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Fandomweekly Challenge 183 - The flick of a switch
Title: The flick of a switch
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: A future-verse story.
Author notes: Written for Challenge 183 - Revolution at![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomweekly
Summary: Commander Piotr Thane holds the whole survival of the universe in his hands.
‘Commander Thane.’ His lieutenant rushed to his side, reporting on the very thing he could plainly see for himself through the large windows on the bridge. No less than thirty ships, with the largest at the head of the vanguard. It was even more impressive and deadly than the reports had made it out to be. He wasn’t sure why that surprised him. Hadn’t everybody always underestimated the humans from planet Earth? That had been their failing.
It was a failing he took personally. After all, hadn’t he contributed to their ability to understand the universe around them? Hadn’t he prevented them from being wiped from existence on more than one occasion? It was a bitter pill to swallow, knowing the sins of his past would come back to haunt them all.
‘Have they made any demands yet?’ he asked, knowing that nearby was a whole room of communications operators, trying to convey messages to the fleet, or to at least prevent the fleet from jamming communications between their own vessels, though they numbered only six.
‘None, sir.’
He nodded. They were finally here. He'd been waiting and preparing for over a century, growing bored and cynical that they would ever make it here. Only someone capable of living well beyond an ordinary lifespan would ever be considered to command the Shadow Proclamation’s most militarily advanced vessel, leading the charge against the rebellion. Of course he knew they would eventually come to meet him here. They’d been a thorn in his side – and he in theirs. The infamous Commander Piotr Thane, stalwart adversary of the growing power of the Earthans, confronting them at every point. What natural resources they hadn't stolen, and what alien races they hadn't captured and tortured for information and advanced technologies, wasn't worth knowing about. No matter how their forces had tried to stop the Earthans, they'd just kept on building up their forces and their weapons. They frustrated him in their relentlessness. Like the poisonous desert weeds from his childhood home, pulling up one inevitably left ten more to sprout up in its place.
His heart ached for centuries long gone when he'd once been allied to their race. He’d cared for them deeply and loved some passionately. They’d needed his protection then. They didn't now, and hadn't done for a long time. All the Earthans he'd loved were long gone, replaced by generations of hate-filled revolutionaries. They didn't want peace and collaboration, unity with the wider universe. Instead they wanted to wipe it out, until Earthan colonies covered every square parsec of every galaxy. They had to be stopped, by any means necessary. Today was the day they brought the fight to the rest of the universe, and Piotr was all that stood between them.
He was about to order them to fire a warning shot when a blaze of coppery light struck, tipping the ship thirty degrees and making him lose his footing. He grabbed for the console just in time to prevent himself falling all the way to the floor, his lieutenant bumping into him as he tried to keep them both upright. No negotiations, then.
‘Shields are down to forty percent!’ someone yelled.
‘Return fire,’ Thane commanded.
His lieutenant was right up in his face, her expression steely. ‘We can't do this alone. We need backup.’
‘We're the most advanced fleet,’ he reminded her. If they couldn't stop them then no amount of reinforcements was going to make the slightest difference. Slow them down for an hour or two at most, but that was it. ‘Reinforcements will never arrive in time.’ They wouldn't destroy the fleet outright. The Earthans would simply cripple them and then take everyone aboard prisoner, to be tortured for information until they were dead.
He shoved his hand down the front of his shirt, grabbing at a long chain and tugging it back out through the collar. Dangling from it was a small silver key. ‘Lieutenant, time for plan B.’ The warp star located in their hull would obliterate the whole fleet, themselves included, but it was the only option, and required both their keys to activate it. To her credit the lieutenant just nodded and extracted her key, pushing it into the twin hole on the opposite side of the console. She was his rock, his good soldier, and now she would follow him into the last battle. One simultaneous turn was all it would take
He couldn't make out the captain of the vessel through the ship’s front console. He turned to one of the ship’s monitors, able to zoom in closer, panning the front of the vessel. Piotr wanted to see the face of the man he was about to deny and to show him the grimace of a man who had nothing to lose.
The monitor was slow to pan back from the outermost edge of the ship's hull. Before it reached the central console it passed by a smaller porthole, and the face of a man appeared on the screen, hands pressed against the glass.
Despite the distance he read perfectly the single word mouthed in pleading desperation. Stop.
Piotr felt his heart stop beating, just for a moment. His blood ran cold and he blinked. He hadn't seen that face in over five hundred years, not even in the dreams and nightmares that haunted him. It was the image of a ghost, his subconscious playing tricks on him, trying to get that tiniest bit of him that didn't want to destroy them to relent.
‘Commander!’ He'd never heard that level of panicked terror in her voice before. He looked down at the control panel and at his hand. It was still there, key clutched between index finger and thumb in the twelve o'clock position, paralysed by the image of the ghosts he'd seen. He hadn't turned the key. The lives of seven thousand men and women on board, relying on their commander to protect them and he hadn't turned the key.
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: A future-verse story.
Author notes: Written for Challenge 183 - Revolution at
fandomweeklySummary: Commander Piotr Thane holds the whole survival of the universe in his hands.
‘Commander Thane.’ His lieutenant rushed to his side, reporting on the very thing he could plainly see for himself through the large windows on the bridge. No less than thirty ships, with the largest at the head of the vanguard. It was even more impressive and deadly than the reports had made it out to be. He wasn’t sure why that surprised him. Hadn’t everybody always underestimated the humans from planet Earth? That had been their failing.
It was a failing he took personally. After all, hadn’t he contributed to their ability to understand the universe around them? Hadn’t he prevented them from being wiped from existence on more than one occasion? It was a bitter pill to swallow, knowing the sins of his past would come back to haunt them all.
‘Have they made any demands yet?’ he asked, knowing that nearby was a whole room of communications operators, trying to convey messages to the fleet, or to at least prevent the fleet from jamming communications between their own vessels, though they numbered only six.
‘None, sir.’
He nodded. They were finally here. He'd been waiting and preparing for over a century, growing bored and cynical that they would ever make it here. Only someone capable of living well beyond an ordinary lifespan would ever be considered to command the Shadow Proclamation’s most militarily advanced vessel, leading the charge against the rebellion. Of course he knew they would eventually come to meet him here. They’d been a thorn in his side – and he in theirs. The infamous Commander Piotr Thane, stalwart adversary of the growing power of the Earthans, confronting them at every point. What natural resources they hadn't stolen, and what alien races they hadn't captured and tortured for information and advanced technologies, wasn't worth knowing about. No matter how their forces had tried to stop the Earthans, they'd just kept on building up their forces and their weapons. They frustrated him in their relentlessness. Like the poisonous desert weeds from his childhood home, pulling up one inevitably left ten more to sprout up in its place.
His heart ached for centuries long gone when he'd once been allied to their race. He’d cared for them deeply and loved some passionately. They’d needed his protection then. They didn't now, and hadn't done for a long time. All the Earthans he'd loved were long gone, replaced by generations of hate-filled revolutionaries. They didn't want peace and collaboration, unity with the wider universe. Instead they wanted to wipe it out, until Earthan colonies covered every square parsec of every galaxy. They had to be stopped, by any means necessary. Today was the day they brought the fight to the rest of the universe, and Piotr was all that stood between them.
He was about to order them to fire a warning shot when a blaze of coppery light struck, tipping the ship thirty degrees and making him lose his footing. He grabbed for the console just in time to prevent himself falling all the way to the floor, his lieutenant bumping into him as he tried to keep them both upright. No negotiations, then.
‘Shields are down to forty percent!’ someone yelled.
‘Return fire,’ Thane commanded.
His lieutenant was right up in his face, her expression steely. ‘We can't do this alone. We need backup.’
‘We're the most advanced fleet,’ he reminded her. If they couldn't stop them then no amount of reinforcements was going to make the slightest difference. Slow them down for an hour or two at most, but that was it. ‘Reinforcements will never arrive in time.’ They wouldn't destroy the fleet outright. The Earthans would simply cripple them and then take everyone aboard prisoner, to be tortured for information until they were dead.
He shoved his hand down the front of his shirt, grabbing at a long chain and tugging it back out through the collar. Dangling from it was a small silver key. ‘Lieutenant, time for plan B.’ The warp star located in their hull would obliterate the whole fleet, themselves included, but it was the only option, and required both their keys to activate it. To her credit the lieutenant just nodded and extracted her key, pushing it into the twin hole on the opposite side of the console. She was his rock, his good soldier, and now she would follow him into the last battle. One simultaneous turn was all it would take
He couldn't make out the captain of the vessel through the ship’s front console. He turned to one of the ship’s monitors, able to zoom in closer, panning the front of the vessel. Piotr wanted to see the face of the man he was about to deny and to show him the grimace of a man who had nothing to lose.
The monitor was slow to pan back from the outermost edge of the ship's hull. Before it reached the central console it passed by a smaller porthole, and the face of a man appeared on the screen, hands pressed against the glass.
Despite the distance he read perfectly the single word mouthed in pleading desperation. Stop.
Piotr felt his heart stop beating, just for a moment. His blood ran cold and he blinked. He hadn't seen that face in over five hundred years, not even in the dreams and nightmares that haunted him. It was the image of a ghost, his subconscious playing tricks on him, trying to get that tiniest bit of him that didn't want to destroy them to relent.
‘Commander!’ He'd never heard that level of panicked terror in her voice before. He looked down at the control panel and at his hand. It was still there, key clutched between index finger and thumb in the twelve o'clock position, paralysed by the image of the ghosts he'd seen. He hadn't turned the key. The lives of seven thousand men and women on board, relying on their commander to protect them and he hadn't turned the key.