A/N ok, getting back into the swing of things. Not that there will be a new update every day, but hopefully more often than there were before. Enjoy, and you know the drill.
After a few (far too few) hours of sleep, Ianto was up again, making another round of coffee for the morning meeting. Clyde had snuck in earlier, using the same secret and largely disused entrance that had admitted Tarleton and his minions under the principal that they wouldn't be watching that one. Not to mention that it had been recently swept for everything and secured. He brought with him the young Evans that they had almost met the night before. John Hart and Patrick had turned up as well, having turned over the surveillance to Jake and David. He could hear the other time traveler's complaints clearly as Chris dragged him down to medical to make sure he'd not managed to damage himself on stake out.
"Alright people," Jack said from the railing outside the conference room, "five minutes." Gwen was coming through the cog door, lights and sirens flashing, with Rhys at her heels.
Ianto turned, then turned back, sidearm already in his hand. "Jack," he said urgently, moving to cover the couple. "If that's Gwen and Rhys…"
"Stand down, Ianto," the Captain said, not looking the least upset. "Nice one, Luke, where'd you get the shimmer?" There was a shift and indeed, Gwen and Rhys turned into Maria and Luke Smith, standing in the middle of the hub. Ianto returned his sidearm slowly.
"Thank you, Sir. How did you know?"
"First, Gwen's already here, came in the garage this morning hiding in the back seat of Tish's husband's car, slipped in when she dropped her daughter at school. Second, you said you'd find a way of getting yourselves safely in, and third, my wrist strap detected the particular energy signature. Not a lot of that tech here. Where'd you get it?"
"I've had it a while, the Doctor gave it to my mum ages ago for me to play with. I've been enhancing it since. But what if we'd been someone else?"
"Then you wouldn't have gotten passed Tish, you had to show yourselves then or you'd be secured upstairs, bolted in."
"We asked her not to announce us," Maria said. "I wanted to see if people were really fooled. We can't see it, you know, not on ourselves anyway."
"Tell Ianto how you take your coffee and get up here, you two," Jack said with a fond smile before young Doctor Smith launched into a long winded explanation of the tech involved. He was much better than he used to be, and Ianto was truly fond of the young alien and his wife, but he still tended to run long when he got excited.
"Oi, Lukie boy, Maria, get up here," Clyde called down.
Pretty soon they were all in the conference room, a bit more crowded than usual, and breakfast was in full swing. John Hart had managed a seat between Patrick and Chris and was busy flirting outrageously with both of them, though he'd already made passes at Clyde (again) and made a couple of suggestions to Luke and Marie before Jack broke in, reminding him that there were more important things that his libido and that the Smiths were both young enough to be his grandchildren, not to mention what Sarah Jane would do to them both. Then he'd started the meeting.
After an hour, they'd broken up and headed off to their separate assignments. Clyde was off to relieve the other man, named Davies, not surprisingly. ("What, couldn't find a Jones," Patrick snarked). Evans, Patrick and John headed off to the showers and their (hopefully) separate beds. Jack had assigned Luke and Maria to look over all the data Ianto had collected and try to figure out what Tarleton's plan was. Jack, after a few minutes wondered down to the lab. Ianto knew he was worried, about Tarleton, about John Hart and the people after him, even about the friends now in hiding in a distant time and place. It was Jack's nature to take on the world. He made a mental note to give him an hour and then go check on him. Meanwhile, he turned over the files to Luke and Maria to review while he excused himself to feed the rest off the residents. He already knew everything that was in them.
After checking Janet and her charge, who seemed none the worse for wear, fed the hoix and another creature whose identification wasn't clear, he grabbed his things and headed for the upper level for a much more pleasant task. He wasn't sure if it was the sound of the bucket, or the smell of breakfast or some other factor, but by the time he was in place, the two resident reptiles were already launching from their cave up high in the wall. Myfanwy got fed first, not only being the senior but because she was too big to hand feed. She couldn't land on the railing very well, nor balance for long.
"You really do have pet Pterodactyls," young Evans said, from below him in an awed voice. "Thought the Leu was having me on."
"More or less," Ianto said unable to resist a moment of pride. "Would you like to have a go?" He offered the young man a glove. Myfanwy was polite and it didn't take much. He agreed and soon Ianto had him throwing fish for her like a pro, while he turned to giving Gwydion his breakfast. The young male was not only much younger but a much smaller species so Jack had managed to get him used to hand feeding, though he would still get his turn to catch a couple of smaller fish when she was done. He didn't think there would be a problem but over all he preferred them to eat separately.
Afterward, he sent the happy young man off to his bunk, having had the experience of a lifetime and probably not the strangest thing that he would see in a career with UNIT.
Luke had already read through the material and was busy making notes on a data pad, working out several possible chains of correlation, some they had already thought of, other new, none of them good. Ianto left him to it and went to get Jack.