Becoming a Time Lady
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who or Torchwood.
A/N: Sorry about the long wait! For some reason I couldn't get up the motivation to work on this. Thanks to Doctor Ross for giving me the idea that eventually led to inspiration as to how to end this chapter.
The Great Ice Cliffs: Teleportation Energy
Jenny closed her eyes, but when she opened them, there was nothing different. Jack was still gone. She swept her eyes around the small control room, searching for somewhere he might've gone or somehow he could've left. Even as she did, Jenny thought about what had happened – he'd spoken once and then, nothing. She supposed it must've been another teleport -
Jenny's gaze landed on what she suddenly knew he'd seen at once. And she fought to stop herself from repeating the last words she'd heard from him. Whatever else it was, Jack had been right; that could not possibly be good.
Unsurprisingly, the Fleet Admiral had a vortex manipulator on his wrist. The devices were standard issue for all Time Agents, so of course he'd have one. What was surprising – and a bit horrifying – was that this vortex manipulator was broken. The cover was missing completely and the buttons were smashed. The most worrying part was that it was glowing a very faint yellow, which was getting brighter even as she watched.
"Teleportation energy?" Jenny muttered under her breath. It was only a guess, but Jack had said that was what the energy surges had been made of. And this certainly seemed to be in the process of surging.
Frantically, Jenny scanned the cabin again for something that might help her not be moved when it had built up enough power. She didn't even have a manipulator of her own to direct the destination.
There! The cover had come off the Fleet Admiral's manipulator, but it hadn't gone far. Jenny scooped it up and put it back in it's proper position, trying not to get too close to the ever-increasing glow. It clicked into place and the glow dimmed significantly. She allowed a brief moment to marvel at the material. The metal that the vortex manipulator's casing was made out of was hard to deform and harder to keep that way – when its shape was changed, it would try and change back. It was impressive that it had been broken in the first place, actually.
Jenny hoped it had another property that she didn't know about. Hopefully, it could shield against the energy, at least temporarily. There was still some light forcing its way under the cover, but it wasn't very bright and if it was increasing at all, the rate was too slow for her to be able to tell.
"Ok. Good for now then. Probably," she said aloud.
She then turned to the control panel. Grimacing, she tried lightly tapping Gelbrooks' skeleton off the controls, but as soon as she touched him, he collapsed completely and she quickly dodged out of the way before the arm with the vortex manipulator landed on her foot; she was still wary of that faint light. "Well, it worked," she murmured, briefly remembering that she'd once used the same words to explain why she'd knocked someone out. Dismissing the thought, she dusted off her hands and then bent to examine the controls.
After such an impressive wreck, the Silver Falcon would never fly again, but it was possible that the ship's computer could still be partially functional. Indeed, after only a few minutes of work, the main screen lit up. All lit showed was white light, but Jenny smiled anyway. It meant something was still working.
"Hello! Computer, are you working?"
For a few seconds, the only response was static, but then a voice that could barely be heard replied, "Affirmative." It vaguely sounded female. She wondered whether the gender was a default. "Twenty-seven percent functional."
Jenny groaned inwardly that she'd have to talk with a computer again. Before leaving Cardiff, she'd completely disabled the voice interface on her own ship, planning to bring it back only once she was sure she'd figured out all of its programming. Nevertheless, this ship could potentially be extremely useful in figuring out what exactly had happened to the Ice Cliffs, so she began trying to find a way to increase the power to the computer. "Is that better?" she asked after making an adjustment. The voice wasn't even audible this time. "Nope...all right, how about now?"
The voice that answered was clear enough, but it wasn't anything like the computer's. "Jenny! Jenny, are you still there?"
Jack had had no time to react. He'd raised an arm against the blinding light coming from the Fleet Admiral's wrist and then dropped about two feet through the air, landing on ice somewhere completely different.
It was a Gowl graveyard. There were bodies scattered about for as far as he could see. Unlike Gelbrooks, these had been preserved by the cold. Most of the final expressions that Jack saw looked serene – they'd probably frozen to death. As methods of dying went, that one wasn't too bad.
They were all in what appeared to be a large bowl of ice. There were steep cliffs all around, more or less in a circle. And right in the middle was Jenny's spaceship. He spent only a moment wondering how it had gotten there before heading toward it. For one thing, it was cold outside.
The teleport that had brought him here didn't seem to have taken Jenny as well, but this time they hadn't been touching, so if these surges really were random, then there would be nothing to make them go to the same place. But it was seeming less and less likely that they were completely random. For one thing, all – or at least most - of the Gowls that had even gotten lost in the Cliffs had evidently ended up here. That couldn't be by chance.
Once he was back in the ship, Jack synced the vortex manipulator with the computer as it had been before all the unexpected teleportation had broken the connection. Then he checked the energy readings, waiting for the next surge so he could take it back to the shipwreck, but it never came. The energy levels seemed to be holding, though the teleport on his own device was still jammed. There was no way to get back.
But the fact that the levels were now constant was promising. Perhaps Jenny had not been moved by the last one and had found a way to block any more.
Jack quickly set the computer to search for the wreck, then looked around Jenny's ship as he waited for a result. It was designed surprisingly similar to the TARDIS' control room. Jenny swore she'd never seen the inside of the Doctor's TARDIS – in fact, she'd only a gotten a very brief glimpse of the outside – but then she'd never actually been told the word either; she just knew it. Maybe she just knew what a Time Lord's time and space machine was supposed to look like as well. The room was more mechanical than the TARDIS and set up with the controls in a semicircle in the centre, rather than a full circle. This had been made to be flown by one or two people, rather than 9 or 10 as the TARDIS had. There was also a storage area in the back, which mostly held oxygen, water, and food right then, along with a few tools from the previous ship that Jenny had deemed useful.
One thing that he noticed she'd neglected to include was any sort of living quarters. He didn't actually need to sleep, though he still could, but she was going to have to get some rest at some point. Time Lords and Ladies might need less sleep than humans – but not none at all.
The computer broke into his thoughts by beeping loudly. It had found the Falcon and it appeared that the other ship's computer system was at least partially working, so he opened a comm line to it. "Jenny? Jenny, are you still there?"
"Jack?"
He grinned. "Yep. I'll take that as a 'yes, I'm still here'?"
"I – yeah. Where are you?"
"I'm back on your ship. This 'random' teleporting thing seems to have a dumping ground," he answered and told her about all the Gowls outside.
"I don't think it is random," she replied, sounding grim. "That little Gowl girl, Ola – she was moved to nearly the same place we were and not too long after. That's not random and neither is you and the ship both turning up at the same place where hundreds of Gowls have been sent before."
"You think it's deliberate?"
"No, but I think there's a pattern involved." She sighed. "Anyway, the Fleet Admiral's vortex manipulator is broken. I assume that's bad?"
"Not just bad," Jack told her, grimacing. He'd been trying not to think too much about that. "It's unheard of. They're made to be indestructible. Mine was at the very centre of an explosion and it didn't get scratched."
"But yours was broken, wasn't it?" Jenny pointed out. "When we met, you'd been trying to fix it."
"That's different." He shook his head, though she couldn't actually see him. "It wasn't broken, just disabled, and it's previously been burnt out. Neither time was it actually destroyed or even physically damaged in any way."
"So, when one does get damaged, it starts spewing teleportation energy?"
"Apparently."
There was a long silence from the other end. Then, "Can you pull up a 3D topographical map of the Ice Cliffs and the surrounding area over there? These projectors are shot."
"I...can, yeah..." Jack said slowly, a little confused, as he did it. "Why?"
"So I can do this." As Jenny answered, the surface of the ice in the map began glowing pale yellow, with a few tiny patches of bright yellow dotted over various locations. "I've overlaid it with the teleportation energy readings. What's it look like now?"
"It's spread out pretty evenly over the whole region, but it dissipates fairly soon after leaving the ice; it's pretty much gone by the time it hits the tree line," he told her. "But there's about five places - "
"About five?" Jenny interrupted incredulously. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Five, there are exactly five places," he corrected himself, though he couldn't help smiling. " Five places where there's a lot of energy. It's like it clustered at certain points."
"And is one of those 'clusters' at your location?"
"Yes," he said, zooming in on the cluster in question. From an aerial viewpoint, it looked even more like a bowl. "And you're at another, several hundred kilometres away. Mine is brighter though. Actually, mine's the brightest out of all of them. Lucky me."
"Ok, theory: the teleportation can happen between places where there's energy and there's energy all over, making this whole area locationally unstable. But it's more likely you'll be sent somewhere where there's more energy," Jenny said carefully. "That's how vortex manipulators work anyway, isn't it? Using the Time Vortex as the energy? Except in the Time Vortex, there's not clusters like here, so the destination can be...controlled..." she suddenly trailed off. "Oh."
"Oh?"
"This vortex manipulator. Gelbrooks' vortex manipulator. It's broken."
"Yeah. What, is it acting up again? For that matter, how'd you stop it in the first place?"
"I just replaced it's cover, which won't work for long, but it's stable right now. No, I mean...Jack," she said, quietly but urgently. "Is it possible that the energy the broken vortex manipulator is spewing is coming from the Time Vortex?"
For a few long moments, Jack didn't answer. Just as Jenny had begun to fear he'd somehow been teleported again, he finally said. "I don't know, Jen. It might be possible. Anything's possible." She had just enough time to think his response was less than helpful before he went on. "Except if it is...and really, even if it isn't...I'm not sure you should've covered it like that."
"What?"
"Whatever the source, it didn't stop my vortex manipulator being jammed, but it did stop the energy surges – I can't go anywhere from here, by either its power or my own. Like you said it wasn't a permanent solution. Think about it though. There was enough energy there to cover thousands of square kilometres of ice and now you've stopped it."
Jenny suddenly understood and let out a small gasp. "Pressure," she whispered, glancing at the manipulator. Was it slightly brighter than before?
"That metal is strong, but it's apparently not unbreakable. And this one's already been broken once. What happens when the pressure builds enough to break it again?"
Nothing good. Jenny thought, but didn't say out loud. Instead, she say down on the floor next to the Fleet Admirals' skeletal arm and slid the broken vortex manipulator off of it. "If I'm right, the teleport should take me to you. To my ship."
"What? Jenny, what are you doing?"
"I'm coming," she answered quietly, strapping the manipulator to her own wrist. "I'm coming to you, Jack." Then she flipped open the cover.
There was a blinding flash of light and in the few seconds before I cleared, Jenny contemplated the possible results of her action. The sudden burst of energy hadn't killed her outright, which had been the worst case scenario, and it hadn't sent her anywhere that would kill her more slowly; encased in ice or high in the air. One of the remaining options was that her theory was correct and she'd end up in the same place as Jack and all the Gowls had been sent – if not this trip, then within the first few. Finally, her theory could be wrong and she'd randomly teleport around the Ice Cliff until she froze or starved to death.
Her vision cleared. To her relief, she stood directly next to her ship.
"Jack?" she asked as she entered.
He spun around, looking a bit shocked. "What did you do?"
Jenny held up the vortex manipulator "I took it. I needed to bring it here, find out exactly what's wrong with it."
"Sure...but what did you do?" He asked again. "About 30 seconds ago, this whole map was shining like a star, then it went back to like before. What happened?"
"I opened the cover..." she murmured, coming over to look at the holographic image. "It let out all the energy that had been trapped when I blocked it...did you say the whole map? Not just the Cliffs – beyond them as well?" Jack nodded and she bit her lip anxiously. "Letting the energy build up like that might not have been a very good idea. Settling it all free at once allowed it to break whatever barrier had been keeping it confined to the ice."
"Oh, the villagers," Jack said suddenly, understanding.
"I'm going to leave this open for now, so you should be able to direct the energy surges again. Can you go back to the village and ask them if they were affected when I took off the cover?"
"No." Her confusion was evidently apparent from her expression, because he went on. "I can't, no. I don't speak their language."
"They...speak a different language?"
"Of course they do." It was Jack's turn to be confused. "I thought you knew. I mean, you speak it, too."
Jenny froze at the words, mouth slightly open. She thought about talking to Ola and the Matriarch, trying to remember whether there was anything different about their speech – or her own, for that matter, while talking to them. She came up with nothing. As far as she could tell, talking to them had been no different than the conversation she was having now. She did realize that Jack had never actually spoken to any of them, nor they to him. He'd even misunderstood something she said to him while she'd been looking at Ola.
"What language are we speaking - ? Never mind," she cut herself off mid-question. "Not important right now. Still, we should check on the villagers."
"There could be a universal translator on the Falcon. There weren't exactly standard issue for Time Agents – not like vortex manipulators – but they were used for missions in places and times that don't use standard languages. The Fleet Admiral would probably have one. I can go back and check," Jack suggested.
Jenny nodded absently. She was still a little shocked that she could speak a different language without realizing it. As Jack left, she shook herself and then anchored the broken vortex manipulator to her ship. She didn't think it would teleport her any further, because this area was, as Jack had said, the brightest location on the map. Still, if it tried to, it would bring her and the ship along as well.
Jack cursed as he landed in a place that was not the Silver Falcon's control room, though it was probably somewhere on the ship. Probably, though hard to tell for sure – it was pitch black. Feeling around in the dark, he first encountered several wooden crates, then a wall. A few more seconds of fumbling and he found a door handle – locked, but it gave way after a single hard shove.
Jack, along with several of the crates, fell out of what appeared to be a storage closet just off the back part of the Falcon. The old wood splintered on impact with the floor, spilling the boxes' contents. Frowning, he bent to pick up one of the freed objects.
"Vortex manipulators?" he muttered, confused. Just the three crates that had fallen had held dozens of them and there were many more still in the closet. And as he looked around, he saw that the main room of the ship also contained crates. Piles of them, stacked haphazardly wherever there was room. This was not a large ship – more a personal shuttle, really – but as many boxes had been crammed in here as could fit. If they all held vortex manipulators...Jack hadn't even known that many existed.
He opened a few more of the boxes, to find that they, at least, also held the devices. Slightly concerned now – why would Gelbrooks, of all people, be transporting vortex manipulators and why so many – he made his way to the control room.
"Jenny?" he spoke over the comms.
"Here," she answered. "Find anything?"
Jack knew she was talking about the translator, but he glanced back to the room full of crates. "Something, yeah..."
Before he could go on, she absently replied, "Good," sounding like she wasn't really paying attention. "Listen, I think I know where the energy clusters came from. When the manipulator was damaged, it started permeating the Ice Cliffs with energy, yes? But it couldn't sent the energy everywhere, because like yours, the Fleet Admiral's vortex manipulator still has a working safety release, even after being broken," she explained at top speed. "It wouldn't surprise me if that part is actually designed to withstand even more than the rest; it is most important."
"Yeah. Look, Jenny - " Jack tried to interrupt, but she wasn't listening.
"Anyway, the manipulator started distributing energy, but doing it unevenly. And the energy is attracted to itself; like mass, you know, gravity? Had the energy been evenly distributed, it would've been stable and anyone in the Cliffs really would be teleported randomly. Instead, it gathered into clusters. Eventually, all of the energy would've ended up in those five places, probably."
Jenny - " he began trying to tell her about the crates again, but this time he cut himself off. "Wait, did you say the energy attracts itself?"
"Yes."
"And it's like gravity, where more of it has a stronger attraction?"
"Well, I hardly have a perfect equation, but it seems so, yes."
Jack paused for a second, thinking. "There's something weird about the damage, isn't there?" he asked suddenly. "There's not just a 'hole' letting energy through like water out of a cracked cup – there's something forcing in out, more like a pump."
"Now that you mention it...yeah, there is," Jenny answered after few minutes. "How'd you know?"
"Basic physics. Nothing moves from a lower potential to a higher potential." Jack flipped open the vortex manipulator that he'd taken from the other room. "All the energy now in the Cliffs had to come from somewhere, so there has to be a lot on the other side. In the Time Vortex, if that's where it's coming from. When the ship crashed, there was no energy here, so damaged manipulator or no, it wouldn't go from a place where there's a lot to a place where there's none if it's attracted to itself. Something else would have to be forcing it." As he spoke, Jack had been changing the settings on the vortex manipulator. "Now, is there any change on the map at the ship's location?" he asked once finished.
"Er...yes, there is," she said, sounding surprised. "It's getting dimmer, just a little. What happened?"
"This ship was, apparently, transporting vortex manipulators. It's full of them. Hundreds, possibly thousands." Jenny gave a choking cough of surprise at the numbers. "I know. Anyway, I set one of them to let the energy back through. The attraction does the rest."
"It's not enough though." Jenny sounded disappointed. "This one's pumping energy into the Cliffs faster than that one is letting it out. Much faster. However...yes!"
"Yes?"
"The vortex manipulators on the Falcon – now that I know they're there, I can detect them from here. There are just over 1000 of them, by the way. And they don't have security yet, so I'm guessing they were never registered to anyone. This makes them extremely easy to hack," she explained.
"What did you do?"
"Well, I haven't actually finished doing it yet, but in a minute, I will have set all the vortex manipulators on that ship – excluding yours – so they'll let the energy back through."
A short time passed in silence. "There!" she cried triumphantly. "The teleportation energy is now leaving the Cliffs at a rates that's about twice the rate it's coming in. It might take a few years to clear them up completely, but after that, anything that comes through will immediately go back. I'm guessing your vortex manipulator is working again?"
He checked it, then grinned. "Why, yes it is."
A/N: So, can you tell I'm a Physics major? We work with potentials in E&M all the time. Anyway, I know there are some plot holes and unanswered questions in this adventure, but I plan to come back to it in a few chapters.
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