Xander suddenly sat bolt upright, choking back a scream. As he made the voyage from sleep to wakefulness, the last remnants of the nightmares that had woken him lingered in his mind's eye, no doubt reinforced by the sounds of distant automatic weapons fire, underlaid by the fainter snap-and-crackle that he had been informed was the characteristic sound of sustained energy weapons fire. His body may be in a war-zone in what he was still calling 'the future', but his mind was occupied with memories of past war-zones - none of which he'd actually experienced.
<The oppressive humidity and near-intolerable heat of the semi-tropical jungle; the nerve-wracking tension that came with the knowledge that at any moment he could be shot at without warning. And when the shooting *did* start, the helpless anger at seeing friends shot in front of him.>
<The wind-swept, barren islands in the South Atlantic, which in other circumstances would have been left to their own devices. But not now. Invaders had come to these islands, and he - along with thousands of others - was taking part in the operation to remove them. A classic hard-and-fast raid on an airfield, destroying the ground-attack craft based there, despite being outnumbered by the defenders. Pride in a job well done, mixed with not a little exhilaration at having survived unhurt.>
<The gently rolling terrain, so peaceful on the surface but, as usual, appearances were deceiving. The peaceful terrain was the backdrop to a bitter and quarter-less war as brutal as any he'd ever seen. And, almost to prove that the universe loved irony, *he* was now seen as an invader. Patrolling the countryside and the streets, engaging in brief skirmishes with balaclava-wearing gunmen.
<The shocking impact of the bullet, the almost unnoticed feeling of falling to the ground, his weapon flying from suddenly nerveless fingers, and the dawning realisation that he was going to *die*, and that there was nothing that could be done about it...>
Xander rubbed absently at his temples, wondering what the hell was going on. It wasn't that he was unfamiliar with these dreams - in fact, he'd experience something very similar before, but not long after that fateful Halloween, the dreams had faded. Then he noticed the bright green lettering floating at the bottom of his vision.
{MEMORY INDEXING COMPLETE.}
<What the hell does that mean?> he wondered. <And where are the letters being projected from?>
He waved his hand in front of his eyes, but the lettering remained unaffected. Then he remembered something he'd been told while being prepared for neural nanonic implantation, in particular, how information would be presented to him. <Neuroiconic graphics,> he recalled. Which essentially meant that the nanonics would trick the visual centres of his brain into thinking that the information was being projected on the inside of his eyeballs. Xander wasn't sure he'd fully understood the explanation, but now he was seeing it in action, a few things were becoming clearer.
There was one other thing that he was wondering about. Namely, 'memory indexing'. Another explanation swam into focus. "It's sort of like the index of a book," he'd been told. "You'll be able to 'look up' any event stored in your memory once the indexing process is finished. It might take a while, though."
"And if there's anything I don't particularly want to remember?" he'd asked, thinking about the time he'd been possessed by the hyena spirit.
"Then you can delete the index reference, but apart from that, there's not a lot you can do without specialist equipment."
Now, Xander was realising what one of the unforeseen results of having every memory in his head made accessible via an electronic index was. The hyena spirit had been just that - a spirit, with no real lasting legacy once it had been exorcised, apart from some not-so-pleasant memories, which he'd been doing his best to suppress.
Soldier Boy, on the other hand, had been nothing *but* memories and experiences, Although they had been steadily fading since that Halloween - hardly surprising, since he'd only made use of them on rare occasions. But now it looked like they were back in full force, which led Xander to wonder if the skills would be back as well.
With a groan, Xander decided that getting back to sleep would be difficult at best, and decided to face the day. A brief shower later, he pulled on some of the clothes that Ione had bought for him and wandered off in search of coffee. He was mildly surprised to see that the room the Slayerettes - he was still coming to terms with that - had pretty much taken over for their own was already occupied.
It was one of the Slayers - Elizabeth Baker - and she was sitting on one of the couches, cradling a cup of coffee and watching one of the wallscreens, which was currently displaying the feed from one of the sensors mounted on the exterior of the Hollywood Dome, showing the sun rising, glinting from the geodesic crystal of the other domes. For Xander, it was his first true glimpse of the arcology, and his mind boggled at the thought of the resources - and situation - required for people to live like this. Three hundred million, according to the best estimates available.
Or, to put it another way, a number equivalent to the population of the *entire* United States of America from Xander's time, if not somewhat larger. And the Los Angeles arcology was far from being the only one in North America, although both New York and Edmonton were still recovering from the damage inflicted on them during the possession crisis.
Turning his attention away from the wallscreen, he silently studied Elizabeth for a moment as she watched the sunrise in silence. Despite his best efforts not to compare people he met in this time with those he'd left behind, he kept meeting people who made it difficult to avoid that comparison. If Genevieve Kavanagh had reminded him of Dawn, and Jay Hilton had reminded him of a younger Buffy, then Elizabeth Baker...
Also reminded him somewhat of Buffy. There was a similar delicacy to the features and general build, although Elizabeth's eyes were blue, rather than green. But she was much quieter than Buffy had been, even when she'd first arrived in Sunnydale. In fact, in that regard, she seemed more like a younger Willow, or possibly Willow's friend Tara.
Dragging himself from his moment of reflection - he hadn't been staring, and *definitely* hadn't been checking her out; he'd known her for less than a day, for Christ's sake!
Then a memory from his recently catalogued collection snuck up on him. His first glimpse of Buffy; and the way he'd been so captivated with her that he'd literally fallen head over heels - although the steel railing hadn't helped in that regard. He shook the memory off, although it took some effort. He wasn't a hormone-driven sixteen-year-old any more, although it seemed otherwise at times.
While his brain had been occupied with other matters, his body had piloted itself in the direction of the coffee maker. Interestingly, Elizabeth had been so enraptured watching the sunrise that the first time she noticed his presence was when the coffee maker gurgled into life. "Oh!" she exclaimed, twisting around to see who it was, avoiding spilling hot coffee on herself only by accident. When she saw Xander, she blushed, embarrassed at having been caught being so inattentive to the world around her.
"Hey, don't worry about it," Xander assured her. "There's nothing wrong with enjoying a good sunrise." The sound of distant weapons fire rose to a brief crescendo, and then tapered off, leaving behind silence as the vampires sought shelter for the day, almost as if even *they* didn't want to ruin a moment like this.
"True," Elizabeth replied, "but I was always told that I should be aware of my surroundings, that it might be the difference between life and death."
Xander cocked his head slightly to one side as he finished making his coffee. "That sounds like something a Watcher would say," he remarked as he made his way over to the couch. "You mind?" he asked, indicating the space next to her. When she shook her head, he sat down next to her.
"Ex-Watcher, actually," Elizabeth said, her expression starting to crumple.
Xander instinctively knew that this was going to be bad. He'd heard some of the story, but only snippets. "What happened?" he asked gently.
"I was on patrol one night about three weeks ago," Elizabeth started, "when I ran into a large group of vampires - about thirty, in all." Xander had to suppress a wince, something he found unexpectedly easy, as something activated within his neural nanonics. {FACIAL EXPRESSION OVERRIDE PROGRAM IN PRIMARY MODE}, neuroiconic graphics proclaimed.
Leaving aside technological wonders, Xander was amazed that Elizabeth was still alive. The largest group of vampires that Buffy had encountered was a 'mere' dozen, and that had been a hairy enough moment, even though she'd had the help of Willow, Oz and himself to deal with them.
Fortunately, Elizabeth hadn't noticed his moment of reflection. "I knew there was no way I could fight them all and survive, so I ran. I was lucky enough to eliminate about twenty, but I ran out of running space and weapons," she continued, her expression distant as she remembered that night. Turning to face Xander squarely, her gaze refocused and he could see unshed tears glinting at the corners of her eyes. "I honestly thought I was going to *die*, Alexander. Have you ever felt like that?"
"Please - call me Xander. I only get called 'Alexander' when I'm in trouble," Xander replied, taking a sip of his coffee. "And to answer your question - sure; particularly that time in the hospital." Elizabeth was clearly curious as to what he was referring to, but Xander waved her off. "That's a story for another time. So, obviously help arrived in time."
Elizabeth nodded. "That's right," she confirmed. "I was told to get down, and when I did, Catherine and the others opened fire with heavy weapons, eliminating the last of the vampires that were chasing me."
"You were patrolling by yourself?" Xander asked, incredulous. "Where was your Watcher?"
"Safe at home," Elizabeth replied with more than a hint of bitterness. "Travers is the traditional-minded sort, believing that Slayers should work alone, and I didn't know any better." The unshed tears in the corners of her eyes were threatening to fall.
"Hey, it's not your fault," Xander said comfortingly, then he was brought up short as a realisation bored home. "*Travers*? Your Watcher was named Travers?"
Elizabeth nodded, a trifle unsteadily. "Yes. Alistair Travers, to be precise," she replied, and then paused as something occurred to her. "You had to deal with a Travers, too, right?"
"Yeah," Xander said softly. "Quentin Travers was the bastard who bullied Giles into administering Buffy's Cruciamentum. But that's not important at the moment."
"I'd sent him a contact report," Elizabeth continued, "but he hadn't replied. Once we arrived at the Slayerettes' then-current base of operations -" Xander wondered at that, but decided not to interrupt the story again, "- I tried again to get into contact with him, but couldn't even raise his neural nanonics. What does that suggest to you, Xander?"
Xander thought about it for a moment, and then the answer revealed itself to him: a horrible, ugly answer. "He abandoned you," he said in a near-whisper. "Wrote you off as dead." It was an appalling concept - a Watcher abandoning the Slayer in his charge. He couldn't imagine Giles *ever* abandoning Buffy, no matter the provocation... although her refusal to properly deal with Angelus, and the way she'd run away that summer had probably pushed Giles to his limits.
"In fact, Mister Goldsmith had to contact *him* to arrange a meeting, at which he simply assumed that I would be leaving with him. No expressions of concern, no gratitude that I had survived... nothing like that. Then I found out that the reason he was so insistent that I return with him was to undergo my Cruciamentum."
Although Xander was appalled by the attitude shown by Travers, there was another factor that attracted his interest. <Cruciamentum? Either Slayers are having that inflicted on them at a younger age than in my time, or...>
"When did you turn eighteen?" Xander asked.
"Just under two weeks ago," Elizabeth asked. "Why?"
"It's just that you don't *look* eighteen, that's all," Xander replied. "But that's also something that can be explained later. So, the only reason that Travers wanted you back was to put you through the Cruciamentum? Bastard," Xander muttered with feeling.
Elizabeth nodded. "I think it was then that I realised just what the Watchers were. After almost a year, Travers revealed that he regarded me as a useful tool, nothing more." Tears were gathering again at the corners of her eyes. "And given what had happened just before I was Called as a Slayer..." Her voice trailed off, and she rubbed her eyes, wiping away the tears. At Xander's inquisitive look, she added, "My parents..."
Although she fell silent after those two words, Xander had no trouble filling in the blanks. <Her parents were killed... probably by vampires.> Recovering slightly, Elizabeth continued, "And I couldn't do a *thing*!" <Right in front of her,> Xander added to his earlier thought.
"I didn't notice when the dreams started - I thought they were part of the nightmares I'd been having over the past few nights. It was about a week after... you know... when I punched a wall - something I'd done a few times, with no results other than a bruised hand, so imagine my surprise when I put my hand through the wall.
"As I was standing there, standing at my hand in shock, the admittance alert for the door chimed. I checked, and it was one of the supervisors from my day club." <Day club?> Xander wondered. <Oh, that's right - no schools.> "I thought he was going to ask why I had been absent for the last week, but instead he introduced himself as a 'Watcher', and proceeded to prove to me that I was what he called a 'Slayer'."
Elizabeth paused again in her story to take a sip of the by-now lukewarm coffee. "I thought he was being considerate - giving me somewhere to stay, providing for me, training me - but all he was really doing was maintaining a tool..." Her emotions now almost completely out of control, she started sobbing, and it was fortunate that Xander had recognised the signs in time to gently remove the mug from her grasp and set it beside his on the coffee table in front of them.
Xander didn't have to think about what to do next. Despite all that had happened to him, especially over the last two years, he could no more stand aside and watch somebody else's emotional pain and not try to do something about than he could stop breathing. Gathering the distraught young woman into a supportive embrace, he simply held her as she sobbed into his shirt, and murmured what he intended to be supportive and soothing noises. Evidentially, it worked, because after a while, she stopped sobbing and looked up at him. "Why?" she asked.
"Why what?" Xander replied. It was *way* too early in the morning for serious thinking.
"Why are you being so helpful? I mean, we only met yesterday. It's the same with Catherine and the others - they took me in without a second thought, and that's assuming that they even thought *once*."
"I can't speak for anybody else," Xander replied slowly as he thought about it, "but I can't just stand by when someone needs help and not do a thing about it." That was about a good an explanation as Xander could come up with on short notice. He hadn't really thought about it before, to be honest.
"Thank you, anyway," Elizabeth said softly.
<Thank you.>
Two words Buffy had *never* said to him *or* Willow in the five years they'd been helping her. Even after he'd revived her after she'd been drained by the Master, she'd never said that. <Then again, she *did* say, "I had you to bring me back," although that can be taken to mean that she assumed that I was going to help.>
But Elizabeth had said that after less than twenty-four hours, and for something as simple as some emotional support, and a shoulder to cry on, which was something he'd provided for Buffy on more than one occasion. So, why would Elizabeth thank him and Buffy not? The only thing he could think of was that they were completely different, personality-wise. <Not that that should come as a great surprise.>
That thought, in turn, led to why he was still helping Buffy, despite the fact that she'd made it abundantly clear that she didn't want his help. The simple answer would be 'Jesse', but it'd probably also be a wrong answer, as revenge had never really been a motivator for him. <I guess I got it right when I said that I couldn't stand by when someone needs help.>
When Elizabeth's weight shifted slightly, he realised that while he'd been thinking, she'd drifted off to sleep. <Either I'm a boring person to be around,> Xander thought with a small smile, <or she feels safer or something.> He shifted slightly, in preparation to laying her down on the couch so that she would be more comfortable. That plan was scrapped however, when she gripped his arm tightly with a grip that made it clear that he wasn't going anywhere without her say-so.
Under other circumstances, he wouldn't have moved in any great hurry - being used as a pillow by an attractive young woman was hardly a fate worse than death - but these weren't normal circumstances. He racked his mind for reasons to leave anyway, but it was an exercise in futility, so he simply decided to make himself comfortable. As he shifted position - as gently as possible, so as to avoid waking Elizabeth up - he realised that he'd been wrong about one thing.
He *could* get back to sleep.
It was a couple of hours later that Cat and Alex entered the room, starting the new day themselves. They were somewhat puzzled to see one of the wallscreens switched on, and two half-full coffee mugs sitting on the coffee table in front of the couch. Cat turned to Alex, about to ask a question, when she heard the quiet snoring - which seemed to be coming from the couch.
Gesturing for Alex to go around the side of the couch, Cat went around the other side. What they saw when they rounded the couch made the burst out into synchronised 'aawww's. Xander had slid down until he was half-lying down himself, while Liz had her head resting on his shoulder, with one hand around the back of his neck and the other across his chest. For his part, Xander also had an arm around Liz's shoulders. "They look so *cute*," Cat said softly, and with the first genuine smile she'd worn in days.
"Pictures?" Alex prompted with a similar expression.
"What do you think I'm doing?" Cat countered. Neural nanonics could also be used to capture images from whatever a person with the implanted could see, not to mention manipulate them in ways that would have a graphic designer from the late twentieth or early twenty-first centuries simultaneously green with envy and gibbering with shock.
"Just checking," Alex replied as he made coffee for the two of them. He hesitated with his hands about to grab two more mugs. "Do you think we should wake them up?"
"Yeah," Cat replied with a nod. "Apart from anything else, it should be interesting to see their reactions."
"You can be nasty at times, Cat," Alex commented as he made two more coffees.
Cat just smiled and gently shook Liz's shoulder. As Liz's eyes fluttered open, she chirped, "*Good* morning!"
Liz's eyes shot open, an there was a brief moment of confusion as she woke up. "Huh? Wha...?" Obviously, more brain cells were kicked into operation, since she stopped looking around and her gaze fastened on Cat; but only for a moment, before she noticed the arm around her shoulders. Looking down, she also noticed that she had her arms around a soundly sleeping Xander, who, somewhat amazingly, hadn't woken up. "Oh, so it wasn't a dream," she said softly.
"What, falling asleep in the arms of a handsome young man?" Cat asked teasingly.
"No, not that... or not *just* that I should say. I couldn't sleep, so I came here, intending to watch the sun rise. Xander mustn't have been able to sleep, either, since he showed up not long afterward. We started talking, and... I told him about Travers and-and my parents, and the next thing I know, he's hugging me while I'm crying into his shirt," Liz said with a sad expression. "I managed to regain control for long enough to ask why he was helping, and he said that he couldn't stand by and do nothing when somebody needed help."
Both Cat and Alex nodded solemnly. Not long after they'd taken her in, Liz had told them her story, and it had been fortunate for Travers that he'd left the arcology, because there were people who would find it a good method of anger-management to pound him into a red pulp. But it was interesting that she'd told Xander so soon after meeting him, and apparently without prompting. Cat was about to open her mouth to make another comment, when she was interrupted.
"It's nice to be talked about in such a nice way," Xander said without opening his eyes as he let his arm drop from around Liz's shoulders. "But I *am* trying to sleep here."
"The sleep somewhere else," Cat countered. "Or, better yet, wake up and start the day. We've got work to do."
"You say 'we', I say 'you'," Xander replied, cracking open an eye. "I've got a doctor's certificate prohibiting me from doing any sort of work for the next few days. Damn shame that," he added drily.
"How about, if we can't sleep, neither can you?" Alex remarked as he proffered mugs of coffee to both Xander and Liz.
"That's not much better, but at least you're easing the pain with coffee," Xander said as he sat up and accepted both coffees, handing one to Liz, who let him go to accept it. "So, what's on the schedule for today?"
"I thought you said you couldn't do any work?" Cat asked.
"That's right; I can't. I should have asked, what's on the schedule for *you* today?"
"Not a lot, actually," Alex replied as he took a seat opposite Xander and Liz. "Pretty much just hang around and answer any questions that need answering, and help come up with the patrol roster. It's Amanda and William who have to do most of the work."
Xander remembered the ex-Watcher and police computer expert that he'd been introduced to yesterday. "Let me guess; William for his Watcher-y knowledge, and Amanda to do computer stuff?"
"Yep," Alex replied with a smile. "In fact, Amanda's been trying to work up a program to identify vampires and demons based on things like thermal profile and the like. She says she's pretty close, and all that's needed is field tests to iron out any last bugs."
"Sounds like something we could have used back in Sunnydale... Sunnydale past, rather," he added, seeing Cat open her mouth to comment.
"You might get that chance," Liz put in quietly.
"How's that?"
"There *is* a chance that you'll be able to go home, right?"
"That's what Joshua said," Xander confirmed. The reactions to that simple statement weren't what he was expecting, though.
"Joshua?" Cat asked in a tone of some amazement. "You mean Joshua *Calvert*?"
"Yeah, that's who I mean," Xander replied, unsure as to where this was going.
"Don't you know what he *did*?"
"Yeah, I know - he told me, after all." Then it clicked for Xander. "Haven't you guys saved the world as well?" It was only after he asked the question that he realised that it hadn't come out *quite* as he'd intended.
"Well, yeah, we have on a couple of occasions," Alex said. "But Joshua Calvert didn't save just *this* world - he saved the entire Confederation!"
"It's not that I'm not impressed," Xander said. "In fact, I am - deeply impressed. How can I not be? But I've actually met the guy, and heard the story not just from him, but from Ione, Louise and Gen as well. I suppose that's just a little different from hearing it second-hand."
"Yeah, I suppose it can be," Cat said slowly.
"Anyway," Liz put in, trying to get the conversation back to the original topic. "The point I was getting at was that you've got neural nanonics and retinal implants now, Xander. What makes you think you won't have them when you get home?"
Xander thought about that for a moment. He'd been given retinal implants at the same time as all the other modifications had been made - frankly, once they'd been described to him, there was no way that he *wasn't* going to have them. Thermal imaging, light-amplification and the ability to zoom in on distant objects had all been too tempting to refuse. He wondered briefly if he hadn't been in the grip of what Soldier Boy described as 'Shiny Kit Syndrome'; the desire for anything new and impressive looking, even if he had absolutely no idea of what it was for or what it did.
"Good point," he conceded. "I guess I hadn't thought of it in that way before." He paused and looked at Cat, Alex and Liz in turn. "But what makes you think I'll be going home any time soon?"
The Inner Council of Directors was in session again, something they'd been doing at least once a day as the situation in Los Angeles started to deteriorate. Currently, the director of the Research/Intelligence sub-directorate had the floor. "According to our sources within the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Municipal Authority, the situation within the Sunnydale Dome is the most delicately poised, although the situation across the rest of the arcology is hardly better. This has led my analysts to believe that this is, indeed, where Jonsson has based his operations. However, the size of the Sunnydale Dome, combined with the fact that Jonsson seems to be displaying an extraordinary level of ability, means that pinpointing his location is next to impossible."
Director-General Michelson posed the question that more than one person had wanted to ask, but his position allowed him to ask first. "Are there any signs of the situation stabilising any time soon?"
Research/Intelligence shook her head. "No, Director-General. According to LAPD sources, the situation is likely to get worse before it gets better. In their estimation - and after perusal of the available data, I happen to agree with them - the probability of a favourable outcome is low, unless something happens to radically alter the situation."
The next question was directed to the Security/Operations sub-director. "Are the Shadow Striker teams available for deployment?"
"No, Director-General," Security/Operations replied. "Their numbers are still well below operational status, and it will be a minimum of seven weeks before they are ready for large-scale deployments."
The Shadow Striker teams were the sword arm of the Council of Watchers. First raised not long after the formation of the Council itself, they were originally the bravest warriors in the region where a Slayer lived, and were a combination of bodyguard and elite light infantry unit. Over the millennia, their role was expanded to provide backup during a Slayer's Cruciamentum if required.
As the years went by, and humanity began to congregate in cities, the Shadow Strikers became mercenaries retained by the Council, and after the radical changes in Council policy during the mid-sixteenth century, they began to be recruited from military sources. Longbowmen, Riflemen, paratroopers, ex-SS, Special Forces and, most recently, Confederation Marines, had all served in the Striker teams, whose role was now to act in the Council's interests, as defined by the Inner Council, of course.
During the possession crisis, the Strikers had been deployed into the London arcology in an attempt to prevent Quinn Dexter from taking over. Although they had caused significant losses among Dexter's followers, they had caused little delay, and had taken brutal losses in the process. In fact, they'd been all but annihilated.
"Besides, Director-General," Security/Operations continued, "if the information from Intelligence regarding the number of Confederation, Govcentral and Edenist troops being deployed to Los Angeles are correct, to be honest, I can't really see how the Strikers are going to make that much of a difference." Research/Intelligence looked mildly affronted that her information was being doubted, and he shrugged apologetically. The doubt had come from a professional requirement to treat all intelligence information as suspect until correlated by another source, not any form of personal or professional animosity. In fact, along with Security/Counter-intelligence, the two of them had formed temporary alliances during their respective tenures as members of the Inner Council. That was only logical, given the overlap between their respective areas of responsibility.
Research/Intelligence looked somewhat mollified. Ignoring the by-play, Michelson continued, "And what of Harris? Has his arrival had any significant impact on events?"
"Not as yet, Director-General," Research/Intelligence replied. "Which is hardly surprising, given that his knowledge of demons and vampires is at *least* duplicated, if not surpassed, from... other sources." She refused to name the Slayerettes, but everyone present made the connection. One aspect of Travers' report that had disturbed her somewhat was the fact that the Slayerettes had more complete information regarding the situation than anything she'd had access to up until recently.
She'd been a good intelligence operative, and she was a good intelligence head. Essentially, that meant that she managed not to let personal feeling influence her professional duties. To her, the fact that her sources hadn't reported the full scope of the situation meant one of two things. The first was that they were being fed disinformation, although the fact that they'd come through with a more detailed report indicated against that. Also, a disinformation campaign would have required that they'd been uncovered by the LAPD counter-intelligence types, and all the available evidence said that that had not happened. Of course, lack of evidence was not evidence of lack, but it was all she had to go on in the first place.
The second possibility, that her sources - and the rest of the LAPD with them - simply had not managed to uncover the necessary information meant that Jonsson had managed to keep an extremely low profile while drawing up his plans. That was the truly disturbing thing, as it indicated that his planning ability was excellent, and that further nasty surprises were likely. Of course, an intelligence analyst had to remain objective, and not to fall in love with her own theories. After all, it would only take one inconvenient fact to shoot down even the most elegantly crafted theory.
Picking up from where she'd left off, Research/Intelligence continued, "But the main value of Harris would probably be as a rallying point. It is likely that whoever ends up in command in Los Angeles - whether LAPD, Govcentral, Confederation or Edenist - will use the fact that Harris survived for five years as a vampire hunter on the Hellmouth - longer than most Slayers, in fact - without any form of enhancement, and using primitive weapons, to point out to their troops that they should do at *least* as well, with implants, enhancements and modern weaponry."
Michelson nodded to show that he understood the point and agreed with it. "And of the situation itself?"
"As I noted earlier, Director-General, the situation is likely to deteriorate further before any tactical or strategic improvement is seen. With that in mind, the next few days will prove to be critical."
It was been curiosity that was the cause of Xander's second visit to the vac-train station. Another thousand serjeants were arriving in a few minutes, and he wanted to get a better look - under better circumstances - than the first time he'd seen one. <In hindsight, it does seem somewhat silly that I thought it was a demon,> Xander mused. <But then again, in all fairness to myself, I *had* just been yanked over six hundred years into the future, and was probably in shock from the broken leg I suffered on landing.> That thought caused him to chuckle softly.
"What's up, Xander?" Liz, who was closest, asked.
"Just thinking," Xander replied. "You ever hear of the saying, 'A good landing is one you walk away from'?"
"Yes," Liz replied, wondering where this was going.
"That was one of the things I was thinking about," Xander continued. "When I arrived, it wasn't a good landing - I didn't walk away from it. Oh, and the fact that the first time I saw a serjeant, I thought it was a demon."
Liz snickered softly. "Laugh it up, future-girl," Xander said mock-severely. "I bet you find this incredibly amusing."
"Sure," Liz agreed equitably. "Probably because it didn't happen to me."
"You are a cruel, cruel person, Elizabeth Baker," Xander said sternly, "and if there is any justice in the universe, you will be called to account for your misdeeds."
"If thinking that makes you feel better, Xander," Liz replied with a grin, "you just go on thinking that." Still smiling, she patted his face gently.
Xander was mildly surprised by that. During the course of the day, Alex, Amanda and William had been kept busy providing information to the authorities, briefing them on the sort of things their troops were likely to encounter. That had left himself, Cat and Liz pretty much to their own devices, and the two Slayers had used that time to fill him on some of the things *he* was likely to encounter that didn't involve vampires. There hadn't been too many unexpected things, as Joshua and Louise had been most thorough in preparing him for Earth.
They'd missed one thing, though - the Light Bringer sects that threatened to turn this into a three-cornered war. Even though they'd been lying low since their ill-fated attack on Jonsson nearly three weeks ago, it was extremely unlikely that they'd given up. In fact, it was more probable that they were simply biding their time, and although expectations were that the sect members would attack the vampires to extract a measure of revenge, it was also possible that they'd simply lash out at whatever was available.
That was a matter probably best left for another time, Xander decided. With some time on their hands, the three of them had decided to go down to the vac-train station to watch as the latest batch of serjeant reinforcements arrived. Naturally, they weren't alone, since word of their arrival had spread fairly quickly, and there was a moderate-sized crowd on hand. Of course, 'moderate' by the standards of the arcology still meant tens of thousands, filling every vantage point with even a semi-decent view. More than one person was running a sensevise link to the local media outlet, and tens of millions more were watching from the comfort of their own homes, wondering what this meant. After all, bitek was still illegal on Earth, wasn't it?
Most of those present, like Xander, Liz and Cat, were simply curious, wanting to see for themselves the bitek 'abominations' that all religions still railed against. But even though that accounted for four-fifths of the crowd, that still left thousands of people who were present for other reasons.
Protesters, angry that their arcology was being 'sullied by the touch of the godless, soulless abominations of a degenerate society', as one placard quoting the words of Pope Elanor V read.
A single line of police, backed up by crowd-control mechanoids, stood between the arriving serjeants and the protesters. The recent influx of Confederation and Edenist reinforcements had been what had allowed them to be withdrawn from vampire-hunting duty, which most of them had greeted with relief.
After all, they knew what the casualty rate was much higher than it had been during the possession crisis, and that had been bad enough. The collective attitude of the LAPD - the street cops, at least - could best be described as, 'let them handle it, they've got the weapons and training to do so'. It wasn't that they were willing to stand back and let others bear the brunt of the danger, more like wanting to wait until more heavy equipment was available to augment the AT stocks.
"You know," Xander said, "even after Joshua and Louise told me about the way bitek was banned on Earth, it's still something that really has to be seen to be believed."
Cat snorted gently. "Religious types tend to have a fairly narrow range of thinking, and they also tend not to question dogma too much," she said. "Once Elanor and the other religious leaders proscribed bitek, that was the end of bitek on Earth. Since then, the anti-bitek feeling's had over five centuries to firmly entrench itself. Personally, I think bitek would be useful - say, for instance, a few serjeants - but most people know next to nothing about bitek in general." She paused and rubbed the back of her head thoughtfully. "Come to think of it, *I* don't know a great deal about bitek or Edenism, either."
"Me, either," Liz agreed.
Xander briefly thought about repeating Louise's story about B7, and how they'd engineered the backlash against bitek in order to try to keep it for themselves. But he decided against it - Cat and Liz probably wouldn't believe him, anyway. And the 'shadow group manipulating events for their own benefit' story was an old one. He'd never been a big believer in conspiracy theories - his *reality* was strange enough as it was - but B7 sounded a lot like the Illuminati, or Majestic-12, or the Masons, or any one of a number of groups.
"Yeah," Xander agreed. "My time on Tranquillity wasn't exactly a holiday, and although Syrinx was nice enough to take me on a short visit to Romulus, the visit was too, well, *short* to form any lasting impressions."
Of course, Xander made that last comment in his usual off-handed manner, so the reactions of the Slayers came as a complete surprise.
"Syrinx? Captain of the *Oenone*, and accompanied Joshua Calvert on his mission to the Sleeping God?"
"Romulus? You actually visited a habitat?"
Cat shook her head ruefully. "Y'know," she said to Liz, "I should stop being surprised by anything Xander says about who he's met. Ione Saldana, Joshua Calvert and now Syrinx. Are you feeling just a tad humbled?"
Liz could only nod in mute agreement, while Xander looked on in some confusion. "Never mind, Xander," Cat continued. "So, what does the inside of a habitat look like? Are they as beautiful as they're said to be?"
"Like I said, I didn't spend a lot of time in Romulus to form a definite impression, but what I did see was-"
Just then, the first platoon of serjeants emerged from the station, and the protesters, who hadn't exactly been quiet before, jacked up the amount of noise they were making to the point where audio-discrimination programs had to be put into primary mode in order to be able to understand each other. If the noise level rose much further, conversation would be completely impossible, and they would have to resort to datavising.
With a slight effort of will, Xander shut out the noise, and concentrated on the serjeants. They were pretty much the same as the ones he'd seen on Tranquillity, but with a few differences. Tranquillity serjeants' only item of clothing was their equipment harnesses, as light exoskeleton armour and organo-metallic thermal dissipation layer - essentially a secondary nervous system with a ludicrously high metal content - was built right into their genome, a fact which made any other items of clothing or equipment quite redundant. *These* serjeants were wearing heavier armour and weapons heavier than their standard laser pistol and cortical jammer were slung over their shoulders.
Additionally, the handful of serjeants he'd seen on Tranquillity had been identical in every respect, essentially clones bred from the same DNA template. These serjeants had unique and identifiable facial features, which were wearing expressions of curiosity as they saw the arcology for the first time. For most, it was the first time they'd ever been to Earth. The handful of Edenists accompanying them - easily identifiable by their height and their smooth, confident carriage - were wearing similar expressions.
This was Earth, cradle of humanity, the planet from which the colonists of the Great Dispersal had left in order to seek a better life... and the planet from which their ancestors had been effectively exiled for their stubborn refusal to stop using bitek after Elanor's proclamation. While Eden may be the closest thing Edenism had to a spiritual home - most Edenists visited Eden at least once in their lives, in much the same way as a Christian would make a trip to the Vatican Dome of the Rome arcology or a Muslim to the Mecca arcology; although Edenists would hotly deny that it was in any way a pilgrimage, more a show of respect for the entity that have given birth to their culture - Earth still held a place in their hearts. Xander was willing to bet that the affinity band was ringing with silent conversation as the new arrivals took in their first view of the arcology.
The small official party waiting to greet them stepped forward to make introductions, carefully ignoring the crowd.
Xander was right; the affinity band *was* ringing with conversation, most of it observations about the populations density, which far exceeded that of any habitat, which generally housed less than five million people. Even the Jovian habitats, with their population of nine billion, spread that population throughout four-and-a-quarter thousand habitats, resulting in an average population of just over two million per habitat.
Population density figures were the last thing on Sinon's mind, however. He was paying more attention to the crowd that had gathered, and could tell that while most of those present were simply curious about the new arrivals, there was a significant - and noisy - minority actively protesting.
//Why are they protesting?// he mused over the affinity band. //We are obviously no threat to them, in fact we are here to help them.//
//Maybe they don't know why we are here,// Stephanie Ash replied. //After all, fear of the unknown *is* a fairly large part of the human psyche.//
//That is true,// Sinon conceded, //but their protest seems to be geared more to the fact that we are here at all. It shouldn't surprise me, really. After all, all they know about bitek is what they've been told - and religion has gone out of its way to castigate us.//
//You have a point,// Stephanie agreed. //But it's one thing to know it, and a completely different thing to experience it for yourself, and... isn't that Alexander Harris?//
//Where?//
//A little to your left, about fifty metres away.//
Sinon looked in the indicated direction, and immediately saw a dark-haired young man, flanked by two attractive young women, one to either side of him. //Yes, that is indeed Alexander Harris. And I would presume that at least one of the two women with him is a Vampire Slayer.// After a brief affinity conversation with the detachment commander, he stepped forward to the police line.
"Alexander Harris?"
The young man - Alexander - nodded. "Yeah, that's me."
"My name is Sinon. It is an honour to meet you," Sinon said, extending his hand.
Alexander's face twisted into a grimace, even as he shook the proffered hand. "I've heard that more than once. Dunno why, though - I was nobody special; Normal Guy, the Zeppo."
"I choose not to believe that," Sinon stated. "After all, you survived for five years fighting vampires without any special abilities. That in itself should suggest that you were more than simply the 'Normal Guy'."
Alexander's expression shifted to confusion. "How do you know- Never mind. Athene warned me about this, so I really shouldn't be surprised."
Although the serjeant bodies had been adapted to show the facial features of the human personality that was in charge, the range of facial expressions available was still somewhat limited. But it was enough to allow Sinon to express *most* of the surprise he felt at that statement. "Athene?" he asked. "Does she live in the Romulus habitat?"
"Yep, that's her," Alexander confirmed, looking more than a little surprised himself. "Why, do you know her or something."
"I think that is a safe assumption to make," Sinon replied wryly. "Athene is - or *was*, strictly speaking - my wife."
"Was?"
"I took part in the Mortonridge Liberation," Sinon explained. "Volunteers were requested from the various Jovian habitat multiplicity consciousnesses to operate the serjeant bodies."
"You... were dead?"
"Yes," Sinon affirmed. "Of old age, after living for more than a century and a half."
"And you - what was it again? - transferred to the neural structure of your habitat?"
"Yes."
"Wow," Alexander said with a wistful look on his face. "I bet that must be something - being able to see how your descendants get on, and all."
"It has its benefits," Sinon agreed. "But the novelty wears off after a while. Usually it's about ten or fifteen generations."
"That's still a long time, though," Alexander pointed out.
"True," Sinon agreed again. "If I may ask, when did you visit Romulus? After *Iasus*' mating flight, she didn't leave the habitat."
"Oh, Syrinx was nice enough to take me for a brief visit, and - let me guess, Syrinx is related to you in some way," Alexander added when he saw Sinon's expression change again.
Sinon nodded. "My daughter," he said simply.
One of the young women - the brunette - snickered and said, "You should do what we do - stop being surprised by the people he meets. You can add Ione Saldana and Joshua Calvert to the list of people he's met in his time here."
One of the facial expressions that Sinon missed was the ability to raise an eyebrow. "Well, I *did* just drop into Tranquillity," Alexander said, sounding slightly defensive. "And it was Ione's decision to take me to Norfolk."
The brunette snickered again. "Of course it was, Xander," she said, before turning to Sinon. "I think introductions are in order. I'm Cat Piper, and this is Liz Baker," she added, indicating the young blonde woman. "We're both Slayers."
Yes, Sinon *definitely* missed the ability to raise an eyebrow. If he had that ability, he'd probably have raised both eyebrows at that last statement. It was a pretty impressive coincidence, meeting both Slayers so quickly after arriving in Los Angeles. He was about to reply, when an affinity notice alerted him to the fact that the detachment was about to move on to their destination. "I have to go now, but it was a pleasure to meet you," he said. "Perhaps we shall meet again?"
"Given the fact that Xander here seems to meet *everyone* important," Cat said, pointing a thumb in Alexander's direction. "I wouldn't bet against it. In fact, I'm surprised he hasn't met the President of Govcentral or something yet."
As he studied the reports coming in from his minions, Jonsson was reasonably content with the way things were progressing. Yes, there was an ever-increasing number of Confederation and Edenist troops pouring into the arcology - the Sunnydale Dome in particular - they had to cover the entire arcology against attacks he *might* make. That *had* to be tying down significant numbers of troops - or would be, except for one fairly consistent thread; the fact that the number of patrols being conducted were increasing exponentially, which indicated that there were few, if any, fixed-point defensive locations being set up.
To call Jonsson merely 'opportunistic' would be an understatement, but the description would be basically correct. And here was an opportunity, waiting to be exploited, and if the timing was not *quite* perfect, a delay of a day or so would allow the conditions to improve for the tentative plan now forming in his mind. It hadn't been part of the original scheme, but he was willing to allow for modifications - after all, it was impossible to predict peoples' reactions ahead of time.
The question was, would he use some of the new assets and resources that he now had at his command? Compelling arguments could be made both for and against such a course of action. Pro: the surprise value. Plus, the authorities *had* to suspect something along those lines, given the number of personnel that had simply vanished, 'into the night and fog,' as the ancient saying went. Con: what he was planning, while significant, would hardly be decisive. Unless he caught some massive breaks in his favour, which he was most definitely *not* counting on. In fact, disruption to his enemies' operations was the intended goal, and anything else would be a bonus.
In the end, he decided to use the newly-acquired resources. It had to happen sometime, so why not now? Also, while he wasn't going to count on getting a lucky break, he certainly wasn't going to complain - or be caught unaware - if one did happen to come his way.
The planning took most of the rest of the day, and would be put into effect tomorrow.
After the serjeants had formed up and marched off, Xander turned to Cat and Liz, asking, "Now what?"
"Now, we head back," Cat said, as if stating the obvious. "But first, we stop off and get a bite to eat. The stuff they serve up at the station has a tendency to taste like somebody else has already eaten it. All hail the lowest bidder," she added sarcastically.
Xander understood what she meant. From the time that Earth's population had retreated to the arcologies until Joshua had repaired Earth's environment, the vast majority of the planet's food supply had come from artificial sources, usually recycled from things best not thought about. Real, farm-grown food had been a luxury item only the moderately wealthy could afford on anything even remotely approaching a regular basis, and even they ate the artificial stuff most of the time. Sure, some people maintained small private gardens, providing the occasional supply of fresh fruits or vegetables, but space constraints meant that such gardens were too small to allow for a regular supply.
Farms were starting to spring up, but most of the knowledge required for large-scale food production had been lost in all but a theoretical sense - except by the inhabitants of the stage-one colony worlds now sharing Earth's orbit - plus there was the simple fact that there was no way that farming on one planet, no matter how industrialised, could hope to feed forty billion people. Once the Second Dispersal was completed, it would be a different story, but even the most optimistic projections put that at *least* thirty years away, and people still had to eat in the meantime.
Of course, even though the food itself was artificially produced, the texture was identical to that of 'real' food, and sufficiently talented people could still prepare it in a way that made it nothing short of incredibly appetising, which was why there were still restaurants, catering for a variety of tastes, and dishes hadn't changed all that much since Xander's time, since taste buds still worked in the same way.
All of this was explained to Xander after he'd expressed his surprise at seeing a number of familiar names on the menu, even if the prices were a little steep. "That means that there are fresh ingredients involved," Cat explained when he pointed that out.
"Fair enough," Xander remarked as he adjusted one of the maser carbines strapped to his side in its quick-release holster. "And why the weapons, anyway? I'd say it was just a little paranoid, but then again -"
"But then again, there *are* people - or vampires, to be precise - out to get us," Cat concluded. "Which makes it not paranoia, but a healthy regard for safety in case something happens. Which it shouldn't, but no point in taking chances, right?"
Xander had to agree with the point she was making. Most of the arcology never saw direct sunlight, which allowed vampires to operate twenty-four hours a day, with the weakness of the human host bodies the only limitation. "On another subject, erm... about paying for this meal..."
"Don't worry about it, Xander; we'll cover you," Cat interrupted. "I somehow doubt that you'll have anything that can be used for legal tender," she added, smiling gently to take any possible sting out of her words.
"I wouldn't be so sure about that," Xander commented, pulling his Jovian Bank credit disc from his pocket. The purple-and-silver markings were recognisable anywhere in the Confederation, and there was only one currency that was ever loaded on one - fuesodollars. The expressions on Cat and Liz's faces were truly something to behold, and he had to struggle not to laugh, although he couldn't help smiling.
Liz was the first to recover the power of speech. "Who gave that to you?" she asked incredulously. "And how much is on there?"
"Ione, and five million fuesodollars," Xander replied, answering her questions in the same order that they'd been asked.
Liz still looked suitably awestruck, which was hardly surprising when the fact that fuesodollars were the closest thing the Confederation had to a common currency was taken into account. Backed by the Edenist energy monopoly, the fuesodollar was the hardest currency in the Confederation, and accepted *anywhere*, without any questions whatsoever. The smallish disc in Xander's hand was, by any standards, a not-so-small fortune.
Cat's expression was also one of amazement. "Liz, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"That it's Xander's treat?"
"That's what I thought you were thinking."
The group of vampires approaching the restaurant paused for a last-minute equipment check while their leader, Steven, considered his options in the light of the orders he was operating under. They were simple, and allowed him considerable leeway, once the main points were accounted for.
Cause terror and disruption, with the intention of making the police and military react. Bring back as many people for turning as possible. But do not run unnecessary risks. Simple, direct orders. An important task, probably intended to assess his judgement and command abilities, preparing the way for him to move up within Jonsson's hierarchy. For someone who'd been turned less than six months ago, his rise had been somewhat rapid, and this was his opportunity to prove himself worthy of greater power - and greater responsibility. Frankly, he was also somewhat relieved that he was able to get away from, even if only temporarily, the ambush missions. While they were generally successful, the casualty rate was high, and he'd already survived two close calls.
If he was successful in this, he would be directing operations in a section of the Dome, and not be required to accompany those missions himself. With that in mind, he drew his weapons - a TIP pistol and a cortical jammer - and nodded to the vampires under his command, who prepared their own weapons. Two of them hefted gaussguns and fired a barrage of sense-overload ordnance at their chosen target; a restaurant by the name of 'Crimson Dragon'.
Xander had agreed with good grace to pay for the meal, and had resolved to enjoy the evening - which he had, of course. After all, he *was* in the company of two attractive young women, and there had been more than one covert glance directed his way from people who were probably slightly envious of his good fortune.
It wasn't *just* the company he was enjoying, of course. Throughout the meal, they'd been trading stories - Xander expanding on the details that the debrief nanonics had missed, or that hadn't translated well to the bitek storage media or describing his week on Norfolk, while Cat and Liz told 'Slayer stories'.
"- so one day, Joshua decides to take me out horse riding. When I expressed my not unreasonable doubts, he simply grinned at me and said, 'It's not all that hard.' Fine for *him* to say - he probably had a horse-riding program or two tucked away in his neural nanonics, and he *definitely* had a lot more practice at it," Xander was saying. "But he completely ignored me and dragged me off to the stable, where he unceremoniously dumped me on the biggest damn horse I've ever seen. To start off with, it wasn't too bad - until I started getting cocky.
"Picture this - I'm galloping around the fields with Joshua, and we come to a fence. Joshua, of course, simply points his horse at the fence and clears it easily. I go, 'Right. I can do that, too,' and point my horse at the same fence. Of course, at the critical moment, the horse stops dead and I go sailing over the fence without the horse and land in a *huge* mud puddle on the other side. Naturally, Joshua found the situation *incredibly* amusing, and so did Louise when he told her about it."
Joshua and Louise weren't the only ones who found that funny, apparently, since both Cat and Liz started snickering pretty much as soon as he finished the story. Despite the indignant front he put up -it wouldn't do to let them get away with it, after all - he was feeling better than he had in a long time. This was something he'd used to do with Buffy and Willow, before they decided that he shouldn't be taking part in the Slayage, and he'd enjoyed the time he spent with his friends, talking about everything *but* Hellmouth-related stuff.
Bringing his mind away from the past - in more ways than one - was something of an effort, but he managed it in time to hear Cat saying, "-so I just looked at him and said, 'Why?' I even gave him a couple of minutes to try to answer that before I staked him. Idiot."
Xander gathered that she'd been talking about a vampire that she'd staked; one that had pleaded not to be staked, and he chuckled appreciatively at the thought of a vampire with enough intelligence to try to talk rather than simply charge. As it found out, however, that course of action didn't work, either.
It was then that he noticed that Liz wasn't telling many stories. "What's up, Liz?"
She started slightly, obviously deep in thought about something. "N-nothing."
"Why aren't you joining in the story-telling?"
"I... don't really have any to tell," she admitted quietly. "After my parents died, I didn't really have any friends, and..." Her voice trailed off, uncertain as to how to continue.
"That bastard Travers," Cat growled. "I'm beginning to *really* hate him."
"How many reasons have you got to kill him now, Cat?" Xander asked lightly.
"Five thousand, seven hundred and forty-one," Cat replied. "Of course, the more I hear about him, the more that number increases."
"I guess it's a good thing that he'll probably never come back to LA, then," Xander commented lightly, causing Liz to smile slightly.
"I just want to say 'thank you'," Liz said softly. "For, you know..."
Xander reached across the table and squeezed her hand softly. "Hey, it's no big thing," he replied. "In fact, -"
Anything Xander had been about to say was drowned out as the salvo of sense-overload ordnance punched through the windows and began detonating in dazzling flashes of light and mind-scrambling bursts of noise. Two things saved them from being incapacitated; the first was that they were tucked into a back corner of the restaurant, with the other patrons absorbing the brunt of the effects.
The second was that Xander's neural nanonics were military-grade, with the enhanced filter programs that came with it - which Xander managed to put into primary mode instinctively. The two Slayers didn't have that advantage, but the enhanced constitutions that were part and parcel of the Slayer Gift were sufficient to cope with the residual effects of the sense-overload ordnance.
Any questions as to who was responsible for this were quickly answered as vampires began to pour through the doors and windows. Even if the Slayers hadn't been able to detect that they were vampires, it would have been immediately obvious - they had their 'game faces' on, as part of their orders to spread terror.
"What now?" Cat asked, as the three of them took cover behind the table.
"It's obvious, isn't it?" Xander replied as he tipped over the table to form a crude defensive position. "We kill the vampires," he added as Liz took up position on the other side of him. The table was large, but not *that* large, and in order to properly benefit from the cover it provided, they were pretty close. "I always wanted to be the meat in a Slayer sandwich," Xander muttered as he drew his maser carbines.
Muttered, but not quietly enough. The enhanced hearing of the Slayers -even without neural nanonic programs in primary mode - was good enough to let them hear his muttered comment. As one, they both rolled their eyes. Also as one, they lightly swatted him on the back of the head. "Ow! What was that for?" he protested as he finally found the tactical program he was after and put it in primary mode, linking it with the tactical programs already running in the Slayers' neural nanonics.
Steven was satisfied with the way things were progressing. The initial salvo had done what he had intended it to do - sow fear and confusion -and now all that remained was the mopping-up, which shouldn't take too...
The crash of a table being tipped over interrupted his thoughts, and he turned his head towards the corner the noise had come from to see three people - two women and a man - huddling behind an overturned table as if it would provide protection. The idea was so ludicrous that he almost started laughing, but something was nagging away in the back of his mind. In fact, the two women looked vaguely familiar...
Then he remembered where he'd seen them before, and the urge to laugh died a quick death. There were images of the two women in prominent locations throughout Master Jonsson's headquarters, in the way one would keep pictures of one's deadliest threat around in order to serve as a reminder of what to keep focused on. And with good reason, too - both women were Slayers. The man was unfamiliar to him, but Steven wasn't about to make any assumptions.
A notion that was only reinforced when all three drew a pair of maser carbines each with quick, efficient motions and opened fire. Suddenly, the focus of the mission shifted from 'snatch-and-grab' to 'survive', and the best way to do that was to take out the opposition. The fact that that involved killing both of the Slayers active in Los Angeles was simply a pleasant bonus.
It was simple enough to issue orders to that effect - most of the vampires under his command had already recognised the threat, and were making their way towards the corner, liberal use of the cortical jammers speeding their way through the milling panicked restaurant customers. Some of the victims would undoubtedly die of suffocation, the muscles that controlled their breathing paralysed, but the majority simply became prisoners in their own bodies, unable to move.
But that would have to wait until the Slayers - and their companion -were dealt with. Already, they had eliminated half-a-dozen of his followers.
{PRIMARY MODE: Weapon-control program - maser carbine}
{PRIMARY MODE: Tactical program - small-arms engagement}
{PRIMARY MODE: Fire-control program - track-while-scan}
{PRIMARY MODE: Fire-control program - target selection}
{PRIMARY MODE: Medical monitor program - autonomous function control}
{PRIMARY MODE: Infra-red scanning module}
{DATA LINKAGE TESTED AND ESTABLISHED}
Bright green neuroiconic graphics floated at the bottom of Xander's vision, displaying a status report that he pretty much ignored. Up until now, he'd never really used the full capacity of the neural nanonics that had been implanted in the O'Neill Halo - he hadn't had to - and he suspected that he *still* wasn't using the full capacity, or even anything close to it. Of course, the latest neuroiconic message was something of an unsubtle hint.
{CAPACITY IN USE: 7.642%}
Most of his vision was overlaid with a targeting grid - heavy enough to be seen, but light enough not to obstruct his vision - with bright red outlines around the vampires who were currently rampaging in his direction. The data coming in from Cat and Liz was mainly for co-ordinating their fire, suggested tactics and status reports. He briefly wondered if they'd done what he'd done - turned over control to the fire-control programs, which meant that pretty much all he had to do was pick a target, and even that was assisted by the small data block tagged to each threat marker.
<That one.> A vampire screamed briefly as it was immolated by the focused microwaves.
<That one.> That vampire didn't even have a chance to scream.
<That one.> A precise shot, perfectly splitting the gap between two screaming, panicking people, which reduced the vampire to dust before it could realise that its human shield had moved without him.
"I know this is probably a dumb question, but has anyone called for help?" Xander called out above the sounds of combat.
"Yeah," Cat called back. "And don't worry - it's not a dumb question. I just hope help arrives pretty damned quickly, though."
Xander couldn't help but agree with that sentiment. The vampires were closing faster than they could burn them down, and it was inevitable that some would survive to reach their position.
Los Angeles Police Department Precinct Headquarters Sunnydale Dome, Los Angeles arcology 19th June, 2614
The communications technician on duty jerked upright as the emergency signal blared - datavise and audio-visual both. Silencing the alarm, he scanned the massage.
{Under attack by a large group of leeches - estimated strength, two dozen plus. Immediate assistance required. Come quickly, or don't bother showing up at all.}
The identification code attached to the massage was unfamiliar, but it was the work of a fraction of a second to run it through his neural nanonics and identify it, and when he did, his eyes widened in amazement. *Both* Slayers, along with Alexander Harris, were being attacked by a large group of vampires in a restaurant. Calling up the template for an 'officer in distress' message, he inserted the location and sent it as a general broadcast, highest priority, which meant that any unit in the vicinity not in immediate danger themselves was obligated to respond with all possible speed.
Acknowledgements began to come in, and he noticed that the nearest unit was a Marine patrol about three minutes away. He hoped they would arrive in time as he relayed that fact to the Slayers.
"Help's on the way!" Cat called out as she burned down another vampire.
"I hope it arrives in time," Liz replied, unconsciously echoing the thoughts of the communications technician.
"Three minutes or so," Cat said. "That's all we have to hold out for." She surveyed the wreckage that had once been a restaurant. It was mostly silent - only a few of the other patrons were moaning; the others were unable to - and the vampires had temporarily stopped their attack in order to organise themselves. Attacking unorganised, their numbers had been reduced by a dozen or so - <Which still left another dozen or so,> Cat thought sourly.
"We can do this," Xander said quietly, causing both Slayers to look at him with some surprise. His expression was still reasonably calm -although both suspected that facial-expression override programs played a major part in that - and his quietly stated confidence was enough to give them hope that they'd survive the situation. Not that they'd been overly pessimistic, of course - but now they were more confident themselves.
"Gaussgunners!" Liz called.
Xander and Cat looked in the direction she was indicating, and Cat began to swear softly before all three poured fire in the direction of the heavy weapons operators, fractionally before they opened fire themselves.
The fact that they survived the next few seconds could be attributed to the way the gaussgunners flinched slightly before opening fire, sending their first few rounds off-target. That, and the fact that they didn't survive to fire more than those first few rounds. Xander and the Slayers didn't escape unscathed, though.
A fragmentation round detonated in front of the table, and only its robust construction prevented it from being blown to splinters instantly. Liz yelped - more in surprise than pain - as a carbotanium fragment scored across the side of her face, leaving a nasty-looking but superficial cut, and a second, smaller, fragment buried itself in her right shoulder, causing her to drop the maser carbine held in that hand.
"Liz!" Xander shouted, his voice betraying his concern.
"I'm all right," she replied, the pain easing as her neural nanonics erected axon blocks across the nerves involved, and reported back to her. Somewhat clumsily, she recovered the maser carbine she'd dropped -thanking God that it had no recoil - and turned to thank Xander for his concern. What she saw... "Xander!" she exclaimed, horrified.
He was a *mess*, blood trickling down the side of his neck, his left arm and the right side of his chest.
"Nah, I'm fine," he assured her. "These are just scratches," he added with a lopsided grin.
Liz felt a sudden rush of warmth run through her body, but before she could even think about it, Cat called, "Guys! I hate to interrupt, but we've got a more pressing concern at the moment!"
Almost as if that was a signal, the surviving vampires hurled themselves from behind their cover and at the trio of vampire hunters, who immediately began firing with metronomic precision.
<That one. That one. That one.>
Despite the short distance they had to cover, eight of them were still burned down in the seconds it took to cover that distance. Of course, that still left six able to crash into their improvised defensive position.
{PRIMARY MODE: Unarmed-combat program}
{WEAPON IMPLANT ACTIVATED}
{WARNING: AT enhancement implants off-line. Adjusting to compensate}
As he lunged at the blonde Slayer, Steven still found time to wonder where it all went wrong. What should have been a fairly simple abduction mission had been thrown into chaos by the presence of the Slayers at his chosen target. Even the man with them had proven to be not much less lethal, which lead Steven to believe that he was a Confederation Marine, given the prowess he showed with the weapons he carried.
It was apparent that the Slayer was injured - the blood running down her face and the fact that her right arm didn't seem to be operating to well were obvious - but the stake held in her *left* hand was rammed into the other vampire who'd joined him in attacking her, reducing her to dust. He batted aside the stake she thrust at him with her right hand, and drove an overhand right into her jaw, the impact sending her flying into a wall where she slumped obviously unconscious. Decisions as to her fate - whether he should return her to the headquarters for interrogation and turning, or simply kill her - could wait until the other two had been dealt with. He turned towards the Marine-
Just in time to hear an anguished shout of, "LIZ!" as the Marine shoved his palm at Steven's chest. He had a brief moment to wonder as to the purpose of that action, and then his world dissolved into pain, and he dimly felt his body fly through the air before slamming into the same wall he'd sent the Slayer - Liz - flying into a second before.
The two vampires that charged Xander were big, and *exceptionally*stupid. All he had to do was draw the two stakes from his pockets and hold them straight out, point-first, and momentum did the rest.
As the two clouds of dust settled to the ground, he turned towards Liz -not understanding the impulse that drove him to turn to her aid, as opposed to Cat's - just in time to see her stake one of the vampires attacking her. The other parried the thrust she aimed in his direction neatly, but the blow that sent Liz sprawling wasn't as neat.
Unthinking rage flooded Xander's mind at the vampire turned to face him. A Slayer had been hurt on his watch, and ignoring the recommendations of his tactical programs, he shoved an open palm at the vampire, connecting with its chest. The vampire had just long enough for its expression to become curious before Xander activated the weapon implant. Electricity flowed through the cells implanted in his arm, and out through the wart-like organic conductors implanted in his fingers and palm. There was a sharp *CRACK*, and the smell of burnt flesh arose briefly before the vampire was slammed into the nearest wall.
Cat, of course, had already dealt with the two vampires attacking her -the benefit of her longer experience as a Slayer, combined with the fact that the injuries she'd sustained from the gaussgun round were less severe - and she grabbed his arm and restrained him. "XANDER!"
"Let me go, Cat," Xander said flatly, not taking his eyes from the dazed vampire.
"No, Xander! We need to question this guy before we stake him," Cat insisted, tightening her grip. "Don't you think it'd be a good idea to find out what this bunch were up to?" She felt relieved as Xander's unthinking anger began to dissipate. She *really* didn't want to have to forcibly restrain him, Slayer strength or not.
"Sorry," Xander apologised. "It's just that..."
"You were wondering if she's alright," Cat completed. "That's okay," she added. "I just checked her neural nanonics, and apart from being unconscious - which is nothing to be taken lightly, granted - she'll be fine. Although she'll have a headache when she wakes up," she concluded with a small grin. At that moment, she heard a brief spatter of fire from outside the restaurant, before a dozen Marines burst in, armed to the canines and spoiling for a fight. They looked vaguely disappointed when they realised that the fight was over.
As a medical nanonic was being applied to the small cut on her face -probably unnecessary, given her enhanced healing - Cat studied the scene being played out less than five metres away. Xander, with medical nanonics adorning all of the injuries he'd sustained, including a leg wound he'd neglected to mention, was hovering protectively over Liz as a Marine medic used a diagnostic block to ascertain the extent of her injuries, before commencing treatment.
It wasn't often that she had to restrain someone else in the throes of anger - normally, *she* was the one who tended to let her emotions get the better of her, and she found the situation nicely ironic, which caused her to chuckle lightly and mutter, "Note to self: apologise to Will for the grief I've given him."
The Marine, having finished applying the medical nanonic, looked at her with a quizzical expression. "Excuse me?" he asked politely.
"Never mind," Cat replied. "I was talking to myself," she added before returning her gaze to Xander. It was obvious that he was deeply worried, more so than Cat. It wasn't that she was less caring; just more confident that Liz would recover swiftly. Xander wasn't convinced, though, and although he managed not to pester the medic with questions, and even managed to stay out of the medic's way, she could tell that he *wanted* to.
But *why* was he acting like this? After all, he'd only met them the previous day, which was too short to form any deep-rooted attachments, unless Xander was able to make snap judgements about people, based on brief acquaintance. There was another possible motivation... either way, it was something that she'd have to talk to Will about. Despite the journals that had survived from the early twenty-first century and the data from his debrief nanonics; she knew that she probably didn't understand the thought processes of one Alexander Harris, founder of the Slayerettes, all that well.
Given that she tended to be more in favour of direct action, leaving the research stuff to Will and Amanda, that was hardly surprising, and Alex - <The *other* Alex,> she thought with a small grin, wondering how they were going to tell the two apart, given that they looked fairly similar - tended to be pretty much the same, probably a result of his Marine training. 'Knuckle-dragging Marine,' she'd tease him, to which he would respond, 'Ook,' in imitation of the gorilla they'd seen in the Los Angeles zoo.
Her thoughts were interrupted when Liz's eyes fluttered open. "Are you alright?" Xander asked, voice full of concern, which was a pretty silly question in Cat's opinion.
"I've got the *worst* headache... no, it's gone now," she added as the painkiller infused into her bloodstream began to take effect. "But thank you for asking," she concluded with a gentle smile that was solely for Xander's benefit, and one that lit up her beautiful face. Cat wasn't that way inclined, but she had to admit that it did wonders. It *certainly* had an effect on Xander.
"Hey, what are friends for?" he asked, gently touching her uninjured shoulder.
Liz levered herself into a sitting position - ignoring the protests of the medic in the process - and hugged Xander before planting a gentle kiss on his cheek. "Thank you, anyway," she said softly. The resultant expression on Xander's face was one that Cat found quite amusing.
"What do you want us to do with this guy?" the patrol commander asked, interrupting Cat's thoughts once again.
"Bring him along with us," Cat replied. "There are probably some people with some pointed questions for him."
"Probably with pointed implements, too," the corporal said with a chuckle, before going over to the vampire and ensuring that it was unable to struggle by the simplest possible way - kicking it in the head - before shackling its wrists and ankles. "We'll wait for the medical services to arrive, and then we'll be off."
Steven returned to full consciousness to find himself secured to something. Quite effectively, too, since his tentative struggles got him precisely nowhere. Any further action on his part was forestalled when he heard a voice announce, "Ah, good. I see you're awake. Now we can get down to business."
The voice had been full of barely restrained anger, and the promise of nasty things in the future. Turning his head - the only part of his body that he was able to move - Steven saw a sandy-haired man glaring at him. Standing a little further back was the brown-haired man that he had assumed was a Marine. While the nearer man's expression was angry -furious would probably be a better way to describe it - the Marine's expression was...
Flat. Completely blank, with no life in it at *all* as if Steven was nothing more than an insect that he had deigned not to crush - for now. The other man continued, in the same angry voice, "You tried to kill two young women I almost regard as my own daughters and a young man who I greatly respect. I've got some questions for you, and if you answer, your end will be quick and painless. If not, it'll be not so quick, and *quite* painful."
Steven had no trouble imagining what would happen if he didn't cooperate, an impression reinforced when the Marine spoke in a dead, flat tone. "Personally, I don't give a flying fuck which choice you make, since I'm the one who gets to carry out the end result." He paused for a moment before continuing. "Although I'd probably be inclined to hope that you're uncooperative, since I've got some anger issues to work out, and you'll do nicely."
Although Steven was technically dead, and thus, already cold, he felt a chill shiver run down his spine. The chill in the Marine's voice wasn't all that much less - if at all - than could be found in Master Jonsson's voice when he was in a foul mood, and the only reason Steven hadn't been reduced to a pile of dust was that Master Jonsson's ire had been aimed elsewhere. But surely they were bluffing, right? They were the *good guys*, and one of the things that separated those who wore white hats from the black hats - ancient expressions, the origins of which had been long lost - was that they didn't do the sort of things the black hats routinely indulged in.
Fifteen minutes later, thoroughly disabused of that notion as the Marine applied holy water and crosses to carefully selected parts of his body, Steven was babbling answers to whatever questions were put to him, even though his knowledge was limited to Master Jonsson's immediate tactical objectives, and he knew nothing of the greater design. Not that that mattered much.
When all of his interrogators' questions were answered, it came almost as a relief when the Marine shoved a stake into his chest. In the fraction of a second he had before crumbling into dust, he had time to be grateful that it was over, and he wouldn't have to face the wrath of Master Jonsson for caving in-
"What did he have to say?" Amanda asked as Will and Xander returned from the room they'd used to interrogate the vampires. A couple of technological toys had soundproofed the room, so that the vampire's screams while he'd been... stubborn... hadn't leaked out to disturb the rest of the station's occupants. While they mightn't shed any tears over anything that was done to a vampire, ingrained constraints against torture would have left them feeling ambivalent - at best - about the process.
"Not a lot that we didn't already know, or hadn't already worked out for ourselves," Xander replied, brushing dust from his hands. "But we managed to pry one useful piece of information from his neural nanonics."
"Apart from the fact that vampires *can* use neural nanonics in the first place," Will pointed out.
"There is that, yeah," Xander admitted. "But what I was referring to was this," he continued as an image appeared on one of the wallscreens. "Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Big Bad - Master Henrik Jonsson." The man on the screen was coldly handsome, with narrow features that reminded Xander somewhat of Spike, an impression reinforced by the pale blonde hair and even paler blue eyes. "Steven - the vampire we... oh, what was the phrase again, Will?"
"'Put to the question,' I think it is," Will answered.
"That's the one. Anyway," Xander continued, "he doesn't know a lot about Jonsson, other than that's he's old and, quote, 'scares the shit out of us', unquote, which seems to be a requirement for the job," he concluded, taking a seat next to Liz. Cat was on Liz's other side, ensuring that no complications arose from her brief unconsciousness as instructed by the medic when Liz insisted on not being put under observation overnight.
"It was also obvious," Will continued, picking up the thread, "that he knew nothing of Jonsson's greater designs. However, given that up until now, it is apparent that Jonsson has been working according to a carefully thought-out plan, I have no doubt that whatever the ultimate goal is, it will almost certainly be apocalyptic, if not in the literal sense of the word."
"So, to sum up," Cat put in, "Steven was just a minion who knew nothing more than he had to, and whatever Jonsson's brewing will be a doozy."
"That is, in essence, correct."
"Oh, *great*," Cat grumped. "The biggest threat since Glorificus, and we've got no fucking idea of what he's planning. I'd make sure my insurance was paid up, but I get the feeling that there won't be too many survivors to collect the payout if things go wrong."
"Excuse me," Xander interrupted Cat's incipient rant on the unfairness of the universe, "but would someone mind telling me who Glorificus was?"
Cat's eyes widened. For a moment, she'd forgotten where - and more importantly, *when* - Xander was from. "Shit," she said with feeling.
"What you said," Amanda agreed.
It wasn't often that Cat saw William rendered almost completely speechless, but now was one of those times.
And to think it had been caused by a fairly innocent question, too...
Xander looked from person to person, taking in their expressions. "Why do I get the feeling that that wasn't a good question to ask?"
William rallied in time to answer that question. "It's not so much that, as..." his voice trailed off, due to his uncertainty as to how to proceed.
"I'm guessing the reason you're hesitating is that Glorificus - whatever *that* is - is something that happens during my lifetime, right?" Xander asked, cutting to the chase.
"It's not that we don't *want* to answer," Amanda contributed, "as we don't know what the consequences will be. Yes, Glorificus is something that happens during your lifetime. But that's all I'm going to say on the subject."
Xander opened his mouth to protest, but shut it again when Cat reached around behind Liz and lightly smacked the back of his head. "Don't bother trying, Xander," she told him. "Amanda can be pretty damned stubborn when she gets in the mood."
"So can I," Xander replied, but he decided to let the matter drop. It wasn't as if they didn't *already* have enough to worry about.
<It's a good thing you decided not to press the matter,> William thought. <Yes, we knew that you'd disappeared for quite a while - but not where you'd gone - and we also knew pretty much to the hour when you returned to Sunnydale. But we can't tell you any of this, for fear of causing irreparable damage to the time line. In fact, gross damage must have been avoided, since we *know* that you make it home safely, and we exist... and that there *is* a history beyond your lifetime. Or something.>
It was William's first serious foray into temporal mechanics, and it was giving him a monstrous headache.
"What other information did you pry from the vampire before you dusted him?" Alex asked, bringing everyone back to the topic at hand.
"What? Oh, yes," William started, brief confusion at the sudden topic shift dissipating. "There was really only one other piece of useful information - the location of Jonsson's base."
"Well, I'd call *that* pretty damned useful," Cat remarked. "So, why haven't you reported it to the guys in charge yet?"
"Settle down, Catherine," William cautioned with a slight smile as the energetic Slayer seemed ready to leap to her feet and dash off to the operations room. "For one thing, it's been less than five minutes since we... received it. And for another," he continued, his smile blossoming into a full-fledged grin, "I have already passed the information on. Neural nanonics are useful things, are they not?"
Cat slumped back into the couch. "Fine," she grumped. "But don't think that I'm not going to get you back for that, William Goldsmith," she added in a warning tone.
"I await the event with trepidation," William replied as everyone else chuckled lightly. "Back to the subject at hand, though, there was one piece of warning advice that I felt compelled to add to the information."
"That we don't know if that base is Jonsson's main base or not," Alex said in realisation.
"Precisely. After all, we already know of at least one occasion when Jonsson has shifted his base of operations. The fact that he did so without being detected seems to indicate that the location he moved to was already prepared for his use, which would seem to indicate that he has other alternate locations to operate from."
"That, and he used the utility tunnels to move at least some of his equipment," Amanda pointed out. "After his last headquarters was raided by the Light Bringers, the CSI guys went over the place, and found a booby-trapped hatch leading into the utility tunnels, along with signs that it had been used." She shrugged before continuing, "Probably not overly relevant to the situation, but something to keep in mind, as well."
"So what are we going to do?" Xander asked.
"About Jonsson's base? The military authorities will be sending in a reconnaissance mission as soon as an appropriate force can be prepared," William replied. "In fact, I have received a request for one of us to accompany the raid. Alex, I believe you would be best suited for that task," he continued.
"Sure," Alex agreed. "It'll give me something to do."
"Amanda and myself will continue to assist in the analysis of the information gathered by the patrols, and answer any questions that might arise. Xander, I believe the inhibitions on your AT implants will be lifted shortly?"
Xander nodded. "Within the next few hours, according to my nanonics."
"Excellent," William replied with a nod. "In that case, I believe you should commence training with Catherine and Elizabeth once that happens."
"What, right away?" Xander asked in surprise. "Come *on*, not even Giles made us train right after being in a fight. And besdies," he added, stifling a yawn, "I'm too tired, thanks to that wonderful implant of mine. I guess that's what the technician meant when he warned me about overusing it."
William nodded. "I understand, Xander. In fact, I didn't mean for you to start training right away. Tomorrow morning, once the medical packages have been removed, I suggest you start with a light workout."
"With two Slayers? Your definition of 'light' obviously differs from mine, then."
"Don't worry, Xander," Cat said with a smile. "We'll go easy on you."
"Why am I not reassured by that?"
The pieces were in place, and the plan was about to be put into motion.
Not *the* plan, but something that would at least increase his chances of pulling it off; the preliminary attacks to draw off any local reaction forces, and then the main strikes - against the four precinct headquarters covering the area of the Hellmouth. Even if they all failed, the Govcentral and Confederation authorities would have no choice but to increase the amount of forces covering their own headquarters, which would leave less to conduct patrols and react when the main event started. And once that happened, the unimaginable *power*of the being he would have shackled to his service...
Short of plastering the area with antimatter planetbusters, there would be no way of stopping it.
The fact that no-one had known the exact location of the Hellmouth until he had rediscovered it was somewhat puzzling, though. Surely, that sort of information should have been kept closely held; by the Council of Watchers, if no-one else?
Not that it mattered now. With a single thought, he set the plan into motion.
{Begin.}
The medic datavised another disengagement order, and Xander felt a slight tingle in his arm as the last of the medical packages disengaged itself and was lifted from the unmarked flesh below. Dressed in shorts and a t-shirt - both to allow easy access to the nanonic packages, and because he was about to start training - he watched the process with interest.
"You know," the medic commented as she placed the rubbery green nanonic onto a tray, "you could have done this yourself."
"What, and miss out on having the pleasure of your company?" Xander replied with a grin.
"Cute. Now the less fun bit - testing. Can I have nerve channel access to your arms and legs?"
"Is this the bit where you say, 'Trust me, I'm a doctor?'" Xander asked, slightly warily. "And just what does that mean?"
"Well, I'm not a doctor, so I can't say that," the medic replied with a grin of her own. "And I'm asking for... control, basically, of your arms and legs so I can run diagnostics on your new implants." When she saw the expression on Xander's face, she chuckled and added, "Don't worry, I won't make you do anything embarrassing. Besides," she continued with a glance at Cat and Liz, who were watching the process with some interest of their own, "I don't think your friends would *let* me do anything like that."
"Oh. Okay, then," Xander said after a few seconds' thought. "How do I do that?"
The process was easy enough to demonstrate and, a few seconds later, Xander was watching in bemusement as, for the first time in his life, his limbs were moving under someone else's control. After a few minutes of that, the medic announced her satisfaction, and closed off her control. "I suggest you carry out a program of light exercise for the next few days until you've adjusted to your new implants."
"I think I've got that covered," Xander said lightly.
"I'd say you have, too," the medic replied. Anything else she might have said was interrupted by a priority datavise. {Heavy vampire attack in our AO. Reaction force, deploy immediately, to the following location...}
"Things could get ugly," Liz commented worriedly.
"The reaction force will be able to handle it, or call in reinforcements if they can't," the medic commented as she packed away her equipment.
"There is that," Xander replied, "but I've got a bad feeling about this. What if it's a ploy to draw off the reaction force so Jonsson can hit another target? Such as... well, here?"
"Don't say things like that, Xander!" Cat exclaimed mock-dramatically, giving his arm a light swat. "Do you want to jinx us or something?"
"Of course not," Xander replied with a grin, "but your reaction was worth it, though."
"Ooo, you're going to *so* pay for that," Cat growled. "What do you think, Liz?"
"Absolutely," Liz replied, and both young women each grabbed an arm and started hauling Xander off towards the training room.
"Is this where I say something along the lines of 'I regret that I have but one life to lay down for my country'?"
The ex-Confederation Marine surveyed the positions the vampires under his command had taken up and nodded in satisfaction. Getting so close to the precinct house without being detected had been tricky, but the results were worth it. Six hundred vampires - what he persisted in calling a 'short battalion' - with combat armour and heavy weapons were in position to attack.
He contemplated how to make the first move. He could just march a force up to the doors, trusting that the fact that they were dressed in Confederation Marine-issue armour and were carrying Confederation Marine-issue weapons to fool the police and soldiers still there that they had friendly forces approaching and using them to force an entry. Of course, the automatic sensors would detect their complete lack of body temperature pretty quickly, which would cost them the elements of surprise.
The option he eventually decided on was the simplest - superior fire-power. A volley of light armour-piercing missiles with electron-explosive warheads seemed about right.
{Fire.}
Xander had just completed a series of light warm-up exercises - well, light for a Slayer, but he'd had no real difficulties. "Hey, this is pretty neat," he said, taking a small sip of water. "I never used to be able to do stuff like that."
"Yeah, AT implants can be pretty useful," Cat remarked. "For a while, Will and myself were discussing whether it'd be worth me getting some, but we decided against it in the end. Not only is the process hideously expensive, but the Slayer enhancements are probably equivalent to a pretty high level of enhancement by itself, and there's no way of telling what'd happen if AT implants were added to the mix. In fact-"
Whatever the 'in fact' was, it would go forever unsaid as the building rocked to a series of stunning impacts. Even though the training room was buried almost at the heart of the tower, the three of them still managed to hear the muffled explosions.
"Were those what I thought they were?" Liz asked in concern.
"Depends," Xander replied. "If you think they were light electron-explosive warheads, then yes, they *were* what they thought you were. We're under attack," he added, somewhat unnecessarily. "Damn, I hate being right like this."
Just then, they all received an emergency datavise. {Condition Red. We are under heavy attack by a battalion-sized group of bloodsuckers. All personnel; collect weapons and report to your emergency duty stations. I repeat-}
"Well, we don't have assigned emergency locations," Liz pointed out as they headed towards the secure room that had been turned over to the Slayerettes as an equipment storage room. "So, where do we go?"
"I think we'll be more effective as a roving group," Xander replied as they ran at a brisk jog that would be a sprint for someone without AT implants or Slayer enhancements. "One with heavy weapons, to boot."
Surprise may have been total, but the Confederation Marine commanders had thought about contingency plans for a lot of scenarios - even the ones considered to be almost rampant paranoia by the LAPD. One of those, of course, covered the possibility of the precinct houses being attacked by vampires, and steps had been taken to cover that eventuality.
Since there hadn't been much time since the plans had been developed and implemented, not all of the automated weapons positions had been put into place. If they had been, the only possible way to take the LAPD out of the picture would have been to destroy the precinct houses with stand-off fire, which was an option that had been carefully considered, but discarded. The odds of reinforcements arriving were something approaching certainty, which meant that any disruption caused would be only of a temporary nature.
Needless to say, the fact that that was all Jonsson was *expecting* had not been passed on to the assault commanders, which made them, in effect, expendable shock troops whose loss wouldn't be regretted for too long. After all, there were more where they came from.
Hence, the use of stand-off fire to beat down any exterior defences, followed by a storm of the building to kill any survivors. Although that meant that casualties would be heavy, the assault commander viewed that as a worthy price to pay for a successful outcome.
When he judged that the suppressive fire had done its job, he sent out the next datavised order. {Stage Two. Go.} Hefting an X-ray laser rifle, he leapt out from the building he'd been using as a command post...
... and was nearly vaporised by an incendiary grenade. Immediately shifting into a duck-and-weave run intended to throw off the aim of any surviving gunners - human or AI - he considered the fact that this might not end up being as easy as he'd first thought.
Oh well, if the authorities had set contingency plans into plans, he had plans of his own. {Delta-Four. Execute!}
More than half of the weapons emplacements that had been actually put into operation had been taken out by the opening support fire, but that still left quite a few left, and under the control of their AI and human supervisors, the turret-mounted heavy masers and gaussguns swivelled in two dimensions, locked onto their targets assigned by pre-programmed parameters, and opened fire.
Targeting lasers sought out individual vampires, and close behind were powerful bursts of focused microwave radiation - enough to immolate a vampire with less than a second of sustained fire - while the gaussguns pumped out incendiary grenades that tore huge holes in the attacking force. Dozens of vampires were reduced to dust, but there were still hundreds left.
And even as they were being decimated, they were still getting closer to the embattled precinct house. Then *their* contingency plan kicked in. Vampires toting gaussguns and their heavy ammunition backpacks selected firing positions and started hurling armour-piercing rounds back at the weapons positions, methodically taking them out one by one, before switching their fire to the handful of defensive positions that had been occupied, silencing them as well.
By the time the last of those had been silenced, the vampire assault force had been reduced by almost half. But that still left three hundred vampires to force entry into the building with their EE breaching charges. A few more fell; picked off by snipers, but since each shot made by one of the snipers was answered by a deluge of fire, that soon stopped.
The EE charges made short work of the doors and a few carefully selected places in the walls, and the vampires poured into the building, the lead ranks firing from the hip as they charged, in order to first, suppress and then kill, any surviving defender at the entry points. More vampires were dusted, but for every one eliminated, there was over a dozen close behind. Swarming like particularly pissed-off insects, they quickly spread out, intending to kill anything that wasn't them.
And ran into the hard core of the defences.
Inquiring minds had turned their attention to what other sorts of weaponry would be effective against vampires. One result of such research was about to get an unexpected and very thorough field-testing. A newly-designed round for a gaussgun, it was basically a hollow cylinder packed with ball-bearings and a bursting charge.
Canister ammunition had made a comeback.
It was *sophisticated* canister, though. A customised fire-control subroutine in the weapon-control program of the wielder analysed the range and target density and adjusted the distance at which the bursting charge detonated so as to have the most optimal spread of the ball-bearings. At close range, this was often as soon as the round left the barrel.
The Confederation Navy Intelligence Service had also contributed one of their lesser-known pieces of equipment. A microscopic lump of nanonic circuitry, when fired at its target, it immediately sought of the nearest major nerve cluster and, to put it simply, overwhelmed the nervous system with electrical energy. There had been doubts about its effectiveness, but when the fact that vampires felt pain, and thus, *must* have had some sort of functional nervous system, the doubters were silenced. Besides, it was worth a shot, wasn't it?
When these were added to the more conventional weapons already available, the hard-point defensive locations set up within the precinct house became a *lot* more effective.
Which meant that instead of being a one-sided slaughter, the battle was much more level.
But not *completely* level.
Xander swore as the vampire he was pouring fire at from both maser carbines kept coming, despite the thermal dissipation grid on its combat suit glowing first red, then white as it tried to dump the massive thermal load he was dumping into it. Finally, it overloaded and the vampire was immolated. "Finally!" he exclaimed in irritation as he dropped the carbines to dangle from the slings in order to check the remains of the defensive location for any survivors. Judging by the devastation - the marks left by heavy explosives and energy weapons fire were quite distinctive - he doubted there would be any, but he had to check.
"Alex, Amanda. Cover us, please," he ordered absently as he gestured for Cat and Liz to assist him with the search. In his preoccupation, he missed the looks and shrugs the Slayerettes exchanged before the complied. Through the detachment imparted by nausea-control and tranquilliser programs, he noted that the defenders had fought hard before being dragged down. It *definitely* wasn't a pretty sight.
"I don't know what's more disturbing," Cat commented as she gave up looking for anyone who was still alive. The simplest method was to send out a query-response signal - a 'ping' - which would be automatically returned by any functional set of neural nanonics. Since only death or deliberate destruction made a set of nanonics stop working, the fact that there had been only four answering pings was indicative that there were no survivors. "The fact that Jonsson was able to muster so many vampires for this attack, or that so many of them are former military."
"Well, I guess it answers the question of what happened to all those patrols that disappeared," Xander replied as he also gave up looking for survivors and started collecting heavier weapons. <Waste not, want not.>
"I suppose so," Liz remarked as she watched him heft a gaussgun with little apparent effort and run a quick diagnostic on it.
"Yeah, but this can't be all of them... can it?" Alex wondered.
"Probably not," Xander replied as he checked the ammunition backpack, noting with a grimace the fact that it was nearly full. According to the load listing, it was a nearly equal mix of fragmentation, canister and incendiary. That last one caused him to raise an eyebrow. Using incendiary rounds inside a building that you were in was generally a bad idea, since it had a tendency to burn the building down around you. But it *would* explain the hint of smoke in the air.
Shrugging, he slipped on the backpack, and cradled the gaussgun in a tactical carry position, absently noting that he'd added seventy kilograms to his load - thirty kilograms of weapon, and another forty of ammunition - without really noticing it. Datavising the fire-control processor to change the ammunition mix so that the first three rounds of any burst he fired would be canister, with an equal mix of fragmentation and incendiary after that. That should do nicely to take care of any group of vampires they happened to run into.
"So where to next, O Fearless Leader?" Amanda asked.
"Wherever there's trouble," Xander replied with a shrug. "It's not as if it's going to be hard to find."
The next half-hour would always be a blur - without running an active memory search, anyway - of confused fighting, screams and running to the next fight. Before too long, it became necessary to bring audio-discrimination programs on-line to protect their hearing from the concussion of near-constant gaussgun fire. And once, the fighting got to close-quarters, which allowed Xander to make the discovery that at thirty-kilogram weapon makes a *fine* bludgeon.
But eventually, the vampires started pulling back, although Xander suspected that that was of their own accord, rather than because they were being driven back.
As it turned out, he was entirely correct. The assault commander had just received a datavised warning that reinforcements for the beleaguered police station were on the way. Mentally shrugging as he burned down another police officer, he sent the withdrawal command. {Bug-out Boogie. Extraction route Tango-Three.}
As acknowledgements came in, he wondered how Jonsson would take the news. If he'd been expecting too much from the assaults, he'd probably feel... disappointed. And those who disappointed Jonsson tended to come to gruesome ends. The assault commander shrugged again; it wasn't as if there was a great deal he could do about it.
As the first units of the relief force arrived, Xander let the gaussgun fall to the floor with a soft 'THUD', and leaned up against the wall behind him as he finally managed to find time to pay attention to what his medical program was reporting. In all, he'd probably been quite lucky; the only injuries he'd suffered were a few minor cuts and some mild surface burns caused by near-misses from masers and TIP weapons, nothing serious.
Cat and Liz also dropped their weapons and leant up against the same wall, coughing lightly in a reaction to the smoke they'd inhaled during the fighting. "What was that all about?" Cat asked in between coughs.
"I'm not sure," Xander replied, his expression contemplative. "But somehow, I get the feeling that this was more of a spoiler raid than anything else. Something intended to reduce the amount of patrols by causing us to increase the number of troops held back in defence." His expression became somewhat bleaker as he surveyed the almost-destroyed lobby, which had become a makeshift field hospital where the walking wounded tended to their more-seriously injured colleagues and friends.
"Possibly," Alex replied, taking in the scene himself. "But he's got to know that we can call in more troops from the Confederation. That means we can pretty much flood the Dome with troops."
"Up until a point, anyway," Liz countered. "But if there's one thing we've learned about Jonsson is that he isn't stupid. All this raid achieved was to confirm that he'd taken Marines and turned them, and we'd suspected that before."
"Time," Xander said suddenly. "He wants us to waste time, which probably means that whatever he's planning is about to happen."
"That's as may be," William said as he entered the room. "But since we have next to no idea of what Jonsson is actually planning, knowing that doesn't actually help us a great deal."
"True," Amanda said thoughtfully, "but it's a place to start. I'll get some questors formatted and let them loose on the information we have, see what turns up."
"Joy. Research party," Xander said warily.
"Nope," Amanda replied. "Questors are search programs, and all of our information is stored in our neural nanonics. We'll just turn them loose and see what happens."
"*All* of your information is stored in your neural nanonics?" Xander asked. "How much storage space do these things *have*?"
"Mine are a specialist researcher's set," William replied. "I would have to look it up to be certain, but it is something on the order of several hundred terabytes of storage space."
Xander was astounded. Willow had told him about the new hard drive she had bought for her computer. He hadn't fully understood most of it, but one thing he remembered was her talking about 'one hundred gig' of hard drive space, and being impressed by it. To hear that neural nanonics had several *thousand* times that amount of storage was... awe-inspiring, even for someone as relatively ignorant as himself. "And that's what I've got, right?"
"Something like that, Xander," William agreed.
"And how much would a set of these go for, normally?"
"Depends on the exact model," Alex replied. "What sort have you got?"
"I'm not really sure," Xander said. "The tech implanting them said something like 'Kulu Corporation ANI-5000', or something like that."
If the expression on Amanda's face was anything to go by, she was obviously and deeply impressed. "Those are *the* most powerful neural nanonics currently available on the market," she said in a suitably awe-stricken tone of voice. "That's the model used by the King of Kulu himself. And a set costs about seventeen thousand fuseodollars."
Xander whistled at that. He still couldn't quite work out how much a fuseodollar was worth in comparison to the American dollar, but seventeen thousand of *anything* was serious money. And Ione had given that to him as a gift... and the implants, plus five *million* more fuseodollars.
Well, she *was* the head of state of an incredibly wealthy nation, so it wasn't as if she couldn't afford it, but to be the recipient of such largesse was somewhat unsettling. With an effort, he dragged his thoughts back to the subject at hand. "Is the raid on that base of Jonsson's still on?"
Alex's expression became semi-vacant for a moment as he datavised a query. "Yep," he replied. "In fact, it's become even more important now."
"Let me guess, as a way of retaliation as well as possible information-gathering?"
As the reports from the assaults came in, Jonnson smiled. Despite the obvious nervousness of the strike commanders - those that had survived, anyway - he couldn't be more pleased with the results. Heavy losses had been inflicted on his enemies, and though he had suffered losses just as heavy, he could increase his numbers far more easily.
Things really were starting to come together.
And it was time to open the third act of this drama, the last of the preliminaries before the main act.
All across the Sunnydale Dome, a lot of things happened.
Over the last week, utility mechanoids and their human supervisors had been seen making repairs and adjustments to the basic infrastructure of the arcology. Since that was a common sight, no-one had paid any attention to them.
It was ludicrously easy for Jonsson to slip some of his minions among them, placing improvised anti-personnel explosive devices in some of the most heavily-trafficked areas of the Dome. And, upon the receipt of the detonation command, the dozens of bombs exploded, sending shrapnel through the crowded areas, resulting in thousands of deaths and injuries.
At the same time, small groups of heavily-armed vampires began attacking almost at random. The authorities *knew* that the intention was to force them to disperse their forces, but they *had* to respond. They tried to comfort themselves with the fact that the process of sending in more troops had been fully smoothed out, and that thousands more were arriving by the hour, especially serjeants.
It was cold comfort, though, when compared to the reports of civilian deaths flooding in, deaths they could do little to prevent. It seemed that Jonsson had switched from a guerilla campaign to one of pure terrorism, and none of them knew why.
Actually, they were fairly close to the mark when they were thinking that Jonsson was forcing them to disperse their forces even more, and it was a campaign intended to last for seventy-two hours, and end with the culmination of Jonsson's plan, a plan that had been almost a quarter or a century in the making.