Fic: Night Of The Harvester – Part 6

[badly_knitted]

 


Title: Night Of The Harvester – Part 6
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Ianto, Jack, OCs.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2489
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: Ianto and Jack get their first look at Harvester in the flesh, so to speak, and it turns out he’s not what they originally thought.
Written For: spook_me 2024, using Torchwood, Pumpkinhead / Jack O' Lantern.
Disclaimer: Sadly, I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
A/N: Set in my Through Time and Space ‘verse.
 


 
Previous Part
 


 
Once they’d finished their coffee, and Ianto had rinsed their empty cups with a drop of water before putting everything back in his bag, he stood up, stretching the kinks out, and doing some gentle warm-up exercises. Off to the west, a faint glow was becoming visible along the horizon; the first and closest of the planet’s three moons was rising.
 

Jack stood up too, settling the night-sight goggles over his eyes and running a final check on his weapons, ensuring they were ready for use. His heart was beating faster as adrenaline started pumping, the way it used to before a Weevil hunt back on earth, but this was a very different situation; the threat they were facing was nothing they’d ever encountered before.

 
Despite what he’d said earlier, he felt a frisson of fear, and knew Ianto would almost certainly be experiencing the same thing. There was always the worry that someday one or other of them might die and not wake up again. No matter that the Doctor had assured them both of their status as fixed points, destined to basically live until time itself ended, they still didn’t dare take it for granted that they couldn’t be killed. There were still too many mysteries in the universe, and they would soon be pitting themselves and their immortality against one. Still, there was no point dwelling on things that were beyond their control. They had a job to do, even if it was one they’d volunteered for. It was too late to back out now, even if they’d wanted to, which they didn’t. They’d see this through to the end. They had no choice; there was an entire colony depending on them.
 

“Ready for the big showdown?”
 

Ianto gave a tight smile and nodded. “As I’ll ever be. You?”
 

“Same.” Side by side, they stared across the fields to where the glow of the rising moon was gradually growing brighter.
 

Each of the men and women standing sentry around the occupied farms had been equipped with a small device that, at the press of a button, would send a signal to the TARDIS indicating that Harvester had been sighted. The signal from each device was on a slightly different frequency so that the TARDIS would be able to pinpoint exactly which of the sentries it was coming from and direct her two humans to the correct field. The technology had already been tested earlier in the day to make sure they were all working properly.
 

The devices also contained sensors that were constantly measuring everything within range, from ambient temperature and barometric pressure to different kinds of radiation and energy levels, which would hopefully allow the TARDIS to gather some basic information about the creature Ianto and Jack would be facing, once it appeared. No one knew where Harvester went between feeding cycles, but it was largely assumed that like the corn grubs, he simply burrowed beneath the ground. Perhaps that was where the remains of his wrecked spaceship were. Maybe he retreated to it to rest and bide his time until hunger drove him forth again. He might even be down there somewhere working tirelessly to repair it; anything was possible. Still, for a creature that had terrorised the small community for decades, surprisingly little was known about Harvester, and most of that was nothing more than conjecture.
 

For the time being, Jack and Ianto could only stand around, alert and tense, waiting to be told where to go. In some ways, this was the worst part; they were ready for action, but there was nothing they could do until their target was located.
 

“I wish Harvester would hurry up,” Jack muttered, restlessly pacing back and forth in front of his husband, a ball of nervous energy. “What’s keeping him, did he decide to have a lie-in?”
 

“The moon isn’t all the way up yet, it’s only partway,” Ianto pointed out calmly. Indeed, the moon, in its first quarter, wasn’t yet fully above the horizon.
 

“Bessica said ‘When the first moon rises’, not ‘When the first moon has already risen’.”

 
Before an argument could start over semantics, the TARDIS spoke in both their heads. ‘Something is happening. I sense a disturbance in one of the fields, two point four miles to the northwest of your current position.’
 

“Is it Harvester?” Jack demanded, speaking aloud.
 

‘I am unsure. None of the sentries have yet sounded the alert, and yet several of my remote sensors are detecting significant movement.’
 

“Okay then, guess we should head over there and check that out.” Jack set off in the indicated direction at a fast walk, and Ianto fell into step beside him, pulling his own goggles down over his eyes so that he could see where he was going.
 

“The sentries don’t have night-sight goggles,” he said. “An oversight on our part, so they probably can’t see much, the moonlight’s not bright enough. Harvester might be burrowing his way up out of the ground.”
 

‘I do not think so,’ the TARDIS replied. ‘I am not sensing movement beneath the ground; it is more a gathering of energy at ground level, a… drawing together, a convergence.’
 

Something was niggling at the back of Ianto’s mind, an elusive thought he couldn’t quite get hold of, and he frowned. “What crop is growing in that field? Do you have that information?”
 

‘I believe that particular field is planted with several varieties of winter squash.’
 

Just like that, all the disconnected fragments of information, all the random details from witness statements and reports, the corn grubs’ careful avoidance of pumpkin fields, and pumpkins in general, started to slot into place in Ianto’s meticulously organised brain. “Of course! We’ve been working on the assumption that Harvester is a shapeshifter of some description, but it’s not. It’s an energy being!” He couldn’t for the life of him think why that had never occurred to him before. “It doesn’t make itself LOOK like it’s made of pumpkins and gourds, that’s literally what it is, the crop from the field animated and bundled together into a roughly human shape, using its ‘body’ to extract life energy from everything living that it comes into contact with!”

 
Jack almost tripped over his own feet, momentarily thrown of balance by the revelation. “That… makes a weird sort of sense,” he agreed. “This creature’s been around for more than ten thousand years, and that’s a far longer lifespan than most species, even if it was hibernating between feeding cycles. What if there never was any spaceship crash? The colonists have never mentioned finding any wreckage as they’ve cleared and cultivated the land. What if the fire that fell from the sky was a meteor that just happened to be carrying a passenger, either accidentally or deliberately. Like the one that fell outside Cardiff that time?”
 

“Only this one doesn’t feed on orgasmic energy, or take control of unsuspecting humans.”

 
“Not that we know of,” Jack corrected
 

“Pretty sure the colonists would’ve noticed something like that.”

 
‘I am receiving multiple signals.’ The TARDIS interrupted, sounding remarkably calm under the circumstances. ‘Seventeen of the posted sentries now have Harvester in view. Most are retreating, as they were instructed. Two will remain close to the fence line, keeping Harvester in view, and following if it should become necessary.’
 

“This is the same field you sensed a disturbance in, right?” Jack cut in quickly. “I mean, we ARE heading for the right field?”
 

‘Indeed. I would have informed you otherwise,’ replied the TARDIS, unperturbed.
 

“That’s what I thought. Right, let’s move it!” Jack broke into a run across the uneven ground, Ianto alongside him, matching him stride for stride.
 

‘Will our weapons, the pulse guns, lasers, and plasma rifle, be effective against an energy being?’ Ianto asked silently, saving his breath for running. ‘I don’t like the thought that by firing at it, we might accidentally make Harvester stronger. That would be bad.’
 

‘If your theory is correct, which seems logical, Harvester feeds on a combination of vegetable matter and life energy. There has been no indication in any of the reports that the solar collectors powering the farms and the town were drained during its previous visits, therefore it seems likely that electrical energy is of no use to it. Whether that means it can harm this being is unknown.”

 
‘Then I guess we’ll have to find that out for ourselves,’ Ianto mused.
 

‘It would seem so. As to your weapons, they may or may not prove effective, but it is doubtful they will benefit Harvester in any way. The forms of energy they use may be considered incompatible with its… physiology, for lack of a more fitting term.’
 

‘Okay, that’s good to know.’
 

‘There is, however, one further point of interest. I found mention in one of the reports that Harvester did not approach a bonfire that was burning on one of the farms it targeted on its last visit. An area approximately thirty metres in diameter around the fire was left untouched, but as it was in a field where what remained salvageable of a crop infected with mould spores had been harvested the previous day, it was not considered significant. It was thought that Harvester merely rejected the tainted remnants as unappetising.’
 

‘A logical assumption,’ Ianto admitted.
 

‘I agree.’

 
‘Now I’m wishing I’d thought to add a flamethrower to our arsenal,’ Jack thought, both the TARDIS and Ianto ‘hearing’ him clearly through the telepathic link the three of them shared.

 
Ianto snorted. ‘You don’t have enough hands for the weapons you’re already carrying.’

 
‘Neither do you,’ Jack reminded his husband.
 

‘The difference being I won’t try to use them all at once.’
 

Jack blew a telepathic raspberry.
 

‘Oh, very mature.’
 

They were almost halfway to their destination by now; less than twelve minutes had passed since the TARDIS had picked up the first indication of a disturbance in the fields, but it already felt like far too long, especially since they didn’t know what was happening in the field a mile and a quarter away. There were limits to what the TARDIS could tell them without actually being present, or telepathically connected to someone who was, so that she could see through their eyes.

 
Part of Jack wanted to pick up the pace, run as fast as his and Ianto’s legs could carry them, but he knew that would be a mistake. They were already taking a big risk running straight across the rutted, uneven farmland instead of sticking to the slightly smoother tracks between the fields. If they tried to go faster, they could trip and fall, possibly breaking a leg, or even their necks. Any time they gained would be lost again if they were forced to wait for their injuries to heal.
 

So they kept going at a steady lope, eyes focussed intently on the ground ahead to minimise the chance of stumbling, leaping over some obstacles, and detouring around the ones too big to jump. All the while the time was ticking away. Fifteen minutes, twenty, twenty-five… They changed course slightly to go around a barn that loomed dead ahead, came alongside it, and then Ianto’s breath caught in his throat and his stride faltered. There, some hundred and fifty metres ahead, tearing up and consuming a field of cabbages, was Harvester, a twenty-foot-tall conglomeration of pumpkins and gourds, many of them endowed with jagged Jack O’ Lantern mouths, and eyes that glowed with an eerie blue light. Ianto skidded to a halt, just on the safe side of the border between two farms, vaguely aware of Jack stopping too.
 

“Ugly, isn’t he?” Jack murmured from beside Ianto, both men slightly out of breath. “A face only the Great Pumpkin himself could love.”

 
A snort of disbelief escaped Ianto. “You’re making Charlie Brown references now?” He raised an eyebrow; there were days he was convinced he’d never understand the way his husband’s mind worked.
 

“I figured a lame attempt at humour would be better than screaming and running in the opposite direction.”

 
“You too, huh?” Ianto’s legs were suddenly feeling a little shaky, his palms clammy, his heart pounding in his chest, and it had nothing whatsoever to do with the running.
 

“Oh yeah. Fight or flight response kicking in with a vengeance.”

 
“Ultrasonics of some kind, maybe.” Ianto watched the monster claw up a handful of cabbages with its massive right hand and shove them into a gaping mouth that opened in the huge pumpkin forming its belly.
 

Jack nodded. “Could be. It might explain a few things.”
 

Having seen them approach, the two sentries who had been keeping track of Harvester’s movements from the safety of a meadow belonging to the neighbouring farm, glanced towards the two immortals, dimly visible to them in the pale light of the first moon. Each of them briefly raised a hand before retreating, hopefully to safety. Their job was done, although all other sentries would still be in place elsewhere across the farmland, just in case Harvester wasn’t stopped at this first farm and had to be located again.

 
Harvester had been busy. Through their night-sight goggles, Jack and Ianto could see that even in the short time since the energy creature had formed a body for itself out of the pumpkin crop, it had already stripped two fields of fresh produce and was halfway through a third. The fields weren’t especially large, but even so…
 

“Moves fast for a big guy, doesn’t he?”
 

“Mm,” Ianto agreed, watching as Harvester’s other arm reached down, the one which had a wide-mouthed pumpkin at the end instead of a hand. It chomped its way along a row of cabbages, blue energy flickering around each of the vegetables as they appeared to vanish the instant the pumpkin mouth closed around them.
 

“It’s as it it’s converting everything directly to energy,” he said quietly. “Some form of organic fusion?”
 

“Maybe. If that energy could be harnessed…” Jack trailed off as Ianto shook his head.
 

“Not a good idea. Too much baggage attached.”

 
“You might be right. Let’s just hope killing this thing won’t vaporise the entire planet.”
 

Ianto turned to look at Jack, suddenly uncertain. “Is that likely?”
 

‘I am not registering any form of harmful radiation,’ the TARDIS assured them, having analysed the readings she was receiving through the remote scanners they carried on their belts.

 
“That’s a relief. Fingers crossed then.” Ianto straightened his shoulders. “Should we introduce ourselves, do you think?”

 
“It would be the polite thing to do. Like you’re always telling me, good manners cost nothing.”
 

Ianto smiled at his husband. “Nice to know you listen to me occasionally. There may be hope for you yet.”
 

“That’ll depend on whether or not we survive the night.”
 

“Good point. Let’s make sure we do, shall we?”
 

Jack gave a curt nod. “It’s a deal. Let’s go smash a few pumpkins.”
 
 

TBC in Part 7