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Transfer Point; to the Valiant
Topic Started: Feb 7 2009, 12:26 PM (1,341 Views)
Captain Jack Harkness
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Director, Torchwood-Three
[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Once outside of Cardiff, Jack made good time, restlessly zipping past slower traffic - impatient to get where he was going and dreading it at the same time. Still, confrontation was better than avoidance; one way or another things would be over. He also reminded himself that Martha would be there, a survivor like him, a Companion and between the two of them, plus his team, there wasn't much he didn't think they could handle. Beneath that, was the knowledge (maybe it was hope) that, even if the Doctor had made clear he'd never come rescue Jack, he might come to help Martha if things got too bad. And, if the Master was still alive, Jack was positive the Doctor would show up for him. It wasn't jealously that made Jack feel vaguely angry, he was sure of it.

At the gate he leaned out with a shining grin and his Torchwood clearance, chuckling as the sentry fumbled his paperwork with a blush before turning to clear it with her superiors. She returned with alacrity, and a bit of confusion, "You're cleared to go in, Group Captain."

"Just what I love to hear," Jack said with a wink as the gates swung wide and he pulled the SUV into the motor pool.

"Okay, kids, everybody out," he said, standing beside the SUV to survey the base. St. Athan's had been, until recently, one of the largest RAF bases and it stretched wide across shallow hills and under a cloud patched blue sky. A series of massive hangers sheltered craft undergoing maintenance and older training planes for the kids still earning their wings. The activity, organized, busy but without the desperation of wartime, made Jack smile as a stiff breeze pulled at the edges of his coat and ruffled his hair.
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Toshiko Sato
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Time Lord
[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Tosh got out of the SUV quickly, crossing her arms over her chest and looking over the base with a swift turn of her head that belied the amount of detail she took in. Exits, buildings, personnel: she catalogued everything with a quick efficiency before looking back to Jack, waiting for instructions. She had mixed feeling about the base, a confusion of the fear and distaste evoked by UNIT and the familiarity she felt with military bases after her parents' careers.

She looked for Andy, but didn't say a thing: just seeing him there was fine. She smiled to Gwen instead, needing something to do.
Edited by Toshiko Sato, Feb 7 2009, 12:54 PM.
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Andy Davidson
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Blames The Jam
[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Andy stretched and cracked his back. It hadn't been a bad drive, but four people in the back of an SUV with six people's worth of luggage was a little bit confining. He didn't catch Tosh's glance, but he saw her go over to Gwen. They looked well situated enough, so he looked around and tried to get his bearings.
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Captain Jack Harkness
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Director, Torchwood-Three
[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
By the time every one had gotten out of the SUV with their carry-alls - Jack opened a case in the relative privacy of the boot and gave everyone one of the newfangled stunners - a flight lieutenant had appeared, posture careful and curious gaze avid. He flicked his gaze across Jack's coat and saluted, flustered.

"Sir."

Jack ignored the faint question beneath it and just nodded at him. "You have a dossier for me?"

"Yes, sir," the lieutenant stepped forward to hand off the clearances Hodges had arranged. Jack didn't bother looking at them, just handed them off to Ianto to put away somewhere. "And we're holding a supply plane on runway six for you, its ready to leave, if you'll come with me."

The lieutenant even had a little open air golf cart - they zipped along, past Quonset huts and barracks, a small group of cadets doing something to a very sad looking plane - until they reached runway six where, indeed, a small military supply plane waited, engines growling in idle and a couple of flight mechanics with irritable shoulders waiting for them. Jack slung his carry-all over his shoulder, grabbed the sides of the doorway -several feet of the ground with no stairs in sight - and muscled his way into the bay, coat sweeping against the airforce gray frame before he dissapeared into the shadows inside.

Then he leaned back out into the light, hand extended. "Come on."
Edited by Captain Jack Harkness, Feb 7 2009, 04:57 PM.
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Andy Davidson
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[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
"Mmm." Andy raised up onto his toes a little to peer up into the plane. "I suppose business class was too much to hope for."

He turned to look at the others. "Anyone want boosties?"
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Captain Jack Harkness
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Director, Torchwood-Three
[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
There was a brief shuffling pause and Gwen rolled her eyes, "Seriously?"

She threw her carry-all up to Jack who caught it as if that's exactly what he was expecting, smiled at Andy, and took up his offer. At the point where she wasn't sure their balance was all that it needed to be, she gave a little huff of frustrated effort because those airmen were watching and she had a pretty good idea why there were no stairs -

Jack's hand slid under her arm and hauled her effortlessly up, grinning as she leaned into him as she got her feet sorted.

"Y'know it'll look really bad if the world ends because no one can figure out who goes first," Jack said behind her as she went to find wherever they were supposed to be for this flight.

It was nothing like a passenger plane, the entire body was open, except for the cockpit and cargo had been webbed into place through most of it. Gwen sidled along with her carryall until she found an open space with built in seats folded along the sides. And lots of straps.
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Toshiko Sato
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[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Tosh watched Gwen scramble up before moving forward herself, her smile less sure. Once they were airborne there really was no going back; if she hesitated much longer she wasn't going to be able to make herself get inside.

She raised onto her tiptoes to pass her bag up to Jack before moving over to Andy as Gwen had, giving him a little nervous smile.

"Thanks," she said quietly, just before he lifted her.
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Andy Davidson
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"No problem." He lifted Tosh easily, and just high enough that Jack could help lift her the rest of the way in.

Andy turned to face Owen and Ianto. "Anyone else?"
Edited by Andy Davidson, Feb 8 2009, 09:33 AM.
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Owen Harper
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[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
With a scowl, Owen stepped forward, letting Andy give him a step up before grabbing Jack's hand and hauling himself up. He stalked into the interior of the airplane, taking in the jump seats with a look of significant disdain.

"Well, UNIT really is rolling out the red carpet for us, aren't they?" he muttered.
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Andy Davidson
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Andy raised an eyebrow Owen's way as he disappeared into the dark of the cargo plane, then gave Ianto a questioning look as if to ask whether the stick up Owen's arse could possibly be as uncomfortable as he made it look.
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i_jones
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[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Ianto caught Andy's look and smirked, tossing his bag up after Owen and letting Andy boost him up into the plane, Jack hauling him the rest of the way up. "Shouldn't have worn the suit, hm?" he said as he pressed by Jack and followed the others into the plane.
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Andy Davidson
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Andy chucked his bag up through the door, then levered himself up in a slightly less dignified imitation of Jack's own effort. Jack's assist partway through was welcome, and probably stopped his ascent from looking as silly on the inside of the plane than it did on the outside.

"I guess you earned those stripes on your coat after all," he said, and hunkered down with his bag near (but not too near) Toshiko.
Edited by Andy Davidson, Feb 8 2009, 11:26 AM.
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Captain Jack Harkness
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Jack chuckled as he checked the door the airmen locked and followed Andy back. "It's doing that while the plane is taking off that separates the officers from ground pizza."

He made sure everyone had mastered their harness before walking foreword, head ducked against the low ceiling, to thump twice on the door to the cockpit. The shift in engine noise was the only response he got as the plane took a hard aft to line up with the runway. Jack skidded back to grab a seat of his own.

The take-off wasn't anything like a civilian lift; the pilots didn't waste time or runway space on a gradual take-off and the insulation fulfilled health regulations but not middle-class expectations. The air roared around them as the engines went high throttle and the lurch into the air threw them all against their harnesses as the plane strained towards the sky. The cargo strapped to the floor and walls creaked around them. Once in the air though, the engine noise quieted somewhat and the flight smoothed out.

"Okay," Jack said, voice lifted over the engine noise. "We've got a forty-five minute flight, more or less, and I've got a lot to tell you so listen up."
Edited by Captain Jack Harkness, Feb 8 2009, 11:56 AM.
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Toshiko Sato
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[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Tosh was hardly aware of the boys getting into the aircraft; she was busy strapping herself in, checking her harness with deft fingers. Once it was done she leaned back to rest her head and closed her eyes, hands clasped in her lap. From the outside it looked as if she were perhaps afraid of flying, but that wasn't true: Tosh was entirely comfortable with planes, and after her father's talk about his work she knew a lot about them. Instead the take off was a comfort: as they gained altitude she used the noise and the movement to distract herself from UNIT, running through the physics and mechanics of it to keep herself distracted.

Only when they had leveled out did she open her eyes to Jack's voice.

"We've got a forty-five minute flight, more or less, and I've got a lot to tell you so listen up."

Tosh waited, expecting facts about the ship's layout or purpose or maybe a few more details about the missing device.
Edited by Toshiko Sato, Feb 8 2009, 12:30 PM.
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i_jones
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Ianto's heart thumped with the engine, his fingers wound into the harness as the plane roared to life. He'd been on a plane precisely once, a hop to Paris when he was eighteen, and though that had taken his initial nervousness he still didn't feel comfortable in the sky, in a machine he had no clue how to fly.

His stomach dropped a little with the sensation of wheels leaving tarmac, and he chewed the inside of his lip to keep from grinning inanely.

"Okay," Jack said, half-shouting to be heard. "We've got a forty-five minute flight, more or less, and I've got a lot to tell you so listen up."

Ianto let out a breath, mentally congratulating Jack on choosing a time to brief them that made it difficult to ask too many questions.
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Captain Jack Harkness
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His team looked up at him, waiting to understand. Jack tightened his grip on his harness, licking his lips as he searched for a place to start. Start at the beginning, wasn't so easy when the beginning was the end, the end was the beginning and the middle had been erased.

"Okay, so you saw Saxon assassinate the President," a beginning, at last, even if it happened at the end of the story. "Then he got killed - the end. Except it wasn't; it was the beginning."

"Saxon didn't die then." Jack unbuckled his harness to stand, clinging to the cargo webbing above their heads because he couldn't sit through this - and the feeling of restraint made him twitch as he spoke Saxon's name. "He died a year later, an entire year that didn't happen for you. That you don't remember," he corrected himself.

"It happened for the Valiant, for the crew on it, for a few other survivors -" Jack shifted frustrated. "During that year ... Saxon pretty much destroyed the Earth, he - he brought an army from the end of the universe, from a future so far away that even the stars had died; he brought the last survivors of the human species back into their own past to destroy it. He called them the Toclofane."


ooc: i'm going to break this up a bit, feel free to interupt with questions etc
Edited by Captain Jack Harkness, Feb 8 2009, 02:59 PM.
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Toshiko Sato
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Whatever Tosh had been expecting, it certainly wasn't anything like that. She had worked with Jack long enough to recognize the restless energy in his body, the tension that curled its way up under his shoulders and tightened over his arms; something was very, very wrong and, as she began to hear what, her mouth fell slightly open. The whole thing was simply too big for her to grasp: a year that never was, a year where they lived and yet they couldn't remember any of it but Jack did, just the look in his eyes told her that he did, even without anything else.

"How did time reset?" she said, hardly audible over the engines. It was the only angle on the whole thing that she was able to grasp; everything else about it was simply too much to comprehend. What had they done for that time? What had been done to Jack? Why could he remember it? Why--

She looked round the others quickly for their reactions.
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Owen Harper
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Jam
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Owen frowned. Jack was putting him on edge. "Wait, those stupid spheres?" They'd only seen the news feeds afterwards, but they'd looked like a play for power more than anything else.
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Andy Davidson
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Blames The Jam
[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Andy had barely buckled in before Jack knocked to give the signal. The takeoff was faster than he was prepared for, and he white-knuckled the webbed straps of his harness. It felt like a roller coaster without the rails (or a little bit like that last second before he'd landed in the old Ystradgynlais) and he felt suddenly queasy and a little terrified. He made a tiny sound in his throat, but couldn't quite bring himself to close his eyes.

Not again. Never again. Oh god.

The world stayed solid around him, though, and the ride smoothed out. He let out a long, guts-stabilizing breath as Jack addressed them. "Okay. We've got a forty-five minute flight, more or less, and I've got a lot to tell you so listen up."

Andy nodded and swallowed. His mouth and throat felt sour, and he was still a little pale, but he was okay. Mostly. He listened as Jack began to explain about Saxon's army, the destruction of the world, and about a year that no one remembered.

"So the Valiant's a year older than it is? Or it's really a year later than it is?"
Edited by Andy Davidson, Feb 8 2009, 03:20 PM.
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Captain Jack Harkness
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[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Jack's mout twisted, "Yes, those stupid spheres."

He latched onto Andy's questions which was relatively simple. "Effectively, the Valiant is a year older than everything else in the universe. You aren't missing a year, it never happened - trust me, you didn't miss anything worth knowing."

"That's one of the reasons everyone is so interested in it, you can see pieces of that year on the Valiant," Jack had to swallow against a dry mouth. "Anyone who was on the Valiant too, they're all a year older and experienced everything that happened."

"It's the classic paradox," Jack said to Tosh, sweat glinting at his temple. "Go back in time and kill your grandmother? You don't exist so you can't go back in time ... so your grandmother lives, so you are born after all and you go back in time .... The Toclofane weren't beneficial aliens," Jack's voice twisted as he mocked the Master's words shortly before the world began to end. "They were the final descendants of humanity, born hundreds of trillions of years in the future. The first thing Saxon had them do was ... kill ten percent of the world's human population."

Jack licked his lips and he was sure the engine noise would cover the crack in is voice. "Mostly because he wanted to but I think he was testing his paradox machine. If the Toclofane could kill their own ancestors yet not undo the timeline, then he'd ... well, it worked."

"Saxon stole a - a time ship and used it to build a paradox machine. One strong enough to hold a paradox on the universal scale - " something that only a TARDiS; an ancient TARDiS had the power to do. "- when the paradox machine was destroyed, the paradox was undone. Anything that happened within the paradox ceased to exist; the first Toclofane that killed the first human was the moment the paradox started and that was just a moment after the president was assassinated."
Edited by Captain Jack Harkness, Feb 8 2009, 03:47 PM.
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