DISCLAIMER: All things Buffy are the creation and property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy Productions, and so forth. All things non-Buffy are the creation and property of many other individuals and corporate entities. This particular story is the creation of Robert A. Black (that's me). Feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you think of my work. Good or bad, I'd like to hear it. TIME CONTEXT: This story takes place between the Buffy episodes, "Nightmares" and "Invisible Girl." Confused? Refer to the Readers' Guide at the end of the chapter for hints and explanations.

It was the greatest space battle the universe had never seen. At least, that's how it looked to a twentieth century Earthling named Fox Mulder.

On the Bridge of the Enterprise-D, crew members and visitors alike listened as the various space fleet commanders continued to bluster and argue over exactly who was going to conquer whom. No one seemed interested in doing any actual shooting to find out the answer for certain.

"My Base Stars were here first," Baltar was saying. "And my fighters have taken up the optimum tactical position. This area of space is clearly mine!"

"The Ninth Sontaran Battle Group yields to no one," Group Marshal Stike proclaimed. "You are the ones who must withdraw before I destroy you."

"This debate is completely pointless," said Gul Dukat. "If you don't all stop talking, I'm going to silence you permanently."

"You'll be the one who is sssssilenced once my Killcruisers have atomized you," hissed Warlord Shank.

"You will not be a-to-mi-zing a-ny-bo-dy," squawked Davros. "The Daleks are the su-preme beings in this u-ni-verse or a-ny oth-er. We will ex-ter-mi-nate you!"

"Your arguments are irrelevant," intoned the Borg. "Assimilation is inevitable. Your technologies will adapt to service us."

"You said the same thing ten minutes ago," said Gul Dukat. "In fact, you've all been saying the same things over and over again."

"And you haven't?" retorted Baltar.

From his command chair on the Enterprise Bridge, Captain Picard turned away from the viewscreen. "Turn off that damn noise, Mister Worf," he ordered. "I've given up on thinking we'll hear anything useful."

"Aye, sir," Worf replied gratefully.

"Captain," Data reported, "the alien fleets are taking up positions around the Borg cube. They appear to have lost interest in us."

"Good," said Picard. "Ensign Lefler, bring us around slowly. Set a new course of..."

Alarms sounded from several points on the Bridge, interrupting Picard. "Captain!" Worf called from his console. "Several new vessels have arrived. They appeared from out of nowhere!"

"Cloaked ships?" Picard asked.

"No sir," Worf replied. "Their technology is completely unknown to us."

"On screen," Picard ordered.

Mulder turned to the viewscreen just in time to see the newly arrived ships. They were like nothing else in the area - black, spindly vessels with glistening surfaces. They shimmered into existence from nothing and moved with unmatched agility. And unlike the other hostile forces that had gathered, these ships had no intention of waiting for their opponents to shoot first. Red beams of energy surged from several of the black vessels at once, slicing through everything in their paths.

Counselor Troi screamed and fell to the deck, grasping her head in pain. Bashir ran to her side.

"Darkness!" Troi shouted. "Blackness. Coldness. Deliberately calculated cruelty. That's all I can sense. It's all around us!"

Marcus went to Troi's side as well. "You're a telepath?" he asked her. "Do you hear the ships screaming in your head?"

The Counselor managed to nod weakly.

"Try to concentrate on making the noise go away," Marcus instructed. "Believe it or not, that will give the whole ship some degree of protection."

Troi nodded again and did as the Ranger advised. Marcus stood up and found Picard watching him closely.

"They're Shadow vessels," Marcus explained. "I should have known they'd be here. The Shadows love starting fights between various alien races. They figure it's their way of advancing evolution."

"Well, if that's how they get their kicks," said Mulder, "then maybe they're the ones who brought us all together in the first place."

"Not even the Shadows have ever manipulated time and space as thoroughly as what we've seen," said Marcus, "but if they did figure out how to do it, you'd better believe they would."

Mulder looked to the viewscreen again. By now, a giant space battle was in full swing. The Shadows had done their job. Every ship from every different fleet was now shooting at anything else in range.

Unfortunately, their targets included the Enterprise. As Mulder watched, a damaged Cylon fighter came tumbling through space. Mulder flinched as the ship slammed into some kind of energy barrier and exploded. The deck rocked beneath his feet.

"Shields are at ninety-four percent, Captain." Worf reported.

"We can't stay here, Captain," Marcus advised.

"I agree," said Picard. "Ensign Lefler, increase speed to full impulse. It's time we were leaving."

The deck shook again as another stray energy bolt hit the ship. Lefler's hands flew over her console as she tried to control the ship. "That might take some doing, Captain," she said grimly.

All Mulder could do was watch helplessly. He had always wanted to contact alien life, but this was carrying things a bit too far.

***

Willow watched the space battle with morbid fascination. She had to keep reminding herself that it was not a movie or a video game, that beings of some sort were being hurt and killed out there, and that she herself might suffer the same fate if any of the ships ever noticed the Enterprise lurking on the edge of the battle zone.

Kirk had allowed Willow to join the crew on the Bridge, and Spock had let her sit in his chair at the science station. The Vulcan - that's what Spock called himself - was standing next to her, looking into some kind of viewer. Willow couldn't help wondering what it showed him.

"Can you locate the other Federation ship?" Kirk asked.

"I believe so, Captain," Spock replied. "It is attempting to withdraw from the battle. Unfortunately, several other ships appear to be targeting it."

"We have to help them," said Kirk.

"How are we going to do that?" cried Willow. "Do you have guns big enough to stop all those ships?"

Kirk merely turned and scowled at her. Willow quickly shrank into her chair. "I'll be quiet now," she promised.

"Despite the emotional nature of her outburst, Miss Rosenberg does raise a valid point," said Spock. "We lack the necessary armament to successfully engage in this conflict. I believe our logical course of action is to find a way of reversing the time-space anomalies that brought us all here in the first place."

Suddenly, the light from a nearby explosion flashed across the viewscreen. The deck lurched, and half the people on the Bridge fell out of their chairs. Willow wished she had a seat belt or something.

"Captain!" called a red-shirted man with a Scottish accent. "We canna take many hits like that! The ship will blow apart!"

"I'll keep that in mind, Mister Scott," Kirk replied. He looked over at Spock again. "Mister Spock, if you've got something in mind, I suggest you get started on it."

Spock went to Willow's side. "There is a way to accelerate our search for an answer," he told her, "but to use it, I must make contact with your mind."

"O... Okay," Willow said hesitantly. She didn't know if she liked Spock's idea, but this was no time to be picky.

"I do regret the intrusion, but time is of the essence," Spock said. He then put his hand to Willow's face and stared into her eyes. His gaze burned straight through her, opening her mind in ways she had never known before.

"Our minds are growing closer," she heard Spock say. "Our minds are becoming one. I will provide your mental abilities with the assistance they require. Think back to the events that brought you here. Remember every detail, no matter how insignificant it may seem."

Willow did as she was told, and thought back to the beginning of the evening. The memories came to her with amazing clarity, and she could feel Spock watching them through her eyes.

The deck shuddered beneath her again, but this time Willow remained calm. Somehow, Spock's mind was giving her some of his emotional control. He was helping her to stay focused, but at the same time, he couldn't help reminding her how urgent their situation was.

As Spock watched, Willow cleared her mind and concentrated on the memories again. She didn't know exactly what the Vulcan was looking for in her mind, but she was determined that he would find it.

***

Buffy tossed the remaining shards of her stake aside. She had others with her, naturally, but they were useless against the creature that was poised to attack her.

She had fought vampires before, and she had fought robots before, but she had never fought a robot vampire. Despite her predicament, Buffy found herself wondering what Giles would think if he knew what was going on.

Buffy was still struggling to get back on her feet when she heard a warrior's yelp slice through the air from behind Lore. The android turned around just as Kimberly stepped forward and swung one of the candle stands at him. Her blow connected solidly, but did almost no damage. It did, however, give Xander a chance to dash past Lore and come to Buffy's aid.

"Xander, what are you doing?" cried Buffy.

"Rescuing you," said Xander. "It's my turn, remember?"

Xander helped Buffy to her feet, and the two teenagers hurried away. Kimberly continued to hold Lore back, but she was losing ground fast.

Over near Riker, Ace was busy rummaging through her rucksack. "This guy's going to take some more serious hardware," she said as Buffy reached her. "Keep him busy while I get it ready."

Buffy didn't know what Ace had up her sleeve, but at this point, anything was worth a try. She turned and grabbed another of the candle stands, then hurried to join Kimberly in the fight.

By now, Kimberly's own candle stand was mutilated beyond any usefulness. The girl was trying to keep Lore at bay with kicks and punches, but she was hurting herself more than she was hurting him. Buffy attacked with her own candle stand, but didn't have much more luck.

At this rate, the fight was not going to last much longer. Buffy worriedly glanced over to see what Ace was doing. It looked like she had pulled several old-fashioned deodorant cans out of her bag. What was she planning to do? Kill Lore by destroying his ozone layer?

Ace grabbed the cans and began creeping forward. Buffy saw her approach and circled around Lore in an attempt to face him in the opposite direction. Kimberly picked up on the move and tried to do the same, but Lore lashed out and knocked her senseless with a single blow. Buffy swung her candle stand and broke it against Lore's body. The android didn't even flinch, but he did turn to face the Slayer with a murderous fury in his eye.

That was all the opportunity Ace needed. She stepped forward, pulled pins out of the tops of two cans and stuffed them down Lore's shirt. The android swung around and knocked Ace back several feet, but the cans stayed put.

"Get away from him!" Ace screamed.

Buffy didn't need to be told twice. Xander had come forward to help Kimberly, but Buffy grabbed them both and dragged them as far as she could. Lore was still struggling with the cans and let the teenagers go.

Seconds later, the android disappeared in a tremendous explosion. The blast knocked everyone else in the chamber to the ground. Debris rained down on them from the ceiling.

Buffy found herself lying on the floor next to Ace. The girl was looking at her handiwork with a gleam in her eye. "Wicked," she said.

"You carry that stuff around all the time?" Buffy asked.

"Comes in handy when you travel with the Professor," Ace replied.

"We've still got the Master to deal with," Buffy said as she stood and brushed herself off.

"That might not be so easy," said Xander.

Buffy looked over at her friend, then followed his gaze to the back of the chamber. As the dust cleared, Buffy could see that they were alone. The Master had slipped away during the explosion.

***

It had been hours since Dana Scully quit trying to describe the evening's events in a way that wouldn't convince anyone who read her FBI field report that she belonged in a mental hospital. Now she was simply trying to convince herself that she didn't belong in a mental hospital.

As she watched, the strange assortment of people continued to connect the library's computer to the Fourth Doctor's robot dog. Below them, the "Hellmouth" continued to swirl in the middle of the impossibly huge library. If Scully had seen those two items alone on anyone else's report, she would have thought someone was playing a joke on her. And she hadn't even started thinking about the parallel universes, vampires and alien assistants.

The librarian, Rupert Giles, saw her standing there and came over to join her. "In all the confusion, I don't believe we ever got the chance to meet," he said.

"Kes told me who you were, Mister Giles," Scully replied. "I'm Dana Scully, Special Agent with the FBI."

"Surely you're not the Dana Scully, are you?"

"I don't know," said Scully. "Am I?"

"Well, are you the one who works in the X-Files division?" the librarian asked. "Fox Mulder's partner?"

"That's me," Scully confirmed.

"How fortunate," said Giles. "I read your partner's field report on vampire cults in the Los Angeles area. It was a bit naive in places, but mostly quite illuminating."

"Really?" said Scully, eyeing Giles suspiciously. "I was... somewhere else... when Mulder handled that case. How did a high school librarian manage to get a copy of his report?"

"How?" Giles stammered, suddenly aware that he had given away too much information about himself. "Well, you know... this being the Hellmouth and all, I've done my best to keep up with... er, shall we see how they're doing with the computer over there?"

Scully was about to object, but the crowd at the computer came to Giles's rescue. A cheer went up from the group as the robot dog's ears began to wiggle back and forth.

"I think we have a winner!" Wade shouted. "We're getting data from all the input ports, and there are no error messages."

"All input/output parameters are within acceptable tolerance limits," K9 reported.

"Good dog, K9," said the Fourth Doctor, patting the robot on the head.

"Please refrain from generating excess background oscillations on my instrument platform, Master," said K9.

"Sorry," said the Fourth Doctor, lowering his voice as if that would help the robot do its job.

"So now that we have these machines talking to each other," said Giles, "what exactly are they saying?"

"Quite a lot, actually," said Arturo, staring intently at the computer screen. "The Podowski variables are in a range I've never seen before." He pointed to a string of numbers that made no sense to Scully, but obviously meant a lot to him. "Look at this, Mister Mallory. There's no force in nature that could generate this amount of distortion."

"I thought you'd already established that we weren't dealing with a force from nature," Giles pointed out.

"Yes, we had," said the Fourth Doctor, "but it's always nice to know when you're right."

"Check this out, Professor," said Quinn. "There are two sets of distortion fields. There's a smaller one that looks like its riding piggyback on top of a larger original."

"You mean someone originally created the phenomenon that brought us here," said the holographic Doctor, "and someone else is using it to bring other people here?"

The Seventh Doctor pushed his way through the crowd and looked at the screen for himself. "That's exactly what they mean," he replied after a moment. "What's more, the smaller distortion field was generated using Time Lord technology."

"You mean it's one of us?" said the Fourth Doctor.

"Or worse," the Seventh Doctor replied ominously.

"What about tracking these fields to their source?" asked Giles. "Do you still think that's possible?"

"Give us a few minutes and we'll let you know," Quinn replied.

Scully stepped away from the group for a moment. Things were about to start happening very rapidly, and she wanted to know where Mulder was while she still had the chance. If he was close by, he could probably reach the library before things got too interesting.

She reached into her coat pocket, pulled out her cellphone and began to punch in Mulder's number.

***

The Enterprise-D lurched again, caught in the crossfire as the Spung and the Daleks traded energy bolts. Or maybe it was the Borg and the Cylons. Mulder had lost track.

One thing was certain. The ship was in serious trouble.

"Shields are at fifty-seven percent," Worf reported. "Secondary power couplings on deck twelve are off line."

"Target the ships directly in front of us," ordered Picard. "Fire all weapons on my command. We'll try to punch our way out of this."

The Bridge crew scrambled to their tasks. All Mulder could do was watch and feel helpless. He was busy contemplating just how helpless he felt when an unexpected noise interrupted him.

His cellphone was ringing.

"What's that noise?" asked Marcus.

Mulder reached into his pocket and pulled out the phone. It continued to ring, completely ignoring the fact that it was both several solar systems and several centuries away from the nearest calling zone.

"I think it's for me," Mulder said, holding up the phone. He flipped it open and pushed the activation button. "Mulder," he spoke tentatively into the mouthpiece.

"Mulder, it's me," came a familiar voice.

"Scully?" Mulder said in disbelief. "Where are you?"

"I'm at the Sunnydale high school library. How soon can you get here?"

"Not for a while, I think," Mulder replied. "You know, we should tell the Bureau what a bargain they're getting with these phones. The range on them is incredible."

Ensign Lefler looked up at Mulder from her console. "Lefler's Law number one-hundred-three. A couple of light years can't keep good friends apart."

Mulder was about to reply, but before he could say anything, the Enterprise took another hit. Lefler's console erupted in a blast of sparks and debris, throwing her to the deck. Mulder rushed to her aid. Bashir arrived seconds later.

"Moderate head trauma," Bashir reported as he checked the Ensign over. "Some minor burns, too. Nothing we can't handle, but we've got to get her off the Bridge."

"Too bad there's no Lefler's Law about watching out for exploding consoles," Mulder remarked.

At that point, Mulder was no longer sure he wanted to make contact with alien beings after all.

End of Chapter 14

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