Jack made his way cautiously to the TARDIS, looking around corners before continuing on, expecting fire-throwing-trombone players dressed as Santa Claus to jump out at him from behind every tree and phone box. The courtyard area of the Powell Estate was quiet, however, aside from the occasional echo of bass from a distant Christmas Eve party.
Once again feeling naked - and not in the fun way - without a weapon at his side, Jack wondered idly if somewhere in the wilds of the never-ending TARDIS corridors there were anything resembling an armory. Certainly the Doctor wouldn't have chosen to add one, but the Doctor hadn't designed the TARDIS, he'd borrowed her.
As he reached the TARDIS, Jack pulled his key - given to him very ceremoniously by Rose after they'd dropped off Blon-the-egg on Raxacoricofallapatorious with the Doctor looking on, a faux-bored look masking a smile - out of his pocket and unlocked the door. He'd felt absurdly pleased to receive a key, absurdly happy that the Doctor was acknowledging to that extent that Jack was just as much a part of the TARDIS crew as Rose was… no, Jack corrected himself mentally, it wasn't a crew so much as it was a family. Jack had been absurdly pleased that the Doctor thought of Jack as part of the TARDIS family.
He stepped into the TARDIS and smoothly shut the door behind him, flipping the lock. He took a deep breath, and he felt a nearly-imperceptible shift in the atmosphere of the console room. It was an odd mixture of the usual welcoming feeling the TARDIS always seemed to radiate when the Doctor and his companions arrived home after an adventure and a strange sense of foreboding or wrongness. Jack shivered slightly, and chalked the feeling up to his own worry over the crisis at hand and whatever irregularities the TARDIS was probably picking up.
"Hello, beautiful," he said softly to the ship. It always made the Doctor sigh exasperatedly and roll his eyes when Jack flirted with the TARDIS. Jack suspected this was more his general annoyance with the regularity of Jack's flirting than it was any particular opposition to Jack being attached to the TARDIS. The truth was that Jack really did think the TARDIS was beautiful. Beautiful both from an engineering perspective - to build a living, growing, endless vehicle in which one could travel through space and time was, in Jack's opinion, pretty damn impressive - but also from a much less concrete or describable perspective. Jack couldn't have explained to someone who hadn't been on the TARDIS why she was beautiful. She simply was, and Jack loved living there.
It had occurred to him that the personality changes that legends held could accompany regeneration might mean that the Doctor would no longer want him on board. He couldn't imagine the Doctor ever wanting Rose to leave - which Jack rather thought was borne out by the Doctor's reaction when he thought Rose might want to leave. Jack was newer, though. He told himself not to worry, but he also found himself trailing his fingers lightly along the handrail as he made is way up the ramp to the TARDIS console.
Just in case he had to leave, he wanted to remember everything perfectly.
He reached the console and pulled the monitor around until it was positioned above the set of controls Jack wanted to use.
"All right, girl," he said softly. "Let's see what you've got." He searched through databanks, using what little he knew about the approaching aliens as search parameters. It was difficult, however, because they knew so little.
Frustrated, he switched to data about the TARDIS. "Don't suppose you've got a cache of weapons hidden away? I know the Doctor wouldn't like it, but the Doctor's not awake right now."
There was a slight change in the TARDIS' usual humming noise, but Jack wasn't sure if it was an affirmative or disapproving change.
As he browsed rapidly through technical specifications about the TARDIS, Jack revisited the idea of piloting the TARDIS without the Doctor. Jack had enough background knowledge about spacecraft, even ones with time travel capabilities (albeit rudimentary ones when compared to the TARDIS), that he could recognize the purposes of different sets of controls. But he wasn't confident in his abilities to pilot the TARDIS on his own. There were a lot of controls about which Jack had no ideas regarding their purpose. And although Rose had been traveling with the Doctor longer than Jack had, she lacked his background knowledge. She was perfectly adept at following the Doctor's instructions on the not-uncommon occasions when he drafted her for assistance with a tricky landing, but that was as far as her TARDIS-piloting capabilities extended.
It seemed to Jack that hiding in the TARDIS as he'd mentioned to Rose was looking like a better and better option. In the meantime, he flipped off the monitor and adjusted a few dials.
"Time to run silent," he murmured. "Don't want anyone catching on to you being here."
In low light, Jack made his way through the TARDIS corridors to his room. He rummaged around in his stuff until he found one of his weapons that the Doctor hadn't managed to confiscate or ruin yet. It was a small blaster, and judging from the grainy picture he'd seen of whatever was coming for them, it wouldn't be much use. But Jack felt better armed than he did unarmed, no matter how the Doctor felt about weapons.
Tucking the blaster discreetly into the waistband of his pants, Jack left his room and returned to the console room. He stroked the console one last time.
"If there's anything you can do for the Doctor," he said quietly, "now would be a good time to let me know." He waited for a few moments, half expecting the console room to light up or for bells to ring, but nothing happened.
Jack sighed. "Didn't think so," he said sadly. He strode down the ramp and left the TARDIS, carefully locking the door behind him.
He returned to Rose's flat and entered without knocking. "I'm back," he called out, lest anyone think he was an intruder. He heard the bedclothes rustling in the room where the Doctor was resting, and then Rose's head poked out beyond the doorframe.
"Anything?" she asked hopefully.
Jack shook his head. "Nope. It's hard to look up an alien race when you don't know its name."
Rose's face fell, though she quickly tried to hide it.
"Any change with him?" Jack asked her.
She shook her head.
Jack was saved from coming up with a reply by Mickey's voice from the living room.
"Rose!" he called. "I'm in!"
With backward glances at the Doctor, still restless in his bed, Jack and Rose made their way down the hallway. When they both came into the room, Mickey shifted on the couch so that there was space on both sides of him. Jack sat on one side and Rose on the other.
"Take a look," he said to them both. "I've got access to the military." His screen was split into several sections, with different feeds in each. He pointed to one, which Jack recognized as some kind of radar. "They're tracking a spaceship," Mickey said. "A big one, and fast too." Even as he spoke the blip of the ship was coming closer to the center of the radar array. "And it's coming this way," Mickey finished, tone dark.
"Coming for what, though?" Rose mused. "The Doctor? Like, specifically him?"
"I don't know," Mickey said. "Maybe they're coming for all of us."
Jack stroked his chin thoughtfully. "We do have a pronounced tendency to show up in places and times where something we have to fix is coincidentally happening right as we arrive." He shrugged. "I sort of assumed it was the TARDIS nudging us along."
"Yeah," Rose said, "but the Doctor got the trip right this time. He aimed for Christmas and here we are. Christmas."
Jack nodded. "Christmas, with a side of an alien invasion for flavor."
"Well however it happened, you're here now," Mickey said. "And the invasion's happening, whether they're coming for the Doctor or not." He glanced back and forth between the two of them as an image of the aliens, this one clearer than before and containing four faces instead of one, came on the screen. "Have you seen them before? Did you find anything in the TARDIS, Jack?"
"I've never seen them," Rose said.
Jack shook his head. "Nothing on the TARDIS that could help." He tilted his head slightly at the image of the four aliens. "I do have the sudden urge to sing 'Bohemian Rhapsody,' though."
Rose giggled, stifled the laugh quickly. "It's no time to joke, Jack," she said, trying for a stern tone but only just barely managing to suppress the laugh instead.
The aliens were speaking, and it took Jack a moment to process that he couldn't understand what they were saying. Alarmed, he looked up from the laptop to find Rose looking at him, a similarly alarmed look on her face.
"I don't understand what they're saying," she said nervously. "Can you?" she asked Jack.
"Nope. Not a word." Mickey looked at the two of them quizzically.
"The TARDIS translates alien languages in our heads, all the time, no matter where we are."
"Then why isn't it working now?" Mickey asked.
"I don't know," Rose said, and Jack shook his head numbly. "Must be the Doctor," Rose continued, sounding more lost and upset than she had all night, which was saying something. "Like he's part of the circuit, and he's… broken."
Jackie bustled into the living room with three bowls of soup on a tray. She set the tray down on the table and then perched on the arm of her chair, grabbing the remote for the TV as she did so. "Eat up, you three," she said sternly. "If you're going to have to save us all, I don't want you doing it on an empty stomach. She flipped the TV on. "And I'm having this back on, too." She turned the volume up some. She gestured to the soup. "Eat it, I said."
"Yes, ma'am," Jack said, mustering a smile. "I never refuse food." He reached out to the table and picked up a bowl. He was pleasantly surprised by the taste of the soup. It wasn't gourmet by any measure, but apparently for all that Rose and the Doctor liked to joke about Jackie's cooking, she hadn't rendered canned soup inedible.
Rose and Mickey followed Jack's example, Mickey setting his laptop on the table so that he could eat without risking spilling on the computer. Satisfied that they were obeying her, Jackie got to her feet. She set the remote control back on the table. "Leave that on," she said. "I'm going to go sit with the Doctor while you eat and do your technical stuff. I can hear it in the bedroom."
Rose looked up at her, a grateful smile on her face. "Thanks, Mum," she said quietly.
Jackie nodded and, with a detour to the kitchen to pick up a cup of tea, headed for the Doctor.
On the news, one of the BBC anchors was speaking. "Speaking strictly off the record," he said solemnly, "government sources are calling this our longest night."
"Ah," Jack said conversationally. "That's cheery."
"You can always count on Auntie Beeb," Rose returned dryly.
"Oi!" Mickey exclaimed, pointing at his laptop. "Look, they must have some kind of translation software."
Jack shifted his attention from the television to the computer and sure enough, a box underneath the video was now filling with text as the alien message replayed. "People-slash-cattle." Jack paused in the middle of reading out the translation, unable to resist the urge to comment. "That's sort of an important distinction. You'd think they could make their translation software a little more sensitive." He shrugged and continued reading. "You belong to us. To the Sycorax."
"What, like in The Tempest?" Rose asked. Jack and Mickey looked at her in surprise. "What? I do read, you know." She shrugged. "A while back, the Doctor somehow got us stranded in the Vortex for weeks. I spent a lot of time in the library. The Doctor came in while I was reading The Tempest and the next thing I knew we were doing dramatic readings of his favorite scenes."
Jack laughed and Mickey shook his head. "We own you," Jack continued once he'd finished chuckling. The video of the alien message had stopped playing, but the text remained on the screen under a still from the video. "We now possess your land, your minerals, your precious stones. Well, they're not greedy at all, then."
Mickey snorted. "No, not at all."
"You will surrender or they will die. Sycorax strong, Sycorax mighty, Sycorax rock."
"Sycorax… rock?" Rose repeated dubiously. "As in… they rock?" She did a bit of a fist pump as she spoke in an attempt to indicate the nuance she was going for.
Jack shrugged. "Presumably. They didn't seem to be made out of rock or anything."
"Who's 'they'?" Mickey asked. "'They will die,'" he quoted.
Rose shivered. "I'm guessing we'll find out soon enough," she said.
"They're sending a reply," Mickey said. "Hold on, let me see if I can pick up the signal." His fingers raced across his keyboard and after a few seconds, he grinned. "Got it. They told the Sycorax that today is a day of peace on this planet and that we extend that peace to them. Hold on, there's a bit more." He hit a few more keys and the text displaying shifted. "They also said that we're armed and we don't surrender."
"Well," Jack said after taking a deep breath. "I can't say I'd have done any different but I'm gonna hazard a guess that it's not going to go over well with the Queen wannabes."
Rose took a deep breath, then shot to her feet. "I'm checking on the Doctor," she announced, and she walked quickly away down the hallway. Jack could hear the distress in her tone. He and Mickey both got to their feet and followed her.
She was standing in the doorway to her mum's bedroom, leaning against the doorjamb and taking in the sight of her mother having fallen asleep at the Doctor's bedside, her head resting on a pillow next to the Doctor's torso.
Mickey approached her carefully, putting a tentative hand on her shoulder.
"The Doctor wouldn't do this," she said shakily. Jack winced internally, cursing the Doctor and himself yet again for their oversight. "The old Doctor," Rose continued. "The proper Doctor. He'd wake up. He'd save us."
"You really love him, don't you?" Mickey observed softly.
Wordlessly, Rose closed her eyes and burrowed into Mickey's embrace. Mickey looked over at Jack over the top of Rose's head.
Jack felt helpless in the face of Rose's distress. He couldn't fix the Doctor, so he couldn't fix Rose. He resisted the urge to punch the wall. Clenching his jaw slightly, he turned on his heel and returned to the living room to watch the feed from the government system on Mickey's laptop.
Author's Note: Late again! More apologies; life has a way of getting in the way of fandom, doesn't it? Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the new chapter even though you had to wait an extra day for it!
(Also, if you're having trouble picturing Nine doing dramatic Shakespeare readings, just look up some of Prospero's monologues about controlling the elements and calling up mythological gods, and you'll see why I can see it happening, lol.)