Not totally happy with the middle passage of this story, but I hope you will enjoy it nonetheless.
The Bteko
The quiet of the Hub was shattered by a loud blast of dissonant sound emanating from the work area. Jack and Gwen hastened out of the glass-walled boardroom to look down on the lower levels, spotting Owen haring out of the medical bay towards Toshiko who was seated at her desk. The noise continued, a martial undertone becoming clear, echoing off the concrete walls sufficiently loudly to bring Ianto up from the archives at a run.
"Sorry, sorry," Toshiko called, frantically hitting her keyboard.
Her voice was barely heard above the ear-piercing noise. Her colleagues, fingers in their ears, made for her desk with the exception of Ianto who stopped at an equipment box and took out five pairs of ear defenders which he distributed quickly, himself putting a pair on Toshiko whose hands were still dancing over the keyboard. The noise continued for several minutes despite her efforts and Jack's use of his wrist strap controls. When they were thinking it would never end, the noise stopped as suddenly as it had begun leaving the Torchwood team stunned by the silence.
"Bloody hell, Tosh," said Owen, removing the defenders and poking at an ear. "What was that?" She did not reply; still wearing the defenders she had not heard him. Ianto, realising this, reached across and removed them.
"Huh? Thanks, Ianto," she said distractedly, concentrating on her monitors.
"Tosh, what happened?" asked Jack.
"One minute." She made a few adjustments using mouse and keyboard and then looked round at her colleagues. "Sorry, I didn't know that would happen. It's the obelisk we found at Barry, it's imprinted with records. I thought they were all videos but seems some are audio." She looked across at the obelisk itself, a stone pillar standing four feet tall and two feet square, next to the curved outer wall of the Hub.
"You've got somewhere with that?" asked Gwen, her interest piqued. She and Jack had retrieved it from a local trader who in turn had found it amongst a mass of flotsam on Barry's beach. "What is it?"
"Not sure yet." Toshiko looked round again. "I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to drag you away from what you were doing."
"No problem," said Ianto with a smile. "It's almost coffee time anyway. You all want one?" When there were murmured agreements and nods, Ianto went off to the machine.
"Sounds like you've seen some of these video records then," said Jack, perching on the edge of Owen's desk. "What are they?"
Toshiko smiled. "It's like a home movie. There are some large and some small aliens playing games. Here, I'll show you."
She activated her central monitor and an image appeared. Against a vivid green background which resolved itself into an alien sky, three large round aliens were poking sticks into four smaller ones to their apparent amusement and delight. There was no sound, but the bearing of all the aliens bore out Toshiko's assessment of this being a game.
"That's so cute." Gwen pulled over Owen's vacant chair and sat beside Toshiko, staring at the screen. "Oh look at that!" One of the smaller aliens had lost its footing – they had small knobbly legs – and fell over, rolling into one of the larger ones.
"Looks bloody dangerous to me," commented Owen. "Those sticks could have an eye out."
"They haven't got any eyes." Gwen scowled at him then turned back to the screen. "Any more?"
"Uh-huh. In this one," she paused as she used her mouse to click through various icons, "they're climbing." The image on the screen changed to show the smaller aliens climbing over the larger ones and then up a sheer cliff face using a strange rocking motion. "I have no idea why they don't fall."
Various suggestions were made as the whole team stood and sat around the desk watching the images while drinking coffee. The aliens were completely unknown – there were no matches in the database – and even Jack had never come across anything like them in all his wanderings. Owen was the first to move away, bored with just the two snatches of video to watch, returning to the medical bay. Not long after, Ianto went back to the archives.
"That sound you had doesn't seem to go with the pictures," ventured Gwen, still entranced.
"I didn't think so either," replied Toshiko.
Jack pushed himself off Owen's desk. "Could go with one of the other videos. How many are there?"
"There are forty two records. Don't know how many are video and how many audio." She looked up at him. "Want me to carry on or shall I –"
"Yes!" exclaimed Gwen, jerking upright. "We're always looking at crap, about time we got to look at something good."
With a smile, Jack said, "There's nothing else urgent to be done. Don't see why you can't finish now you've got this far."
"Thanks." Toshiko was pleased and smiled up at her boss gratefully.
"I'll help Tosh," said Gwen. She and Jack had been analysing the police call out statistics for unusual patterns, a routine and boring task when compared to the chance to watch a brand new race at play.
He shrugged. "All right." Jack ambled off, deciding to visit Ianto in the archives while everyone else was occupied.
-ooOoo-
Three hours later another sound echoed round the Hub from Toshiko's desk. Owen, in the medical bay preparing a specimen for analysis, heard quiet snuffling and sobs and looked up. Jack and Gwen were on their way back from an abortive Weevil sighting and Ianto was upstairs waiting for food so it could only be Toshiko crying. He climbed the steps out of the bay and, sure enough, she was the source of the sound.
He moved to her side. "Tosh, what is it?" he asked quietly. He put a hand on her shoulder, hating to hear anyone crying so helplessly.
"Oh, Owen! They're all dead."
"Who? Jack and Gwen?" he asked, puzzled.
"No. The aliens." Her face crumpled and she wept noisily. Without hesitation, he took her in his arms and held her close, rocking her slightly.
The cog door rolled back and the alarms went off as Ianto walked through, box of food in his arms, followed by Jack and Gwen. All three were laughing until they spotted their colleagues.
"What have you done to her, Owen?" demanded Gwen, storming up the steps to the raised work area. "Tosh, sweetheart, what is it?"
"Me? I haven't done anything!" Owen continued to hold Toshiko, thwarting Gwen's attempts to push him away.
"What's up, Tosh?" asked Jack. He glanced at the monitors before her where the single image showed a land devastated and laid to waste with buildings razed to the ground.
"They're all dead," she said, pulling away from Owen and dabbing at her eyes. She accepted the tissues Ianto offered and blew her nose. "All those aliens are dead."
"What! Those happy round ones?" exclaimed Gwen.
"Is that all?" Jack had seen too many races annihilated by civil war or stronger neighbours to be moved by yet another.
"How can you be so callous?" Gwen had her arm round Toshiko who was now wiping her eyes. "Tosh, tell us."
"I got into all the records. Put them in order." Toshiko looked across at the obelisk. "They made it, as a memorial to their world."
"Not unusual." Still unmoved, Jack stood with arms crossed defiantly.
Disgusted with his boss's attitude, Ianto tried to change the mood. "The curry's getting cold. Let's eat."
"Give me a sec, just got to put some stuff in the fridge." Owen walked off to the medical bay where he secured his specimen.
"Set it up in the boardroom, Ianto," said Jack. Aware of the dirty looks he was getting from Ianto and Gwen, Jack tried to make amends. "Rig up the records, Tosh. We can watch it while we eat."
Ten minutes later the team was in the boardroom, food cartons opened and most of their contents on plates. Toshiko handed the plasma screen remote to Jack. "Press play and the records will come up in order. I won't stay." She picked up her plate and bottle of beer and quietly left the room.
"Maybe I should go with her," said Ianto, watching Toshiko's retreating back through the glass wall. Her shoulders were slumped and she was moving slowly, still affected by what she had seen.
"Nah, stay and watch," muttered Owen. "Come on, Jack, fire it up."
"You can be so unfeeling," protested Gwen. She too looked after Toshiko but decided to stay, wanting to see the records.
"Here goes," said Jack, activating the slideshow.
The first five records (which included the two the team had viewed before) showed the large and small aliens engaged in various activities. An alien voice provided a commentary which Toshiko had partly translated – it had similarities with one they had already deciphered – and subtitles appeared at the bottom of the screen. The watchers learnt the aliens called themselves Bteko and lived a rural existence raising crops. It was an idyllic life in which a small group of adults and children worked side by side in the fields and enjoyed leisure time together. Record six gave the first hint of what was to come. The weather, which had been settled and ordered, became unpredictable and crops failed. The translation fragmented at this point but the pictures showed clearly how the Bteko's life changed for the worse as food became scarce and everyone had to work harder and harder to grow enough to survive. Yet even now they had a few isolated moments of fun. By record nine that had changed. The Bteko featured in the videos (an extended family of over thirty individuals the Torchwood team could now differentiate from one another) suffered attacks by external raiding parties, families who had been less successful or merely greedy, who trashed all they could and left fear and confusion in their wake.
The mood around the boardroom table grew more serious as the records continued to play. Ianto stopped eating, feeling guilty for having food when the Bteko had so little.
The weather improved in record eleven and some crops were planted but not as many as before. Life did not return to how it had been. The family had lost two adult members to the raiders and had to mount a guard over their meagre supplies as the raids continued. In record thirteen a child was snatched away and the family sent out a search party: it and the child were never seen again. By now only six male adults remained and they were unable to protect the crops. Three women and four children were lost to raids and privation and, in record nineteen, the surviving thirteen adults and seven children were forced off the land by stronger neighbours, taking with them only a camera and the video records of their life.
None of the Torchwood team was eating now. All were affected by the scenes being played out before them and the commentary which conveyed the hopelessness and despair of the Bteko. Gwen sniffed and pulled a tissue from her pocket to wipe her eyes.
Record twenty gave the first indication of the wider Bteko world. The family travelled from their rural home to a traditional meeting place where they joined other refugees searching for shelter and food. A succession of images showed the rise of an authoritarian government and, after a short while, one man emerged as the sole leader. This despot forced the refugees, including the family, to grow food taking more than half for Government forces. Rumours of outside forces preparing to attack kept the populace subdued and troops marching through the refugee encampment were a fearsome sight, the rotund Bteko looking sinister in dark uniforms. The well-fed and self-assured troops drew eager recruits including from the family; seven of the younger adults and older children slipped away to join up. The remains of the family, nine adults and four young children, battled to stay together but they were unable to secure sufficient food and the weakest died. Others were lost to casual raids by Government troops, who feared the more numerous refugees, and smashed up the shanty towns and randomly killed anyone sheltering there. Even Jack winced when a child was sliced in two as it tried to run away.
When only three adults and one child was left, the family tried to get away but it was too late. Forcefields erected around the shanty town where they sheltered kept them in. Now unable to keep any of the food they grew, the inhabitants of the shanty turned on themselves and record twenty eight showed acts of cannibalism. The small family refused to join in these excesses, surviving on little more than hope. When all seemed lost, a spontaneous uprising by the oppressed refugees unseated the despotic leader and defeated his forces but in the resulting chaos power plants were blown up and a chain reaction started that devastated half the planet.
The world was dying.
The last two records catalogued the final acts of a group of the doomed survivors. They retreated to a safe place and resolved to leave a record of the history and destruction of the Bteko as a warning to other races. Several obelisks were made, each containing information about the Bteko. The original family, now reduced to four members, produced their valuable family records and these were embedded in the final obelisk, the only visual record of the race.
No one spoke in the boardroom: tears ran down Gwen's face; Owen stared into space; Ianto gulped and blinked back threatening tears; Jack sighed heavily and turned off the plasma screen.
"The planet must have blown and the obelisks sent into space."
"It's so sad," sniffed Gwen. She brought her fist down on the table making the plates, cutlery and food cartons rattle and shake and her team-mates jump. "More bloody crap!" With that, she shoved her chair back and stormed from the room.
"She's got a point," said Owen. "Are there any happy races out there?"
"A lot. Just don't get to see them here," admitted Jack. He retrieved a fork and picked at the cold curry.
"Just our bleeding luck." Owen stood up and ambled out of the room.
Jack looked across at Ianto. "You're quiet."
"I've got an idea, not sure you'll like it." The Welshman eyed his boss steadily.
"Try me."
Ten minutes later, Jack and Ianto joined the rest of the team in the work area. Gwen was sitting on the couch facing Toshiko who had swivelled round in her chair. Owen leant against the wall, arms crossed. All three looked miserable.
"Listen up, kids, Ianto's got a proposition," said Jack, perching on Owen's desk. "And not that kind!"
Ianto ignored the innuendo and Jack. "The Bteko made the obelisk as a warning to others and so their race wouldn't be forgotten. Luckily we found it."
"Why's that lucky?" asked Owen.
"No one but Tosh would have been able to access the records and translate the commentary. I think we should do what the Bteko wanted." He paused and looked round at them all. "If we create copies of the records and send them into space, other races will hear the story too. It'll be like sending messages in bottles. We won't know where they end up but there's a chance someone will find them and learn from them."
Toshiko smiled. "That's a brilliant idea, Ianto. I can copy the records, no problem, but how do we get them into space? Going to use the Rift?" She turned back to her desk, hands reaching for the keyboard.
"No, that would only take them to one place," said Jack, pleased to see his team respond so positively. "Like Ianto says, we need to send them all over and there's some stuff in the archives we can use."
The team got to work. Toshiko created a hundred copies of the Bteko records on silicon chips and Owen and Gwen took these and carefully inserted them into golf ball-sized carriers. These carriers were sealed and loaded into a Seutofi missile from which the warhead had been removed. Jack and Ianto worked on the missile launcher, programming it to send the missile through Earth's atmosphere to release its cargo in space. The missile was camouflaged to prevent UNIT, NASA and other bodies seeing it.
That night the team travelled to a lonely hillside deep in the Welsh countryside where they assembled the launcher, loaded the missile and set it for a delayed launch. They retreated a safe distance, Ianto monitoring the count down with his stopwatch.
"Five, four, three, two, one, zero," he said. He looked up from the stopwatch to see a streak of green light shoot up into the dark sky.
"Safe journey," muttered Gwen, eyes glued to the fading light.
"Good luck," said Toshiko softly.
Jack waited until the night was dark once more, all trace of the missile gone, and retrieved the launcher. "Time we got back to work."
Hope you liked it - Jay.