Fic: Overconfidence
Title: Overconfidence
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Aliens, Jack, Ianto.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1904
Spoilers: Set post CoE, but everyone lives.
Summary: The aliens are completely certain that the people of earth are no match for their superior strength and weaponry. They’re wrong.
Written For: Weekend Challenge: Randomness Abounds at 1_million_words.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
Despite the many times it had already been tried, every power-hungry alien race that happened along seemed to be convinced that they would be the ones to succeed in invading and conquering planet earth. After all, they each considered themselves superior to everyone who’d tried before: Better prepared, better organised, better armed, with faster ships, or a bigger army. They never seemed to learn from other people’s failures.
This latest invasion force had come by ship, because that was judged to be a more effective way of quickly getting a large number of troops on the ground than sending them via the Rift, the risk there being that they’d be too easy for the planet’s defenders to pick off as they came through the portal two or three at time. In that respect they were of course correct; Torchwood, with assistance from UNIT, if it was deemed necessary, could well have used them for a spot of target practice. It would hardly be the first time.
Unfortunately for the invaders, flying themselves down to the surface didn’t increase their chances of success by much, or probably at all, since it was much easier for the people of earth to notice a bunch of spaceships, even modestly sized ones, coming in for a landing than a Rift portal opening in some out of the way spot. Even in Cardiff, where the locals saw weird things so often they barely paid attention to them anymore, alien spacecraft tended to stand out like the proverbial sore thumb.
As it was, by the time the invaders’ quartet of landing craft set down in Pontcanna Fields, which had been chosen as their landing site because it gave them plenty of space, well away from annoying structures, power lines, and other such inconveniences, but close to a major population centre, they found a reception committee waiting for them.
Not that they could SEE anyone outside their ships, since they’d chosen the darkest hours of the planet’s night to sail, as it were, into these most foreign of waters. They’d thought a night landing would allow them to safely touch down without being observed, because what supposedly intelligent species would willingly choose to venture out in the cold, wet, darkness, especially in a spot where there no artificial light was available? It never occurred to them that human night-vision might be considerably better than their own, or that the people of earth might have technology that could enhance their vision further, so that they could see almost as well in the dark as they could in full daylight.
So the elite troops waited patiently inside craft they considered sufficiently camouflaged by their cloaking technology, which, unfortunately for them, only operated within their own visual range, until the earth’s sun began to rise somewhere behind the heavy banks of clouds. Then, when the light was just barely bright enough for them to see by, they disembarked in ranks, ready to begin the process of subduing the local population. Once the city at this end of the Rift was under their control, they could open a portal and bring the rest of their troops through, along with their heavy weapons and the attack beasts. The landing craft could then be utilised to spread their troops and weapons around the globe!
Well, that was their brilliant, and supposedly foolproof, plan. Needless to say, it didn’t exactly work out that way.
They marched down the gently sloping gangways, four abreast, each invader’s six multi-jointed legs striding in unison, and formed into what humans would have described as squadrons, or maybe battalions. Their intention was to simply shoot any humans they encountered until the rest surrendered. It couldn’t be any simpler; their victory was all but assured. Before they could begin, however…
“Good morning!” a loud voice called out to them in oddly accented Galactic Standard as their commander readied the troops to move out. “I’m afraid you can’t leave your spaceships here, not unless you have valid parking permits; you’ll have to move them.”
“What is your business here?” asked another human, in an even stranger accent.
It was holding some sort of writing tablet in one of its upper appendages and what was presumably a writing implement in the other. It was exceedingly ugly, as was the first of its kind, with only two supporting limbs instead of the more efficient six, and two upper limbs instead of four. It had a patch of fuzzy stuff on the top of what was presumably its head, and the rest of it was covered in an assortment of draperies, perhaps to protect it against the unpleasant cold and damp. It was still speaking.
“You really ought to have notified us that you were coming, then we could have directed you to check in with customs at an official landing site. As it is, the paperwork is going to be a nightmare. You know what bureaucrats are like.”
Curiously, neither one of the bizarre creatures seemed at all alarmed at the arrival of four spaceships crammed with heavily armed troops, which just proved that they were rather stupid and would be no match for the might of the Xunichtl Empire!
“You will bring your leaders to us,” Commander Yichtyl said in rasping tones, through the translator device he wore.
The human looked down at its writing tablet. “Do you have an appointment? Our leaders are extremely busy people, they can’t make time for just anyone who decides to drop by.”
“Then we shall find your leaders our own way and issue our ultimatum to them directly. You cannot stand against us! We are superior in numbers, in weaponry, in every conceivable fashion!”
It should perhaps be pointed out that Commander Yichtyl was not only arrogant, but rather a pompous ass. Even his own troops thought so, although they knew better than to say so out loud, at least not anywhere the commander might possibly overhear them. They were still quick to follow orders of course, because one simply did not disobey a commanding officer, and so when instructed to do so, they opened fire with their weapons, killing the nearest human, and fully expecting the other one to become completely demoralised once it saw undeniable evidence of their superiority.
Instead…
“You really shouldn’t have done that; Jack gets annoyed when people kill him.”
Then it raised one of its upper appendages towards a strange fleshy growth on the side of its head, spoke a single, untranslatable word, and the entire invasion force was abruptly subjected to a hail of small but devastatingly effective metal projectiles, and scything beams of fire, not directed at their heavily armoured upper bodies, but at their unprotected legs, shattering limbs, slicing them off, tumbling warriors helplessly to the damp, muddy ground, where they could only flounder, without enough limbs left to stand on. They tried to return fire, but they were having difficulty identifying the positions of the opposing force. The attack seemed to be coming from every conceivable direction at once.
“You cannot do this!” Commander Yichtyl bellowed above the noise.
“I think you’ll find we can.” To Yichtyl’s shocked disbelief, the one they’d killed stood up on its two supporting limbs, dusting itself off and raising its own weapon. “Y’know, word of advice; if you want to go around killing people, you really gotta be prepared for those people to retaliate. No one gets anything for nothing these days.”
“How are you standing? My troops shot you! You are dead!”
“Am I? Funny, I don’t feel dead, and I should know; I’ve been killed often enough. Never lasts though.” With that, the human fired its weapon, shooting off the commander’s lefthand eyestalk, then his righthand eyestalk, and finally the central one. Yichtyl howled in pain and frustration, still alive but unable to see. He heard the sound of another shot from the human’s weapon, felt a momentary pain as the projectile hit him right above his breathing orifice, then his head exploded, and after that, he really didn’t care about much of anything, because he was dead.
Those invaders who still had enough legs to manoeuvre with began a ragged retreat towards the landing craft, dragging the nearest of their crippled fellows with them, but none of the invaders made it back to the ramps, picked off one at a time in an almost leisurely fashion. The pilots still aboard attempted to take off and return to the mother craft, but found their ships would not respond to their commands, their control inexplicably jammed. They tried to call for assistance, or reinforcements, but somewhere out beyond the orbit of the planet’s single satellite, the mother ship was having its own problems, systems failing in rapid succession, unable to cope with a massive, localised rise in temperature, until the overheated craft finally exploded.
Torchwood had never advertised the presence of a powerful laser weapon positioned on the dark side of the moon, but it was there, installed as a precaution after the whole 456 incident. This was its first real test; it proved very effective.
Meanwhile, back in Cardiff…
“Clean-up is going to take all day,” Ianto grumbled, wandering over to join Jack. “There’re spent bullets and bits of alien all over the place. And what’re we going to go about the ships? I don’t think Harwoods has a truck big enough to transport them to one of our storage facilities, even one at a time.”
“Oh, I just thought we’d leave them here. Remove anything dangerous, give them a quick clean, maybe open them as a tourist attraction, or temporary housing for the homeless. They might be quite nice inside once they’re cleaned up. We can borrow a squad from UNIT to handle the dirty work, under Mickey’s supervision, just to make certain they don’t help themselves to any weapons or other components.”
“And what about the legs and other bits?”
Jack shrugged. “I suppose we could recruit some civilian volunteers, give them each a bucket and a pair of tongs.”
“Really?” The withering look Ianto directed at him told Jack exactly what his lover thought of THAT idea.
“Fine, UNIT can take care of that as well, under your supervision if you prefer.”
“Thank you. Can’t have civilians collecting stray bullets; it’s too risky. Some might still be live.”
“Ah. Hadn’t thought of that.”
“No, you never do. Good thing you have me to do your thinking for you.”
“Still, we stopped the invasion, and it’s not even breakfast time yet; even you have to admit that’s not a bad morning’s work. I’ll just contact UNIT, shall I?”
“You do that. The rest of us will start clean-up. No point just standing around waiting for the help to arrive. There should be rubber gloves and some empty containment units in the SUV. Maybe even some tongs if we’re lucky.”
As Ianto strode away to where Torchwood’s official vehicle was parked, at a safe distance and out of sight, Jack pulled his phone from his coat pocket, speed-dialling UNIT, and started towards the nearest landing craft, Webley in his other hand, to check that there weren’t any surviving invaders hiding out inside, awaiting the opportunity to take revenge. Earth wasn’t the easy target the various warlike alien races seemed to think. Humanity might be considered primitive by the standards of the wider universe, but they could take care of themselves.
The End
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Aliens, Jack, Ianto.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1904
Spoilers: Set post CoE, but everyone lives.
Summary: The aliens are completely certain that the people of earth are no match for their superior strength and weaponry. They’re wrong.
Written For: Weekend Challenge: Randomness Abounds at 1_million_words.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
Despite the many times it had already been tried, every power-hungry alien race that happened along seemed to be convinced that they would be the ones to succeed in invading and conquering planet earth. After all, they each considered themselves superior to everyone who’d tried before: Better prepared, better organised, better armed, with faster ships, or a bigger army. They never seemed to learn from other people’s failures.
This latest invasion force had come by ship, because that was judged to be a more effective way of quickly getting a large number of troops on the ground than sending them via the Rift, the risk there being that they’d be too easy for the planet’s defenders to pick off as they came through the portal two or three at time. In that respect they were of course correct; Torchwood, with assistance from UNIT, if it was deemed necessary, could well have used them for a spot of target practice. It would hardly be the first time.
Unfortunately for the invaders, flying themselves down to the surface didn’t increase their chances of success by much, or probably at all, since it was much easier for the people of earth to notice a bunch of spaceships, even modestly sized ones, coming in for a landing than a Rift portal opening in some out of the way spot. Even in Cardiff, where the locals saw weird things so often they barely paid attention to them anymore, alien spacecraft tended to stand out like the proverbial sore thumb.
As it was, by the time the invaders’ quartet of landing craft set down in Pontcanna Fields, which had been chosen as their landing site because it gave them plenty of space, well away from annoying structures, power lines, and other such inconveniences, but close to a major population centre, they found a reception committee waiting for them.
Not that they could SEE anyone outside their ships, since they’d chosen the darkest hours of the planet’s night to sail, as it were, into these most foreign of waters. They’d thought a night landing would allow them to safely touch down without being observed, because what supposedly intelligent species would willingly choose to venture out in the cold, wet, darkness, especially in a spot where there no artificial light was available? It never occurred to them that human night-vision might be considerably better than their own, or that the people of earth might have technology that could enhance their vision further, so that they could see almost as well in the dark as they could in full daylight.
So the elite troops waited patiently inside craft they considered sufficiently camouflaged by their cloaking technology, which, unfortunately for them, only operated within their own visual range, until the earth’s sun began to rise somewhere behind the heavy banks of clouds. Then, when the light was just barely bright enough for them to see by, they disembarked in ranks, ready to begin the process of subduing the local population. Once the city at this end of the Rift was under their control, they could open a portal and bring the rest of their troops through, along with their heavy weapons and the attack beasts. The landing craft could then be utilised to spread their troops and weapons around the globe!
Well, that was their brilliant, and supposedly foolproof, plan. Needless to say, it didn’t exactly work out that way.
They marched down the gently sloping gangways, four abreast, each invader’s six multi-jointed legs striding in unison, and formed into what humans would have described as squadrons, or maybe battalions. Their intention was to simply shoot any humans they encountered until the rest surrendered. It couldn’t be any simpler; their victory was all but assured. Before they could begin, however…
“Good morning!” a loud voice called out to them in oddly accented Galactic Standard as their commander readied the troops to move out. “I’m afraid you can’t leave your spaceships here, not unless you have valid parking permits; you’ll have to move them.”
“What is your business here?” asked another human, in an even stranger accent.
It was holding some sort of writing tablet in one of its upper appendages and what was presumably a writing implement in the other. It was exceedingly ugly, as was the first of its kind, with only two supporting limbs instead of the more efficient six, and two upper limbs instead of four. It had a patch of fuzzy stuff on the top of what was presumably its head, and the rest of it was covered in an assortment of draperies, perhaps to protect it against the unpleasant cold and damp. It was still speaking.
“You really ought to have notified us that you were coming, then we could have directed you to check in with customs at an official landing site. As it is, the paperwork is going to be a nightmare. You know what bureaucrats are like.”
Curiously, neither one of the bizarre creatures seemed at all alarmed at the arrival of four spaceships crammed with heavily armed troops, which just proved that they were rather stupid and would be no match for the might of the Xunichtl Empire!
“You will bring your leaders to us,” Commander Yichtyl said in rasping tones, through the translator device he wore.
The human looked down at its writing tablet. “Do you have an appointment? Our leaders are extremely busy people, they can’t make time for just anyone who decides to drop by.”
“Then we shall find your leaders our own way and issue our ultimatum to them directly. You cannot stand against us! We are superior in numbers, in weaponry, in every conceivable fashion!”
It should perhaps be pointed out that Commander Yichtyl was not only arrogant, but rather a pompous ass. Even his own troops thought so, although they knew better than to say so out loud, at least not anywhere the commander might possibly overhear them. They were still quick to follow orders of course, because one simply did not disobey a commanding officer, and so when instructed to do so, they opened fire with their weapons, killing the nearest human, and fully expecting the other one to become completely demoralised once it saw undeniable evidence of their superiority.
Instead…
“You really shouldn’t have done that; Jack gets annoyed when people kill him.”
Then it raised one of its upper appendages towards a strange fleshy growth on the side of its head, spoke a single, untranslatable word, and the entire invasion force was abruptly subjected to a hail of small but devastatingly effective metal projectiles, and scything beams of fire, not directed at their heavily armoured upper bodies, but at their unprotected legs, shattering limbs, slicing them off, tumbling warriors helplessly to the damp, muddy ground, where they could only flounder, without enough limbs left to stand on. They tried to return fire, but they were having difficulty identifying the positions of the opposing force. The attack seemed to be coming from every conceivable direction at once.
“You cannot do this!” Commander Yichtyl bellowed above the noise.
“I think you’ll find we can.” To Yichtyl’s shocked disbelief, the one they’d killed stood up on its two supporting limbs, dusting itself off and raising its own weapon. “Y’know, word of advice; if you want to go around killing people, you really gotta be prepared for those people to retaliate. No one gets anything for nothing these days.”
“How are you standing? My troops shot you! You are dead!”
“Am I? Funny, I don’t feel dead, and I should know; I’ve been killed often enough. Never lasts though.” With that, the human fired its weapon, shooting off the commander’s lefthand eyestalk, then his righthand eyestalk, and finally the central one. Yichtyl howled in pain and frustration, still alive but unable to see. He heard the sound of another shot from the human’s weapon, felt a momentary pain as the projectile hit him right above his breathing orifice, then his head exploded, and after that, he really didn’t care about much of anything, because he was dead.
Those invaders who still had enough legs to manoeuvre with began a ragged retreat towards the landing craft, dragging the nearest of their crippled fellows with them, but none of the invaders made it back to the ramps, picked off one at a time in an almost leisurely fashion. The pilots still aboard attempted to take off and return to the mother craft, but found their ships would not respond to their commands, their control inexplicably jammed. They tried to call for assistance, or reinforcements, but somewhere out beyond the orbit of the planet’s single satellite, the mother ship was having its own problems, systems failing in rapid succession, unable to cope with a massive, localised rise in temperature, until the overheated craft finally exploded.
Torchwood had never advertised the presence of a powerful laser weapon positioned on the dark side of the moon, but it was there, installed as a precaution after the whole 456 incident. This was its first real test; it proved very effective.
Meanwhile, back in Cardiff…
“Clean-up is going to take all day,” Ianto grumbled, wandering over to join Jack. “There’re spent bullets and bits of alien all over the place. And what’re we going to go about the ships? I don’t think Harwoods has a truck big enough to transport them to one of our storage facilities, even one at a time.”
“Oh, I just thought we’d leave them here. Remove anything dangerous, give them a quick clean, maybe open them as a tourist attraction, or temporary housing for the homeless. They might be quite nice inside once they’re cleaned up. We can borrow a squad from UNIT to handle the dirty work, under Mickey’s supervision, just to make certain they don’t help themselves to any weapons or other components.”
“And what about the legs and other bits?”
Jack shrugged. “I suppose we could recruit some civilian volunteers, give them each a bucket and a pair of tongs.”
“Really?” The withering look Ianto directed at him told Jack exactly what his lover thought of THAT idea.
“Fine, UNIT can take care of that as well, under your supervision if you prefer.”
“Thank you. Can’t have civilians collecting stray bullets; it’s too risky. Some might still be live.”
“Ah. Hadn’t thought of that.”
“No, you never do. Good thing you have me to do your thinking for you.”
“Still, we stopped the invasion, and it’s not even breakfast time yet; even you have to admit that’s not a bad morning’s work. I’ll just contact UNIT, shall I?”
“You do that. The rest of us will start clean-up. No point just standing around waiting for the help to arrive. There should be rubber gloves and some empty containment units in the SUV. Maybe even some tongs if we’re lucky.”
As Ianto strode away to where Torchwood’s official vehicle was parked, at a safe distance and out of sight, Jack pulled his phone from his coat pocket, speed-dialling UNIT, and started towards the nearest landing craft, Webley in his other hand, to check that there weren’t any surviving invaders hiding out inside, awaiting the opportunity to take revenge. Earth wasn’t the easy target the various warlike alien races seemed to think. Humanity might be considered primitive by the standards of the wider universe, but they could take care of themselves.
The End