Sleeping Dragons 03. 01
SLEEPING DRAGONS
Episode 03 - Smiths & Joneses
by Soledad
Author’s notes: For disclaimer, rating, etc. see the secondary index page.
Re: timelines. Yes, I know there are various approaches of dating the individual episodes. I’m following one of the timelines found on LJ, because this is the one serving the purposes of my story best.
Besides, this is an AU, so please mark the label and just accept that I’ve moved “The Doctor’s Daughter” a bit further back in time. Also, since in this AU Martha has gone to work for the UNIT base in Cardiff right after leaving the Doctor, she was not present at the events of that episode.
CHAPTER 01
Doctor Thomas Milligan had the habit to get up in the grey hours of the morning. It was a habit he’d developed while working in Africa for Doctors Without Borders. As in his little bush hospital there hadn’t been any electricity - not to mention any other conveniences of modern urban civilization - he’d got used to work from sunrise to sunset; as long as there had been sufficient natural light.
This habit of his proved to be very handy when he - not entirely voluntarily - became a dog owner. Molly, the four-year-old Irish Setter, had very firm ideas about the right hours to go for a walk, and she was an early riser, too. She clearly didn’t see why a change of owners - the previous one having been murdered and mostly eaten by a carnivorous alien - should make her change her daily routine, too.
After all, a dog needed some stability in its life.
Tom didn’t really mind. Sure, getting out of bed at daybreak was not always convenient (especially when he’d had company in the previous night), but if he wanted to be honest, he had to admit that he’d come to cherish these peaceful morning hours in Molly’s company. She was a cheerful creature that loved to run and to play; those were rare hours of normalcy before facing the organized chaos that working for Torchwood meant on nine days out of ten.
His trial period of three months was almost over by now, but he was still living in the safe house in Splott. Well, it wasn’t an actual safe house, not officially, although used as such on occasion. Had been used, to be more accurate, before he’d move in. His co-worker, Andy Davidson, had earned it from an eccentric aunt and had offered him to stay there until he’d find something more permanent.
It took Tom less than a week to realize that working for Torchwood could most inconveniently interfere with such mundane things as looking for a flat of his own. Sure, Rhys Williams, their general support and logistic guy, had offered to help him, but Tom preferred to do such personal tasks himself.
Besides, he liked the house. It was small, true, but more than enough for a single man with a dog and a not-quite-girlfriend who sometimes spent the night. And Molly had a nice place in the back yard, with enough room to move around while Tom was at work - which meant ten to twelve hours on a good day.
Unfortunately, good days were a rare thing at Torchwood. He couldn’t imagine how the old team had managed even the average workload with just five people. There were fourteen of them now, including Angela, who only did freelance work for Torchwood, and even so, they could barely catch up with the demands of monitoring the Rift and dealing with whatever came through it.
Lately, he’d begun to entertain the thought of buying the house from Andy. Or renting it, at the very least; he couldn’t expect to live there for free much longer. It felt like a home - the first one he’d had for a decade - and he hated the thought of moving to a new place. Sure, Splott wasn’t the finest neighbourhood, but he’d seen worse. Much worse.
“What do you think, Molly?” he asked the dog when she came running back to him, with fluttering ears and laughing eyes, holding the rubber ball firmly in her jaws. “Should we ask PC Andy?”
Molly’s ears perked up hearing that name. She loved the ex-constable almost as much as she loved Tom. Could she speak, she’d definitely have voted for staying in the house; not the least because it belonged to Andy and smelled of him in every corner.
Tom smiled and scratched her head between the ears. Molly closed her eyes in pleasure, dropped the ball, her tongue lolled out of her mouth, making her look as if she were grinning, her tail wiggled like a signal flag in delight. She was about to roll onto her back to have her belly rubbed - her new owner had the most amazing hands! - when a high-pitched, whining noise shattered the peace of the early morning, making her jump at least a foot into the air.
Tom was startled, too, and looked around for the source of the strange noise. It didn’t take long to spot something like a glowing ball come down from the sky in a high arch, touching ground somewhere beyond the house with an earth-shattering impact.
At the same time his mobile phone - his work phone, reserved for Torchwood calls only - began to ring. It was Sally Jacobs, the Rift technician from the night shift.
“We’ve got a Rift spike in Splott,” she told him. “Something came through; something fairly big, according to the readings. An unidentified flying object of some sort; or a meteorite - or perhaps just a piece of space debris.”
“I know,” Tom replied. “I’ve just seen it. It went down some three hundred yards from my current position. Couldn’t it be something falling off from orbit, though? The space around Earth is full of junk after all: burn-out remnants of rocket fuel tanks, dysfunctional satellites and stuff like that.”
“Jack says it can’t be contemporary,” Sally explained. “We’ve got anomalous temporal readings, so it must have come through the Rift. Can you get to the impact site? The police have been informed, and Jack and Mickey are on their way, but it can’t harm if one of us appears soon enough to keep possible gawkers at bay.”
“Sure,” Tom said, mildly excited by the chance of being the first one at the site,” but I don’t have my kit with me. I was just walking Molly.”
“No problem, there’s always a fully stocked medkit in the SUV, just in case. Thanks, Tom you’re a jewel. Trying to raise Owen at this time of the day would have been a real pain.”
“I try my best,” Tom answered modestly. Then he hung up and looked down at the dog. “Well, Molly, are you ready to investigate your first UFO?”
Molly wiggled with her tail enthusiastically and started off without being told to do so.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Tom didn’t know what he’d expected to find at the impact site but he was quite sure that it hadn’t been this. Not a streamlined little spaceship/atmospheric glider/whatever of the size of a double-decker… or, at least, not very much bigger. It was scorched and dented in several places, due to its rather violent landing on the small clearing two streets beyond Andy’s house… or perhaps due to some previous encounter with not-so-friendly fellow space travellers.
Despite that, Tom still found it amazing. An actual, honest, down-to-Earth spaceship crash-landing in his back yard… well, almost. Nothing he’d seen at Torchwood in nearly three months came close to this, and that was saying a lot.
“Look at this, Molly!” he murmured, his excitement growing. “Is it not amazing? It’s like having a guest part in Star Trek!”
As if answering him, Molly suddenly started barking; not in a hostile manner, though, more like as if she were every bit as excited as he felt. Following the direction in which the dog was looking, he saw a small door open on the side of the ship - with some reluctance, as if someone were trying to open it by sheer force. Finally, the door did swing open, and a girl jumped out, feathering down the impact of her landing expertly with bent knees.
Tom stared at her with his mouth literally hanging open. She couldn’t be much older than seventeen; eighteen at most, and she looked completely human, with that pale, heart-shaped face, long, straight blond hair that was pulled back into a tight ponytail, and wide, green-blue eyes that seemed too old and knowing in that sweet, innocent, child-like face. Just as the futuristic weapon hanging from her belt seemed to deny her apparent youth.
She was wearing nondescript back trousers, a tan-coloured tee shirt and a worn leather jacket with more pockets than Tom had ever seen on a single piece of clothing. Her clothes were casual, clearly meant to be practical and comfortable before everything else, but she still managed to look good in them.
She looked around, assessing her situation with the experienced eyes of a soldier. Spotting Tom, she gave him the once-over - not in the manner a free-spirited girl would check out a handsome bloke, though. She was clearly estimating the strenghts and weaknesses of a potential adversary.
Deciding that Tom represented no immediate threat - although how she’d come to that conclusion remained a mystery - she stepped forward and extended her hand with a wide, charming grin.
“Hi, I’m Jenny Smith. Can you tell me where I’ve landed - and, more importantly, when?”
“Tom Milligan,” they shook hands; her grip was surprisingly firm. “This is Cardiff, Wales; the area of Splott, to be more accurate. Erm… what do you mean with when?”
“Well,” the girl gestured around herself, “based on the architecture here, the anomaly must have transferred me backwards in time by a couple of millennia. The only question is: how far back?”
“This is the year 2008,” Tom told him. “Late summer, actually.”
“Oh, my!” she seemed rather disheartened by that piece of news. “How am I supposed to get back to my own time?”
“Perhaps we’ll be able to help,” Tom said.
“You?” she asked with an adorable frown. “No offence, but how could you possibly help me get home?”
“Well, not me, personally,” Tom allowed, “but perhaps the organization I work for. We have… erm… experience with temporally displaced people.”
Her face suddenly became cold and suspicios. “Are you a Time Agent?” she asked in a clipped military tone.
“Good Lord, no!” Tom laughed, wisely omitting the fact that he was working closely with one. With a former one. Whatever. “I work for Torchwood. We monitor the Rift and take care for people and things that come through.”
“The Rift?” she repeated, clearly not having a clue.
“The anomaly you’ve crossed,” Tom explained. “There’s a Rift in space and time running right under the city of Cardiff, and it’s our job to watch it. Not all visitors are as nice as you.”
“Torchwood,” she said thoughtfully. “I’ve heard about the Torchwood Institute. It will continue to exist well into the future - your future, I mean. For me, it’s the past. You’re some sort of alien hunters, then?”
Tom laughed and patted Molly’s head who was rubbing her flank against his leg. She always did it when she couldn’t decide whether she liked a new person or not.
“Actually, I’m the team madic. A doctor. I patch them up when they’ve been injured, deal with alien diseases, do the autopsies… that sort of thing.”
Her mood brightened at once, hearing that.
“You’re a doctor? My Dad’s a doctor, too,” she seemed to thaw out towards him considerably. “So, do you think your colleagues from Torchwood can help me getting back to my own time?”
“I don’t know,” Tom gestured at the Torchwood SUV that was turning around the corner with screeching tyres at the same moment. “Why don’t you ask them?”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Jack Harkness and Mickey Smith got out of the SUV and strolled towards the crashed spaceship in their usual superhero-wannabe style, made particularly impressive by the heroic billowing of Jack’s greatcoat. Doctor Trevor Howard, Torchwood’s Geek Number Two ( also known as the right-hand man of Toshiko Sato) followed them in a much more subdued manner, alien-enhanced scanner on the ready in his hand. Ex-SOCO scientist Sara Lloyd closed the formation, wearing the usual paper coverall to secure the impact site if necessary. She handed Tom a fully stocked medkit on her way.
“I was running an experiment when the call came,” she explained, “and thought I’d take a look at the site. “What do we have?”
“Crash-landed spaceship with teenaged pilot,” Tom summarized for her.
He saw with a certain degree of trepidation how the girl - Jenny - began to levitate towards Captain Harkness unerringly. However, this time it wasn’t the usual fifty-first-century-pheromones-make-everyone-dizzy effect. It reminded him more of the child soldiers in Africa; how they instinctively turned to their commanding officers for guidance, reassurance and orders. For some reason, Jenny seemed to do the same, and Tom wasn’t sure he liked it.
Had the girl been a child soldier, too, somewhere in the far future, thousands of years from now? Had she been on a suicidal mission with that neat little spaceship of hers, on her way to destroy another ship, or a colony, or perhaps an entire planet, when the Rift caught her? Who could tell what a single soldier of that far-away time would be capable of?
Tom had seen enough child soldiers to know that trusting the innocent looks of such a young girl would be a fatal mistake. Children who had been trained to kill from an obscenely young age were a hundred times crueller and more dangerous than any adult soldier; because everything that might stop an adult from doing something truly gruesome had long been destroyed in them. Which was why rehabilitation was so hard and yielded so little results.
“Be careful, Jack,” he said in a low voice.
Jack gave him a barely perceptive nod, singalling his understanding - the man was loud and often obnoxious but not a fool - then stepped forth to address the girl.
“Welcome to Cardiff and the twenty-first century,” he said with one of his trademark thousand megawatt smiles that, however, rarely reached his eyes; not that most people would realize it. “I’m Captain Jack Harkness from Torchwood. Who are you, soldier?”
So he’d picked up the military vibe from the girl, too. No big surprise here. Those captain’s stripes on Jack’s sleeve weren’t for show only. Jack had indeed served in several wars and worked up his way through the ranks. The girl must have instinctively reacted to his natural authority; she saluted him now and gave a crisp, clipped answer that sounded like something she’d been drilled to learn by heart and give whenever asked.
“Generation five thousand soldier primed and in peak physical healt, sir…” then she trailed off and shook her head in disgust. “Damn, I really need to break the old habit,” she sighed and extended her hand to Jack. “Sorry for that. I’m Jenny Smith.”
“A remarkably average name for someone who’s clearly not from this planet - or from this time,” Jack commented. “Where are you from, Jenny Smith? And, more importantly, when are you from?”
“Messaline,” the girl replied readily enough. “A planet co-colonized by a mixed group of humans and Hath, in the year 6012, according of what my Dad called the New Byzantine Calendar. For me, it was six years ago.”
“Hath?” Jack repeated with a frown. Clearly, he hadn’t heard of such a species before.
The girl made a vague gesture. “Oh, you know… half-human, half fish. They need a… an appareatus full of some blue liquid to be able to breathe outside of the water. Funny creatures, really - if they’re not shooting at you.”
Jack shook his head. “Never heard about them.”
“It doesn’t matter,” the girl shrugged. “They won’t come here anyway. Not for several millennia yet… if ever.”
“Speaking of which,” Jack said, “what are you doing here?”
“And flying a starship of Raxacoricofallapatorian design, at that,” Trevor added, eyeing the crashed vessel with a manic gleam in his eyes not even his glasses could fully conceal. “This little darling seems to be the same design as the one that crashed into the Big Ben, back in 2006 - although perhaps a more advanced model.”
“Really?” Jack, who hadn’t been present by that event, asked with interest.
Trevor nodded. “The similarities aren’t that obvious for the naked eye, but I was part of the engineering team that studied the Slitheen ship at Torchwood London. This is definitely Raxacoricofallapatorian design.”
“And so we’ve reached another interesting question,” Jack said. “How would a human girl from the future come to a contemporary Raxacoricofallapatorian ship?”
“I got it on the planet Udrani, in the Brineka Cluster,” Jenny explained matter-of-factly. “My old shuttle was destroyed when I helped the local Itiyri to fend off a Maseeth invasion. They found they owed me, so they organized for me a ship I could operate on my own.”
“You’re a hired gun then?” Jack asked with a frown. “Some kind of mercenary? That’s what you do for a living?”
The girl laughed, heartily and delightedly like a child.
“Of course not, silly! I’m just a traveller. I love travelling! There are always planets to save, civilizations to rescue, terrible creatures to defeat… and running. Usually, there’s a lot of running involved. That’s the best part of it!”
“Sounds familiar,” Jack commented with a strangely wistful smile. “So, have you been running from the Maseeth - whatever those are - when you ended up here?”
“No,” the girl replied, suddenly deadly serious. “From the Xathian Alliance.”
“Another thing I never heard of,” Mickey commented. “You must have travelled beyond the well-trodden paths, love.”
The girl gave him a flat look.
“Be glad you never ran into them. They’re horrible people,” she answered. “The worst plague that had ever swept across that part of the Universe. In fact, perhaps the worst plague ever.”
Jack, Mickey and Trevor exchanged doubtful looks. All three of them had faced Daleks and Cybermen - even both at the same times on occasion - and so they had a hard time to imagine anything that would be worse than those.
On the other hand, as Jack liked to say, it was a big universe. Not even he, in all his years as a Time Agent - or as the Doctor’s companion - could have seen all that was out there.
“Why was the Alliance after you?” he asked gently.
The girl sighed. “I happened to run into one of their patrol ships and helped an imprisoned Shanelan escape. I mean, sure, they’re arrogant bastards, but not even they deserve to be used as the organic processor units of the Alliance ships, right?”
“I’m getting a headache,” Lloyd commented dryly. “You’ve told us about more alien species in the last five minutes than I’ve studied in the last eight months, and I’ve studied a lot of them.”
“Hey, it’s not my fault that you people are so clueless,” the girl replied defensively.
“All right,” Jack said hurriedly, before the two women could get into a real fight, “this is not the right time or the right place to update our alien database. I suggest we all return to the Hub and hold a detailed debriefing, with the entire team present.”
“What’s the Hub?” Jenny asked suspiciously.
“Our base,” Jack replied, grinning. “We’re a super secret organization, with a super secret underground base.”
Jenny shot the SUV, parked well within eyesight, a doubtful look.
“Since when is Torchwood a secret organization?” she asked. “Everyone in my time knows about the Institute. They’ve been heavily involved in space exploration, terraforming projects and the colonization of new planets in the past. They’re part of human history.”
“Well, you’re even further back in the past now, and in this time, Torchwood still is a secret organization,” Jack returned.
“Driving a vehicle with the name of your organization on it, in letters large enough to be seen from orbit doesn’t seem the tactically wisest choice to me,” Jenny commented, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “You have an interesting concept of secrecy, Captain.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Jack was saved from the necessity to give an equally snarky answer - not that he’d actually have one - by their comms coming alive. It was Ianto; having arrived to the Hub at the usual ungodly hour, he wanted a preliminary progress report.
“Object is a crashed spaceship of Raxacoricofallapatorian design,” Jack summarized for him in a clipped tone. “The only passenger is a temporally displaced human girl; she seems unharmed, but Tom will have to take a look at her later, just to be sure.”
“What about the ship?” Ianto asked. “Can we move it from the crash site?”
“I don’t know,” Jack admitted. “It looks badly banged on the outside; must have taken quite a beating before coming through,” he turned to the girl. “Are your engines still working?”
“I’m not sure,” she replied. “I might be able to get it flying within the atmosphere, but the space drive got hit by a pulsar cannon; I doubt that I could leave the planet with it.”
“You got that, Ianto?” Jack asked.
“Clear as rain,” the Welshman replied. “Just how big is that ship of hers? Would it fit into the hangar where we caught Myfanwy?”
Jack gave the neat little ship a critical look.
“It’s somewhat bigger than a double-decker, but not by much. Yeah, that should work. If we can get the ship into the hangar, Tosh and her fellow geeks can see if they could help fixing the space drive.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Ianto agreed. “Keep me informed and give us a call if you need any help.”
“Will do,” Jack promised; then he looked at Jenny. “Well, Jenny Smith, what about getting your ship out of sight and somewhere where it could be repaired?”
“Sounds good,” she replied brightly. “Shall I engage the perception filter or are people of this time used to seeing spaceships travelling in the atmosphere?”
“You’ve got a perception filter?” Jack asked in surprise.
The girl gave him a droll look.
“Well of course I do! I don’t want the bad guys shooting at me all the time,” she explained patiently, as if she were talking to a bunch of very young - and not very bright - children.
“Then, by all means, engage it!” Jack said. “And let us take this baby to the hangar where nobody can stumble over it by accident.”
“I’ll need the coordinates,” she said.
Jack grinned like a maniac. “No, baby; what you need is a co-pilot.”
She gave him a doubtful look. “You can pilot a spaceship of Raxacoricofallapatorian design?”
“I can pilot any spaceship, no matter what design, if it has been constructed before the fifty-first century,” Jack told him, way too content with himself.
She stared at him with wide-eyed awe. “You’re from the future, too? And you’re trapped here?”
“No,” Jack said, “not really trapped. I came voluntarily; and stayed here out of my own free will.”
“Why?” she clearly couldn’t understand why somebody would restrict himself to one planet when the whole Universe stood open for them.
“Because I’ve got important work here to do,” Jack replied. “The twenty-first century is when everything changes; something really big is going to happen, and we have to be ready.”
“We?” she echoed uncertainly.
“The people of Earth,” Jack explained. “Humans. Most of them are still living in happy ignorance, pretending that there’s nothing out there. But you and me, Jenny Smith, we know that’s not true. Torchwood knows a lot about what’s out there, and we’re learning more every day. We must. Because we’re the only ones to prepare the people for what’s coming.”
“But what is it?” she asked. “What’s the terrible thing that’s coming?”
“We don’t know; not yet,” Jack replied. “All I know that my predecessor looked into the future, and what he saw made him kill his entire team and himself at the end. That’s why we must prepare for all possibilities.”
“Can you do it?” the girl’s voice was small, barely audible. “Can you make people ready?”
“I’m not sure,” Jack answered after a lengthy pause. “But I’ve got to try.”
“Perhaps I can help,” she offered. “Perhaps the anomaly - the Rift, as you call it - has brought me here for a purpose. Perhaps I know things you don’t; things that will be important one day.”
“Perhaps,” Jack allowed. “Now, let’s get your ship safely tucked away first. Then we’ll take you to our base, and we can talk.”
He turned to the others. “Mickey, you with us. You’re good with alien tech; you can help us assess the damage.”
Mickey nodded, clearly happy to get a chance to take a closer look at the alien ship. Trevor, on the other hand, looked positively insulted. He was the one with previous experience with Raxacoricofallapatorian design; the one who’d recognized it in the first place. But Captain Harkness was playing favourites again.
Tom made a mental note to have words with he captain about it - or with Director Jones, if he had to. Just because Trevor used to work for Torchwood One, an organization Captain Harkness still nurtured an irrational hatred for, he had no right to question Trevor’s skills and knowledge. The man was an engineer with a degree in cybernetics, for God’s sake!
“We’ll take the SUV back to the Hub, then,” Lloyd, also not unaware of the slighting Trevor had just suffered, said. “You coming, Tom?”
Tom shook his head. “I have to take Molly home first and prepare his food dispenser for the day. This promises to be one long shift again; I can’t let my poor dog starve. You go; I’ll get in at the usual time.”
Chapter 02
Episode 03 - Smiths & Joneses
by Soledad
Author’s notes: For disclaimer, rating, etc. see the secondary index page.
Re: timelines. Yes, I know there are various approaches of dating the individual episodes. I’m following one of the timelines found on LJ, because this is the one serving the purposes of my story best.
Besides, this is an AU, so please mark the label and just accept that I’ve moved “The Doctor’s Daughter” a bit further back in time. Also, since in this AU Martha has gone to work for the UNIT base in Cardiff right after leaving the Doctor, she was not present at the events of that episode.
CHAPTER 01
Doctor Thomas Milligan had the habit to get up in the grey hours of the morning. It was a habit he’d developed while working in Africa for Doctors Without Borders. As in his little bush hospital there hadn’t been any electricity - not to mention any other conveniences of modern urban civilization - he’d got used to work from sunrise to sunset; as long as there had been sufficient natural light.
This habit of his proved to be very handy when he - not entirely voluntarily - became a dog owner. Molly, the four-year-old Irish Setter, had very firm ideas about the right hours to go for a walk, and she was an early riser, too. She clearly didn’t see why a change of owners - the previous one having been murdered and mostly eaten by a carnivorous alien - should make her change her daily routine, too.
After all, a dog needed some stability in its life.
Tom didn’t really mind. Sure, getting out of bed at daybreak was not always convenient (especially when he’d had company in the previous night), but if he wanted to be honest, he had to admit that he’d come to cherish these peaceful morning hours in Molly’s company. She was a cheerful creature that loved to run and to play; those were rare hours of normalcy before facing the organized chaos that working for Torchwood meant on nine days out of ten.
His trial period of three months was almost over by now, but he was still living in the safe house in Splott. Well, it wasn’t an actual safe house, not officially, although used as such on occasion. Had been used, to be more accurate, before he’d move in. His co-worker, Andy Davidson, had earned it from an eccentric aunt and had offered him to stay there until he’d find something more permanent.
It took Tom less than a week to realize that working for Torchwood could most inconveniently interfere with such mundane things as looking for a flat of his own. Sure, Rhys Williams, their general support and logistic guy, had offered to help him, but Tom preferred to do such personal tasks himself.
Besides, he liked the house. It was small, true, but more than enough for a single man with a dog and a not-quite-girlfriend who sometimes spent the night. And Molly had a nice place in the back yard, with enough room to move around while Tom was at work - which meant ten to twelve hours on a good day.
Unfortunately, good days were a rare thing at Torchwood. He couldn’t imagine how the old team had managed even the average workload with just five people. There were fourteen of them now, including Angela, who only did freelance work for Torchwood, and even so, they could barely catch up with the demands of monitoring the Rift and dealing with whatever came through it.
Lately, he’d begun to entertain the thought of buying the house from Andy. Or renting it, at the very least; he couldn’t expect to live there for free much longer. It felt like a home - the first one he’d had for a decade - and he hated the thought of moving to a new place. Sure, Splott wasn’t the finest neighbourhood, but he’d seen worse. Much worse.
“What do you think, Molly?” he asked the dog when she came running back to him, with fluttering ears and laughing eyes, holding the rubber ball firmly in her jaws. “Should we ask PC Andy?”
Molly’s ears perked up hearing that name. She loved the ex-constable almost as much as she loved Tom. Could she speak, she’d definitely have voted for staying in the house; not the least because it belonged to Andy and smelled of him in every corner.
Tom smiled and scratched her head between the ears. Molly closed her eyes in pleasure, dropped the ball, her tongue lolled out of her mouth, making her look as if she were grinning, her tail wiggled like a signal flag in delight. She was about to roll onto her back to have her belly rubbed - her new owner had the most amazing hands! - when a high-pitched, whining noise shattered the peace of the early morning, making her jump at least a foot into the air.
Tom was startled, too, and looked around for the source of the strange noise. It didn’t take long to spot something like a glowing ball come down from the sky in a high arch, touching ground somewhere beyond the house with an earth-shattering impact.
At the same time his mobile phone - his work phone, reserved for Torchwood calls only - began to ring. It was Sally Jacobs, the Rift technician from the night shift.
“We’ve got a Rift spike in Splott,” she told him. “Something came through; something fairly big, according to the readings. An unidentified flying object of some sort; or a meteorite - or perhaps just a piece of space debris.”
“I know,” Tom replied. “I’ve just seen it. It went down some three hundred yards from my current position. Couldn’t it be something falling off from orbit, though? The space around Earth is full of junk after all: burn-out remnants of rocket fuel tanks, dysfunctional satellites and stuff like that.”
“Jack says it can’t be contemporary,” Sally explained. “We’ve got anomalous temporal readings, so it must have come through the Rift. Can you get to the impact site? The police have been informed, and Jack and Mickey are on their way, but it can’t harm if one of us appears soon enough to keep possible gawkers at bay.”
“Sure,” Tom said, mildly excited by the chance of being the first one at the site,” but I don’t have my kit with me. I was just walking Molly.”
“No problem, there’s always a fully stocked medkit in the SUV, just in case. Thanks, Tom you’re a jewel. Trying to raise Owen at this time of the day would have been a real pain.”
“I try my best,” Tom answered modestly. Then he hung up and looked down at the dog. “Well, Molly, are you ready to investigate your first UFO?”
Molly wiggled with her tail enthusiastically and started off without being told to do so.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Tom didn’t know what he’d expected to find at the impact site but he was quite sure that it hadn’t been this. Not a streamlined little spaceship/atmospheric glider/whatever of the size of a double-decker… or, at least, not very much bigger. It was scorched and dented in several places, due to its rather violent landing on the small clearing two streets beyond Andy’s house… or perhaps due to some previous encounter with not-so-friendly fellow space travellers.
Despite that, Tom still found it amazing. An actual, honest, down-to-Earth spaceship crash-landing in his back yard… well, almost. Nothing he’d seen at Torchwood in nearly three months came close to this, and that was saying a lot.
“Look at this, Molly!” he murmured, his excitement growing. “Is it not amazing? It’s like having a guest part in Star Trek!”
As if answering him, Molly suddenly started barking; not in a hostile manner, though, more like as if she were every bit as excited as he felt. Following the direction in which the dog was looking, he saw a small door open on the side of the ship - with some reluctance, as if someone were trying to open it by sheer force. Finally, the door did swing open, and a girl jumped out, feathering down the impact of her landing expertly with bent knees.
Tom stared at her with his mouth literally hanging open. She couldn’t be much older than seventeen; eighteen at most, and she looked completely human, with that pale, heart-shaped face, long, straight blond hair that was pulled back into a tight ponytail, and wide, green-blue eyes that seemed too old and knowing in that sweet, innocent, child-like face. Just as the futuristic weapon hanging from her belt seemed to deny her apparent youth.
She was wearing nondescript back trousers, a tan-coloured tee shirt and a worn leather jacket with more pockets than Tom had ever seen on a single piece of clothing. Her clothes were casual, clearly meant to be practical and comfortable before everything else, but she still managed to look good in them.
She looked around, assessing her situation with the experienced eyes of a soldier. Spotting Tom, she gave him the once-over - not in the manner a free-spirited girl would check out a handsome bloke, though. She was clearly estimating the strenghts and weaknesses of a potential adversary.
Deciding that Tom represented no immediate threat - although how she’d come to that conclusion remained a mystery - she stepped forward and extended her hand with a wide, charming grin.
“Hi, I’m Jenny Smith. Can you tell me where I’ve landed - and, more importantly, when?”
“Tom Milligan,” they shook hands; her grip was surprisingly firm. “This is Cardiff, Wales; the area of Splott, to be more accurate. Erm… what do you mean with when?”
“Well,” the girl gestured around herself, “based on the architecture here, the anomaly must have transferred me backwards in time by a couple of millennia. The only question is: how far back?”
“This is the year 2008,” Tom told him. “Late summer, actually.”
“Oh, my!” she seemed rather disheartened by that piece of news. “How am I supposed to get back to my own time?”
“Perhaps we’ll be able to help,” Tom said.
“You?” she asked with an adorable frown. “No offence, but how could you possibly help me get home?”
“Well, not me, personally,” Tom allowed, “but perhaps the organization I work for. We have… erm… experience with temporally displaced people.”
Her face suddenly became cold and suspicios. “Are you a Time Agent?” she asked in a clipped military tone.
“Good Lord, no!” Tom laughed, wisely omitting the fact that he was working closely with one. With a former one. Whatever. “I work for Torchwood. We monitor the Rift and take care for people and things that come through.”
“The Rift?” she repeated, clearly not having a clue.
“The anomaly you’ve crossed,” Tom explained. “There’s a Rift in space and time running right under the city of Cardiff, and it’s our job to watch it. Not all visitors are as nice as you.”
“Torchwood,” she said thoughtfully. “I’ve heard about the Torchwood Institute. It will continue to exist well into the future - your future, I mean. For me, it’s the past. You’re some sort of alien hunters, then?”
Tom laughed and patted Molly’s head who was rubbing her flank against his leg. She always did it when she couldn’t decide whether she liked a new person or not.
“Actually, I’m the team madic. A doctor. I patch them up when they’ve been injured, deal with alien diseases, do the autopsies… that sort of thing.”
Her mood brightened at once, hearing that.
“You’re a doctor? My Dad’s a doctor, too,” she seemed to thaw out towards him considerably. “So, do you think your colleagues from Torchwood can help me getting back to my own time?”
“I don’t know,” Tom gestured at the Torchwood SUV that was turning around the corner with screeching tyres at the same moment. “Why don’t you ask them?”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Jack Harkness and Mickey Smith got out of the SUV and strolled towards the crashed spaceship in their usual superhero-wannabe style, made particularly impressive by the heroic billowing of Jack’s greatcoat. Doctor Trevor Howard, Torchwood’s Geek Number Two ( also known as the right-hand man of Toshiko Sato) followed them in a much more subdued manner, alien-enhanced scanner on the ready in his hand. Ex-SOCO scientist Sara Lloyd closed the formation, wearing the usual paper coverall to secure the impact site if necessary. She handed Tom a fully stocked medkit on her way.
“I was running an experiment when the call came,” she explained, “and thought I’d take a look at the site. “What do we have?”
“Crash-landed spaceship with teenaged pilot,” Tom summarized for her.
He saw with a certain degree of trepidation how the girl - Jenny - began to levitate towards Captain Harkness unerringly. However, this time it wasn’t the usual fifty-first-century-pheromones-make-everyone-dizzy effect. It reminded him more of the child soldiers in Africa; how they instinctively turned to their commanding officers for guidance, reassurance and orders. For some reason, Jenny seemed to do the same, and Tom wasn’t sure he liked it.
Had the girl been a child soldier, too, somewhere in the far future, thousands of years from now? Had she been on a suicidal mission with that neat little spaceship of hers, on her way to destroy another ship, or a colony, or perhaps an entire planet, when the Rift caught her? Who could tell what a single soldier of that far-away time would be capable of?
Tom had seen enough child soldiers to know that trusting the innocent looks of such a young girl would be a fatal mistake. Children who had been trained to kill from an obscenely young age were a hundred times crueller and more dangerous than any adult soldier; because everything that might stop an adult from doing something truly gruesome had long been destroyed in them. Which was why rehabilitation was so hard and yielded so little results.
“Be careful, Jack,” he said in a low voice.
Jack gave him a barely perceptive nod, singalling his understanding - the man was loud and often obnoxious but not a fool - then stepped forth to address the girl.
“Welcome to Cardiff and the twenty-first century,” he said with one of his trademark thousand megawatt smiles that, however, rarely reached his eyes; not that most people would realize it. “I’m Captain Jack Harkness from Torchwood. Who are you, soldier?”
So he’d picked up the military vibe from the girl, too. No big surprise here. Those captain’s stripes on Jack’s sleeve weren’t for show only. Jack had indeed served in several wars and worked up his way through the ranks. The girl must have instinctively reacted to his natural authority; she saluted him now and gave a crisp, clipped answer that sounded like something she’d been drilled to learn by heart and give whenever asked.
“Generation five thousand soldier primed and in peak physical healt, sir…” then she trailed off and shook her head in disgust. “Damn, I really need to break the old habit,” she sighed and extended her hand to Jack. “Sorry for that. I’m Jenny Smith.”
“A remarkably average name for someone who’s clearly not from this planet - or from this time,” Jack commented. “Where are you from, Jenny Smith? And, more importantly, when are you from?”
“Messaline,” the girl replied readily enough. “A planet co-colonized by a mixed group of humans and Hath, in the year 6012, according of what my Dad called the New Byzantine Calendar. For me, it was six years ago.”
“Hath?” Jack repeated with a frown. Clearly, he hadn’t heard of such a species before.
The girl made a vague gesture. “Oh, you know… half-human, half fish. They need a… an appareatus full of some blue liquid to be able to breathe outside of the water. Funny creatures, really - if they’re not shooting at you.”
Jack shook his head. “Never heard about them.”
“It doesn’t matter,” the girl shrugged. “They won’t come here anyway. Not for several millennia yet… if ever.”
“Speaking of which,” Jack said, “what are you doing here?”
“And flying a starship of Raxacoricofallapatorian design, at that,” Trevor added, eyeing the crashed vessel with a manic gleam in his eyes not even his glasses could fully conceal. “This little darling seems to be the same design as the one that crashed into the Big Ben, back in 2006 - although perhaps a more advanced model.”
“Really?” Jack, who hadn’t been present by that event, asked with interest.
Trevor nodded. “The similarities aren’t that obvious for the naked eye, but I was part of the engineering team that studied the Slitheen ship at Torchwood London. This is definitely Raxacoricofallapatorian design.”
“And so we’ve reached another interesting question,” Jack said. “How would a human girl from the future come to a contemporary Raxacoricofallapatorian ship?”
“I got it on the planet Udrani, in the Brineka Cluster,” Jenny explained matter-of-factly. “My old shuttle was destroyed when I helped the local Itiyri to fend off a Maseeth invasion. They found they owed me, so they organized for me a ship I could operate on my own.”
“You’re a hired gun then?” Jack asked with a frown. “Some kind of mercenary? That’s what you do for a living?”
The girl laughed, heartily and delightedly like a child.
“Of course not, silly! I’m just a traveller. I love travelling! There are always planets to save, civilizations to rescue, terrible creatures to defeat… and running. Usually, there’s a lot of running involved. That’s the best part of it!”
“Sounds familiar,” Jack commented with a strangely wistful smile. “So, have you been running from the Maseeth - whatever those are - when you ended up here?”
“No,” the girl replied, suddenly deadly serious. “From the Xathian Alliance.”
“Another thing I never heard of,” Mickey commented. “You must have travelled beyond the well-trodden paths, love.”
The girl gave him a flat look.
“Be glad you never ran into them. They’re horrible people,” she answered. “The worst plague that had ever swept across that part of the Universe. In fact, perhaps the worst plague ever.”
Jack, Mickey and Trevor exchanged doubtful looks. All three of them had faced Daleks and Cybermen - even both at the same times on occasion - and so they had a hard time to imagine anything that would be worse than those.
On the other hand, as Jack liked to say, it was a big universe. Not even he, in all his years as a Time Agent - or as the Doctor’s companion - could have seen all that was out there.
“Why was the Alliance after you?” he asked gently.
The girl sighed. “I happened to run into one of their patrol ships and helped an imprisoned Shanelan escape. I mean, sure, they’re arrogant bastards, but not even they deserve to be used as the organic processor units of the Alliance ships, right?”
“I’m getting a headache,” Lloyd commented dryly. “You’ve told us about more alien species in the last five minutes than I’ve studied in the last eight months, and I’ve studied a lot of them.”
“Hey, it’s not my fault that you people are so clueless,” the girl replied defensively.
“All right,” Jack said hurriedly, before the two women could get into a real fight, “this is not the right time or the right place to update our alien database. I suggest we all return to the Hub and hold a detailed debriefing, with the entire team present.”
“What’s the Hub?” Jenny asked suspiciously.
“Our base,” Jack replied, grinning. “We’re a super secret organization, with a super secret underground base.”
Jenny shot the SUV, parked well within eyesight, a doubtful look.
“Since when is Torchwood a secret organization?” she asked. “Everyone in my time knows about the Institute. They’ve been heavily involved in space exploration, terraforming projects and the colonization of new planets in the past. They’re part of human history.”
“Well, you’re even further back in the past now, and in this time, Torchwood still is a secret organization,” Jack returned.
“Driving a vehicle with the name of your organization on it, in letters large enough to be seen from orbit doesn’t seem the tactically wisest choice to me,” Jenny commented, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “You have an interesting concept of secrecy, Captain.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Jack was saved from the necessity to give an equally snarky answer - not that he’d actually have one - by their comms coming alive. It was Ianto; having arrived to the Hub at the usual ungodly hour, he wanted a preliminary progress report.
“Object is a crashed spaceship of Raxacoricofallapatorian design,” Jack summarized for him in a clipped tone. “The only passenger is a temporally displaced human girl; she seems unharmed, but Tom will have to take a look at her later, just to be sure.”
“What about the ship?” Ianto asked. “Can we move it from the crash site?”
“I don’t know,” Jack admitted. “It looks badly banged on the outside; must have taken quite a beating before coming through,” he turned to the girl. “Are your engines still working?”
“I’m not sure,” she replied. “I might be able to get it flying within the atmosphere, but the space drive got hit by a pulsar cannon; I doubt that I could leave the planet with it.”
“You got that, Ianto?” Jack asked.
“Clear as rain,” the Welshman replied. “Just how big is that ship of hers? Would it fit into the hangar where we caught Myfanwy?”
Jack gave the neat little ship a critical look.
“It’s somewhat bigger than a double-decker, but not by much. Yeah, that should work. If we can get the ship into the hangar, Tosh and her fellow geeks can see if they could help fixing the space drive.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Ianto agreed. “Keep me informed and give us a call if you need any help.”
“Will do,” Jack promised; then he looked at Jenny. “Well, Jenny Smith, what about getting your ship out of sight and somewhere where it could be repaired?”
“Sounds good,” she replied brightly. “Shall I engage the perception filter or are people of this time used to seeing spaceships travelling in the atmosphere?”
“You’ve got a perception filter?” Jack asked in surprise.
The girl gave him a droll look.
“Well of course I do! I don’t want the bad guys shooting at me all the time,” she explained patiently, as if she were talking to a bunch of very young - and not very bright - children.
“Then, by all means, engage it!” Jack said. “And let us take this baby to the hangar where nobody can stumble over it by accident.”
“I’ll need the coordinates,” she said.
Jack grinned like a maniac. “No, baby; what you need is a co-pilot.”
She gave him a doubtful look. “You can pilot a spaceship of Raxacoricofallapatorian design?”
“I can pilot any spaceship, no matter what design, if it has been constructed before the fifty-first century,” Jack told him, way too content with himself.
She stared at him with wide-eyed awe. “You’re from the future, too? And you’re trapped here?”
“No,” Jack said, “not really trapped. I came voluntarily; and stayed here out of my own free will.”
“Why?” she clearly couldn’t understand why somebody would restrict himself to one planet when the whole Universe stood open for them.
“Because I’ve got important work here to do,” Jack replied. “The twenty-first century is when everything changes; something really big is going to happen, and we have to be ready.”
“We?” she echoed uncertainly.
“The people of Earth,” Jack explained. “Humans. Most of them are still living in happy ignorance, pretending that there’s nothing out there. But you and me, Jenny Smith, we know that’s not true. Torchwood knows a lot about what’s out there, and we’re learning more every day. We must. Because we’re the only ones to prepare the people for what’s coming.”
“But what is it?” she asked. “What’s the terrible thing that’s coming?”
“We don’t know; not yet,” Jack replied. “All I know that my predecessor looked into the future, and what he saw made him kill his entire team and himself at the end. That’s why we must prepare for all possibilities.”
“Can you do it?” the girl’s voice was small, barely audible. “Can you make people ready?”
“I’m not sure,” Jack answered after a lengthy pause. “But I’ve got to try.”
“Perhaps I can help,” she offered. “Perhaps the anomaly - the Rift, as you call it - has brought me here for a purpose. Perhaps I know things you don’t; things that will be important one day.”
“Perhaps,” Jack allowed. “Now, let’s get your ship safely tucked away first. Then we’ll take you to our base, and we can talk.”
He turned to the others. “Mickey, you with us. You’re good with alien tech; you can help us assess the damage.”
Mickey nodded, clearly happy to get a chance to take a closer look at the alien ship. Trevor, on the other hand, looked positively insulted. He was the one with previous experience with Raxacoricofallapatorian design; the one who’d recognized it in the first place. But Captain Harkness was playing favourites again.
Tom made a mental note to have words with he captain about it - or with Director Jones, if he had to. Just because Trevor used to work for Torchwood One, an organization Captain Harkness still nurtured an irrational hatred for, he had no right to question Trevor’s skills and knowledge. The man was an engineer with a degree in cybernetics, for God’s sake!
“We’ll take the SUV back to the Hub, then,” Lloyd, also not unaware of the slighting Trevor had just suffered, said. “You coming, Tom?”
Tom shook his head. “I have to take Molly home first and prepare his food dispenser for the day. This promises to be one long shift again; I can’t let my poor dog starve. You go; I’ll get in at the usual time.”
Chapter 02