The Key of Forever
by Antonio Cabañas
Chapter Three
Disclaimer: Star Trek in all its incarnations and all related characters are property of Paramount Pictures. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and all related characters were created and are owned by Joss Whedon. Star Trek, and Star Trek: The Next Generation created by Gene Roddenberry. Star Wars and everything related with it is property of Lucasfilm Ltd., and was created by George Lucas.
Tony Castro and the USS Corsair were created by me, other adventures of her can be found in my site, which address is in my profile.
E-mail: borg31de777yahoo.es
Spoilers: Spoilers for Buffy season 5. Spoilers for Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: First Contact and Deep Space Nine until season 4.
Author Note 1: This story is a sequel of the story "Trek to the Hellmouth". If you don't want to read it, here is a quick resume: After the events in Star Trek: First Contact, the Enterprise-E is relaunched, but remains of Borg technology aboard launch the ship back in time toward the moment when Buffy killed Adam. Adam becomes a Borg, but he quickly comes to dominate the Collective. But the time paradox in progress start to opens the Hellmouth. The Enterprise crew, guided by Tony Castro, an admiral that was invited to the launching and had contact with the Watchers and the Slayers in the past, contact the Scoobies, and the events began to take a rollercoaster ride from there: the Borg Queen reappears, from the Hellmouth emerges the Mirror counterpart of Admiral Castro, Adam devises a plan to absorb the energies of the Hellmouth, destroying Earth in the process. Finally with the sacrifice of Mirror Tony they destroy Adam and close the Hellmouth.
Author Note 2: for the nitpickers, this story takes place shortly after the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "The Sons of Mogh".
I wish to thank my beta-reader Carycomix, for his help and support through all this time.
Answer to Reviewers:
Zantac the Barbarian: thankks! And I hope that you won't be disappointed by the lateness of this update (but you are going to get two chapters in a row).
Summary: Dawn visits Buffy's tomb and something happens. "Meanwhile", in the 24th Century, Captain Tony Castro discover a very unsettling thing, and Captain Sisko of Deep Space Nine witness a real blast from the past…
Magic Box. The present.
"By this blood, I bind my spirit and the owner of this object together." said Willow, letting a few drops of blood fall on Dawn's music box, blood that came from a small cut that she had just done to herself with a small knife. "Air spirits, listen to this daughter of Gaea, the Mother Earth! Show me the whereabouts of my bound spirit!"
The music box started to glow, forming an orb of energy around it. At first, it was only a mass of swirling colors, but soon cleared, showing Buffy's tomb.
"Damn!"
"Why did you say that?"
"Because the Eye of Acheron would show Dawn, even if she had fallen to another dimension or ended up at the other side of the Universe." said Giles. "The air spirits had only managed to show the last place where Dawn was."
"Where's Dawn, then?" asked Anya
"Look, who's that woman?" said Tara, who had been looking at the orb.
Giles, Xander and Anya looked back at the orb, which now showed a young woman with a pen in her right hand, kneeling before Buffy's tomb.
"Can this thing transmit sound?" said Xander
Willow, who had been busy maintaining the spell, nodded and said a few hushed words. Suddenly the vision in the orb started to speak:
"…she was a friend of my sister Amanda, a blonde airhead cheerleader, you know the type. But in her last months in L.A. she… grew up emotionally. We became sort of friends, but then something bad happened at the prom, her parents divorced and she and her mother moved to Sunnydale. I tried to keep in contact with her, but I started to work at the SETI lab by then, a very absorbing job. Later I started to work with you, and you know what happens."
"Oh, yes." said the voice of an older woman. "Remember, I was in your shoes for 28 years."
"Who is speaking?" asked Xander.
"I think that the pen is some kind of radio." said Tara
A Sunnydale cemetery.
"Well, what does Beta-6 have to say?" asked Rain.
"According to this snotty machine, there are strong transdimensional readings in a six-foot radius around the tomb. The frequency matches what we detected earlier." answered the older woman from their New York headquarters. "Can you look around for footprints?"
Rain looked around and saw immediately what Roberta was pointing at. Four sets of footprints came from, and only one came back.
"Two of the four sets of footprints are from men, who came of different directions; one of the other two is from a young woman and the other from a girl."
"The heat traces say that the footprints of the two men are hours older than the other two."
"That's impossible, because one of the men walked over the girl's footprints..."
"The only explanation would be that their bodies were several degrees colder than normal humans."
"Aliens?"
"Your servo only register traces of human DNA there… one moment, put the servo very close to the young woman's footprints."
"Why?"
"Plastic, signs of small electric discharges, lubricant, trace amounts of rare metals… but not a trace of DNA or organic matter from the body…"
"An android?"
"Yeah, and the strangest thing is that the girl's footprints give the strongest traces of transdimensional readings."
"Do you think that the girl carried a transdimensional transporter?"
"I think that the girl WAS the transdimensional transporter. There are some anomalies in her DNA… of the same type that one could expect if she wasn't born, but directly made from a direct energy-matter conversion. A Q or some other advanced race trying to be inconspicuous, or maybe something totally different from what we have seen until now."
"So, what we do now?"
"Simple, follow her trail."
Bridge of the USS Agincourt. Year 2372.
"What was that?" asked Dawn after the tremor subsided.
"I don't have any idea." said Tony "Since this started, nothing works."
"Why have we light then?" asked Angel.
"Life support in critical areas like the bridge is run by a totally independent system… That's it" she said as she bolted out of the chair.
"Eh?"
"Follow me!" said as she opened a panel on the wall, next to one of the doors.
The door opened, revealing a circular, vertical conduit. She carefully, stepped inside, on a ladder that ran through the walls of the conduit.
DS9. Station Commander office.
"Very well, captain Sisko. You can use the Defiant to examine the Agincourt, but I want to monitor the mission through a subspace holo-link." said DTI agent Sylvia Silver from the screen.
"The Defiant is still not equipped with..."
"I know, captain. But, you chief engineer can jury-rig a holoemitter on the bridge and connect it to the communications console. Am I wrong?"
"No, but it'll be a huge drain..."
"Not if you leave out the force-field emitters, Captain. That would suffice."
USS Corsair. Lykandia system
"I need the cloaking device, Korg. I can't tell you anymore." said Tony as she started to rewire the cargo transporter.
"Why?"
"Part of it is top secret stuff, and the other part would get you a court-martial."
"You, too, Tony."
"I have a duty, Korg. Take care of the Corsair while I'm away, love." she said as she stepped into the rewired cargo transporter, next to the cloaking device box..
"Be careful"
She smiled as she and the box disappeared in the transporter effect.
USS Caravel. Agent Silver's quarters.
The DTI agent opened her eyes. She had been communing with her Mistress, and together they had sketched a plan. First she had to recruit some minions. She removed the belt of the civilian outfit that she had been wearing ever since she boarded the ship, as her reflection in the mirror simultaneously disappeared.
TO BE CONTINUED...
