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amand_rTitle: Leviathan 2/3
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
amand_r
Prompt: Jaws
Characters: Jack, Gwen, Ianto, random OCs
Rating: R for violence
Wordcount: 24,700
Spoilers: You don't have to have seen Jaws. But you should. You really should. All canon through season two of Torchwood is assumed.
Disclaimer: I do not have any rights over Jaws and/or Torchwood, nor can or do I make any money off any fictive enterprises that I might undertake with them. All I have are a handful of Skittles that are all warm in my pocket. Sue me and taste the linty rainbow, people.
Author's Notes: Read it before you go swimming. In Wales. Where it's cold.
Real Author's Notes: Thanks tomisswinterhill and joanwilder for the beta goodness. And to the mods, for patience. alba17, you're beyond deification. Also, I might've played merry cob with maritime authorisation rules, though for the most part, jurisdictions et al are correctly observed. I'm not Tom Clancy. Also, I wrote this to so much techno, I might have given myself an arrhythmia.
Summary: South Wales had everything. Clear skies. Gentle surf. Warm water. People flocked there every summer. No wait, they didn't. That doesn't really matter. It was the perfect feeding ground anyway.
PREVIOUSLY, ON TORCHWOOD: Part One
SATURDAY NIGHT, AFTER EVERYONE HAS TIED ONE ON:
It was odd how the lack of bodies could be just as bothersome mentally as a container of human chum, Ianto mused. Not one body had been recovered from the wreckage of the WaterBus, even though the boat had been half-full. Ianto imagined pieces of the people floating in the eddies and currents of the bay, being eaten by the gulls that touched down in the water. Eaten by fish. He knew it happened, he just didn't want to have to think about it.
In his head, Ianto always put on victims the faces of people he loved: Gwen, Rhi, Mica, David, reduced to parts and fish food. It was enough to drive a man to drink.
And well, hey…
Ianto sat in front of the weevil cage and drank from his beer. He settled back on the chair and placed the bottle on the floor beside him. Janet's eyes darted to the bottle, then back at his face. He leant forward and rested his arms on his knees. That lasted for a few seconds and then he put his head in his hands. There was a rustle in front of him, and when he rolled his eyes up at Janet, she was sitting on her cot with her head in her hands, peeking out at him.
Ianto slid his fingers down his face. Janet slid her fingers down her face.
Ianto clasped his hands in front of him. Janet curled her hands into a prayer gesture.
Ianto scrunched his face up into a snarl. Janet's lips slid away from her teeth more than they already did.
He curled his fingers into claws. Janet raised her hands, curled the (real) claws, and growled.
Ianto smiled. "Give us a kiss."
Janet foamed at the mouth with rage and ran at the glass, banging her head with a resounding thud and falling backwards onto the floor of her cell. Ianto sat back in his chair and picked up the beer bottle, taking a drink.
"Good girl. I needed that." Janet shook her head and growled at him from her crouch on the floor.
"You're vindictive, you know that?" Ianto turned his head and watched Jack push off from the doorframe. He raised a bottle in his hand. "Chateau Lafite, nineteen…" Jack glanced at the bottle, whose label had worn to almost illegibility. "Something something." He pulled the cork from the bottle with his teeth. "I opened it upstairs and let it breathe, whatever."
Ianto shook his head. "Glasses?"
Jack held out his other hand and let Ianto choose one of the identical thick-bottomed tumblers clipped in his fingers. "Only the best."
"Hm." Ianto didn't bother asking how Jack had got his hands on it. He didn't have to. Jack started to pour a little into his glass, sinking onto the floor in front of him and leaning back against his left leg.
"I got a case of this from Élie de Rothschild back in forty-five when we moved through Bordeaux," Jack said. "I'm not a wine person. But something about investment, and I could stand to have some money, you know, with my life span and," he gestured with his tumbler, filled two inches. "Blah blah blah." He pulled Ianto's glass-filled hand forward and tipped the bottle over it. "Say when."
The wine passed the halfway mark in the glass and Jack paused. Ianto shook the glass minutely and the bottle tilted again.
There was about a centimeter left of the glass when Ianto nudged Jack with his knee. Jack held the bottle up to the light and examined the three inches remaining. Ianto merely rested his back against the chair and helped himself to a long swallow.
Jack sipped his wine. "So here's the thing."
"There's always a thing," Ianto agreed. It was true. Even Janet agreed. There were things.
Okay, so maybe he'd had about four beers before this.
"Yeah, so here's the thing. That monster they caught. The Amaldan." Jack shrugged. "It could be the monster we're looking for, it really could, but I would just…"
"You would feel better if we knew for certain." Ianto drank deeply and admired the robust something or other he was supposed to be appreciating about the wine. He liked the fermented grapes part. That was the part that made him all tingly.
Jack toasted Janet, and for a second, Ianto could see them both reflected in the glass of her cage, Ianto all dark except for a pale floating head, and the blue of Jack's shirt, light enough to give him more definition than just a spectre of a face, more permanency in even their reflections in the glass.
"I would." He leaned his head back and regarded Ianto upside down. "What do you say about breaking into UNIT's facility?"
Ianto grinned. "And I was complaining that you never take me anywhere nice."
Jack grunted and rose to his feet, holding out a hand. "We don't have to break in, you know."
Ianto nodded and Janet let out a low moan. "We can do anything; we're Torchwood."
UNIT FACILITY #69947-K664, PENARTH, THIRTY MINUTES LATER:
"Wow," Jack said as they entered the warehouse to see the Amaldan hanging from the ceiling by a couple of jerry-rigged hooks and levers. Stink and water and…whatever sloughed off dead creatures dripped onto the floor below it, and Ianto was glad he'd put on the wellies from the back of the SUV.
They hadn't had to break into anything, really, just flash their badges. Ianto had signed them into the facility while Jack had sexually harassed the gate guard, and then they'd procured a motor cart and rolled through the area at what was probably an inappropriate speed. Jack had driven the SUV, and so he had let Ianto drive the cart, saying, "How fast can this thing go, anyway?'
Answer: forty kilometers per hour.
But now, Jack circled the Amaldan and looked up at it, Ianto wondered just how they were going to search the innards of a rotting flesh piñata above their heads.
Laser Saw it was, then. Jack held the device as close to the creature as he could, tilted at an angle so that he could avoid the spillage, and set the laser to work. It cut a large slit in the Amaldan's purple underbelly (now more a milky lavender), and as soon as the flesh parted, innards began to fall down onto the concrete, splashing against the crates scattered about the room, and Jack, who made a noise and covered his mouth with his arm.
"Now that," he said loudly, "is rancid."
The smell hit Ianto and he staggered backwards. Dear god, it occurred to him, the things pooling about his feet could very well be digested people, or at the least, a sea of stomach acids. He lifted one wellie and examined where the acid had come in contact with it: still intact. He didn't want to be standing there and suddenly feel a burning sensation in his toes.
It was easy to see the large chunks of things the Amaldan had consumed: clumps of seaweed, a tyre, multitudes of fish, whole and in varying stages of digestion. What might be a chunk of human flesh or a fish close to becoming liquid. Ianto pushed things around with his toes and looked for the pocket handkerchief he'd brought along on purpose.
"It did a circuit in Northern waters," Jack said, kicking through the debris on the floor.
Ianto was glad that he'd dipped his handkerchief in cologne that morning in anticipation of smelling some very rank fish-related things. He coughed and waded through the spillage. "How you know?"
Jack kicked an object and it skittered towards Ianto, slipping and spinning a few feet from him. Once it was still, Ianto realised that he was looking at a sheep head. Oh ha ha.
"You know what I'm not seeing," Ianto said softly.
Jack took a long metal pulley rod and poked at the Amaldan around the open flaps of the carcass. "Yeah, I know."
"Could they have been…digested already?" Ianto queried. "Or, no, not if that head is still intact. It couldn't have eaten that today, right? It had to have been—"
Jack shrugged. "I'm guessing it's slow. It's a huge thing, sluggish, cold water. Slow digestion. We should be seeing something." He tossed the rod off to the side in the darkness and brushed his hands on his coat before spying a bunch of rags off in the corner. Ianto took advantage of Jack's retreat to move out of the mess itself and lean against a crate. Jack ran the rag under the tap in the corner, then wiped his face.
"Are you okay?" Ianto asked.
Jack was frozen, staring down, lost in thought probably, though what was on his mind was anyone's guess. Probably what Ianto was going to say now.
"We've got to close the bay. Call the coast guard. UNIT. All the—"
"We've got a bigger problem than that, Ianto. We've still got a hell of a thing out there with a mouth about as big as the SUV." Jack sighed. "We should look into getting ourselves a boat." He handed Ianto the wet towel and watched as he washed his hands. "We have to go out there."
Ianto looked up. "On the water?"
Jack smiled and turned, leading the way out of the warehouse. "Well, if we're looking for a sea monster, we're not going to find him on the land."
Ianto threw the towel over one of the spare crates. UNIT could clean up this mess. "Yeah, but I'm not drunk enough to go out on a boat."
"Yes, you are," Jack laughed.
Ianto slid the door shut and breathed in the wet summer air. "No, I'm not."
"Yes, you are."
"I can't do that."
"Yes, you can."
LATER, PENARTH MARINA, 'STEALTH MODE' IS ENGAGED:
"Where did you get this boat, anyway?" Ianto said as they boarded the small motorboat that Ianto was sure doubled as a deathtrap in a former life. The thing rocked perilously as he stepped on board, and he knew it had to be his drunken imagination, because the boat was big enough that boarding shouldn't have rocked it as much as he thought.
Jack turned the key and the engine grumbled crankily. "I didn't get it. The keys are in it. Remember about ten seconds ago when I told you to keep a look out for anyone?"
Ianto glanced about the Penarth Marina. "Are we stealing this?"
Jack shrugged. "We're commandeering it."
"Good to know when the police are taking me away I can say, 'But constable, we commandeered it." He rummaged about in a bin for a life vest and found two, offering one to Jack, who waved him away with a hand.
Jack turned over the engine and grinned. "Don't you love being above the police?"
Ianto slipped the vest over his head. If he was this drunk on land, that had to increase exponentially when he was off land and out in water. His brain was sure that if he were to blast into space, he would be even more intoxicated. This was possibly drunk-logic talking.
"I do," he mumbled, fussing with the straps. There were about six, no wait, eight too many of them.
Jack steered them out of the marina with a minimum of fuss, only one minor almost-collision with a parked yacht, and that might have been because a drunken Ianto had grabbed Jack's shoulders and said, "Dear god, watch out for that boat!" and thusly prevented him from steering around the boat. As it was, they cleared the hull of the much larger and more expensive ship and headed out to the dark waters with only a few lit buoys to guide their way.
"How far do we have to go out?" he asked Jack, trying to stand next to him at the wheel but rather falling backwards every time Jack hit the throttle, which seemed to be every five seconds or so. It was as if Jack was doing it on purpose. Ianto watched his hands. Maybe he was doing it on purpose.
Jack glanced at him and waved a hand. "I don't know. It's a night feeder."
Ianto blinked. "No, it's not." When Jack stared at him, he gesticulated wildly at the water in front of them. "Keep your eyes on the road."
Jack laughed. "Sit down before you fall down." And then, over the increasing throttle as Ianto fell back into the side seat, "Are you drunk enough now?"
Ianto took his pulse. "Possibly."
"Then now is a good time." The engine gunned and Jack took them through the sound barrier and all of the sudden when Ianto looked back at the marina, it was a thin ribbon of indistinguishable lights. He took in a deep breath and tried not to think of watertaxis. Maybe the creature would think they were insignificant. Maybe it wouldn't even notice them. Maybe later he'd turn into a dolphin and swim back to shore, too.
Jack swung the boat about. It was as if he loved being on the water because he didn't have to stay in a lane. Ianto wondered if this was how he had flown spaceships. Probably. He sat back against the seat and felt the patterned rocking of the boat when he closed his eyes and tried to pretend that he was on a star cruiser, headed out to the Lotus Nebula or the Orion…Gazega or something, but the wind on his face and the bell-like ringing of the buoys and Jack's singing were distracting him from his fantasy.
"Shooooow me the way to go hooooome," Jack sang, swinging the wheel and kicking something at his feet. "I'm tired and I wanna go to bed!"
Ianto gritted his teeth and just thanked the gods of rugby (the only gods he prayed to, actually) that eventually Jack would stop and they would be able to drift for a while. Also that they wouldn't get eaten. And that he wouldn't vomit. And for some chips. And then, just so he didn't seem selfish, for the health and safety of the Queen and his sister and her family. He was considering the possibility that he might have asked the gods of rugby for too much when Jack slowed the boat and cut the engines, his voice becoming louder for the lack of sound.
"…and it's gone right to…." His voice slowed and softened as he became distracted and Ianto opened his eyes to see Jack staring out in front of the boat's path. "…my head."
Ianto turned his head to see the object that had distracted the Captain whilst captaining (a joke he had yet to redeem). Ahead of them, part of a boat sat in the water. It was obviously some sort of large sailboat, or rather it would have been if it had had intact masts. They stuck into the sky like broken fingernails, shreds of sails hanging down and into the water where they floated at the surface, coating the water with an extra white sheen.
His eyes tried to move quickly over the boat, looking for bodies, whole or partial, blood even, and he found none. The boat groaned with the slow sucking in of water pressure changing as it sank; it had been sinking for some time.
"What is that?" Ianto slurred. Oh Jesus, it was true: the half a bottle of Pinot Grigio he'd drunk on the way here in the car under Jack's enabling eye was catching up with him.
Jack turned the sodium light so that it hit the structure more clearly. "That is a schooner. Well, what's left of her." He waved the light about gently, and Ianto had the feeling he was either looking for something specific, or moving the light slowly enough so that Ianto could keep up with it. He was about to tell Jack that second option was a lost cause when the schooner listed a little and sank further into the water. Something had seriously compromised her hull.
"What is a schooner?" he drawled, hands on the railing and trying not to lean out over the edge of the boat. He had this feeling that if he wasn't visible from in the water, then the creature wouldn't know that he was there.
"A sailboat with two or more sails, fore and aft," Jack said lightly. His mouth was drawn in a line and he ground his jaw.
Ianto leant closer to the boat—no, no, schooner. "How do you even know that?"
Jack snorted. "Captain." Self-identifying finger stab.
"In the RAF," Ianto said, rolling his eyes. "That's the air."
"Close enough, just as apt, might as well," Jack rattled off. "I read, okay?"
Ianto tried to laugh, but it wasn't funny. Not when the boat in front of them was sinking into the water. Or maybe it was just floating. Only half of it was visible, so it had to be sinking. Ianto didn't know anything about a) boats or b) how fast they sank or c) if he was wearing this life vest correctly. Suddenly that seemed very very important. He pulled a cord and almost cut off his air supply.
Jack hooked the sodium light on a pole next to the boat's windshield and fiddled with the straps to Ianto's vest. His brow knit and he patted the vest with finality. "Okay, you're set. Unless you want a pair of water wings?" When Ianto reached up and smacked his shoulder, he chuckled. "I have to go in the water for a sec, okay?" Jack's hands travelled to Ianto's arms, sliding up and down from elbow to shoulder in what Ianto would have found a comforting gesture if he hadn't been three sheets.
The schooner had three sails. Not. A. Good. Comparison.
"Okay, but you do know that something ate that boat, right?" Ianto said, wondering if he was going to get hysterical. It had not, really, he reminded himself, escaped his notice that he was in the middle of more water than he could drink. Whenever one was in more water than they could drink, the possibility of drowning increased by ninety-eight percent.
"Ianto, look—" Jack pointed out to the water, where a dozen or so seagulls floated on the waves. Ianto blinked and tried to remember what was important about them. Oh. Oh.
"Well, that's cracker," he said. "Oh but not for…" He looked back at the boat sagging in the water. Something silver and shiny in the wreckage caught his eye. "That looks significant."
Jack followed his pointing finger to the wooden splinters of the sinking boat. "I dunno. Let's find out."
He watched Jack kick off his shoes and socks, shed his coat and outer shirt and peel off his trousers, setting the Webley on top of the pile and eyeing Ianto in a way that was a sort of passing of the torch. He stood, pointed at the controls of the boat.
"Ignition, throttle, brake, wheel." He winked. "I don't think you'll have to worry about hitting anything if you have to do this yourself, but remember you want to go northeast, right here," he tapped the lit electronic compass." But that's bollocks, because I'll be right back."
Ianto nodded and watched Jack pull the diving knife from the same place he'd got the life vest, and wondered if this were the end. Oh come on now, Jones, Jack was indestructible. If the thing ate him, he'd just cut himself out of the stomach and swim up to the surface.
Jack gave him a peck on the cheek, sat him on the bench and slapped his shoulder. "I'll be back," he said in a bad accent and sat on the edge of the boat, knife in one hand, a waterproof torch in the other.
"Oh ha ha," Ianto said and pushed Jack over the side. Oops. Well, he was going that way anyway.
He wanted to take out his stopwatch and time Jack, but he was afraid of what the sea air would do to the mechanics of it, and so he simply patted his waistcoat pocket and wished that he had his jacket. It was considerably cooler out here on the water, especially now that the sun had set. The boat rocked in the wind and the waves, and he clapped his hands together before resting his forearms on his knees and leaning forward. Oh, no, that was nauseating.
He didn't know how long to give Jack. He could hear the occasional knock of something on the sides of the sinking boat, possibly Jack working with his knife, doing something in or on the hull. Ianto wondered if he'd encountered bodies. Or the creature. A glance out at the gulls drifting about in the water brought some reassurance, not unlike a canary singing in a mineshaft.
He lost track of time, but he thought about counting in the manner his Gran had taught him when waiting for thunder after lightning: one Glenmorangie, two Glenmorangie, three Glenmorangie and so on, when there was a screech on the hull behind him and he shot to his feet so suddenly that he almost fell over the other side of the boat.
Jack surfaced with a shuddering intake of air that reminded Ianto of other times that Jack seemed to rise from the dead (did rise from the dead), and he grabbed for the side of the boat, his fingers skidding along the smooth surface frantically. "Get me up, get me up," he rasped impatiently, and Ianto complied by reaching down and locking forearms to haul Jack up to the deck. Jack seemed to shoot out of the water when Ianto pulled and they both flew backwards into the boat. Jack rolled off and knelt, probably some sort of reflex, but Ianto righted himself more gradually.
"No sign of anyone," Jack said quickly. "But this, this, I got from the hole in the bottom." He sighed. "I know this," he breathed, using the sodium lights hanging in the boat to illuminate what he held in his hand. Ianto noticed that the diver's knife was gone. Maybe he'd dropped it. Whoops. Sorry, actual owner of said boat.
"I know what this is," Jack muttered, "oh god, I know what this is." He pushed himself to standing and swayed a little, staggering back, the tooth clattering to the deck. Ianto stared at it. It was a wicked thing, metallic silver, like metal, and as long as Ianto's hand from middle tip to bottom palm. He wasn't looking forward to meeting the thing in whose mouth it belonged.
Jack recovered quickly. "Get the mooring lines," he muttered, yanking on his trousers and stuffing his feet into his boots, socks forgotten. His fingers scrabbled at the laces as if he was frantic to tie them and get the hell out of there. "We have to tow this in."
Ianto glanced about. What the hell were mooring lines? "Jack," he started, but stopped when Jack turned away and walked to the far end of the boat, rummaging in one of the huge bins, producing coils of rope.
Ianto thought about sicking up over the side of the boat. He'd told Jack that he wouldn't when they were on the way over in the SUV, but now he wasn't so sure. Plus, so he vomited in the ocean, it wasn't as if he'd have to wash it off anything.
Jack tossed a coil of rope at him before he leant over towards the sinking boat and clipped some carabiners to a few of the holds and stays on the bit of bow still above the water. Ianto tried to fasten the ropes to the back of their boat, but Jack simply waved his hands away, securing the lines and clearing the engine propellers before starting her up and steering them off. There was a jolt when the mooring lines were pulled taut, and the engine bucked until the schooner started to drift with them. Jack geared the engine down and stood rigidly at the wheel, wet clothes drying in the wind, hair puffing a bit in the humidity.
Ianto wrapped his arms about his waist and rested his chin on Jack's shoulder. They were out in the middle of the water and no one would ever see; that was just the way he liked it sometimes. "What is it Jack? What's this thing?"
Jack leaned back into him, but Ianto couldn't be sure if it was authentic or just the swaying of the water that did it. "It's a nightmare," he said softly, almost too softly to hear over the purr of the engine. "A nightmare from another world."
MONDAY MORNING, JUST OFF THE GLAMORGAN HERITAGE COAST:
"The Mistral Maiden," Ianto said in a booming voice so that Jack could hear him over the thousand or so homicidal seagulls that littered the beach to pick through the wreckage washing up with the tide. "A hundred-foot pleasure yacht loaded with wedding guests sailing up and down the coast while the DJ played hits of the seventies and eighties." At that moment a vinyl 45 clacked against the rocks at his feet, and he bent down to scoop it out of the water. The Captain and Tenille.
Jack looked over his shoulder. "'Love Will Keep Us Together,'" he mused. "There are many things we could say right now."
Ianto threw the record out in the water again, where he hoped it would sink, never to be seen again. "None of them appropriate at the site of a boat wreckage."
Gwen trotted towards them, her mouth taut. "There were people on the shore," she said when she got close enough to yell comfortably, and then her voice tapered down to a reasonable tone when the three of them stood in a huddle, protecting their eyes from the wind and occasional gust of sand.
Jack and Ianto glanced back at the gaggle of people, most of them gawkers, but a few that had been pulled aside by the police to have their statements taken. "Ah, what did they see?"
Gwen held out a palm camera. "See for yourself."
They huddled over the little flip out screen, shielding their eyes and the LCD, but it was impossible to see until Jack took off his coat and flung it over their heads. Ianto had no doubt they looked a sight, three people smashed together, top halves hidden under a military greatcoat. On a beach in the middle of summer. Lovely. Torchwood: confounding the locals since…ever.
The video was dark, it being shot at night and all, but the boat was clearly visible out on the water, a floating nest of fairy lights outlining the shape of her, from stern to bow, bottom to top. All the way up the rigging. Gwen had turned the volume up on the player, and even with the wind in the mic and the giggling of the cameraperson, he could hear the dull thumpa thumpa of the bass from the ship's onboard speakers.
"Nellie wants shots from the shore," a female voice said. "For the video." Ianto's stomach turned. This was Nellie's wedding video right here. The rest was on its way to the bottom of the ocean.
"Do you think Clive really has a giant pecker?" another female voice asked. "Nellie said it's huge." Ianto wondered if they'd planned on editing the sound after they'd shot this.
The camera swayed a little. Obviously whoever was taking the video was a little pissed herself, if the cant of the lens was any indication. "Well, I'm not asking, and I don’t care. He's got a dog face." Oh, they had to have been planning to edit this.
Both women were giggling when the first shadow slid over the fairy lights on the boat, down by the stern, almost unnoticeable, unless you were looking for it, which Ianto was.
"That's where it start—" Gwen began, but suddenly the outline of the boat shuddered and the middle bent, just like the WaterBus had. There was the faint noise of unified screams from the boat's passengers, and as the craft made a V of lights, the cameraperson steadied the machine, no doubt in shock. The other person's voice whispered, "Oh my god."
More shadows fell on opposite ends of the boat and pulled down, bending the halves in half, and the line of the boat made a capital M for a second before the lights blinked out.
"Oh my god oh my god," the cameraperson whispered. "Oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god," over and over as the screams offshore grew louder, each distinct voice too soft to hear but altogether sounding like a cacophony of anguish and grinding metal and plastic and wood until what Ianto thought might be the boat (it was difficult to tell now, now that the lights had gone out and the moon was dark—he stared at the screen where the boat had been) was sucked, pulled or yanked under, or into pieces.
"Jenn, call 999. Call them," the cameraperson said, and the camera was lowered to the ground, jostling as it hit the sand and stared sideways out at the water. "Call 999, Jenn, go!" They could hear the clatter of someone, probably Jenn, dropping her bag to the sand and digging, no doubt for a mobile. The cameraperson—not Jenn—came into view as she ran towards the waterline.
Ianto couldn't make out what she was screaming, what she was saying at the edge of the water, but he heard Jenn get the 999 operator: "Oh sweet Jesus come, the boat there's something with the boat it's gone oh god—"
Gwen snapped the screen shut on the camera and they de-huddled. Jack pulled the coat from their heads and the solar flare of sudden sun was blinding. He really needed those sunglasses.
"By the time the police got here with water rescue, the Coast guard was already out there--" She waved a hand at the two small boats out on the water, pulling wreckage in with hooks and nets. "They haven't found a single body, except for…." They followed her finger to the ambulance that sat on the side of the road, and the small litter that protruded from it, a litter that carried a tiny body. "The flower girl, I reckon, by the looks of her dress. Poor thing can't be over three and a half, and she's in shock."
Ianto stared back out at the water, forcing his eyes to remain open so that he could think about a child's plastic doll floating in the water.
Jack sighed. "Probably hung on to something and managed to stay off the creature's radar. It sees heat signatures."
Gwen stuffed the camera in her bag and crossed her arms, glancing from the ambulance to Jack and back again. "Yeah? And how do you know that?"
Ianto had been waiting for Jack to open up about the creature that he'd seemed to recognise the night they'd gone out on the boat. Ianto had been pretty pissed, but he had remembered the metallic tooth and Jack's panicked mumbling, and the way he'd clenched the steering wheel of the boat in a deathgrip all the way back.
The problem was that Jack didn't talk about these kinds of things, things that were obviously from his past, almost to an infuriating degree, seeing as how twice already that past had come back to bite them. Kill them, actually, not that Ianto thought knowing about Gray could have prevented what had happened to Tosh and Owen.
They walked towards the road away from the shore, Gwen accepted a cup of water from the SOCO, and they separated from the gaggle of people, one of them the Jenn from the video, as she was still shaking and saying, "It was horrible, just terrible," to the officer taking her statement. Ianto wondered just how long he'd been taking it. It wasn't her fault. People who witnessed violent atrocities were rarely coherent for a while after, and if they were coherent, it usually meant that there was something to worry about.
Jack was a few feet ahead of them, but he was already talking. "We need to call Colonel Storr again, this time no more flower jokes." Ianto smirked in spite of himself. It wasn't funny. Okay the plastic flowers he'd sent Storr the first time had been macabre and funny.
Everyone loved plastic daisies.
Jack finally stopped about a hundred feet from the emergency vehicles and faced the water. "They're going to tell us that they want us to take care of it, because it's a Welsh problem," he said softly. "And they'll send us a boat, but it will be a piece of shit." He glanced at Gwen over his shoulder. "And they'll say, 'What happened to the mighty Torchwood?'"
Ianto snorted. "I think it imploded in London." He cocked his head. "Where was UNIT then?"
Jack tsked. "Now is not the time to quibble. I want a platoon, or a squadron, or whatever they call it over there, and I want some big bombs." Jack pulled his hands from his pockets and waved them in the general direction of the channel. "Do they make harpoons big enough for this?"
Ianto winked at Gwen. "I saw them at Costco in a twelve pack," he retorted lightly. It was good. If they could all get past the video, past the little girl back there on the litter, past the Captain & Tenille sinking to the bottom of the ocean, then they could do their jobs.
Jack didn't laugh. "I bet they'll send Llewellyn." Another glance back at Ianto. "You'll like him." He shoved his hands back into his coat and rocked on his heels. "We'll have to hear all about the beasties of the deep."
"Jack," Gwen said, sitting down on the rock edge of the fence and drinking her water before making a face and pouring it on the sand. "Ianto says you know what this is."
Ianto parked himself a few feet from her on the ledge and allowed for a space where Jack could sit between them if he wanted to. Jack liked to confide in them when they were next to him, sometimes, a fact that hadn't escaped Ianto's notice. Maybe he wanted them to be able to hear him the first time, or maybe he wanted the assurance of them both being near him, or maybe he just liked to be in the middle. Probably all three.
But Jack was turned away in front of them, hands in his coat pockets, staring out to sea. He just needed a swell of some music and the picture would be complete: the hero broods. Ianto rolled his eyes at Gwen and massaged his temple with two fingers. It was bright, and that brightness had caught up with his skull.
It was good that they were going to do this, though, Ianto thought. Jack had declined to tell either of them what they were dealing with, and soon Ianto and Gwen had planned to stage a coup. They figured that they could lock Jack in the conference room and then force him to tell them. Gwen had suggested that Jack would listen to logic. Ianto had solemnly added, yes, and failing that, tickling had been known to subdue him as well.
Gwen sometimes had no sense of humor. Gallows humor, really. He didn't blame her. Gallows weren't really funny, once you got a good look at them. Much like severed hands.
"I grew up on the sea," Jack said softly and Ianto sat up straighter. Gwen glanced at him, one eyebrow raised. Ianto was fairly sure that Gwen knew less about Jack's origins than he did, which was pretty much next to nothing. Even after Gray and Hart, Jack remained tightlipped about even the name of his home. Homeworld, Ianto corrected himself, since he'd long convinced himself that Jack wasn't from this planet. Or from this now.
He held his breath, as if the expiration of air was going to change Jack's mind about confiding. Gwen glanced back down at the cup that she was slowly dismantling into a long curled paper strip.
"The waters of my homeland," Jack said, as if rebooting the story to start in a less personal way, "had a monster just like this one. Many of them, actually."
Ianto sucked in his cheeks and stared at the bird on the shore. Gwen shredded her coffee cup in her fingers. Jack stood away from them, but they could hear his voice, bright and chipper, as if he were simply describing the seaside view to an onlooker: And here we have the majestic shores of the Glamorgan, a historical stretch of land that as of last night was a graveyard to at least seventy-five people…
"They weren't native to it, but they were brought by the…well, they were brought. Grown." Jack turned and smiled weakly. "I don't remember if they were always there, but they were as far back as I can recall. Agents of war, actually, hard to control." His hands flapped in his pockets, and the coat flew out in a woolen shrug. "I don't think they were ever controlled."
"What are they?" Gwen said, and Ianto wanted to tell her to hush, but he wasn't the inquisitor here. Gwen had training in this sort of thing, this gentle prodding, and he had to admit that sometimes Jack told her more than he told Ianto sometimes. It should have been the other way around, probably, but he had long since reconciled himself to the fact that Jack would tell more tales to an old soldier than an old lover. Ianto was still working on the soldier part.
"We didn't name them." Jack made his way back to them, as if now that he had opened the floodgates, he could sit down, could look at them, could voice what he wanted to say to the faces, their bodies. "I only saw them a few times, when I was a boy."
Ianto let one of his hands, the one closest to Jack, rest on the rock between them, tips of his fingers just barely under Jack's thigh. Gwen took Jack's other hand in hers and held it in her lap, a placeholder maybe for someone else. Jack's eyes traveled the length of the water, as if he were looking for it even now. Ianto watched the gulls sail out over the waves.
"They were giant creatures," Jack said, his eyes still darting. "Made of mouths, too many to count, and tentacles, sure, but so many mouths they looked like pincushions of blinding silver teeth."
Ianto remembered the dagger-like thing they'd pulled out of the schooner the other night and shuddered. A creature made up of rows upon rows of them was something he would desperately wish to avoid.
"All right then," he said with finality. "How did you kill them?" Ianto glanced at Gwen across Jack, and knew that she wanted to ask tonnes of things: What are they called? Where are you from? How do you know this? Why do you never confide in us? It wasn't as if he disagreed, but they didn't need Jack clamming up on them either.
Jack reached down and picked up Ianto's hand from the rock ledge and dragged it into his lap, and they sat, looking out to sea, the sounds of the human chaos winding down behind them, the crash of the surf in front of them, sounds squeezing the peace too much to be insignificant.
"We never did."
TUESDAY MORNING, HOT AND NASTY, IANTO CALLS IT 'CLOSE':
"Absolutely not," Ianto said, turning abruptly on the dock. "No. No way."
Jack smiled. "I'll get you one of those cute yellow blow up-vests."
Ianto stabbed Jack in the chest with his finger, then pointed to the ship beside him. "It's called the Shamu."
Jack smiled. "I know."
"The Shamu. As in killer whale. As in Orca. As in Quint. As in Jaws. As in dead."
Jack flipped his fingers on his left hand back and forth. "You connected this boat to a giant fictional killer shark in the States in the seventies in less than six moves. Good job, Jones." He smiled and whistled at the boat, presumably to hail its captain. "I bet you can really kick arse at that Kevin Bacon game."
Gwen stopped next to them and handed Ianto a large thermal satchel. "Enough sandwiches to feed a third-world country, courtesy of Rhys." To Jack she said, "Why can't I come? This smacks of sexism."
Jack pulled a tube of something out of his pocket and unscrewed the cap. He looked quite out of place on the dock, in his long coat despite the stuffed heat. He'd changed to a pair of heavier denim trousers for the occasion, but he hadn't yet shed the woolen coat or the button-down. Just looking at him made Ianto warm. He'd left the suit at home in favor of denims and a T-shirt, and his bag was packed with more of the same. Gwen twisted her hair into a sloppy tail and looked irritable in her summer uniform: jeans and a sleeveless top that Jack had privately told Ianto was called the 'glass cutter'.
"Gwen," Jack said, squeezing the zinc oxide on his finger and brandishing it. "Why do we do anything in life?"
Ianto set his duffel down on the docks next to Jack's and eyed the five crates of items that they had compiled from the armoury and sub basements the night before in preparation for UNIT's boat. UNIT'S boat, Ianto mused, named after a killer whale that had died multiple times in captivity. Ianto appreciated irony, just not when it was killer irony.
Gwen crossed her arms and the muscles stood out. Ianto liked arm muscles on women. Good going, Gwen. "This is a macho thing, isn't it?" Her eyes narrowed as if she dared them to say it. Ianto was pretty sure that it both was and wasn't.
Jack ran a finger down her nose quickly and left a white zinc streak. "No, it's a brute strength thing." He smiled. "And a 'I would prefer you yell at UNIT' thing."
"And a 'Boss Ianto around' thing," Ianto added , sitting on one of the pier thrusts and staring out at the sea.
Gwen crossed her arms, and Jack leaned in closer, until his lips were almost flush with her ear. "I got him a little sailor cap—"
"That's it," Gwen said, pulling back and waving a hand. "I'm out of here. Storr is going to be stropped as fuck when he learns that you've not waited for his official clearance."
Jack shrugged and smiled. "If only people delivered on the second when they were the first." He looked at Ianto. "I like angry sex, don't you?"
Ianto smiled. "I'm more than willing to punch you in the face later. We can find out," he offered, and Gwen gave them both the V as she stalked down the Penarth Marina dock.
"So, what's the real reason?" Ianto asked as they watched her get into the SUV and drive away. Jack's eyes followed the car, but he didn't say anything. Ianto simply shrugged. "Ah."
He turned to lift the lid on the nearest crate so that he could determine which one it was, but he was stopped by a hand on his arm. Jack's eyes vied with the sky above him for clarity. "Hey, you know it's not like that, right?"
Oh Jesus, what was he supposed to say to that? It never seemed to come at a good time, a conversation about them and their relationship. He would have suspected that was planned on Jack's part, but for the fact that it took two to tango. So instead he just nodded and opened his mouth to say something when he was interrupted by a loud groan from on the boat.
"Fucking hell, Harkness, you bringing your girlfriend on my boat? Women are bad luck." A head popped into view, followed by a pair of rugby-issue shoulders and a chest that looked like it had come straight from the navy. Ianto squinted in the sun and sighed.
Jack patted Ianto's shoulder and laughed. "I sent her away, Kel. I know how you feel about the ladies." He shouldered his pack and stepped around the gangplank to board the ship, stopping at the last step onto the boat. "Though this is the twenty-first century and you might want to get with the times. Even UNIT has female officers on deck."
Kel, presumably Captain Kel Llewellyn, shrugged his massive shoulders and cracked a knuckle on his left hand with just the hand. Ianto could hear it from where he was standing. "'Bout round the time when the chain of command got all muddy, too," Kel grumbled.
Oh god, it was a living sailor stereotype. Ianto had read about them in books. Like Treasure Island. And Deadliest Catch. Now he just needed a beard and a pipe. Instead, Kel Llewellyn was scraggly and unkempt in that unmoisturised way: tan, leathery face, five days worth of beard, hair that needed a trim tucked behind his ears. Most of all, what Ianto noticed were the scar-covered arms under a painted-on T-shirt. A horizontally striped T-shirt, like one of The Village People or something. Ianto wished he could see the man's legs to check if he was wearing those bellbottomed sailor pantaloons. Instead he put his hands on his hips and waited.
"No, I meant this one," Llewellyn muttered around an unlit cigarette, thumbing at Ianto.
Oh. Son of a bitch.
"Now now Kel, Jones here is a great soldier and outstanding Torchwood operative." Jack reached down and Ianto handed him the second duffel, and he tossed both of them past Kel onto the deck. "Ianto, this is Kel Llewellyn, formerly UNIT Colonel Kel Llewellyn, right?" He grinned when Llewellyn rolled his eyes and lit a match off the boat railing. "Kel here headed up the maritime division of UNIT up until, what was it? Eighty-eight?"
Llewellyn took a long hit from his cigarette and Ianto realised the he also wanted a cigarette. In the worst way. His nerves were on edge. He was about to get on a boat with Popeye the sailor and look for a killer monster.
"Ninety-three," Llewellyn answered. "Then they reallocated the funding to desert climes. Fucking sand aliens."
Jack laughed again and left the gangplank to walk about the boat deck. "Yeah, they came out of nowhere, didn't they?" he agreed, and Ianto filed all of it away to ask about later. Sand aliens. Instead, he leaned on the lid of the crate in front of him and sighed again. It was probably the first of many. He needed a dolly to get these things on board, and even then, he wanted help. Apparently Captaining meant that you got to stand there and look menacing while the first mate and the others hauled things.
"Well then," he tried to say as amicably as possible, "we're in the safest possible hands." It simply came out snippy, and he was forced to make a small smile of surrender.
Llewellyn simply turned to Jack. "Metal teeth, you say?" he began, as if picking up a previous conversation. Jack and Llewellyn had spoken on the phone earlier, so they must have gone over the mission parameters. "Taking down whole boats lightning fast?"
Jack stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Ayup." Ianto rolled his eyes. In no time the two of them would be saying 'Arrrr,' and doing peg leg impressions.
"We took down one of these off the coast of Tangier back in eighty-two," Llewellyn drawled. "Don't know where you were, Harkness."
Jack stared out at sea. "Probably a whorehouse somewhere," he said lightly and Ianto almost snorted.
"It came through your rift here and went screaming mimi down the coast until we caught up with it. Loaded it up with napalm and C-4." Llewellyn dragged on his cigarette. "You were probably still in nappies, Jones," he called louder, as if Ianto couldn't hear him from where he was, about eight feet away.
"Actually," he answered. "I might have been in utero."
At that, Jack did bark a laugh. "He's feisty, that Mister Jones."
Ianto tried to win the staring match he found himself in with Llewellyn, but he had to look away, mostly because the sun came out from behind the man and blinded Ianto into blinking. Yeah, that was it.
Llewellyn grunted. "Let's get those workers something to do and get these crates on board so we can push off. We're losing daylight." Llewellyn waved over two of the dockworkers standing about and berated them from the prow until they hopped to. Ianto was relieved that he wouldn't have to be the one to clumsily wheel the things onboard; the gangplank looked like it had been decommissioned about the same time as the boat had, which was right around 1974. The year Jaws came out.
"Tie them to the port side and make sure they're secure," Llewellyn said as he tromped across the deck and flicked his cigarette over the side of the boat into the water. "The last thing I need is some alien gun falling out of one in bad weather and taking my balls off." Then he looked at Ianto, looked at him, and the whole insulting implication was made.
That fucker. Ianto tromped up the gangplank, sat on the edge of the boat, and imagined his impending doom. Maybe if he made peace with his oncoming death, it would be less surprising when it happened later today.
"I like him," Jack whispered as they watched Llewellyn disappear into the cabin. "He's got moxie."
Ianto rolled his eyes and watched as the dockworker wheeled the first of the crates of tech on deck. "Is that what they call it these days?" Jack leant forward and kissed Ianto's cheek. It was an obvious display, and not one that Ianto appreciated. "Oh fuck off."
Jack clapped his hands and looked at the second crate as it was delivered to the port side. "I do love a good ocean adventure, Ianto. The high seas, the waves, the endless depth, the salt air." He winked. "A bunch of sweaty men on a boat."
Ianto crossed the deck and grabbed a length of rope. No one else seemed to be willing to secure the crates, so it looked like this was a job for super-Ianto. "I suppose the fantasy of all those sweaty men will keep you warm whilst you float to shore as the only survivor."
Jack whistled under his breath. "If you don't want to come, Ianto, you don't have to."
Ianto refastened the latch on the loose crate lid he'd prised up earlier and turned to Jack. "You're an idiot." He kicked the crate so that it was flush with the edge of the boat, and one of the planks buckled under his toe. He swore and wondered what was inside the bottom the crate.
"Oh you're going to be loads useful," Llewellyn said dryly as he sauntered from the cabin, his cigarette still unlit. Ianto figured it was because he hadn't found a match to scrape across his face yet.
The plan of attack was unsteady here. He'd had loads of experience with tossers like Llewellyn. Hell, he'd worked with Owen Harper. On the other hand, Jack seemed to imply that Llewellyn outranked Ianto, sort of, if you tilted your head to the right and squinted. He might have even outranked Jack, except that UNIT and Torchwood were separate. And if one were playing the ranking home game, they could also flip over the card that added the fact that they were currently standing in Llewellyn's boat, which he owned, shitebox that it was. It was still loads better than the canoe Ianto had found gathering dust in one of the sub-levels of the Hub the night before whilst looking for equipment.
It had not been reassuring when Jack had taken one look at the canoe, with its painted moniker of 'HMS LOVEBOAT' and launched into a yarn about how he'd once taken this out on the Taff and caught a mutant alien fish 't—h—i—s—b—i—g,' and then something about Gerald and Harriet setting the river on fire, and by the time Jack was finished laughing and wiping tears from his eyes, Ianto had backed away and made a mental note that Torchwood should never, ever have a maritime division.
The fact remained that he was going to have to deal with Llewellyn on a very small boat, possibly for days on end. And Llewellyn wasn't going to let up, so he was going to have to pull the Harper maneuver number fifteen: be a bigger arsehole.
"If you have a problem, sir, then I would prefer that we address it now, while I have a chance to haul myself off this godforsaken excuse for a seaworthy vessel." He shoved his hands in his pockets and ignoreD Jack's small mewl that was probably supposed to be 'Dude, wtf?' in an alien language. "In fact, I bet if I made some calls, I could get a much larger boat that doesn't look as if it's about to fall apart any second."
Llewellyn scraped a match on the doorpost of the cabin and shielded his eyes for a minute with the cupping hands gesture that one used when lighting a cigarette in the open wind. Ianto avoided putting his hands on his hips (what Owen called the 'international sign of the ponce when engaged in argument'). At this point, he wagered that Llewellyn would either kick him off the boat, push him off the boat, keelhaul him (though Jack might save him from that), or further escalate their pissing contest.
"All right, then. You think you'll be useful?" Llewellyn reached to the crate next to him and yanked on the short length of discarded rope Ianto had set there after he'd secured it to the desk. "Tie me a sheepshank," Kel said as the rope hit Ianto's face.
"You've got to be kidding me," Ianto mumbled to Jack.
Jack leant against the railing of the boat. "Go on, boyscout, tie a knot for the man."
Ianto looked at the rope in his hands and tried to remember everything he'd ever learnt about knots. That was surprisingly a great deal. Okay, the little eel swims into the cave, he swims out of the cave and back—no that was something else. His fingers fumbled under Llewellyn's scrutinising eye, and it occurred to him that no matter what he did, this was a trap. He finally tried what he thought was a passable knot and handed it back to the man.
Llewellyn peered at the rope. "This is a trumpet knot."
Ianto crossed his arms. "They both do the same thing." Behind him, Jack snorted. "So does a noose."
Llewellyn threw the rope behind him, and right too, it was a useless length, Ianto noted, good for restraining small items, possibly an errant Captain and tossing him belowdecks. He reached out and grabbed Ianto's hand. "Lemme see your hands."
"Woah, now Kel," Jack said, coming up behind Ianto and leaning over. "This is going too—"
Llewellyn turned Ianto's hand over so he could run one callused finger across his palm. "You've got city hands, Mister Jones." He glanced up and met Ianto's eyes. "You've been pushing pencils all your life."
Ianto snatched his hands away and waved one at Jack. "Oh this is bullsh—"
"Ianto, calm down."
Ianto stared at Jack with one raised one eyebrow. He liked to think it was the look that was most effective at communicating the homicidal rage he felt at any given moment, namely this moment. Jack must have got the picture, because he clapped Llewellyn on the shoulder.
"Oh-kay then, Cap'n." He steered the man down off the boat and onto the dock. Let's get the last of these loaded and we'll be on our merry way."
Llewellyn shrugged. "He'll be useless on the boat."
Ianto pulled a length of rope and set about lashing the latest crate to the side of the deck. This rope was much longer, a better length for, oh say, tying someone up and keelhauling them in deep waters. Off the coast. Of Southern Wales. Later today. He'd only ever read about it in books, but Ianto was a quick study.
Jack almost sounded apologetic. "My charter, my crew. Jones stays."
"As long as he stays out of my way," the man groused. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and rocked on the dock, as if he were unsteady on unmoving ground.
"You know," Jack said, "I gotta ask, Kel: Shamu?"
"Got a granddaughter. Lives in Orlando."
"I thought boats were named after girls or ladies. What's your granddaughter's name?"
"Olive."
"The Olive. The Olive…nope, you're right, not a good name for a boat."
"Oh, but Shamu is," Ianto spat out from across the deck. He secured the fourth crate with the rope and stood, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. He really wanted Gwen to be there. That way he'd have commiseration. In the back of his mind he thought about a rumour he'd heard that it was good luck for women to piss on the boat before it went out to sea, and part of him wished that Gwen was here so that he could watch her deck Llewellyn when he suggested it.
Then he'd steal the man's fags.
Jack glanced over his shoulder and winked. "Down, boy." To Llewellyn, he added, "Okay, so what do we have left to do?"
The man grunted and put out his cigarette. "Gotta get clearance from the harbour master unless we want them Sikorskys to follow us out and try to run us ashore. UNIT protocol."
Jack sighed. "Your Colonel Storr is a pain in the arse, you know that, right?" Ianto rummaged in his pack, one ear to the conversation. "I'll get this last crate loaded, and you do that, and we'll be out of here before we can finish our 'Here lies the body of Mary Lee's'." He let the last dockworker wheel the last crate on board and followed him up the gangplank. While Llewellyn's back was turned, he made a shooing gesture, motioning for Ianto to stand back on the boat, then he set about pulling the mooring lines from the pier supports and tossing them on the boat, which listed a foot or so away from the dock.
Llewellyn was halfway down the dock when Jack sprinted up the stairs to the pilothouse and ran his hand along the steering wheel. He waved at Ianto and wiggled his eyebrows, then dangled something metallic from two fingers. They looked like keys.
Oh no.
Ianto took the stairs two at a time, but he wasn't there yet when Jack had started the boat's motor and Llewellyn turned, almost all the way down the pier to the harbour master's office. Jack turned and gave him a thumbs up sign, and that seemed to stop the man for just a second, a lull they needed because Jack gunned the engine and the boat slid away from the dock like a bat out of hell. A ten-mile-an-hour bat out of hell.
Ianto clutched onto what passed as a dashboard and stared at Jack. It wasn't that he wasn't pleased with their sudden loss of Llewellyn, but it did mean that they were now two, not three, or four. And that sounded a little foolhardy. A lot foolhardy. A plethora of foolhardy. The gangplank dragged down the length of the pier until it hit a support and knocked off into the water, not unlike driving away from the petrol station with the pump still attached to the tank.
The throttle groaned and the boat kicked up water in the front as Jack took the Little Engine That Maybe out onto the open sea.
"Doesn't this mean that the harbour master will be after us?"
Jack whistled merrily. "Not if I slipped him fifty quid to sit there and look perplexed."
"Did you?"
"Hell no. I pulled rank."
"Ah."
"What?" Jack asked, one hand on the wheel, and the other waving animatedly at Llewellyn's shrinking figure on the dock. "You think I was gonna let Captain Ahab come along?" Ianto was reminded of cartoons in which ants had temper tantrums at very large animals and they just looked like small jumping dots with high-pitched squeaking voices. Llewellyn needed some black squiggly lines over the top of his head. Ianto resisted the urge to stick his tongue out. He was an adult.
He might have flipped him off with one of his 'city hands' anyway.
Still.
"I saw Jaws. I know better," Jack said, with one more glance back and he turned the boat, both hands on the wheel and face tilted to the sun. "Besides, that man is crazy." He gave a pointed glance at Ianto and there was that look again, the one that said that Jack was worried. He looked over the open pilothouse to the crates of secured alien equipment on the deck, guns and drugs and rays and all manner of scanners and things that they could need.
"And you know what's bad luck?" Jack said, turning the wheel almost completely around and bracing himself with his knees. Ianto almost fell into him with the arc the ship cut in the water. "Two captains on one boat." He flashed his grin at Ianto, sodium lights in the daytime. "Let's go do this, Torchwood style."
Ianto turned and headed for the stairs to the main deck. "Oh yes, Torchwood style," he muttered. "With the screaming and understaffing and the buckets of blood."
"What was that, Ianto?"
"Nothing, sir! It's a smashing plan, we'll be sure to triumph."
On to Part Three
Author:
amand_rPrompt: Jaws
Characters: Jack, Gwen, Ianto, random OCs
Rating: R for violence
Wordcount: 24,700
Spoilers: You don't have to have seen Jaws. But you should. You really should. All canon through season two of Torchwood is assumed.
Disclaimer: I do not have any rights over Jaws and/or Torchwood, nor can or do I make any money off any fictive enterprises that I might undertake with them. All I have are a handful of Skittles that are all warm in my pocket. Sue me and taste the linty rainbow, people.
Author's Notes: Read it before you go swimming. In Wales. Where it's cold.
Real Author's Notes: Thanks to
misswinterhill and joanwilder for the beta goodness. And to the mods, for patience. alba17, you're beyond deification. Also, I might've played merry cob with maritime authorisation rules, though for the most part, jurisdictions et al are correctly observed. I'm not Tom Clancy. Also, I wrote this to so much techno, I might have given myself an arrhythmia.Summary: South Wales had everything. Clear skies. Gentle surf. Warm water. People flocked there every summer. No wait, they didn't. That doesn't really matter. It was the perfect feeding ground anyway.
PREVIOUSLY, ON TORCHWOOD: Part One
SATURDAY NIGHT, AFTER EVERYONE HAS TIED ONE ON:
It was odd how the lack of bodies could be just as bothersome mentally as a container of human chum, Ianto mused. Not one body had been recovered from the wreckage of the WaterBus, even though the boat had been half-full. Ianto imagined pieces of the people floating in the eddies and currents of the bay, being eaten by the gulls that touched down in the water. Eaten by fish. He knew it happened, he just didn't want to have to think about it.
In his head, Ianto always put on victims the faces of people he loved: Gwen, Rhi, Mica, David, reduced to parts and fish food. It was enough to drive a man to drink.
And well, hey…
Ianto sat in front of the weevil cage and drank from his beer. He settled back on the chair and placed the bottle on the floor beside him. Janet's eyes darted to the bottle, then back at his face. He leant forward and rested his arms on his knees. That lasted for a few seconds and then he put his head in his hands. There was a rustle in front of him, and when he rolled his eyes up at Janet, she was sitting on her cot with her head in her hands, peeking out at him.
Ianto slid his fingers down his face. Janet slid her fingers down her face.
Ianto clasped his hands in front of him. Janet curled her hands into a prayer gesture.
Ianto scrunched his face up into a snarl. Janet's lips slid away from her teeth more than they already did.
He curled his fingers into claws. Janet raised her hands, curled the (real) claws, and growled.
Ianto smiled. "Give us a kiss."
Janet foamed at the mouth with rage and ran at the glass, banging her head with a resounding thud and falling backwards onto the floor of her cell. Ianto sat back in his chair and picked up the beer bottle, taking a drink.
"Good girl. I needed that." Janet shook her head and growled at him from her crouch on the floor.
"You're vindictive, you know that?" Ianto turned his head and watched Jack push off from the doorframe. He raised a bottle in his hand. "Chateau Lafite, nineteen…" Jack glanced at the bottle, whose label had worn to almost illegibility. "Something something." He pulled the cork from the bottle with his teeth. "I opened it upstairs and let it breathe, whatever."
Ianto shook his head. "Glasses?"
Jack held out his other hand and let Ianto choose one of the identical thick-bottomed tumblers clipped in his fingers. "Only the best."
"Hm." Ianto didn't bother asking how Jack had got his hands on it. He didn't have to. Jack started to pour a little into his glass, sinking onto the floor in front of him and leaning back against his left leg.
"I got a case of this from Élie de Rothschild back in forty-five when we moved through Bordeaux," Jack said. "I'm not a wine person. But something about investment, and I could stand to have some money, you know, with my life span and," he gestured with his tumbler, filled two inches. "Blah blah blah." He pulled Ianto's glass-filled hand forward and tipped the bottle over it. "Say when."
The wine passed the halfway mark in the glass and Jack paused. Ianto shook the glass minutely and the bottle tilted again.
There was about a centimeter left of the glass when Ianto nudged Jack with his knee. Jack held the bottle up to the light and examined the three inches remaining. Ianto merely rested his back against the chair and helped himself to a long swallow.
Jack sipped his wine. "So here's the thing."
"There's always a thing," Ianto agreed. It was true. Even Janet agreed. There were things.
Okay, so maybe he'd had about four beers before this.
"Yeah, so here's the thing. That monster they caught. The Amaldan." Jack shrugged. "It could be the monster we're looking for, it really could, but I would just…"
"You would feel better if we knew for certain." Ianto drank deeply and admired the robust something or other he was supposed to be appreciating about the wine. He liked the fermented grapes part. That was the part that made him all tingly.
Jack toasted Janet, and for a second, Ianto could see them both reflected in the glass of her cage, Ianto all dark except for a pale floating head, and the blue of Jack's shirt, light enough to give him more definition than just a spectre of a face, more permanency in even their reflections in the glass.
"I would." He leaned his head back and regarded Ianto upside down. "What do you say about breaking into UNIT's facility?"
Ianto grinned. "And I was complaining that you never take me anywhere nice."
Jack grunted and rose to his feet, holding out a hand. "We don't have to break in, you know."
Ianto nodded and Janet let out a low moan. "We can do anything; we're Torchwood."
UNIT FACILITY #69947-K664, PENARTH, THIRTY MINUTES LATER:
"Wow," Jack said as they entered the warehouse to see the Amaldan hanging from the ceiling by a couple of jerry-rigged hooks and levers. Stink and water and…whatever sloughed off dead creatures dripped onto the floor below it, and Ianto was glad he'd put on the wellies from the back of the SUV.
They hadn't had to break into anything, really, just flash their badges. Ianto had signed them into the facility while Jack had sexually harassed the gate guard, and then they'd procured a motor cart and rolled through the area at what was probably an inappropriate speed. Jack had driven the SUV, and so he had let Ianto drive the cart, saying, "How fast can this thing go, anyway?'
Answer: forty kilometers per hour.
But now, Jack circled the Amaldan and looked up at it, Ianto wondered just how they were going to search the innards of a rotting flesh piñata above their heads.
Laser Saw it was, then. Jack held the device as close to the creature as he could, tilted at an angle so that he could avoid the spillage, and set the laser to work. It cut a large slit in the Amaldan's purple underbelly (now more a milky lavender), and as soon as the flesh parted, innards began to fall down onto the concrete, splashing against the crates scattered about the room, and Jack, who made a noise and covered his mouth with his arm.
"Now that," he said loudly, "is rancid."
The smell hit Ianto and he staggered backwards. Dear god, it occurred to him, the things pooling about his feet could very well be digested people, or at the least, a sea of stomach acids. He lifted one wellie and examined where the acid had come in contact with it: still intact. He didn't want to be standing there and suddenly feel a burning sensation in his toes.
It was easy to see the large chunks of things the Amaldan had consumed: clumps of seaweed, a tyre, multitudes of fish, whole and in varying stages of digestion. What might be a chunk of human flesh or a fish close to becoming liquid. Ianto pushed things around with his toes and looked for the pocket handkerchief he'd brought along on purpose.
"It did a circuit in Northern waters," Jack said, kicking through the debris on the floor.
Ianto was glad that he'd dipped his handkerchief in cologne that morning in anticipation of smelling some very rank fish-related things. He coughed and waded through the spillage. "How you know?"
Jack kicked an object and it skittered towards Ianto, slipping and spinning a few feet from him. Once it was still, Ianto realised that he was looking at a sheep head. Oh ha ha.
"You know what I'm not seeing," Ianto said softly.
Jack took a long metal pulley rod and poked at the Amaldan around the open flaps of the carcass. "Yeah, I know."
"Could they have been…digested already?" Ianto queried. "Or, no, not if that head is still intact. It couldn't have eaten that today, right? It had to have been—"
Jack shrugged. "I'm guessing it's slow. It's a huge thing, sluggish, cold water. Slow digestion. We should be seeing something." He tossed the rod off to the side in the darkness and brushed his hands on his coat before spying a bunch of rags off in the corner. Ianto took advantage of Jack's retreat to move out of the mess itself and lean against a crate. Jack ran the rag under the tap in the corner, then wiped his face.
"Are you okay?" Ianto asked.
Jack was frozen, staring down, lost in thought probably, though what was on his mind was anyone's guess. Probably what Ianto was going to say now.
"We've got to close the bay. Call the coast guard. UNIT. All the—"
"We've got a bigger problem than that, Ianto. We've still got a hell of a thing out there with a mouth about as big as the SUV." Jack sighed. "We should look into getting ourselves a boat." He handed Ianto the wet towel and watched as he washed his hands. "We have to go out there."
Ianto looked up. "On the water?"
Jack smiled and turned, leading the way out of the warehouse. "Well, if we're looking for a sea monster, we're not going to find him on the land."
Ianto threw the towel over one of the spare crates. UNIT could clean up this mess. "Yeah, but I'm not drunk enough to go out on a boat."
"Yes, you are," Jack laughed.
Ianto slid the door shut and breathed in the wet summer air. "No, I'm not."
"Yes, you are."
"I can't do that."
"Yes, you can."
LATER, PENARTH MARINA, 'STEALTH MODE' IS ENGAGED:
"Where did you get this boat, anyway?" Ianto said as they boarded the small motorboat that Ianto was sure doubled as a deathtrap in a former life. The thing rocked perilously as he stepped on board, and he knew it had to be his drunken imagination, because the boat was big enough that boarding shouldn't have rocked it as much as he thought.
Jack turned the key and the engine grumbled crankily. "I didn't get it. The keys are in it. Remember about ten seconds ago when I told you to keep a look out for anyone?"
Ianto glanced about the Penarth Marina. "Are we stealing this?"
Jack shrugged. "We're commandeering it."
"Good to know when the police are taking me away I can say, 'But constable, we commandeered it." He rummaged about in a bin for a life vest and found two, offering one to Jack, who waved him away with a hand.
Jack turned over the engine and grinned. "Don't you love being above the police?"
Ianto slipped the vest over his head. If he was this drunk on land, that had to increase exponentially when he was off land and out in water. His brain was sure that if he were to blast into space, he would be even more intoxicated. This was possibly drunk-logic talking.
"I do," he mumbled, fussing with the straps. There were about six, no wait, eight too many of them.
Jack steered them out of the marina with a minimum of fuss, only one minor almost-collision with a parked yacht, and that might have been because a drunken Ianto had grabbed Jack's shoulders and said, "Dear god, watch out for that boat!" and thusly prevented him from steering around the boat. As it was, they cleared the hull of the much larger and more expensive ship and headed out to the dark waters with only a few lit buoys to guide their way.
"How far do we have to go out?" he asked Jack, trying to stand next to him at the wheel but rather falling backwards every time Jack hit the throttle, which seemed to be every five seconds or so. It was as if Jack was doing it on purpose. Ianto watched his hands. Maybe he was doing it on purpose.
Jack glanced at him and waved a hand. "I don't know. It's a night feeder."
Ianto blinked. "No, it's not." When Jack stared at him, he gesticulated wildly at the water in front of them. "Keep your eyes on the road."
Jack laughed. "Sit down before you fall down." And then, over the increasing throttle as Ianto fell back into the side seat, "Are you drunk enough now?"
Ianto took his pulse. "Possibly."
"Then now is a good time." The engine gunned and Jack took them through the sound barrier and all of the sudden when Ianto looked back at the marina, it was a thin ribbon of indistinguishable lights. He took in a deep breath and tried not to think of watertaxis. Maybe the creature would think they were insignificant. Maybe it wouldn't even notice them. Maybe later he'd turn into a dolphin and swim back to shore, too.
Jack swung the boat about. It was as if he loved being on the water because he didn't have to stay in a lane. Ianto wondered if this was how he had flown spaceships. Probably. He sat back against the seat and felt the patterned rocking of the boat when he closed his eyes and tried to pretend that he was on a star cruiser, headed out to the Lotus Nebula or the Orion…Gazega or something, but the wind on his face and the bell-like ringing of the buoys and Jack's singing were distracting him from his fantasy.
"Shooooow me the way to go hooooome," Jack sang, swinging the wheel and kicking something at his feet. "I'm tired and I wanna go to bed!"
Ianto gritted his teeth and just thanked the gods of rugby (the only gods he prayed to, actually) that eventually Jack would stop and they would be able to drift for a while. Also that they wouldn't get eaten. And that he wouldn't vomit. And for some chips. And then, just so he didn't seem selfish, for the health and safety of the Queen and his sister and her family. He was considering the possibility that he might have asked the gods of rugby for too much when Jack slowed the boat and cut the engines, his voice becoming louder for the lack of sound.
"…and it's gone right to…." His voice slowed and softened as he became distracted and Ianto opened his eyes to see Jack staring out in front of the boat's path. "…my head."
Ianto turned his head to see the object that had distracted the Captain whilst captaining (a joke he had yet to redeem). Ahead of them, part of a boat sat in the water. It was obviously some sort of large sailboat, or rather it would have been if it had had intact masts. They stuck into the sky like broken fingernails, shreds of sails hanging down and into the water where they floated at the surface, coating the water with an extra white sheen.
His eyes tried to move quickly over the boat, looking for bodies, whole or partial, blood even, and he found none. The boat groaned with the slow sucking in of water pressure changing as it sank; it had been sinking for some time.
"What is that?" Ianto slurred. Oh Jesus, it was true: the half a bottle of Pinot Grigio he'd drunk on the way here in the car under Jack's enabling eye was catching up with him.
Jack turned the sodium light so that it hit the structure more clearly. "That is a schooner. Well, what's left of her." He waved the light about gently, and Ianto had the feeling he was either looking for something specific, or moving the light slowly enough so that Ianto could keep up with it. He was about to tell Jack that second option was a lost cause when the schooner listed a little and sank further into the water. Something had seriously compromised her hull.
"What is a schooner?" he drawled, hands on the railing and trying not to lean out over the edge of the boat. He had this feeling that if he wasn't visible from in the water, then the creature wouldn't know that he was there.
"A sailboat with two or more sails, fore and aft," Jack said lightly. His mouth was drawn in a line and he ground his jaw.
Ianto leant closer to the boat—no, no, schooner. "How do you even know that?"
Jack snorted. "Captain." Self-identifying finger stab.
"In the RAF," Ianto said, rolling his eyes. "That's the air."
"Close enough, just as apt, might as well," Jack rattled off. "I read, okay?"
Ianto tried to laugh, but it wasn't funny. Not when the boat in front of them was sinking into the water. Or maybe it was just floating. Only half of it was visible, so it had to be sinking. Ianto didn't know anything about a) boats or b) how fast they sank or c) if he was wearing this life vest correctly. Suddenly that seemed very very important. He pulled a cord and almost cut off his air supply.
Jack hooked the sodium light on a pole next to the boat's windshield and fiddled with the straps to Ianto's vest. His brow knit and he patted the vest with finality. "Okay, you're set. Unless you want a pair of water wings?" When Ianto reached up and smacked his shoulder, he chuckled. "I have to go in the water for a sec, okay?" Jack's hands travelled to Ianto's arms, sliding up and down from elbow to shoulder in what Ianto would have found a comforting gesture if he hadn't been three sheets.
The schooner had three sails. Not. A. Good. Comparison.
"Okay, but you do know that something ate that boat, right?" Ianto said, wondering if he was going to get hysterical. It had not, really, he reminded himself, escaped his notice that he was in the middle of more water than he could drink. Whenever one was in more water than they could drink, the possibility of drowning increased by ninety-eight percent.
"Ianto, look—" Jack pointed out to the water, where a dozen or so seagulls floated on the waves. Ianto blinked and tried to remember what was important about them. Oh. Oh.
"Well, that's cracker," he said. "Oh but not for…" He looked back at the boat sagging in the water. Something silver and shiny in the wreckage caught his eye. "That looks significant."
Jack followed his pointing finger to the wooden splinters of the sinking boat. "I dunno. Let's find out."
He watched Jack kick off his shoes and socks, shed his coat and outer shirt and peel off his trousers, setting the Webley on top of the pile and eyeing Ianto in a way that was a sort of passing of the torch. He stood, pointed at the controls of the boat.
"Ignition, throttle, brake, wheel." He winked. "I don't think you'll have to worry about hitting anything if you have to do this yourself, but remember you want to go northeast, right here," he tapped the lit electronic compass." But that's bollocks, because I'll be right back."
Ianto nodded and watched Jack pull the diving knife from the same place he'd got the life vest, and wondered if this were the end. Oh come on now, Jones, Jack was indestructible. If the thing ate him, he'd just cut himself out of the stomach and swim up to the surface.
Jack gave him a peck on the cheek, sat him on the bench and slapped his shoulder. "I'll be back," he said in a bad accent and sat on the edge of the boat, knife in one hand, a waterproof torch in the other.
"Oh ha ha," Ianto said and pushed Jack over the side. Oops. Well, he was going that way anyway.
He wanted to take out his stopwatch and time Jack, but he was afraid of what the sea air would do to the mechanics of it, and so he simply patted his waistcoat pocket and wished that he had his jacket. It was considerably cooler out here on the water, especially now that the sun had set. The boat rocked in the wind and the waves, and he clapped his hands together before resting his forearms on his knees and leaning forward. Oh, no, that was nauseating.
He didn't know how long to give Jack. He could hear the occasional knock of something on the sides of the sinking boat, possibly Jack working with his knife, doing something in or on the hull. Ianto wondered if he'd encountered bodies. Or the creature. A glance out at the gulls drifting about in the water brought some reassurance, not unlike a canary singing in a mineshaft.
He lost track of time, but he thought about counting in the manner his Gran had taught him when waiting for thunder after lightning: one Glenmorangie, two Glenmorangie, three Glenmorangie and so on, when there was a screech on the hull behind him and he shot to his feet so suddenly that he almost fell over the other side of the boat.
Jack surfaced with a shuddering intake of air that reminded Ianto of other times that Jack seemed to rise from the dead (did rise from the dead), and he grabbed for the side of the boat, his fingers skidding along the smooth surface frantically. "Get me up, get me up," he rasped impatiently, and Ianto complied by reaching down and locking forearms to haul Jack up to the deck. Jack seemed to shoot out of the water when Ianto pulled and they both flew backwards into the boat. Jack rolled off and knelt, probably some sort of reflex, but Ianto righted himself more gradually.
"No sign of anyone," Jack said quickly. "But this, this, I got from the hole in the bottom." He sighed. "I know this," he breathed, using the sodium lights hanging in the boat to illuminate what he held in his hand. Ianto noticed that the diver's knife was gone. Maybe he'd dropped it. Whoops. Sorry, actual owner of said boat.
"I know what this is," Jack muttered, "oh god, I know what this is." He pushed himself to standing and swayed a little, staggering back, the tooth clattering to the deck. Ianto stared at it. It was a wicked thing, metallic silver, like metal, and as long as Ianto's hand from middle tip to bottom palm. He wasn't looking forward to meeting the thing in whose mouth it belonged.
Jack recovered quickly. "Get the mooring lines," he muttered, yanking on his trousers and stuffing his feet into his boots, socks forgotten. His fingers scrabbled at the laces as if he was frantic to tie them and get the hell out of there. "We have to tow this in."
Ianto glanced about. What the hell were mooring lines? "Jack," he started, but stopped when Jack turned away and walked to the far end of the boat, rummaging in one of the huge bins, producing coils of rope.
Ianto thought about sicking up over the side of the boat. He'd told Jack that he wouldn't when they were on the way over in the SUV, but now he wasn't so sure. Plus, so he vomited in the ocean, it wasn't as if he'd have to wash it off anything.
Jack tossed a coil of rope at him before he leant over towards the sinking boat and clipped some carabiners to a few of the holds and stays on the bit of bow still above the water. Ianto tried to fasten the ropes to the back of their boat, but Jack simply waved his hands away, securing the lines and clearing the engine propellers before starting her up and steering them off. There was a jolt when the mooring lines were pulled taut, and the engine bucked until the schooner started to drift with them. Jack geared the engine down and stood rigidly at the wheel, wet clothes drying in the wind, hair puffing a bit in the humidity.
Ianto wrapped his arms about his waist and rested his chin on Jack's shoulder. They were out in the middle of the water and no one would ever see; that was just the way he liked it sometimes. "What is it Jack? What's this thing?"
Jack leaned back into him, but Ianto couldn't be sure if it was authentic or just the swaying of the water that did it. "It's a nightmare," he said softly, almost too softly to hear over the purr of the engine. "A nightmare from another world."
MONDAY MORNING, JUST OFF THE GLAMORGAN HERITAGE COAST:
"The Mistral Maiden," Ianto said in a booming voice so that Jack could hear him over the thousand or so homicidal seagulls that littered the beach to pick through the wreckage washing up with the tide. "A hundred-foot pleasure yacht loaded with wedding guests sailing up and down the coast while the DJ played hits of the seventies and eighties." At that moment a vinyl 45 clacked against the rocks at his feet, and he bent down to scoop it out of the water. The Captain and Tenille.
Jack looked over his shoulder. "'Love Will Keep Us Together,'" he mused. "There are many things we could say right now."
Ianto threw the record out in the water again, where he hoped it would sink, never to be seen again. "None of them appropriate at the site of a boat wreckage."
Gwen trotted towards them, her mouth taut. "There were people on the shore," she said when she got close enough to yell comfortably, and then her voice tapered down to a reasonable tone when the three of them stood in a huddle, protecting their eyes from the wind and occasional gust of sand.
Jack and Ianto glanced back at the gaggle of people, most of them gawkers, but a few that had been pulled aside by the police to have their statements taken. "Ah, what did they see?"
Gwen held out a palm camera. "See for yourself."
They huddled over the little flip out screen, shielding their eyes and the LCD, but it was impossible to see until Jack took off his coat and flung it over their heads. Ianto had no doubt they looked a sight, three people smashed together, top halves hidden under a military greatcoat. On a beach in the middle of summer. Lovely. Torchwood: confounding the locals since…ever.
The video was dark, it being shot at night and all, but the boat was clearly visible out on the water, a floating nest of fairy lights outlining the shape of her, from stern to bow, bottom to top. All the way up the rigging. Gwen had turned the volume up on the player, and even with the wind in the mic and the giggling of the cameraperson, he could hear the dull thumpa thumpa of the bass from the ship's onboard speakers.
"Nellie wants shots from the shore," a female voice said. "For the video." Ianto's stomach turned. This was Nellie's wedding video right here. The rest was on its way to the bottom of the ocean.
"Do you think Clive really has a giant pecker?" another female voice asked. "Nellie said it's huge." Ianto wondered if they'd planned on editing the sound after they'd shot this.
The camera swayed a little. Obviously whoever was taking the video was a little pissed herself, if the cant of the lens was any indication. "Well, I'm not asking, and I don’t care. He's got a dog face." Oh, they had to have been planning to edit this.
Both women were giggling when the first shadow slid over the fairy lights on the boat, down by the stern, almost unnoticeable, unless you were looking for it, which Ianto was.
"That's where it start—" Gwen began, but suddenly the outline of the boat shuddered and the middle bent, just like the WaterBus had. There was the faint noise of unified screams from the boat's passengers, and as the craft made a V of lights, the cameraperson steadied the machine, no doubt in shock. The other person's voice whispered, "Oh my god."
More shadows fell on opposite ends of the boat and pulled down, bending the halves in half, and the line of the boat made a capital M for a second before the lights blinked out.
"Oh my god oh my god," the cameraperson whispered. "Oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god," over and over as the screams offshore grew louder, each distinct voice too soft to hear but altogether sounding like a cacophony of anguish and grinding metal and plastic and wood until what Ianto thought might be the boat (it was difficult to tell now, now that the lights had gone out and the moon was dark—he stared at the screen where the boat had been) was sucked, pulled or yanked under, or into pieces.
"Jenn, call 999. Call them," the cameraperson said, and the camera was lowered to the ground, jostling as it hit the sand and stared sideways out at the water. "Call 999, Jenn, go!" They could hear the clatter of someone, probably Jenn, dropping her bag to the sand and digging, no doubt for a mobile. The cameraperson—not Jenn—came into view as she ran towards the waterline.
Ianto couldn't make out what she was screaming, what she was saying at the edge of the water, but he heard Jenn get the 999 operator: "Oh sweet Jesus come, the boat there's something with the boat it's gone oh god—"
Gwen snapped the screen shut on the camera and they de-huddled. Jack pulled the coat from their heads and the solar flare of sudden sun was blinding. He really needed those sunglasses.
"By the time the police got here with water rescue, the Coast guard was already out there--" She waved a hand at the two small boats out on the water, pulling wreckage in with hooks and nets. "They haven't found a single body, except for…." They followed her finger to the ambulance that sat on the side of the road, and the small litter that protruded from it, a litter that carried a tiny body. "The flower girl, I reckon, by the looks of her dress. Poor thing can't be over three and a half, and she's in shock."
Ianto stared back out at the water, forcing his eyes to remain open so that he could think about a child's plastic doll floating in the water.
Jack sighed. "Probably hung on to something and managed to stay off the creature's radar. It sees heat signatures."
Gwen stuffed the camera in her bag and crossed her arms, glancing from the ambulance to Jack and back again. "Yeah? And how do you know that?"
Ianto had been waiting for Jack to open up about the creature that he'd seemed to recognise the night they'd gone out on the boat. Ianto had been pretty pissed, but he had remembered the metallic tooth and Jack's panicked mumbling, and the way he'd clenched the steering wheel of the boat in a deathgrip all the way back.
The problem was that Jack didn't talk about these kinds of things, things that were obviously from his past, almost to an infuriating degree, seeing as how twice already that past had come back to bite them. Kill them, actually, not that Ianto thought knowing about Gray could have prevented what had happened to Tosh and Owen.
They walked towards the road away from the shore, Gwen accepted a cup of water from the SOCO, and they separated from the gaggle of people, one of them the Jenn from the video, as she was still shaking and saying, "It was horrible, just terrible," to the officer taking her statement. Ianto wondered just how long he'd been taking it. It wasn't her fault. People who witnessed violent atrocities were rarely coherent for a while after, and if they were coherent, it usually meant that there was something to worry about.
Jack was a few feet ahead of them, but he was already talking. "We need to call Colonel Storr again, this time no more flower jokes." Ianto smirked in spite of himself. It wasn't funny. Okay the plastic flowers he'd sent Storr the first time had been macabre and funny.
Everyone loved plastic daisies.
Jack finally stopped about a hundred feet from the emergency vehicles and faced the water. "They're going to tell us that they want us to take care of it, because it's a Welsh problem," he said softly. "And they'll send us a boat, but it will be a piece of shit." He glanced at Gwen over his shoulder. "And they'll say, 'What happened to the mighty Torchwood?'"
Ianto snorted. "I think it imploded in London." He cocked his head. "Where was UNIT then?"
Jack tsked. "Now is not the time to quibble. I want a platoon, or a squadron, or whatever they call it over there, and I want some big bombs." Jack pulled his hands from his pockets and waved them in the general direction of the channel. "Do they make harpoons big enough for this?"
Ianto winked at Gwen. "I saw them at Costco in a twelve pack," he retorted lightly. It was good. If they could all get past the video, past the little girl back there on the litter, past the Captain & Tenille sinking to the bottom of the ocean, then they could do their jobs.
Jack didn't laugh. "I bet they'll send Llewellyn." Another glance back at Ianto. "You'll like him." He shoved his hands back into his coat and rocked on his heels. "We'll have to hear all about the beasties of the deep."
"Jack," Gwen said, sitting down on the rock edge of the fence and drinking her water before making a face and pouring it on the sand. "Ianto says you know what this is."
Ianto parked himself a few feet from her on the ledge and allowed for a space where Jack could sit between them if he wanted to. Jack liked to confide in them when they were next to him, sometimes, a fact that hadn't escaped Ianto's notice. Maybe he wanted them to be able to hear him the first time, or maybe he wanted the assurance of them both being near him, or maybe he just liked to be in the middle. Probably all three.
But Jack was turned away in front of them, hands in his coat pockets, staring out to sea. He just needed a swell of some music and the picture would be complete: the hero broods. Ianto rolled his eyes at Gwen and massaged his temple with two fingers. It was bright, and that brightness had caught up with his skull.
It was good that they were going to do this, though, Ianto thought. Jack had declined to tell either of them what they were dealing with, and soon Ianto and Gwen had planned to stage a coup. They figured that they could lock Jack in the conference room and then force him to tell them. Gwen had suggested that Jack would listen to logic. Ianto had solemnly added, yes, and failing that, tickling had been known to subdue him as well.
Gwen sometimes had no sense of humor. Gallows humor, really. He didn't blame her. Gallows weren't really funny, once you got a good look at them. Much like severed hands.
"I grew up on the sea," Jack said softly and Ianto sat up straighter. Gwen glanced at him, one eyebrow raised. Ianto was fairly sure that Gwen knew less about Jack's origins than he did, which was pretty much next to nothing. Even after Gray and Hart, Jack remained tightlipped about even the name of his home. Homeworld, Ianto corrected himself, since he'd long convinced himself that Jack wasn't from this planet. Or from this now.
He held his breath, as if the expiration of air was going to change Jack's mind about confiding. Gwen glanced back down at the cup that she was slowly dismantling into a long curled paper strip.
"The waters of my homeland," Jack said, as if rebooting the story to start in a less personal way, "had a monster just like this one. Many of them, actually."
Ianto sucked in his cheeks and stared at the bird on the shore. Gwen shredded her coffee cup in her fingers. Jack stood away from them, but they could hear his voice, bright and chipper, as if he were simply describing the seaside view to an onlooker: And here we have the majestic shores of the Glamorgan, a historical stretch of land that as of last night was a graveyard to at least seventy-five people…
"They weren't native to it, but they were brought by the…well, they were brought. Grown." Jack turned and smiled weakly. "I don't remember if they were always there, but they were as far back as I can recall. Agents of war, actually, hard to control." His hands flapped in his pockets, and the coat flew out in a woolen shrug. "I don't think they were ever controlled."
"What are they?" Gwen said, and Ianto wanted to tell her to hush, but he wasn't the inquisitor here. Gwen had training in this sort of thing, this gentle prodding, and he had to admit that sometimes Jack told her more than he told Ianto sometimes. It should have been the other way around, probably, but he had long since reconciled himself to the fact that Jack would tell more tales to an old soldier than an old lover. Ianto was still working on the soldier part.
"We didn't name them." Jack made his way back to them, as if now that he had opened the floodgates, he could sit down, could look at them, could voice what he wanted to say to the faces, their bodies. "I only saw them a few times, when I was a boy."
Ianto let one of his hands, the one closest to Jack, rest on the rock between them, tips of his fingers just barely under Jack's thigh. Gwen took Jack's other hand in hers and held it in her lap, a placeholder maybe for someone else. Jack's eyes traveled the length of the water, as if he were looking for it even now. Ianto watched the gulls sail out over the waves.
"They were giant creatures," Jack said, his eyes still darting. "Made of mouths, too many to count, and tentacles, sure, but so many mouths they looked like pincushions of blinding silver teeth."
Ianto remembered the dagger-like thing they'd pulled out of the schooner the other night and shuddered. A creature made up of rows upon rows of them was something he would desperately wish to avoid.
"All right then," he said with finality. "How did you kill them?" Ianto glanced at Gwen across Jack, and knew that she wanted to ask tonnes of things: What are they called? Where are you from? How do you know this? Why do you never confide in us? It wasn't as if he disagreed, but they didn't need Jack clamming up on them either.
Jack reached down and picked up Ianto's hand from the rock ledge and dragged it into his lap, and they sat, looking out to sea, the sounds of the human chaos winding down behind them, the crash of the surf in front of them, sounds squeezing the peace too much to be insignificant.
"We never did."
TUESDAY MORNING, HOT AND NASTY, IANTO CALLS IT 'CLOSE':
"Absolutely not," Ianto said, turning abruptly on the dock. "No. No way."
Jack smiled. "I'll get you one of those cute yellow blow up-vests."
Ianto stabbed Jack in the chest with his finger, then pointed to the ship beside him. "It's called the Shamu."
Jack smiled. "I know."
"The Shamu. As in killer whale. As in Orca. As in Quint. As in Jaws. As in dead."
Jack flipped his fingers on his left hand back and forth. "You connected this boat to a giant fictional killer shark in the States in the seventies in less than six moves. Good job, Jones." He smiled and whistled at the boat, presumably to hail its captain. "I bet you can really kick arse at that Kevin Bacon game."
Gwen stopped next to them and handed Ianto a large thermal satchel. "Enough sandwiches to feed a third-world country, courtesy of Rhys." To Jack she said, "Why can't I come? This smacks of sexism."
Jack pulled a tube of something out of his pocket and unscrewed the cap. He looked quite out of place on the dock, in his long coat despite the stuffed heat. He'd changed to a pair of heavier denim trousers for the occasion, but he hadn't yet shed the woolen coat or the button-down. Just looking at him made Ianto warm. He'd left the suit at home in favor of denims and a T-shirt, and his bag was packed with more of the same. Gwen twisted her hair into a sloppy tail and looked irritable in her summer uniform: jeans and a sleeveless top that Jack had privately told Ianto was called the 'glass cutter'.
"Gwen," Jack said, squeezing the zinc oxide on his finger and brandishing it. "Why do we do anything in life?"
Ianto set his duffel down on the docks next to Jack's and eyed the five crates of items that they had compiled from the armoury and sub basements the night before in preparation for UNIT's boat. UNIT'S boat, Ianto mused, named after a killer whale that had died multiple times in captivity. Ianto appreciated irony, just not when it was killer irony.
Gwen crossed her arms and the muscles stood out. Ianto liked arm muscles on women. Good going, Gwen. "This is a macho thing, isn't it?" Her eyes narrowed as if she dared them to say it. Ianto was pretty sure that it both was and wasn't.
Jack ran a finger down her nose quickly and left a white zinc streak. "No, it's a brute strength thing." He smiled. "And a 'I would prefer you yell at UNIT' thing."
"And a 'Boss Ianto around' thing," Ianto added , sitting on one of the pier thrusts and staring out at the sea.
Gwen crossed her arms, and Jack leaned in closer, until his lips were almost flush with her ear. "I got him a little sailor cap—"
"That's it," Gwen said, pulling back and waving a hand. "I'm out of here. Storr is going to be stropped as fuck when he learns that you've not waited for his official clearance."
Jack shrugged and smiled. "If only people delivered on the second when they were the first." He looked at Ianto. "I like angry sex, don't you?"
Ianto smiled. "I'm more than willing to punch you in the face later. We can find out," he offered, and Gwen gave them both the V as she stalked down the Penarth Marina dock.
"So, what's the real reason?" Ianto asked as they watched her get into the SUV and drive away. Jack's eyes followed the car, but he didn't say anything. Ianto simply shrugged. "Ah."
He turned to lift the lid on the nearest crate so that he could determine which one it was, but he was stopped by a hand on his arm. Jack's eyes vied with the sky above him for clarity. "Hey, you know it's not like that, right?"
Oh Jesus, what was he supposed to say to that? It never seemed to come at a good time, a conversation about them and their relationship. He would have suspected that was planned on Jack's part, but for the fact that it took two to tango. So instead he just nodded and opened his mouth to say something when he was interrupted by a loud groan from on the boat.
"Fucking hell, Harkness, you bringing your girlfriend on my boat? Women are bad luck." A head popped into view, followed by a pair of rugby-issue shoulders and a chest that looked like it had come straight from the navy. Ianto squinted in the sun and sighed.
Jack patted Ianto's shoulder and laughed. "I sent her away, Kel. I know how you feel about the ladies." He shouldered his pack and stepped around the gangplank to board the ship, stopping at the last step onto the boat. "Though this is the twenty-first century and you might want to get with the times. Even UNIT has female officers on deck."
Kel, presumably Captain Kel Llewellyn, shrugged his massive shoulders and cracked a knuckle on his left hand with just the hand. Ianto could hear it from where he was standing. "'Bout round the time when the chain of command got all muddy, too," Kel grumbled.
Oh god, it was a living sailor stereotype. Ianto had read about them in books. Like Treasure Island. And Deadliest Catch. Now he just needed a beard and a pipe. Instead, Kel Llewellyn was scraggly and unkempt in that unmoisturised way: tan, leathery face, five days worth of beard, hair that needed a trim tucked behind his ears. Most of all, what Ianto noticed were the scar-covered arms under a painted-on T-shirt. A horizontally striped T-shirt, like one of The Village People or something. Ianto wished he could see the man's legs to check if he was wearing those bellbottomed sailor pantaloons. Instead he put his hands on his hips and waited.
"No, I meant this one," Llewellyn muttered around an unlit cigarette, thumbing at Ianto.
Oh. Son of a bitch.
"Now now Kel, Jones here is a great soldier and outstanding Torchwood operative." Jack reached down and Ianto handed him the second duffel, and he tossed both of them past Kel onto the deck. "Ianto, this is Kel Llewellyn, formerly UNIT Colonel Kel Llewellyn, right?" He grinned when Llewellyn rolled his eyes and lit a match off the boat railing. "Kel here headed up the maritime division of UNIT up until, what was it? Eighty-eight?"
Llewellyn took a long hit from his cigarette and Ianto realised the he also wanted a cigarette. In the worst way. His nerves were on edge. He was about to get on a boat with Popeye the sailor and look for a killer monster.
"Ninety-three," Llewellyn answered. "Then they reallocated the funding to desert climes. Fucking sand aliens."
Jack laughed again and left the gangplank to walk about the boat deck. "Yeah, they came out of nowhere, didn't they?" he agreed, and Ianto filed all of it away to ask about later. Sand aliens. Instead, he leaned on the lid of the crate in front of him and sighed again. It was probably the first of many. He needed a dolly to get these things on board, and even then, he wanted help. Apparently Captaining meant that you got to stand there and look menacing while the first mate and the others hauled things.
"Well then," he tried to say as amicably as possible, "we're in the safest possible hands." It simply came out snippy, and he was forced to make a small smile of surrender.
Llewellyn simply turned to Jack. "Metal teeth, you say?" he began, as if picking up a previous conversation. Jack and Llewellyn had spoken on the phone earlier, so they must have gone over the mission parameters. "Taking down whole boats lightning fast?"
Jack stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Ayup." Ianto rolled his eyes. In no time the two of them would be saying 'Arrrr,' and doing peg leg impressions.
"We took down one of these off the coast of Tangier back in eighty-two," Llewellyn drawled. "Don't know where you were, Harkness."
Jack stared out at sea. "Probably a whorehouse somewhere," he said lightly and Ianto almost snorted.
"It came through your rift here and went screaming mimi down the coast until we caught up with it. Loaded it up with napalm and C-4." Llewellyn dragged on his cigarette. "You were probably still in nappies, Jones," he called louder, as if Ianto couldn't hear him from where he was, about eight feet away.
"Actually," he answered. "I might have been in utero."
At that, Jack did bark a laugh. "He's feisty, that Mister Jones."
Ianto tried to win the staring match he found himself in with Llewellyn, but he had to look away, mostly because the sun came out from behind the man and blinded Ianto into blinking. Yeah, that was it.
Llewellyn grunted. "Let's get those workers something to do and get these crates on board so we can push off. We're losing daylight." Llewellyn waved over two of the dockworkers standing about and berated them from the prow until they hopped to. Ianto was relieved that he wouldn't have to be the one to clumsily wheel the things onboard; the gangplank looked like it had been decommissioned about the same time as the boat had, which was right around 1974. The year Jaws came out.
"Tie them to the port side and make sure they're secure," Llewellyn said as he tromped across the deck and flicked his cigarette over the side of the boat into the water. "The last thing I need is some alien gun falling out of one in bad weather and taking my balls off." Then he looked at Ianto, looked at him, and the whole insulting implication was made.
That fucker. Ianto tromped up the gangplank, sat on the edge of the boat, and imagined his impending doom. Maybe if he made peace with his oncoming death, it would be less surprising when it happened later today.
"I like him," Jack whispered as they watched Llewellyn disappear into the cabin. "He's got moxie."
Ianto rolled his eyes and watched as the dockworker wheeled the first of the crates of tech on deck. "Is that what they call it these days?" Jack leant forward and kissed Ianto's cheek. It was an obvious display, and not one that Ianto appreciated. "Oh fuck off."
Jack clapped his hands and looked at the second crate as it was delivered to the port side. "I do love a good ocean adventure, Ianto. The high seas, the waves, the endless depth, the salt air." He winked. "A bunch of sweaty men on a boat."
Ianto crossed the deck and grabbed a length of rope. No one else seemed to be willing to secure the crates, so it looked like this was a job for super-Ianto. "I suppose the fantasy of all those sweaty men will keep you warm whilst you float to shore as the only survivor."
Jack whistled under his breath. "If you don't want to come, Ianto, you don't have to."
Ianto refastened the latch on the loose crate lid he'd prised up earlier and turned to Jack. "You're an idiot." He kicked the crate so that it was flush with the edge of the boat, and one of the planks buckled under his toe. He swore and wondered what was inside the bottom the crate.
"Oh you're going to be loads useful," Llewellyn said dryly as he sauntered from the cabin, his cigarette still unlit. Ianto figured it was because he hadn't found a match to scrape across his face yet.
The plan of attack was unsteady here. He'd had loads of experience with tossers like Llewellyn. Hell, he'd worked with Owen Harper. On the other hand, Jack seemed to imply that Llewellyn outranked Ianto, sort of, if you tilted your head to the right and squinted. He might have even outranked Jack, except that UNIT and Torchwood were separate. And if one were playing the ranking home game, they could also flip over the card that added the fact that they were currently standing in Llewellyn's boat, which he owned, shitebox that it was. It was still loads better than the canoe Ianto had found gathering dust in one of the sub-levels of the Hub the night before whilst looking for equipment.
It had not been reassuring when Jack had taken one look at the canoe, with its painted moniker of 'HMS LOVEBOAT' and launched into a yarn about how he'd once taken this out on the Taff and caught a mutant alien fish 't—h—i—s—b—i—g,' and then something about Gerald and Harriet setting the river on fire, and by the time Jack was finished laughing and wiping tears from his eyes, Ianto had backed away and made a mental note that Torchwood should never, ever have a maritime division.
The fact remained that he was going to have to deal with Llewellyn on a very small boat, possibly for days on end. And Llewellyn wasn't going to let up, so he was going to have to pull the Harper maneuver number fifteen: be a bigger arsehole.
"If you have a problem, sir, then I would prefer that we address it now, while I have a chance to haul myself off this godforsaken excuse for a seaworthy vessel." He shoved his hands in his pockets and ignoreD Jack's small mewl that was probably supposed to be 'Dude, wtf?' in an alien language. "In fact, I bet if I made some calls, I could get a much larger boat that doesn't look as if it's about to fall apart any second."
Llewellyn scraped a match on the doorpost of the cabin and shielded his eyes for a minute with the cupping hands gesture that one used when lighting a cigarette in the open wind. Ianto avoided putting his hands on his hips (what Owen called the 'international sign of the ponce when engaged in argument'). At this point, he wagered that Llewellyn would either kick him off the boat, push him off the boat, keelhaul him (though Jack might save him from that), or further escalate their pissing contest.
"All right, then. You think you'll be useful?" Llewellyn reached to the crate next to him and yanked on the short length of discarded rope Ianto had set there after he'd secured it to the desk. "Tie me a sheepshank," Kel said as the rope hit Ianto's face.
"You've got to be kidding me," Ianto mumbled to Jack.
Jack leant against the railing of the boat. "Go on, boyscout, tie a knot for the man."
Ianto looked at the rope in his hands and tried to remember everything he'd ever learnt about knots. That was surprisingly a great deal. Okay, the little eel swims into the cave, he swims out of the cave and back—no that was something else. His fingers fumbled under Llewellyn's scrutinising eye, and it occurred to him that no matter what he did, this was a trap. He finally tried what he thought was a passable knot and handed it back to the man.
Llewellyn peered at the rope. "This is a trumpet knot."
Ianto crossed his arms. "They both do the same thing." Behind him, Jack snorted. "So does a noose."
Llewellyn threw the rope behind him, and right too, it was a useless length, Ianto noted, good for restraining small items, possibly an errant Captain and tossing him belowdecks. He reached out and grabbed Ianto's hand. "Lemme see your hands."
"Woah, now Kel," Jack said, coming up behind Ianto and leaning over. "This is going too—"
Llewellyn turned Ianto's hand over so he could run one callused finger across his palm. "You've got city hands, Mister Jones." He glanced up and met Ianto's eyes. "You've been pushing pencils all your life."
Ianto snatched his hands away and waved one at Jack. "Oh this is bullsh—"
"Ianto, calm down."
Ianto stared at Jack with one raised one eyebrow. He liked to think it was the look that was most effective at communicating the homicidal rage he felt at any given moment, namely this moment. Jack must have got the picture, because he clapped Llewellyn on the shoulder.
"Oh-kay then, Cap'n." He steered the man down off the boat and onto the dock. Let's get the last of these loaded and we'll be on our merry way."
Llewellyn shrugged. "He'll be useless on the boat."
Ianto pulled a length of rope and set about lashing the latest crate to the side of the deck. This rope was much longer, a better length for, oh say, tying someone up and keelhauling them in deep waters. Off the coast. Of Southern Wales. Later today. He'd only ever read about it in books, but Ianto was a quick study.
Jack almost sounded apologetic. "My charter, my crew. Jones stays."
"As long as he stays out of my way," the man groused. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and rocked on the dock, as if he were unsteady on unmoving ground.
"You know," Jack said, "I gotta ask, Kel: Shamu?"
"Got a granddaughter. Lives in Orlando."
"I thought boats were named after girls or ladies. What's your granddaughter's name?"
"Olive."
"The Olive. The Olive…nope, you're right, not a good name for a boat."
"Oh, but Shamu is," Ianto spat out from across the deck. He secured the fourth crate with the rope and stood, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. He really wanted Gwen to be there. That way he'd have commiseration. In the back of his mind he thought about a rumour he'd heard that it was good luck for women to piss on the boat before it went out to sea, and part of him wished that Gwen was here so that he could watch her deck Llewellyn when he suggested it.
Then he'd steal the man's fags.
Jack glanced over his shoulder and winked. "Down, boy." To Llewellyn, he added, "Okay, so what do we have left to do?"
The man grunted and put out his cigarette. "Gotta get clearance from the harbour master unless we want them Sikorskys to follow us out and try to run us ashore. UNIT protocol."
Jack sighed. "Your Colonel Storr is a pain in the arse, you know that, right?" Ianto rummaged in his pack, one ear to the conversation. "I'll get this last crate loaded, and you do that, and we'll be out of here before we can finish our 'Here lies the body of Mary Lee's'." He let the last dockworker wheel the last crate on board and followed him up the gangplank. While Llewellyn's back was turned, he made a shooing gesture, motioning for Ianto to stand back on the boat, then he set about pulling the mooring lines from the pier supports and tossing them on the boat, which listed a foot or so away from the dock.
Llewellyn was halfway down the dock when Jack sprinted up the stairs to the pilothouse and ran his hand along the steering wheel. He waved at Ianto and wiggled his eyebrows, then dangled something metallic from two fingers. They looked like keys.
Oh no.
Ianto took the stairs two at a time, but he wasn't there yet when Jack had started the boat's motor and Llewellyn turned, almost all the way down the pier to the harbour master's office. Jack turned and gave him a thumbs up sign, and that seemed to stop the man for just a second, a lull they needed because Jack gunned the engine and the boat slid away from the dock like a bat out of hell. A ten-mile-an-hour bat out of hell.
Ianto clutched onto what passed as a dashboard and stared at Jack. It wasn't that he wasn't pleased with their sudden loss of Llewellyn, but it did mean that they were now two, not three, or four. And that sounded a little foolhardy. A lot foolhardy. A plethora of foolhardy. The gangplank dragged down the length of the pier until it hit a support and knocked off into the water, not unlike driving away from the petrol station with the pump still attached to the tank.
The throttle groaned and the boat kicked up water in the front as Jack took the Little Engine That Maybe out onto the open sea.
"Doesn't this mean that the harbour master will be after us?"
Jack whistled merrily. "Not if I slipped him fifty quid to sit there and look perplexed."
"Did you?"
"Hell no. I pulled rank."
"Ah."
"What?" Jack asked, one hand on the wheel, and the other waving animatedly at Llewellyn's shrinking figure on the dock. "You think I was gonna let Captain Ahab come along?" Ianto was reminded of cartoons in which ants had temper tantrums at very large animals and they just looked like small jumping dots with high-pitched squeaking voices. Llewellyn needed some black squiggly lines over the top of his head. Ianto resisted the urge to stick his tongue out. He was an adult.
He might have flipped him off with one of his 'city hands' anyway.
Still.
"I saw Jaws. I know better," Jack said, with one more glance back and he turned the boat, both hands on the wheel and face tilted to the sun. "Besides, that man is crazy." He gave a pointed glance at Ianto and there was that look again, the one that said that Jack was worried. He looked over the open pilothouse to the crates of secured alien equipment on the deck, guns and drugs and rays and all manner of scanners and things that they could need.
"And you know what's bad luck?" Jack said, turning the wheel almost completely around and bracing himself with his knees. Ianto almost fell into him with the arc the ship cut in the water. "Two captains on one boat." He flashed his grin at Ianto, sodium lights in the daytime. "Let's go do this, Torchwood style."
Ianto turned and headed for the stairs to the main deck. "Oh yes, Torchwood style," he muttered. "With the screaming and understaffing and the buckets of blood."
"What was that, Ianto?"
"Nothing, sir! It's a smashing plan, we'll be sure to triumph."
On to Part Three
