Title: The Angel of Death (13/?)
Author: Emma
Characters: Jack Harkness, others
Rating: Starts PG. That's all I know.
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?
Summary: Far in the future, Jack meets someone he never expected to see again
Author's Note: I don’t know where this came from. I really don’t.
Author's Note: The Shiva Star is for real, well, it will be when they work out the bugs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_Star
Author's Note: My first post in DW. I will be working to change/add the links so that they point here instead of LJ, but it will take a while!

The previous chapters are here

The blare of the Toshiko's alarms had Jack scrambling before he was fully awake. He rolled out of bed, slightly disoriented, looking around for the track pants he had thrown carelessly to the floor the night before.

“Here,” Ianto said, tossing him a pair of the loose, drawstring waisted silk trousers that seemed to be standard wear for off-duty Angels. “Tosh, what's happening?”

“Incoming emergency signal from the transport. They're under attack.”

They had followed Leah's ship for nine days as it threaded in and out of the asteroid field, following the routing beacons' signals. All travel inside Freeman's Dream was done at sub-light speeds; there were too many cautionary tales, all true in every horrific detail, of what could happen when a ship emerged out of hyperdrive bang in the middle of an asteroid swarm. Leah, obviously protective of her human cargo, had chosen the safest route.

Jack had been glad of the slow pace. He wanted as much time with Ianto as he could get before they had to face the 456. Ianto had obviously been of the same mind. Leaving Tosh to navigate, they had thrown themselves into exploring each other, body and mind.

At first Jack had mapped the similarities and the differences between this man and the one he had lost so many centuries before. He had often wondered whether his memories were true or whether he had made them up as the real ones faded over the centuries and he fought to hang on to someone he loved, but he didn't think so. Ianto, the Ianto of twenty-first century Cardiff, the Ianto he hadn't admitted to himself he loved until he had watched him die, was still vivid in his mind.

Sometimes he had to ask Tosh to show him pictures of the others so that the faces matched his memories again –that was Gwen, big expressive eyes and delicious gap between her front teeth, loving, pushy, impulsive; that was Rhys, steady, strong as Wales, and as much of an alpha male as Jack himself; that hatchet-faced man was Owen, sharp of tongue and hiding a caring heart as big as a mountain; and that exquisite woman was Martha, elegant, gentle, and tough as nails; and sometimes even that was Toshiko, brilliant, sweet, shy, and with the bawdiest sense of humor he had ever encountered. But he never had to ask for a photograph of Ianto. That face had never faded.

But this Ianto, this warrior built out of Ianto's flesh and Ianto's last breath, was worthy of love on his own merits. Jack had soon stopped the comparisons and enjoyed him for himself, and if sometimes a sly comment or an amused eye-roll caught Jack unawares and the memories flooded back, he accepted them as part of the whole. Now, as he ran behind him towards the Toshiko's control room, Jack knew whatever happened this Ianto would become as much a part of the weave of his immortality as the other Ianto already was.

When they arrived at the control room, they found that Tosh had already set up the tactical screens. The center column had widened and two new sections, both equipped with virtual reality gloves and goggles, had appeared on either side of the main panel. Jack pointed Ianto to one of them.

“Can you use these?” A single raised eyebrow was his only answer. “Never mind. Basic training for Angels, right?” He offered up the goggles. “Same principle. They control the Toshiko's shiva stars. Four on either side of the plasma nacelles. Tosh handles the feeds but the imagery is your own. Targeting disks controlled by thumbs, triggers by index fingers. Ready?”

“One question. Why do these look like RAF flying goggles?”

Jack grinned. “Nobody said one couldn't be stylish while kicking ass.” He pulled on the goggles and slipped his hands into the gloves. “Tosh, feeds, please.”

The star field exploded into view. They were in a middle of an asteroid swarm, mostly mid-sized boulders. High and to the right, Jack could see the transport, its cannons extruded and firing. It had taken some damage to the hull, and one of its plasma nacelles had been sliced open. Surrounding it were five unmarked four-man stingers. They were harrying the transport, taking advantage of its limited mobility, one or two zipping in to fire at close range while the others kept the transport busy. It was a good tactic, but not without its dangers: two stingers, their wings and noses blown to smithereens, drifted powerless away from the battle.

“Cousin Leah is a good shot.”

Jack turned his head to look at him, and nearly dropped out of the VR environment. Ianto was balancing on an asteroid. Gigantic black and silver wings spread out behind him, and he carried a short Roman sword that glittered silver. But instead of a Roman warrior's kit or an Angel's black, polished armor, he was wearing a three piece suit. Pinstripes and red shirt. Jack took three deep breaths before he trusted himself to speak.

“She can indeed. But she won't be able to keep them off for too much longer. High or low?”

His answer came as Ianto turned and, in one smooth move, targeted a stinger that has launched itself into a steep dive towards the transport's ramscoop. The only warning Jack got was the sudden blue flare in Ianto's eyes as the sword came up to point at the stinger's own scoop. The Toshiko's floor shivered under Jack's feet as the shiva star fired. The thin red beam of the targeting gun touched the scoop on the panel midway between the two cooling vents. Less than a second later, the metal seemed to glow as the electron stream struck it. Jack could see lightning crawl over the hull as the energy found the wiring beneath the surface and discharged directly into the stinger's electrical systems. The ship spun wildly out of control, tumbling end over end to crash into an asteroid.

Grinning fiercely, Jack turned to find his own target. Another stinger went the way of the first before the others realized they had a new opponent. One of them shifted course towards the Toshiko, but it was persuaded of its folly by a peppering of shockwave grenades from the Toshiko's forward cannon. As the nose cone of the stinger separated neatly from the body, the others decided the prize was not worth the price. They peeled off and turned tail, heading for the thickest part of the asteroid field.

Jack gave a small whoop. “Tosh, get a hold of Leah and...”

“Jack!”

The urgency in Ianto's voice was matched by the sudden blare of the Toshiko's alarms. Jack whirled towards the other man. Through Ianto's image he could see the shimmer pattern that signaled an opening wormhole.

“Another one!” Ianto called, pointing over Jack's shoulder. He turned again to see another wormhole opening directly over the transport.

“They're 456 freighters, Jack!” Tosh's voice sounded slightly distorted, as if she were trying to function at multiple levels, which Jack supposed she probably was.

“We're not leaving these people behind!” He shouted angrily.

The booming of a plasma cannon shook the Toshiko. Jack found himself dropping out of VR as he fought to keep himself from flying off his feet. He felt the ship shake again under his feet, and the answering fire of the shiva stars. On the tactical screen, one of the large red circles that represented the 456 transport suddenly bloomed and died to black. Before he could reactivate his goggles, Ianto pulled his off.

“Can the Toshiko outrun them?”

“Not here. Too many asteroids...”

“All right, then. We at least make them...”

The Toshiko gave another shudder, but this one seemed somehow different. Jack felt a brief moment of space sickness, and then a familiar rocking and churning. He hung on for dear life as the Toshiko rode the current, trying to wrap his mind around this... shift... in reality.

Finally, the Toshiko settled into a smooth glide, and then all sense of motion disappeared. “Tosh?”

“Yes, Jack?”

“What just happened?”

“Something woke the TARDIS coral. It assessed the situation and took action to protect itself and us. It merged with the Toshiko. Then, it... talked to me. It showed me how to enter the Vortex. And then it pointed out we would be in much better condition, operationally speaking, if we also merged.”

“Tosh, that's impossible!”

“We did it. I did it.” She sounded a bit smug. “An organic computer is extremely close in structure to a TARDIS, and you did your level best to recreate a number of TARDIS technologies in the Toshiko. The coral simply adapted to it and then adapted it.”

“Are you telling me that...”

“Yes, I am, Jack.” Tosh nearly giggled. “I'm telling you you finally have your own TARDIS.”