On his first morning at the Central Australian Research for Torchwood (CART) base, Ianto woke thinking he was in the Hub. He'd never really realised before that the Hub's sound was that of a science fiction superbase in a cave, which worried him, because that's exactly what the Hub was.
What worried him more was that connecting his erroneous assumption that he was in the Hub to the fact that he was in a double bed alone brought him to the conclusion that he'd been injured and had no recollection of it.
Probing his mind for any clues about how he got hurt and hints about what movements would be painful and therefore a bad idea brought up images of red desert and an air-conditioned train, long talks about finance and independence and sharing of information and recruitment procedures. Australia, not injury. He laughed at himself and sat up and turned the light on to assess the room.
The facility was a small town under the surface of the desert, away from the intense heat. Accommodation for the employees and their families – all contracted to the facility in some way, or educated in the facility's school for the younger ones – and for visitors, was arranged in a ring around the edge of the complex, with a small shop-cum-restaurant at North, South, East and West. Every room was carved out of the red stone, with bare rock for a ceiling, and lit by bulbs that produced as near to natural light as possible, not that anyone living out here was likely to suffer from vitamin D deficiency. Five minutes on the surface could cause sunburn and dehydration.
Ianto was Welsh. He was going to die.
He found his suntan lotion and coated himself in it before he got dressed and headed out to find breakfast and Ally, in that order. When he eventually located the restaurant closest to them, where they'd been informed that they could get food whenever they wanted it, he found Ally sitting at one of the tables with coffee, an Australian-style breakfast and a copy of the Daily Telegraph. She smiled up at him, although she looked slightly worse-for-wear, and gestured to the seat opposite her. "I told them you'd want the same once you arrived. They're watching out for you. Sleep well?"
"Better than you, by the looks of it," he picked up the lifestyle section and ignored her glare. They'd arrived in the late evening the night before, after an early dinner in Alice Springs, but Ally had met up with a group of researchers who had offered to drink her under the table. It looked like she'd taken them up on the offer. "What time did you get to bed last night?"
"I went to bed last night?" she hid behind her newspaper. "My own, about two."
"Ah," he glanced up at her and chuckled at what he could see of her expression. "Was he worth it?"
"No one is worth this hangover," she muttered darkly.
"Not even me?" he batted his lashes and pouted.
"Not in your dreams," she flicked a screwed up paper napkin at him and yawned, then folded her paper and rested her elbows on the table. "Jack on the other hand..."
Ianto spotted a waitress coming towards him with a plate piled high with food and grinned. "I wouldn't try to outdrink him. Alcohol doesn't even touch the sides."
"I thought he liked whiskey?"
"He does, but only for the flavour." He cleared his papers away for the waitress to serve him and smiled up at her. "Thank you."
"You're welcome, Mr Jones. Can I get you tea or coffee this morning?" she smiled down at him with a maternal air and Ianto realised with a shock that she was about twice his age, and that he outranked her enormously down here.
"Oh, coffee please," he smiled back. "And could Ms Craig have a lot more water, please?"
The waitress laughed and left them, taking Ally's empty plate with her and muttering about flighty young things who would learn soon enough. Ally glared at him and pillowed her head on her arms. "I'm never going to pull again if you keep acting like my boyfriend."
"Ally, everyone within a three mile radius is involved with Torchwood. They've all been following the gossip columns and know perfectly well that I'm with Jack. In fact,t ehy probably know more about me and Jack than we do," he tapped her on the top of the head with a folded paper and she whined. "And don't think I don't know where most of the gossip has been leaking from."
"I don't know what you're suggesting," she reached over and tried to steal one of his sausages, but got a forked hand for her troubles. "Ow..."
"Serves you right," he chided, digging into his breakfast. "Have you got the itinerary for today?"
"Yeah," she slid it out from under the newspaper and studied it. "Test flight in under an hour, so eat up. That's going to go on for two hours, three if it doesn't get too hot, then back down here for a tour of the whole facility finishing up with lunch. Then we're in the labs to look at the ships they've got in the afternoon, and they're throwing a Christmas dinner in the evening."
Ianto swallowed his mouthful thoughtfully. "I was about to say that it's early for Christmas, but it's only a couple of weeks away."
"It is," she chuckled. "What are you doing for Christmas?"
"We were hoping to have my sister and Jack's daughter over," he resumed eating and made a mental note to do some organising towards that when he got home. "We're living day-to-day at the moment. What about you?"
"Back to my parents. They'll be pestering me to find someone, as usual."
"Have you thought about hiring an escort?" he suggested.
"Yes." She started tidying up the paper and nodded past him. "Adelaide's here."
Ianto let Adelaide and Ally make polite conversation whilst he finished his breakfast as quickly as he could, then joined them heading through the stone-carved corridors towards the surface. Adelaide was a tall woman, possibly half a foot taller than Ally if they were both in stocking feet, but Ally made up for it with high heels, brightly coloured hair and a tall manner. The three of them had fallen into step unconsciously, with Ally's heels clacking out louder than Ianto's boots or Adelaide's sensible pumps. Red rock gives way to concrete after a while, reinforced and bomb-proof, with blast doors just in case anything goes wrong. There's more of them down below, surrounding the labs and separating the residential areas. No one wants to lose anyone, but Torchwood has always been about minimising the damage.
Torchwood One forgot that when they were building the tower at Canary Wharf. They'd ignored the rules and built up in glass and concrete, not that it would have helped against the Daleks. But it would have stopped the Cybermen from converting people, if they'd been able to shut off the upper levels from the rest of the building. Of course, the upper echelon of management had wanted the top floor offices, and hadn't wanted to get trapped up there. Much good that it did them.
Ally touched his elbow gently and he smiled at her, nodding at another blast door. "You seem to have a preponderance of blast-proofing down here, Adelaide."
"One can never be too careful," she pointed out, with just a hint of a smile.
"Amen to that," he muttered.
The concrete is brighter than the stone, if not as nice to look at, and this prepares them somewhat for the burning light on the surface. Only somewhat, though. They're both prepared with sunglasses and put them on quickly, trying not to look at each other or even speak, for fear of it descending into a CSI moment. It's still bright. And hot. Lots of hot.
"Christ, no wonder no one comes out here," Ally gasped, which was pretty much what Ianto was thinking, even if he would have phrased it more tactfully.
They don their sunhats as well – Ally's is a big, floppy, white creation with a black rim on the brim, and Ianto's got one of the ones that you can feed to elephants. They help, which is a relief, even if Ally's droops down over her face. Adelaide leads them away from the tunnel entrance along a concrete track towards a hangar. "We have a lift to get them from the labs up to the surface. Better than putting someone in the cockpit and engaging an engine we don't know particularly well."
"As twitchy as the former airforce pilots get," he smiled at her.
They turned a corner on the walkway and the ships came into view past the hangar just a bit further on. The sunlight glinted off them, caressing their lines and making love to... The heat was getting to him already. Either that, or Jack was contagious.
"Holy shit, aliens are real," Ally swore.
"And on that bombshell," Adelaide nearly laughed, Ianto was sure, as she gestured them forwards. "We have a limited time before it gets too hot to be up here for long periods."
They are welcomed by a group of very excited engineers. Everyone seems to be up here for this, but most are being kept back from the site. A few big tents have been set up, and most people are clustered in their shade. All the children at the facility are sitting in neat rows under the watchful eye of their teachers, even though it's technically the holidays. They're out of uniform at least.
Ianto, being an honoured guest, is led up to 'meet the ships'. The attractive engineer, probably chosen because he's attractive and they think that that will appeal to Ianto, shakes his head when Ianto reaches out. "Don't touch the metal. It'll be bloody hot by now."
"Noted," Ianto smiles at him and looks back up. "This is the Sarousse Mark Seven, isn't it?"
"We think so," the engineer confirms, stepping back and holding up a remote. "Would you like to go onboard, sir?"
There are no words. 'Would you like to go on board this alien space ship from the thirty sixth century which has somehow found its way here, which was the most expensive ship of its class produced for about a millennium and a half?' Who wouldn't? Its design was based on dolphins, and it curled up to the tail, with glass on the bottom, letting them see up into the living area. The engineer, and Ianto still didn't know his name, activated the remote, and a spiral staircase twisted down from the back of the glass panel.
Inside, the furniture was somehow Victorian space-age. Smooth, sleek likes, shining metal, but all a bit fiddly. There was a thunk and the staircase they ascended twisted back into position, offering them the upper floor where the cockpit is. "What do you think?"
Ianto shook his head and looked down through the glass to the ground below, where engineers were milling around. "I wish my boyfriend were here to see this?" he offered, and the engineer chuckled. "I've never stood on a spaceship that..." he gestured around. "Well, it doesn't look like it just crashed."
"You must see so much more of it in Cardiff," the engineer brushes his fingers along the tabletop. "We had to restore a lot of it, but the ship's computer system took care of that once we got it back online."
"It has repair bots?" Ianto asked.
"Yeah. Useful things. We'd cleared this floor, but the ship's system kept the elements needed to recreate from 75% damage in storage, so it just rebuilt itself," he shook his head and laughed. "Wish we could work out how to do it."
"One day," Ianto hopes aloud, then watches the staircase descend again. "More company?"
"That will be your pilot coming on board."
Fifteen minutes later and Ianto wass sitting next to Margerita Jackson, strapped into a flight seat. She handled the controls as if she were born on this class of spaceship, even though she'd never flown it before. "We simulated it," she reassured him, then clipped her comms on. "This is Kings Shadow preparing for take-off. Engine on, exterior secure. Ship, internal lockdown," the final light on the dashboard went green and she raised her head slightly, easing what passed for the throttle forwards.
And they were off the ground.
Down below, the gathered crowds cheered, and Ianto felt guilty that he was up here and they were down there. They were the ones who'd worked towards this for so long, after all. But he'd been at Torchwood One when it was retrieved in Sussex, and then at Torchwood Three when Jack finally got to look at it and, actually, now he thought about it, they might have already christened this particular ship. It had very definitely had a glass floor, but it was hard to tell when the ship was such a wreck as it had been then. Anyway, he had a history with this ship.
Margerita took them up into the clear, huge blue sky and for a loop around the facility. It was clearer from up here just how isolated they were, and the utter desolate beauty of the place struck him again. This little cluster of buildings, hours from anywhere, where the best scientists in the world worked on getting alien spaceships functioning again.
"You okay there?" she asked him, watching him with a grin.
He laughed and she joined him. "I'm on top of the world."