Title: Smoked out
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,307 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 456 - Yellow
Summary: A battered alien ship is causing all kinds of strange weather phenomena over Cardiff.


‘It’s getting worse, you know,’ Ianto said, voice slightly muffled beneath his breathing apparatus.

Jack didn’t bother looking up from what he was doing. He could scarcely see three feet in front of him. He didn't even know where Ianto was. He might be standing just off to Jack's side, or he might have been miles away at the hub, dealing with things from there. ‘I’m going as fast as I can,’ Jack argued, ‘but there is only one of me, remember?’

‘How could I forget?’ came the reply.

‘I can barely see what I’m doing and that's with extractor fans going full pelt,’ Jack said, providing an update on the situation. The fans were ridiculously powerful and he could feel the air pushing against his body as he leaned inside the huge alien vessel, reviewing each of the mechanical systems one by agonisingly slow one, trying to get to the bottom of the ship’s woes. Even with the fans, the huge plumes of thick yellow smoke that were billowing out were finding their way inside the narrow confines of the inner workings, clouding Jack's view of delicate parts, tubing, electrical panels and wiring. It was a nightmare.

The ship had crashed several days ago, burying itself in a smoking crater in the middle of the night in the middle of a large football pitch. It didn't appear to be on fire, but something had gone haywire and it was burning fuel from some kind of malfunction and spewing out noxious mustard coloured gas seemingly without end.

Jack felt something brush his leg. ‘Are you sure you don't need any help?’ came the question, confirming that the thing that touched him was probably Ianto. ‘I mean, we’ve all forgiven you for your earlier rudeness, suggesting that we mere stupid earthlings are totally incapable of understanding the workings of an alien spaceship, but to be totally frank, it doesn't look like you're having much luck here on your own either.’

Jack turned his head, just barely able to make out Ianto’s outline in the bulky suit and slightly terrifying looking gas mask he was wearing. They’d quickly upgraded from handkerchiefs to dust masks, to full on biohazard suits. It wasn’t just the smoke from the vessel that was the problem. It was the prevailing weather conditions that were making it worse. A cold front had descended over the city, bringing fog which had combined with the smoke to form smog, and a layer of high altitude warm air was keeping the whole thing trapped over the city, forming an impenetrable pea soup of yellowy foulness. Citizens at least didn't seem panicked by the situation. Cardiff was used to fog, albeit it usually didn’t have such a strange colouration to it, nor such a foul, bitter smell. News presenters were putting it down to environmental pollution and getting every science boffin to weigh in, but such was the thickness of it now that even the climate change protesters who'd been crowding city hall two days ago demanding the government take action had given up and gone home.

Jack heaved a sigh, wishing he could pull off his mask and get some fresh air and to wipe the sweat from his face that was accumulating inside the mask. It had been designed to help him breathe, but not to give him any kind of cooling ventilation in what was becoming exhausting, fiddly work. He regretted his earlier bravado, telling his teammates that they were of no use to help. Gwen might have levied the words “arrogant bastard” at him if he recalled correctly, going off in a huff to liaise with the emergency services. It wasn't his fault that they didn’t know where or how to go about fixing alien mechanics, though perhaps he could have been a little less smug and dismissive. It wasn’t like he had much to show for three days of crawling through every gap in the ship, trying to pinpoint the problem and fix it. The ship in fact had numerous problems to fix, but none of them seemed to be having any impact on the amount of fuel it was burning and chugging out into the atmosphere.

‘I’m sorry I was so rude,’ Jack apologised, heartened by Ianto's loyalty and willingness to do whatever he could to help.

‘That’s okay. We're used to it by now. Gwen would have come with me except the police are driving her batty.’

Jack nodded in understanding. If he thought things were going badly here, it was probably nothing compared to the authorities trying to manage the unfolding disaster. Jack knew his phone was probably ringing off the hook with demands to know what was going on. Whenever anything bad happened in Cardiff, everyone knew that it was Torchwood's job to fix it – and probably Torchwood’s fault it happened in the first place. Iato would have field what calls he could, but there was no putting off the commander general of UNIT or the Prime Minister. Gods knew even Her Majesty was probably trying to get a hold of him out of concern.

‘Is there any hope of getting some better weather?’ Jack asked. None of this might have been a problem except for the fog and the cold trapping in every last bit of it, blanketing the city.

‘Not for at least another few days,’ Ianto replied. ‘Funny how the one thing you can never rely on around here is the weather, yet right when you need it to be unpredictable and change on you, it wants to stay firmly fixed in place.’

Jack groaned. ‘Tell me about it.’ If the fog would just lift or they could get a bit of a breeze, the smoke would just disappear into the air and blow away. An annoying busted ship would be just that and nothing more.

‘At least we haven’t had to worry about anyone seeing it,’ Ianto said, looking for the silver lining in all of it. ‘We could have a whole legion of these and no one would see them. I bumped into about twenty things just getting from the carpark to here. God knows I'll probably never find the car again now, so I might as well stay here with you and help.’

Jack sighed again. ‘I really wish you could help, Ianto. I just don’t know where to begin explaining what to look for or how to fix it. At this rate our best bet is going to be hoping the thing eventually runs out of fuel to burn.’ Jack didn't like those odds. A ship this size would need to carry an awful lot of fuel to travel the kind of distances it was built for, and the complete lack of any crew, dead or alive, was a puzzle he didn't have time for.

‘I didn’t think so,’ Ianto replied. ‘I can change a tyre or top up the oil on my car, but alien ships? I’d need to study the manual first and I'm guessing they don’t have one of those on board. Instead I did the next best thing I could think of to help.’

‘What's that?’

Ianto held up something in a gloved hand, barely discernible in the haze. ‘I brought coffee. In a thermos. And some straws. Not the best way to savour it, but given that we probably don't want to unzip these suits any more than is strictly necessary…’

Jack beamed, even though Ianto couldn't see it. Nothing else was going his way, but at least one thing was looking up. It might not be able to fix an alien ship, but coffee could fix pretty much everything else, and with a bit of caffeine to keep him going, who knew what was possible. Cardiff’s yellow scourge could be well on its way to getting fixed.