81A Legacy of Chaos
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters or universes that I am about to mangle around for my own amusement, sadly Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, Stargate and EVE Online belong to 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.
Author Note: My thanks to Keiran Halcyon for his help with this chapter.
Chapter Three
Station Administrators Quarters
Xander's Citadel
The Next Morning
The sharp, insistent electronic beeping of the alarm, pitched at just the right volume so you couldn't ignore it no matter what you tried, echoed through the bedroom bringing Xander out of the deep sleep into which he had fallen almost as soon as his head hit the pillow. Groaning Xander opened his eyes to be faced with the pitch darkness of the bedroom aside from the light of the alarms holographic display and the point of white light that indicated the location of the sensor controlling the room's lights. Wincing at the continuing alarm sound and making a mental note to adjust the tone a bit as the shrillness hurt his ears as he'd found his hearing had been slightly enhanced ever since the hyena possession, he sat up.
"Alright, alright I'm up, alarm off," he growled in irritation even as he swiped a hand over the light sensor. Immediately the alarm shut off and the room's lights began to come on. They came on slowly at first, gradually rising to full brightness but doing it over a time period that his eyes had no trouble keeping up with.
"Good morning Xander, did you sleep well," Aura asked, making him jump slightly in the bed even as he stretched and yawned. Damn it I wish she wouldn't do that, he thought making another mental note to see if he could persuade Aura to give a warning tone of some kind before she started speaking – at least when he wasn't in a control pod – so as to stop giving him a virtual heart attack on a regular basis.
"I did," Xander confirmed as he finished his morning stretch before getting out of bed. "I'm just going to have a shower now then dress and then I need to find something to have for breakfast."
"The food synthesizer in the kitchenette area of your quarters has a wide selection of breakfast foods to choose from as well as a dispenser for Quafe," Aura told him. "Once you are dressed and have had your breakfast, we will have a few things to discuss."
Xander frowned. "I am not sure I like the sound of that Aura," he said as he stood up and made his way to the on-suite bathroom.
"It's nothing too bad Xander I assure you. It's just I have noticed a few things in my routine post-flight analysis of the telemetry from the frigate you flew last night, I have completed my initial analysis of the recovered corvette and there have been a few other developments in the last few hours that I need to brief you on so you can decide where we go from here."
"I'll take your word for it then Aura, we'll begin discussions soon," Xander replied as he took off the underpants he'd worn last night, chucked them in the chute that would see them taken to an automated cleaning station and returned to these admittedly very luxurious rooms within an hour or so, and climbed into the shower.
Fifteen minutes later dressed and as ready for the day as he ever was, Xander descended the steps from the mezzanine level that housed the bedroom and its on-suite bathroom to the main level. He made his way to the kitchenette just off the main living area and approached the food synthesizer that honestly reminded him of the food dispensers/proto replicators featured in the original Star Trek series just without the ports for pre-programmed recipe cards to be put in. Instead above the alcove – much like in the newer Next Generation series which had recently ended and started making movies with First Contact being the latest, having come out last year – was a control panel detailing what the options were. Thoughtfully Aura had already pulled up the breakfast menu for him. He scanned the options, noting with some surprise that many of the dishes available were very similar to the dishes available back on Earth, but after a moment he decided he shouldn't be, given where the distant ancestors of the people of New Eden had come from.
After a few minutes of browsing he decided on something simple and told the system to produce some simple porridge with maple syrup and butter pancakes. For a drink he decided he might as well try some Quafe since it was specifically designed for capsuleers like himself to drink, being modified especially for their cybernetically enhanced physiology to the point that a normal human drinking it would end up with indigestion at best and a nasty case of the runs at worst.
Immediately the synthesizer went to work with the panel lighting up and emitting a faint humming sound as specialized nanobots began to first produce the bowl, plate and cutlery before beginning to take biomass from the stations storage cells and beginning to assemble it into the correct pattern to produce the requested foodstuffs. Simultaneously a panel nearby opened revealing a can with a simple pull lid and writing on the side – which like everything else here was Gallente script – which confirmed it was a can of Quafe.
Ten minutes later, breakfast over and done with and now nursing a cup of coffee – since his introduction to the supernatural world he'd become quite familiar with the wonders of coffee though unlike Willow he tried not to overdo it – or at least its New Eden equivalent he stood before the window wall in the living area.
"Alright Aura tell me what you found," he said gazing at the thick atmosphere of Neptune, finding its shifting storm bands relaxing though they weren't as energetic as Jupiter's.
"Where do you wish me to begin Xander?" Aura asked.
"Begin with the post-flight summary. Was there anything wrong?"
"Nothing mechanically no. However, when I analysed it, I detected evidence that we had been tracked on an extremely primitive form of interstellar radar."
Xander frowned. "Wouldn't the ECM systems or the navigational shields have stopped it?" he asked.
"Normally yes, however, the frequencies used by these particular radar emissions are extremely primitive and are not normally in the spectrum blocked by ECM for the simple reason no one in New Eden has ever used them," Aura replied. "I have since adjusted the ECM suites on all ships to block the radar emissions. You will not be detected the next time you have to take a ship out."
"That's a relief though I still don't like that someone – presumably the military since they do have a few deep space radar telemetry projects on the go – was able to track us."
"It is a concern," Aura agreed. "And unfortunately, I have to add to it."
"How so?"
"It appears Xander that this station has been detected by Earth based optical and radiological telescopes. In the last eight hours I have detected numerous primitive radio transmissions being beamed towards the station from numerous Earth based sources. Most appear to be the same data transmission sent towards us again and again though several have been audio messages all in the same unknown language."
Xander frowned. "Play one for me please Aura," he asked.
"As you wish Xander this is the first message we received four hours and nine minutes after you turned in for the night."
For a moment after Aura went quiet there was nothing then an authoritative male voice, with a slight but notable Texan accent, filled the air. "To the unknown alien space station orbiting Neptune I am Major General George Hammond representing the United States of America and Stargate Command," the voice said, "identify yourself and state your reasons for being in our solar system."
Xander's frown deepened. "What's Stargate Command," he wondered aloud, "and Aura that language is not unknown, it's American English the same language I've been speaking."
"Actually, Xander you have not been speaking that language," Aura told him. Xander's frown, if possible, got even deeper before he blinked and suddenly realized that the artificial intelligence was right. The whole time that he had been here, literally from the moment he'd been dumped out of the cloning tank, he'd been speaking Gallentese.
"Bloody hell," he said in surprise speaking English this time and blinking as the language, which had previously been second nature for him to talk, suddenly sounded strange and alien to his ears as it was a bit harsher than the more lyrical Gallentese he'd previously been unknowingly speaking. Guess there is a hell of a lot more of Alexander left in me than just his memories, skills and the cybernetic implants that make someone a capsuleer, he thought as he made his way to one of the seats and collapsed down into it.
"I did not understand that, but it sounded to me like you just cursed," Aura commented. "Is something wrong Xander?"
"It's alright Aura," he replied, switching back to Gallentese. "I was just surprised to find out that I've been speaking Gallentese this whole time and that the language I've always spoken sounds and feels alien to me now. It's just… I guess it drives home again that I am no longer the person I was before yesterday and can never be that person again. Perhaps even more than the implants in me or Alexander's memories ever could."
"I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault. Though one thing's for sure I really want to find out who was behind that blasted spell so I can thank him… with a plasma enema."
"I see. Do you wish me to continue with my report? Perhaps move onto the analysis of the recovered alien corvette's exterior?"
"The corvette can wait. Leave me in peace for a bit please Aura."
"As you wish, Xander. Call me if you require anything."
With that Aura signed off. Xander sighed and stood back up before walking back to the window wall which was steadily becoming his favourite place to stand and attempt to gather his thoughts. He didn't know how to feel about what he had just discovered about himself and how much of Alexander was still left inside of him and how much it was influencing him. Influencing him to such a degree that he hadn't even realized that he wasn't speaking his own language anymore but had felt quite natural to speak Alexander's native language. Am I even still Xander Harris anymore, he wondered, or have I become someone else, someone who is a mixture of who I was and who I was turned into yesterday by whatever spell was cast upon Sunnydale?
He did not know and that bothered him more than he could admit, even to himself.
Sunnydale High School
Sunnydale
That Same Time
Buffy Summers sighed softly to herself as she stepped out of her mother's car and gazed upon the front of Sunnydale High. She wasn't surprised to see that Willow was not waiting for her at the entrance to the grounds as she normally was, in fact she was willing to bet that her redheaded friend hadn't even gotten out of bed this morning. Willow had understandably been devastated last night when she'd told her about Xander's death. It had been the hardest thing she had ever done, and Willow's heart-breaking cry of denial and despair would be one she would always remember.
Buffy mentally shook herself and walked through the gates, climbed the steps and immediately went inside. As always, the school corridors were thronging with students and some members of the faculty as they prepared for another school day on the mouth of hell. She paused in the doorway for a few moments, observing the activity, everyone going about their business as if nothing had changed as if Xander's death was of no consequence to them.
It infuriated her to no end. She had to fight hard not to give into the urge to scream at them, to demand how they could act as if nothing had happened as if the death of a brave young man meant nothing to any of them. She managed to keep the words in though and forced herself to walk inside and make her way to her locker. It took only a moment to put her packed lunch inside and get out the books she would need for her first lesson of the day.
It was when she closed the locker though that she got a surprise as standing there, his presence previously masked by the sheet metal, was Kyle Dufours. The leader of Sunnydale High's own little pack of mean teens, though they had gotten a lot quieter since the hyena primal incident, looked dreadful. His skin was paler than it should be, his normally neat black hair a mess and his clothing rumpled. She could even see bags under his eyes.
"Is it true?" Kyle asked her bluntly, seemingly desperate for an answer to his question.
"Is what true Kyle?" Buffy asked with a look of genuine confusion and concern on her face.
"Is it true that al… I mean that Xander's dead?" The look in Kyle's eyes, the desperate hope that she would tell him that it wasn't true and that Xander was still alive, broke her heart. Especially as she would have to dash his hopes that Xander was still alive, though she wondered just why Kyle was reacting like this to Xander's death. If her ears weren't deceiving her then she was sure he was going to say alpha before he corrected himself and said Xander's name. I should report that to Giles, she thought, wondering if there was still some echo of the hyena possession in Kyle and the others.
"I'm afraid so," she said softly, sadly, feeling her eyes begin to sting with the tears that wanted to start falling again. It was obvious that that reply was not the one that Kyle had wanted, and hoped not, to hear as his shoulders slumped and he looked down and away for a few moments. When he looked back up, she clearly saw that he was trying his hardest not to break down as there was an utterly wrenching look of pain and loss in the normally mean teens eyes.
"I… I hoped it wasn't true," Kyle said at last his voice notably shaking the waves of sorrow coming off him were almost palpable. "Thanks for telling me… even if it's not what I wanted to hear."
With that he turned and walked away. Buffy tracked him with her eyes and watched as he moved over to where some vending machines were, where somehow, she wasn't surprised to see Tor, Heidi and Rhonda all waiting for him. Though she couldn't hear what he said over the hubbub of dozens of different conversations going on in the corridor, even the supernaturally enhanced hearing of a Slayer had its limits after all, she didn't need to know as the teens reactions told her everything; she saw Rhonda fall into Kyle's arms while Tor embraced Heidi and it was obvious from the way their shoulders were shaking that both girls were crying and that Kyle and Tor were just as devastated with only there male pride preventing them from joining the girls in breaking down.
Okay there is some echo of the hyena left in all of them, she thought, otherwise they wouldn't be reacting to Xander's death in that way. But how Xander told us that he didn't remember anything of the possession, and I haven't seen him hang around with Kyle's crew at all since. Was Xander lying about that? And has he been seeing the other four members of the pack behind me and Willow's backs? She honestly wasn't sure what to make of that possibility as why would Xander feel the need to lie to them about that? They hadn't held anything he'd done while possessed by the hyena spirit against him as he'd had no control at the time. After a moment she gave a mental shrug and decided then and there that as soon as she had a free period – which was just after lunch today – she would go and see Giles about it. Hopefully he would have some answers for her on it as well as some information on where the vampiress Drusilla could be hiding so she could find that bloodsucking undead bitch and dust her in retribution for Xander's death.
Abruptly new activity at the end of the corridor caught her attention. Every student, and indeed members of the faculty including Principal Snyder, were all running towards the main common area outside the canteen. Though there wasn't any fear in the way they were moving just shock and excitement. Now what? She thought as, curiosity got the better of her, she allowed herself to get caught up in the crowd moving towards where the big screens were mounted on the wall above the notice boards. In mere moments she was amongst the crowd, finding herself standing next to a slack jawed Larry of all people with Cordelia on her other side and Jonathan in front of them. Following their gaze to the screens she couldn't help but freeze in shock at what she saw.
The screens were tuned to CNN, which was not unusual as they usually were, but it was what was on those screens that had everyone so utterly gobsmacked. The screens were showing an artist's impression of a great blue planet that Buffy vaguely recognised from physics class as Neptune. Sitting front and centre of the screen was an enormous, vaguely wedge-shaped structure that was clearly artificial. The screen caption reading was as unbelievable as it was Earth shattering as it read: "ALIEN SPACE STATION FOUND OVER NEPTUNE: IS THIS FIRST CONTACT?". There was only one thing she could think to say, and it was something that neatly summed up the shocked, amazed, hopeful and wary sentiments of everyone present students and faculty alike.
"Holy crap."
Billings
Montana
A Few Minutes Earlier
Holding a steaming mug of coffee, the man who now referred to himself as Doctor Peter Tanner arrived at his office in downtown Billings. The office was deserted at this time in the morning, not even the attractive young blond who served as his secretary had arrived yet though she would be here within the next fifteen minutes assuming she didn't get stuck in the traffic, which was why he always came in so early. It gave him time to enjoy a little peace and quiet before the organised chaos of the day began, especially as he had another appointment with Martin today. An appointment where he would have to issue his unknowing countryman with another round of the drugs that supress his memories of their true origins.
It was something that always left something of a foul taste in his mouth.
Yes, it was necessary to stop the man complaining about them deserting their doomed home and how they should return to their ship and make their way back home and salvage their honour in battle against the Goa'uld forces besieging their planet. The fact that their little corvette was no match for a Goa'uld mothership, its beam cannons nowhere near powerful enough to penetrate a Ha'tak's shields, and would be quickly blasted out of the sky by the motherships heavier plasma cannons, never seemed to occur to him which meant they had no choice but to silence him. That didn't mean however that he enjoyed having to do so as taking a man's identity away from him was never something that should be done lightly. Maybe we would have been better off just killing him, he thought, it would be a lot less cruel than what we are doing to him now.
He gave a mental sigh and took a sip of the coffee he'd picked up at Starbucks on his way in. A smile appeared on his face as some of the hot, bitter liquid disappeared down his throat. Coffee was a pleasure of this world that he was seriously beginning to enjoy. There were so many varieties of it to choose from, not to mention the myriad of other beverages hot or cold that there were. He was sure it was going to take him a lifetime to try them all.
Moving to his desk he sat down, put the coffee on its coaster and unlocked a specific drawer in the desk. This was another reason he came in before everyone else did, to check on the status of the corvette they'd hidden behind Mars. Given that its fuel cells had been half empty when they'd abandoned it – the majority of their home planets available naquada reserves had after all been earmarked for both the planetary defence platforms and the handful of surviving cruisers that were the last line of defence against the forces of the Goa'uld System Lord Ba'al – it was only a matter of time before the ship lost power and began to be pulled in by the Martian gravity. As he opened the drawer, he immediately saw a red warning light blinking on the ship remote.
Eyes widening in surprise and concern he brought up the remote's status display causing a hologram to blink into existence over the small silver remote. Late last night, when he and the others had all been sleeping, the ship had sent an emergency subspace burst to the remote. Pulling up the keyboard interface he queried the nature of the emergency message and frowned in concern at what he saw.
Shortly after midnight an alien spacecraft of unknown origin had appeared from an unknown form of FTL propulsion nearby and approached the ship. After scanning it thoroughly for a couple of minutes the alien had moved in close and locked onto their ship with a gravitational-magnetic force beam of some type pulling it out of orbit and in close to itself. The vessel had then created a bubble of depleted vacuum around itself and the ship before accelerating to translight velocities with their ship in tow. The ship had sent its data burst a few nanoseconds before it moved out of the limited range of the ship remote.
"This is not good," he muttered to himself as he pulled up the data burst and looked at what information their ship's sensors had gathered about the unknown that had taken it. The alien vessel was around a hundred meters long and constructed of several unknown metallic alloys which were heavily infused with some type of nanotechnology. There was no naquada aboard that the ships sensors could detect. Instead power seemed to be derived from an incredibly compact antimatter-based power plant and a series of capacitors. Weapons wise the ship appeared to be armed like their corvette with four weapons banks – three on the dorsal hull one on the ventral hull – that appeared to be stowed behind armoured hatches when not in use. It had a shield generator too though, given that its shields had been down at the time, he had no idea how strong the defensive force field would have been.
All in all, its technology was distinctly non-standard.
"Who built you I wonder," he mused as to the best of his knowledge there were no spacefaring races in this region of the galaxy, certainly none advanced enough to build a ship like the unknown warship. Given how thoroughly they'd searched this entire area of the galaxy – which was on the opposite side of Goa'uld space to their homeworld – they would have detected them if they were in any way local. I really need to talk to the others about this, he thought as he saved the data before shutting down the ship remote and returning it to its drawer, though with the ship out of range of our remote I have no idea what we're going to do about it. Especially as our shuttle pod is not capable of hyperspace travel.
It was just as well he had returned the ship remote to its secure drawer as at that moment the door to his office flew open and he saw his secretary Juliet Rawlings standing there. She looked breathless and shocked and he immediately felt concern. "Good heavens Juliet whatever is the matter," he asked.
"Doctor Tanner you better come to the common room there's something unbelievable on the telly that you should see," the young woman replied. Peter – it wasn't his real name of course but it was the one he preferred to use these days – raised an eyebrow. Now what could be so interesting on that idiot box, he thought, as television was one of the things on this world that really didn't make much sense to him. Oh, some of the entertainment could be nice – if a little incomprehensible at times especially that bizarre sport they called football – but most of the time he paid it little attention. Still knowing Juliet well by now, thus knowing she wasn't one to get worked up casually, he found his interest peaked.
"Alright," he agreed, standing up from the comfortable leather backed chair and coming around the desk. Juliet immediately turned and hurried out of the office and its small antechamber clearly in a hurry to get back to seeing whatever had caught her attention. Peter followed at a more sedate pace arriving at the common room that served drinks and light bites to all the staff on this floor a minute or two after Juliet left the office. To his great surprise the room was packed with what seemed like everyone who worked on this floor of the eight-story building and all of them were focused on the television which was displaying a feed from CNN.
What's all this about, he wondered as he made his way through the crowd to get close enough to the tv to see what was going on. When he got there, he practically froze eyes widening in shocked surprise as he beheld the exact same image and headline that at that very moment a certain bottle blond vampire slayer was seeing in distant Sunnydale. Where the bloody hell did that come from, he thought gazing at the massive alien space station in disbelief, it was completely unlike anything he had ever seen in his life before – which was saying quite a bit as he had seen quite a bit of the galaxy before they'd inadvertently entered Goa'uld space starting the war that there homeworld was quickly losing as the superior numbers of the Goa'uld enabled them to triumph over their slightly superior, but only slightly, technology – and also something that had not been there when they'd first come to this system nearly a year ago.
"Oh my," he said aloud.
"Amazing isn't it," Juliet said from beside him, "do you think the aliens are friendly?"
"I would hope so I wouldn't want to get on the bad side of anyone who can build a space station that big," he replied, getting nods and murmurs of agreement from all around. Especially as whoever built that thing would easily have the technology to turn this planet to a pile of asteroids and gravel orbiting this system's star, he thought as he studied the station the best he could. Even with just a limited visual inspection he could tell that it was the product of an extremely technologically advanced civilization as no one in this galaxy, to the best of his knowledge anyway, were capable of building something on such an immense scale.
"Any idea what's going to happen next Peter?" one of the other psychiatrists who worked on this floor asked.
Peter shrugged. "My guess is the government will attempt to make contact with the station," he replied, "though given how far Neptune is from Earth there is no guarantee that the aliens will be able to understand any radio transmission beamed at them." Though that's a thought, he thought, maybe we'll be able to use the ship remote to access the pods subspace transmitter and contact whoever it is that's out there. Maybe they'll know who took our ship, if they didn't take it themselves. I'll have to talk to the others to see what they think.
"Do you think the government would try to cover this up," Juliet asked, "say we're just looking at a reflection of swamp gas or something equally stupid like that?"
"Unlikely as this thing will be visible to both optical and radio telescopes all around the planet," one of the other support staff in the room replied. "Even if they wanted to there would be no way for the government to silence all those observatories, not to mention the other governments who are bound to know by now."
"So, what's going to happen next," Juliet asked a question that was met with nothing but looks between colleagues and silence for one simple reason…
…there was no answer to give.
