Border Princes

by Dan Abnett

  ‘Does today!’

  Ianto stepped closer. ‘Owen. You’re sitting at Tosh’s station. You are systematically disabling the firewalls encasing the subject specimen. I can’t allow you to do that.’

  ‘Go and make me a nice cup of coffee, would you?’ Owen replied.

  ‘Don’t make me hurt you.’

  ‘You wish. Funny. I’m laughing, see? Aha ha ha.’

  ‘Owen.’

  ‘Get lost!’

  Owen’s fingers were racing across the keyboard. Inhibitor codes were flashing up, and were being cancelled, one by one.

  ‘Listen,’ Ianto said. ‘Jack told me this thing had to be locked away. Vaulted. In an isoclave.’

  Owen kept typing code. ‘Jack doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’

  ‘Owen—’ Ianto warned. He looked at the screen beside him. He saw the firewalls closing down, one after another.

  ‘Coffee please,’ Owen said, working furiously. ‘Coffee. Please. Now coffee. Make it a big one. Big big one.’

  Owen reached over to press a key. His hand stopped dead. Ianto had grabbed it, holding it back.

  ‘Coffee!’ Owen cried, and slapped Ianto in the face with his other hand.

  Ianto reeled, but recovered. He looked mortified. Without further words, he slugged Owen. Owen fell backwards off his seat onto the deck, dragging Ianto down with him.

  Owen shook and went still. Ianto scrambled up. He saw the screens. He saw the last of the firewalls collapse.

  Suspended in a cold blue glow, the Amok trembled and rotated.

  Ianto punched blindly at various keys. It was too late.

  He sank back, gazing at the wobbling light.

  ‘You’re big,’ he said. ‘Big big big.’

  THIRTEEN

  James had used his spare key to open the SUV. He lugged a portable scanner system and some other bits of kit into the empty warehouse space that was not as empty as it looked. He started to unpack the anonymous, brushed-steel flight cases.

  Gwen completed a third circuit of the shed. She tried her phone again. Jack had been cut off mid conversation by a squall of interference, and there had been nothing from him since.

  She dialled a different number instead. ‘Ianto? It’s Gwen. Why aren’t you picking up? Ianto, it’s urgent. Call me or James as soon as you get this.’

  She walked back over to James.

  ‘Something’s wrong,’ she said.

  ‘I thought we’d pretty well established that.’

  ‘No, more wrong than just this. Something’s going on at the Hub.’

  ‘Ianto still not answering?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘We’re not having much in the way of telephonic success today, are we?’ he observed.

  She sighed, and pinched the bridge of her nose, her eyes closed. ‘Can’t believe I’ve got that headache again, on top of everything else.’

  ‘You too?’ James stood up. ‘I’ve had a killer head for about the last five minutes. Came on like a switch.’

  ‘Just like Thursday’s?’

  ‘Just like Thursday’s. You don’t suppose there’s another one of those things around, do you?’

  Gwen didn’t answer. A breeze hustled litter across the ground. The muted sensation of haunting that had clung around the site earlier had been replaced by a palpable feeling of malice.

  ‘Can you even begin to explain what’s going on here?’ she asked James.

  He was still setting up the system, snap-extending the aluminium legs of the folding stands that the sensors clipped to. There were six altogether, and he was arranging them in a wide ring around the centre of the warehouse. ‘Some kind of Rift phenomenon?’ he suggested. ‘A crack, a fold, an overlap? A spatio-temporal slip? A cleft? Dimensional transcendence? A chronal bifurcation with—’

  ‘Whoa. You’re just saying long words now, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes I am. Actually, I’m trying to reassure you. I thought if one of us sounded like they were in charge...’

  ‘Oh, I’m in charge,’ said Gwen fiercely. ‘I’m in charge, me, so very in charge. Look at me, being in charge. Come on, boy! Get those scanners set up! Pronto!’

  He grinned. ‘Yes, boss. You could help.’

  ‘I’m in charge,’ she replied. She stared at their surroundings. The sky visible through the incomplete roof was an ugly shade of white, bruised with grey clouds. ‘This place has got a really nasty feeling about it, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Yup. Getting nastier by the minute. Oppressive. Very much like my headache.’

  ‘What do you really think is going on? And skip all that bifurcatory hooey this time.’

  James fitted the last sensor in place on top of its tripod. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I have a hunch Jack and Tosh have stepped on an insanely malignant cold-spot and been drawn away from us against their will by the unliving appetite of some spectral entity.’

  Gwen thought about that. ‘Pooh,’ she decided. ‘That’s cobblers.’

  ‘Of course,’ said James. ‘Being positive didn’t work, so I was shooting for negative reinforcement.’

  ‘You’re a nutjob, is what you are.’

  James knelt down by the scanner system’s master unit and pressed some switches. A vague filigree of green light spread out from the tripod-mounted sensors: thin rays they could barely see in the daylight criss-crossed and overlapped like a spirograph pattern.

  ‘Actually,’ James said, ‘I was only half-kidding. I don’t believe in ghosts. “Ghost” is a word people use to explain things that Torchwood can provide much better, scientific explanations for. But in this instance...’

  Gwen narrowed her eyes. ‘Stop it.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Saw a ghost once...’

  He shrugged. ‘If you say so.’

  Gwen got back to business. ‘Getting anything?’

  James fiddled with the master control, adjusting wavelengths. ‘Umm... no.’

  Gwen’s phone rang. She snatched it out.

  ‘Hello?’

  She heard silence at the other end. Then, the very faintest murmur of something.

  ‘Hello? Jack?’

  The call ended. The phone immediately rang again.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Gwen?’ It was Jack. His voice sounded thin and very, very far away. Thin, rushing sounds came and went, like gusts of wind. ‘I’ve been trying to get through for ages. Gwen?’

  ‘I’m here. Are you all right?’

  ‘I can barely hear you, Gwen. My phone’s on low battery. Can you hear me?’

  ‘Just.’

  ‘It’s getting dark, Gwen. Really dark. Nightfall. We’ve gone inside the chapel. Tosh says she can hear noises outside, but I don’t hear anything. She’s telling me she can. Something walking around. Footsteps.’

  Static.

  ‘Jack?’

  ‘Gwen? Gwen, how are things your end?’

  ‘We’re... we’re trying to find you, Jack. Hold on.’

  ‘Battery’s low, Gwen. I—’

  Dead.

  Gwen looked anxiously at James. He returned her look with one of slight exasperation. ‘I can’t get the system to align properly,’ he said, getting up and walking around the ring of tripods, adjusting each unit in turn. ‘I’m just getting feedback. Interference patterns.’

  ‘Listen,’ he added, ‘I’m sorry about the roast thing. I didn’t mean to Wooof you out.’

  ‘What roast thing?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You just said you were sorry about the roast thing,’ Gwen said.

  ‘I didn’t. I said ghost.’

  ‘You bloody didn’t.’

  James opened his mouth but didn’t answer. He met Gwen’s eyes. They each knew what the other was thinking. They’d been here before.

  The pull came on him, without any warning, as it always did.

  ‘Steady on, mate!’ the traffic warden said. ‘Are you all right?’

  The lean man in the black suit had sprung up off the bus stop bench and bar
ged into him.

  ‘I said, are you all right?’

  The man was swaying slightly, glancing around in some confusion. Drugs, thought the traffic warden. The man didn’t look the type – too old, too well dressed – but nobody looked the type any more.

  ‘Mate?’

  The man took a step, halted, looked around again, and met the warden’s eyes.

  ‘What did you say?’ the man asked.

  ‘Are you all right? You look a bit spaced.’

  ‘Alert protocol,’ the man said, as if that explained everything. ‘Threat to the Principal. Jeopardy. Investment is beginning, but the pull is wrong. The pull is wrong.’

  ‘Ri-ight. Whatever you say, mate. Just mind how you go.’

  The man ignored him and began to stride away down the pavement. He bumped into an old woman with a tartan shopping trolley, and then clipped a pushchair with his hip.

  The mother gave him what for. The man ignored her too, and moved on, start-stop, a few quick steps, then another bewildered glance around. He changed direction several times.

  Definitely drugs, thought the traffic warden, shaking his head. The man was scurrying backwards and forwards, like Jerry Lewis doing his ‘confused’ shtick, except there was a curiously fluid grace to his movements.

  Designer drugs, the traffic warden decided. He’d read all about those.

  City Road was bustling. Tuesday lunchtime. Bookmakers with coloured-bead door curtains; army surplus stores selling camo-pants and Air-soft guns; slot arcades with doormen; Dragon Burger bars ripe with grease; conga lines of carts outside the Happy Shopper; resigned queues outside the Post Office; bunting-trimmed forecourts of pre-owned cars with stickered windows; hot-dog stands sizzling with onion smoke; bhangra pumping from minicab sound systems; reversing hooters and car alarms; hand car wash and valeting, redolent with pine scent; a council worker in Day-Glo overalls, picking up litter with a squeezy claw and dropping it into his yellow cart; kids with sherbet fountains outside Poundland, laughing at the man by the crosswalk proclaiming Jesus’ constant love to an uninterested crowd; men carrying cue-cases like shouldered arms as they wandered upstairs to the snooker club; double parking; hazard lights ticking; two Somali men arguing in a doorway; chuggers with clipboards asking for just a moment; the stable-smell of straw and pellet food exuding from the pet shop; two women in chadors; Telecom engineers erecting an orange hazard guard around the manhole they are about to lift; someone shouting to get Ronnie’s attention; the pip-pip-pip of the crossing posts; the air-horn of a boy racer’s GTi rendering ‘La Cucaracha’; carentan melons like bald scalps in the fake grass trays of a fruit and veg; people, people, people.

  Too many noises, too many smells, too much movement. Too much input. The pull was wrong. The pull was wrong. He couldn’t get a clean fix on the alert. Location? What was the location? How could he respond if he didn’t have a definitive location? The upload was pulsing into him, but it was patchy and contradictory. It pulled him one way, then another, as if it was uncertain, as if it couldn’t make its mind up.

  ‘Where? Where is it?’ he demanded out loud. Faces in the crowd looked at him, confused, amused, alarmed, but they were just faces and he didn’t care what they thought. Some of them spoke to him, but he didn’t care what they said either.

  Where was he needed? Where was the Principal? How could he have lost the fix on the Principal? Why couldn’t he focus? Why was the upload so disjointed? Was it being jammed?

  ‘Principal,’ Mr Dine muttered. ‘Majesty. Where are you?’

  He felt his metabolism start to hike as the alert protocols took full control. His composition altered. He felt a surge as the investment began and power was relayed into him, unsleeving the deep-seated caches in his genes and bone marrow, and lighting up his higher senses. Still no fix. The pull was still wrong. Indecisive.

  Turning wildly, he bumped against a news-stand, and a row of magazines slithered off onto the pavement. The vendor started to remonstrate with him.

  ‘I’m talking to you, twat! Oi!’

  No time for an altercation. Mr Dine raised his hand. The vendor jerked backwards into his stand and ended up sitting on a heap of scattered tabloids.

  Some of the faces were shouting at him suddenly. What did he think he was doing? Who did he think he was? Jackie flaming Chan?

  Mr Dine ignored them. He turned left, then checked himself and turned right instead, stepping off the kerb.

  There was a squeal and a crunch. A woman screamed.

  The Autospares van, an older, commercial-bodied Escort, had come to a stop so suddenly, its rear end had swung out. The driver’s side door opened, and a chubby man with sweat patches on his beige, short-sleeved shirt got out and stared at Mr Dine, his mouth a goldfish ‘O’.

  ‘I didn’t...’ the driver began. ‘I didn’t see you. Are you...?’

  People were gathering. Mr Dine was still on his feet, still glancing to and fro in a twitchy, panicky way. He realised he was the focus of particular attention suddenly. He looked down.

  His legs had stopped the van dead. Ramming him had been like ramming a deep-seated bollard or a gate post. The bumper, number plate and grille had folded in around his thighs. The leading edge of the bonnet was crumpled like a bed-sheet. Dirty fluid gurgled out of the split radiator and pooled under the front wheels.

  ‘Jesus flippin’ Christ!’ the driver stammered. ‘How the—’

  Mr Dine stepped away from the arrested vehicle. Bent bodywork groaned as his legs came out of the form-fitting impression. The bumper fell off.

  No fix. Still no fix. The pull was wrong. Still no definitive focus from the upload, despite the fact that his body was now accelerating to full combat investment, hyping to maximum.

  In another ten seconds it would automatically switch over to battledress. That was something that could not be allowed to happen in plain sight.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said to the chubby driver.

  ‘But you can’t... you should go to hospital and—’

  ‘I have no further time for this digression.’

  Mr Dine started to move. By the time the gathered crowd had realised the man in the black suit was shoving his way through them, he had somehow – inexplicably, in the opinion of many – already vanished.

  The recorded voice said, ‘The phone you are calling is out of range or has been switched off. Please try again later.’

  Gwen cancelled the call. Her head was throbbing so much, she was having difficulty accomplishing even simple tasks. It felt like a six-inch nail had been driven in through the top of her skull. She wanted to cry. She wanted to lie down. She wanted to cry and lie down.

  Fiddling with the master control box, James let out a dull moan. His hands were visibly shaking.

  ‘Gwen, I can’t do it. I can’t work it. I can’t think straight.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Gwen, can you see the blue lights?’

  ‘No,’ she lied. ‘Try again.’

  He looked up at her. His eyes were horribly bloodshot. Dots of sweat clung to his forehead and made his hair lank. ‘I can’t. I can’t. I can’t get the foetus to align.’

  ‘The foetus?’

  ‘The focus, focus.’

  ‘It’s OK. Just try one more time.’

  ‘One more climb? Climb what?’

  ‘I said time.’

  ‘No, you said—’

  ‘James! Please!’

  He bent back over the control box.

  Gwen held up her mobile, blinking away tears. She willed it to ring.

  It rang. She answered. ‘Tosh?’

  ‘Gwen Cooper. Good to hear your voice.’

  It was just a whisper, desperately far away, deep in a well.

  ‘Jack!’

  ‘My phone died. I’m using Tosh’s, but her battery is fading fast too. Something here is sucking energy up. Something hungry.’

  ‘Jack—’

  ‘Listen to me, Gwen. I don’t have long. It’s gone dark here. Pitch
black. Scary dark. We’re both feeling pretty wretched, headache and nausea. I guess if this place leeches power out of cellphone batteries, it leaches power out of organics too. Anyway, we’re not doing too good, all told. And there are footsteps out there. I can hear them too now. Circling the chapel in the dark. Creepy. This is not—’

  ‘What? Jack?’

  ‘This is not how I pictured my demise.’

  ‘It’s not going to be your demise, Harkness. We’ll get you out of there! We’ll—’

  ‘Gwen. You’re a good girl, but I know when I’m beat. I’ve flown from one side of this galaxy to the other, and seen a lot of strange stuff—’

  ‘Don’t you go all Han Solo on me now, you bugger! I get enough of that from Rhys! We’re getting you out of there!’

  ‘How?’

  Gwen looked at James.

  ‘How?’ Jack repeated down the line. ‘Gwen, you still there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How are you going to get us out of here? I don’t even know where here is. All I know is there are footsteps coming closer and they ain’t friendly.’

  ‘We’ll find a way.’ She had a lump in her throat. ‘We’ll find something.’

  A moment passed before he said anything. ‘Gwen, I made a bad call today. Learn from that. I rushed in here with Tosh, and it was a bad call. Dumb. I don’t know what I was thinking. Major error of judgement. Something was affecting me, something... putting me off my game. I don’t mind paying for that, but I hate the fact that Tosh is paying for it too. Error of judgement. Not like me at all. Never rush into a situation unsecured. These are the things you have to remember. The things you have to learn.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘When you take over. Recruit and rebuild. It’ll be down to you. You’ll need to learn from my mistakes.’

  ‘Take over? Torchwood?’

  ‘No, the Cyncoed Choral Society. Yes, Torchwood.’

  ‘Jack, there won’t be any Torchwood without you.’

  ‘There damn well better be, girl. The Rift won’t police itself. I’m counting on you—’

  Static wilted his voice. A dry buzz. A flicker of rasping voices lacking any real words.

  ‘Jack?’

  Buzzing, buzzing.

  ‘... come back and haunt you forever, you hear me?’