To the Power Born: A Tale of the Slayers

Part 42: Splitting Forces

Something niggled at my mind while we sat around waiting for Ethan to tell us where Catherine Madison was working, but I couldn't get it to come forward. I was opening my mouth to ask Ripley for help when Ian, who'd been sitting quietly off to one side, holding hands with Joyce, said, "Buffy?"

"Yes, Ian?"

"I want to come with you. I'm supposed to, I think." Ian sighed and shook his head a little. "I know, we still haven't figured out a lot of what I can do… but I'm still supposed to go with you, I think."

"I'm not exactly thrilled about the idea," Buffy said. She looked at him, saw that he was scared— but still resolute— and went on, "But I'll listen. State your case."

"The Guardians said that we have to listen to and remember all the things Belle said," Ian said. "Remember?"

"I remember." Buffy gave him nothing else to work with, made him lead her.

"Belinda said that you should take everyone here with you to Montana, even me, Judith and Joyce," Ian said. He looked thoughtful as he said, "She said we all had our parts to play… but I haven't done anything. So… I should go with you. Play my part. And… Buffy, I love Joyce. I want to help keep her safe. One of the few things we know I can do is heal people, and—"

"And healing a wound more serious than a Band-Aid could take care of wipes you out," Buffy said. She shook her head. "Ian, I don't think—"

"Evil things burn if they touch me, at least when I've got Hope's light burning," Ian said. He then burst into Hope's light, the bright blue lines tracing their enigmatic pattern all over his body. "I can stay like this for hours at a time— did it all day once, to see if I could, remember? And I can calm people down, always, even if they're hurt. That could be handy.

"Add in that sometimes spells just… don't work on me, and I can help, Buffy. I know it. I'm supposed to help, I know that, too."

Buffy locked eyes with him, held his gaze for a long, long moment, then said, "Go get whatever weapons you can use. You're getting good with a staff, I'd recommend one of those, and you'll need something with an edge.

"On the bed in your bedroom, you'll find some heavy leather pants and a heavily padded jacket— it's not armor, but it will help some. Get it on, get your weapons, get ready fast."

He blinked— then stood and said, "On my way," and ran out of the room.

"Okay, he was smart enough not to thank me," Buffy said with a sigh. She blew hair out of her face and said, "Points for brains."

"You were planning on taking him all along?" Giles asked.

"No, but I wasn't going to leave him behind if he asked," Buffy said. "Or at least not if he asked the right way for the right reasons. I remembered what Belinda said, Giles, and I'd noticed that he hadn't 'played his part' yet, so I wanted to be ready."

"You've certainly grown into the role of general of an army, Buffy," Giles said with a nod of approval.

"Nah, just a colonel," Buffy said. She smiled at Giles a little and said, "I'm a field commander. You're the General, Giles.

"Hmm. 'General Giles'— I like it, it has a ring to it."

"Don't you dare!" Giles said, pointing an admonishing finger at her. "I never have told anyone about the unqualified disaster that was your Home Economics final exam your sophomore year at Sunnydale High, young lady, but if you start referring to me by that title, I shall tell all and sundry!"

"Blackmailing fiend," Buffy muttered, and sank into her chair, pouting in a fashion that made it plain she was joking.

My brain stopped niggling at me, and I decided that taking Ian must have been what it wanted. Good on my brain, if Buffy was ready for it.

Ian came downstairs dressed in black leather pants and a heavy, gray, canvas-and-leather padded jacket that would act as at least partial armor, and Joyce made a little growly noise of approval at the figure he cut. I couldn't argue— his well-muscled body and his mild-but-handsome face worked well with the warrior's garb. He had a metal-capped quarterstaff in one hand and a short sword hanging on his hip.

"You stick with Joyce unless Jocelyn or I tell you different," Buffy said to him as he moved to sit next to Joyce. "Jocelyn— you're my second on this. I go down, you finish the job."

"Understood," I said. I met her eyes, let her see that I didn't like the idea of her falling, but that I felt I could handle the responsibility. "I'll do it, if it comes to that, Buffy. Just don't let it come to that."

"That's part of my plan," Buffy said, giving me a little smile. "Not falling? Key element."

Uncle Ethan came upstairs then and he looked both smug and worried.

"I have it," he said. "Catherine Madison is doing her ritual in a rather disturbingly expansive underground area— created for her by Warren, I suspect— under the old Eastland Mall complex."

"Crap," Buffy said— and I couldn't have agreed more.

Eastland Mall, a shopping mall with more than ninety stores, had closed in the spring of that year, some six months before, when the company that owned it went bankrupt in a big way, complete with criminal charges and the full, unfettered fury of the IRS. It hadn't been bought yet, but all of the stores had stripped their outlets there and pulled out anyway, hadn't waited to see if someone would buy the place.

"Okay, Graham has us some transports coming." Buffy stood and stretched, looked around at all of us, and said, "You all know the stakes. You know the sheer hell that will be unleashed on the world if Catherine succeeds.

"What I hope you know is how damned proud I am of all of you. You know how bad this can be, but I look around and all I see is a bunch of people who are ready and willing to go and do what has to be done, and never mind how dangerous or scary that is.

"The Scythe chose well. The Powers That Be chose well when they put you people in my life— and I'm grateful to both, as well as to all of you."

A loud horn blast sounded from out front, announcing the arrival of the transports from START.

"We've got an apocalypse to stop," Buffy said, looking around at us one last time. "Let's get it done."

So we went. Five active Slayers (sort of, counting Piper, and two of those Slayers very inexperienced), forty-five well armed soldiers, five Watchers (counting Andrew Wells and Uncle Ethan), one Guardian and two dozen well-trained (if no longer super-powered) inactive Slayers set out to save the world.

Just like old times….

Interlude: Asimov Station

Getting aboard the Station in the pressurized chamber Ballard had designed for pseudo dragons to make the trip to orbit had been easy; it had a standard airlock, after all. Getting Starpulse in after involved a bit more shuffling. They wanted to leave the chamber attached to the lock for speed of departure later, and getting a Station Security officer to open another lock for Starpulse took a reminder of the things Team Slayer had done for the station in June.

"Highly irregular," muttered the corporal who finally did it for them as he overrode the small emergency lock nearest the one they'd used for the shelter. "First all of you come in without tickets or passports, now I'm supposed to let in another guy without a ticket, a passport or even a damned spacesuit."

The lock cycled, and Starpulse entered, nodded his thanks and looked at Ballard, who was looking at Elaine as she conversed rapidly with Spider Robinson, who had been waiting at the airlock when they arrived thanks to a call from Elaine.

"Wait, you're telling me that wasn't the same guy, even?" Spider said. He looked a little shocked, but only a little. "He's got how many bodies?"

"At least thirty," Elaine said. "Maybe more. We really don't know, Spider. Can you take us to where you last saw one of him?"

"Sure thing, let's go," Spider said, and strode off, moving easily in the one-third gravity of the station. He'd completely forsaken his cane, and seemed to be perfectly spry. As he walked, he said, "You know, I'm going to be owing you guys for a long, long time for bringing me up here. I feel like I'm thirty again, maybe younger, and I'm writing like a madman. I do my column every day— between a thousand and fifteen hundred words— and then I go see something cool on the station, something like the Laboratory for Space Medicine, the Space Travel Lab, the Museum of Space Travel, a viewport that lets me see the Earth, whatever— then I go and write for another four or six hours on a novel that I started the day I came up here.

"I feel like a kid again, and it's all thanks to you guys— so I'm glad I can help with this."

*'Glad' is an understatement,* his pseudo dragon, Willis, sent to all the Team Slayer party. *'Giddy' would be a bit more accurate.*

"Could be, yeah," Spider said with a chuckle. "After all, how often does a writer who's damn near seventy get to help save the world? Not too damned often, I'd bet."

He led them to a wide concourse near the main entry lock to the Station and pointed to a shop right across the way from it, a souvenir place run by the Station itself. "He was coming out of there. Had on jeans and a T-shirt that said 'Gamers do it in groups.' Turned left out of the shop, headed down the spoke just down there."

"Okay," Willow said, stepping forward and looking around a little. "Lots of traffic here, maybe a little less in the spoke. Let's go down there, and I'll try to get a track on him.

"Um, can someone used to low gravity hold my hand? I feel like I'm gonna bounce off of the ceiling, or something."

Chuckling, Spider took Willow's hand and walked her down to the spoke. She looked down it, nodded, and said, "Oh, yeah, lots better. Let's just go a few feet in, so we're out of everyone's way, and I'll make with the mojo, see if I can't lock onto Robot Boy."

They went a little way down the hall, Willow cast a short, simple spell— and she grinned for a moment. "Got him. He's… oh, shoot, the spell isn't meant for not-a-planet environments. Um, he went thattaway." She pointed straight ahead and slightly up. "Come on, but let's walk slow, so I don't lose my fix on him."

Without discussion, Rose moved ahead of Willow even as Elaine fell to the back of the group to play rear guard. Faith moved to walk on Willow's other side, and Chantelle walked behind Ballard and Sh'rin, who followed Willow, Spider and Faith. Vincent and the security man came behind Chantelle, then Elaine, and they moved slowly, but not at a crawl.

They reached a junction and Wil indicated that Rose should continue straight on, did so again as they kept moving towards the center of the station. They all got lighter and lighter as they moved towards the center of the station, and soon Wil said, "Heck with it," let go of Spider's hand, and began moving herself— carefully, very carefully— with her telekinesis.

Soon enough, they came to the hub of Asimov Station— and Willow's gaze traveled up to the door above them labeled "Control Room: Authorized Personnel Only!"

"Uh-oh." She sighed and said, "I hate to get all offensive magic here, you know? I could end up doing damage to the Station."

"But if the asshole's in there, he can do what Brian was talking about," Faith said in a grim voice. "He can drop this place on Normal— and that's some serious bad."

"I can get the door open," Starpulse said, and Rose nodded at him.

Starpulse drifted close to the door and aimed his hands at it— but the security man, forgotten by all and sundry, yelled, "Hey! Don't even think about it!" He'd drawn his sidearm, a laser pistol, and had it aimed at Starpulse. "Back away from the door or I will fire!"

Elaine's hand blurred, and suddenly the security man was shaking his empty hand, trying to relieve the pain of his gun leaving his hand at speeds too fast for his eyes to follow.

"Don't point guns at my friends," Elaine said as she took the charge-pack out of the laser pistol. "We don't have time for playing nice, and—"

"Look, let me call them, have them open up for us," the corporal said. "Lady, that door costs more than most people make in five years of their lives, and there are delicate instruments on the other side of it that cost even more. Let me call in. Please."

Elaine looked at Rose, and Rose nodded reluctantly before saying, "Hold up, Starpulse. We let him try it his way."

The man pulled a Station-phone off of his belt (a cell phone that operated on frequencies rarely used because they weren't good for more than three miles or so, and that wouldn't interfere with other frequencies at all), and pressed some buttons. He put it on speaker from the start, so they heard the cheerful voice that answered, "Control Room, how may I help you, Corporal Garson?"

Garson looked oddly at the phone, but said, "This is a security override, level two-orange. Open the door, we have visitors with legitimate business concerning the safety of the Station."

"Ooo, sorry, no can do, Corporal," the voice said. "We're kind of busy in here, and we just can't afford visitors, sorry."

"I'm not asking, I'm telling, mister— who is this?"

"The name is Mears. Warren… Mears. And I don't care what you're telling me, meat-sack."

"Starpulse, get that door open," Rose snapped.

Garson hung up, pressed three keys on his phone, and earned points from the members of Team Slayer that he was with right then by reversing from 'slightly annoying pest' to 'willing to help security officer.' When he spoke, his voice echoed from speakers all around them.

"This is Cpl. Wayne Garson, Station Security," he said, his voice steady and calm. "I am declaring a Station-wide emergency. This is not a drill. All Station personnel, this is situation ninety-three, I repeat, situation ninety-three.

"Station Security, be advised; we have non-personnel allies, designation: Hammer."

At Rose's puzzled look, Garson smiled nervously and said, "Situation ninety-three refers to United Airlines Flight Ninety-Three, which was hijacked as part of the nine-eleven attacks of oh-one— means there's an attempted hijacking of the Station.

"Designation: Hammer… um, way back when, Hammer Studios made a whole lot of horror movies, lots about vampires…."

All of the Team Slayer people cracked up, and Garson relaxed visibly.

Even as Starpulse started firing at the control room door, the Station shuddered.

"Oh, shit, those are our retros," Garson said. He'd gone very, very pale. "The ones on the space side of the Station— they'll push us towards Earth."

"How long to decay the orbit dangerously?" Starpulse asked.

"Ten minutes, maybe, at max power," Garson replied.

"Piece of cake," Starpulse said. "I'm about to damage your Station, Cpl. Garson— but I think you'll agree, there's no other way."

"Go!" Garson pointed to a hallway that ran left from just before the control room door. "Airlock there— override code is Skywalker, type it on the pad right of the door!"

Starpulse flew off without another word, even as a whole lot of security men and women flitted up from down the hall. The man in front was Security Chief Winston, whom Rose, Elaine, Sh'rin and Ballard had met on their last trip up here.

"Holy shit," Winston said. He blinked at the armor all the members of Team Slayer except Willow wore, and said, "Okay. It's bad, I got that, between the retros and your being here— is it vampires? Demons?"

"Neither, Chief Winston," Rose said, shaking his hand. "Robotic former human. Crazy as an honest politician, hates Team Slayer with a passion, has tons of tricks up his sleeve, and a witch on his side."

"I should've been an insurance salesman," Winston groaned. "Dad tried to tell me, but did I listen? No, I had to go to space.

"What can you do?"

"Starpulse is about to destroy the retrorockets," Rose said. "After that… we'll have to play it by ear."

"Never a dull moment," Winston said. He looked at the man immediately behind him and said, "Tarrant, open the door. We let Team Slayer go in first— they're acquainted with what we're facing, and equipped to battle without damage to equipment— or at least without as much damage."

Tarrant, a small, mousy-looking man, stepped to the door, opened a panel that none of the Team Slayer people had even noticed, and produced a device from a shirt pocket, attached wires from it to the circuits revealed by the removal of the plate.

"Probably won't work," Rose said, sounding annoyed. "Warren will have rewritten all override codes to the control room."

"Good thing there's no code involved, then, huh?" Winston said with a hard grin. "Believe me, we took that into account, Rose. Every door on this station has a simple, hardwired override that is in no way computerized or attached to any computerized system. Smack it with the right voltage and—"

The control room door hissed and popped open six inches or so, and from the other side, they all heard Warren Mears say, "What the hell?"

Even as they started into the control room, Slayers first, the station shuddered and shifted suddenly, and Chantelle muttered, "You go, Colin!" as she charged in.

"Tarrant, call up some heavy-duty tugs from Armstrong City while the Slayers do their job," Winston said. "They can reseat us in our orbit while we work on repairing the retros." Then he stood in the open control room door to watch the fight.

Chantelle and Faith, being less accustomed to the vagaries of zero gravity, had to stop and take a moment to adjust to the sudden confusion caused by the spherical room with control panels covering seventy-five percent of every surface except the two doors that opened into the place. Rose and Elaine, however, glanced at the half-dozen dead bodies strapped in various chairs— and went straight after Warren-bot, Rose in a long, flat dive, her blade out and reaching for Warren-bot, Elaine in a bouncing, ricocheting orbit that let her hit the Warren-bot from behind even as Rose hit him from the front.

The Warren-bot, though, had programming for dealing with zero gravity, and was damnably fast. Instead of sinking into the Warren-bot's stomach at belt level, Rose's sword scraped across the outside of its hip, and Elaine's kick at his head missed completely, sending her into a narrow spot between two consoles on the "floor" behind Rose.

"You people," the Warren-bot said conversationally, "are on my last neural simulation circuit, you know that?"

Faith hit him then, both feet slamming into his back as she finished a reasonably well done flip after kicking off of a wall. Unfortunately, her unfamiliarity with zero-gee movement caused her to bounce away from Warren-bot and hit a control panel hard, even as Warren-bot slammed into a different panel on the opposite side of the spherical room.

Rose and Elaine moved at him again as Faith, groaning as her back protested the slamming about she'd given herself, righted herself, holding onto a console for stability.

Chantelle stayed where she was for a moment, watching— then crabbed sideways and looked out the door. " 'Scuse me, but could I borrow Sgt. Tarrant for a sec, please? Thanks a bunch."

Tarrant moved in gracefully, and Chantelle told him what she wanted, whispering softly against his ear. The man blinked in surprise— then grinned and tugged Chantelle towards a console as she unlimbered her metal longbow and handed the sergeant a metal arrow.

Rose was not having an easy time of things, nor Elaine. They kept trying to pin Warren against a surface, and he kept escaping just before the pin happened. Rose had given up on her sword, sheathed it, and gone into kung-fu-dervish mode, even as Elaine hit the true Capoerista's "crazy tornado" pace (both modified for zero gravity, of course). Faith had continued her surprise attacks, bouncing at Warren-bot from every direction, now taking into account the momentum translated back to her from her attacks, and recovering much better.

Chantelle watched and waited, saw Elaine notice her standing ready, then Faith, and finally Rose. Once all three had seen her and what she'd had Sgt. Tarrant do for her, they started working a little differently. Faith, acknowledging her unfamiliarity with the environment, stopped trying to hit Warren-bot and began simply moving past him, missing him deliberately, distracting him as Rose and Elaine set him up.

It didn't take long; they'd been coming here for years, since the station opened to the public in 2011, and they had been Slayers, lovers and a nigh-unstoppable team for eight years before that.

Rose hit Warren with a carefully controlled kick, bounced away from him towards the door even as Elaine spun into him, hit with her feet in an even more controlled impact, and moved away towards the opposite door. Warren-bot was left in the middle of the room, spinning and tumbling slowly, unable to reach anything to push off against, drifting slowly— much too slowly to help him— towards a control console some fifteen feet away.

"Hey," Chantelle said softly from the far side of the room. "Over here, you bad Pinocchio imitation!"

Warren-bot looked around at Chantelle— and she loosed the arrow she'd had drawn to full extension, flew backwards with a surprised squawk as the recoil-imparted momentum from the shot hit her— and missed the end result of her own shot as she hit Chief Winston in the doorway and the two of them got tangled up.

The arrow, trailing wires from the console Chantelle had been next to, impacted square on the Warren-bot's artificial navel, punched into his metallic spine— still a major nexus for his "neural simulation circuits" as he'd built his body as closely to human design as he could— and Sgt. Tarrant flipped the breaker on the console whose wires had been attached to Chantelle's arrow.

Electricity shot into the arrow, then out through the Warren-bot, frying his every circuit instantly and, for lack of a better word… fatally.

The breaker reversed before the power in the control room went out, and Chantelle, untangled from the Security Chief, got hit by a three-sided hug as Rose, Elaine and Faith hit her, whooping their delight.

In a storeroom in the Space Travel Museum on the outer edge of Asimov Station, Warren Mears sighed his frustration, looked at his selves in the room with him, and said, "Okay. Plan B."

All of him nodded at him in acceptance, and the one who'd spoken produced a phone-like device that had been heavily modified, opened it and spoke again.

"Task Force Inferno, this is Dante," Warren said into the phone. "Primary plan has failed— get in here."

"Inferno, roger," a male voice replied. "Contacting the sorcerer now— three minutes to assault."

Warren-bot looked around at his many selves and said, "Okay— now we wait until Team Slayer is distracted and we're facing the right direction, then… well, what's a few bodies less when we get to kill Buffy and everyone she cares about?

"They've managed to keep some Slayers active, somehow, and they've got their comic book hero— but we're still on task."

His selves nodded at him, and they sat to wait for their moment.

From each of them, though, came a quiet humming noise… the noise of some sort of power generator cycling to a higher output….

"Chief!" Cpl. Garson shouted as Chief Winston shook hands with Chantelle Penobscot. "Problems! We've got… shit, I think there are some sort of demons on the station! They're appearing on the main concourse by the lock at radius two-seventy— lots of them, and they're still coming out of some sort of hole in the air!"

"Willow, kill that gate!" Rose called. "Chief, we need to get there ASAP— which way?"

"Follow the blue stripe!" the security chief said, pointing at a wide blue stripe painted on a wall.

"We're gone, everyone, weapons out!" Rose shouted. "Chief, have your people watch the small exterior locks for Starpulse, let him in and send him to us when he shows up at one!"

"On it!" Winston called after her— then watched the Team Slayer folks shoot off down the spoke towards the lock at radius two-seventy, Rose, Elaine, Ballard and Sh'rin outdistancing the others rapidly thanks to their familiarity with zero-gee movement.

Willow stayed where she was long enough to cast a short, powerful spell that closed down the gate the demons were using, then sailed off after the others, moving under the power of her own telekinesis.

"Good luck, people," Winston said softly. Then he looked at his men and said, "Get people on the other airlocks, now. We may not be as experienced as they are at this— but if anything shows up anywhere else, we have the advantage of being used to the lower gravity."

Sgt. Tarrant started talking to his station phone immediately, and Winston started off towards the lock at radius ninety to keep watch for another incursion.

Eastland Mall, Bloomington, Illinois— Jocelyn:

After reading— several times— the history of the Battle of Bloomington, I expected us to have a hell of a time getting into the old Eastland Mall, expected it to be surrounded by monsters, and to have more constantly arriving. Didn't happen that way.

There was nothing at all in the parking lot around the mall, not even a stray car or a lone vampire. Somehow, that managed to be worse than an army of demons— or at least creepier.

"The entrance to the underground area where Catherine is working is in the Bergner's court," Uncle Ethan said. "So let us park near the east entrance to the mall near where Bergner's was, please."

We parked, we offloaded, and Buffy looked around before saying, "I realize there's nothing out here right now, but that could change. Lydia, Vi, stay here and keep your eyes peeled. Ethan, you're their magic. If something comes up elsewhere in town, you do what needs doing, up to and including taking all of your forces to it and leaving us here alone. That is an order— don't argue with me."

"All right, Buffy," Vi said, though she looked worried. "Just… be careful in there, okay?"

"We will," Buffy said, and smiled. "Inside team— let's go."

We went to the doors, Buffy jerked them open casually, shattering the metal locks, and we went into something that was nothing at all like what I expected.

I expected battling for every inch. What I got was a series of magical puzzles that locked down various methods of entry to the mall, to the actual complex, and to the next damned monster.

Just inside the door, something dropped from the ceiling, missed landing on Buffy only because she dove forward, heard or felt it coming and dived out of the way. This left Graham, who'd been right behind Buffy, face-to-face with a Turok-han vampire.

Graham grinned at the thing, said, "Bye, now!" and fired the over-and-under rifle-slash-grenade-launcher that he carried into the thing's gut. There was a dull "WHUMP"— and the vampire blew apart and dusted.

"What the heck did you hit it with?" Buffy asked from the ground, where she lay with her heels and a longsword pointed at where the Turok-han had been.

"Little idea we stole from Whitey," Graham said, grinning over his shoulder at my Daddy. "Low-power grenade, loaded with powdered communion wafer, some holy water— and a little bit of white phosphorous just for insurance."

"I'll take a dozen gross," Daddy said immediately— and he and Graham laughed.

"Okay what the heck is this?" Buffy asked, looking at the whiteboard that stood a few feet further in— right against a deep blue force field. "Numbers and stuff. Not my thing. Let's see if we can't get the force field down with more… conventional methods."

Buffy started attacking the field (which visibly extended into the stores on either side of the hall, so we couldn't just go around), and I moved to help. Nothing we did seemed to bother it, nothing Graham tried bugged it— but while he and Dad worked on it, Buffy and I examined the whiteboard.

It sat there on a small easel, and on the shelf across the bottom where you'd usually find a marker or an eraser or both, sat a jumbo pack of Crayola crayons, the hundred and twenty pack. Six numbers had been written on the white board, each in a different color, and below the bottom number was a single black line.

First the number 42 in green. Below that, the number 1 in red. Below that, 6 in yellow. Then 3,263,442 in a deep, dark purple-blue. Below that a 2 in orange. And at the bottom, above that black line by far enough to leave space to write on that line, the number 1806 in blue.

Buffy and I stared at it, trying to make sense for a long moment, then Judith said from behind us, "Oh, I see. Excuse me, please?"

We glanced behind us at Judith, who stood looking at the puzzle with her eyes alight.

"You see?" Buffy said. "You know what's next? How?"

"Quite simple, really, once you stop thinking of those numbers being in the order they're written in," Judith said, stepping forward and opening the crayon box. She started pulling crayons out, reading the labels on them, dropping them back in. "If you put them in order from smallest— one— to largest— three million, two hundred and sixty-three thousand, four hundred and forty-two— you will then see that they are also in the order of the visible spectrum. 'Read Out Your Good Book In Verse,' you see? Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and…." She pulled out a purple crayon, grinned and showed us the label on it. "Violet.

"From there, it becomes a simple mathematical puzzle, and—"

"Simple!?" Buffy and I said in perfect harmony.

"Quite, actually," Judith said. "Each number in the sequence, after the one, is the result of that number multiplied by itself plus one. One times itself plus one is two, two times itself plus one is six, six times itself plus one is forty-two, etcetera. Thus the number ten trillion, six hundred and fifty billion, fifty-six million, nine hundred and fifty thousand, eight hundred and six is next, being the result of three million, two hundred and sixty-three thousand, four hundred and forty-two multiplied by three million, two hundred and sixty-three thousand, four hundred and forty-three."

"You did that in your head!?" Buffy asked as Judith started for the whiteboard.

"Yes, of course," Judith said, sounding puzzled. "It's only simple arithmetic.

"Whitey? Graham? Do step back, please, I can open the field."

Dad and Graham looked around, came over when Buffy waved them to, and listened to Judith's explanation.

"Damn," Daddy said. "I like numbers and math, Judith, and I'd never have seen that. You're good, young lady!"

Judith grinned, blushed a little, wrote "10,650,056,950,806" on the black line on the whiteboard with the violet crayon— and grinned as the force field faded away to nothing.

She stopped grinning when the two dozen P'korkin demons appeared between us and the next force field, some fifty feet down the hall, and charged us, huge, sharp, insectoid arms swinging at us already.