Buffy Summers in the Twenty-Fifth Century.

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Chapter 2

Captain William 'Buck' Rodgers finished emptying his, and Wilma's plates into the recycler. Picking up a bottle of wine he walked back toward the table that he and Wilma Dearing had shared dinner on. When he went to pour Wilma put her hand over her glass, "I have duty tomorrow morning and I've already had a glass," she said, hoping Buck bought the excuse. She liked an occasional glass of Vinol, but she had yet to find a wine that she really enjoyed, despite Buck's constant attempts to find one she liked. The 'fried chicken' he had prepared for tonight's dinner had been one of her favorites of his dishes so far though. She was about to tell him this when his communicator buzzed.

Buck walked over to the wall mounted device and activated it. Doctor Huer, the grey-haired head of the Science Council of New Chicago appeared on the screen. "Good evening Buck, Colonel Dearing was supposed to be having dinner with you tonight, is she still there?"

"I'm here Doctor Huer," Wilma said as she stood up and came over so Dr. Huer could see her.

"Good. Wilma I'm afraid I'm going to have to cut your dinner short. We are beginning to pick up faint energy readings around the Sunnydale crater."

"What kind of readings?" Wilma asked.

"We're not sure. But whatever they are, they are growing in amplitude at an alarming rate."

Buck frowned, "Sunnydale, isn't that where the big explosion that set off the last war was?"

Dr. Huer nodded, "Yes, we've been monitoring the craters ever since we recovered the capability, but we haven't picked up anything before tonight."

"Craters? I thought there was only the one explosion." Buck had been busy since the Draconians had found his capsule, Ranger 3, floating in space, and had then revived him and sent him on to Earth in the opening bid in an attempt to conquer it. That hadn't worked out so well for the Draconians with the failure of their plot and the loss of almost their whole attack force. He'd saved the planet several times since then, and while he'd studied the final war, a little, he'd never had the quiet time to actually sit down and absorb it.

"There was Buck, all the witness accounts agree, there was only one fireball, but it left a double crater. The main one is over three miles across, the secondary about a mile and a half. The truly unusual thing is that the smaller crater bisects the larger one and the far crater wall of the smaller crater does not resemble blast damage. We've always assumed that do to the size of the explosion there was some kind of high energy event that we aren't aware of, but so far nothing we have modeled can explain it."

"I need to go Buck," Wilma said as she headed for the door. "Dr. Huer, have two shuttles prepped and a couple of starfighters. Send four squads of guards and a medical detachment, just in case. Have them meet me at the shuttles."

"Of course Colonel, they'll be ready to go when you get there," the head of the Science Council assured her.

"Doc, Wilma, if you don't mind I'd like to tag along," Buck requested.

Wilma nodded and Dr. Huer said, "Of course Buck, happy to have you."

"Okay, just let me change into my uniform quick and I'll be right with you," He said pulling on the collar of the brown jacket he was wearing off duty.

"I have to change too," Wilma said, "I'll meet you at the hanger."

In a way Buck was sad, he liked the way Wilma looked in her uniform, mostly white with some bands of color on the sleeves, but there was an awful lot to be said for blue spandex.

Buck hurried and changed into his uniform. Unsurprisingly, he beat Wilma to the hanger. He quickly checked the four squads over, and the two pilots for the starfighters. Ordinarily, he and Wilma would be the pilots in the starfighters, but Buck figured that Wilma would want to actually be on the ground for this one. Sure enough, when she showed up about five minutes later she motioned for the squads to board the shuttles and then climbed into the lead one herself. Buck climbed in after her.

The trip only took about twenty minutes. Ten minutes out though they could see a green glow coming from the area of the craters. Taping the co-pilot of the shuttle on the shoulder, Wilma asked, "What kind of energy readings are you picking up from the craters?"

He shook his head, "I've never seen anything like it; it's some kind of quantum flux."

"Wilma," Buck asked, "What if we are looking at the same thing that happened last time? We could be flying into one heck of a big bang."

"There are no records of the first explosion Buck," Wilma began. "The closest survivor account was from someone who was over two hundred miles from the incident. And he only survived because he was working along the base of a tall hill. By the time he got around the hill the fireball was already at its full height. People farther away weren't in the position to see the explosion, just the fireball as it climbed into the sky."

"So what you are saying is that we may be flying into a massive explosion."

"I'm afraid so."

They flew along in silence for next three minutes, when, "Colonel Dearing, check this out!" The pilot exclaimed, pointing out the front windows of the shuttle.

Wilma hurried to the window and gasped. Right behind her Buck saw what caused her exclamation. The craters of the explosion looked a lot like a snowman wearing a cape with a fan shape of damage spreading out from the juncture of the two craters. The smaller crater, though at a mile and a half, it was anything but small, was glowing brightly green. In the light, Buck could see that it was filled about a quarter of the way up with water. There was something wrong with the crater; Buck studied it, and he realized that it was too deep for its width. He couldn't tell how deep it was exactly, but from the angle of the sides it looked to Buck that it was hemispherical rather than the shallower bowl shape that most craters had. In fact, judging by the angle of the walls on the smaller crater, he wouldn't be surprised if it was just as deep as the large crater that was over twice its size.

He was about to point this out to Wilma, when the light in the crater gave a massive flash. Fortunately, the shuttle cockpit windows were polarized and they darkened when the flash happened, so while everyone in the cockpit blinked, none were even temporarily blinded. So, they got a ring side seat for what happened next. It reminded Buck of a pop-up books he had as a kid, were you opened a page and cutouts would spring up and give you a kind of three-d effect, only in this case instead of cardboard cutouts popping up, buildings popped into existence. As the effect reached their side of the crater, Buck could see the buildings of a twentieth century town seemingly come into existence from nowhere. The town just as suddenly, vanished behind a massive spray of water.

As the town settled into the lake that was bottom of crater the water was displaced. Everything on the side of the larger crater was pushed out of the smaller crater. It raced across the three miles of the crater and smashed into the far side. Much of it flowed up and over the sides of the crater to flow out onto the desert that surrounded the pit. The remaining ran back down the sides and crashed back into the lake. The resultant wave went speeding back toward the bedrock of the town that had just appeared to smash against that rock in a fearsome spray. The water that was displaced on the other side of the town was driven up between the bedrock and the stone that the town sat on. It helped to cushion the town into the bottom of the crater, because thanks to erosion over five hundred years it was no longer a perfect fit, so Sunnydale sank relativly slowly, rather than just drop the average of six inches between what was then and what was now.

Water that was pushed out by the settling town exploded from around it in a massive spay of foam and mist. The fan of spray rose thousands of feet into the air, to fall slowly back to the ground; flooding the surrounding country side. Fortunately, the ground surrounding the city was slopped away from it, so only a small portion of the billions of gallons of water flowed back into the town, most of it flowed away, filling nearby streams as it headed toward the ocean a couple of miles away.

The lights stayed on in the town for an instant, then shut off as if someone threw a switch. In that instant Buck saw at the center of the circle there was a tower that looked rickety even from where he was, close to a mile away. Worse he saw a form diving off of the tower, and another smaller form still on the tower. The tower had a slapdash appearance to it, and Buck doubted it would be able to take the jolt of the town settling into the crater. "Pilot! Get us in next to the tower, there's still someone on it!"

The pilot of their shuttle nodded and increased the throttle on the shuttle. He zoomed in, level with the extension from the tower. Buck saw that the individual on the tower was a teenager, fourteen or fifteen at the max. She had long brown hair and was wearing some kind of purple dress. Buck also saw that someone had slashed the girl, two cuts five or six inches long that almost met right below her naval. She was crying hard and gripping one of the supports of the tower, staring down after the figure that had jumped or fallen. "Come on!" Buck yelled at her. "You have to get off of this thing before it collapses!"

The girl looked up; shock plain on her face as she took in the Earth Force Shuttle Craft that was hovering at the end of the plank that Buffy had jumped off of.

The wave slammed into bedrock of the town at this point staggering the girl and shaking the tower even more. One of the main cross pieces fell off of the top of the tower, and the whole thing started to come apart. Buck was about to jump onto the tower to go and get the girl when she decided that the shuttle was probably safer than the tower and ran along the plank and jumped into Buck's arms.

Wilma ordered the other shuttle to land and secure the perimeter. She turned around just in time to see the figure from the tower jump into Buck's arms. Getting a good luck at the girl, she smiled to herself. The Buck Rodgers' luck was still going strong. He had found another pretty girl.

The bar that had fallen off the top clipped out one of the back legs of the tower, with an anguished grown the makeshift tower fell away from everyone still in the scrap yard and crashed to the ground. The second shuttle landed thirty seconds later, before the dust had even settled. The figures in the yard were staring at the crumpled blonde body that was laying across a bunch of broken up concrete, almost like she was sleeping.

So great was their shock, they didn't react to the tower falling, or the first shuttle landing. There were six of them. One was red-headed woman, supporting another blonde woman, one brunette guy, who was carrying a blonde woman, one older guy, coming out of building in the yard that had a huge hole in side, and a blond haired man in a black leather duster that was climbing over some wreckage. When the second shuttle landed in front of them, especially with the tower survivor on board this changed. The blond guy yelled, "Bit" and rushed over to grab her. Seeing him coming she broke out of Buck's grip and ran to him, "It's all my fault, it should have been me!" The black clad figure grabbed her and took her into a close hug.

The Earth Force people rushed over to the other survivors to check them out. Surprised at first, when they saw that they wanted to help they started to let them. The security troops on the perimeter, began to see some odd alien life forms. They began advancing on the guards, but a couple of shots with their laser guns convinced them they wanted to be somewhere else.

Wilma went off to check out what the perimeter was shooting at so Buck went to check survivors. Thinking abut it, he grabbed a blanket to put over the remains of the person who had fallen off of the tower. As he approached the body he was surprised in how good of a shape it was in. He'd been unfortunate enough in his life to see the results of a couple of high speed collisions between a person and a solid object. He opened the blanket and was about to put it on her when he heard a groan. Leaning forward he realized that the girl, she couldn't have been much more than twenty, was still breathing.

"Medic!" He screamed. "This ones still alive! We need to stabilize her and get her back to New Chicago!"

Every one looked at him, both Earth Force and the survivors, "Move!"