Border Princes by Dan Abnett
‘Jesus bugger it!’ said one of the officers as he leapt out. ‘Where’d he come from?’
The officer ran over to James and bent down. ‘Call it in, for Christ’s sake!’ he yelled at his oppo. ‘Get a bloody ambulance!’
He knelt beside James. ‘S’all right, mister, it’s all right,’ he said. The man they’d run down was in his early thirties, blond, clean cut. He was wearing black jeans, a white shirt, and a black leather coat. Good quality, all of it. The officer, who was twenty-two years old and whose name was Peter Picknall, had a feeling it was a bit odd someone so well dressed should be running out of a derelict lot. Running out of a trendy club, maybe.
‘Is it coming?’ he yelled.
‘It’s coming!’ his oppo, Timmy Beal, yelled back. Squawks on the radio. The rain hissing.
‘What the hell is this?’ Timmy Beal called.
Peter Picknall didn’t look up. The man they’d run down had been holding a black leather glove. When Peter picked it up, he realised there was something heavy inside it. The something heavy fell out and bounced on the road surface in the back-splashing rain.
It was something metal. Something oddly shaped.
Peter picked it up. Immediately, he knew it was the best thing he’d ever done. He felt like he’d won the lottery. Twice. During sex.
There were people all around him. There were people milling around the unit, people knocking Timmy Beal down and kicking him out of the way.
Peter heard Timmy Beal cry out in pain. He hardly cared. He stood up. He looked at the people closing in around him.
‘Big big big,’ he agreed. ‘Now piss off, it’s my go.’
Shiznay brought Mr Dine his shashlik, along with a side of shredded iceberg lettuce and a wedge of lemon.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
She shrugged.
‘Shiznay?’
‘What?’
Mr Dine studied her face. ‘I have a feeling I’ve upset you somehow. Or let you down. I’m not very good at reading facial expressions where your kind is concerned.’
‘My kind?’ she asked, astonished that he could be so openly racist.
He considered her response. ‘I feel I may have put that badly. I meant—’
‘What? What did you mean?’
‘What did I do to upset you?’ he asked.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said.
‘Whatever it was, I’m sorry,’ he replied. ‘I never intended any slight or prejudicial slur. Really not. The cultural briefing, it’s so vague really, when you get down to it. So many useful things they don’t tell you.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I like you, Shiznay. I really do. I like you, and I like the spiced meat and the animal fats. And the alcohol.’
She shook her head sadly. ‘I don’t get you.’
He shrugged. ‘No, I suppose you don’t. But I do like you. You are kind. You have a physical aspect that is—’
‘Oh, so you are a breast man, are you?’ Shiznay sneered, and turned away.
‘I was intending a compliment! Did it not come out right either?’
‘Not so much,’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘Shiznay, all I want to say is that I’d hate to do anything to upset you. That was never my intention. You’ve been kind to me. I...’
‘You what?’
Mr Dine sat upright suddenly, his back straight. His bright, wide eyes switched back and forth in his head. With his flock hair, he reminded Shiznay of the Eagle-Eyed Action Man her brother had once played with.
He stood up, bumping the table.
‘I have to go,’ he said. ‘What?’
‘Something’s happened. I have to go.’
‘But,’ Shiznay protested, ‘you’ve ordered.’
‘I have to go.’
‘You have to pay first.’
‘Next time.’
‘You have to pay. You’ve ordered food.’
‘Next time,’ he insisted, striding towards the door.
‘Mr Dine!’
‘The Principal,’ mumbled Dine. ‘The Principal is under threat. I must go.’
Shiznay ran after him. ‘Waitaminute!’
Her father was blocking the door of the Mughal Dynasty. ‘You have to pay, sir. Do you hear me, sir? You have to pay before you leave.’
Mr Dine raised his right hand, as if he was brushing away a fly. There was nothing in it, no force. It was a gesture. Nevertheless, Shiznay’s father was suddenly sitting on the carpet and Mr Dine was gone.
Shiznay ran out into the street.
The lights of passing cars were blurred by the heavy rain. There was no sign of Mr Dine.
She looked around, baffled at how he could have disappeared so rapidly. Out of the corner of her eye, Shiznay had a fleeting impression of something leaving the pavement in a fluid leap that took it up onto a two-storey roof fifty yards away.
But that could only have been her imagination.
FOUR
The chain link bit into her fingers. Gwen wailed in pain and fear as the drape of fencing she was swinging from began to tear out from its moorings.
‘Got you,’ said Jack, and he had. He held her by the wrists. With a grunt of effort, he pulled her up onto the path.
‘Oh shit,’ she murmured. She had to lay where she was for a moment, her heart pounding. She rubbed at her throbbing fingers.
‘I thought I was gonna—’
‘But you didn’t,’ said Jack.
‘But I thought I was—’
‘But you didn’t,’ said Jack.
Gwen took a deep breath. ‘Thank you.’
Jack shrugged off her gratitude. He seemed scratchy and aggravated, and not quite himself.
The mob had disappeared up the bank. Jack was already heading for the embankment steps.
‘Coming?’ he asked.
She got to her feet and followed him.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
‘If this turns out not to be the End of the World, I’m going to be reading everyone the riot act when we’re done.’
‘And if it is the End of the World?’
Jack was taking the steps two at a time. ‘Then I’ll stick to the main points in the time available.’
‘Jack?’
‘Amateur hour,’ he said, more to himself than her. ‘This is a mess, even by our own high standards.’
‘Jack!’
He ignored her. He wasn’t stopping. They could hear voices up ahead, and see flashing blue lights strobing and bouncing off the shadowy buildings before them.
‘I’ll take that,’ Owen told the policeman.
To emphasise his instruction, he clouted the policeman around the back of the head with the grip of his side-arm. The policeman slumped forwards across the boot of his unit. Owen dug the object out of his clenched fist. The rest of the crowd closed in, clamouring for him, grabbing at his clothes and his hair.
Pain was helping him heaps. The pain of being smacked in the mouth had lent Owen a wonderful sense of clarity and prickly anger that buoyed him up. He kicked and punched back at the crowd, relishing each pay-back impact, and began fighting his way clear of the milling, uncoordinated pack.
Something began to cancel out the pain, something very welcome and also very inviting. It spread out from his hand, up his arm, into his head and into his loins. Such a rush. Such a big big rush.
‘Owen!’
‘What?’
‘Owen, let it go! Don’t hold on to it too long! You can’t hold on to it for too long!’
Owen blinked. The world was full of blue lights. The police car lights. Other lights.
‘Owen!’
Owen blinked again, refocused, and saw James. James was pushing people out of his way, reaching at Owen. ‘Give it to me! We have to get it into the SUV! Into the box, remember?’
‘Not really necessary,’ Owen replied.
‘Give it to me!’
Owen raised his side-arm and aimed it at James’s f
‘Owen? Mate?’
‘It’s my turn,’ Owen said.
Both Jack and Gwen felt it, like a sudden change in air pressure, or like chronic tinnitus when it suddenly stops. The rain suddenly felt colder.
They stepped out onto the street.
It was like the aftermath of a bomb blast. A few people were still standing, swaying aimlessly. Most of the others had fallen down in the rain. Some were sobbing or moaning, others limp and still, others looking around them in complete bewilderment.
The muttering had stopped.
Jack and Gwen stepped down past the stationary police car. Its cycling light bar reflected off the puddles like an Eighties disco.
‘What’s going on?’ a middle-aged man asked them, leaning against the police car’s right wing as if he was ill. His voice was tremulous, outraged. ‘What the bloody hell is going on?’
They heard someone calling out someone else’s name. A young girl splashed past, crying for her mum.
James was sitting on the road with his back against one of the rear wheels of the SUV. The SUV’s hatch was open. A brushed-steel casket stood on the ground between his legs. James’s face was in his hands.
Five yards away from him, Owen lay flat on his back on the tarmac, blinking up at the rain as he came round. He sat up sharply. ‘What,’ he began. ‘The hell?’ he added.
Gwen and Jack walked over to James. Toshiko appeared and, limping slightly, fell in step with them. James looked up at them as they drew close.
He smiled feebly and patted the locked lid of the containment box in front of him.
‘Got it,’ he said. ‘Chastity belt. One hundred per cent chastity belt.’
FIVE
No one spoke much on the way back to the Hub. Jack drove, hard and mean, as if there was some urgency left.
Ianto was there waiting for them when the cog hatch rolled aside and they walked into the gloomy stone vault. He was about to speak, but then thought better of it. It wasn’t the tired, strung-out looks on their faces, or the bruises, the cuts or the torn clothing. It wasn’t that James was limping painfully, or that Owen was helping Tosh.
It was the stone-hard glint in Jack Harkness’s eyes. Ianto had only seen that once or twice before, but he knew it was something you didn’t speak in the presence of.
Jack went straight up to his office, carrying the containment box. Shortly afterwards, they heard the old, heavy safe door clang.
Owen sat down at his work station, popped two painkillers and knocked them back with a swig of flat coke from an open can on his desk. He winced as the cold metal touched his puffed, bruised mouth.
‘Right,’ he said, ‘med checks. Let’s get them done right now, before I stop giving a toss.’
‘You first, Tosh,’ said James, leaning back against the lip of his station to ease the weight on his leg. ‘You nearly got your head pulled off.’
‘You bar-dived a moving car,’ Toshiko countered. ‘You’ve probably broken something. And Gwen’s hands—’
‘Gwen’s hands are fine,’ said Gwen, rubbing at the raw places where the chain link had stripped the skin off her fingers and palms. ‘Gwen just needs some antiseptic spray, a stiff drink and a, oh I don’t know...’
She looked at the others.
‘... long holiday in the Maldives?’
Owen snorted, and wished he hadn’t, as snorting made his nose bleed again.
‘Christ alive,’ murmured James. ‘We’re a bit of a mess, aren’t we?’
They eyed each other up: the bruises, the lacerations, the swelling lips, the skinned knuckles.
‘Still,’ said James. ‘Look on the bright side. It’s not the End of the World.’
The four of them began to laugh. ‘Stop it,’ protested Toshiko, ‘it hurts my ribs.’ For some reason, this made it even funnier. Their combined laughter echoed out across the Hub.
‘I suppose it is real funny.’
Jack was standing in the doorway of his office. He wasn’t laughing.
‘I mean,’ he said, taking a few steps towards them, ‘given what we’re supposed to be. Real funny.’
‘Oh, come on, Jack,’ said Owen, ‘if you can’t laugh, what can you do?’
‘I dunno,’ said Jack. ‘Not perform like a bunch of clowns maybe? What happened tonight was just embarrassing.’
‘What?’ asked Toshiko, stunned. ‘Jack?’
‘You heard me, Tosh. Did you see the mess we left behind us tonight? Forty-plus civilians with their lives bent out of shape. At least three dead. Hardly a covert operation.’
‘We had to react fast,’ said Toshiko. ‘It was right on us. We had to improvise.’
‘And excuse me,’ said Owen, ‘but plus, we were getting our arses handed to us.’
Jack shook his head wearily. ‘I expect more. A lot more. This is Torchwood, not amateur theatre.’
He turned away.
‘Oi!’ cried Gwen.
‘Save your “oi” for sometime when I care,’ Jack told her over his shoulder, walking back into his office.
Gwen glanced at the others and then sprang up to follow Jack. ‘Oi!’
‘I’m not kidding around, Gwen,’ Jack said. ‘Don’t “oi” me just now.’
She marched into his office anyway. He was sitting down behind his glass-topped desk.
‘Where do you get off?’ she asked.
‘Wanna close the door?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘Do you suppose I might want you to close the door?’
‘I couldn’t give a toss, frankly. Where do you get off?’
Jack looked up at her. ‘You tell me.’
‘We got beat to shit tonight. Beat to shit. I know Tosh is hurt worse than she’s letting on, and James must be banged up a treat. Owen too, but he’s playing it all macho.’
‘Good old Owen.’
‘What is your bloody problem?’
Jack sat back. ‘We should have been on top of that. We should have closed it down quick and clean, before anyone knew. In and out. That mess is going to be in the Western Mail tomorrow, Gwen. Mystery riot. Deaths. We can’t paper over it. Fast bug out. No time to wipe memories or fake deaths. Just a big old mess.’
‘We did the best we could, and—’
‘That’s what I’m saying. It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.’
‘I had an “and” then, by the way,’ she said.
‘So “and” me.’
‘And we won, I was going to say.’ said Gwen. ‘We stopped it. We got it contained, even though it nearly killed us.’
Jack shrugged and rose to his feet. He looked at her. ‘You know what I think? I think you’re pissed at me, Gwen Cooper, because I called you amateurs.’
‘Actually, no I’m not,’ Gwen replied. ‘I’m perfectly well aware of my amateur status. So’s Tosh and James and Owen. See, the thing is, as far as we’re aware, there are only amateurs in this line of work. ’Cept you, maybe. The things we have to deal with, Jack. The bloody things we have to deal with. We’re only ever going to be amateurs, Jack.’
‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ Jack said.
Gwen sighed and shook her head. ‘Sometimes...’ she said.
‘Sometimes what?’
‘Sometimes you can be the biggest arse imaginable.’
‘That all you got?’ Jack asked, sitting back down. ‘You done?’
‘I think I am.’
‘I think you are too. Walk away and check on the others. Don’t come back until my headache’s gone.’
‘How will I know when your headache’s gone?’
‘I won’t be armed.’
‘Funny. Ha ha.’
‘Look at my face.’
‘Rather not,’ she said, and swept out.
Halfway up the stairs to the medical area, she stopped in her tracks. Rather not? What was she, six?
‘Just bruising,’ said Owen, swinging the med-light away.
&nbs
‘OK, nasty, nasty bruising, but just bruising all the same.’ Owen took another look at her throat. The pale skin was discoloured with brown fingermarks. ‘Big bastard did a number on you.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Can I put my top back on now?’
Owen glanced back at her with a grin. ‘Unless there’s anything else you want me to examine?’
Toshiko shook her head and reached for her sweater. ‘Check James, please.’
‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ said James. He had stripped down to his jeans and was lying back on the exam bed. Owen had covered the stainless-steel surface with clean paper roll, but still he felt vulnerable. ‘I feel like I’m waiting for my Y-shaped incision,’ James complained.
Owen adjusted the lights. He palpated the green-black bruises and contusions on James’s white torso.
‘You really took a knock, didn’t you, mate?’ Owen said.
‘Ow! Will I – ow! – live?’
Owen didn’t reply. He waved his Bekaran deep-tissue scanner over James’s torso and stared at the graphic displays.
‘You’ve cracked a rib on the left side. I’ll bond it for now, but go easy. No heavy lifting. Oh, and your left elbow’s knackered up. Nothing fractured, but you’ve got serious tissue swelling. Hang on.’
He played the device over James’s arm. ‘Get that packed in ice and don’t tit around with it.’
‘Yes, Doctor.’ James sat up.
They heard the metal creak of a locker opening. Gwen was up by the sink, going through the drug store for something to put on her hands.
‘Let me do that,’ Owen said.
‘I can do it,’ Gwen replied. ‘Check yourself over.’
‘Me?’ asked Owen. ‘I’m fine. I’ve had worse on an average Friday night off duty.’ He sat down on a swivel chair, rode its castors across the tiled floor to the lower lockers, and leaned over. He winced, paused to take the side-arm out of his waistband and set it on the cabinet top, and then leaned over again and opened a drawer under the instrument rack. He produced a bottle of Scotch, screwed off the top, and took a swig.