Dan Abnett - Border Princes

James nodded. ‘Things are as bad as they look.’

‘Oh, God, no,’ said Jack. ‘Things are much worse than they look, my friend.’ He held up the heavy service revolver clenched in his hand. ‘You know what this is?’ he asked.

‘Uh, no?’ Owen replied.

‘Absolutely useless, is what it is,’ answered Jack, putting the gun away. He got up and hurried to the gate, head down. ‘It’s gone,’ he reported. ‘It’s moving.’

‘What do we do?’ asked James.

‘Not much,’ said Jack. ‘We follow it. See where it’s headed. Try to keep it contained away from population centres. Think hard and pray for miracles.’

‘It’s probably heading back to my shed.’

They looked around. Davey Morgan stood outside his ruined backdoor, gazing at them. Toshiko hovered behind him.

‘What did you say, sir?’ asked Jack.

‘Yank, are you?’ asked Davey.

‘Kinda,’ admitted Jack.

‘Got to know a lot of your sort, back then,’ said Davey. ‘Good old boys. Tough as old boots, they were.’

‘Thanks,’ said Jack. ‘What were you saying about a shed?’

‘Mr Morgan has been talking with the machine,’ said Toshiko gently. ‘They have an understanding, of sorts.’

‘Old soldiers together,’ said Davey.

‘Is that right?’ asked Jack, walking over.

‘I tried to make Mr Morgan wait out front,’ whispered Toshiko to Jack. ‘He wouldn’t be moved.’

‘You could have smacked him silly and dragged him,’ Jack whispered back.

‘Yes, I could have, but I’m a nice person,’ whispered Toshiko.

Davey Morgan looked at them both. ‘It’s not polite to whisper,’ he said.

‘No, it’s not,’ said Jack, turning to him. ‘Mr Morgan, wasn’t it?’

‘Davey.’

‘OK, Davey. I’m Cap’n Jack Harkness. Tell me about this shed.’

‘It’s up on my plot,’ said Davey. ‘On the allotments, I mean. I kept your smart weapon there after I dug it up. I think it likes it there.’

‘Where is this shed exactly?’ asked Jack.

‘I’ll show you,’ Davey said. ‘Hang on a mo.’ He turned, and limped back into the kitchen.

‘Does he realise there’s some degree of urgency?’ Jack asked Toshiko.

‘He can help us, Jack,’ Toshiko insisted.

Jack pursed his lips. He pulled out his phone and tried to dial. Dead.

‘We’re still inside that thing’s jamming range,’ he said. ‘Serial Gs are fitted with a comprehensive suite of communication counter-measures.’ He tossed his phone to Owen. ‘Take that, and get walking. I don’t care how far you have to go. As soon as you’ve got a signal, call Ianto and tell him to go to the Armoury, book out catalogue item nine-eight-one, and bring it here as fast as is humanly possibly. Got that?’

‘Armoury. Nine-eight-one. Right,’ said Owen, and hurried off through the house.

Davey re-emerged from the kitchen, a cap on his head. He was buttoning up a threadbare jacket. ‘Off we go, then,’ he said. ‘I just had to get my digging jacket.’

‘Well of course you did,’ said Jack.

Davey Morgan led the way down the back lane behind the houses to the allotment path. Jack, James and Toshiko followed him. It was slow going. Davey had a pronounced limp that was obviously troubling him.

The sky had blackened. The sporadic rain had turned into a shower, and worse was undoubtedly coming. The wind had picked up. Choirs of alarms were singing across the backyards, punctuated by the whoop of a police klaxon.

‘Gwen’s dealing with the police,’ Toshiko told Jack. ‘She’s keeping them back, clearing people from the houses here.’

Jack nodded.

‘A lot of them don’t want to go,’ Toshiko added. ‘A lot of them want to see what’s going on.’

‘They’ll die then,’ said Jack.

‘I suppose they might,’ said Toshiko. ‘Let’s hope the police are persuasive.’

‘Yeah, let’s hope.’

‘Jack?’ asked James.

‘Yeah?’

‘What’s catalogue item nine-eight-one?’

Jack smiled. ‘James, you so don’t want to know.’

‘Apparently, I do.’

Jack glanced at him. ‘It’s one of the Armoury items I don’t let you play with.’

‘And that’s going to take this thing out?’

Jack shrugged. ‘Couldn’t honestly say, James, but I can guarantee it’ll make a whole lot of noise.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh, yeah. There will be noise. There will be bright lights. There will be woe. There will be weeping and consternation. The streets of Cardiff will resound with the lamentation of estate agents.’

‘This is Torchwood going to war, then?’ asked Toshiko.

‘No, this is Torchwood trying to prevent one,’ said Jack.

‘You people have never seen a real war,’ said Davey.

‘Sir?’ Jack asked, looking at the old man.

‘I said you’ve never known a real war. Not a real one. It never leaves you, war doesn’t. Everything you saw or did, it all clings like a smell you can’t ever wash off. Sixty years, sixty damn years, it hasn’t ever washed off.’

Davey had stopped by an iron gate. It stood open on its bolts, as if it had been pushed aside.

Beyond the gate lay the allotments: portioned-out strips of ground, a patchwork of rectangular plots, some with sheds, some with rainwater tanks or tool chests, some neglected and overgrown. A hazy mist drifted over the winter beets and rhubarb leaves. The rain began to fall harder, pattering off the vegetation.

Jack walked into the allotments, and looked around.

‘I could come to like a place like this,’ he said. ‘When I retire. Not so much with the rain, obviously.’

He looked at Davey. ‘Your shed?’

‘Up along there, Captain,’ Davey said, with a gesture. Raindrops dripped from his raised sleeve.

‘Tosh tells me you’ve spoken to this thing?’

‘Tosh?’

‘The nice Japanese girl there.’

‘Oh, right. Yeah, we’ve spoken a little. I dug it up, after all. Kept it safe. We chatted. Reminisced, really, one old boy to another. War stories. Memories of life during wartime.’

Jack wiped rain off his face and looked at Davey. The old man’s eyes were very sharp, very knowing.

‘So, was it good to talk?’ Jack asked him.

‘Good?’ replied Davey.

‘I have no idea, no frame of reference, so I’m asking you. Was it good to talk?’

‘I suppose,’ said Davey. ‘It was refreshing to meet someone who got it. To be truthful, Captain, I’ve never had anyone I could talk to about… about the service. Not Glynis. Not really. She never got it. God knows, I never wanted her to get it. It understood, though. I could tell it things. We shared things. Memories. It was nice for me.’

‘Yeah?’

Davey nodded. Drops of rain ran off the end of his nose. ‘Nice to be respected. To be acknowledged. Only a soldier understands what another soldier has been through. In the end, we’re a lonely breed in that regard.’

‘I guess you would be.’

‘I just-’

‘What?’ Jack asked.

Davey shook his head. ‘I just wished we could have kept it to that. It kept having these dreams, see? At night, its dreams leaked into mine. I tried, but I couldn’t bear them. The things it had done. Laughed about. Awful things. I have my own bad dreams, Captain Harkness, and I’ll carry them to my grave, where God can judge me, if he likes. I couldn’t carry its dreams too. I wanted to. I tried. One old soldier to another.’

‘It’s OK,’ said Jack.

‘You’re going to have to kill it, aren’t you?’ asked Davey.

‘I think we are. I wish to hell I knew how,’ said Jack. ‘Davey, let’s see this shed of yours.’

The rain beat down relentlessly. The shed was a silent, damp box. Its windows were broken and its door was half-open. Jack and James gazed at the decaying remains of the bodies spread and staked out in front of it. Toshiko looked away, swallowing hard.