Dan Abnett - Border Princes

She climbed the stairs to Jack’s office. He was at his desk, cleaning his revolver.

‘Hi, come in,’ he said.

She came in and sat facing him.

‘Anything new?’ he asked.

‘Nope,’ she said. ‘Oh, one thing. Reports of civil disturbance down on the point this afternoon. Round about the same time we were up to our necks.

‘Where?’

‘Exactly where we were last Thursday night. Where we recovered the bloody thing from in the first place. There was some fighting, a mini-riot. A couple of cars set on fire, windows smashed.’

‘You’re getting this from?’

‘I checked the police system. The whole thing went away again as quickly as it started, with no one willing or able to explain what the hell had been going on.’

‘It all went away again?’

‘At about the same time our migraines eased and we started to remember how to spell our own names again.’

‘And the police are saying?’

Gwen shrugged. ‘Someone’s suggesting it might be some kind of chemical poisoning event, a toxic spill at one of the Bay’s industrial depots. Environmental teams are checking. It has happened twice in a week, after all.’

Jack smiled sadly. ‘Well, they’ve written a cover story for us, at least.’

‘We going to start this meeting, then?’ she asked.

‘Couple of things I want to say to you first,’ Jack said, closing his old gun’s frame and sliding it back into its leather holster. He screwed the lid back on the small bottle of gun oil, and put it away in the cleaning kit with the bristle push-brushes.

‘Can they wait for the meeting?’

‘No,’ said Jack. He tossed two oil-smudged cotton wool pads into his waste bin and got up to put the cleaning kit away in a drawer. ‘The first thing I want to say is thank you. You saved me today, Gwen.’

‘Oh, no, I just-’

‘You saved me,’ Jack insisted, sitting back down. ‘Me and Toshiko both. Despite everything, despite the… circumstances under which you were operating, you stuck to it. You stayed right there and, crazy though it was, you came up with a trick to get us out.’

He looked over at her. ‘It was a damn crazy trick, Gwen. Damn crazy. Using one threat to combat another. How did you know it would work?’

‘Honestly? I didn’t. It seemed to have some resemblance to logic at the time. But — at the time — I was a girl with a jack-hammer going off in her head and serious big hand/little hand differentiation issues. So I think we were lucky, really.’

‘I’ll take luck, any time it’s offered,’ said Jack. ‘Again, thank you.’

‘Please,’ she said, ‘you’re going to make me blush.’

‘Yeah, well you’ll hate the second thing, then. The second thing is sorry.’

‘Oh, what for?’

Jack sighed. ‘I know I’ve already apologised about tearing you all off a strip last week, but seriously, I need to do a lot more. I handled this whole thing really badly. Like-’

‘An amateur?’ she suggested.

‘Oh yeah,’ he grinned. ‘I had no business calling you that.’

‘I told you the other day,’ said Gwen, ‘the best we can ever hope to be at this is amateurs. You too. We should be proud of that. Anything that doesn’t kill us makes us learn for next time. How can we expect to tackle the mysteries of the bloody Universe head-on and know everything about everything? A piece of alien technology put you right off your game today, Jack. But it’s the end of the day, and we’re all still alive, and Cardiff isn’t a smoking hole in the ground populated by shuffling zombies, so, you know, yaaay us.’

Jack rose to his feet. ‘Speaking of mysteries, there are some left, of course.’

The mood in the Boardroom was subdued. Everyone shuffled in like they were hung-over. Ianto brought in a tray of drinks.

‘Decaff,’ he said, handing them out. ‘I thought that might be best.’ He glanced at Jack. ‘If that’s all?’

‘No, you sit too,’ Jack said. ‘You weren’t a bystander today. I’d appreciate your input.’

Ianto hunched his shoulders and sat down.

Jack took a sip of his drink. ‘Mmm. So, what are we calling that?’

‘Twenty-seven?’ said James. They all smiled, even Toshiko, who was huddled in a shawl and seemed to be shivering.

‘Absolutely,’ said Jack. ‘I’m tempted to go even higher. This is the post-game analysis, so I want your comments. Speak freely. But first, hear mine. I was as much to blame as anyone for what went down today. More so, in many ways. So, sorry for that.’

No one spoke.

‘OK,’ said Jack. ‘Moving on. It was a twenty-seven. Any other remarks?’

Owen half-raised his hand. ‘I let it out. I acted like a prat. I think I smacked Ianto as well, so I suppose I’ll be the one sitting on the naughty step.’

‘You were under the influence,’ said Jack.

‘As usual,’ Owen replied.

‘You know what I mean,’ Jack insisted. ‘If it hadn’t been you, it would have been someone else. Ianto tried to stop you because he was the only one of us who hadn’t actually touched the darn thing. It’s my belief that once someone touches it, it doesn’t let them go, not even when it was dormant and contained. It was always going to get free again.’

‘The riots this afternoon seem to support that idea,’ said Gwen.

‘It had a real range on it,’ said James. ‘It got to us over quite a distance.’

‘There is a question none of us have asked,’ said Toshiko. ‘Where is it?’

‘And why did it stop?’ Jack added. ‘I mean, it had us, and then-’

‘I’ve had the Hub systems scanning for it,’ Ianto said. ‘Nothing, not a trace. It’s gone. Maybe it went back where it came from?’

‘Doesn’t seem likely,’ said James. ‘Jack’s right, it had us, it really did. It was winning.’

Jack looked at Owen and Ianto. ‘You two were here. Either of you remember anything?’

They shook their heads.

‘Hub monitors? Security?’

‘I’ve been through the logs and the playback. There’s nothing useful,’ said Ianto. ‘Though it’s fair to say the records are incomplete. There’s a whole chunk of the day’s Hub-monitor log that’s effectively blank, like it was jammed or erased.’

‘Anything else?’

‘There are signs that the Hub was violated,’ said Ianto. ‘Certain entry traces and system intrusions. But I don’t think they’re anything. I think they’re all part of the damage the Amok caused. It got into everything.’

‘Unless,’ said Owen. ‘Unless someone or something came in here and removed the Amok.’

‘Like who?’ asked James.

Owen shrugged. ‘I dunno. Given our security, I guess that’s too scary to contemplate.’

‘I want us back to alpha scoping for the next week or so,’ Jack announced. ‘Extreme vigilance, twenty-four seven. If the Amok’s still out there, I want to know about it. Any hint of it, any hint.’

Toshiko and Ianto nodded.

‘So, are you going to tell us what happened to you?’ Owen asked Jack.

‘A little Rift-slip,’ Jack replied. ‘Something on the books I’d been looking out for. The Torchwood Archives have notes regarding St Mary-in-the-Dust. A phantom repeat-incursion. A temporal eddy trapping a little parcel of place and time like a fly in amber, and returning it to our reality on a fairly regular basis. I’d been keen to take a look around, next time it showed up.’

‘What was it like?’ asked Ianto.

‘An old chapel,’ said Jack. ‘Thing is, there was a reason it kept coming back. There was something in there, probably the extra-dimensional presence that had edited the chapel out of our time in the first place. And it was hungry. Hungry for energy. It came back here to feed.’