53
Ianto wakes first, the general alarm sounding through the USS Enterprise and he grunts as he shoves Jack off him, both men landing on the floor where they swap nightmare looks, momentarily unsure of their own parts to play. This is not even their ship for fucksake.
They stumble into nav-bay.
Ianto tries to contact the bridge only to find coms are disabled. He glances at Jack who tries to rouse Torchwood but she isn't responding either.
"EMP?" Ianto asks and Jack shrugs, trying again as the vessel seems to be in freefall jusging from the numbers Ianto can see on the old outer hull mechanics. They don't make them like they used to ya know. This bird is a classic.
"1550 millibars, dropping 20 MB per minute, shit, we're haemorrhaging air. Somethin' took a swipe at us." Scotty's voice is higher pitched than usual and Ianto is reminded of Andy. He realises he would rather have him screaming at him over a squawk box.
"Tell me we're still in the open lane. Just show me all those stars, all those bright, beautiful, deep-space..." Jack activates an exterior view as Ianto continues to bring internals online faster than Scotty can.
A planet rushes up at them.
"That's why we have gravity down here." Jack says calmly.
"Moon Goddess" Ianto whispers with horror.
The USS Enterprise ploughs through the upper atmosphere, antennae pylons already disintegrating.
Heart battering his ribs, Ianto runs forward, using hand-holds to steady himself.
Ianto and Jack enter the secondary flight deck and Ianto harnesses in, starts running switches - but fumbles a few times, making mental calculations to adjust for another's programming as he overrides the internal buffers that closed everything down when the EMP hit. Finally he gets crash-shutters open to reveal... mountains and trees sweeping up past the windscreen like floor-lights on a dropping elevator.
"We're shedding big altitude." Ianto yells as he tried to restart the thrusters, coms flickering and coming online as Sulu and Chekov scream instructions to one another that Ianto ignores. He knows this old girl too, he knows how to stroke her… "Firing up!"
"... crisis program selected Number Two of this system because it shows at least some oxygen and more than 1,500 - would you SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Jack roars as he hammers a button, silencing the alarms as Kirk's face flickers into a box in the corner of their flight screen to show he is clinging to his chair with an intense stare as Jack and Ianto flies his ship with him "- more than 1,500-millibars of pressure at surface-level. Okay, so maybe the ship's mother did something right for a change..."
Ianto runs more switches as up on the main flight deck Spock does the same, they move in unison like a parody of one another. Dancers.
Explosive bolts fly away in rapid-fire around the ship's skin, blowing away non-essentials that hinder aerodynamics … including big deep-space drives. But this last separation puts the ship into a dangerous roll.
Out the windscreen, cloud strata roll around them. Jack throws actuators "Tiger, strap in, get baby stable!"
Ianto slips onto the chair next to Jack's and tightens the harness around his shoulders, leaving the lap belt undone to protect the baby against the impact. He snarls without realising he is even doing it, the terrain is coming up fast.
And airbrakes deploy. Ianto and Spock woke her at the last moment and lights start to flash. She manages to kill the roll. But the ship's still coming in nose-high.
"...showing no major water bodies...maximum terrain, 220 meters over mean surface... largely cinder and gypsum with some evaporate deposits..." Chekov is calling back the stats on the planet as Kirk ignores him, watching Spock strap in and nod that he is Ok.
"What're you doing?" Kirk asks as the vessel shift dangerously.
Jack flips up a new security-latch. "Can't get my nose down...too much load up there..."
"You mean that "load" of passengers?" Ianto understands and checks the screen, "Is everyone on the saucer? I think we might have to disengage if the pulling continues with the thrusters fighting like this.. We can't fly both."
"So what, we could both go down too?"
Tortured silence.
"I can't disengage" Scotty yells over the coms, "something has….has….it looks like sabotage. I am not sure but the couplings will not respond from this side."
Seething anger and fear, Jack pops more airbrakes, shedding more speed, more heat. The ship does level - but it's still being pounded hellishly. He tries to get a stable view out... the windscreen. They're breaking through the tree canopy now. There's just a glimpse of landscape before...
An airbrake fails. It shears off and pinwheels into... The windscreen. It cracks into a thousand spider webs – but impossibly it holds. For now.
"What the shit was that?" Scotty screams.
"Hell Scotty" Jack tells as he starts boot at the console, "Prepare for emergency disengaging procedures."
"Ah fuck" Scotty sighs, the small explosives for such a purpose will make a mess of the couplings and he can only warn those in engineering with him to brace for immediate and insintanious impacts.
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..
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Gita is about three hours away...maybe. If you don't hear from me tomorrow, don't worry. Last time power went out with trees on powerlines, it will only be that again OK? I have faith everything will be OK. We just need to hang on. xxxx
