Lost City
"When did you decide?" Willow asked softly.
Buffy let her forehead rest against Willow's and smiled wryly. "The moment I ripped my clothes off in front of Ford. It was just suddenly so clear. It just hit me that this is so much bigger than the Slayer. How many people on Earth die in a day? Two-hundred thousand or more? How many of of those are 'cause of vampires?"
"Less than five thousand," Willow estimated.
Buffy nodded, turning to the side and slipping down to rest her head on Willow's chest, nuzzling a nipple with her chin. "I've been clinging to the hope of a normal life, and being Fae just seemed like one more thing taking that away from me. But, it's like, the stuff I've been clinging to since Halloween isn't stuff I actually care about, you know, for its own sake. And I realized, being stuck on it might cost the lives of people I care about. I just don't have time to change my mind a little bit by bit..."
"Yeah," Willow agreed.
"Actually, I've been thinking about it," Xander said, sliding down onto Willow's other side and meeting Buffy's lips in the center of Willow's chest. "And... Venus."
"Venus? What about Venus?" Willow asked.
"We ask for it, or just claim it as ours outright," Xander said. "There's nothing there to preserve, so we could terraform it right now, couldn't we?"
"Um, since it wouldn't matter what got, uh, grey-gooed, yeah I can make a basic indiscriminate planetary environment seed," Willow said thoughtfully.
"But what do we need a new planet for?" Buffy asked.
"Okay, so go with me on this for a minute," Xander said, sitting up. "Willow covers Earth in sensor fog, and then sets up an alert that'll let her know when someone on Earth is about to die..."
"Uh, Xander, that's gonna be a lot more complicated than it sounds," Willow said. "I'm still a long way from understanding the Eliezera's abstract reasoning functions, so I can't just order the ship to notice dying people. I'd have to write a notice-dying-people narrow AI from scratch. That's a big job."
Xander nodded. "That's okay, 'cause that gives me and Buffy time to pull off the other part of my plan."
"Okay," Buffy acknowledged. "What's the other part?"
"The Prometheus," Xander revealed. "We get our hands on it, either by convincing the SGC to help, or by tricking them, or by just plain stealing it, and we use the subspace matter transporters to grab everyone Willow's program finds, and stick them in a birthing pod on Venus. Or here, if Venus is out of range, and send the pods to Venus the slow way."
"Okay," Buffy said slowly, "but what's the point of the sending them to Venus?"
"Because we don't have a Giaa to keep the peace on Earth," Xander pointed out.
"He's right, Buffy," Willow said with a thoughtful nod. "Eelesia knew a bit of the history. Back in the days of the Antarctic Coherence, there were attempts. Fear and anger and fighting to maintain the status quo, even if the status quo was horrific. In some places anyone who was outed as seeking the upgrade was in danger of being mobbed and murdered, though with the Giaa Seed in control of the planet by then, mostly everybody was okay. China tried to launch nukes at Antarctica once, and it was only okay 'cause the Giaa Seed had control of the missiles."
Buffy grimaced.
"People already expect their human life to come to an inevitable end," Xander mused. "We can fight against the idea that it's proper to die a natural death. We can try to change people's minds, try to..." Xander's lips quirked in a nostalgic smirk. "...raise the sanity waterline. But it'll be a lot more efficient to exploit that idea instead. People die, and then they vanish in a mysterious flash of light... People want to believe that dying is merely going somewhere else, and we can use that. We can take what lots of people already want to believe, and make it true."
"It's probably the best thing we can do," Willow agreed.
"I like it," Buffy declared. "Do you think you can pull it off, Wills?"
"I think so," Willow said, closing her eyes in concentration. "Whatever we do, we are probably going to need the sensor fog, though. I'll start making it now."
Below them, the Earth was growing. Once Willow opened her eyes, Buffy pulled her down for a heated kiss before pushing away and snatching up her outfit. Xander took a turn flying the shuttle, nudging their course to make sure they came down over the right area.
Captain Carl Grogan waited with the rest of SG-9 in the hanger off the helipad. The personnel elevator opened, and Carl straightened up when he recognized Dr. Jackson. Jackson nodded to him as he meandered over to the threshold of the hanger and looked up at the sky.
They were waiting for another ten minutes before Dr. Jackson took a step and said, "They're here."
Carl grabbed his radio and called it in as he waved his team forward. SG-9 had been briefed on the Fae an hour ago, but he was still surprised when something that looked like a giant greenish soap bubble dropped out of the sky from directly overhead.
It was silent and still as it slowed to a stop on the tarmac, but it still somehow produced a downwash like a small helicopter. The bubbleship touched down, and the wind vanished like it had never been. Three figures moved inside, passing through the bubble and out onto the ground. Carl only barely kept his mouth from hanging open, and if he hadn't been warned in the briefing, he might not have managed even that.
The voluptuous redhead in the middle was wearing a dark green corset-type thing that covered her from belly-button to solar plexus, laced with glinting white cords, emphasizing her bare breasts and hips. A criss-crossing of matching cords wrapped her upper arms, anchoring a set of gossamer green tassels that trailed from her shoulders. Colorful flowers were scattered in her hair and she had an ornate silver bracelet on her left shin, with more white cord criss-crossing up that leg.
The petite blonde on the left had what looked like polished triangular bars of gold bent into helices around her right thigh and left forearm, with matching gold spirals on her breasts, and a thin golden cord riding on her hips. Pleated tails of glimmering white cloth flared out from the waist cord, like someone had taken a floor-length skirt and removed all but two three-inch sections just behind the hips. She also had a pair of golden bracelets on each of her upper arms, trailing white ribbons.
Lastly, the sleekly muscular guy on the right was wearing a pair of dark red belts around his shoulders that crossed at his collarbone and the top of his spine, each running under one arm and over the other. A pair of matching belts circled each of his thighs, anchoring a black, red-ribbed covering on the outside of his thighs that went from his knee to a point above his hips. A pair of the red ribs followed his iliac lines, branching to meet at a rounded black diamond-shape that covered his navel and contrasted against the pale pinkish fleshtone of his manhood. The guy was... up. Gravity-defyingly so, flat against that patch of black.
The girls were gorgeous, and the guy was a walking recipe for male insecurity. Shaking himself, Carl mentally yanked his eyes back into his head and firmly reminded himself that he was a professional diplomat and that this was not the weirdest thing he'd had to deal with.
"Willow. Buffy. Xander," Dr. Jackson greeted, gesturing back towards Carl. "This is Captain Grogan and SG-9. They'll be escorting you around the base and answering any questions you have about our protocols."
Carl stepped forward. "Ma'am. Ma'am. Sir. If you'll follow me."
The planet glowed with the molten flows that covered its scorched crust. Anubis' flagship sank slowly towards the sole remaining artificial structure on the dying planet, ash and embers scattering as the massive ship's shields extended, encompassing the small Alteran outpost.
Anubis, with a squad of Kull warriors at his back, stepped off the ring platform and stalked towards the psionic control chair. His warriors spread around the dark and empty facility, but Anubis didn't expect to need them.
Twenty minutes later, Anubis' flagship rose away from the molten landscape. Inside the once-again dark and powerless Alteran outpost, beside the inactive control chair, a small Octagonal socket was open and empty.
"And these will be your temporary quarters, should you need to remain on base for any length of time," Lieutenant Veronica Hamilton explained.
Buffy peered into the room. "Well, it's very... clean. And right-angle-y."
"Thanks for, um, the consideration," Willow said, "but it's probably unnecessary."
"Just in case you're down here longer than you planned, Ma'am," Captain Grogan assured her.
"I actually meant, we don't need rest, so quarters are kind of superfluous," Willow told him.
That got some raised eyebrows. The other two members of SG-9 hadn't said much, and seemed to be strenuously refusing to look directly at any of the Fae. The two young male soldiers were obviously fighting blushes, but Grogan and Hamilton seemed successful at ignoring the Fae's state of dress, except for the occasional lingering glance. Grogan and his second exchanged a look.
"How does that work?" Captain Grogan asked.
"Really well," Xander joked, clapping his hands together. "So, where to next?"
Captain Grogan turned. "Lieutenant?"
"We're on schedule," she replied.
"To the briefing room, then," Captain Grogan announced.
The three Fae got a lot of stares as they traveled the concrete corridors. Willow privately marveled that she still wasn't feeling immodest or embarrassed. All the attention to her nudity just made her feel otherly, a constant reminder that she and Buffy and Xander were a piece of something else, outside the scope of earthly custom, and these people recognized that.
"Forgive me if this is rude, but I can't help my curiosity," Lieutenant Hamilton said. "Does your culture have a taboo about, uh, non-nudity?"
"Nope!" Buffy said.
"The only taboo we have is taboo itself," Xander stated sagely, getting an elbow from Willow.
"Clothing simply serves no purpose with us beyond ornamentation," Willow elaborated.
"But, if what you're wearing now is typical of your fashions, why is it... why does it leave you so, er, deliberately exposed?" Lieutenant Hamilton inquired.
"For much the same reason your fashions leave your face deliberately exposed, I expect," Willow told her, Buffy nodding in agreement.
Lieutenant Hamilton blinked at this answer, frowning thoughtfully.
Captain Grogan jogged ahead and spoke to an airman. The airman ran into the briefing room to alert Doctor Weir, returning shortly and giving Grogan a nod.
Buffy, Xander, and Willow filed into the big conference room type place. SG-1 was already seated, and Doctor Weir walked around the big wooden table to greet them.
"Thank you for being here," Doctor Weir said.
Willow shook Doctor Weir's hand. "Of course. By the way, I have a gift for you. Or rather, for Samantha Carter." Willow reached into her flower-adorned hair and pulled out something shiny and black about the size of a cell phone. She set it on the table.
"What is it?" Carter asked.
"A complete copy of our scientific database, formatted to be read by present day computers," Willow explained. "It won't be of much immediate practical value, but I expect it will provide you and your scientific community with many useful insights."
Carter stared at the innocuous-looking device, looking like she was barely resisting the urge to pull out her laptop and start going through the information right then and there.
"Your gift is much appreciated," Doctor Weir said.
Once they were seated, Jack O'Neill put his elbows on the table and asked, "So what were you folks doing in California?"
"Jack," Daniel Jackson warned.
"It's alright," Willow said. "We were visiting."
"Visiting," O'Neill repeated flatly.
"When we were first summoned to this universe, we weren't actually on our ship," Willow explained. "We appeared on the ground, in that town. Our ship didn't show up until some time after that. We don't know why the delay, though."
"We have friends there," Xander told them. "So yeah. Visiting."
"These friends of yours have names?" O'Neill asked.
"Yup," Buffy said, "but we're so not gonna repay their trust by ratting them out to you."
"We can understand that," Doctor Weir cut in, shooting the Colonel a quelling look.
"So anywho," Willow changed the subject. "The first time you asked us about trading technology, we couldn't really give you an answer, but I've learned a lot since then. We can offer you a few very useful things."
"Like what?" Carter asked curiously.
"Well, for an example of something I could do for you right now," Willow replied. "How about a bunch of high-capacity space elevators?"
Carter's jaw dropped. "Um, wow, that would be..."
"Conspicuous?" O'Neill finished.
"That's a generous offer, Willow, but there's no way we could conceal something like that from the general population," Daniel elaborated.
"So don't," Buffy said.
"I'm afraid its not that simple," Doctor Weir said, sounding genuinely regretful. "Though I'm curious as to what you would want in exchange for something like that."
"We're mostly interested in your subspace matter manipulators," Willow revealed. "Even with the Asgard limiters Major Carter told me about, even mere teleportation would be very useful to us."
"Because you plan to keep visiting?" O'Neill questioned.
"That, and other stuff," Willow agreed cheerfully.
"We'll have to confer with our superiors on that," Doctor Weir warned, "but we may be able to make such a deal, if certain conditions are met."
Willow nodded. "If you're not interested in space elevators with enough lift capacity to evacuate a majority of the Earth's population in the event of a planetary threat that cannot be stopped with luck and plucky heroism," Willow forced herself not to look at Buffy, "then how about a few tons of room-temperature superconductor?"
Carter choked.
Doctor Weir looked at her. "Major?"
"Ma'am, a room-temperature superconductor is widely considered one of the holy grails of materials science," Carter explained. "There are a number of technologies that we could theoretically build, if we had such a material. We've had some successes exploiting the pseudo-superconductive properties of refined naquadah, but a true room-temperature superconductor would be immensely useful."
"What's naquadah?" Xander asked.
Carter explained, "It's a rare super-dense mineral, with several exotic properties..." She went on to explain its liquid form had an unparalleled ability to produce energy, how it reacted with bioelectric fields to power some examples of goa'uld technology, how the crystal form produced subspace emanations, and how it could manipulate gravity, and so on.
"Oh, so it's basically Eezo," Xander blurted. "Gotcha."
Everyone, including Buffy and Willow, gave him the 'huh?' face. "Eezo?"
"Oh, its from a science fiction franchise Za - I liked from back during my human life," Xander explained. "Eezo was the magical substance that all the physics-breaking technology was based on."
Samantha Carter almost said something, before stopping herself and looking uncomfortable.
"So," Buffy cut in. "What's this major intelligence victory that Anubis pulled off?"
Doctor Weir stood up. "Why don't I let Dr. Jackson and Major Cater fill you in on that while I make some calls about your offers of trade."
The three Fae readily agreed, and Elizabeth Weir retreated to her office while Daniel Jackson began to explain about the Ancient Repository of Knowledge that was left behind by a precursor race called the Alterans.
"Where are these Alterans now?" Buffy asked.
Daniel adjusted his glasses. "Tens of thousands of years ago, the Alterans evolved to the point where they were able to shed physical form and Ascend to live as energy on a higher plane of existence. Since then, they've avoided interfering on our plane, because they discovered that in that form, they actually gained power from being worshiped, so they hold themselves apart to avoid the temptation to set themselves up as gods. A year ago I was one of them, but they took my memory and returned me to human form as punishment when I tried to use my power against Anubis."
"That is really not how evolution works," Xander muttered to himself.
Willow put up a hand. "Um, excuse me, but how the flipping fiddly fable of fortunedid you actually encounter incorporeal consciousnesses that can continue to think and act without technology or biology or any material system, and can manipulate the universe through thought alone, and gain energy directly from being worshiped, and you didn't recognize it as magic when it was staring you in the face? You call yourself a scientist?"
"Hey now..." O'Neill defended.
"No, evolution really does not work that way," Xander repeated.
Buffy reached over and put an arm around Willow's shoulders. "Come on, Wills, you're getting all worked up."
Willow abruptly glanced around the table and blushed faintly, sinking back down into her chair. "Ah, sorry, Major Carter. I didn't mean to be so blunt."
Samantha Carter nodded, her teeth on edge.
Buffy looked at Daniel and frowned thoughtfully. "So, if these Alteran guys are so non-interfere-y, what are you doing here?"
Daniel blinked. "Well, I'm not Alteran. I was dying of radiation sickness, and an Alteran called Oma who we'd met in the past came and helped me Ascend."
"So they do interfere in mortal affairs after all, when they can get away with it," Buffy said.
"Well..." Daniel trail off.
Willow's eyes flew wide. "Oh!"
Everyone looked at her, but Willow didn't elaborate. She just sat back in her chair looking stunned. For over a year Willow had been studying witchcraft, making small progress and struggling to understand it on a deeper level so she could wield the power of magic to help her friends. Sometimes she'd get a spell to work, but she never had any real idea why it worked.
And here, in a military base, a group of alien experts had inadvertently given her a huge clue. Willow would bet that this 'higher plane' wasn't a place existing in higher dimensions at all. After all, these guys had spaceships that traveled higher dimensions all the time, and there was a different-dimensional portal in Willow's high school. The place where Ascended Beings went wasn't a place at all. It couldn't be.
"Willow?" Xander prompted.
Minds, human and alien both, existing bodyless, outside the universe itself. Not physically outside the universe, which was nonsense, like trying to go to the center of the surface of a sphere. Computationally outside the universe, yet causally linked to the universe and to each other, following a system of constant rules that recognized specific conscious phenomena: the fundamental laws of mental magic that operated across their multiverse without exception.
"Are you well, Willow Rin?" Teal'c intoned.
And through that system, the universe could be edited. A witch's spells invoked those 'higher' entities who were fully recognized by the system, since their consciousness was being explicitly enacted by the system. And the witch traded - well it wasn't exactly worship, that was an oversimplification, but a particular kind of attention, of mental exertion, perhaps - that the system recognized without any special prompting, and in exchange the invoked entity wills a piece of the quantum math to change. With each invocation, the system was prompted to recognize the witch's mind, and that degree of recognition directly translated to a witch's power level.
"Willow, what's up?" Buffy prodded.
The chain of inference wasn't rock solid, but it was promising. It was a disturbingly good explanation for why spells tended to go wrong in the particular ways they did. If she was right, there must be a way to get the system to increase its recognition of a mind without invoking an already-Ascended, if the Alterans really did develop their magic personally, without invocation. If that was true, no wonder they erased Daniel's memories. He must have known the secret that would free human mages from Alteran dependency, which would deprive them of the pseudo-worship-y mental energy that strengthened them. And it was exactly the sort of secret that might be hidden in that ancient repository that Anubis got his hands on, which meant...
"Um," Willow said faintly. "I think we might be... in trouble."
"What're you talking about?" Jack O'Neill asked.
"I think Anubis may be about to discover how to obtain unlimited magical power, from that repository thing," Willow revealed.
"Huh?" "What?" "Huh?"
"Actually, Willow," Daniel said. "Anubis already has all the powers of an Ascended Being. He was Ascended himself, until the others cast him out. He fought back somehow, and managed to retain his powers, but he's not allowed to use them. If he does use anything he got from being Ascended, the others will destroy him."
Willow nodded slowly. That fit with her hypothesis, if Anubis was returned to being a piece of their universe rather from being an independent process, but somehow got the system to continue its previous level of recognition. "Daniel? Do you remember anything at all from when you were one of them?"
Daniel shook his head. "Why do you ask?"
"Because I may have just found a hypothesis about the fundamental nature of psionic magic," Willow said bluntly.
Samantha Carter blinked.
Jack O'Neill kicked back in his chair. "As fascinating as all this is, can we get back to talking about how we're gonna not all die when Anubis decides to get off his incorporeal butt and come destroy us all? Thoughts? Ideas?"
"Unscheduled Offworld Activation!"
"I am afraid I am not the bearer of good news," the elderly jaffa warrior said as Jack, Teal'c, and Weir greeted him at the base of the embarkation ramp. "We've had word from jaffa loyal to our cause. Anubis has gathered the full force of his fleet. He will be here, in three days."
Bra'tac didn't bat an eye when he was introduced to the Fae, simply welcoming them as allies and asking about their capabilities. The assembled group went over the capabilities of goa'uld ships, and the capabilities of the Eliezera. Jack was impressed despite himself at little blonde Buffy's grasp of tactics.
"The problem is, we just can't protect the whole planet," Buffy summed up. "We can defeat any goa'uld ship in our line of sight, but a ha'tak is too fast to chase down, especially if you want us to stay out of low orbit."
"Wills, could we make new ships by the deadline?" Xander asked.
"Maybe," Willow said. "But what good would that do? I can't fly multiple ships at once, and there's no reason to think that whatever stripped the Giaa out of theEliezera wouldn't propagate to the assembly of new ships. I could probably figure something out if we had more time, but we just don't. Do we?"
"Now that Anubis possesses the knowledge of the ancestors, he will not be made wary by rumors of Ancient weaponry possessed by the Tau'ri," Bra'tac advised. "Any attempt to stall his attack through intimidation is likely futile."
"We need to lay an ambush," Buffy said. "How long would it take a ha'tak to re-enter hyperspace right after coming out?"
"Ten to twenty seconds, approximately," Carter informed her.
Buffy nodded. "So, we need a way of having the Eliezera waiting within ten light-seconds of where Anubis' fleet is gonna pop up. Then we'll have a chance to to take them down before they scatter."
"Bra'tac, do you have anyone in a position to let us know Anubis' course?" Jack asked.
"It appears we will have but one opportunity," Bra'tac reported, handing a tablet over to Doctor Weir. "Anubis plans to pause his advance at this planet to bolster his ranks of jaffa."
"How long do we have?" Doctor Weir asked.
"Anubis' fleet is expected in less than ten hours," Teal'c told them.
"This is better than I was hoping for," Buffy put in. "If I can get on board Anubis' flagship, I can get to Anubis. The ambush will go a lot smoother if the bad guys get there and their leader's dead."
"Look, Buffy," Jack said. "We appreciate the help and we're glad to work with you and all that, but this is going to be a surgical military operation. We can't have a liability like - "
"I'm going," Buffy overrode him. "This is what I do, Colonel, and not to step on your ego and stuff but the fact is, I'm a better... combat asset, than your entire team put together."
"You think so, huh?" Jack challenged.
"Sir, it would be better to have multiple plans in place," Carter put in. "We could use a personal assault on Anubis as a distraction and a cover for a second team to join the fleet covertly with an encrypted subspace transponder, allowing us to track their approach to Earth."
"The problem with that, is that if Buffy slays Anubis, that might stall this attack, but there'll still be a huge invasion fleet sitting there just waiting for some wanna be big bad to claim it. There's no telling how long that would take, how long the infiltration team would have to keep their cover," Xander pointed out. "Our goal is to stop the invasion, yeah, but it's to stop the invasion, not just delay it, right?"
"Indeed," Teal'c contributed.
"What if I sneak on board myself?" Buffy suggested. "I can do the stealthy thing. The best time to strike might be right when Anubis begins his attack. If I go alone, I could even serve as a targeting beacon for the Eliezera. That would make your vulnerable human selves the liability, Colonel. I could survive anything but a direct hit, and I trust Willow's aim."
Willow gulped, but nodded resolutely.
"So, what, with the world at stake, you expect us to sit around twiddling our thumbs while you execute this op all by your lonesome?" Jack demanded. "That's way to much riding on a single point of failure."
"Buffy, I think maybe it's time for some showing off," Xander said. "They've never seen you in action."
Jack got a raised eyebrow from Buffy, and turned inquiringly to Doctor Weir, who's expression was suddenly alarmed. Jack spun back, only to find Buffy's chair empty.
"Where'd she go?" Jack snapped as the rest of his team slammed their chairs back and looked under the conference table.
A pair of thumps alerted made everyone spin towards the doors, where the pair of MPs were unconscious on the floor. Willow and Xander were still in their seats, looking slightly smug.
"What was that? What's she doing?" Doctor Weir demanded.
"Demonstrating," Willow said evenly. "Buffy says you have ten minutes to stop her from stealing your Stargate." Her eyes widened. "Oh don't worry! She wont actually take it! She's just trying to make a point. But yeah, ten minutes."
Jack was already moving towards the lockdown alarm, and the air was filled with the sound of alarm klaxons. He snatched a base phone up and started snapping out orders. Willow was probably telling the truth, but he wasn't going to take the chance she wasn't.
Nearly ten minutes later, Jack watched as the little nude blonde woman streaked into the gate room with a crash of torn metal, a Zat in each hand and a pair of staff weapons floating without visible support over her shoulders. She paused, hovering fifteen feet in the air, to smirk at Jack.
This was the first time in ten minutes anyone in the base even saw her long enough to identify her. He'd been getting reports of soldiers dropping unconscious for no apparent reason, and a fleshtone blur appearing in completely unpredictable places, shrugging off weapons fire like it was nothing, and just generally being made to look like fools.
Buffy tossed away her four weapons and tapped her wrist, giving Jack a raised eyebrow. Moments later a squad of marines along with Teal'c and Bra'tac moved in and opened fire.
The petite bare-skinned blonde just folded her arms and hovered in mid air as bullets and staff blasts struck brutal blows, suppressing a grimace of pain. She darted backwards two feet, and caught the incoming staff blasts in her Utility Cloud, surrounding herself with a whirling torus of orange plasma.
Her attackers dove for cover as some of their bullets were sprayed out from their target in molten form while others joined the spinning torrent of fiery death. Meanwhile, Buffy turned to the massive power cables hooked up to the Stargate, and without visible movement on her part, the cables and clamps detached themselves.
Buffy flew above the Stargate and swept her arms upward, sending a torrent of energized plasma and molten lead drilling upwards through the blast doors in the ceiling.
Looping down to the top of the Stargate, Buffy gripped it under the rim and, straining with effort, lifted it from its moorings and carried it up the shaft towards the surface.
"Well, if it makes you feel better, Colonel, you guys did manage to wreck my outfit," Buffy offered generously. "But I think I've made my point."
Jack O'Neill scowled down at her while behind him Samantha Carter and an army of technicians along with Willow Rin scrambled to reconnect the Stargate to the base's systems. "And what if it takes us more than nine hours to get the gate working again?"
"I was careful not to damage any of the stuff you had hooked up to it," Buffy pointed out petulantly.
"Your capabilities are indeed fearsome, Buffy Reaval," Teal'c contributed.
"Yeah, about that." Jack pointed accusingly. "You can fly!"
"Well, not really," Buffy denied.
"Not really? Then what the hell was all that?" Jack demanded, waving towards the Stargate.
"Magnets!" Buffy proclaimed.
Jack blinked. Teal'c blinked. Daniel stared at Jack, and promptly cracked up. Buffy gave Daniel a confused look, because he was clearly laughing at Jack, but she couldn't figure out what was so funny.
"Aht da ta!" Jack snapped, stalling Daniel's laughter but not his mirth. He gave Buffy a long searching look. "I still don't like it. But, just maybe, you're our best shot."
Jack watched uncomfortably as Buffy gave Willow a lingering kiss.
"Go be sneaky," Willow told her.
Buffy fidgeted with the SGC tactical vest that Jack had talked her into taking, as she stepped back and glanced towards the shimmering blue of the active Stargate. Willow retreated to Xander's side and put an arm around his waist.
"We'll be ready," Xander said.
"I know," Buffy said, giving them a dry smile, like there was something she wanted to say, but stopped herself with a glance at the various SGC personnel present.
Buffy turned and looked up at the open Stargate. Then, she moved, and Jack had to suppress a flinch as the diminutive blonde shot forward. She cleared the embarkation ramp in a single step, hurtling into the event horizon at nearly thirty miles per hour.
As the Stargate shut down, Willow and Xander shared a look and gave Jack a nod. Without another word, the pair of Fae lifted into the air and flew up the shaft above the Stargate. Their movements were slower and shakier than Buffy's seemingly effortless flight, but they disappeared up into the passage quick enough.
Willow and Xander pulled themselves up by the metal reinforcement in the concrete walls, gaining as much speed as they could before they shot out the top of the mountain. Willow was already controlling the shuttle to come intercept them. Finally they rocketed up into cold open air, their ascent slowing with gravity.
Under Willow's control, the shuttle came streaking out from behind the rocks and caught them before they could start to fall. Willow bounced off the inside of the shuttle and settled herself in the center of the sphere, and the shuttle blasted upwards with a sonic boom.
"My lord, I'm reading another anomaly on the internal sensors," First Prime Her'ak reported dutifully from the pel'tack control console. "This one appears to be on the superweapon maintenance level. Shall I send a squad to investigate?"
"No," Anubis rumbled. "The hour of our victory approaches. We have greater concerns than these minor glitches. I will deal with the responsible incompetents in due time."
Her'ak bowed. "Your command, my lord?"
"When we arrive at the Tau'ri homeworld, you will lead the attack in my stead," Anubis ordered hollowly. "There is a task I must see to in secrecy."
"Yes, my lord."
Willow watched with half an eye from her perch on the large round fleshy cushion she had raised in a little hollow between two trees, as Dawn did her level best to rape Xander. He was fending her off playfully, and Dawn was laughing at the game. Apparently, after spending something like thirty straight hours masturbating, Dawn had put one and one together and figured out just what that big firm phallic appendage of Xander's was for.
A small part of Willow still found the idea of Buffy's young daughter trying to molest Xander to be disturbing, but thanks to Eelesia she remembered what had happened when the First Generation had tried to impose their behavioral standards on their Fae offspring. Nearly an entire generation simply shut their parents out of their early lives. It was hard to lie to one's kids about things like sexuality when they were born physically mature with perfect eidetic recall and a Dreamlink. It was hard to enforce one's authority when one's kids weren't dependent on their parents for anything material.
It was a simple story that had repeated countless times in those early days. There simply wasn't any point in trying to convince a young Fae that their urges were wrong.
So, Xander was playing, keeping it light-hearted as he fended off Dawn's attempts to grab him by the cock and impale herself, as though it were an innocent tickle-fight, because in a very real way that's the sort of thing it was. Also because it would be irresponsible to expose Dawn to the concept of shame before she was old enough to handle it.
Willow took a moment to giggle into her hand as Xander hefted Dawn by her waist with the young girl sideways, her head down behind Xander's knees and her legs kicking in the air. It was the quiet before the storm, in a sense. The ship was as ready for battle as it was going to get, and she and Samantha Carter were both sure she was at least over the correct hemisphere to avoid putting the Earth between them and Anubis' fleet. It was just a matter of waiting for Buffy's Dreamlink signal to reappear, now.
Shutting her eyes, Willow returned to her work on what she'd come to call her Salvation Seeker Program. Just because they didn't have the subspace transporters yet, didn't mean she couldn't work on the meat of the problem. Drawing on every bit of knowledge she could think to look for, she was slowly gathering the pieces she'd need to write a search algorithm that sifted through the massive data influx from the sensor fog that now covered Earth, looking for... dying people. Such simple words, just four syllables, and yet defining those words in rigorous mathematical terms was by far the most daunting project she'd ever set herself to.
She'd get it right though. She would. Literally everyone's life was at stake. Three people died every time her heart beat, and that was just on Earth. With a sense of surrealness, Willow realized that if Anubis' invasion lasted even just one day, delaying Willow's work, the toll in lives lost to natural causes could easily exceed the number of lives lost in the actual conflict.
Willow continued mapping the SSP out in her head, her mind a storm of research, abstraction, and math. Perfect eidetic recall was so useful.
"No, no, I'm sure she's fine," Rupert Giles assured Joyce Summers over the phone.
"So you do know where she is?" Joyce inquired in a dangerously calm tone.
Giles rubbed his forehead. "Ah, not as such, no."
Joyce hung up shortly after that, and Giles sighed as he looked around the empty library.
"Where is that blasted girl?"
With a whorl of blue plasma, the massive flagship of Anubis' fleet dropped out of hyperspace just outside the orbit of the moon. In its wake, the star-filled black lit up as dozens of hyperspace windows produced a vast fleet of ha'tak and al'kesh.
From the flagship, a single tel'tak emerged and cloaked as it accelerated towards the Earth's southern pole.
"Mr President, a short time ago, our space-based radar detected over three dozen Goa'uld vessels emerging from hyperspace," General John Jumper reported without preamble.
"It would appear Anubis doesn't know about our newest allies," General George Hammond noted. "Those numbers are consistent with our estimates of Anubis' forces. I think we can safely assume the Fae operative has avoided detection."
President Henry Hayes paused as the lights in the oval office began to dim. The air in the center of the room warped, and a circle the height of a man shimmered like a hole was being cut in the air, forming a perfect window through which the bridge of a Goa'uld ship was visible. Most prominently, standing before the portal was a jaffa with the gold marker of a First Prime, flanked by a pair of Kull, with an ominous hooded figure further back on a golden throne.
The president's advisers scrambled away as secret service rushed into the room and started firing into the portal.
"Hold your fire! It's a hologram!" General Jumper shouted.
President Hayes straightened up and walked towards the portal.
"I am Her'ak, First Prime to the one true god, Anubis," the jaffa announced. "In Anubis' name, you will submit, or you will be destr - "
Suddenly, a small girlish figure plummeted into view from above, smashing down on the figure in the golden throne with an electrified fist. The black-cowled figure fizzled out in a shower of sparks as the blonde Fae's fist put a crater in the seat of the throne, revealing him for a hologram.
Her'ak made an undignified noise of surprise, whirling around as he went for his Zat. The blonde Fae closed the distance in a single step and Anubis' First Prime died with a broken neck before he could even activate his weapon. She spun, kicking one of the Kull in the chest hard enough to send him flying across the room and dent the wall. The other opened fire on her, but she just shrugged off the hits and grabbed the arm with the blaster. She forced it up under the Kull's chin, breaking through the armor with a two-finger strike and allowing the plasma bolts to penetrate.
"Holy mother of..." someone whispered.
Buffy looked through the portal into the oval office, and spoke aloud for their benefit. "Willow. Open fire."
It was like a thread of greenish light, stretching through space. Innocuous, even sort of pretty, and not very impressive, but as that thread swept through the great mothership, there was a flare brighter than the sun as the shields were pierced and the ship was first cut in half, then ripped into shrapnel by the secondary shockwave, all in less than a heartbeat.
The shock was like nothing Buffy had ever experienced before. It completely overwhelmed her senses, and also actually hurt her, badly enough that her pain receptors cut off. The first comprehensible thing Buffy became aware of was that she was tumbling through space, and her skin was numb. Her eyes weren't working right, but she still had enough intact skin on the side that hadn't been facing the explosion to regenerate her Utility Cloud, and she used that to look around.
It was like being in a nest of stars, as dozens of ha'taks were ripped apart in silence by the sheer kinetic impact of the Eliezera's tightly focused reaction mass. Turning her sight onto her own body, she saw that the skin over half of her body was some odd combination of bruised, scraped, and burned. They weren't really directly comparable to human injuries; the internal composition of her tissues was just too different.
A subsystem of her morph settings prodded her awareness, informing her that she'd be healed in about forty minutes. Make that eight minutes, taking Slayer healing into account. Eight minutes. Eight minutes to recover from what was effectively a small nuke going off in her face. Sometimes, Buffy loved being Fae.
The reports came in. One ha'tak had fled into hyperspace, but four others had managed to disperse into Earth orbit before the Fae ship could destroy them. One of those was damaged from a graze that drew a line of fire across the upper atmosphere over Australia, lighting up the night like a second sun.
"George, I believe I have one more job for you," President Hayes said.
Moments later, General George Hammond departed to take command of the Prometheus and hunt down the remaining Goa'uld ships.
Nice aim, Wills, Buffy sent.
Buffy? Are you okay? Willow sent back.
Yeah, Buffy replied. I could use a ride, though.
A shuttle is on the way, Willow promised.
Awesome, Buffy replied. How did we do?
Four of the big ships managed to scatter into low orbit, Willow informed her. I'm moving the Eliezera into an elliptical polar orbit. The SGC says they're sending their ship out to help hunt down the motherships. Xander wants to take a shuttle and go after the smaller support craft.
That's a good idea, Buffy sent. I'll join him with my shuttle as soon as it gets to me.
Deep under the ice of Antarctica, a ring platform activated. A flash of light and the rings sank back out of sight, leaving the cowled figure of Anubis standing alone on the platform.
The ship that had destroyed most of his fleet was unknown to him, but soon that wouldn't matter. He'd made the right decision to come for the Alteran outpost immediately and in person.
Moving like a ghost, he found his way to the control chair. He knelt on the dais and produced a glowing orange ZPM from his black robes. With deliberate unhesitating motions, he removed the depleted ZPM and replaced it.
The outpost lit up around him as it recognized his power. Triumphantly, Anubis sat in the control chair.
"Blue Squadron, you are go for launch," came General Hammond's order.
Lt. Colonel Cameron Mitchell opened the throttle of his F-302 and screamed out of the Prometheus' hangar bay, followed by the rest of his squadron. Behind him, thePrometheus turned to engage the ha'tak mothership as orange plasma splashed on the smaller battleship's shields.
There were three al'kesh in range, and handful of death gliders, coming to aid the ha'tak. Mitchell barked orders, arranging his forces and assigning targets, and battle was joined.
The first run did some satisfying damage to one of the al'kesh, but required some wild evasion to dodge the return fire from the heavy bomber's cannons. A deathglider lined up for a shot. Mitchell cut thrust and pitched down hard, cutting an arc with his guns and blowing off a piece of the deathglider's wing. He slammed the throttle up and shot off in an entirely different direction, curving to rejoin his wingman.
A narrow miss streaked by the canopy as a new trio of deathgliders came in at high speed. Mitchell pulled up hard and returned fire, but the deathgliders were already breaking away and taking up a new attack vector. A plasma blast struck his wingman and that F-302 erupted in a fiery explosion.
"Shit," Mitchell swore.
"Mitch we got two more coming in on our seven," his co-pilot Adam Banks warned.
"I see 'em."
Cameron Mitchell was a very good pilot, but space combat was hardly a refined art form. All of the hard-won experience and wisdom fighter pilot training might call on assumed an atmosphere, gravity, and aerodynamics. F-302 pilots were a new breed, and they were learning fast, but they were still learning.
Cameron twisted his plane out of a crossfire and launched a missle, but, "Fuck! Banks, where's number three?"
A plasma bolt grazed the wing, answering that question. Mitchell hesitated a split-second before yawing left hard, a move that was suicide in an atmosphere, and the delay left him right in the deathglider's sights.
Suddenly, a barely-visible thread of greenish light lanced right through the deathglider, and the Goa'uld fighter erupted like someone had stuffed the cockpit entirely full of C4.
"Holy shit, are you seeing this, Banks?" Mitchell gaped.
Something that looked like a soap bubble flitted through the battle, those little lances of green snapping out in every direction, never once missing or needing a second shot. Mitchell watched as the bubble flitted into the path of a plasma blast from the last al'kesh. There was no flare of a shield, but the bubble merely wibbled under the impacts. A moment later another green thread lanced out and cut the al'kesh into smoldering halves.
"Is that... a naked blonde girl?" Banks asked faintly.
Sure enough, as they flew into formation, the bubble passed close enough for Mitchell to make out the female figure inside. The bubble seemed to deliberately slow, pulling around to hang in front of the reformed Blue Squadron at close range. She gave a little salute, and then spun around and streaked off at what had to be something like sixty Gs. Mitchell noticed that she turned, but the bubbleship didn't, it just moved it whichever direction.
"I don't know what that was, but I want one," Mitchell breathed.
"Yeah, she was seriously hot," Banks agreed.
Mitchell snorted. "Oh yeah, but I was talking about her ship."
Xander cut another of the big silver ships into scrap, and looked down at a strange golden light that suddenly appeared on the icy white continent below. His eyes went wide in alarm as he made out what looked like an almost organic column of glowing gold sprouting into space far to quickly to be anything terrestrial. It was heading right for where the Eliezera was approaching in its new orbit.
Willow! Incoming! Xander sent as he rocketed towards the rising column.
Once he got closer, he could make out that the golden light was made up of a swarm of smaller glowing things. As the golden swarm neared the Eliezera, it fountained, splitting up into dozens of smaller streams that curved around the massive pearlescent ovoid ship before arcing in towards it. Streams of relativistic radon lanced out, cutting explosive holes in the golden swarm.
Xander noticed that the swarm didn't seem to want to maintain more than a dozen or so separate streams, but at the same time Willow was having a hard time hitting multiple targets at once.
A stream of the swarm struck the hull like... like nothing Xander could think to compare it to. A rapid sequence of explosions, blending into an almost constant flare. He could actually see the hull discolor as vast amounts of energy were dissipated across the whole of the ship, and for a moment he thought the ship was standing up to the assault, but then a greatly diminished stream of the swarming golden glows erupted from the opposite side of the ship.
Xander's mouth fell open and he forgot to control his shuttle as he watched the golden swarm rip its way straight through something like twenty miles of of starship. What the hell were those things? Granted, the interior of the ship was orders of magnitude less tough than the hull, and that was a relatively thin cross section of the generation ship, but still.
More streams penetrated the Eliezera, and Xander watched in helpless shock.
Oh crap! Xander, those things are breaching the fusion core! I'm about to go nova over here! Willow sent.
And it happened. There was a blinding flash and a nimbus of nuclear fire as theEliezera ripped itself into two ragged halves. One of the halves was still firing on the swarming golden things, and Xander watched as it maneuvered itself back towards the severed half, matching its velocity. As soon as it got close enough, the dead half revived and resumed firing as well.
Willow! Xander sent urgently.
Holy moley, Willow replied. Xander! We're running on nothing but stored power now, and we're already low on radon from chasing ha'tak all over the place. I don't know how long I can keep this up.
Xander grunted in frustration, and then he had an epic lightbulb moment. Willow! Those things came from the surface! Here! He sent the image from his memory of where the golden light first appeared.
For an eternity of two whole seconds, Willow stopped firing entirely, and then a single glimmering thread struck at the planet, carving a line of fire down through the atmosphere. Another blinding flash, and the swarm of golden glowy things just went dark and died, while a mushroom cloud bloomed over Antarctica.
"Everything shook a lot and then it got really warm and then the air went away for a while, but its back now," Dawn summed up her take on the battle, making Xander smile and Buffy shake her head.
"Antarctica is never going to be the same," Willow lamented, closing her eyes. "I thought I held back enough, but just look at it! Antarctica is so not supposed to be that color!"
"Well, nobody's talking about global nuclear winter," Xander pointed out. "So I think you hit Anubis just hard enough."
"We didn't know that was Anubis, and we were only guessing it would stop the drones," Willow fretted.
Buffy patted Dawn on the head and floated up to hug Willow from behind, pressing her breasts into the red-head's back. "You did good, Wills."
Xander joined them, making a Willow samwich as he gave her a gentle kiss. Willow sighed and gave her two best friends a sheepish smile. Her expression firmed up and she nodded.
"Right, so first things first," Willow said. "Refuel and restock the ship, then get back to work on the SSP. You guys should talk to the SGC about the matter transporters, or else start planning how to steal them... uh, maybe after Buffy checks in at home?"
Buffy winced. "My mom is going to kill me."