STORIES

TWENTYEIGHT

"The Everything Killer?" Ianto Jones asked the Captain incredulously. "That sounds a bit unlikely."

"It's not. Grasshopper, are you paying attention?"

"Yes, Jack."

The Captain pantomimed a punch to Ianto's face, pulling it so that his knuckles met the Welshman's cheek and nudged his head. "Violence is mostly about energy delivery. Fists, clubs, swords, bullets, death rays – their purpose is to dump energy into a person's body."

Ianto smiled, his eyes sparkling. "This I know, Jack. Conservation of momentum, it's not just a good idea – it's the law!"

Jack met the good-humored remark with a deep frown. This was serious business. "What's the most concentrated source of energy you can think of? Answer me, quickly now!"

"Erm… nuclear fission?"

Jack nodded. "And the stupidest way of using it is to split a whole lot of nuclei in the air above a city, just burn up everything from horizon to horizon. It works, but it's messy and it destroys a lot of stuff that doesn't need destroying. It's better to kill more precisely."

"How do you manage that?"

"The amount of fissile material you need to kill any living being is microscopic. That's the easy part. The hard part is delivering it to the right place, to the right people."

Ianto shook his head confused, "So you're talking about a targeted dirty bomb of some sort?"

Jack smiled menacingly, "Much more elegant. What I'm talking about is a reactor smaller than the size of a pinhead. It's a tiny, perfect little mechanism, with moving parts, a little touch of memory, and a few different kinds of nuclear material in it. When it's turned off, like it is now… Grasshopper, do you want to beam the container over?" The jar shimmered into existence on top of a small table at the far side of the room. "…it's almost totally inert." He walked over, picked up the container, and gave it a shake or two. "You could eat these reactors for breakfast by the spoonful and it would be no worse than eating a bowl of bran flakes.

"But switch one of these reactors into the 'on' configuration and it goes critical and sprays an intense burst of high-energy neutrons in every direction, and kills – well – anything and everything that is alive with a radius of – depending on exposure time – about half a mile." Jack put the container back down on the table. "And there are hundreds of thousands of them here. Millions of them…

"Hence the name."

"What's the delivery mechanism?" Ianto asked not inappropriately.

Jack lifted an index finger into the air and twirled it around in a circle before dropping his arm back to his side, "Whatever Grasshopper can come up with."

Ianto looked at the container, his expression a mixture of awe and horror. "And what causes them to turn on?"

The Captain shrugged. "Anything could be a trigger. Body heat. Respiration. A timer. A radio transmission. The lack of a radio transmission. The sound of Wil's voice singing a Mozart aria. They're programmable. That's what the little dash of memory is for.

"And they're brilliant. They're too small to show up on any known radar. Get even a couple of them in the vicinity of a ship… Or a smattering in the vicinity of an invasion fleet…" The Captain raised an open hand into the air and then quickly closed his fingers into a tight fist. He didn't bother with an accompanying sound effect; he didn't need one. "If by some bizarre chance the radiation, heat, and blast don't do it, the Everything Killers will also fry the EM and other systems."

Jack took a deep breath. He had said his piece. In fact, it distinctly felt to him like he'd been talking way, way too much as of late and he was now more than ready for something else – for some action. "Any other questions? Ianto? Grasshopper?"

After a few moments of silence he lightly touched, in complex sequence, a couple of carefully hidden buttons on the container's surface – the last and final security measure – and unscrewed the lid of what had formerly looked like a harmless cookie jar. "They're all yours," he said to Wil's ship as he placed the container back onto the table. "Beam Ianto and me back to The Doctor's TARDIS, please."

"Where did those come from?" Ianto asked him after they rematerialized. The Captain simply stared at him.

"What did you have them for?" Again, just the stare.

"God, Jack, I can't believe you kept those at the Hub." The tone was disapproving, distressed.

The Captain's stare turned icy cold. "And I can't believe you think you know me that well."

It was meant to hurt and it did. The hurt showed clearly on Ianto's face. "Jack? What's going on?"

"Nothing, nothing at all," The Captain turned his back on the Welshman and went over to the console. "Let's go get John, shall we?"

Ianto nodded wordlessly, for a moment wishing very much he was somewhere else – that he'd not come along on this particular quest. But only just for a moment. He screwed up his courage and spoke again, "I'm sorry Jack, I didn't mean for it to sound that way. I know you have reasons for what you do. I have no right to question them. And maybe you're right. Maybe I don't know you all that well. Maybe I never did." There was almost a pleading quality to his voice, like he so did not want what he just said to be true.

Jack pivoted, looked at him and smiled. It was a genuine, one-hundred percent Captain Jack Harkness smile. "I wouldn't say that. You know me better than anyone else in the room."

"Gee, thanks Jack."

"Don't mention it, Ianto. And never forget that I love you. Now hold on because we're… uh, this elevator is about to go down."

The engines fired up but it was one of the quickest rides Jack had ever taken in the Doctor's TARDIS – in The Doctor's and his TARDIS. The engines throttled back almost as soon as they revved up, and the control room lights dimmed as the central column slowed and promptly stopped.

"What's happening, Jack?"

"I think this is the ship's way of running silent and running deep," the Captain murmured. "I suggest you keep your voice down." He motioned toward the entrance. "Let's go have a look, shall we?"

The two men walked quietly down the ramp to the doors. But before Jack could open them Ianto happened to glance at the floor. The Welshman placed a hand on the Captain's arm and whispered urgently, "Uh, Jack, hold on. What's that?"

"I don't know, looks like… um, water? What the hell…? Shit!" Jack raced back to the console, hit a button and then ran back down to Ianto's side. The trickle of water had stopped but the area was still visibly damp.

"I've put the shielding up," the Captain explained as he opened the doors. Then, for a few seconds, Jack Harkness felt as if his heart had stopped beating. That's because he found himself staring out at a wall of water. Literally – a vertical wall of water being held back by the TARDIS force field. It was as if they were at an aquarium standing behind a thick plate glass window watching the pretty little fishies in the beautiful blue water. But this was not an aquarium. There were no pretty little fishies. And the water was not quite, but nearly, totally pitch black.