Title: All out at sea
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Owen, Tosh, Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 4,681 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 359 - Current
Summary: Tosh drags Owen out on what should be a simple assignment.


'Owen!' Tosh called out as he was wandering past her desk. He could tell she was just dying to tell him something by the tone of her voice.

'You look smug,' he said, studying her expression.

'I'm not smug!' She paused and reconsidered. 'Okay so maybe I'm a little bit smug.' Her eyes lit up. 'I found something!'

'An original vinyl copy of Little Richard's greatest hits?'

'No, something alien!' she replied, ignoring his attempt at humour. 'At least I'm pretty sure it's alien. I mean, it's got to be. I've already checked all the historical reports for shipwrecks and unclaimed flotsam and jetsam. It's not in there.'

'Shipwrecks? Alien shipwrecks?'

She shrugged. 'Or just alien. No, scratch that. Definitely alien. Look at this!'

Owen peered over her shoulder at the meaningless little line waving up and down imperceptibly on the screen. 'Oh yeah, that's one hundred percent alien.'

She smirked. 'Normally you ask me what it is first.'

'Thought I'd bypass the whole me not having a clue but and just let you crack on with it.'

'It's a signal. So faint that no one has ever detected it before.'

'Ah, so that's what made it so amazing. Tosh discovers fantastic new alien thing that nobody else ever has,' he said, teasing her.

Tosh didn't let Owen dampen her enthusiasm. 'I thought you could come with me, check it out and deactivate it.'

'Me? Why me? Surely this kind of thing is right up Jack's alley.'

She blushed a little at his direct question. 'I thought you might like to come instead. Why should Jack get all the cool jobs?'

'Yeah, I can see what's so unbelievably cool about it already. What about Ianto?'

Tosh grimaced. 'I figured maybe it wasn't such a good idea to ask him. Not after last time, what with him getting seasick and puking up over the side of the boat the whole time.'

'Yeah, fair point. That'd be all you'd need.'

'C'mon. I'll let you drive the speedboat.' She knew that would cinch it for him. Jack never let anyone drive the speedboat.

Owen sighed. 'Yeah, alright.'



Within the hour, Tosh had them geared up and cruising out from behind the Penarth headland, heading for open ocean.

'What'd you have to offer up to the boss to let us take this beauty out on the water?' Owen asked. He was curious about what Tosh had said to done to curry favour, wondering if he couldn't use the same tactics in future.

'Actually, I wasn't that specific. I just said that you and I were checking out a weak alien signal and that we'd report back.'

Owen smirked. Obviously Tosh knew just as well as he did that Jack never let anyone play with the cool toys. 'That sounds an awful lot like lying, Tosh.'

'It was an omission of facts. I didn't lie. Not outright, anyway.'

'Well, you should. I like it. So, what's so fascinating about this signal?'

Tosh gave her PDA a cursory glance. 'Nothing really. It's been out in the Bristol Channel for years according to what my readings show. Decades probably. Just hanging about out there, not doing anything.'

'And no one's ever reported anything funny about it?'

She shook her head. 'It's not near any of the shipping lanes, even though the water out there is pretty deep according to the oceanographic maps we've got.'

'So, chances of it being the cousin of the Loch Ness monster are pretty slim.'

'Afraid so. I've already done some analysis of the signal, but it's not doing anything from what I can tell. It's not a warning beacon, or a message for help. It's not even projecting very far. Certainly not out into space. I think it's just been forgotten.'

'Like someone's gone from the house and left the telly on,' Owen offered.

'Exactly. The plan is basically to give it one quick check up close and then use the electromagnetic pulse generator I brought with us to deactivate it for good.'

Owen opened up the throttle, letting the boat cut through the swell. 'Perfect. Just a little joy ride for us then.'



The signal was a lot further out than Owen had thought, taking them well over two hours to reach it, out in deep water. Tosh kept studying the readings, hoping that as they got closer something might change. From the look on her face, it was just as boring as it had been back at the hub.

'Nothing but reruns of I Love Lucy?' Owen asked, watching Tosh as she studied the equipment in front of her.

'Hmm?'

'The abandoned telly,' he explained. 'Or is it Antiques Roadshow?'

She smiled. 'More like the Station Closed signal.' She frowned. 'I was kind of hoping it'd reveal something more exciting once we got here but it's literally just pointless static. Can you go and switch off our navigation and computer controls? Don't want to fry our own computers when I activate the EMP.'

'Right-o,' Owen replied, moving from the back of the boat to the controls at the front on the bridge. She waited twenty seconds then saw him stick his arm out and give her a thumbs up. 'All powered down. Should be good to go,' he called back.

She pressed the button on the EMP generator and heard the low whump sound as it emitted the short sharp pulse. 'Right, that's all done, Tosh announced. 'No more strange alien signals out in the middle of the Bristol Channel.'

Owen rejoined her at the bow of the vessel. 'Well, that was anticlimactic.'

'Sorry,' she apologised. 'I never promised it'd be exciting.'

'Yeah, alright. Still it was a day out.' Owen squinted at the clouds overhead. They'd been a flat expanse of palest grey all day but now they were starting to darken and look more ominous. 'Let's get out of here before the weather turns on us.' He flipped the engines back on and the boat rumbled into life.

The boat cruised for about five minutes before Owen noticed that it seemed to be slowing down. 'What's wrong with this thing?' he complained, pushing forward on the throttle which made little difference. Honestly, if a bunny like Jack could pilot this thing… 'Stupid thing,' he muttered.

Tosh peered over his shoulder, checking the readings from the instruments on the bridge's panel. 'Engines are still showing as operating at full power, but you're right. Our speed is decreasing.'

'How's that work, then?'

'Maybe the instruments are faulty.'

'Maybe you wrecked them with your EMP thingy.'

She ignored the barb. 'If I had then our engines wouldn't have started at all. Besides, our navigation computer seems okay.' She pointed at it. 'That's our position and relative speed. It shows that as we're moving further away from where the alien device was, we're slowing down even more. But that's just silly,' she said, as if to herself. 'It's not active. The only thing that could be affecting our speed in the prevailing currents.' She scratched her head and considered it. 'We could be coming up against a stronger than usual current, I suppose.'

'One that's getting stronger the more we try to push through it?' Owen asked, sounding totally skeptical.

'We should change heading,' Tosh said. 'That way we won't be trying to drive straight against it. Like swimming sideways out of a riptide. Then we can skirt around it and recorrect course.'

Owen altered their course so that they were moving at a forty five degree angle to their original heading, but the engines seemed to struggle just as much with their altered course. 'Any more bright ideas?' Owen said, as he forced the engines even harder against the current. We're practically not moving.'

'Don't push the engines any harder,' Tosh told him. 'They're at their limit and we've only got so much fuel. Plus you could burn them out altogether.'

Owen huffed his annoyance. 'So what? We just let the current push us even further out to sea?'

'It's got to peter out at some point,' Tosh assured him. 'We should probably radio back the hub and let them know our situation, though.'

Owen flicked the switch on the console and brought the hand-held radio speaker to his mouth before frowning at it. 'It's not working either.'

'Currents don't affect radio signals, Owen.'

'Well, I'm telling you there's nothing. No power and no signal.'

'That's absurd.' She pushed him out of the way to inspect it for herself. She took the radio in her hand. 'Sea Knave to Torchwood hub. Come in please.' There was nothing. Not even static. 'That can't be right,' she muttered, looking perplexed. 'You can't have power for the engines and navigation but not the radio. They're all interconnected.'

'How fast can a current carry a boat this size with the engines cut?' Owen asked.
Tosh was still frowning at the bridge console, as if staring hard at it would make the problem and the solution evident. 'Only a few knots at most.'

'Well, we're travelling at least ten in the complete opposite direction. They watched as the navigation display showed their position, edging ever backwards to where they'd been.

Tosh knelt under the console, beginning to pull away the panel and muttering 'This shouldn't be happening,' as Owen watched on.

The boat rocked against a sudden wave which threw them against the cabin wall and into a tangled heap on the floor.

'What was that?' Tosh asked, trying to pull herself to her feet whilst not sticking elbows or knees into Owen who was wedged underneath her. Once she was upright she reached down to help him up. They both stared out the windows as their boat bobbed up and down on the waves.

'Well, we're not moving anymore at least,' Owen said, pointing at the screen. Their position had stopped drifting and was now just a single pinging dot on the map.

'Okay, so try the engines again and head due east,' Tosh said, suggesting a change of course that would be linearly the same as the current that had forced them back.

Owen opened up the throttle and pushed the boat forward but there wasn't so much as a single foot of distance achieved.

'Try north.'

Nothing.

'South?'

'It's no use, Tosh. No matter which direction I try to move this thing won't budge an inch.'

'But that's crazy. You can't have a current that pushes at you from all directions! That's a whirlpool.'

Owen gave up as he began to smell the acrid scent of rubber and metal smoking as he pushed the engines hard. We're right over the top of your alien junk heap. I don't think we can call that a coincidence. Whatever you did, it wasn't happy about it.'

Tosh bristled.' It's not sentient. It can't be happy or unhappy.'

'Fine, but that still doesn't help us. Whatever is going on it's got to be connected to the alien thing.'

'So, what are you saying, it was preventing a huge influx of oceanic current from coming anywhere near it?'

There was a thud against the hull on the port side. A few seconds later there was one on the starboard side, twice as hard, throwing them off balance again. They caught each other before falling over.

'What now?' Owen complained. 'It is trying to capsize us?'

They carefully went to the edge of the bow and peered over the side. The ocean was reasonably calm, just a slight bobbing up and down on the water until something long and grey whipped past their vision.

'Dolphin?' Tosh asked. There was another thud from the opposite side of the boat. Owen moved over to see what it was when it came into view for a second time, colliding with their vessel with considerable force. 'Oh, that's just great,' he muttered. 'We've got sharks.'

'Sharks?' Tosh sounded incredulous. 'But they don't attack boats.'

'Well, this one is.' Large droplets of rain began to hit the back of Owen's head, soaking straight through his thin jacket. He cast his gaze wayward and got smacked in the eye by another large raindrop. He growled. 'Is there anything that isn't pissed off at us?' He sighed and turned back to Tosh. 'Everything went to custard after we switched that thing off, so we should switch it back on.' That had to be the answer to all their problems.

'It's not that easy,' Tosh replied, looking slightly worried. 'We used an EMP to knock it out but that's not the same as being able to activate it again. Assuming we even can.'

Owen grabbed for the side of the cabin as another violent thud hit the side of the boat, trying to tip it. 'Bottom line it for me. Can we or can we not switch it back on?'

'Theoretically, yes.'

'And practically?'

She grimaced at him. 'We'd have to physically try and get it going again.'

'Tosh, I hate to break it to you, but it's three hundred metres straight down. How are we going to manage that? '

Tosh moved over to the stainless steel footlockers behind the cabin. 'We've got dive suits capable of making it down there. One of us would need to go and manually reactivate it.'

Owen gave her a look then waited for a beat. 'One of us?'

'Someone has to stay on board to operate the dive winch. At that depth you'll need it to get yourself back up to the surface. Plus, if we lose power, someone should be here to manually winch the line back up.'

'Have you forgotten Jaws out there?' He pointed emphatically at the choppy water, their foe having temporarily disappeared from sight.

Tosh drew her hair back from her face as a gust of wind and rain plastered it across her eyes. 'We could wait an hour. If it doesn't find anything of interest maybe it'll go away.'

Owen could hear the waves beginning to lap up against the side of the boat. The weather was turning quickly, threatening to tip them over and make them both shark bait. 'I don't think we've got an hour. I haven't got a clue what to do when I'm down there,' he said, accepting that he was going to have to be the one to go down and try to fix the thing.

'You'll have your suit cam. I can talk you through it. As for the sharks, I can try and rejig the EMP generator to a constant magnetic field around the boat. Sharks don't like magnetic fields that interfere with their own electrical fields. It should be enough to keep them at bay.'

'Can we try that before you truss me up like a dinner to go?'

Tosh rolled her eyes. 'As if I'd send you out there unprotected.'

Owen smirked. 'Sorry, you're right. Been hanging around Jack too long.'

He grabbed the suit from the locker and began changing into it whilst Tosh worked on her EMP generator, altering it to produce a sustained charge rather than a short powerful pulse. The suit wasn't much more than a wetsuit with a funny looking visor thing that was attached to the front of his wetsuit cap. At least he wouldn't have to worry about a mouthpiece as the tank would be clipped into the visor mask, feeding him oxygen directly into the helmet, along with Tosh's communications, assuming they held up. Nothing else was working, but so far his tests had been okay, he could hear Tosh's and she could hear him. That was what counted.

'Okay, I've switched on the generator,' Tosh announced as he was loading his tank by the side of the now violently rocking vessel, clipping himself onto the winch. She virtually had to raise her voice to be heard.

Owen peered over the side but it was almost impossible to tell if the sharks were still out there or not. The water was cutting up badly and washing over the side of the boat when the waves got too high. He'd just have to take his chances. 'Ready?' he called back at her.

She nodded and flipped the switch on the winch, unspooling a length of cable so that he could enter the water.

Owen gave one last look at the slate coloured waters around him, searching for any sight of brighter grey latches lurking for a quick meal gulped then jumped off the end. Down below the surface things were much calmer, the waves no longer doing much more than causing him to say from side to side as he clutched the cable and it descended into the blackening depths. He kept a wary eye out for any sharks but Tosh's generator seemed to have done the trick at least for now. 'Can you still hear me?'

'Loud and clear,' Tosh reported back.

'Good. Now get back inside that cabin before those waves throw you overboard.'

Owen continued his descent, feeling his ears pop and the pressure of the water press in all around him. Large schools of fish hurried past him, tangling their mass with his winch line but not doing much more than being a nuisance, small as they were. They could harry and buffet him around but it was still better than their larger cousins who might want a piece of him.

As it got too dark to see anything, he switched on his dive helmet light, casting just enough light to see three feet in front of him. He wasn't sure he wanted to see much more than that. Anything could be lurking down here.

'You should be almost there,' Tosh's voice crackled over his headset. As she said it he felt his feet drop into a deep denseness that must have been the sea floor.

He grabbed his line with one hand and began moving around in tight circles trying to spot their alien device. 'I think it might be partly submerged,' he said, finding nothing but a whole lot of sand, starting to kick it around, throwing up clouds of it that blurred his vision. With a bit more exploratory shuffling, his foot hit something harder. He tapped it again, feeling metal before reaching down to sweep away more sand with his hands.

'I found it,' he said, certain it was no rock. It was heavy and round, and took a bit of digging around to ascertain that it was about four feet across but deep set into the sea bed. He pawed away at it until he could feel a slight ridge in the side. 'I think there's some kind of control panel.'

Tosh waited until the cloud of sand settled back down in the water, able to get a first look at it. 'Yes, I think you're right. See if you can get it open.'

There was a small utility belt and a paring knife which Owen used to scrape away the coral like accumulate. Fortunately, buried as it had been, there was only a fine layer gluing the panel shut, and with a bit of force he was able to pop it open.

'That's good,' Tosh said. She gave him some instructions to hold steady whilst she got a good look at the inner workings. All Owen could head over his headset were howling winds and raging seas. Tosh must have been getting blown around up there, even inside the relative safety of the cabin.

'Okay,' Tosh finally said. 'I have no idea what it does, but the internal workings don't look much different to most machines. Bit by bit Tosh told him what he should do.

'You're almost there,' Tosh assured him after a tricky thirty minutes of fiddling with the inner workings, hankered by the lack of light, lack of tools and the general freezing water temperatures which were turning his fingers numb.

There was one final piece of wiring inside it that needed to be cut, stripped and re-twined together whether the EMP had caused it to arc and melt. Just as he'd managed to cut through the wire and remove some of the protective coating so that he could twist it back together, something grabbed at his ankle. He assumed it was just a piece of seaweed until it tugged more strongly. He turned around, his helmet light shining on the thing that had grabbed him and wished he hadn't. The suit cam couldn't see the enormity of the thing right in front of him. His foot was in the clutches of a fifty foot giant squid. He screamed.

'Owen! What's happening?'

'Giant squid!' he cried, hand still clutching the wires. He had to get them repaired, desperately trying to twist them together against his rising panic. Even if he didn't make it out of here, Tosh was counting on him to fix the device so that she might be able to.

His feet went out from under him as the two wires reconnected and he lost his grip on them, flailing as he was drawn away from it. He felt the winch line punch around his belt and grabbed it with both hands for all the good it might do him. 'Bring me up!' he yelled.

Up on deck Tosh scrambled from the cabin and across the boat to the stern, nearly going overboard as the rains lashed down, soaking her in seconds and making her footing treacherous. She crashed into the winch, grabbing hold of it to stop her from sliding further and activating the reverse turn on it, slowly drawing up the heavy black cable. It spun for a few rotations before it met resistance.

'Owen!' Tosh yelled into her headset, hardly able to hear a thing over the storm raging around her. 'Did you get the device working?'

'Never mind that!' he yelled back, feeling the tentacle wrap tighter around his leg, pulling him away from it. It disappeared as the light from his helmet glowed only into an empty nothingness now, whilst the belt around his middle squeezed, trying to cleave him in two. 'Keep pulling!'

Tosh increased the power on the winch, cranking it up to a higher speed. The wheel protested at the instruction, cable moving only a few inches at a time as it spooled agonisingly slow. She worried that it would snap, grabbing at it with both hands as if that might help. The cable snaked over the edge of the boat and she felt the stern dip lower in the broiling water as Owen became a game of tug of war. Seawater washed over and drenched her but she clung for dear life.

Owen struggled against his assailant, kicking and writhing, trying to get away from its grip. It wrapped another tentacle around his middle and this time he reached for his paring knife and stabbed at it. It flinched at the sudden pain and withdrew both tentacles just long enough for him to feel the pull of the cable quickly draw him away, putting distance between him and the creature.

Tosh was thrown backwards by the sudden lack of resistance. The cable whirred madly, spooling quickly now. It whirred and groaned and what felt like an eternity and then sparked and snapped, coming to a complete stop as the motor gave out. Tosh flung herself to the edge of the stern and tried to look down, adjudging how much cable was still left to draw in. 'Owen, you okay?'

'Yeah, just get me the hell out of here.'

Tosh grabbed the cable and pulled, then went back to the winch and began turning it manually. Her hand slipped on the wet handle, but as the rains began to ease, she was able to keep hold of it better, reeling it in slowly but surely. Her arms ached with every turn but she kept going, knowing Owen was counting on her and that the squid could come back at any moment and grab him. If it did, she knew she'd be no match for it.

Owen finally broke the surface with huge relief, finding the boat a hundred feet away and paddling towards it. The waves had subsided a bit but they still hampered his efforts to reach the boat and its promise of safety. Now would be a really bad time to have those sharks come back, he thought. Never mind the squid.

Tosh reached down for him and helped pull him up and over the railing, the pair of them collapsing on the deck in a sodden heap. 'Thanks,' Owen finally got his breath back, tugging off his dive helmet and grateful for normal air. 'I'm never going to be able to face a plate of calamari ever again.'

Tosh propped herself upright and leaned back against the winch, regaining her own breath as her aching muscles tried to recover from the exertion. 'How big was it?'

'You don't wanna know,' he replied. 'But I'm not going back down there, no matter how screwed we are.'

Tosh squeezed the water from her dripping hair. 'I doubt it would matter,' she said, as the clouds overhead broke up, revealing patches of grey dusk falling. 'The winch drained the last of our fuel and power before it burnt out. Either way we're stuck here.'

Owen slumped against the opposite site of the boat. 'That's okay. I think I'm just going to sit here for a while and think about how I'm never going to let you talk me into anything like this ever again. Someone will find us, right?'

'We're miles from any shipping lanes.'

Owen closed his eyes and leaned his head back. 'Great.'



They sat there in silence as dusk turned to night, just bobbing helplessly on that water until something made Tosh open her eyes and look around. 'Do you hear that?'

'What?'

'Off in the distance. It sounds like a helicopter.' She struggled to her feet, crawling over to the footlocker and digging around inside it. 'I hope the flares didn't get wet,' she muttered, loading one into a stubby gun and firing it up into the night sky. Luckily it took light and the arc or orange light moved through the air, signalling their position. Moments later, Tosh's suspicions were confirmed as the sounds of a helicopter hovered right over them, its bright flood lights illuminating their stricken vessel.

'Hey, you kids,' came a familiar voice over a loud hailer.

'Jesus, I never thought I'd be so happy to hear Jack's voice,' Owen muttered. He watched as a cable lowered from the underside of the chopper, ready to lift them both to safety. In no time at all both of them were aboard and the helicopter headed back towards home.

'How'd you find us?' Owen finally asked, wrapping a blanket around him as Tosh buried herself in her own.

Jack gave them a trademark smile over his shoulder. Freak weather cell starts up out in the Bristol channel? Of course I was watching it. Okay, I lie. Tuning into the shipping forecast is more Ianto's thing than mine, but this was too freaky even for us to ignore. And we knew there'd be trouble when we went to grab a boat to check it out and find it missing. Your GPS tapped out a few hours ago so an aerial search was the only way to be sure we found you. Glad we did.' He turned back around and glared at them.' By the way, who said you could borrow the Sea Knave, anyway?'

Owen pointed at Tosh.

'Oh, well that's okay, then.'

Owen scoffed. 'How come it's okay for her to knick the Torchwood dinghy and not me?'

Jack just shrugged as if that were enough to answer him. 'Next time maybe just warn me first.'

'What, no punishment? Owen asked.

Jack grinned to himself. 'Ianto's already got the requisite paperwork for both borrowing and losing the boat, in triplicate, ready for you when you get back. I think that's punishment enough. Plus I can't wait to read your reports.'