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It was, Claudia reflected, just her luck. They had barely finished clearing up from the last prehistoric incursion, and now they were experiencing another one. One that had significantly greater immediate effects than a flock of parasitically infected dodos. One that she definitely needed military back-up to handle.
Right on cue, a procession of black 4x4s appeared as if from nowhere, and screeched to a halt beside her. All the doors opened simultaneously, and a large number of uniformed Special Forces soldiers poured out on to the grass.
Claudia searched for the familiar face of Captain Ryan, so she could update him on the situation. However, instead of Ryan, she found herself face-to-face with Captain Jacobs, his second-in-command.
“Captain Jacobs reporting, ma’am,” announced the soldier, dashing off a smart salute.
Claudia sighed. She really wished that all the soldiers would stop saluting her. She didn’t feel she deserved it, since she wasn’t in the military. She also wished they’d stop calling her ‘ma’am’. That made her feel like she was about sixty.
But none of that was important right now. Claudia had a couple of questions that she wanted answering.
“Where is Captain Ryan, Captain Jacobs?” she asked. “Why isn’t he here?”
“Apologies, ma’am,” replied Jacobs. “He is currently assigned on another mission. I will be your military liaison for today.”
“Excuse me? What other mission? This project is supposed to be Captain Ryan’s top priority.” Claudia was suspicious, and she let Captain Jacobs see it.
“Again, I apologise, ma’am,” said Jacobs. “But that information is classified.”
“But I have top level security clearance,” protested Claudia. “How can it be classified to me? And besides, what could possibly be more classified than this project? Are you telling me that there’s something more weird going on than creatures from the past finding their way into the present through big sparkly anomalies?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I can’t tell you what I don’t know. Captain Ryan has been assigned to another top secret mission – that is all the information I have.”
This is ridiculous, thought Claudia frustratedly. I’m definitely going to have to take this up with Lester.
Aloud, she said: “very well, Captain Jacobs. I will liase with you, for the moment. Now please relay this information to your men. The creature seems to have gone to ground in that small copse over there. I want you to set up a perimeter around the trees to hold it there until Professor Cutter and his team arrive to identify it. Be warned, the animal is extremely large and apparently aggressive. If it tries to break cover, you have my permission to use force to take it down. I know Cutter prefers to keep these things alive, but I will not have any more casualties as a result of this situation.”
* * * * *
Captain Ryan stood to attention at the front of his team as the Torchwood operative explained the logistics of the latest mission. Apparently, the Institute’s number one enemy, known only as ‘the Doctor’, had put in an appearance, and Torchwood were going to try, for the umpteenth time, to catch him.
Sometimes, Ryan wished he had never signed up for Special Ops. It wasn’t that he minded carrying out top-secret missions for the good of his country, without the possibility of public recognition. But what he hadn’t counted on was that his talents would land him in the ‘X-Files’ of the classified mission directory. Between Torchwood and the anomaly project, he felt like his head was going to explode with the amount of weird things he had seen.
And now he had been dragged away from the anomaly project and back to Torchwood, thanks to the appearance of the mysterious ‘Doctor’. This wouldn’t normally have happened. Torchwood were normally content to leave ‘consultant’ military operatives, like Ryan, to whatever duties they had been assigned, and use the soldiers that they had permanently allocated to their organisation. But the Doctor required the best of the best, and that meant Ryan. So here he was, at a top secret location in the London Docklands, being briefed about the Doctor and his strange habits.
He wished he was allowed to give some kind of explanation for his sudden reassignment to his superiors on the anomaly project. Oh, no doubt Lester knew all about it anyway. In fact, Ryan wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that Lester was really a secret Torchwood agent, and that anomaly project was in actuality being run by Torchwood.
But Claudia Brown would be completely in the dark. She wasn’t high up enough in the hierarchy to know about Torchwood, even if they were really running the show. He could just imagine the look on her face when Captain Jacobs turned up and informed her that Ryan had been reassigned, at least temporarily. He could also picture the showdown she would have with Lester, demanding answers that he wouldn’t be able to give her.
But she would give it a bloody good try. The thought was almost enough to make Ryan smile. But he reigned in the impulse, keeping his face impassive as he listened to the end of the Torchwood briefing. There was nothing he could do but try and complete this mission (although he wasn’t holding his breath about that – the Doctor was a notoriously slippery customer), and then apologise to Claudia when he went back to the anomaly project. It wasn’t really enough, but it would have to do.