Does Africa Know A Song Of Me? - Part 10/10
Title: Does Africa Know A Song Of Me?
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairings: Jack/Ianto, mentions of Gwen/Rhys, Martha/Tom
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: No, I don't own Torchwood. Things would be rather different if I did.
Spoilers: Set sometime late in an alternate version of S2 (where no one is dead)
Summary: Jack gets a call from UNIT. They need his help... in Namibia. And when they arrive, Jack and Ianto (because Jack wouldn't leave him behind) discover the only communication they have with the team is letters...
Author's Note: The title is taken from a quote from the film 'Out Of Africa'. This was written for tw_bigbang
Thanks to: The wonderful morbid_sparks for beta'ing, cheerleading and letting me complain about not knowing where the plot was going.
Also huge thanks to my lovely bigbang artist, wrenriddle - find her fanmix and beautiful cover art for this story here.
Previous Parts: One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine
Does Africa Know A Song of Me?
Cardiff
17th May 2008
Dear Jack and Ianto,
We’re all so very relieved to hear that you’re so much better, Ianto. And as much as you may not like to hear it, we are fully behind Jack mother henning you a little until you are back to 100%. We know you want to get back on the job so you can get back here, but no pushing until you’re ready, okay?
Owen says he will not be impressed if you get back here and you still look like death warmed up, so let that be a warning. Although I don’t know what he’s planning on doing to you if you don’t listen.
Wish there was something we could do to make up for the fact that you can’t actually send us the data. If it helps at all, we’ve done several searches on the signs you’ve described (like the localised earthquakes) and found nothing in any of the databases. Obviously that doesn’t mean whatever it is isn’t in there, but hopefully it might help you narrow it down a tiny bit.
The Rift is still quiet - we’re really getting quite suspicious now - and while we don’t quite trust it enough to actually all leave at the same time, we’ve been taking it in turns to man the Hub while the others have some time off. Obviously the person whose turn it is to be in the Hub for the day (you might have guessed it‘s me today) also feeds everything, although I have to admit I’m still not all that fond of feeding Myfanwy. I don’t care how well you two claim she is trained; I don’t quite trust her not to take my arm off when I’m tossing food at her.
Now that everything has settled down, and UNIT have all left, Martha has gone back to London and Tom - he’s leaving again in just a few days so she - for obvious reasons - wants to spend as much time with him as she can before he goes.
She left something on your desk for the two of you, though, Jack. I have no idea what - she wouldn’t tell me and I swore I wouldn’t look - so you have to hurry up and get back here and open it so you can tell me what it is! I’m dying of curiosity here.
Look after each other, and get this thing solved soon - we miss you and we’re all dreadfully deprived of half-decent coffee. (We promise we love you for more than your coffee, Ianto.)
Love,
Gwen
Namibia
24th May 2008
Dear All,
We’re coming home! Finally! Well, we will be in a few more days, but it is only a few more days.
Sorry that we haven’t written in several days, but we had rather a breakthrough three days after our last letter and we’ve been on the go fairly constantly ever since - and before you start, even Jack has accepted that I’m better now, and no, I’m not pushing myself too far too soon.
It had its intended result, though; Namibia is now several aliens lighter than it was a few days ago, although I think we should admit that, technically, we’re not directly responsible for that.
It all started, really, the day after we last wrote. Jack still wasn’t overly happy with the idea of taking me back out into the middle of the desert again so soon, so while he went off on another recon trip out to the latest site of the anomalies, I spent the day in our ‘office’ instead, scouring the data we’ve collected since we’ve been here.
When I added in some estimated data for the reported abnormalities before we arrived, I noticed there was, well, a bit of a spatial pattern in where the incidents had been occurring over time.
Or to be more precise, they were all in a straight(ish) line, moving in one direction in time.
Making the painfully obvious assumption, we set out the following day to trace backwards along the line of movement, hoping to discover where it had originated. We drove across desert for quite some time, and though there was no residual Rift energy along the way (which we now know the reason for, but I’ll get to that in time) we did eventually hit a spot where the scanners went mad picking up a variety of other energy signals, and the life signs monitor started picking up a reading or two as well.
The handheld monitors, as you know, aren’t particularly accurate as far as actually locating the activity goes, so it took us until lunchtime the next day to finally stumble upon what we were looking for.
And when I say stumble upon, I mean literally stumble upon (if Jack hadn’t caught me, I would have ended up flat on my face on the sand - not so dignified).
Their cloaking devices were highly effective - I was very impressed; it beat the hell out of our little perception filter trick for the invisible lift. Jack just said it was a stupid place to park an invisible spaceship, what with the lack of landmarks and all.
I was slightly less impressed with the fact that they managed to use said cloaking to also hide the bloody great hole we discovered when we were inching our way around the edge of the ship. And by ‘discovered’, I mean that Jack fell into the edge of it up to his waist.
It was lucky really that it was only waist deep right at the edge - if he’d tumbled right down into it properly I don’t know what would have happened. It would certainly have been even more confusing for me.
Anyway, from his new vantage point halfway into the hole, Jack could duck down and see into the rest of the hole - it was only cloaked from ground level up.
In the end, we both went in and went to explore a bit - the deep central part of the hole had stairs hewn into the edges so it was fairly easy and safe to get down. We weren’t very far into the (amazingly and unexplainably well-lit; I still don’t know how it was done) tunnel at the bottom when we encountered a couple of them.
As soon as we saw them, Jack finally remembered where he’d seen those energy signals before. He didn’t go that far into the specifics, but he did say it was before he joined Torchwood. Apparently it wasn’t actually with members of that same species the last time, but they were from the same galaxy and it was one where they shared around a lot of their technological advances. According to Jack, that galaxy was also chock-a-block with tourist destinations and whole planet resorts - I’m assuming that’s how Jack ended up there but you know with Jack that you never can tell.
Anyway, the Illariyari (that’s my best approximation of how the name should be written; I’m not sure our alphabet has the right letters to express it fully) appeared to be friendly enough, if more than a little surprised to find us in their tunnel. They also - unsurprisingly - didn’t understand a word we said when we used English. We had slightly better luck when Jack tried his hand in whatever snippets of language he remembered from visiting their galaxy.
Luckily for us, his pidgin… whatever language it was, was good enough to convince them that we didn’t mean them any harm, but we would like to talk with them about their presence on Earth.
This appeared to signal lots of messaging back and forth between the pair we were talking to and some others presumably further along the tunnel, and then to Jack and me being escorted back up the stairs and actually into the spaceship.
I’m sure I’ll end up describing the interior of this spaceship to you in more detail once we get back, but for now I will leave it at saying that it was equipped with some seriously interesting pieces of kit and enginery.
We were left on our own for a bit in a rather swish meeting room of some sort - I confess for a fraction of a moment I did worry that, despite the appearance of friendliness, we were being taken prisoner.
Our friends from the tunnel eventually reappeared with several others - including one we were about to discover was their ship’s captain.
Conversation from that point on was rather simpler, since a few of the newcomers had arrived lugging a large bulky box between them; when it was placed in the middle of the room and a switch flipped, suddenly the things they were saying started to make sense - not perfectly, the grammar seemed more like it was a literal translation than a proper one, but streets ahead of Jack’s knowledge.
Apparently they’re rather better in a few millennia - or so Jack says, anyway. And not so bulky - but still almost prohibitively expensive. It was good enough that we found out why they were here, though.
For a nice change, they weren’t here bent on taking over the planet, or wiping out the human race, or anything even vaguely malicious at all, in fact.
They were just passing by - well, passing a couple of million miles away - when they discovered they had a serious leak in one of their fuel tanks and weren’t going to make it much further. Earth was the closest planet suitable for landing that also fit their requirements, so - despite the fact that they knew they could get into some sort of trouble for landing here (there’s a law of some sort - I didn’t quite catch all the details) - they did an emergency landing and just aimed for somewhere that looked as close to unpopulated as they could find in a hurry.
From their descriptions and stories, I reckon that was about three and a half months ago. They fixed the fuel tank, and since then have been working underground mining a downright peculiar mixture of different rocks and minerals. The tech that we’ve been picking up on the monitors is a nifty little gadget that converts the mined rocks into a fuel they can use in their ship.
While that process is extremely efficient, their mining process wasn’t so much, so Jack and I have spent a bit of time in the last few days using our (admittedly limited) knowledge of human mining techniques to help them improve it.
As a result, we managed to get them enough fuel converted and loaded into their tanks a bit faster than they had been expecting; they had been anticipating another week or two on Earth, but they left this morning. They’re not fully fuelled, but they have enough to make it to the next fuelling station without having to worry.
Jack (who you may have noticed hasn’t been interrupting my letter writing today) is up to his eyeballs in paperwork still - we have both been. If you ever thought we had a lot of red tape and reports to get through working for Torchwood, it’s nothing compared to what UNIT insist upon. Even filling out the paperwork has associated paperwork.
And once we’re done decimating a few forests, Lieutenant Halse is escorting us to the UNIT office in Windhoek to debrief or… something like that.
If it’s anything like the UNIT meetings Jack tries to get out of regularly back in Cardiff, I foresee Jack causing trouble (you know what Jack’s like when he gets bored). We can’t get out of it, though.
After the meetings are over, we finally get to come home, though!
Our flight from Windhoek to Johannesburg leaves on the 27th, and we’ll be back in Cardiff (well, the airport anyway) late lunchtime on the 28th. I’ll call you from Amsterdam with the details of our flight number and such, because I don’t actually have any of those details yet - I didn’t book the flights, a UNIT officer did it on our behalf. I just know what time we leave and what time we get back. (Oh, I can’t wait to have internet access again - things are just so much more difficult without it!)
I am looking forward to seeing all of you again - yes, even you, Owen. I know Jack feels the same.
Four more days - and unless there’s an emergency, yes we are expecting you to pick us up from the airport. You don’t need to be standing anxiously at the arrivals gate with a ‘Welcome Back’ banner (actually, please, please don’t) but we’d rather like to see you there.
Take care of yourselves, and we will see you soon!
Ianto and Jack
THE END
I hope you enjoyed this - please comment and let me know what you thought!
(Comments = &hearts)
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairings: Jack/Ianto, mentions of Gwen/Rhys, Martha/Tom
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: No, I don't own Torchwood. Things would be rather different if I did.
Spoilers: Set sometime late in an alternate version of S2 (where no one is dead)
Summary: Jack gets a call from UNIT. They need his help... in Namibia. And when they arrive, Jack and Ianto (because Jack wouldn't leave him behind) discover the only communication they have with the team is letters...
Author's Note: The title is taken from a quote from the film 'Out Of Africa'. This was written for tw_bigbang
Thanks to: The wonderful morbid_sparks for beta'ing, cheerleading and letting me complain about not knowing where the plot was going.
Also huge thanks to my lovely bigbang artist, wrenriddle - find her fanmix and beautiful cover art for this story here.
Previous Parts: One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine
Does Africa Know A Song of Me?
Cardiff
17th May 2008
Dear Jack and Ianto,
We’re all so very relieved to hear that you’re so much better, Ianto. And as much as you may not like to hear it, we are fully behind Jack mother henning you a little until you are back to 100%. We know you want to get back on the job so you can get back here, but no pushing until you’re ready, okay?
Owen says he will not be impressed if you get back here and you still look like death warmed up, so let that be a warning. Although I don’t know what he’s planning on doing to you if you don’t listen.
Wish there was something we could do to make up for the fact that you can’t actually send us the data. If it helps at all, we’ve done several searches on the signs you’ve described (like the localised earthquakes) and found nothing in any of the databases. Obviously that doesn’t mean whatever it is isn’t in there, but hopefully it might help you narrow it down a tiny bit.
The Rift is still quiet - we’re really getting quite suspicious now - and while we don’t quite trust it enough to actually all leave at the same time, we’ve been taking it in turns to man the Hub while the others have some time off. Obviously the person whose turn it is to be in the Hub for the day (you might have guessed it‘s me today) also feeds everything, although I have to admit I’m still not all that fond of feeding Myfanwy. I don’t care how well you two claim she is trained; I don’t quite trust her not to take my arm off when I’m tossing food at her.
Now that everything has settled down, and UNIT have all left, Martha has gone back to London and Tom - he’s leaving again in just a few days so she - for obvious reasons - wants to spend as much time with him as she can before he goes.
She left something on your desk for the two of you, though, Jack. I have no idea what - she wouldn’t tell me and I swore I wouldn’t look - so you have to hurry up and get back here and open it so you can tell me what it is! I’m dying of curiosity here.
Look after each other, and get this thing solved soon - we miss you and we’re all dreadfully deprived of half-decent coffee. (We promise we love you for more than your coffee, Ianto.)
Love,
Gwen
Namibia
24th May 2008
Dear All,
We’re coming home! Finally! Well, we will be in a few more days, but it is only a few more days.
Sorry that we haven’t written in several days, but we had rather a breakthrough three days after our last letter and we’ve been on the go fairly constantly ever since - and before you start, even Jack has accepted that I’m better now, and no, I’m not pushing myself too far too soon.
It had its intended result, though; Namibia is now several aliens lighter than it was a few days ago, although I think we should admit that, technically, we’re not directly responsible for that.
It all started, really, the day after we last wrote. Jack still wasn’t overly happy with the idea of taking me back out into the middle of the desert again so soon, so while he went off on another recon trip out to the latest site of the anomalies, I spent the day in our ‘office’ instead, scouring the data we’ve collected since we’ve been here.
When I added in some estimated data for the reported abnormalities before we arrived, I noticed there was, well, a bit of a spatial pattern in where the incidents had been occurring over time.
Or to be more precise, they were all in a straight(ish) line, moving in one direction in time.
Making the painfully obvious assumption, we set out the following day to trace backwards along the line of movement, hoping to discover where it had originated. We drove across desert for quite some time, and though there was no residual Rift energy along the way (which we now know the reason for, but I’ll get to that in time) we did eventually hit a spot where the scanners went mad picking up a variety of other energy signals, and the life signs monitor started picking up a reading or two as well.
The handheld monitors, as you know, aren’t particularly accurate as far as actually locating the activity goes, so it took us until lunchtime the next day to finally stumble upon what we were looking for.
And when I say stumble upon, I mean literally stumble upon (if Jack hadn’t caught me, I would have ended up flat on my face on the sand - not so dignified).
Their cloaking devices were highly effective - I was very impressed; it beat the hell out of our little perception filter trick for the invisible lift. Jack just said it was a stupid place to park an invisible spaceship, what with the lack of landmarks and all.
I was slightly less impressed with the fact that they managed to use said cloaking to also hide the bloody great hole we discovered when we were inching our way around the edge of the ship. And by ‘discovered’, I mean that Jack fell into the edge of it up to his waist.
It was lucky really that it was only waist deep right at the edge - if he’d tumbled right down into it properly I don’t know what would have happened. It would certainly have been even more confusing for me.
Anyway, from his new vantage point halfway into the hole, Jack could duck down and see into the rest of the hole - it was only cloaked from ground level up.
In the end, we both went in and went to explore a bit - the deep central part of the hole had stairs hewn into the edges so it was fairly easy and safe to get down. We weren’t very far into the (amazingly and unexplainably well-lit; I still don’t know how it was done) tunnel at the bottom when we encountered a couple of them.
As soon as we saw them, Jack finally remembered where he’d seen those energy signals before. He didn’t go that far into the specifics, but he did say it was before he joined Torchwood. Apparently it wasn’t actually with members of that same species the last time, but they were from the same galaxy and it was one where they shared around a lot of their technological advances. According to Jack, that galaxy was also chock-a-block with tourist destinations and whole planet resorts - I’m assuming that’s how Jack ended up there but you know with Jack that you never can tell.
Anyway, the Illariyari (that’s my best approximation of how the name should be written; I’m not sure our alphabet has the right letters to express it fully) appeared to be friendly enough, if more than a little surprised to find us in their tunnel. They also - unsurprisingly - didn’t understand a word we said when we used English. We had slightly better luck when Jack tried his hand in whatever snippets of language he remembered from visiting their galaxy.
Luckily for us, his pidgin… whatever language it was, was good enough to convince them that we didn’t mean them any harm, but we would like to talk with them about their presence on Earth.
This appeared to signal lots of messaging back and forth between the pair we were talking to and some others presumably further along the tunnel, and then to Jack and me being escorted back up the stairs and actually into the spaceship.
I’m sure I’ll end up describing the interior of this spaceship to you in more detail once we get back, but for now I will leave it at saying that it was equipped with some seriously interesting pieces of kit and enginery.
We were left on our own for a bit in a rather swish meeting room of some sort - I confess for a fraction of a moment I did worry that, despite the appearance of friendliness, we were being taken prisoner.
Our friends from the tunnel eventually reappeared with several others - including one we were about to discover was their ship’s captain.
Conversation from that point on was rather simpler, since a few of the newcomers had arrived lugging a large bulky box between them; when it was placed in the middle of the room and a switch flipped, suddenly the things they were saying started to make sense - not perfectly, the grammar seemed more like it was a literal translation than a proper one, but streets ahead of Jack’s knowledge.
Apparently they’re rather better in a few millennia - or so Jack says, anyway. And not so bulky - but still almost prohibitively expensive. It was good enough that we found out why they were here, though.
For a nice change, they weren’t here bent on taking over the planet, or wiping out the human race, or anything even vaguely malicious at all, in fact.
They were just passing by - well, passing a couple of million miles away - when they discovered they had a serious leak in one of their fuel tanks and weren’t going to make it much further. Earth was the closest planet suitable for landing that also fit their requirements, so - despite the fact that they knew they could get into some sort of trouble for landing here (there’s a law of some sort - I didn’t quite catch all the details) - they did an emergency landing and just aimed for somewhere that looked as close to unpopulated as they could find in a hurry.
From their descriptions and stories, I reckon that was about three and a half months ago. They fixed the fuel tank, and since then have been working underground mining a downright peculiar mixture of different rocks and minerals. The tech that we’ve been picking up on the monitors is a nifty little gadget that converts the mined rocks into a fuel they can use in their ship.
While that process is extremely efficient, their mining process wasn’t so much, so Jack and I have spent a bit of time in the last few days using our (admittedly limited) knowledge of human mining techniques to help them improve it.
As a result, we managed to get them enough fuel converted and loaded into their tanks a bit faster than they had been expecting; they had been anticipating another week or two on Earth, but they left this morning. They’re not fully fuelled, but they have enough to make it to the next fuelling station without having to worry.
Jack (who you may have noticed hasn’t been interrupting my letter writing today) is up to his eyeballs in paperwork still - we have both been. If you ever thought we had a lot of red tape and reports to get through working for Torchwood, it’s nothing compared to what UNIT insist upon. Even filling out the paperwork has associated paperwork.
And once we’re done decimating a few forests, Lieutenant Halse is escorting us to the UNIT office in Windhoek to debrief or… something like that.
If it’s anything like the UNIT meetings Jack tries to get out of regularly back in Cardiff, I foresee Jack causing trouble (you know what Jack’s like when he gets bored). We can’t get out of it, though.
After the meetings are over, we finally get to come home, though!
Our flight from Windhoek to Johannesburg leaves on the 27th, and we’ll be back in Cardiff (well, the airport anyway) late lunchtime on the 28th. I’ll call you from Amsterdam with the details of our flight number and such, because I don’t actually have any of those details yet - I didn’t book the flights, a UNIT officer did it on our behalf. I just know what time we leave and what time we get back. (Oh, I can’t wait to have internet access again - things are just so much more difficult without it!)
I am looking forward to seeing all of you again - yes, even you, Owen. I know Jack feels the same.
Four more days - and unless there’s an emergency, yes we are expecting you to pick us up from the airport. You don’t need to be standing anxiously at the arrivals gate with a ‘Welcome Back’ banner (actually, please, please don’t) but we’d rather like to see you there.
Take care of yourselves, and we will see you soon!
Ianto and Jack
THE END
I hope you enjoyed this - please comment and let me know what you thought!
(Comments = &hearts)