The deck is ripped upward as the entire 40-ton crane is pulled over by the weight of Torchwood. It topples in the launch well with a roar of tortured steel that rivals the storm.
AN EXPLOSION OF WATER.
Underwater, the crane tumbles between the twin hulls. Trailing a vortex of foam and debris, it roars down towards the darkness.
McBride stares in shock at the churning cauldron of the launch well. Grabs the underwater telephone. "Jack! We've lost the crane!"
"What? Say again."
"THE CRANE! WE'VE LOST THE CRANE. IT'S ON ITS WAY TO YOU!"
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Everyone is stunned by what is happening. Ianto fires up the sonar. "Got it! It's dropping straight to us."
He puts the signal over the speakers and the room fills with eerie PINGING. Jack shouts over the intercom. "Rig for impact! Seal all exterior hatches. Move it! Let's go!"
The rig crew pounding down the narrow corridors. Diving through low
hatchways. Hatches are closed and the wheels spun down. Owen puts Janet into a ZIP-LOK BAG and seals it.
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The umbilical drops down in slack loops out of the blackness above, draping itself over the habitat in large coils. Toshiko pilots her submersible feverishly among the falling loops. She banks and twists. A length of heavy umbilical slams onto her neck, tipping the sub.
She manages to get out from under it a keep going.
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Through the front viewport they can see the coils of cable piling up in front of the rig. The hull booms with impacts as the massive stuff hits.
Everyone hold their breath as the sonar return-pings get closer... and closer. And closer... An ENORMOUS SHAPE plunged into the floodlight in front of the rig.
K-WHAM! The 40-ton crane hits like a flatiron thirty feet in front of them. A clean miss. Much whooping and cheering. Then...
The crane topples slowly over the back. It rolls down the slope of the drop-off, gathering speed. Then tumbles over the cliff into the abyssal canyon. The coiled umbilical starts to pay out after it like rope after a harpoon.
And they're still attached.
"Oh shit." Ianto whispers with wide eyes.
An agonizing few seconds. Then... the cable pulls taut.
K-BOOM!
The rig is slammed by the shock. Everyone is knocked off his feet, into walls and equipment.
The rig begins to slide. It tilts over the embankment and grinds down the slope of the drop-off in a cloud of silt. The cable pulling it inexorably toward the cliff. The framework twists and slams into rocks. SCREECHING AND GROANING of tortured steel.
All hell has broken loose. SIRENS, SCREAMING, a KLAXON HOOTING moronically. Jack sprints from Control, bouncing off the corridor walls as the rig lurches and tilts. The lights go out. Emergency light come on. He trips and falls, scrambles up, running on.
In the ladderwell of trimodule C, Ianto runs toward the machine rooms.
K-BOOM!
A searing bright explosion in the electrical room. Flames roar through the doorway. He dashed to a seawater hose hanging nearby and starts to unroll it. He sees Saxon and Schoenick in maintenance, lashing down the mystery package.
"Hey! Get on this hose, you dickheads"
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Monk is working in a spray of seawater, turning valves to stop the flow of ruptured pipes. Behind him, a wall of flame blossoms through the door from the electrical room, driving the back with the heat. A reservoir-tanks breaks loose from one of the compressor assemblies. In rolls at him, crushing his legs against machinery. The fire roars into the room.
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Owen runs into the Sub Bay. The place is going nuts. Water floods from the moonpool as the rig tilts. Davison is dancing across the deck, leaping over compressed-gas cylinders which are rolling around loose. Cab One jumps clear off its cradle and slides SCREECHING across the deck. Davison, running before the 12-tom juggernaut, had no place to go. The SEAL dives into the churning moonpool. Cab One slams into the end wall, then spins and rolls toward Owen.
He starts to run. Drop something. Looks back.
Janet, in his zip-loc bag, is lying in the path of the slide submersible.
Owen runs back. Scoops up the baggie. Cab One comes up behind him. He makes it through the door an instant before the thing hits behind him, buckling the steel doorframe.
Davison is clawing up the sheep skirting of the moonpool. He gets his fingers over the top. Pulls himself up... A steel helium tank slams against his fingers, crushing them, and he falls back. More tanks bounce over the lip of the pool, hammering Davison down into the foaming water.
He doesn't surface.
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The rig is sliding to the edge of the cliff. Beyond it... the bottomless pit of the Cayman Trough. It slams, crushing and twisting, into a rock outcropping and stops, hanging over the precipice.
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Perry is trapped as the trimodule floods with stunning swiftness. He makes it through an emergency hatch between floors but can't get it closed. The inrushing tide blasts it open. He scrambles upward to the next hatch. Spins the wheel. No time. He is slammed against the ceiling by the force of the water.
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In the Drill Room Eugene, Tommy Ray Dietz, and Lupton Harris fight their way toward the door as the drill room floods rapidly. Ahead, the big automated watertight door is closing like a motorized bank-vault. They reach it just as it is closing, but can't prevail against the strength of the motors. they scream soundlessly at the tiny pressure window in the door. We can hear the dull THUNK of their pounding.
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Saxon and Schoenick, in emergency breathing masks, are fighting the fire with a seawater hose and fire extinguishers. Smoke and steam choke the dark chambers.
Nearby, Ianto grabs Owen's arm as he is running past and drags him into the blazing compressor room. Hands him a seawater hose. Wide-eyes, he starts blasting everything in sight with water.
"No! Hold it on me!" Ianto yells a he rushed into the teeth of the fire as Owen blasts him with a spray of water, following him into the intense heat. He grabs Monk, who is semiconscious, and drags him out of the blazing room... Owen dancing back with the hose, tripping… blasting him in the face.
But it works. They get Monk clear.
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Jack comes pounding down the flooding corridor in time to see the water in the drill room swirl above the pressure window, obscuring the faces of the trapped men. He claws futility at the door. The motors and the fail-safe latching mechanism are on the opposite side. Through the pressure window he watches helplessly as they drown. We don't see what he sees, but we know what he sees. Suddenly the bulkhead next to him gives way and a freezing torrent thunders in. Jack is blown off his feet a hurled along the corridor.
He scrambles up somehow, splashing waist deep toward the opposite end of the corridor where another of the hydraulic doors is closing inexorably. He's not going to make it. He reaches it a moment too late to squeeze through.
Grabs the edge of the door and desperately tries to stop it from closing with the strength of his arms. It doesn't work. The steel door closes on the fingers of his left hand, pinning them in the doorframe.
But something amazing happens. His wedding ring lodges between the door and frame, preventing his fingers from being crushed and the door from sealing and locking.
It resists tons of pressure, denting but not collapsing.
The freezing sea pours in until only his head is clear. "Heeyy! HHHEEEYYY!"
On te other side of the door, John and Sonny come pounding up. They see his face at the tiny window and his hand jammed in the door. Sonny wedges a crowbar in the narrow opening and starts to pry.
"Cut the hose" Jack screams with horror as he struggles "The fucking hoses!"
John whips open his knife and slashes the hydraulic hoses on the door actuator. He is sprayed with red hydraulic fluid, machine blood.
Together they force open the door. Jack is blown through in a torture of water. Sonny is thrown back into some pipes. Breaks his arm. Together they somehow heave the door shut manually, cutting off the flow. John hammers the fail-safe latch home with the crowbar.
Jack lies gasping and shivering... staring at the tiny band of metal that saved him.
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ONE HOUR LATER
Geek moves along the wall of the canyon, tilting up to show Torchwood perched at the very edge of the abyss. The rig is twisted and dented, covered with loops of umbilical, trimodule-A a mass of wreckage. The ROV passes across the front of the control module. Through the front port, two figures can be seen in the light of a single emergency lamp.
Sonny is trying to use the radio "Mayday, mayday. This is Torchwood Two calling Benthic Explorer. Do you read, over?"
Sonny flips some switches on the UQC acoustic transceiver. Tries again. "Benthic Explorer, Benthic Explorer. Do you read, over? This is Torchwood…"
"Forget it, Sonny. They're gone" Jack sighs.
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Jack walks down the corridor from control, slowly... as if carrying a great weight. The air is still thick with smoke. The power off... everything lit by emergency lights. Makeshift quarters have been set up in the mess hall, with blankets laid out on the tables, and with folding cots in the storage room across the hall. Jammer is still unconscious. Saxon and Schoenick bring Monk in on a stretcher, and set him up on a table. He is conscious but dazed with painkillers, his led splinted.
"Did you find Davison?"
"No." Saxon replies. He and Jack lock eyes. Jack bites back on his recriminations, but his gaze blames Saxon. He turns away.
"Harkness." Saxon says and Jack turns back to face him as he continues to speak "I was under orders. I had no choice."
Saxon's manner is subdued, contrite. A marked contrast to his previous brusque arrogance. He's wrestling with his own loss, a severe blow to the tight brotherhood of a SEAL unit. Jack's anger is not dispelled. But he can't address it now. He moves on.
In the infirmary Sonny Dawson is rigging a sling over his own broken arm. He cries out in pain, cursing at himself.
Jack crosses and looks down through the grill decking where we can see the bottom level of the module is flooded. John is down there welding, sending shivering reflections through the chamber.
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Ianto is working, up to his knees in water. he is covered with grease, tools scattered around. Jack puts his hand on his shoulder. She looks up.
"What's the scoop, Tiger?"
"I can get power to this module and sub-bay if I remote these busses. I've gotta get past the mains, which are a total melt-down." Ianto sighs. Rather than trigger anger the disaster seems to have affected him in a different way. He's accepted the situation now that's it's done, and is immersing himself in technical tasks, which are for him therapeutic.
"Need some help?"
"Thanks. No, I can handle it. Jack... there won't be enough to run the heaters." Ianto warns looking back to his work "In a couple hours this place is going to be as cold as a meat locker."
"What about O-2?"
"Brace yourself. We've got about 12 hours worth if we close off the sections we're not using."
Jack rears back "The storm's gonna last longer than 12 hours."
"Maybe I can extend that. There's some storage tanks outboard on the wrecked module. I'll have to go outside to tie onto them." he goes back to his task, working efficiently with a socket wrench.
"Hey, Yan..."
He looks up at Jack.
"I'm glad you're here." Jack smiles softly.
"Yeah? Well I'm not".