Fandom: Torchwood

Characters: Jack

Author: m_findlow

Rating: PG

Length: 1,991 words

Content notes: none

Author notes: Written for Challenge 356 - Spark

Summary: Jack is stuck on prehistoric earth unless a miracle happens.



'Computer, try the engine again,' Jack commanded, leaning wearily over the pilot's seat and praying for a miracle. His ears strained for the sound of anything, but apart from the whipping of sand and grit being buffeted by the wind against the metal hull of his crashed vessel, there was nothing else.

'Try it again, Computer.' He wished the computer still had its voice output module so it could at least tell him it had heard the command and was trying to follow it. He bent over the console, pressing his forehead to the metal as if it might telepathically exchange some news with him but there wasn't even the slightest vibration.

'Oh, come on baby,' Jack pleaded. 'Just give me a little something.'

When nothing happened he slouched back into the pilot's seat with an exasperated sigh. 'Well, Jack, looks like they're going to be digging up your bones in about fifty thousand year's time.' He chuckled to himself. 'Hell of a way to confuse the archaeologists. And you're a top specimen, even if I do say so myself.'

He leaned his head back against the headrest and sighed. He was tired. Days and weeks of nothing but trying to salvage the mechanics of his ship by jury rigging it from bits cannibalised from less vital systems. It broke his heart to have to pull apart the ship's vocal input/output systems. He always liked having someone to talk to and his preference was for ships that could at least talk back. They made for surprisingly scintillating conversations sometimes, or perhaps he was just lonelier than he thought. What he wouldn't give for a bit of dirty spaceship talk right now. Or just any talk come to think of it. If he kept talking to himself like this, he was going to go crazy before he ended up dead.

'Sorry, Computer, but I think we're almost at the end of the line. Unless we find a spare Chula transporter lying around, we just haven't got the parts.' Right now he'd have taken anything with a spark of life in it.

Hell of a place to have crashed, right after the asteroid strike. All manufactured, of course. One of these days he was going to learn not to double cross his buyers. When they got down to obliterating whole planets when a deal went south, he was probably too deep into a game he wasn't skilled enough to play. He supposed they thought he was dead. That had been the objective, after all. Not dead yet, but it wasn't looking good. How long could you survive on rotting dinosaur meat? He had a bit of it carved up and freeze dried from when his ship still had leaking coolant gas, but that was all gone now. A pity the meat wasn't gone yet. It really was as bad as he thought it might taste. It was no fillet steak, that was for sure, and even the worst beef jerky would have been a five star meal in comparison. Freeze dried dinosaur was tough, bitterly metallic, and led to the kind of reflux even the nastiest tourist destination couldn't aspire to.

Now the inside of this tin can was like a sauna. Everything outside had burned itself out by now, trees, prehistoric life, and most of the drinkable water, but the atmosphere was still heavy with hot smoke and scorching earth. The ozone had taken a big hit and now things were wild and unpredictable at best out there. It was breathable, but only just. Still, he couldn't stand sitting in here one more minute. Even a few minutes outside had to be better than baking himself inside as he waited to die.

He pushed himself out of the seat and walked the short journey from forward to aft, all in all no more than ten paces, before manually overriding the hydraulic systems that held the rear cargo door in place. He'd butchered the hydraulics two weeks ago and now it took brute force to open and shut the airlock seals. At least they still did seal. He'd need that if he ever got out of here, or otherwise he'd be sucked into deep space in three seconds flat, and then have a further fourteen seconds to contemplate his short and unspectacular end as his blood boiled and his oxygen and water filled body obliterated itself in the vacuum. Really bad way to die. He put his shoulder into it and shoved the door open just enough to slip through, greeted by a mound of red earth that had built up against the side and now worked its way in on the latest gust of wind.

He raised a hand to shield his eyes. The sun was burning orange and red and without the ozone, Jack was going to be burnt in under twenty minutes from the radiation. He'd keep his outing to less than ten, though he already knew what lay five minutes in any given direction. Desolate nothing, death and hopelessness.

He took another circuit around the outside of his battered ship, trying to see if there was anything more he could strip from the outside panels to use to try and get the engines and some basic shields online. He didn't want much, just enough to hobble to the next closest spaceport where he could get some proper equipment and repairs, not to mention some real food and, he thought, taking a cautionary sniff under his arm, a very long shower. If there had been anything left alive out here it certainly wouldn't eat him. It'd take one sniff and decide starving was a better option.

Outside things hadn't improved. The asteroid might have burnt off a lot of the atmosphere, but there was still enough left to start boiling up some hellish looking storm clouds. They were less clouds than they were noxious black gatherings swirling ominously above him. A huge bolt of lightning cracked from the largest of them and hit the ground just a few yards from where he was standing. It made him jump in alarm. 'Hey, take it easy,' he told it. 'This wasn't my fault, strictly speaking. How was I supposed to know they had warp laser technology? I mean, how many people hurl an asteroid at you? You're lucky they didn't blast us all into tiny little pieces. We're just a bit cooked.'

Another bolt came lashing down, this time just inches from his foot. 'Okay! Okay! So you're not gonna be happy until I'm crispy as well as cooked!' He quickly dove towards the panel hanging open on the underside of the vessel, crawled under it and reached in, grabbing whatever cabling he could and darted back to the rear door, pulling it shut behind him. He looked despondently at the clutch of wiring and let it fall from his hand. Totally useless in all likelihood. Unless he was prepared to pull apart the oxygen scrubbers, he was still short several vital components. And he'd really need oxygen if he was going to make it off this rock.

'Who are you kidding?' he asked himself. He was good at fixing things but he was no miracle worker. Still, that didn't stop him giving it one last go. After all, what else did he have to occupy his time?

He took his toolbox and shoved it over towards the underside of the console and then grabbed the bundle of wiring and circuit boards. He reached deep inside and fished around before his fingers finally landed on the circuit board, tugging it free. He inspected it, noting a small crack that was preventing it from working properly. He'd checked it three times before and hadn't noticed the damage until now. Well, at least he had a spare. He reached back in to replace it and it sparked momentarily, burning the tip of his finger and giving it a sharp shock.

'Ow!' he cried, sticking the injured finger in his mouth and sucking it. He was about to reel off a string of other expletives when a thought dawned on him. 'Oh, you idiot!' He'd spent the last two weeks trying to build up an alternative power source to kick-start his engines, and had abandoned it days ago when he couldn't get any transference from his nearly depleted power stores. But now the answer was staring him right in the face. He'd very nearly been struck by the idea in the literal sense. The lightning! All he had to do was get it to strike a power relay in just the right spot and that should give him the power boost he needed to get everything going.

'Computer, I think we might be back in business,' he said, looking around the cluttered mess. 'Just need something to… ah ha!' There was a long piece of metal tubing from a broken fuel line, just perfect to use as a lightning rod. He grabbed his bundle salvaged cables, stripping them one by one and twisting them together until he had length enough to feed from his power modulator all the way to the ends wrapped around his lightning rod. He double and triple checked everything else before venturing out again. He had maybe one shot at this so it all had to be aligned perfectly.

Assured that everything was as good as it was going to get, he carried his rod to the back of the ship, forced the door open again and took it outside. He ducked and weaved as storm clouds gathered overhead, working quickly lest he get caught still holding his rod when it decided to strike. He didn't have much with which to attach it to the side of the ship, making it the tallest metal structure and a tempting target for a deadly lightning strike, but it only had to poke up a little bit. There was nothing else for miles.

Jack jumped down from the roof of his ship, feeling the dirt and grit being whipped up by the winds, hitting his face and stinging his eyes. 'Oh, yeah! You wanna hit me now? Gimme everything you've got, baby!' Well maybe not everything. He didn't want the weather to toast his internal circuits. He didn't have to wait long. Out of nowhere came a huge jagged white bolt, striking the rod with a loud zap that made all the hair of Jack's head stand up a little. He dashed back inside and was welcome by a console that was, for the first time in weeks, lit up and glowing with life. There was a gentle him that might as well have been a whole symphony of sound, better than anything he'd ever heard in his life.

Jack hooted with delight. 'Yeah baby! Captain Jack is back!'

"Welcome back, Captain," the computer's interface read.

'It's good to be back,' he replied. 'Now, think you can get us the hell outta here and plot a course to the nearest space port without running out of gas?'

The computer didn't hesitate in providing him a response. "By my calculations, you should reach Thanos Port Six Omega Dash Two in fifteen hours, twenty six minutes, and still have reserve power for another three hours and fifty four minutes."

'That calls for a celebration.'

"I'm afraid my fabrication unit was dismantled during your repairs," the computer apologised.

Jack nodded. 'So, no hypervodka martinis until we dock for repairs. Got it. Anything else we might do to pass the time?'

"I do still have access to a wide collection of multi sensory erotic literature."

He grinned and leaned back in the chair. 'Lucky that storm arrived when it did. If we'd had to sacrifice that then there really would have been no point living anymore. Dial it up and I'll see you on the other side of fifteen hours and twenty six minutes.'

"With pleasure, Captain."