Title: A Matter of Trust
Chapter 03: First Stop
Characters/pairings: Nine/Jack/Rose
Chapter Rating: PG-13
Spoilers/warnings: none
Disclaimer: Still not making money out of this. Characters are still belonging to RTD and the BBC.
Plot: From the end of The Doctor Dance and Boomtown, Jack and the Doctor went from hostile suspicion to reliable friendship, how did this happen?
Previous chapters' summary: The Doctor did rescue Jack, but really doesn't like the way Rose and even the Tardis react to the newcomer, and more than all he doesn't like the way Jack disturb him.
Beta: imzadimylove
...
Jack was fully aware of the effect he had on others. It's been a long time since he had learned to turn to his advantage the Kr'ttt pheromones grip. Sex was a weapon, a cheap bargaining chip he could use unashamedly. And love doing so.
If, as a teenager his Kr'ttt legacy had been hard to deal with, now he assumed it fully and played all-out at being the tempting snake. Rose was all excited about him, and wasn't shy at all; she would be easy prey. But she clearly was the Doctor's girl.
What about the Doctor? Jack didn't miss the awkward moment of hesitation the Doctor had when the alien walked into the wardrobe. The Doctor had been clearly disturbed, as if he'd been surprised by his own lust. Oh, yes, because that was really lust Jack had seen in these large blue eyes. A wild desire, a primal one, Jack had felt it deep within his being, as if the Doctor had possessed him right there, physically. Wow! All this in just a glance! Jack's legs were almost weak with anticipation.
He chose clothes more appropriate for his gender and put them on.
"I'll join you in the kitchen, I need to go back to my room first," he told Rose without further explanation.
There, he took back his vortex manipulator and set it around his ankle. After the Doctor confiscated his square blaster back in London, Jack had make sure the alien wouldn't know about the small time travelling device, let him believe he only had the more powerful one adapted from the Chula ship engine.
His wristband device was out of order for quite some time, at least the teleport and vortex manipulator itself but most of the accessory settings were still working. It still was his only possession and as long as he could keep it he could hope to repair it and if Remona was to be more than just a stop for him in the Doctor's mind, he preferred to have it with him.
He went to retrieve Rose in the kitchen, there he quickly have a glass of juice and grabbed a piece of Kafan before they headed to join the Doctor on the bridge.
The Tardis materialized near a small town. After walking out, Jack couldn't help but circle around the ship. He had always been madly fond of ships. They almost affected him as a pretty girl would. This one was really amazing and in more than one aspect.
The Doctor and Rose were waiting, arms crossed, watching with amusement.
"I really do love the wooden panel. Very vintage."
The Doctor nodded appraisingly.
"Aren't you going to say it?" Rose let out of frustration.
"What?"
"That's it bigger on the inside, of course."
"Right, I had noticed," Jack replied. "That makes it easy to park. Is there a perception filter?" he added turning to the Doctor.
"Yes," the Doctor answered watching for Jack's reaction.
"You really are a Time Lord?" It wasn't really a question. Jack was just truly flabbergasted; when he was a kid back on Boeshane, Time Lords were the stuff of legend. Back at the Time Agency, Time Lords were just mere bogeymen said to appear out of nowhere to clean up careless time travellers' messes. They were said to clean any time agent altogether because of the mess the agent's caused. But of course that was just tales for newbie's benefits.
"The last one."
"Okay," Jack replied puzzled.
"Is that all?" Rose asked a bit disappointed by Jack's lack of reaction.
...
Remona was a small agrarian colony. Jack had absolutely no idea what they were doing there. The Doctor and Rose walked ahead together, while Jack felt like a puppy stuck to their heels. They strolled like this, aimlessly for hours, just like tourists. They tasted local delicacies, Rose bough two or three souvenirs under the Doctor's paternal gaze.
Jack was content with making sure not to lose sight of them among the crowd, while being as unobtrusive as he could. The Doctor was always watching him from the corner of his eye, Jack just knew it. He felt like the Time Lord was waiting for any excuse to leave him here. And frankly, Jack didn't feel like settling here. At last, they headed back toward the Tardis.
"For once, hell didn't break loose," Rose stated. "It makes a change."
"Perhaps," the Doctor replied carelessly. "What do you say, Captain?"
"About what?"Jack asked, expecting to be denied access to the ship.
"I presume you're not interested in settling as a farmer, aren't you?"
"I'm not much for drugs," Jack replied bitterly.
"Ooh! So you did notice?"
"Notice what?" Rose asked.
The Doctor didn't reply, leaving it to Jack.
"These are maltac fields; this one is still in its grass stage, but the one next door was harvested very recently."
"You are able to identify budding maltac, Captain?" the Doctor asked suspiciously.
"As you did, I noticed the peasants red fingertips while we were shopping through the village. Children's eyes are gaunt with the pollen spreading into the atmosphere all around them. In less than a generation the whole population will be overrun by the influence of that drug," Jack explained.
"Oh, but why? How did this happen?" Rose asked horrified by the prospect.
"It's a typical set-up. Intergalactic smugglers land, offering farmers to cultivate their seeds, promising them to redeem their harvest for gold. And they do as they said. In fact, it's not a too long-time investment and in the end they'll win it all. At first, everything looks fine, it's easy money. Farmers will upgrade their farms and tools, and then gradually get into the game wanting to make more profit. But gradually the pollen intoxicates them, they won't even notice it until it's already too late and became addicted. Of course this will lead them to grow more maltac reducing the place of other crops, and shortly they'll not only be addicted, but economically dependent as well. In addition, the maltac impoverishes the soil. In less than five generations these people will die of hunger."
"We must do something. We can't let that happen," Rose stated turning to the Doctor.
The Doctor was still watching Jack, as if he was expecting him to also answer that part.
"We can do something, right?" Rose asked once again expectantly.
"What do you thing we can do?" Jack replied completely distraught.
"I don't know. What about we set fire to these fields, for example?"
"That won't do any good, the smugglers would just punish the peasants for destroying what they consider to be their property," Jack explained, "No, it would need something discouraging those drugs dealers for good."
"Discouraging? Right," the Doctor said, with a very suspicious dark look, "And what would you propose as a deterrent?"
The Doctor was clearly challenging him, expecting him to come up with some stupid or short sighted solution, Jack suddenly felt like he was going through an oral at the Academy before the big boss himself. Not that the Man in White was ever involved to pass the exams. In fact, he was as much a legend to him as were Time Lords.
However, Jack wanted to pass, feeling ridiculously stupid and perfectly aware he wasn't likely to impress a Time Lord whatever he came up with, feeling like an eager puppy, wanting to please his master. Jack wasn't used to feeling that way, he was in fact more often at the other end of the equation.
Jack ran quickly over what he had noticed during their short tour, and went for a simple but most likely efficient response.
"Making sure the planet wouldn't be profitable, by making the drug inedible or too cheap for the trouble would be, I guess, the better way to permanently discourage the dealers."
"I like the sound of that," Rose said, "But how we do that?"
"By polluting it with phénigue; it's a fungus which can give very unpleasant effects, not deadly but very nasty."
"Are you seriously considering contaminating a planet with a particularly prolific parasite?" the Doctor asked dryly.
"Of course not. Okay with the Nanogens, I did really mess up, but it never was premeditated. I made a blunder and a big one, I grant you , but I'm not stupid enough to deliberately release a highly contaminant seed in an ecosystem," Jack replied a bit annoyed. "Phénigue naturally grow on cargo ships' racox tanks. The traffickers usually decontaminate tanks interior before every load, but they rarely clean the outside. "
"So you're saying we could contaminate the inside with the outside?" Rose said very happy with that solution. "You're sure this stuff is not dangerous?"
"Not lethal and whatever, less dangerous than the drug itself, but unpleasant enough to discourage drug addicts, at least for the major part."
"You seem to have really mastered the subject, Captain," the Doctor pointed out.
Jack didn't object about the subtext, he couldn't explain how he knew so much about maltac traffic. Probably one of the numerous things he'd learned during the two years he missed. It was rather curious that knowledge remained while his memories had, themselves, fully and finally evaporated.
"It shouldn't be very difficult for you to materialize on board the freighter with the Tardis and proceed with the drug contamination," Jack said, and before the Doctor, who had postponed ostensibly his attention on the maltac field said anything, Jack added: "It will be more difficult to permanently destroy what grow on those fields without causing collateral damage, I'll take this part."
To be continued.