Jen watched the hologram smile back at her while the baby nursed. Toshi had grown so quickly in the last three weeks. Jack was right. Their daughter would be unique combination of their traits. Her speed of development would be more like her mother. Jen could only hope the child's compassion and intelligence would follow her father. She ached for him. She missed Jack's crooked smile and teasing. He used to say it was his fifty-first century pheromones that kept her with him, but it was more than that. So much more.
Toshi looked up at her mother as she finished, then held her hand towards the hologram. "Da?"
Jen smiled back and kissed the baby on her head. "Yes, Toshi, Da."
Jen sadly turned the hologram off, watching Jack's image shimmer and then disappear. She placed the baby on her shoulder and gently patted her back until the baby burped. Toshi looked sleepy so Jen placed her in the cradle her father had given her, his cradle from long ago. Jen sat down and rocked it so that the planets and stars attached began to move in hypnotic circles. Toshi first gurgled and reached up towards them, but then her blue eyes began to droop, and soon she was fast asleep. Charlie padded across the room and lay down next to Toshi's cradle, looking up at her with sad eyes.
"You miss him, too." Jen leaned down to ruffled his ears. The spaniel put his muzzle on top of his paws and sighed. She dimmed the light in the room and left to go back to her research in the library.
Her father's warnings had confined her within her TARDIS on the sweltering first planet of the Keplar 47 system. Shakira kept her and her child safe from the swinging temperatures and driving winds, but Jen was tired of waiting. Waiting for her father to deem it safe for her to leave, waiting for her father to return to Earth for Jack. It had been too long. He said he gave the right coordinates for the Captain to use his wrist strap to transport back to her, but he did not come. Jack Harkness would never have abandoned her and Toshi. Never. Something was wrong, terribly wrong.
"Shakira, open the observation windows."
The TARDIS windows slowly revealed a desert landscape very different from Caputo 7.
Shakira was nestled high against a rocky cliff. All around them were the shifting pattern of sandy dunes. The constant wind drove the sands in fluid motion so that each day was a different pattern. There was no water, no plant, no animal native to this desolate planet. A binary star, Keplar 47 was its sun. A small red star orbited around the large yellow one producing spectacular double sunsets. A larger gaseous planet completed this small isolated system.
Jen walked into the library her father had duplicated from his own. She sat down at her research table and spread out the evidence she had collected so far on The Silence.
"There is something that I am missing," she mused as she scrolled through the data. She brought up a sketch of an alien humanoid: tall with bulbous heads with pitiless eyes sunken deep within their sockets. Its bony face stretched his skin to a point on his narrow chin. It was recorded that their large, shriveled hands included a large flipper-like finger that contains a killing energy leaving only debris. Ruling by suggestion, their victims could not remember their presence. They seemed to live in tunnels and hang from the ceilings like bats. Some type of religious order focused on the destruction of her father and any other time traveler. As with other ruthless cultures, the Silence attracted like-minded organizations like the Church and the Order of the Headless Monks. All were dangerous zealots.
"Shakira, access trends of religious war and violence."
Her TARDIS began a litany of wars based on the domination of one creed over another: the Purge of Nadians, the Christian Crusades of Earth, the Taliban Wars, the Genocide of Hal, etc." All were religious factions struggling for economic dominance and power masquerading their actions as the will of their god. Why? Why were they fixated on time travelers? The story about her father answering some question that would cause their destruction seemed mythic and useless. The real issue was how to fight them. All her innate military training focused on this.
She turned the metallic eye patch over in her hand. The Doctor had given it to her, a souvenir from the Battle of Demon Run. This is how they controlled humans and humanoids. This was the only way to see and hear them; however the neural link had a failsafe mechanism that would kill the wearer if the Silence felt threatened. Jen cleared an area on the light table and began to take apart the eye patch. The answer must be here.
She didn't hear her father's TARDIS materialize next to Shakira in the morning until there was a knock at the door. Jen had fallen asleep at the table. She shook herself awake, and then walked over to check on Toshi. The child was just beginning to waken.
Jen picked up the baby and walked to the door. As she opened it the Doctor swept in with shopping bags.
"So how are you doing on Tatooine? Hot sandy planet." He giggled. "Always did like this name. Took it from a director I met in the 20th Century in California. George Lucas was his name, quiet man, great imagination. Luke Skywalker and Tatooine! Never did get the concept of time travel, but a good storyteller."
Jen shifted Toshi to her other shoulder. She kissed her father on the check and directed him to the kitchen where he put the shopping bags down on the table. He turned around and took Toshi from her raising the baby high in the air.
"How is my baby granddaughter?" The Doctor laughed then kissed her as he whirled around the room. "Isn't she a beauty, and she's getting so big! I've brought her some new clothes." Toshi began to cry.
"She doesn't like getting dizzy," Jen said, "and she's hungry. I'm transitioning her to solid food. Would you like to feed her?"
The Doctor grinned with delight and sat down with Toshi on his knee. Jen heated up some applesauce and handed it to him. He began to feed her.
"You are a natural at this," Jen smiled at the sight.
"Done it before," the Doctor said. "I love babies. The promise of new life, new possibilities."
Jen fixed tea, poured two cups, and sat next to her father."Have you heard from Jack?"
"No," the Doctor continued to stir the applesauce and then offered a spoonful to Toshi. "But I'm not worried. This has happened before. He can take care of himself."
Jen could feel the anger surge into her blood, but suppressed it.
"When do you think it will be safe enough to leave here?" Jen pointed out the observation windows to the sandstorm that was in progress. "This is no place to raise a child, and she needs her father."
"I gave him the coordinates so he must have a good reason if he's not back yet," the Doctor replied while balancing Toshi on his knee. "I told you, he can take care of himself. Don't worry about him; he'll be back. Jack is a soldier."
"Like Rory was a soldier?" Jen exploded. "I've listened to your stories. You like someone you can send on dangerous missions and is expendable?" She stood up and put her hands on the table. "You saw what he suffered on Caputo 7! How can you forget that! He may heal, but I see the nightmares. He needs family that has his back. We are his family!"
Toshi began to cry. Jen took a deep breath to calm herself, then picked up Toshi and began to rock her as she walked around the control area. The child began to relax after the adults stopped arguing.
The Doctor lowered his eyes. "I'm sorry. Of course I want Jack back here, but now is not the time to return. I need more time to figure out how to deal with this threat."
Jen decided it was pointless to continue this line of conversation and switched topics.
"Toshi has something of my pattern of accelerated growth." Jen took the child to the observation room and placed her in a playpen. Toshi began to play with the musical pattern toy that chimed like silver bells. Charlie spotted her and trotted over next to the playpen and sat down wagging his tail.
"How fast?" asked the Doctor.
"I estimate a ratio of one to five." Jen returned to the table while keeping an eye on her daughter. "That means that she would be equal to five Earth years at the end of one year, and ten Earth years at the end of two years and so on."
"I expect she will stop when she reaches maturity," observed the Doctor. "At least she'll have a childhood. I'm sorry that you missed that, I really am sorry."
Jen shrugged. "I am what I am."
The Doctor stood up and went behind Jen's chair and hugged her. "I love you all: you, Jack, and the baby. I know it is hard, but you just need to trust me."
He straightened up. "This is a short visit, but I'll be back in three days. Did you have a chance to look at that eye patch? You're much better at technology and science than I am."
"Yes," Jen said, "I'm taking it apart to see how it works. Maybe that's the key."
She walked her father to the door of her TARDIS and watched him leave. She then went over to the playpen and took Toshi out and placed her on the rug next to Charlie so that they could play together. Jen went back to the library, sat down, and looked at the pieces of the eye patch scattered on the light table. She glanced at the bookcase and picked up a framed picture of Jack from the shelf, lightly touching his cheek with her finger.
"Where are you?" she whispered allowing tears to come. "Where are you, Jack?" Then she kissed it.