A Stitch in Time - Ch 02 - Strange Encounter of the Eerie Kind
A STITCH IN TIME
BY SOLEDAD
Fandom: Star Trek - Enterprise/Whoniverse x-over
Genre: Action-adventure, Alternate Universe, Romance
Rating: T, for now
Series: This is a sequel to A Matter of Time and would only make real sense if you’ve read that part first.
Disclaimer: Star Trek belongs to Gene Roddenberry, first and foremost, and secondly whoever happens to have the rights at the moment. It’s hard to follow. I don’t own anything just a few secondary characters and the alternate plot idea.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
CHAPTER 02 - STRANGE ENCOUNTERS OF THE EERIE KIND
Author’s note: No, I don’t believe that T’Pol would give such imprecise measurements as in the actual episode. She’s a Vulcan, for Surak’s sake! So I’ve corrected that oversight.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Ianto’s warning (about being careful what one wishes for) comes true sooner than anyone - even Ianto himself - would have expected. Only two days after the ineffective weapons’ test, T’Pol, who’s having the Bridge at the beginning of what would later be called Beta Shift, calls the captain and the senior officers to the Situation Room.
Apparently, the sensors have detected a ship of previously unknown configuration dead ahead. Ianto is not invited to the briefing, but since he has a live feed between the Situation Room and his office (courtesy of Sandra), he can follow the events as well as if he were physically present.
“How big is it?” Tucker asks, eyeing the long vessel on the viewscreen with understandable excitement. This is a First Contact situation if there’s ever been one, after all.
“Approximately ninety two point six five metres in length,” T’Pol replies, ignoring the sniggering of the humans around her. If they chose not to care for precise measurements, it’s their problem. She’d still give them everything to the last digit.
“Doesn't seem to be moving very fast,” Archer comments. Which is an understatement, as - according to the readings on the bottom of the screen…
“It is not moving at all,” T’Pol vocalizes Ianto’s thoughts.
Archer’s eyebrows climb till his hairline in surprise. “That's odd. Where's the nearest star system?”
T’Pol checks her readings. “Two point nine six light years away.”
“They could be running some kind of a deep space experiment,” Tucker suggests, full of excitement. “Maybe we should go have a look.”
“If you insist on allowing your curiosity to dictate your actions,” T’Pol’s voice is dry like desert sand. She could also be talking to desert sand, as much effect as her disapproval has on the humans.
“We insist,” Archer declares with Jack’s wide, white smile, and the other senior officers are nodding in unison.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
They relocate to the Bridge and Enterprise heads off towards the unknown ship. Ianto, of course, has a live feed from the Bridge as well; and this time Sandra, who’s off-duty at the moment, accompanies him.
Officially for a cup of coffee. The rest is nobody’s business.
“Range: five thousand kilometres,” Mayweather reports.
The screen is at maximum magnification, and now they are close enough to notice some details on the long ship. It is silver-grey, shaped similarly to a Terran pike, with a long, snout-like bug, a slightly fanning-out heck and a long row of what looks like cargo containers (although they could also be deck plates) along each side.
“It is something, isn’t it?” Sandra murmurs. “A real, honest-to-Earth alien ship. Not even at Torchwood have we seen anything like that.”
“Actually, One did have that little alien sunglider,” Ianto corrects, “but it got destroyed in the Battle of Canary Wharf, like everything else.”
“Yeah, Jack was really pissed about that,” Sandra agrees, grinning. “He’d have loved to lay hand on it.”
“He used to be a pilot; of course he wanted it,” Ianto smiles. “This looks more like a cargo vessel, though. I wonder what race built it.”
“The vessel's hull is comprised of tritanium and disilicon polymers,” T’Pol is reporting to Archer on the Bridge.
“I'm not getting anything on their propulsion system,” Tucker adds with a frown, “but it may be offline.”
“What about weapons?” the captain asks.
“If they have any, they're not charged,” Reed answers with a shrug.
Archer looks at Hoshi. “Any comm activity?”
She shakes her head. “No, sir.”
“Let’s see if they’ll react to a direct call,” Archer suggests. “Run this through the translation matrix. This is Captain Jonathan Archer of the Starship Enterprise. We're on a mission of peaceful exploration. Oh, we come from the planet Earth. We're sending you a pulsar grid that should help you locate our star system.”
“Idiot!” Ianto hisses angrily and his fingers fly over the surface of his (highly illegal) scattering device to delete the last part of the message. He manages just in time before it gets sent, but it’s a close cut.
Sandra gives him a look full of understanding. “You hoped people would have learned not to broadcast Earth’s location to all and sundry, didn’t you?”
Ianto sighs. “I know that people have forgotten a lot, due to the changes in the timeline,” he says. “But I thought at least Jack’s great-grandson, or whatever degree of relationship they truly have, would know better.”
“He doesn’t have Jack’s vast experience,” Sandra reminds him. “You cannot expect him to react the same way Jack would.”
“I could expect some common sense, though,” Ianto mutters angrily, because Archer insists that Hoshi should repeat the message.
“Did you rotate the frequencies?” the captain asks, and this time Ianto is prepared to intervene in time.
“I'll try it again,” Hoshi sounds apologetic, as if it would be her fault that the aliens don’t react. “No response, sir.”
“Captain,” Tucker interrupts them, “mind if I push in on the venting ports around that hatch?”
Archer clearly doesn’t. “Go ahead.”
Tucker zooms the viewscreen image. They are looking at the upper part of the vessel now, with some bizarrely shaped… holes on it.
“Are those venting ports or hull breaches?” Mayweather asks suddenly, because some of the holes seem to have fairly irregular rims.
“Bring us in a little closer, Travis,” the captain orders. “Let's get a look at the other side.”
Mayweather carries out his order. The other side of the ship is similarly marked.
“Those look like scorch marks,” Archer says grimly.
“The residue indicates oxidation and thermal shock effects,” T’Pol supplies, looking up from her hooded scanner. “It could be the result of a high yield particle impact.”
“You mean weapons,” the captain clarifies, but T’Pol is not ready to make any binding statement without sufficient data.
“Possibly,” is all she allows.
“Are we close enough to scan for biosigns?” Archer asks.
“Yes, but scanning their ship's interior might be seen as a violation of privacy,” T’Pol warns him. Unlike for humans, this is clearly a big issue for Vulcans… and possibly for other alien races as well.
Archer considers this for a moment, then he looks at Hoshi. “Anything?“
Hoshi shakes her head.
“Do you think there’s anyone on board?” Tucker asks.
“If there is, you can bet they know we're out here,” Mayweather says with the certainty of someone who grew up on a spaceship. “I wonder why they aren’t responding, though."
“Not everyone chooses to answer the door when they hear a knock,” T’Pol says; her tome makes it clear that Vulcans certainly wouldn’t do so. “It would be best to resume our previous course.”
“Yeah, cause that’s gonna happen with somebody - anybody - with Harkness genes in command!” Ianto comments, and Sandra nods in agreement.
And Archer’s next order proves them right.
“See if you can find another hatch,” the captain tells his chief engineer, and Tucker carries out the order in record time. “Diameter?“
“Point nine metres,” Tucker replies. It doesn’t sound much; clearly, the aliens, whoever they are, aren’t very broadly built.
Archer turns to the science station, where T’Pol is still sitting. “Scan for biosigns.”
The Vulcan bends over her hooded scanner and performs the task with practiced ease. “There are a number of life-forms aboard,” she then reports.
It is unusual for her not to give the exact number of said life-forms, but Archer is instantly energizes by the thought of a possible first contact.
“Humanoid?” he asks eagerly.
“Their cellular activity is below the threshold of your sensors,” T’Pol replies coolly.
“That is Vulcan for ‘I don’t have a clue but wouldn’t admit it for the world’,” Sandra comments cynically. She and Ianto share a grin.
“Do you know anything about this?” she then asks, waving into the general direction of the viewscreen.
Ianto shakes his head. “My knowledge about this mission isn’t that detailed. In fact, I doubt that even the Temporal Agency knows much about it, save for the general outline of things. Too much micro-management can have a detrimental effect on the outcome, or so they’ve told me.”
“So they left you in the dark?” Sandra frowns.
“To be honest, I don’t mind,” Ianto says with a shrug. “I prefer figuring out things for myself to being a puppet.”
If anyone, Sandra can understand that. Suzie was the same. She doesn’t get a chance to answer, though, because in the next moment she’s summoned to the Launch Bay to suit up for a visit on the alien ship.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
As expected, Archer has ignored his science officer’s objections and decided to lead the Away Team to the alien vessel. What hasn’t been expected are the people he’s chosen for the team: Hoshi, Reed and Sandra. Ianto begins to suspect that the captain might instinctively trust those with a connection to Torchwood than anyone else. Of course, it might be a coincidence; but if it’s not, it’s interesting - to say the least.
Tucker, who doesn’t know about some of those connections at all (and does not think the ones he knows about would be important) can’t truly understand his best friend’s choices. He hoped to be part of the Away Team; to see the previously unknown alien ship close up. After all, he, too, signed onto this mission of exploration so he could do a little exploring, he argues, and he can’t understand why Ensign Massaro should get this chance instead of him.
Archer is understanding - sympathetic even, since he can’t wait to find out what’s going on aboard that ship himself - but stands to his original decision. Which, in Ianto’s opinion, is a big improvement, compared with Jack, who gave in to Gwen’s demands every time.
Unlike Tucker, Hoshi isn’t that eager to suit up and go over to the alien ship.
“I’d rather stay here and keep an open comm. link,” she admits to Ianto, who’s come down to the Launch Bay to see them off. “That way I'll have immediate access to the linguistic database and could be a lot more helpful, without the lag time being tripled.”
“Have you told the captain?” Ianto asks.
Hoshi nods glumly. “He said he’d rather wait a few seconds if it means having me on site, in case the UT won't work.”
“He does have a point,” Ianto says. “And field work can be exciting. Commander Tucker certainly would give an arm to be going over there. What's wrong?” he asks, seeing her unhappy face.
“The environmental suits,” Hoshi admits. “They make me a little claustrophobic.”
“Claustrophobic?” Ianto echoes in surprise. “How did they accept you for training at all?”
“I wasn’t always claustrophobic,” Hoshi mutters. “Not before prison. Eighteen months in a six foot by six foot windowless cell can do that to a person.”
“I am sorry,” Ianto says honestly because he remembers all too well how Tosh had to struggle with the memories of her imprisonment time and again; and he’s still having his own flashbacks to Canary Wharf from time to time. “Do you think you can do this?”
Hoshi shrugs uncertainly. “Perhaps. If I just bite my lip and get through it. I hope I won’t freak out in the worst moment.”
“Well, if you do, at least the captain will learn to think twice before putting you into an EV suit again,” Ianto says overly seriously and is rewarded with a nervous little smile.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
With that, Hoshi accepts that the only way out is the only way through and suits up with Archer, Reed and Sandra. They board the shuttlepod and are soon on their way, Hoshi carrying the helm camera to document the entire away mission. It has a live feed to the main viewscreen on the Bridge, so Ianto can watch it in his office, too.
After a short, smooth flight the pod docks in with the alien ship, and the team faces their first problem: how to get inside.
“Just our luck, no release,” Reed grumbles, after having pushed himself upward into the docking tube. “Shouldn't be a problem though. I can place micro-charges here and here.”
“Or we could just cut the hull open with the phase cannons,” Sandra comments sarcastically. “Should save us a great deal of effort… if we had working phase cannons. Which we don’t. Not yet.”
“Hold on, you two,” Archer says before Reed could come up with an equally sharp answer. “Ensign, can you try opening the hatch? Malcolm can still blow it up later, if nothing else works.”
“Sure, Captain, give me a minute,” Sandra pulls out her Torchwood-issue scanner, pilfered from the ruins of the Hub only she knows what way. After a moment of taking readings, she nods and pulls at a couple of protruding rods until she finds one that opens out and opens the hatch.
“After you, Lieutenant,” she says to Reed; regulations demand that security should go first.
”Enterprise, we've got access,” Hoshi reports back. “We're boarding the vessel.”
They push themselves through the hatchway and come up into a corridor that is completely dark, save for the light of their torches. Hoshi sweeps hers along the fairly unremarkable walls - whatever this ship used to be, it clearly wasn’t a pleasure cruiser - and finds something familiar.
“Well, at least we know they're bipeds,” she says.
Reed glares at her doubtfully. “What gives you that idea?”
“The ladder,” she replies dryly, aiming her torch at the item in question.
Reed is momentarily speechless and Ianto, watching them from his office, allows himself a grin. It’s a good thing that Hoshi won’t let herself be intimidated by the arrogant bastard.
Archer, in the meantime, is getting impatient.
“Come on,” he says, consulting his tricorder. “Nitrogen-methane atmosphere, and it's cold. Minus twenty degrees. I wonder if they prefer cold climates or their environmental controls are broken.”
“There is power going through here,” Hoshi checks one of the wall panels, “but not much of it.”
“Captain, look at this!” Reed aims his torch at a different part of the bulkhead. Green dribbles are visible on the otherwise dull grey metal. Archer analyzes them with his tricorder.
“Molecules look like amino acids,” he mutters.
“Blood?” Hoshi suggests uncertainly, and suddenly Ianto is taken back to the Brecon Beacons, to the village of in-bred cannibals, where both he and Tosh were nearly slaughtered and eaten by the villagers. He’s getting a very bad feeling about this and tries to force back his nausea.
Archer, who has no such memories, just shrugs. “Perhaps. We’ll take a closer look. Let’s try find their bridge… assuming they have one.”
They walk down the corridor and find a door that’s just an inch open. Sandra manages to find the manual controls and they force it open. That gets them into a room of unknown function; perhaps some sort of control room.
“There is still power to these displays,” Sandra says, manipulates something on a console, and the monitors come alive, although somewhat sluggishly.
“These icons look like they represent frequency bands,” Hoshi says in surprise, studying one of them.
“Communications?” Sandra asks; Hoshi shrugs.
“If it is, it's offline. Maybe that's why they didn't answer our hails.”
“They may have been in no condition to answer our hails,” Reed aims his torch at the bulkhead that’s splattered with the same green stuff as on the corridor; presumably blood.
Archer, two consoles away, is studying the schematic of the ship. “Ensign Massaro, does any of this make sense to you? Anything?”
Sandra goes over to him and gives the display a good, hard look. Then she points at it at several places.
”I’d say these could be power couplings. And these could be transfer conduits. This is likely a schematic to their power layout: one diagram for each deck.”
“And what's this?” Hoshi points at an area that appears to be a great deal more active than the rest.
“That's midship,” Sandra decides after some thinking. “One deck below. If we're right, something down there is drawing a lot of power.”
“Let's go see if we're right,” Archer suggests, and they return to the corridor to use the ladder Hoshi spotted to get one deck deeper. Already as they begin climbing down, they can hear some strange, rhythmic, throbbing noise.
“Somebody seems to be home, after all,” Reed says; then he takes point, phase pistol on the ready, just in case.
It doesn’t take long to find the source of a rhythmic noise. It is an odd-looking machine, fastened to the wall right inside the room directly below the one they searched first.
“Some sort of hydraulics,” Sandra says, after giving it a scan with her tricorder. “But whatever it is, it hasn't been here very long. Neither does it originally belong to the ship. This is a different technology, based on the power signatures…”
She is interrupted by Hoshi’s terrified scream. As she turns towards the inside of the room, her helm camera sweeps over several vaguely reptilian figures in uniform. Only that they’re hanging upside down with tubes coming from them to the device.
Images of that fridge in the Brecon Beacons, filled with human body parts, come back to Ianto with merciless quality, and he becomes violently ill in the solitude of his office.
Archer, who cannot see the transmission of Hoshi’s helm camera, is understandably baffled as she turns around and tries to flee. “Hoshi, where are you going?”
“I don't think you need a translator,” she replies, half-way down the corridor already.
Sandra, however, grabs her before she could blindly stumble into something and get hurt.
“Stay here,” she says, turning Hoshi away from the sight. She’s perhaps the least disturbed by all this. But again, she - or rather Suzie - was part of the clean-up team at Canary Wharf. She’s seen worse. Much, much worse.
Archer and Reed, meanwhile, are trying to figure out what’s happened with the dead aliens… with very little success.
“Their bodies are being flushed out with some kind of fluid,” Reed says. “Of course, since we don’t know the species, this could as well be some kind of burial rite.”
“They’re in uniform,” Archer points out; then he asks, with a little hesitation. “Are they all?...”
“All dead, sir, I'm afraid so,” Reed checks again, just to be sure. Archer nods, clearly having made up his mind.
“All right. Let’s go back to Enterprise, analyze the situation and see what we can do. If there’s anything we can do.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Less than an hour alter Archer and Reed, freshly out of the decon chamber, are sitting in the Situation Room with T’Pol, Tucker, Sandra and Ianto; the latter having been invited due to their experience with hostile aliens. Or, as the captain likes to put it, ‘the Torchwood factor’. If T’Pol is bewildered by his (unexplained) choice, she doesn’t show it; but again, she never does.
“How many?” she asks instead.
Archer shrugs. “I don't know. About a dozen.”
“Fifteen,” Reed corrects grimly.
“They're being drained of something,” Archer ignores the interruption. “Whoever did it went to a lot of trouble. My guess is they're coming back.”
“They are,” Ianto says quietly, remembering the 456. The similarities are unsettling, to put it mildly. “Such people always are.”
“Which is why we should leave,” T’Pol says.
“There are fifteen dead people over there,” Archer protests. “We can't leave.”
“Your reason for boarding that vessel was to provide assistance, if assistance was required. Clearly, it no longer is,” T’Pol points out with infuriating logic.
Archer glares at her in disbelief. “You're telling me that we should just leave them there?”
“What's the alternative?” she asks back. “Your intentions were admirable, Captain, but nothing can be done for that crew now and if we remain here your crew could be put in jeopardy.”
Which is arguably very true, of course, but Archer isn’t willing to back off just yet. He looks at Sandra and Ianto.
“What do you say? What would Jack Harkness do?”
“You shouldn’t ask that,” Sandra replies dryly. “His methods aren’t suited for sane people. And the Torchwood way leads to a high mortality rate, at a very young age.”
“Jack would want to find out what’s happening,” Ianto says. “He’d try to catch the people who did this, so that they wouldn’t get another chance to do it. Of course, he has a unique advantage the rest of us do not,” he adds, reflecting to Jack’s immortality, about which the humans present all know, while T’Pol does not.
“Maybe we don’t,” Archer says slowly. “Still, these were crewmen, murdered on their own ship. Fifteen dead crewmen. Should we just leave them there, hanging like slaughtered animals? Don't you think maybe we should take them down, try to figure out who they were, make some effort to contact their families?”
“We don't know where they came from,” T’Pol reminds him. “It would be very difficult to locate their families.”
“So we shouldn’t even try?” Archer is getting angrier by the minute. “Should we just stick our tail between our legs and run, leave them there to rot? Am I the only one who's having a problem with this?”
After a short, unpleasant silence Tucker is the first one to speak. “You said it yourself, sir. Whoever killed those people are probably coming back.”
“So we should avoid confrontation at any cost, is that what you're saying?” Archer demands.
There’s another uncomfortable silence; then Sandra speaks.
“Well, if you’re gonna do this the Torchwood way, Captain, perhaps Ensign Sato can use that comm station we saw to send a distress call to the planet the ship came from. And I for my part won’t have any problems returning for a little more fact-checking.”
“You may not,” Tucker says. “Hoshi might.”
“I’ll talk to her,” Ianto promises.
“Why you?” Tucker asks in surprise.
Ianto shrugs. “I’ve been in a situation like this before. I can understand her better.”
“Very well,” Archer is clearly relieved to have support at least from the Torchwood faction. “I’ll inform Doctor Phlox in the meantime.”
“And I’ll put together a security detail,” Reed promises.
Archer shakes his head. “There's no one over there who can hurt us. Stay here and work on those targeting scanners; we might need them. Trip, Ensign, prepare to suit up at fourteen hundred hours.”
“Me, Captain?” Tucker is pleasantly surprised; probably the only one who is.
Archer nods. “You wanted to see what's going on over there. Now's your chance. Ensign Massaro is right: the best way to find their people would be through their own comm system. You're going to need to get it up and running. Hoshi will decipher their language and compose a message. Hopefully it'll make sense.”
“Aye-aye, Captain,” the two engineers reply, and with that the meeting is dismissed.
~TBC~
BY SOLEDAD
Fandom: Star Trek - Enterprise/Whoniverse x-over
Genre: Action-adventure, Alternate Universe, Romance
Rating: T, for now
Series: This is a sequel to A Matter of Time and would only make real sense if you’ve read that part first.
Disclaimer: Star Trek belongs to Gene Roddenberry, first and foremost, and secondly whoever happens to have the rights at the moment. It’s hard to follow. I don’t own anything just a few secondary characters and the alternate plot idea.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
CHAPTER 02 - STRANGE ENCOUNTERS OF THE EERIE KIND
Author’s note: No, I don’t believe that T’Pol would give such imprecise measurements as in the actual episode. She’s a Vulcan, for Surak’s sake! So I’ve corrected that oversight.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Ianto’s warning (about being careful what one wishes for) comes true sooner than anyone - even Ianto himself - would have expected. Only two days after the ineffective weapons’ test, T’Pol, who’s having the Bridge at the beginning of what would later be called Beta Shift, calls the captain and the senior officers to the Situation Room.
Apparently, the sensors have detected a ship of previously unknown configuration dead ahead. Ianto is not invited to the briefing, but since he has a live feed between the Situation Room and his office (courtesy of Sandra), he can follow the events as well as if he were physically present.
“How big is it?” Tucker asks, eyeing the long vessel on the viewscreen with understandable excitement. This is a First Contact situation if there’s ever been one, after all.
“Approximately ninety two point six five metres in length,” T’Pol replies, ignoring the sniggering of the humans around her. If they chose not to care for precise measurements, it’s their problem. She’d still give them everything to the last digit.
“Doesn't seem to be moving very fast,” Archer comments. Which is an understatement, as - according to the readings on the bottom of the screen…
“It is not moving at all,” T’Pol vocalizes Ianto’s thoughts.
Archer’s eyebrows climb till his hairline in surprise. “That's odd. Where's the nearest star system?”
T’Pol checks her readings. “Two point nine six light years away.”
“They could be running some kind of a deep space experiment,” Tucker suggests, full of excitement. “Maybe we should go have a look.”
“If you insist on allowing your curiosity to dictate your actions,” T’Pol’s voice is dry like desert sand. She could also be talking to desert sand, as much effect as her disapproval has on the humans.
“We insist,” Archer declares with Jack’s wide, white smile, and the other senior officers are nodding in unison.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
They relocate to the Bridge and Enterprise heads off towards the unknown ship. Ianto, of course, has a live feed from the Bridge as well; and this time Sandra, who’s off-duty at the moment, accompanies him.
Officially for a cup of coffee. The rest is nobody’s business.
“Range: five thousand kilometres,” Mayweather reports.
The screen is at maximum magnification, and now they are close enough to notice some details on the long ship. It is silver-grey, shaped similarly to a Terran pike, with a long, snout-like bug, a slightly fanning-out heck and a long row of what looks like cargo containers (although they could also be deck plates) along each side.
“It is something, isn’t it?” Sandra murmurs. “A real, honest-to-Earth alien ship. Not even at Torchwood have we seen anything like that.”
“Actually, One did have that little alien sunglider,” Ianto corrects, “but it got destroyed in the Battle of Canary Wharf, like everything else.”
“Yeah, Jack was really pissed about that,” Sandra agrees, grinning. “He’d have loved to lay hand on it.”
“He used to be a pilot; of course he wanted it,” Ianto smiles. “This looks more like a cargo vessel, though. I wonder what race built it.”
“The vessel's hull is comprised of tritanium and disilicon polymers,” T’Pol is reporting to Archer on the Bridge.
“I'm not getting anything on their propulsion system,” Tucker adds with a frown, “but it may be offline.”
“What about weapons?” the captain asks.
“If they have any, they're not charged,” Reed answers with a shrug.
Archer looks at Hoshi. “Any comm activity?”
She shakes her head. “No, sir.”
“Let’s see if they’ll react to a direct call,” Archer suggests. “Run this through the translation matrix. This is Captain Jonathan Archer of the Starship Enterprise. We're on a mission of peaceful exploration. Oh, we come from the planet Earth. We're sending you a pulsar grid that should help you locate our star system.”
“Idiot!” Ianto hisses angrily and his fingers fly over the surface of his (highly illegal) scattering device to delete the last part of the message. He manages just in time before it gets sent, but it’s a close cut.
Sandra gives him a look full of understanding. “You hoped people would have learned not to broadcast Earth’s location to all and sundry, didn’t you?”
Ianto sighs. “I know that people have forgotten a lot, due to the changes in the timeline,” he says. “But I thought at least Jack’s great-grandson, or whatever degree of relationship they truly have, would know better.”
“He doesn’t have Jack’s vast experience,” Sandra reminds him. “You cannot expect him to react the same way Jack would.”
“I could expect some common sense, though,” Ianto mutters angrily, because Archer insists that Hoshi should repeat the message.
“Did you rotate the frequencies?” the captain asks, and this time Ianto is prepared to intervene in time.
“I'll try it again,” Hoshi sounds apologetic, as if it would be her fault that the aliens don’t react. “No response, sir.”
“Captain,” Tucker interrupts them, “mind if I push in on the venting ports around that hatch?”
Archer clearly doesn’t. “Go ahead.”
Tucker zooms the viewscreen image. They are looking at the upper part of the vessel now, with some bizarrely shaped… holes on it.
“Are those venting ports or hull breaches?” Mayweather asks suddenly, because some of the holes seem to have fairly irregular rims.
“Bring us in a little closer, Travis,” the captain orders. “Let's get a look at the other side.”
Mayweather carries out his order. The other side of the ship is similarly marked.
“Those look like scorch marks,” Archer says grimly.
“The residue indicates oxidation and thermal shock effects,” T’Pol supplies, looking up from her hooded scanner. “It could be the result of a high yield particle impact.”
“You mean weapons,” the captain clarifies, but T’Pol is not ready to make any binding statement without sufficient data.
“Possibly,” is all she allows.
“Are we close enough to scan for biosigns?” Archer asks.
“Yes, but scanning their ship's interior might be seen as a violation of privacy,” T’Pol warns him. Unlike for humans, this is clearly a big issue for Vulcans… and possibly for other alien races as well.
Archer considers this for a moment, then he looks at Hoshi. “Anything?“
Hoshi shakes her head.
“Do you think there’s anyone on board?” Tucker asks.
“If there is, you can bet they know we're out here,” Mayweather says with the certainty of someone who grew up on a spaceship. “I wonder why they aren’t responding, though."
“Not everyone chooses to answer the door when they hear a knock,” T’Pol says; her tome makes it clear that Vulcans certainly wouldn’t do so. “It would be best to resume our previous course.”
“Yeah, cause that’s gonna happen with somebody - anybody - with Harkness genes in command!” Ianto comments, and Sandra nods in agreement.
And Archer’s next order proves them right.
“See if you can find another hatch,” the captain tells his chief engineer, and Tucker carries out the order in record time. “Diameter?“
“Point nine metres,” Tucker replies. It doesn’t sound much; clearly, the aliens, whoever they are, aren’t very broadly built.
Archer turns to the science station, where T’Pol is still sitting. “Scan for biosigns.”
The Vulcan bends over her hooded scanner and performs the task with practiced ease. “There are a number of life-forms aboard,” she then reports.
It is unusual for her not to give the exact number of said life-forms, but Archer is instantly energizes by the thought of a possible first contact.
“Humanoid?” he asks eagerly.
“Their cellular activity is below the threshold of your sensors,” T’Pol replies coolly.
“That is Vulcan for ‘I don’t have a clue but wouldn’t admit it for the world’,” Sandra comments cynically. She and Ianto share a grin.
“Do you know anything about this?” she then asks, waving into the general direction of the viewscreen.
Ianto shakes his head. “My knowledge about this mission isn’t that detailed. In fact, I doubt that even the Temporal Agency knows much about it, save for the general outline of things. Too much micro-management can have a detrimental effect on the outcome, or so they’ve told me.”
“So they left you in the dark?” Sandra frowns.
“To be honest, I don’t mind,” Ianto says with a shrug. “I prefer figuring out things for myself to being a puppet.”
If anyone, Sandra can understand that. Suzie was the same. She doesn’t get a chance to answer, though, because in the next moment she’s summoned to the Launch Bay to suit up for a visit on the alien ship.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
As expected, Archer has ignored his science officer’s objections and decided to lead the Away Team to the alien vessel. What hasn’t been expected are the people he’s chosen for the team: Hoshi, Reed and Sandra. Ianto begins to suspect that the captain might instinctively trust those with a connection to Torchwood than anyone else. Of course, it might be a coincidence; but if it’s not, it’s interesting - to say the least.
Tucker, who doesn’t know about some of those connections at all (and does not think the ones he knows about would be important) can’t truly understand his best friend’s choices. He hoped to be part of the Away Team; to see the previously unknown alien ship close up. After all, he, too, signed onto this mission of exploration so he could do a little exploring, he argues, and he can’t understand why Ensign Massaro should get this chance instead of him.
Archer is understanding - sympathetic even, since he can’t wait to find out what’s going on aboard that ship himself - but stands to his original decision. Which, in Ianto’s opinion, is a big improvement, compared with Jack, who gave in to Gwen’s demands every time.
Unlike Tucker, Hoshi isn’t that eager to suit up and go over to the alien ship.
“I’d rather stay here and keep an open comm. link,” she admits to Ianto, who’s come down to the Launch Bay to see them off. “That way I'll have immediate access to the linguistic database and could be a lot more helpful, without the lag time being tripled.”
“Have you told the captain?” Ianto asks.
Hoshi nods glumly. “He said he’d rather wait a few seconds if it means having me on site, in case the UT won't work.”
“He does have a point,” Ianto says. “And field work can be exciting. Commander Tucker certainly would give an arm to be going over there. What's wrong?” he asks, seeing her unhappy face.
“The environmental suits,” Hoshi admits. “They make me a little claustrophobic.”
“Claustrophobic?” Ianto echoes in surprise. “How did they accept you for training at all?”
“I wasn’t always claustrophobic,” Hoshi mutters. “Not before prison. Eighteen months in a six foot by six foot windowless cell can do that to a person.”
“I am sorry,” Ianto says honestly because he remembers all too well how Tosh had to struggle with the memories of her imprisonment time and again; and he’s still having his own flashbacks to Canary Wharf from time to time. “Do you think you can do this?”
Hoshi shrugs uncertainly. “Perhaps. If I just bite my lip and get through it. I hope I won’t freak out in the worst moment.”
“Well, if you do, at least the captain will learn to think twice before putting you into an EV suit again,” Ianto says overly seriously and is rewarded with a nervous little smile.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
With that, Hoshi accepts that the only way out is the only way through and suits up with Archer, Reed and Sandra. They board the shuttlepod and are soon on their way, Hoshi carrying the helm camera to document the entire away mission. It has a live feed to the main viewscreen on the Bridge, so Ianto can watch it in his office, too.
After a short, smooth flight the pod docks in with the alien ship, and the team faces their first problem: how to get inside.
“Just our luck, no release,” Reed grumbles, after having pushed himself upward into the docking tube. “Shouldn't be a problem though. I can place micro-charges here and here.”
“Or we could just cut the hull open with the phase cannons,” Sandra comments sarcastically. “Should save us a great deal of effort… if we had working phase cannons. Which we don’t. Not yet.”
“Hold on, you two,” Archer says before Reed could come up with an equally sharp answer. “Ensign, can you try opening the hatch? Malcolm can still blow it up later, if nothing else works.”
“Sure, Captain, give me a minute,” Sandra pulls out her Torchwood-issue scanner, pilfered from the ruins of the Hub only she knows what way. After a moment of taking readings, she nods and pulls at a couple of protruding rods until she finds one that opens out and opens the hatch.
“After you, Lieutenant,” she says to Reed; regulations demand that security should go first.
”Enterprise, we've got access,” Hoshi reports back. “We're boarding the vessel.”
They push themselves through the hatchway and come up into a corridor that is completely dark, save for the light of their torches. Hoshi sweeps hers along the fairly unremarkable walls - whatever this ship used to be, it clearly wasn’t a pleasure cruiser - and finds something familiar.
“Well, at least we know they're bipeds,” she says.
Reed glares at her doubtfully. “What gives you that idea?”
“The ladder,” she replies dryly, aiming her torch at the item in question.
Reed is momentarily speechless and Ianto, watching them from his office, allows himself a grin. It’s a good thing that Hoshi won’t let herself be intimidated by the arrogant bastard.
Archer, in the meantime, is getting impatient.
“Come on,” he says, consulting his tricorder. “Nitrogen-methane atmosphere, and it's cold. Minus twenty degrees. I wonder if they prefer cold climates or their environmental controls are broken.”
“There is power going through here,” Hoshi checks one of the wall panels, “but not much of it.”
“Captain, look at this!” Reed aims his torch at a different part of the bulkhead. Green dribbles are visible on the otherwise dull grey metal. Archer analyzes them with his tricorder.
“Molecules look like amino acids,” he mutters.
“Blood?” Hoshi suggests uncertainly, and suddenly Ianto is taken back to the Brecon Beacons, to the village of in-bred cannibals, where both he and Tosh were nearly slaughtered and eaten by the villagers. He’s getting a very bad feeling about this and tries to force back his nausea.
Archer, who has no such memories, just shrugs. “Perhaps. We’ll take a closer look. Let’s try find their bridge… assuming they have one.”
They walk down the corridor and find a door that’s just an inch open. Sandra manages to find the manual controls and they force it open. That gets them into a room of unknown function; perhaps some sort of control room.
“There is still power to these displays,” Sandra says, manipulates something on a console, and the monitors come alive, although somewhat sluggishly.
“These icons look like they represent frequency bands,” Hoshi says in surprise, studying one of them.
“Communications?” Sandra asks; Hoshi shrugs.
“If it is, it's offline. Maybe that's why they didn't answer our hails.”
“They may have been in no condition to answer our hails,” Reed aims his torch at the bulkhead that’s splattered with the same green stuff as on the corridor; presumably blood.
Archer, two consoles away, is studying the schematic of the ship. “Ensign Massaro, does any of this make sense to you? Anything?”
Sandra goes over to him and gives the display a good, hard look. Then she points at it at several places.
”I’d say these could be power couplings. And these could be transfer conduits. This is likely a schematic to their power layout: one diagram for each deck.”
“And what's this?” Hoshi points at an area that appears to be a great deal more active than the rest.
“That's midship,” Sandra decides after some thinking. “One deck below. If we're right, something down there is drawing a lot of power.”
“Let's go see if we're right,” Archer suggests, and they return to the corridor to use the ladder Hoshi spotted to get one deck deeper. Already as they begin climbing down, they can hear some strange, rhythmic, throbbing noise.
“Somebody seems to be home, after all,” Reed says; then he takes point, phase pistol on the ready, just in case.
It doesn’t take long to find the source of a rhythmic noise. It is an odd-looking machine, fastened to the wall right inside the room directly below the one they searched first.
“Some sort of hydraulics,” Sandra says, after giving it a scan with her tricorder. “But whatever it is, it hasn't been here very long. Neither does it originally belong to the ship. This is a different technology, based on the power signatures…”
She is interrupted by Hoshi’s terrified scream. As she turns towards the inside of the room, her helm camera sweeps over several vaguely reptilian figures in uniform. Only that they’re hanging upside down with tubes coming from them to the device.
Images of that fridge in the Brecon Beacons, filled with human body parts, come back to Ianto with merciless quality, and he becomes violently ill in the solitude of his office.
Archer, who cannot see the transmission of Hoshi’s helm camera, is understandably baffled as she turns around and tries to flee. “Hoshi, where are you going?”
“I don't think you need a translator,” she replies, half-way down the corridor already.
Sandra, however, grabs her before she could blindly stumble into something and get hurt.
“Stay here,” she says, turning Hoshi away from the sight. She’s perhaps the least disturbed by all this. But again, she - or rather Suzie - was part of the clean-up team at Canary Wharf. She’s seen worse. Much, much worse.
Archer and Reed, meanwhile, are trying to figure out what’s happened with the dead aliens… with very little success.
“Their bodies are being flushed out with some kind of fluid,” Reed says. “Of course, since we don’t know the species, this could as well be some kind of burial rite.”
“They’re in uniform,” Archer points out; then he asks, with a little hesitation. “Are they all?...”
“All dead, sir, I'm afraid so,” Reed checks again, just to be sure. Archer nods, clearly having made up his mind.
“All right. Let’s go back to Enterprise, analyze the situation and see what we can do. If there’s anything we can do.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Less than an hour alter Archer and Reed, freshly out of the decon chamber, are sitting in the Situation Room with T’Pol, Tucker, Sandra and Ianto; the latter having been invited due to their experience with hostile aliens. Or, as the captain likes to put it, ‘the Torchwood factor’. If T’Pol is bewildered by his (unexplained) choice, she doesn’t show it; but again, she never does.
“How many?” she asks instead.
Archer shrugs. “I don't know. About a dozen.”
“Fifteen,” Reed corrects grimly.
“They're being drained of something,” Archer ignores the interruption. “Whoever did it went to a lot of trouble. My guess is they're coming back.”
“They are,” Ianto says quietly, remembering the 456. The similarities are unsettling, to put it mildly. “Such people always are.”
“Which is why we should leave,” T’Pol says.
“There are fifteen dead people over there,” Archer protests. “We can't leave.”
“Your reason for boarding that vessel was to provide assistance, if assistance was required. Clearly, it no longer is,” T’Pol points out with infuriating logic.
Archer glares at her in disbelief. “You're telling me that we should just leave them there?”
“What's the alternative?” she asks back. “Your intentions were admirable, Captain, but nothing can be done for that crew now and if we remain here your crew could be put in jeopardy.”
Which is arguably very true, of course, but Archer isn’t willing to back off just yet. He looks at Sandra and Ianto.
“What do you say? What would Jack Harkness do?”
“You shouldn’t ask that,” Sandra replies dryly. “His methods aren’t suited for sane people. And the Torchwood way leads to a high mortality rate, at a very young age.”
“Jack would want to find out what’s happening,” Ianto says. “He’d try to catch the people who did this, so that they wouldn’t get another chance to do it. Of course, he has a unique advantage the rest of us do not,” he adds, reflecting to Jack’s immortality, about which the humans present all know, while T’Pol does not.
“Maybe we don’t,” Archer says slowly. “Still, these were crewmen, murdered on their own ship. Fifteen dead crewmen. Should we just leave them there, hanging like slaughtered animals? Don't you think maybe we should take them down, try to figure out who they were, make some effort to contact their families?”
“We don't know where they came from,” T’Pol reminds him. “It would be very difficult to locate their families.”
“So we shouldn’t even try?” Archer is getting angrier by the minute. “Should we just stick our tail between our legs and run, leave them there to rot? Am I the only one who's having a problem with this?”
After a short, unpleasant silence Tucker is the first one to speak. “You said it yourself, sir. Whoever killed those people are probably coming back.”
“So we should avoid confrontation at any cost, is that what you're saying?” Archer demands.
There’s another uncomfortable silence; then Sandra speaks.
“Well, if you’re gonna do this the Torchwood way, Captain, perhaps Ensign Sato can use that comm station we saw to send a distress call to the planet the ship came from. And I for my part won’t have any problems returning for a little more fact-checking.”
“You may not,” Tucker says. “Hoshi might.”
“I’ll talk to her,” Ianto promises.
“Why you?” Tucker asks in surprise.
Ianto shrugs. “I’ve been in a situation like this before. I can understand her better.”
“Very well,” Archer is clearly relieved to have support at least from the Torchwood faction. “I’ll inform Doctor Phlox in the meantime.”
“And I’ll put together a security detail,” Reed promises.
Archer shakes his head. “There's no one over there who can hurt us. Stay here and work on those targeting scanners; we might need them. Trip, Ensign, prepare to suit up at fourteen hundred hours.”
“Me, Captain?” Tucker is pleasantly surprised; probably the only one who is.
Archer nods. “You wanted to see what's going on over there. Now's your chance. Ensign Massaro is right: the best way to find their people would be through their own comm system. You're going to need to get it up and running. Hoshi will decipher their language and compose a message. Hopefully it'll make sense.”
“Aye-aye, Captain,” the two engineers reply, and with that the meeting is dismissed.
~TBC~