Chap 16

Yosh considers for a moment. And yeah, probably has that epiphany. Then "Get to the closest point you can safely. I'm gonna go down to that end."

She starts to run to the far end.

"What are you gonna do?" Ianto yells.

Tosh is far enough away now that her voice comes over the suit coms.

"I'm gonna distract them." She yells.

"You're gonna distract the worms?" Ianto gapes.

"Yeah."

Perhaps Ianto ought to give this more thought. But he doesn't. Maybe it's the exhaustion. Maybe it just never would have occurred to him. Tosh disappears into the darkness and the distance. Ianto waits. Then "You ready?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Lemme know when it starts to clear."

Ianto doesn't get it. But a moment later, a shiver runs through the worms. And they start to undulate away. Towards Tosh. Pulsing faster and faster until it's clear in a moment or two, like a giant amoebae withdrawing, he will have clear access to the pass.

At the far end, is five hundred yards into the worms. They know. They've told each other. And they're coming in pulsating waves. Towards her. At the epicentre. She gags. And hears "It's clear Toshi."

Tosh tries to turn around. She's mired now. And they're up to her waist. It's a fucking nematode feeding frenzy. "Good."

She can't even lift her feet. They're beginning to cover her now. She can see the colour of her suit spreading around her as they devour it.

"You were right, sweetie." She is strangely calm now, at the end, "There's gotta be a reason. This can't just be an accident. I don't know what the worms're doing here or how they got here. But science don't explain it. And it pisses me off to no end."

Ianto turns. He can see now what Tosh has done. A tiny glowing figure can be seen 1000 yards away. He's speechless.

"I'm gonna have to turn off my radio in a sec. So you don't have to hear me screaming like a girl." Tosh says softly.

"What have you done?" Ianto bites back a sob.

"Finding out there's things I don't understand. That science don't know squat about. Maybe even the damn Earth's worth saving. Someone's gotta give it a try. Gotta find out about these worms. Go, get off this fucking planet." Tosh calls out, "cause you don't want to see this."

"There's two women in Missoula, one in Bozeman. Tell them each they were my last words." She sobs.

"Oh, my Lord..." the radio goes. Across the distance we can see a figure, now entirely coated in luminous worms, writhing wildly. Ianto leaves his light on, starts to run.

The phosphorescence is gone in the centre of the circle. The edges are the colour of her suit. Then blood red for forty yards. Bits of bone white. And then right in the dead centre, grey, spreading, spreading as what was once Tosh's brain is food for worms.

Ianto scrambles up, steeper and steeper, to the edge of the valley and the ridge line. From the top he can see the way below is his prize - the Cosmos. Checks his watch, hopefully, desperately triggers the radio.

"Torchwood, this is ground crew. Torchwood, this ground crew. Do you copy?" Ianto sobbed into the coms.

Above him somewhere in the sky. Jack is locking out parts of the ship to conserve power on the way home. At first he's not sure he really heard that. Rushes across the room to the radio interface."Ground crew?! Status?" he barks.

"Me. Alone. The worms just ate Tosh." Ianto sobs, "Thought you might be gone."

"Guess you promised you wouldn't leave..." Ianto laughs shakily.

"Ianto, I'm...still here." They both know he's caught him still here by happenstance.

"I'm about a kilometre from the Cosmos. It's in sight. Call you when I'm there." Ianto picks up the pace as he sees the end game is near.

Ianto heads down. Bounding down the hill. No algae on his side. He leaves a trail of phosphorescent footprints as he goes. They grow fainter and fainter as he descends.

Up on the Torchwood Jack comes rushing in. Too fast. Slams up into a wall. Resets. Belts himself in.

Down on the surface, It's been sitting there for 30 years. As he approaches, the solar panels turn and track towards his light. It's still waiting. Sits on six over-built legs. Sample return vehicle launches off the base. Liquid fuel tanks, sample return container the size of a large trash can.

"How you doing?" Jack's voice comes over the coms.

"It's really cold. My fingers aren't sure they want to work." Ianto hudffs as he struggles to check the old vehicle.

"You can do this." Jack reassures him. "The maintenance port has a cover. It should be marked."

Ianto looks it over. Minor stumbling block, "Yeah. In Cyrillic."

Finds it anyhow. He flexes his unresponsive fingers, and after a try or two, unscrews the cover, reveals an IR port. "Got it."

"All right, I'm gonna download this to you." Jack days and Ianto can heat the clacking of keys.

Ianto yanks out his HHC. Dozen adapters in the back. Finds the one that fits the old modem port on the jerry-rigged radio. "Go."

"Plugs it in. Stuff flashes. On the HHC, Windows comes up, the Cosmos Launch Master program, Cyrillic crudely re-labelled in English. Unplugs the modem so he can speak again.

"It's still got power." Ianto crows.

"You should be able to run diagnostics." Jack comes back.

There's a diagnostics check and launch check. He hits diagnostics. The two talk, link up, and - a Windows error screen comes up on the HHC:

"Warning - your system has become busy or unstable. Press Ctrl-Alt-Delete to exit programs and reboot."

"I know now why it didn't launch" Ianto says as he watches the screen ask for a re-boot, "Control alt delete."

Reboots in the blink of an eye. Systems check positive.

"It's looking good." Ianto pants as he re-checks.

"Okay, this thing only has two settings. On and off. One sends it all the way back to Earth. As you don't have air, food or water, which would be bad." Jack informs him, calculating madly as he goes on. Trying to sound calm. He's anything but. "We want just enough lift for escape velocity. With the weight you left at and the suit...I peg you at 165. It was designed to take 200 pounds of rocks home. Tanks are seven litres each. You need to take two litres out of each tank. There's a central purge; you're gonna have to be exact."

"And you better try to find something to put the fuel in and get it the hell away from there, as we don't want it to go up when the rocket goes off." Jack warns.

Ianto considers. Yeah, it all makes sense. But how?

Ianto, using the few tools he has left, has unbolted the sample return container. Measures its width "I need you to do some math. A cylinder 50 centimetres wide, how deep is six litres?"

"Eleven and three quarter centimetres." Jack answers and Ianto measures and scribes in the line.

"Somewhere, Mr. Plummer, my 10th-grade math teacher, is cackling like a son-of-a-bitch." Ianto mutters and Jack huffs don the line.

Ianto slides underneath, opens the main purge and fills the big steel bucket with rocket fuel. It looks just like the guy at Texaco, working on your car. "Now what?"

"Launch diagnostics. Avoid pressing anything that says ignition." Jack answers and Ianto fancies he can hear the grin.

He runs it - seals are good, pumps are good, engine's ready. And the ignition power force, all 300 volts of it, is dead as a doornail. The program suggests the replacement part number. And suggests he order it quickly. Checks again. Answer's the same. He slumps down, sits beside SRM. He ain't going nowhere. Just sits there. Can't move. Can't speak. After all this, he's fucked. Stares out into the distance.