Smiths & Joneses
by Soledad
Author's note: For disclaimer, rating, etc. see the Introduction.
Warning: disturbing images in this chapter.
Chapter 12
The lighthouse fascinated Jenny. While the two men took up defensive positions with the Big Gun (Mickey) and the sonic blaster (Captain Harkness), respectively, she offered to climb up to the top and keep watch, just so that she would get the chance to explore a bit. After all, who knew when would she get another chance to see something like this?
Looking up from the bottom of the spiral staircase was a unique sight, she found. It was as if some invisible power would draw her upward, higher and higher… she simply couldn't resist.
Taking two steps at once, she ran up to the top chamber lightly. Running was something that came to her easily; something she really enjoyed. Perhaps it was a Gallifreyan thing. Perhaps it was something she had inherited from her father. That and the fondness of bananas, if the ex-companions she currently stayed with could be trusted – and why couldn't they?
Again, the ancient machinery in the upper chamber fascinated her. Coming from the time and level of technical development that she did, the mere idea of something completely mechanical was totally alien for her. But it had worked for centuries, according to Andy, so it had to be reliable. Amazing.
She stepped out to the small balcony running around the upper chamber and looked out to the general greyness of the sky, the water and the limestone rock. It was low-tide, the sea had begun to withdraw right after their arrival, and a wide stretch of rocky shore was glimmering wetly; a darker stripe in the all-encompassing grey monotony.
Once again, she felt sorry for those who had to live on this triste island, either by choice or for their own safety. She hoped that the help Captain Harkness had called for would be sufficient and young Director Jones could be healed enough to return to Torchwood. The thought of him spending the rest of his life in that dank bunker broke her hearts – and she knew it would break Jack's heart, too.
She liked them both. She liked the entire Torchwood team and wondered what her father could probably have against Torchwood in general. Yes, there was the fact that the Institute had originally been founded to capture him, but hadn't he spent considerable time on Earth as an UNIT consultant without being bothered?
Jenny decided that more research on her father's time spent on Earth was in order. Toshiko would help. To understand herself, her own motivation, she needed to know where she came from; and learning more about the enigmatic Doctor whose genetic material – and partially whose memories – she shared was the best way to do that.
She scanned the shoreline again and some kind of movement caught her eye, still far out in the water. She adjusted her goggles, focused the distance – and paled a little, despite her bravery. This was the hour of truth, and the outcome far from certain.
"Captain," she touched her earpiece. "It's here."
Jack didn't know what exactly he'd expected the eraser to look like, but it most definitely hadn't been this. The closest thing his unconscious mind had come up with had suggested something like an oversized Cyberman: huge, metallic and generally clumsy. Something slow and stupid.
What emerged from the waves instead appeared to be some kind of enormous, chitin-armoured worm, not entirely unlike a caterpillar in its shape but covered with jagged chitinous spikes that, at second sight, were probably rows upon rows of highly advanced biomechanical sensors. Two pairs of short, sturdy legs, segmented like those of a grasshopper, were attached to the middle and to the end of its body… armour… whatever, making it move forward with alarming speed; presumably also enabling it to walk upright or to make long jumps.
It had several segmented appendages right below its head, probably concealing ray weapons or projectile launchers or whatever kind of weaponry its species had come up. Said head was covered by an elaborate helmet, shaped a bit like those of high-speed bikers and attached to the rest of its armour by an accordion-like neckpiece.
Jack's experienced eye recognized some of the built-in technology, despite its alien nature: surveillance systems that gave it an almost 360-degree-vision, atmospheric compensators, targeting systems and the crack lines that suggested that the three-piece visor could be opened outwards like a triple window. There were other pieces of technology not even he could identify; but again, the armour was supposed to sustain its wearer in the vacuum of space, so it had to be extremely advanced. And redundant.
Still, something seemed to be wrong with it. As the eraser approached their position by way of bizarrely elongated jumps, Jack saw that there were long cracks in its armour, in no recognizable pattern; and those cracks were filled with – foam?
"It's injured!" he realized with a jolt of hope. "Apparently, crossing the Rift had damaged its armour somehow… that foam must be the fluid filling it reacting with our atmosphere. How can we use that to our advantage?"
"The organic creature within is vulnerable without the technology protecting it," Jenny said thoughtfully. "If we could break the armour further open, exposure to the local atmosphere might weaken it enough, perhaps even render it more or less helpless."
"Perhaps?" Mickey asked in doubt. Jenny shrugged.
"I can't be sure; nobody can. But that's the only chance I can see."
"I'll take that chance," Jack said. "Let's give it a try. If the sonic blaster Tosh has built me works as it's supposed to work, it should be able to splinter the armour a good deal… if I get close enough."
"That won't be easy," Jenny warmed. "Erasers are heavily armed; it would kill you before you can get a good shot at it. We must distract it somehow long enough for you to get the right angle for the shot."
"What if we start shooting at it with he Big Gun?" Mickey asked. "At least the impact should give Jack the chance to sneak up to it."
Jenny nodded. "It's worth a try. I just hope you've got quick reflexes. These… things are said to be highly intelligent and demonically fast."
"No shit," Mickey's face became ash grey as he watched the long, ground-eating leaps of the eraser and the drastically lessening distance between it and their position. "How are we supposed to take out that?"
"Using the element of surprise and a great deal of luck," Jack replied grimly and tossed one of the modified rifles Mickey had brought back from the alternate dimension to Jenny. "Take this. I don't know how much good it can do, but it took out Daleks and Cybermen at Canary Wharf; it ought to have at least some impact on our bug."
Jenny slipped into military mode with the ease of slipping into comfortable, well-worn shoes and checked the rifle.
"Nice," she said with professional appreciation. "What's our strategy?"
"You two take the enemy under fire from two opposite sides, and I'll try to sneak up behind it while it's distracted," Jack explained succinctly. "Give your best, kids – I have the unpleasant feeling that we won't get another try at this."
"You're right: we won't," Jenny looked at Mickey. "I'll take the left flank. We'll fire in a left-right patter, in no particular rhythm. When it's focused on one of us, the other will drive its attention away. The rest depends on the captain."
"Nice of you to take the pressure off me," Jack muttered, but he knew that Jenny was right. Not that that would make him feel any better. "All right, children, let's do this."
Not needing any further instructions, Jenny and Mickey silently moved into position… and waited. They all knew that the waiting wouldn't be long.
The eraser located the three primates as soon as it emerged from the waves, of course. Its armour might be damaged – and the exposure to the contaminated sea water that had seeped in through the cracks had already begun to dissolve the organic parts – but the sensors were still functioning at an acceptable level of efficiency.
It scanned the primitive creatures waiting near the tall structure the function of which remained unclear for it; and they were armed. The surveillance systems reported a heavy projectile weapon – not much of a threat, usually, but a potential danger now that its armour was already broken in several places – an unknown design of ray weapon with impressive firepower one wouldn't expect to find on such a backwater planet, and another, smaller weapon that the systems could not define. Still, based on the size of it, it wasn't likely to cause much harm.
All in all, the weaponry of the local primates was pathetic. Did they really expect to take out a Hithon assassin with their primitive toys?
The surveillance system now automatically switched to bioscan. Two of the creatures registered as regular inhabitants of their miserable mudball, although they had unusual energy readings; especially the one with the indefinable weapon. But they were of the species originating from this planet; the ones called themselves human.
The third one, however… the readings indicated a binary vascular system, a body temperature half of the other two primates and a respiratory bypass system, and the eraser felt the immediate satisfaction of a successful Hunt fill its entire being. Finally, it had found its intended target. It could fulfil his task and die in the joyous knowledge of another mission accomplished.
It had to hurry up, though, before its body – what was still there of it anyway – would succumb to the lethal planetary environment. The eraser forced its weakening mind to focus and instructed the jump legs of the armour to contract before they'd catapult it into the last long leap.
Jack noticed the contraction of the segmented legs and guessed what that could mean.
"Pay attention, Mickey Mouse," he said through gritted teeth. "Wait until it jumps; then fire a salvo to knock it off-balance in mid-flight. I doubt that it could change directions by then; but even if it can, the momentum would serve to our advantage."
Mickey nodded tersely and bit his lip. He had very good hand-eye coordination and lightning-fast reflexes – playing all those video games in his misspent youth had turned out to be good for something, after all – but he couldn't be sure that it would be good enough. And if he failed… well, he refused to even think of that, as the mere thought would have lamed him in the worst possible moment.
At the same time, the eraser jumped, aiming clearly at Jenny; its grotesquely elongated body seemed to extend in the process like a rubber band and its segmented upper limbs appeared to splinter, revealing the weapons hidden within. Four limbs and four weapons emanating chemical fire – presumably each and every one powerful enough to kill all three of them and level the lighthouse at the same time. Or the entire island.
Jenny threw himself to the floor and rolled out of the way of the quadralupe rays that burned deep, smoking holes into the limestone rock, reacting with it and making it… bubble? Was the Hithon ray acid-based? It would make sense; many Terran insects used acids as protective weapons, too.
Ants for example. Mickey hated ants. They found a way everywhere and were sheer impossible to eradicate.
"But we can always try, couldn't we?" he muttered, pulling the trigger and hitting the underside of the creature that was still in mid-leap with a dozen heavy bullets, each one enough to kill an elephant on its own.
The impact knocked the… thing off its intended path. It landed on its back – or what Mickey thought was its back, it was really hard to tell – and Jenny came running up, firing at it with all the modified rifle could give.
She landed a lucky shot, hitting the armour at a previously damaged part and tearing one of the armed limbs off.
One off, three more to go, Mickey thought, finding that thought – for some reason he couldn't explain – hysterically funny. It's like tearing off the legs of a fly, one by one.
This particular "fly", however, could easily have become the revenge for all the others he'd maimed in his childhood. Because the eraser rolled back to its hind legs in half a second and launched another attack, single-mindedly ignoring everyone else but Jenny.
"Look for cracks in the armour!" she yelled, somersaulting out of the line of the acid rays and following her own advice.
One of the eraser's legs was hit, at the very moment when it would propel itself into the air again. It lost balance and collapsed into a rather undignified leap on the rocky floor, dissolved limestone sizzling and bubbling all around it from the shots gone awry.
Jack recognized the chance and ran up to the temporarily disabled creature, firing at it from Tosh's experimental sonic blaster at the highest setting. His own ears popped loudly and he could feel the searing pain as his eardrums broke, realizing belatedly that he'd forgotten about the earplugs.
But the chitinous armour did splinter along the already existing crack lines under the sonic bombardment as it was supposed to do. As usual, Tosh has done an excellent job.
Unfortunately, Jack himself was partially incapacitated from the side effects and so he didn't notice that one of the eraser's weapons was aimed directly at him. Not until the burning pain hit him squarely in the chest and he fell backwards – dead, with a huge, ugly, smoking hole burned through his entire upper body.
One could have looked through his chest like through a peephole on one's door.
"You bloody fucking murderous bug!" Mickey howled in rage and, aiming at the widest crack in the creature's armour, fired all remaining bullets into it, practically tearing it apart from the inside out.
This time all the bullets hit true. The remaining limbs of the creature jerked spasmodically, the weapons shooting random rays of burning acid everywhere… then it went suddenly quiet, still trembling but clearly unable to cause any more harm.
Mickey ejected the empty cartridge and rammed a fresh one into the Big Gun, approaching the creature carefully.
"Is it dead yet?" he asked hoarsely.
"Almost," Jenny came closer, too, still aiming her rifle at the eraser. "Unfortunately, so is Captain Harkness."
"Don't worry; he'll be back with us in no time," Mickey eyed the creature warily. "I wonder what they really look like… inside in this thing, I mean. If they're all soft and wobbly like a jellyfish – like the Daleks, once their cast is removed."
"We can take a look if that's what you want; just keep the gun aimed at it," Jenny carefully set her rifle aside and fished the universal key out of her pocket. "All we have to do is to open its visor; this should do the trick nicely."
Mickey's jaw dropped to the floor.
"You've got a sonic screwdriver? Just like your Dad?"
"Actually, it's a universal key," Jenny switched on her cherished tool, "but it works on the same principle. Now, if I adjust the settings to the energy readings of the helmet and do this…"
The top of the little device was glowing blue, and in the next moment the three movable pieces of the alien's helmet swung outwards without warning. In the inside, they were covered with intricate micromachinery, with the apparent function to deliver all kinds of information to the creature within and to enable it to operate the multiple functions of the armour.
Behind the visor, the face of something shockingly akin to Spiderman was revealed, right down to the brick-patterned coloration and the black compound eyes. However – unlike Spidey – it did have a mouth. A rather wide one, filled with what looked like the ragged teeth of a handsaw.
"Mandibles," Mickey muttered. "Bloody mandibles. They must have been man-eating monster insects once. Assuming that they were any humans on their homeworld to begin with. I hope there weren't."
But Jenny wasn't listening to him. Looking down at the eraser, she caught its last, fleeting thoughts; its despair about having failed. Suddenly she could feel those thoughts focusing on her.
Who are you? The eraser demanded. I never failed before. What are you that you could thwart me?
I'm the last child of Gallifrey, Jenny replied proudly. Progeny of the last of the Time Lords and carrying his knowledge and his memories. You never stood a chance. Nor will the Alliance.
Impossible! It protested. You're but one. We have an empire of planets, billions of servants. You have nothing.
I've got friends, Jenny replied. Something you can never understand. Let go now. Your journey ends here.
The eraser didn't answer. It began to convulse violently, and Jenny suddenly realized its intention. She grabbed her rifle and shot directly into the unprotected face of the creature, holding her finger on the trigger steadily until there was nothing but indefinable organic matter left in the helmet.
Burnt organic matter.
Mickey fought hard the urge to throw up on the spot.
"Was that really necessary?" he asked. "It was dying anyway, wasn't it?"
"It was about to initiate self-destruction," Jenny said, "probably by setting off a chemical bomb with a mental impulse. I couldn't allow that to happen. We didn't know the extent of destruction it could have caused."
"Are you sure about that?" Mickey seemed doubtful. "About the bomb, I mean."
Jenny tapped her temple with a finger. "Telepathic, remember? I could feel its intention – and that there was very little time left to prevent it."
Mickey accepted that with a nod, but his mind seemed still whirling.
"Your dad wouldn't have done it himself," he finally said with a vague gesture at the eraser's remains. "He didn't like to get his hands dirty. Still doesn't, I guess."
Jenny shrugged. "I'm not my Dad. I was bred and trimmed to be a soldier. I may have adopted Dad's ideals as a conscious decision, but in an emergency, my conditioning still kicks in… fortunately, I'd say," she paused, but when Mickey didn't argue with her, she changed the topic. "Tell me; has he really exchanged Captain Harkness' sonic blaster for a banana?"
Mickey grinned like a loon. "According to Rose… yeah, he did. I wasn't travelling with them at the time, but Rose said Captain Cheesecake was passed off about it; he was very found of that blaster, you see. Of course," he added thoughtfully, "the Doctor probably regretted it when thy got into a tight spot, not so much later."
He looked at the dead alien – or what was left from it. "Well, I oughtta find some body bags for this guy. I think Lloyd and Owen would be happy to take it apart and see what used to make it tick."
"But shouldn't we look after the body of Captain Harkness first?" Jenny asked. "We can't just let him lie here… dead…"
Mickey stared at her in surprise. "You don't know?"
"What?" she returned, irritated. "What should I know?"
"I thought you had the Doctor's memories," Michael shook his head, baffled. Jenny rolled her eyes.
"Yes, I do, but only where Time Lord knowledge is considered," she clarified. "I don't get the personal stuff; well," she corrected herself, "not yet. So what should I know about Captain Harkness?"
"He's not dead," Mickey said.
"Of course he's dead," Jenny threw an uncomfortable look at the badly damaged body. "Nobody can survive that; and besides, he doesn't have a heartbeat."
"All right," Mickey conceded, "he is dead – now. He's not gonna stay dead for much longer, though. He never does."
Jenny stared at him in shock – then she obviously had a lightbulb moment.
"The Vortex energy I felt in him… that's what anchors him at a fixed point in Time!" she realized with a jolt.
"And what brings him back every time he gets himself killed," Mickey added.
Jenny shuddered. "Oh! That must be very unpleasant."
"Jack compares it with being dragged over broken glass," Mickey said grimly; he looked at Jack's corpse. The ugly, burnt hole in that broad chest was almost completely healed by now. "He'll be coming around any time now; you should go to him and hold him. It hurts him coming back; the more violent his death has been, the worse the return. It's usually Ianto who's him in those moments; but without Ianto, I think he'd prefer you to be for him rather than me."
"Why?" Jenny was honestly surprised. Mickey was Jack's friend, wasn't he? Why would he prefer a stranger?
"Because your dad never was," Mickey told her bluntly.
Jenny was fairly shocked by that piece of information but decided to pursue the matter alter. Instead, she hurried over to Jack, sat down next to him and lifted his head so that it would rest upon her knee, hoping that he wouldn't mind the intimacy once he'd come around.
A moment later Jack gasped back to life, his entire body convulsing with the effort, his eyes wide open and unseeing.
"Ianto!" he gasped, reaching around blindly.
"Afraid not," Jenny answered ruefully, "but you can see him as soon as you've got a grip on yourself."
Jack looked up to her in confusion, dishevelled blonde hair registering vaguely in his still befuddled mind. "R-Rose?"
"Sorry, neither," she replied. "I'm Jenny, remember? Jenny Smith, the Doctor's daughter."
Jack squeezed his eyes closed several time to clear his mind, and the events previous to his most recent death started to come back sluggishly.
"Oh, crap," he said in a resigned tone. "Got myself killed again, didn't I? And ruined the coat, too. Ianto will be royally pissed with me. Have we at least won?"
Jenny nodded. "That we have. The eraser is dead, the self-destruct device is neutralized, and Ianto ought to feel better, now that the telepathic link's been severed."
Jack accepted her help by clambering to his feet. "I've got to check on him, now!"
He still felt out of his depth a bit. This last death had been very painful and, based on the size of the hole in his clothing, fairly violent, too. He'd have to ask their resident geeks what kind of weapon that had been.
"Use your earpiece," Jenny suggested, but Jack shook his head.
"Can't. The building is completely shielded, for the safety of the inmates. I'll go in and see how he's doing. Help Mickey with the clean-up; I'll send you Andy with a body bag in a minute."
"Sure," Jenny gave him a little nudge. "Go and look after Ianto. We've got everything under control here."
"You wish!" Mickey muttered, but he didn't protest when Jack headed back to the asylum on still somewhat uncertain legs.
"So," Jenny said when they were out of Jack's earshot. "Tell me: who's this Rose person?"
"She was my girlfriend," Mickey's mood darkened visibly. "Until she met your dad, that is. They outwitted some alien monsters together – I still don't know all the details, and frankly, I don't care – and then he offered her a trip in the TARDIS. He was supposed to bring her back within twelve hours, but then the TARDIS had the hiccups or whatnot, and it brought them back twelve months alter."
"She," Jenny corrected.
Mickey gave her a blank look and a confused frown. "What?"
"TARDISes are generally referred to as she," Jenny explained.
That took Mickey a moment to digest, but then he shrugged and went on with his story.
"Anyway, there was a great lot of upheaval during that year. Rose's Mum hung the whole estate full of 'missing' posters, with her picture on them, and the police… the police thought I'd killed her."
Jenny winced. "Ouch!"
"Yeah," Mickey agreed morosely. "And when they finally came back, we found ourselves in the middle of a Slitheen invasion – which, mind you, I helped to prevent, by hacking into the defence network and firing that bloody torpedo in the last second – and when it was over, Rose dumped me and went off to travel with your dad."
"But you didn't go with them," Jenny said. It was not a question.
"Not that time, nah," Mickey admitted. "Met them again when they came to Cardiff to refuel the TARDIS, though – something to do with the Rift, I'm not really sure. By then, they've already picked up Jack, and after we'd prevented another Slitheen take-over, I went with them for a while."
"But you also spent some time in an alternate dimension, didn't you?" Jenny asked. "Toshiko mentioned something…"
Mickey nodded. "We got there by accident, and I stayed there, helping the people fight the Cybermen. My counterpart was a freedom fighter, and as my Gram was still alive over there."
"Your what?" Jerry interrupted, not familiar with the expression.
"My grandmother," Mickey explained. "Well, not mine, obviously – she'd died shortly before I left – but I didn't want her other self to be left alone… so I stayed as long as she was alive."
"In the end you did come back, though. Why?"
Mickey shrugged. "When my Gram died, there was nothing to keep me there. This is where I belong."
Jenny nodded her understanding. "What happened to Rose?" she then asked.
"She, too, ended up in that parallel dimension… where she dumped me for the second time," Mickey shrugged again. "Your dad had regenerated in the meantime, becoming much younger and quite hip, and Rose developed a mad crush on him…. One that wasn't entirely one-sided. So, you'll probably understand that I'm not exactly a fan of your dad, after he'd screwed up my entire life so thoroughly."
"I can't blame you," Jenny said slowly. "I'm surprised, though, that he might have developed feelings for this Rose character. What I know about Time Lords would suggest that such a thing was highly unlikely."
"Well, Tosh keeps saying that something must have gone wrong with his last regeneration," Mickey replied with another shrug, "and the longer I think about it, the more I tend to agree with her. I mean, the previous version of your dad was an arrogant wanker, too, what with calling me 'Mickey the idiot' all the time and stuff, but at least he was a reasonable wanker. This new one, though… a nine hundred-year-old, powerful alien behaving like a lovesick teenager is a scary sight."
"It seems that everyone at Torchwood has a grudge against my Dad," Jenny commented a little sadly.
"Nah," Mickey waved off her concern, "only those who've actually met him. Well, with the exception of Tosh, that is. She has very fond memories of his previous self and somehow manages to see the current regeneration as a different entity."
"It isn't, though," Jenny pointed out. Mickey nodded.
"I know. But if it helps Tosh to keep the good memories, who am I to talk her out of it?" he spotted a curly blond head emerging from between the rock boulders. "Oh, good, there comes PC Andy with the body bag. Let's pack this guy in, it starts to get a bit smelly."
Jack, following Helen's instructions, found Ianto's room in the maximum security section of the asylum easily, despite the lack of a name tag on the door. When he burst in, he saw Ianto lying in bed, hooked up to more instruments that it seemed humanly possible. The indicators on the monitors all showed low, constant levels, but Owen, who was sitting at Ianto's bedside, didn't seem too happy.
"I assume you've dealt with the alien," he said.
Jack nodded. "Yeah, it's dead. How's Ianto doing?"
"Well, the unusual brain activity has topped a few minutes ago," Owen replied evasively. "I guess at the same time when you offed the alien."
"That's good, isn't it?" Owen didn't answer, and Jack felt a previously unknown level of dread rise within him until he could barely breathe. "Owen, talk to me! What happened?"
"Well," Owen said darkly. "The good news is that Teaboy's brain isn't gonna melt, now that the telepathic link's no longer there. The bad news is that he's slipped into coma, and I have no idea how to wake him up again."
~TBC~