A/N: BBC still owns Doctor Who and Torchwood, I'm just borrowing it for a bit.
Once there they found that the large industrial looking, underground complex known as the Hub was virtually empty. Well except for Ianto who was looking down at them from one of the platforms further up.
"Anyone else here?" Jack called up when he spotted him.
"No, they went home after bringing in another weevil. Oh but Tosh did mention there was a strange reading on the rift monitor, nothing big, just unexpected."
Jack nodded, looking back at the Time Lords now trailing behind him. "That would most likely be us, yes." The Master confirmed. The Doctor was currently busy being fascinated by the pteranodon circling up near the ceiling.
"You have an actual, living pterosaur? Well a pteranodon to be exact… That is brilliant! Somewhat dangerous, but brilliant." The Doctor grinned, but after stumbling and almost falling on a staircase he took his attention of the winged reptile.
"Nah, she's pretty friendly. We call her Myfanwy." Jacks grin was almost instantly turned into a grimace as the reptile let out a loud, horrible screech. Obviously someone was being sarcastic when naming her. "…And that's why we don't call her by name that often." He added and continued up to his office. Once there he seated himself behind his desk and offered the other chair to the Doctor, leaving the Master standing, and making it clear he'd cherish what victories he could get. Slightly annoyed, but so far quite unimpressed the Master quietly studied the writing on the glass windows behind Jack, leaving the Doctor to try to get something useful out of Jack and Torchwood, something he had considered virtually impossible for quite some time.
"So what's wrong with the Tardis? And what does it have to do with me?" Jack asked, trying to ignore the Master who was a bit too close for comfort for his taste.
The Doctor took a deep breath and started to explain everything to Jack. When he reached the end he'd gone through about three pointless techno babble sessions, two exasperated rants a couple of pointed complains about travel companions mood swings and somehow doubled back over his own arguments half a dozen times further confusing things. In the end it took Jack a couple of confused minutes to process it all but he still managed to get a few useful bits out of it.
"So your Tardis had some sort of break-down, emergency existed the time-vortex and set you down here and you can't get anywhere or anywhen if you can't get it fixed, and you want to go through our archives to see if we might have anything you could use?" He gave the Doctor an uncertain look, almost expecting, and quite hoping, he was joking.
"That pretty much sums it up, yhea." The Doctor nodded, looking quite serious, yet somehow managing to look happy at the same time.
"You're joking. No offense Doc, but why would we do that? Torchwood needs all the equipment it has, not to mention you-"Jack was cut off by a well-timed and obviously well-planned interruption by the Master. It certainly derailed his train of thought, and didn't make any fonder of the Time Lord in question.
"This is quite interesting, flawed to the point where it's nearly useless but interesting nonetheless." The Master gave a fake-friendly smile, the kind every politician worth his name has mastered, while looking just a little bit thoughtful and still facing the window.
"Oh and you know that after looking at it for what? 10 minutes?" Jack turned to face him.
"Hardly. Any second year student and above should be ashamed of himself if they need more than three minutes to see that this doesn't add up properly." He couldn't help but sneer. "No, it took this long to figure out just how you managed to make this many errors in such a rudimentary calculation."
Jack could only sputter and glare, so the Master continued. "I admit it took longer to realize than it should have, but then I thought that not even you would make such a basic mistake." He paused.
"…What mistake? Of course it's not exact, the rift constantly fluctuates and those are just the core numbers that never changes, as far as we've been able to detect. Our reference point if you will." Jack pulled himself up, trying to regain some lost ground in this argument.
"Really? Well I regret to inform you that you couldn't be more wrong if you tried." The Master smirked, looking genuinely amused now. "Meaning your point of reference is flawed. You are obviously aware that a good part of this equation was done in Gallifreyan, and that part is correct more or less. Not quite, but more or less." He pointed out some figures on the largest window that were obviously annoying him. "Then someone went and added equations in your standard decimal system, which wouldn't be a problem in itself if it wasn't for the fact that whoever did it was a complete moron."
"Hey, wait a minute. Tosh is no moron, and this has helped us more than once!" Jack gestured wildly at the large amount of complicated equations on the glass, truth be told it had taken Torchwood 3 a very long time to get those numbers sorted, but Toshiko had perfected it as far as he was concerned.
The Master massaged his temples before continuing, Jacks loud voice was giving him a headache, but he wasn't about to admit it. "Yes, well then she should have taken into account that your standard decimal system at the most permits one to work in three dimensions, while ours basically is a hexadecimal, curvilinear five dimension system. Well the simple system, like the one used here." He took in Jacks flabbergasted expression before adding the final nail to the coffin, "Really, it's quite simple to fix."
"And how inexact is it as it is right now…?"
"Ohh you'd need at least a few decades margin of error as it is right now…" The Doctor who had quietly watched the exchange offered. Well it probably wasn't quite that bad, but he had a feeling he knew where this was going.
"Decades? I doubt it's that bad." Jack looked back at the Doctor who was leaning back comfortably in his chair.
The Master grinned behind his back, glad to see the Doctor had caught on. "Yes decades. Perhaps you've been lucky until now. But luck only gets you so far." He shrugged when he got Jacks attention again.
"Uhu, so will you fix it?" he gave the Master a doubtful look and turned his attention back to the Doctor who smiled apologetically and excused himself with a "He's the math genius here, not me." This was a blatant lie, since both could run far more advanced calculations through their heads while they slept.
Jack let out an exasperated groan and turned back to the Master. Neither the smirk nor the simple "No." surprised him at all. On the other hand, he wasn't really expecting him to turn and leave, but he couldn't deny that he was relieved.
"...I completely lost that one didn't I?" Jack sat back down in his chair and looked at the Doctor who was still grinning.
"Well... yes, you did actually." He ended up agreeing.
"And you're not going to explain what the Master is doing here? Or why he's acting all... sane?"
"Can't." The Doctor shook his head. Technically he probably could, but he really didn't think it was any of Jack's business.
"And now you're helping him to blackmail me?" Jack reached out for his coffee mug, only to find it empty.
"I think it's the other way around this time actually." The Doctor corrected, seemingly oblivious to how this must look.
"Right." Jack glared, starting to really despise this day. "So you get to poke around and see if you can find anything that could possibly help your Tardis get off the ground again, and one of you do whatever needs to be done to sort those numbers out?"
The Doctor nodded in agreement. "It won't take long to write down an explanation and what you should have done and adjust the equation."