STORIES
THIRTYTWO
"I have a visual, Teacher."
"Feed it through to us," Wil responded.
The four of them crowded around the console's tiny display screen. Although both ships had hightailed it out of the neighborhood as quickly and as unobtrusively as possible, Grasshopper had left behind an assortment of homecoming gifts: a swarm of nano-scale video cameras along with Jack's aforementioned toys, plus a few of her more conventional directed-energy weapons.
John was still on the floor, exactly in the same place he'd been since he was brought on board. Surrounded by wet clothes, discarded boots, a manual external defibrillator, damp towels, and used and abused blankets, he sat with a cup of steaming hot tea that someone – probably Ianto – had brought him. He did not seem particularly curious about what was happening at the console.
Oddly, or all things considered maybe not so oddly, it was Wil who desperately wanted to make sure that they stayed for the floor show, that vengeance was suitably wrought on behalf of the Erasmii people and on behalf of her lover. She had ordered the nano cameras to be deployed so that they could watch. John, on the other hand, seemed detached, even disaffected by what was about to take place. The other four had come to some sort of unspoken agreement to let him be.
And indeed John had said his piece. He had let them know where they needed to be. When it became clear to him there'd be a delay, he accepted it gracefully and without further comment.
Displaying on the monitor was the planet – or what was left of it. Erasmus couldn't in good conscience really be called a world anymore; it was just a vanishing memory and a lonely, empty shell. There was a strange sort of glimmer as the invasion fleet became manifest. The Aedui were able to travel by a wormhole-driven vortex-like mechanism, but as Wil had explained, it wasn't really a true vortex, and it was not at all related or similar to how the two TARDISes moved about. But regardless, something rippled, shimmered across the screen; the fleet materialized and instantly surrounded Erasmus, its ships assuming a high planetary orbit roughly between twenty- and thirty-thousand miles above the defunct sphere's surface.
Then the planet blew up.
The thing basically flew apart. There wasn't much in the way of fire and obviously there was no sound – it was outer space. Erasmus just turned into a rapidly expanding mess of smithereens and ceased to exist, the cataclysm expanding to take out the Aedui fleet and anything else that happened to be nearby along with it.
A second or two later the video went dead.
Grasshopper had generously seeded the world, what remained of its poisoned atmosphere, and the planet's general vicinity in outer space with Everything Killers. Only she and perhaps her Teacher knew what the triggering mechanism was. Added to the mix for a little extra punch was a handful of plasma-based directed-energy explosive devices, but in the end they really hadn't been necessary. The resulting devastation was unimaginably widespread. It was incredibly fast. And it was total. As Jack had boasted, everything that had been alive was killed. Nothing remained.
The Doctor turned and looked at Wil, "Satisfied?" The tone of his voice was not a pleasant one.
His tone did not matter in the slightest to Wil Beinert. "Yes, I am," she replied, appraising him coolly. "Although it was only one out of hundreds if not thousands of such fleets."
"Is that supposed to justify what you've just done here?"
There were times when Jack Harkness felt like slapping The Doctor's face. This was one of those times.
But Wil Beinert could stand up for herself. "No," she said quietly, the golden flash of her eyes belying her fury. "He does." She turned and nodded almost imperceptibly toward John.
If John had heard, he studiously ignored her. Instead he looked up at Jack Harkness. "Cardiff," he said.
"Right," Jack answered, at first nodding but then shaking his head, a perplexed look on his face. "What's in Cardiff again?"
"Your brother."
THAT got everybody's attention.
"What about Jack's brother?" This was The Doctor, bravely stepping in where angels feared to tread.
John held up the knife he'd been holding since Jack had handed it to him and theatrically released the blade. "This belonged to the Halikaarn, an Erasmii leader named Ecba. Ecba was my friend. For the amusement and pleasure of the Aedui he was sent to murder me with this weapon, but instead he used it to slit his own throat. He was their puppet yet in the end he chose to not perform for them. Before he died, just before he died, while his neck was spewing out hot blood-filled bubbles over my face and chest, he warned me that a tool of the Aedui is with us, that one of their traitors is among us. His dying words were: 'There is a surrogate in your midst.'"
Jack brought his hands up to his face, steepled his fingertips against his lips, and did not breathe. Wil let out a small, quiet sob and shut her eyes. The Doctor stood silent and blinked.
"Nightmares and waking horrors," John murmured and then continued. "Before he killed himself Ecba had explained they – the Aedui – knew me, recognized me, had even made use of me. But he didn't say and never intimated that I was their factotum, he plainly implied someone else was." John shook his head and smiled demonically as he retracted the weapon's blade. "I had a lot of time to think about what he told me, although I tried damn hard not to. When he talked about the Aedui he described them as coming from, as swarming out of the darkness. As consuming the light. As having nothing in common with us. Jack…" again John's eyes steadfastly held the Captain's. "Look, this may surprise you but there is no doubt in my mind who their surrogate is. It's your brother. I know it as surely as I know that climate change is catastrophic and that nuclear proliferation is bad and that I will love you with all my heart until the end of Time.
"Gray is not their puppet, Jack, he's their accomplice."
John then stood, shakily to be sure, but nonetheless he pushed himself off the floor and stood on his own two legs. He was clearly getting ready for an argument but to his surprise and admitted relief, there was no argument forthcoming.
Instead Jack turned away from his friend and occasional lover and looked into the face of his precious Doctor, and for the two of them – for the Captain and the Time Lord – Time stood still as blue eyes met brown; for the two of them the meaning of the story suddenly became clearer; and for the two of them a few more pieces of a puzzle that kept increasing incessantly in size and complexity snapped into place: "The most horrible creatures imaginable" Jack had always called them, the invaders of his home world whose howls traveled before them and who'd killed his father and abducted his little brother; "There is a surrogate in your midst" were the final words of an honorable man and loyal friend who paid the ultimate price for following his heart and speaking the truth; "I am the Prince of the Dark Force. I am the King of the Darkness" the murderous, psychopathic Gray had strutted and bragged.
Jack now could finally put a name to those who had taken his brother. They were the Aedui. He could finally put a name to those who had destroyed his family. They were the Aedui. He could now put a name to those who had amputated his home world's very existence from Time and Space. They were the Aedui. He could now put a name to those who had stolen his dreams, back when he was too young to even realize that dreams could be stolen. They were the Aedui.
"We had it all wrong," whispered The Doctor, still gazing at Jack, pulling everyone back into the present.
"We need to get back to Cardiff," Jack rumbled, still gazing at The Doctor, but already staring straight on toward the future.