Title: The Siege of Annwfn (4/10)

Author: Emma

Characters: Jack Harkness, Ianto Jones, Torchwood Three Team, Others.

Rating: R

Disclaimer: Oh, please. If I owned them, would I let some of those idiots write the scripts? And if I were making any money off them, would I be where they could find me?

Spoilers: None. This takes place in my Homecoming AU, a few months after The Eye of Neith.

Summary: The only things that stand between our Universe and disaster are Torchwood Three and Ianto’s growing powers…

Author’s Note: Again, for information on TARDIS technology and artron energy, go to whoniverse.org. Speculations about Rift-artron conversion rates, input/output cubes and illusion field collars are my own invention.

            “Come on, sweetheart. Yes, just like that, darling…”

            Jack and Ianto leaned on the railing of the stairs leading to Jack’s office and watched Torchwood’s resident computer genius at work. John Hart was bent over his i/o cube – nothing as pedestrian as a keyboard and scanner for him – crooning to the mainframe as he fed in data, retrieved results, and formulated new queries in an elegant waltz. Jack swore that at times he could actually see the mainframe respond, and he had the performance statistics to prove it. When John was working, everything got done faster and the probability extrapolations edged into flat-out wild-ass guesses, which should not be possible for a computer.

            “Yes! That’s it! That’s it!” John ran his hands in feathery strokes over the cube. “Superb as usual, my love.”

            “John,” Ianto said teasingly, “after that performance you will have to ask her to marry you.”

            “I have, but the little tart insists on playing the field.” He waved the printout at Jack. “Get down here and look at this. I can’t make anything out of these readings.”

            Jack vaulted over the railing and landed in an easy crouch next to John. Ianto followed much more sedately, walking downstairs and around to John’s work station.

            Jack looked at the printout. “Mainframe. On screen. Show the power fluctuation graphs and the local radiation reads and correlate it with this data.”

            There was a small but noticeable hesitation, and then information flowed rapidly across the screen in a jumble of data, equations, and graphs that stabilized into four quadrants.

            “She’s given you a bit more than you asked for,” John said. “Thank you, love.”

            Ianto held up a hand. “Before you get into one of those discussions where the rest of us lose track before you get to the first and, could you explain it in words of one syllable?”

            “I live for moments like this,” John smirked. “See this part here? It shows a huge energy spike each time we’ve had one of our little mythological encounters, which, by the way, getting yourself chased by giant hounds? Showing off, Eye-Candy, showing off. Anyway, these two here show that whatever generated the spikes was using Rift energy as the power source at a ruinous rate of exchange. This last one shows the particle-wave signature for the generated energy and that’s where the problem is, because I don’t recognize it, and, dammit, I thought I had run into every sort of possible radiation in the Universe.”

            Jack traced the image with his fingers. “You have encountered it, John; you just didn’t know you had.”

            “Oh?”

            “It’s called artron energy, and it’s the principal form of energy fuel used by a TARDIS.”

            “I thought you said the TARDIS used Rift energy… Ah. Conversion.”

            “Yeah. What I find puzzling is the conversion rate readouts. A TARDIS energy system is efficient beyond anything we will be able to build for centuries. It’s pretty much one-one particle conversion, and in an emergency it can be pushed to one-two. Whoever is behind this is not reaching even ten-one. They’re burning up Rift energy by the ton to get ounces of artron.”

            “Which is a weakness to keep in mind,” John said. “What else do we know about it?”

            “Artron energy is actually the energy of thought and perception…”

            “Is that how TARDIS communicate, then?” Ianto interrupted.

            “Give my favorite Welshman the prize” Jack said. “Artron energy causes TARDIS to generate a low-level telepathic field. But it’s more than that. Artron energy is produced every time a sentient being makes a choice, because a choice collapses a quantum-wave into a real-time event.”

            “So everyone has some of it?” John asked.

            “Everyone generates a negligible amount of it. Very few actually have it, except for Time Lords, Companions, and now Ianto. Artron energy is part of the Gallifreyan genetic makeup. The Doctor’s cells are partially powered by thought and perception. People who are in close contact with a TARDIS or who travel through the Vortex accumulate artron in their DNA, especially in neurons and glial cells in the brain. It makes us potentially highly telepathic.”

            “You went to the end of the Universe on the outside of a TARDIS,” Ianto said. “you’re probably swimming in the stuff.”

            “I knew there was a problem with his brain all along,” John mocked. “So you, Martha, and Ianto are probably the guinea pigs I need.”

            “Errr…John,” Ianto backed up dramatically. “What do you mean by guinea pigs?”

            “Easy, Eye-Candy. I’m going to reconfigure one of the Volian scanners we got last year into an artron detector. It shouldn’t be too difficult, but I’m going to need test scans to set the base readings.” He made a pointing-the-gun gesture in Ianto’s direction. “Bang. You’re it.”

            They laughed and bickered while John retrieved the scanner and set to work. Jack sometimes wondered at the easy friendship between the two men. Looking back, he didn’t know exactly what he had expected; armed truce, perhaps, or a clearly defined Maginot Line with no man’s land on either side. He was pleased that neither had come to pass, and, being a wise man in some things, he didn’t ask either man how their new relationship had been achieved.

            He looked up as Martha and Andy joined them. The two were freshly scrubbed and smelled of disinfectant. Martha had dragooned Andy into assisting at the autopsy of their “hound” since Gwen, who was considerably less squeamish, was spending the day in meetings with her counterparts in UNIT and the military establishments of several countries. Jack made a mental note to pop for a new pair of Jimmy Choos for his heroic second-in-command.

            “You have something for me, Martha?”

            “A number of anomalies. He is a human male, slightly below average in height and weight, about twenty-five. His teeth and stomach are in terrible shape. He has no dental work at all. His last meal was a disgusting mess of barley, oysters, and mutton swilled down with something like mead. He has signs of previous injuries, most from what I think were stone-tipped arrows. And he was wearing this.”

            Jack took the narrow torque she was offering. It was made of a metal he had not seen since the day he had destroyed the paradox engine. The metal had been etched and circuitry laid down along the grooves. The torque ended in a pair of spheres studded with pinhead-sized concave mirrors.

            “What is it?” Ianto asked.

            “It’s an illusion-field collar,” Jack said. “A Gallifreyan toy designed to develop children’s psionic abilities. The one wearing it casts an illusion and the others try to see through his disguise.”

            “Time Lord hide-and-seek, then?” said Andy.

            Jack laughed. “I guess so, although one time Rose and I used them to visit the Shrine of Ellanora during Festival. I thought the Doctor was going to blow out one of his hearts when he found out.” He tossed the torque on John’s work bench. “Here. Another guinea pig for your experiment. They are powered by artron energy, and the more they are used the more it accumulates in the circuitry.”

            John grunted his thanks and continued working. Martha started to say something, but a soft pinging noise from the medical bay attracted her attention.

            “Toxicology,” she told Jack as she walked away.

            “Martha.” Jack waited until she had turned to face him “I will tell him, but not yet. He has a bad habit of trying to save Time Lords from their own folly.”

            She nodded and left. Jack reached behind him without looking and found Ianto’s hand exactly where he expected it to be. Their fingers intertwined.

            “With you two it’s all grab, grab, grab.” John jumped up, brandishing the modified scanner. “Unlink. I need to read you separately.”

            Grinning, the two men separated a hand span apart. John sighed.

            “I’ll take what I can get,” he said as he moved the scanner over them head to toe. He linked the scanner to the i/o cube and downloaded the data into the mainframe. “Sweetheart, will you correlate these readings to the particle-wave signature of energy readings taken in the last week? Thanks, doll. Martha!” he bellowed.” Get your gorgeous butt back up here!”

            Martha emerged from the medical bay with her hands full of printouts. “Bellow at me one more time, Hart, and I’ll have you muzzled. What do you want?”

            “Nothing much. Just stand right there.” He ran the scanner over her. “You can go back now.”

            “No, Martha, stay,” said Jack. “This might be important.”

            “Andy,” John said, “Your turn.”

            “Me? Why?” the former policeman looked at him suspiciously. “I’m as everyday as a bacon buttie. You’re not likely to get anything off me.”

            “Exactly. You’re my control. Now stand still.”

            Once he was finished with Andy, John scanned the torque and went through the process of feeding the data into the mainframe again.  He had barely finished when the monitor lit up, showing the results plotted on a graph. There were three definite clusters of points.

            “Jack, is that even possible?”

            “At this point, I don’t know what is or isn’t possible,” sighed Jack. “It’s what we get. Could the mainframe be mistaken?”

            “Jack, this is bread-and-butter stuff to her. With no evidence of a massive malfunction, I would stand by the results.”

            “What is it?” Andy asked.

            “Here, look.” John pointed. “This is you, Andy, so human you could serve as the template for the species. Here are Jack, Martha, and Ianto. Human – well, with some modifications for Jack -- but showing lots of artron energy in the tissues, all with the same energy-signature. These last ones are the energy readings taken during the time of Donna Noble’s death, your run with the doggies, and the torque. Artron energy, alright, but with a different signature.”

            “And that means…”

            “Whoever is doing this is not from our Universe.”