshaw answered.

"They might not know about the gate," Rawlings pointed out, "we still have no idea just how much of our galaxy is covered by the network only how much of the network had been explored and charted by the System Lords at the time of Ra's death over Abydos. The station's builders, whoever or whatever they are, could easily come from a part of the galaxy where the gates either have never existed or don't exist anymore lost or destroyed in the time between the fall of whatever ancient civilization built them and the rise of the Goa'uld."

"Point," Bradshaw conceded a moment before the phone in front of the couch where General Rawlings was sitting rang. The Air Force officer immediately reached out and picked up the handset.

"Yes. George this is a…" Rawlings started to say then trailed off as he listened to whatever General Hammond was saying on the other end of the line. It was obviously not good given how his face immediately went pale. "She's been what? How did…oh I see."

As their colleague talked to the commander of the SGC everyone else in the room exchanged concerned and alarmed glances as clearly something had gone very wrong at Stargate Command. Especially if the she that Rawlings and Hammond were talking about was Captain Carter.

"I see. You're placing her in holding cell? Excellent, proceed with interrogation as soon as possible and do whatever you can to get that thing out of her. Yes, I'll tell the president. Good luck George."

"What is it?" Julian asked from his position behind the desk as the military man put the phone down.

"SG-1 just returned from P3X-382 after completing the evacuation of the native population. There is a problem with Captain Carter."

"What kind of problem?"

"She's been taken as a host by a Goa'uld."


Authors Notes: Well another chapter bites the metaphorical dust. Who is it who has come to visit Xander and why will be revealed in the next chapter where I am hoping to really start getting down to the meat of this particular story so to speak, especially now that Jolinar has entered the picture.