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silver_sunTitle: Things Lost and Found Along The Way (3/10)
Rating: pg13
Characters: Jack. AU Ianto, Owen and Tosh. Owen/Tosh, and eventually Jack/Ianto
Word Count: This part 3k (total 8k of 22k posted)
Contains: Serious illness of an alien variety.
Summary: Travelling back to Earth with Ianto, Owen and Toshiko on board the freighter Ariadne, Jack has growing concerns that the glove he'd used to bring them into this universe has somehow affected him. He's still trying to deal with these worries on his own when they receive a distress call from another ship. A call which is about to change everything.
A/N: This is a sequel to The Spaces in Between. Which was a CoE sort of fix it, and as such won't fit with Miracle Day canon in any way. I hope to update this weekly.
Starts here
The hours until they reach the Meridian Star pass slowly and uneventfully, with any attempts at communication with the liner failing to elicit a response.
Docking goes with the liner goes smoothly, despite there being no assistance from the Meridian Star, Vran piloting the Ariadne into position with ease.
Once they are docked, everybody except Vran, who is still on the bridge of the Ariadne, gathers at the airlock that now links them to the Meridian Star.
Jack waits for Celesti to give her orders to the crew. It feels odd after being in charge of Torchwood for so long to be standing back and letting somebody else be in charge. Odd, but not bad, as it's something of a relief to not to be the one having to make the hard decisions all the time.
Celesti adjust the gun belt that she's now wearing over her boiler suit, and says, “Me and Jack are going over, I want a couple more volunteers.”
Pol steps forward straight away.
Celesti shakes her head. “No, I want you to stay here. If things go arse up over there I want to know you here get us out. I wouldn't trust just anyone with that.”
Pol doesn't look happy, but nods, saying, “Alright, but don't go looking for trouble.”
“Do I ever?” Celesti laughs.
“I'll go,” Owen says, stepping forward. “There could be people hurt over there.”
“And if it's mechanical failure I might be able to do something.” Kelda steps forward.
Tosh looks at Owen and Kelda for a moment then says, “I'll come too. If it's a software malfunction I may be able to help.”
“Alright, that's enough, I need some of you to stay here,” Celesti says, looking at the small group now stood closer to the airlock. “No sense leaving our own ship deserted.”
There's a slightly disappointed look on Ianto's face at the realisation that he's going to be left behind, but he doesn't say anything.
“What's the readings like in there?” Celesti radios through to Vran.
“Seems fine.” Vran's voice comes over the comm. “The oxygen mix is good. It's a bit warm and damp though, looks like the enviro controls might be shot.”
“Not much of a reason for putting out an all ships distress call, is it?” Celesti says, not really looking for answer. “Okay, lets get going.”
The airlock opens with a hiss, and they walk into the small chamber between the Ariadne's airlock and the one on the Meridian Star.
After a moment the door closes behind them, and the one into the liner opens.
A bit warm and damp is an understatement, and Jack regrets wearing his greatcoat the moment he steps on board the Meridian Star, the heat and humidity making it feel like he’s walking into a tropical rainforest.
“Keep your eyes and ears open,” Celesti says, walking off down the corridor. “Now lets get to the bridge and find out what's going on.”
Celesti's suspicions that the liner is being taken to be broken down for scrap seems to be confirmed as most of the soft furnishings, carpet and most of the decorative wall fittings and hangings have been removed. In a few places, mostly where it had been too difficult or time consuming to removed, fragments remain, giving the liner an air of faded grandeur.
“It must have been beautiful once,” Tosh says looking a crate that's filled with broken up pieces of silver and gold plaster that once would have covered the ceiling in shimmering swirls.
“Yeah,” Jack says, a little wistfully. It's been years, centuries really, since he was last on a liner like this.
“You've been on a ship like this before?” Tosh asks, curious.
“A few times.” Jack smiles at the memories. Sure he'd been working when he'd been on the liners, once as a Time Agent and then a few times later on as a conman, but it had never felt like work. The drinking, dancing and scores of men and women looking for a little bit of holiday romance had seen to that.
Tosh smiles back at him. “It sounds like you enjoyed it.”
“They were good times.” It seems almost unreal now that back then his only worries had been how to leave without paying for anything, and how to avoid getting caught by somebodies jealous partner.
They pause at the door to the bridge. “Do you miss it?”
“I don't know,” Jack says after a moment. It's been so long since he's lived that life, and since the Doctor set him on the course of becoming the man he is now, that he doesn't have an answer.
“I told somebody very special once that going back to that life wouldn't solve anything. That because I left it I'd seen things I'd never have dreamt of, and met and loved people I would never have known.” There are unshed tears in his eyes as he adds, “And I meant it.”
Tosh gives him a sad, knowing smile. “You mean Ianto, don't you?”
“That obvious, huh?”
“You don't mention the Ianto from your world, and you look at ours like he's going to suddenly disappear.” Tosh “I asked Ianto, but he said it wasn't his place to say.”
“He died. Nearly a year...” Jack stops, it barely seems true that that amount of time has passed since the horror of Thames House, of losing Ianto and Stephen.
“I'm sorry.” Tosh puts a hand on his arm.
“So am I.”
“It's not easy losing people,” Tosh says quietly, her eyes haunted by what had happened to her world.
“I have to believe it'll get better, otherwise...” Tosh looks down. “Well, I think you understand.”
“Best to keep busy, right?” Jack says, with a cheerfulness that he really doesn't feel, but thinks that Tosh needs right now. Because while he's lost Ianto and Stephen, Tosh, along with Owen and Ianto have lost everybody they've every known, friends, lovers, family, everything but each other.
Tosh nods. “Nothing like a mysterious ship and its missing crew to take your mind of your problems for a while.”
Tosh is right about mysterious, Jack thinks, there's been no sign of any crew or any indication that there has been anybody on board recently as they've made their way to the bridge.
Looking round the deserted control room, Celesti says, “I don't like it.”
Jack can't help but agree with her: there's something decidedly eerie about the crumbling and silent liner and its missing crew.
Celesti nods towards the controls. “Kelda, see if you can get anything on the logs about why the put out the distress call.”
Kelda looks at the sweep of terminals under the huge curving window at the front of the ship. “Might take a while, controls could still be locked to crew.”
“But if the ship is being decommissioned shouldn't most of the systems be open access?” Tosh says, walking over to one of the control panels. “After all it wouldn't be much use having them locked to a few specific crew members if what you've potentially got is dozens of different construction workers using is every day.”
Kelda looks impressed. Turning to Celesti she says, “You okay with Tosh working on the systems with me?”
“Do what you need to. I want to find out what happened, and if we can call this old crate salvage. Then we get out of here.” Celesti runs a hand through her hair. “And somebody go and fix the thermostats, it's hotter than a Gulbian sauna in here.”
“I'll go,” Jack says, wanting the opportunity to check out more of the ship. “I'm good with my hands.”
“Full of yourself, aren't you?” Celesti says with some amusement, throwing a small radio mic to Jack. “Alright, any trouble and you call back.”
“Yes, ma'am,” Jack says with a smile, knowing it will get a reaction. Then, clipping the mic to coat he sets off.
Stripped of all their furnishings, the bare metal of the corridors echoes dully with the sound of Jack's footsteps as he makes his way through the ship. While the lighting flickers overhead, the hot and humid conditions affecting the wiring.
There's still no sign of any crew as Jack walks along corridors and down steps to reach the room containing the life support systems and environmental controls.
The control room is deserted, and as devoid of clues as to the whereabouts of the crew as the rest of the ship.
There's nothing wrong with the thermostat, Jack finds after minimal inspection of the controls. It has been deliberately set to create hot and humid conditions. Turning it down to a more comfortable level, Jack smiles; he's got an idea as to why the temperature and humidity have been set as high as they have.
“I've turned the heating down,” Jack says into the comm. link. “It should start to get a bit cooler in the next hour or so. There's no sign of the crew, so I'm going to take a look down in the holds, I've got a hunch why the temperature was set so high.”
The comm. crackles, and through the interference Jack can just about make out Celesti saying, “Alright. Any trouble, you get back here.”
It's not far from the environmental control room to the first of the holds, and Jack has just reached it when the lights begin to flicker again, then go off leaving the room in complete darkness.
Jack stands still for a moment, listening. There's no sound to indicate that they might be under attack, although he knows that that might not actually be a good sign; a well planned ambush should be silent.
He knows it could just be the section of ship that he's in that has lost power, the wiring finally having shorted out from the damp.
Staying where he is isn't going to get any answers, and Jack feels his way along the wall of the hold until he reaches what seems to be bales of what must have been the liner's soft furnishings.
His sleeve snags on something as he feels his way along the wall. There's a ripping noise as he pulls it free, followed by the barely audible rasp of material slipping against each other.
A second later something bulky in size, but light in weight topples on to him, knocking him off his feet.
Lying on the deck Jack is aware that something has started falling on him. Slow at first, the fall of dry and musty material seems to increase until it's an avalanche of tiny flakes, covering him, seemingly trying to bury him alive.
Buried alive. Jack starts to cough, suddenly sure that he can feel dirt starting to clog in his throat and nose. Heart pounding he kicks out, trying to untangle his greatcoat from his legs, only to find that there's something twisting about his ankle, stopping him from getting away, keeping him down, maybe even pulling him under.
Fumbling at the catch on the gun holster on his belt, Jack is ready to risk shooting into the darkness and maybe hitting his own legs in an attempt to dislodge whatever has hold of him, when the lights flickers back on and Jack can see what has caught him.
He's lying half buried in a huge pile of dried pink and purple flowers, the twine that had been used to tie the bale tangled around his feet.
Heart pounding, Jack gives a shaky laugh as he frees his feet. Sitting amongst the tiny dried flowers, Jack crumbles a few of them between his fingers. He recognises them as asha flowers, mild alien narcotic, or at least they would be once processed. Right now they're nothing more than illegal pot-pourri.
A quick inspection of the rest of the holds, which would have once been filled with passengers luggage or supplies for the cruise, reveal that they been converted into a huge greenhouse. Banks of lights are suspended from the ceiling, while dozens of raised hydroponic beds, arranged in neat rows, fill the cavernous space.
The gel in the beds is discoloured and starting to dry out, while a few leaves are scattered across the deck, the asha flowers that had been grown there now harvested.
Jack is still wondering why the people who'd gone to so much trouble to cultivate the drugs only to disappear and leave them all behind, when he hears Ianto say, “We were being to think you'd disappeared.”
Jack turns to see Ianto and Orvis standing in the doorway.
“Celesti let you on board then?” Jack asks, glad that they hadn't arrived a few minutes earlier to witness his rather ridiculous struggle with a pile of flowers.
Ianto nods. “She said she wanted the ship checked as quickly as possibly.” He looks at Jack's coat, then asks, “You lost your radio, didn't you?”
Glancing down, Jack can see the radio mic that Celesti has given him is gone, lost mostly likely when the stacked asha bales had fallen on him.
“Found him. Nothing is wrong, not with him any way.” Orvis radios through to Celesti. “We've found out why the ships taking the slow route to nowhere. It's a drugs farm.”
“Shit,” Celesti swears sounding less than happy. “Alright. You do a quick sweep of the next couple of decks, make sure there's nobody hanging about, then get back to the bridge. I've got the rest of the crew searching the other decks. Where you're done get back here and I'll put in a call to the ports authority, tell them we're bringing the Meridian Star in.”
“Should be a nice big reward though,” Orvis says.
“There'd better be.”
Orvis takes the lead, his gun drawn, as they walk down the corridor, checking rooms as they go.
They walk in silence for a few minutes, until Ianto says, “I worked on a steam liner once.”
“A man of many talents.” Jack hopes that it doesn't sound too much like flirting, as he's pretty sure Ianto isn't going to appreciate it at all.
Ianto shakes his head. “Not really, I just was there to help move baggage about and help with the washing.”
“Their loss,” Jack says with a smile.
“I didn't work there long.” Ianto smiles back. “It turned out there were a few stowaways which were a very, very long way from home, a couple of galaxies in fact. It's how I started working for-”
Ianto stops as they open the door to a new section of corridor lined with passengers cabins, the smell of decay hitting them as they do so.
Jack looks at Orvis and Ianto, and can tell by their expressions that they know what is likely to be causing the stench.
Moving forward cautiously, it doesn't taken them long to find the sort of it. Collapsed half in and half out of the doorway to one of the cabins is the remains of the one of the crew of the Meridian Star. Behind him in the cabin there are four more bodies, each similarly decayed and lying dead in their bunks.
Dead for a few days and in the heat and humidity that the ship has been subjected to, rapidly starting to decay.
Ianto looks at the bloated body with a mixture of horror and revolted fascination.
It's an expression that Jack suspects is mirrored on his own face. He can't see any obvious signs that the any of the dead aliens mights have been attacked.
“Don't touch anything,” Orvis says, taking a few steps back. “I'm calling this in.”
“Cel' you ain't going to like this, but it looks like the crews' dead.” Orvis radio's through. “There doesn't look like there was any struggle, most of them are in their bunks. I can't see any laser blast marks, so it could be some sort of disease. We're heading to the airlock now, I suggest getting everybody back to the Ariadne as soon as possible.”
“Oh hell. You sure?”
“Sure as I can be without taking a closer look.” Orvis pauses. “And I'm not doing that with out a hazmat suit.”
“Right, I'll pull everybody back,”Celesti says, sounding like she's come to a decision. “Then I'm sealing this crate up until we get to Polpaxi and it becomes somebody else's problem.”
With one last look back at the body, Jack, Orvis and Ianto make their way back to the airlock.
* * *
Back on the Ariadne, Celesti gathers the crew in the breakroom.
“Okay, everybody listen up,” Celesti says loudly. “I know you're all worried that there was something catching over there, and I'd be a piss poor captain if I wasn't too. But that doesn't mean we panic, 'cause that solves nothing, so this is what we're going to do.”
She looks at her crew and then at Jack, making sure they are all paying attention.
“First off we're keeping the Meridian Star sealed until we get to the shipyard at Polpaxi, nothing goes in and nothing gets out. Second I want everybody who went aboard to get a full decontamination wash, anti-bac gel will left in the showers. Your clothes will need washing in it too. Once that's done we'll run a deep clean of the water re-cyc tanks and bio-filters.”
There's a groan from a couple of her crew, and Celesti glares at them before continuing. “Better safe than sorry, we're damn long way out to go calling for help all because somebody was too lazy to have a wash. And third any of you feel off, and I don't care if you think it's a hangover or some dodgy food you report it in. I'm taking no chances. Any questions?”
“Shouldn't we check the bodies to make sure they did actually die of disease, rather than say taking too much of the drug they were growing?” Owen asks. “I could do it, take a hazmat suit over.”
Celesti shakes her head. “No. If there is anything nasty over there at least our exposure was limited. I'm planning on keeping it that way. Nobody goes back onto the Meridian Star.”
It's a reasonable decision, and Jack can see why she's made it, he just hopes it's the right one.
Rating: pg13
Characters: Jack. AU Ianto, Owen and Tosh. Owen/Tosh, and eventually Jack/Ianto
Word Count: This part 3k (total 8k of 22k posted)
Contains: Serious illness of an alien variety.
Summary: Travelling back to Earth with Ianto, Owen and Toshiko on board the freighter Ariadne, Jack has growing concerns that the glove he'd used to bring them into this universe has somehow affected him. He's still trying to deal with these worries on his own when they receive a distress call from another ship. A call which is about to change everything.
A/N: This is a sequel to The Spaces in Between. Which was a CoE sort of fix it, and as such won't fit with Miracle Day canon in any way. I hope to update this weekly.
Starts here
The hours until they reach the Meridian Star pass slowly and uneventfully, with any attempts at communication with the liner failing to elicit a response.
Docking goes with the liner goes smoothly, despite there being no assistance from the Meridian Star, Vran piloting the Ariadne into position with ease.
Once they are docked, everybody except Vran, who is still on the bridge of the Ariadne, gathers at the airlock that now links them to the Meridian Star.
Jack waits for Celesti to give her orders to the crew. It feels odd after being in charge of Torchwood for so long to be standing back and letting somebody else be in charge. Odd, but not bad, as it's something of a relief to not to be the one having to make the hard decisions all the time.
Celesti adjust the gun belt that she's now wearing over her boiler suit, and says, “Me and Jack are going over, I want a couple more volunteers.”
Pol steps forward straight away.
Celesti shakes her head. “No, I want you to stay here. If things go arse up over there I want to know you here get us out. I wouldn't trust just anyone with that.”
Pol doesn't look happy, but nods, saying, “Alright, but don't go looking for trouble.”
“Do I ever?” Celesti laughs.
“I'll go,” Owen says, stepping forward. “There could be people hurt over there.”
“And if it's mechanical failure I might be able to do something.” Kelda steps forward.
Tosh looks at Owen and Kelda for a moment then says, “I'll come too. If it's a software malfunction I may be able to help.”
“Alright, that's enough, I need some of you to stay here,” Celesti says, looking at the small group now stood closer to the airlock. “No sense leaving our own ship deserted.”
There's a slightly disappointed look on Ianto's face at the realisation that he's going to be left behind, but he doesn't say anything.
“What's the readings like in there?” Celesti radios through to Vran.
“Seems fine.” Vran's voice comes over the comm. “The oxygen mix is good. It's a bit warm and damp though, looks like the enviro controls might be shot.”
“Not much of a reason for putting out an all ships distress call, is it?” Celesti says, not really looking for answer. “Okay, lets get going.”
The airlock opens with a hiss, and they walk into the small chamber between the Ariadne's airlock and the one on the Meridian Star.
After a moment the door closes behind them, and the one into the liner opens.
A bit warm and damp is an understatement, and Jack regrets wearing his greatcoat the moment he steps on board the Meridian Star, the heat and humidity making it feel like he’s walking into a tropical rainforest.
“Keep your eyes and ears open,” Celesti says, walking off down the corridor. “Now lets get to the bridge and find out what's going on.”
Celesti's suspicions that the liner is being taken to be broken down for scrap seems to be confirmed as most of the soft furnishings, carpet and most of the decorative wall fittings and hangings have been removed. In a few places, mostly where it had been too difficult or time consuming to removed, fragments remain, giving the liner an air of faded grandeur.
“It must have been beautiful once,” Tosh says looking a crate that's filled with broken up pieces of silver and gold plaster that once would have covered the ceiling in shimmering swirls.
“Yeah,” Jack says, a little wistfully. It's been years, centuries really, since he was last on a liner like this.
“You've been on a ship like this before?” Tosh asks, curious.
“A few times.” Jack smiles at the memories. Sure he'd been working when he'd been on the liners, once as a Time Agent and then a few times later on as a conman, but it had never felt like work. The drinking, dancing and scores of men and women looking for a little bit of holiday romance had seen to that.
Tosh smiles back at him. “It sounds like you enjoyed it.”
“They were good times.” It seems almost unreal now that back then his only worries had been how to leave without paying for anything, and how to avoid getting caught by somebodies jealous partner.
They pause at the door to the bridge. “Do you miss it?”
“I don't know,” Jack says after a moment. It's been so long since he's lived that life, and since the Doctor set him on the course of becoming the man he is now, that he doesn't have an answer.
“I told somebody very special once that going back to that life wouldn't solve anything. That because I left it I'd seen things I'd never have dreamt of, and met and loved people I would never have known.” There are unshed tears in his eyes as he adds, “And I meant it.”
Tosh gives him a sad, knowing smile. “You mean Ianto, don't you?”
“That obvious, huh?”
“You don't mention the Ianto from your world, and you look at ours like he's going to suddenly disappear.” Tosh “I asked Ianto, but he said it wasn't his place to say.”
“He died. Nearly a year...” Jack stops, it barely seems true that that amount of time has passed since the horror of Thames House, of losing Ianto and Stephen.
“I'm sorry.” Tosh puts a hand on his arm.
“So am I.”
“It's not easy losing people,” Tosh says quietly, her eyes haunted by what had happened to her world.
“I have to believe it'll get better, otherwise...” Tosh looks down. “Well, I think you understand.”
“Best to keep busy, right?” Jack says, with a cheerfulness that he really doesn't feel, but thinks that Tosh needs right now. Because while he's lost Ianto and Stephen, Tosh, along with Owen and Ianto have lost everybody they've every known, friends, lovers, family, everything but each other.
Tosh nods. “Nothing like a mysterious ship and its missing crew to take your mind of your problems for a while.”
Tosh is right about mysterious, Jack thinks, there's been no sign of any crew or any indication that there has been anybody on board recently as they've made their way to the bridge.
Looking round the deserted control room, Celesti says, “I don't like it.”
Jack can't help but agree with her: there's something decidedly eerie about the crumbling and silent liner and its missing crew.
Celesti nods towards the controls. “Kelda, see if you can get anything on the logs about why the put out the distress call.”
Kelda looks at the sweep of terminals under the huge curving window at the front of the ship. “Might take a while, controls could still be locked to crew.”
“But if the ship is being decommissioned shouldn't most of the systems be open access?” Tosh says, walking over to one of the control panels. “After all it wouldn't be much use having them locked to a few specific crew members if what you've potentially got is dozens of different construction workers using is every day.”
Kelda looks impressed. Turning to Celesti she says, “You okay with Tosh working on the systems with me?”
“Do what you need to. I want to find out what happened, and if we can call this old crate salvage. Then we get out of here.” Celesti runs a hand through her hair. “And somebody go and fix the thermostats, it's hotter than a Gulbian sauna in here.”
“I'll go,” Jack says, wanting the opportunity to check out more of the ship. “I'm good with my hands.”
“Full of yourself, aren't you?” Celesti says with some amusement, throwing a small radio mic to Jack. “Alright, any trouble and you call back.”
“Yes, ma'am,” Jack says with a smile, knowing it will get a reaction. Then, clipping the mic to coat he sets off.
Stripped of all their furnishings, the bare metal of the corridors echoes dully with the sound of Jack's footsteps as he makes his way through the ship. While the lighting flickers overhead, the hot and humid conditions affecting the wiring.
There's still no sign of any crew as Jack walks along corridors and down steps to reach the room containing the life support systems and environmental controls.
The control room is deserted, and as devoid of clues as to the whereabouts of the crew as the rest of the ship.
There's nothing wrong with the thermostat, Jack finds after minimal inspection of the controls. It has been deliberately set to create hot and humid conditions. Turning it down to a more comfortable level, Jack smiles; he's got an idea as to why the temperature and humidity have been set as high as they have.
“I've turned the heating down,” Jack says into the comm. link. “It should start to get a bit cooler in the next hour or so. There's no sign of the crew, so I'm going to take a look down in the holds, I've got a hunch why the temperature was set so high.”
The comm. crackles, and through the interference Jack can just about make out Celesti saying, “Alright. Any trouble, you get back here.”
It's not far from the environmental control room to the first of the holds, and Jack has just reached it when the lights begin to flicker again, then go off leaving the room in complete darkness.
Jack stands still for a moment, listening. There's no sound to indicate that they might be under attack, although he knows that that might not actually be a good sign; a well planned ambush should be silent.
He knows it could just be the section of ship that he's in that has lost power, the wiring finally having shorted out from the damp.
Staying where he is isn't going to get any answers, and Jack feels his way along the wall of the hold until he reaches what seems to be bales of what must have been the liner's soft furnishings.
His sleeve snags on something as he feels his way along the wall. There's a ripping noise as he pulls it free, followed by the barely audible rasp of material slipping against each other.
A second later something bulky in size, but light in weight topples on to him, knocking him off his feet.
Lying on the deck Jack is aware that something has started falling on him. Slow at first, the fall of dry and musty material seems to increase until it's an avalanche of tiny flakes, covering him, seemingly trying to bury him alive.
Buried alive. Jack starts to cough, suddenly sure that he can feel dirt starting to clog in his throat and nose. Heart pounding he kicks out, trying to untangle his greatcoat from his legs, only to find that there's something twisting about his ankle, stopping him from getting away, keeping him down, maybe even pulling him under.
Fumbling at the catch on the gun holster on his belt, Jack is ready to risk shooting into the darkness and maybe hitting his own legs in an attempt to dislodge whatever has hold of him, when the lights flickers back on and Jack can see what has caught him.
He's lying half buried in a huge pile of dried pink and purple flowers, the twine that had been used to tie the bale tangled around his feet.
Heart pounding, Jack gives a shaky laugh as he frees his feet. Sitting amongst the tiny dried flowers, Jack crumbles a few of them between his fingers. He recognises them as asha flowers, mild alien narcotic, or at least they would be once processed. Right now they're nothing more than illegal pot-pourri.
A quick inspection of the rest of the holds, which would have once been filled with passengers luggage or supplies for the cruise, reveal that they been converted into a huge greenhouse. Banks of lights are suspended from the ceiling, while dozens of raised hydroponic beds, arranged in neat rows, fill the cavernous space.
The gel in the beds is discoloured and starting to dry out, while a few leaves are scattered across the deck, the asha flowers that had been grown there now harvested.
Jack is still wondering why the people who'd gone to so much trouble to cultivate the drugs only to disappear and leave them all behind, when he hears Ianto say, “We were being to think you'd disappeared.”
Jack turns to see Ianto and Orvis standing in the doorway.
“Celesti let you on board then?” Jack asks, glad that they hadn't arrived a few minutes earlier to witness his rather ridiculous struggle with a pile of flowers.
Ianto nods. “She said she wanted the ship checked as quickly as possibly.” He looks at Jack's coat, then asks, “You lost your radio, didn't you?”
Glancing down, Jack can see the radio mic that Celesti has given him is gone, lost mostly likely when the stacked asha bales had fallen on him.
“Found him. Nothing is wrong, not with him any way.” Orvis radios through to Celesti. “We've found out why the ships taking the slow route to nowhere. It's a drugs farm.”
“Shit,” Celesti swears sounding less than happy. “Alright. You do a quick sweep of the next couple of decks, make sure there's nobody hanging about, then get back to the bridge. I've got the rest of the crew searching the other decks. Where you're done get back here and I'll put in a call to the ports authority, tell them we're bringing the Meridian Star in.”
“Should be a nice big reward though,” Orvis says.
“There'd better be.”
Orvis takes the lead, his gun drawn, as they walk down the corridor, checking rooms as they go.
They walk in silence for a few minutes, until Ianto says, “I worked on a steam liner once.”
“A man of many talents.” Jack hopes that it doesn't sound too much like flirting, as he's pretty sure Ianto isn't going to appreciate it at all.
Ianto shakes his head. “Not really, I just was there to help move baggage about and help with the washing.”
“Their loss,” Jack says with a smile.
“I didn't work there long.” Ianto smiles back. “It turned out there were a few stowaways which were a very, very long way from home, a couple of galaxies in fact. It's how I started working for-”
Ianto stops as they open the door to a new section of corridor lined with passengers cabins, the smell of decay hitting them as they do so.
Jack looks at Orvis and Ianto, and can tell by their expressions that they know what is likely to be causing the stench.
Moving forward cautiously, it doesn't taken them long to find the sort of it. Collapsed half in and half out of the doorway to one of the cabins is the remains of the one of the crew of the Meridian Star. Behind him in the cabin there are four more bodies, each similarly decayed and lying dead in their bunks.
Dead for a few days and in the heat and humidity that the ship has been subjected to, rapidly starting to decay.
Ianto looks at the bloated body with a mixture of horror and revolted fascination.
It's an expression that Jack suspects is mirrored on his own face. He can't see any obvious signs that the any of the dead aliens mights have been attacked.
“Don't touch anything,” Orvis says, taking a few steps back. “I'm calling this in.”
“Cel' you ain't going to like this, but it looks like the crews' dead.” Orvis radio's through. “There doesn't look like there was any struggle, most of them are in their bunks. I can't see any laser blast marks, so it could be some sort of disease. We're heading to the airlock now, I suggest getting everybody back to the Ariadne as soon as possible.”
“Oh hell. You sure?”
“Sure as I can be without taking a closer look.” Orvis pauses. “And I'm not doing that with out a hazmat suit.”
“Right, I'll pull everybody back,”Celesti says, sounding like she's come to a decision. “Then I'm sealing this crate up until we get to Polpaxi and it becomes somebody else's problem.”
With one last look back at the body, Jack, Orvis and Ianto make their way back to the airlock.
* * *
Back on the Ariadne, Celesti gathers the crew in the breakroom.
“Okay, everybody listen up,” Celesti says loudly. “I know you're all worried that there was something catching over there, and I'd be a piss poor captain if I wasn't too. But that doesn't mean we panic, 'cause that solves nothing, so this is what we're going to do.”
She looks at her crew and then at Jack, making sure they are all paying attention.
“First off we're keeping the Meridian Star sealed until we get to the shipyard at Polpaxi, nothing goes in and nothing gets out. Second I want everybody who went aboard to get a full decontamination wash, anti-bac gel will left in the showers. Your clothes will need washing in it too. Once that's done we'll run a deep clean of the water re-cyc tanks and bio-filters.”
There's a groan from a couple of her crew, and Celesti glares at them before continuing. “Better safe than sorry, we're damn long way out to go calling for help all because somebody was too lazy to have a wash. And third any of you feel off, and I don't care if you think it's a hangover or some dodgy food you report it in. I'm taking no chances. Any questions?”
“Shouldn't we check the bodies to make sure they did actually die of disease, rather than say taking too much of the drug they were growing?” Owen asks. “I could do it, take a hazmat suit over.”
Celesti shakes her head. “No. If there is anything nasty over there at least our exposure was limited. I'm planning on keeping it that way. Nobody goes back onto the Meridian Star.”
It's a reasonable decision, and Jack can see why she's made it, he just hopes it's the right one.
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Date: 2011-07-02 01:06 am (UTC)Crew all dead .... what is going on. (loved the moment were Jack is being smothered!)
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Date: 2011-07-04 09:37 pm (UTC)