The Undertakers Gift (7 page)

‘Really? Then why did you go after those Blowfish alone?’

‘There were only two of them and they were just kids. Didn’t seem worth risking everyone.’

‘Just yourself, you mean.’

‘Not the same kind of risk. You know that.’ He blew out a sigh and sat back. He folded his arms, mirroring her. He looked at her for a long time and then broke out a grin.

‘Not working,’ Gwen stated. She leaned on the desk. ‘Just tell me the truth, Jack. What’s the matter? What’s worrying you? Is it the Undertaker’s Gift?’

He had the decency to blink. The brilliant blue of his eyes looked steely now as the shutters came down, but she’d got him. Sometimes Gwen could really get under his skin.

Jack sat back, thinking what to say. Gwen waited. It was basic police interview stuff – let the silence do the work; people could never stand the silence. They felt compelled to fill it.

‘I’m losing too many people, Gwen,’ he said at last. He spoke very quietly. ‘Too many.’

‘So – what’s the plan? You take all the risks because you can’t be killed, and leave us to do the office work?’

‘How many more people do I have to lose, Gwen? Tell me that. When’s it going to stop?’

‘You know it’s not going to.’

‘And how much more can I take? How many more deaths are gonna pile up in my memory? I’m running out of room in here.’ Jack tapped the side of his head. ‘Something’s got to give.’

Gwen thought for a moment. She wasn’t used to seeing Jack distraught. He was trying his best to hide it in that slightly cocky, slightly old-fashioned way of his, but she still felt her heart aching for him. Immortality had its price. ‘Maybe,’ she said carefully, ‘you just need a break.’

‘There aren’t any holidays in this job. You know that.’

‘Everyone needs some downtime.’

‘The Rift never takes a break. Right now it’s busier than ever. And, yes, we’ve got the Undertaker’s Gift to deal with on top of that –
maybe
. We can’t afford to stop.
I
can’t afford to stop.’

‘We managed without you for a while before.’

‘That was different. And there were more of you then.’ Jack turned and let his gaze rest on the back of Ianto’s head as he worked at his station. ‘I just can’t bear the thought of losing you. Either of you.’

‘If this Undertaker thing is real then you may be losing everyone – not just us.’ Gwen sat on the edge of his desk and smiled at him. ‘Besides, not even Captain Jack can do this job all by himself.’

‘You’d be surprised,’ he said, with a sad smile of his own. His eyes were staring into the past. Maybe even to a time before she had been born.

‘If there
is
a temporal fusion device buried somewhere in Cardiff,’ Jack began, ‘then we are truly staring into the abyss, Gwen. If it’s activated, then the chain reaction will destroy everything and everyone. The lifetime of this planet could be measured in hours, minutes, seconds and I can’t do a damn thing about it.’

Gwen swallowed. ‘Will it be quick?’ she asked quietly.

He shook his head. ‘No.’

TWELVE

Ianto called it the Hokrala Document.

It was a fairly ordinary-looking letter, until you inspected it really closely.

On one side, beneath the Hokrala corporate logo, were several lines of alien script. The markings looked like a series of tiny, jagged dots and dashes and slashes, all tied together in endless knots, varying in size and boldness. Which was probably what English looked like to aliens, Ianto guessed.

Ianto was about to scan the letter into the translator when he noticed something that made him raise the letter up to the light of one of his monitor screens.

A watermark.

It wasn’t the Hokrala logo. This was an altogether different symbol: it was like nothing Ianto had ever seen before, or wanted to see again. A weird, convoluted design that reminded him of a Celtic knot, although there was something distinctly biological about the design, and something utterly violent. He tried turning the paper this way and that in the light, but he couldn’t make any real sense of the mark at all. All he knew was that it left him feeling slightly queasy.

He was feeding the document into the translator machine as Jack and Gwen came out of the office.

‘How’s it going?’ Jack called over. ‘What’s that bad boy got to tell us?’

‘Maybe we’ll just get away with a fine,’ said Gwen, and Jack smiled dutifully.

The Hokrala Document was held beneath a transparent plastic screen. Above it was a monitor unit with a number of words all jostling around into position, as if they were hurriedly trying to line up for an inspection.

‘This is the computer’s best guess at a translation,’ Ianto said. ‘The programme is based on a series of interpolative linguistics algorithms that—’

‘It’s a covenant,’ said Jack tersely. He tapped the screen as a series of words assembled. In the light of the workstation his face looked drawn and white. ‘An agreement if you like, or an arrangement. . .’

The words kept shifting as the computer tried to assimilate the alien language and suggest the appropriate corresponding words in English. Sometimes it failed to settle on a word and the letters kept fluctuating.

‘Who with?’ Gwen asked.

Jack’s finger traced a line. ‘It says here: the Supreme Powers.’

‘Supreme Powers?’

‘That’s what it says.’

‘And who or what are the Supreme Powers?’

‘I’ve no idea, but they sound kind of important.’

‘It could be a translation glitch,’ suggested Ianto. He rattled a few keys. ‘It could simply refer to an umbrella organisation, perhaps – the body which controls Hokrala Corp?’

‘Maybe,’ said Jack flatly. He pointed at another section. ‘What’s that say?’

Ianto peered closer as the letters jiggled around and the words danced in and out of sense.

‘Unbounded. . . unending. . . No – limitless. Erm. . . vengeance. Retaliation. Retribution.’

‘Limitless retribution?’ Gwen echoed.

‘Not a fine, then,’ said Ianto.

Gwen pointed at the translator screen. ‘Wait a second. Look. It goes on. . . It’s more specific: it’s a warning. Is that “murder”? It moved too quick.’

Ianto tapped some keys again and squinted. ‘No, it’s “assassination”. Oh. Your conman friend was right after all, Jack. They
are
sending an assassin to kill you.’

Jack straightened up. ‘That just doesn’t make sense.’

‘True – you can’t assassinate someone who’s indestructible,’ Ianto agreed.

‘Actually, I was thinking that there’s no one who could possibly
want
to assassinate me, but. . .’

‘But surely it’s impossible anyway, like Ianto says,’ Gwen offered.

‘Well, if someone was to teleport in here and shoot me with a focused solar-beam plasma rifle, then that could be tricky. How do I come back to life if I’ve been vaporised into a cloud of positively charged ions?’

‘Could you?’ Ianto asked.

‘I really, really don’t want to find out.’

‘But could they actually teleport someone in
here
?’ asked Gwen. ‘Into the Hub?’

Jack pulled a non-committal face, trying on a smile that didn’t seem as confident as usual. ‘Well, we’ve got defences, but. . .’

‘Nothing’s foolproof,’ finished Ianto.

‘All right,’ Gwen said, trying to sound confident and businesslike. ‘At least we have a definite warning. They’re out to get Jack. They’re sending an assassin – possibly hiring some kind of hitman.’

‘But why now?’ wondered Ianto. ‘Hokrala tipped us off about the Undertaker’s Gift. If there
is
a temporal fusion device hidden in Cardiff, why would they have you assassinated? Surely they’d want you to try to find it and stop it.’

‘Unless it’s just a decoy,’ Jack mused. ‘A distraction. Keep me off my guard, running around Cardiff like a madman looking for a non-existent Time Bomb. Then – pow!’

‘I still can’t help thinking it would take more than one man, even with a focused solar-beam whatever-it-was,’ Gwen said.

‘Could be a team,’ said Jack.

‘A team?’

‘Yeah, I once had a whole squadron of execution robots sent after me.’ Jack’s brows furrowed. ‘But let’s not go into that. Things were very different then. And I came to an agreement with the robots anyway.’

‘An agreement?’ Ianto echoed, raising an eyebrow.

Jack grinned at the memory. ‘What a night
that
was.’

Ianto’s eyebrows dipped. ‘With execution robots.’

‘Well, the squad leader, really. Top of the range, touch-sensitive bearings and micromesh skin. A bit uptight, of course, but me and a can of Brasso soon taught him how to relax.’

‘I think I’ve heard enough,’ Gwen interjected.

Jack suddenly seemed to remember what they had been talking about. ‘Anyway,’ he said, dropping the smile. ‘Execution squad, hit team, lone gunman – does it really matter? They wanna whack Captain Jack.’

‘There is another explanation,’ Ianto said. ‘Hokrala said you’re going to fail to stop the Undertaker’s Gift. What if this is their way of guaranteeing that?’

‘You mean they
want
me to fail?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Ianto, ‘they need you to?’

‘That’s a nasty thought.’

‘OK, until we get to the bottom of this I think you should be grounded,’ Gwen told Jack.

‘Grounded?’

‘Confined to the Hub. As of now.’

‘We need to protect you, Jack,’ said Ianto. ‘You’ll be safer here.’

‘But I’m indestructible,’ protested Jack indignantly.

‘As in unsinkable,’ Ianto noted.

‘That’s right,’ Jack agreed.

‘Like the
Titanic
,’ added Ianto.

‘We don’t know what Hokrala are capable of,’ Gwen put in. ‘And they seemed pretty certain you’ll fail to stop the Undertaker’s Gift.’

Jack nodded slowly. ‘All right. . . There is stuff I can do here. I can stay busy.’

‘I’m going to recheck the Rift monitors,’ Gwen said. ‘You can interview the Blowfish.’

Jack saluted. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

Gwen smiled sweetly back at him and then turned to speak to Ianto. ‘You need to make sure the Hub defences are working properly – especially the matter transmission screening.’

‘Yes, of course.’ Ianto nodded. He had picked up the Hokrala Document again, intending to fold it and store it, but something new caught his attention. He held the paper up to the bright desk light again to inspect the watermark. He turned it over and looked again, puzzled.

‘That’s odd,’ he said. ‘It’s gone.’

‘What has?’

‘The watermark. This paper had a watermark before, I’m sure of it.’

‘Fascinating,’ said Gwen, ‘but not urgent.’

Ianto shrugged, replaced the letter in its envelope, and left it on the desk. He stared at it a moment longer and shivered. He couldn’t think why, but it made his skin crawl.

THIRTEEN

Ray was sitting with Wynnie on the hard metal perch seats in the bus shelter on Plas y Parc, huddled against the cold, blustery weather. They were waiting for a bus to take them back up towards Cyncoed, and hopefully retrace Ray’s steps of the night before.

‘You’re determined to get to the bottom of this, aren’t you?’ Wynnie asked, wincing as another icy gust of wind battered the shelter.

‘Too right,’ said Ray.

‘And to think I gave up a lecture on heterogeneous catalysis for this.’

Ray’s mobile rang, filling the shelter with the tinny strains of ‘Where Did All The Love Go’. She answered it awkwardly, glancing quickly at the display. ‘Hi Gillian. How’s things?’ She looked at Wynnie and shrugged.

‘Hey Ray.’ This was Gillian’s habitual greeting. ‘Glad I’ve got you. Didn’t want to text this, it’s too
weird
. But you know the funeral cortège—’

Ray felt a deep shiver run through her guts. ‘What did you say? How do you know about the funeral. . .?’

‘Your
blog
of course, silly cow.
Someone’s
got to read it! D’uh!’

Ray shut her eyes in relief. Of course! The stupid bloody blog!

‘Are you listening?’ Gillian’s voice was excited.

‘What? Yeah. Go on. The blog. Stupid, really.’ Ray couldn’t think why she was lying, but it came easily. ‘It’s nothing, really. Take no notice of it.’

‘No, no, don’t be
daft
. I was at the party, remember. You’d been drinking but you
definitely
weren’t pissed. Not
that
much anyway. But it was the blog you see, I couldn’t believe it when I read it. Is it true? Did you see it as well?’