The Stardust Fire Brigade : Jack and Sarah Jane : 1981

It started as an excavation as these things often do. Butterly Business Park was expanding. It wasn't much of a park, nor were their butterflies, but business was booming. The workmen uncovered more than they ever expected when they went to dig the first basement out, an alien ship, no less. If that had been all the story might have ended with UNIT, but it was what they found inside that made them look to Captain Jack Harkness. A hand written letter came to him from Arctane, Dublin, for the information was not going to be risked electronically. Not this. Not the endless bodies they'd found inside the strange vehicle. Human bodies crammed in to the bare room, gone to bones and dust, held together by clothing. Hair had fallen in dusty clumps in the flesh become dirt.

There were no chairs, no controls, nothing but well barred ports, a bare floor and the door. There was no doubt it was an object from outer space though, it was made of a metal even UNIT could not identify. There, on the floor at the verge of that gray dirt. A bright sparkle. A strewing of small, clear glittering objects on the only bare floor. There was also a hand towel of loop cotton, white, but smudged with soot. By the human footsteps in the edges of the dusting, there had been quite a scuffle here. A man and a woman.

The ship itself of course couldn't be carbon dated, but the soot clinging to the outside of the craft could, and the date came up as around UNIT was not equipped to read what strange, faint, emanations came from those very Earthly beads. They hadn't even noticed the key washed up against the corner. Another object, like the beads, that was above the general degeneration. A key on a ball and chain necklace.

A TARDIS key. UNIT certainly wouldn't know what that was either.

Somewhere, some when, Sarah Jane Smith was shopping.

Jack had always found it amusing when he, a 51st century man, received letters.  Sure, the era he resided in was still big on it, but he found it funny nonetheless. What was really interesting about this situation was the fact he, Jack Harkness, was being informed and indirectly summoned to the queer situation the people of Butterly Business Park had uncovered. With a quick informative check from his Torchwood team, Jack had studied up on what he planned to walk into. Arcane, Dublin, he heard about the fire that burned away a few dozen lives and injured far more. He wouldn't have thought much about the bodies the workers had found... if it wasn't for the mention of a suspicious looking alien ship.

Despite UNIT being on the scene, Jack was pleased with what the paper now tucked away into his pocket had to offer: something to do.  It was determined quickly that he would go and investigate the scene. It was always best to get firsthand knowledge than having it recited by some private who obviously didn’t know what they were talking about.  They themselves were probably just reciting what they heard.  It was painful.  Plus, knowing UNIT, something would have been missed.  Jack had worked for the Time Agency and then for Torchwood long enough to know that people missed important bits of information that were more than likely dire for the success of an investigation.

Pulling on his navy overcoat, Jack fiddled with the coordinates of his vortex manipulator before teleporting himself to Arcane, Dublin, in February of the year 2013.  He soon found himself in an alley and started off down the street, a stoic expression on his face.

It wasn't long before he found Butterly Business Park. It was interesting to see; the construction items were parked all around the building and so he assumed that would be a good place to head. Walking beside a crane, Jack smirked when he saw the gaping hole of where the workers had dug, and, once peering down the dark earth, he saw the dull shine of the metal described in his letter.

Whether he was suppose to or not, Jack walked down the edge of the hole, leaning back so he wouldn't tumble head first down the steep slope. It was a vain filled attempt since he slipped and rolled the rest of the way down, coughing when dirt and dust was kicked up around him. "Damn. That sucked." But did it really? Something reflecting the noon sun's light caught his eye. Wait.. the rays of light weren't puncturing through the plume of dirt.

Curiosity and interest sparked his impulse to touch it. Hesitantly, Jack reached out, poked it as a test, and when nothing happened he picked it up for closer inspection. What was it? It held the geometrical shape of a hexagon, the hard texture that you would expect from an item such as this, and it had a sour and salty taste. Okay, Jack probably shouldn't have licked it.. but he had been around the Doctor enough times to be curious whether or not that worked. Plus he was sure he had licked worse things in his long life.

Standing up when the dirt had settled back down, Jack pocketed the crystal and thought he should send a sample to HQ and have them test it. In the meantime, he had an alien ship to breach and investigate. Here went nothing...

February, 1981

While London was in a quiet frenzy of buying bay leaves Valentine's day (an errand Sarah Jane had already accomplished, but would never admit to, nor the fresh eggs in the cold box), she was busy trying to connect the dots. Lights in the sky had first caught her attention. The observatories were all claiming it was some sort of temperature inversion that made the 'comets' seem to be going upward instead of downward. Typical human blindness to the possibility of extra terrestrial influence. Sarah Jane knew better. She knew a space shuttle with an advanced Alien drive taking off into atmosphere. Cosmic contrails. It had taken her nearly two months to connect the lights in the sky with the waves of disappearances.

Cross-referencing had been a flurry of paper and pushpins, but in the end, she found herself in Ireland looking for a disco dress. She loved the shopping part of mystery-tracking.


Under the right kind of scan, those beads would show a ghost of a ghost of Artron energy. That trace of Artron radiation was nothing compared to what emanated from the TARDIS key just under the dust, and one very delicate set of bones that could be found just under the floorboards.

Back in 2014, Jack moved closer to the metal surface of the alien craft. The normal airlock system that kept the door sealed shut was breached, assumingly by the workers that had uncovered it in the first place. Trust human nature to lead the buggers into a curious investigation they weren’t qualified to undergo. At least it made it easier on Jack.

His hand pulled the door upward with only mild resistance, revealing the dusty, catastrophic scene inside. What drew his attention first was the numerous glistening crystals like the one he had found outside. Once again he had to ask the question: what were the purpose of these things? What did they do? What were they made of? And why the hell were there so many?

Stepping over a few, he gave a sigh at the barren interior. Well, barren in the stereotypical sense that alien spaceships were full of technology and panels and the whole ‘advanced civilization’ deal. A few more steps finally lead to a halt as he stared at the skeleton laying on the floor, filthied with dust and debris. Advancing towards it, Jack crouched to exam its structure, brows furrowed. How long had it been there? Surely whoever was investigating the place before him would have tested that out. Jack could only assume it was sometime in the 80’s.

Jack didn’t move from his spot but he looked around the rest of the ship before spotting it- the necklace. Or so that’s what he thought it was. He reached over to pick it up- the thing was as dusty as the skeleton- and gave a small smile, “Well would you look at that. Who the hell am I dealing with?” It was an item he knew like the back of his hand. It was a key to the infamous TARDIS.

Standing again and pulling out his phone, Jack made a few phone calls, demanding that they find the identity of the corpse within the ship. It still had all its teeth, a dental check usually did the trick in a situation like this.

A few hours later and the body was recognized as the journalist Sarah Jane Smith. Jack was sitting outside the spaceship, fiddling with a crystal when he received the news. His jaw clenched at finding out an old friend had perished in there. But what did she find? And more importantly how could she be dead? That just wasn’t right based on what Jack knew. They were already acquainted in his timeline… but the shape of her corpse suggested she’d been dead for decades.

It was set in his mind that he would go to the scene of the crime himself… before it even happened. Maybe then he could figure out what the hell happened and prevent Sarah Jane’s death. Thumbing the TARDIS key, Jack programmed his vortex manipulator. The club was already up, the fire happened in Febuary- or so the articles he read said- and so that’s where he would go. Pressing down on the button, Jack appeared in the streets of Dublin in February 1981.

Who knew how many nights it might take before Sarah Jane Smith and Captain Jack Harkness crossed paths?  Or was it the very first one, the pair of them drawn into proximity by fate?  Or perhaps by curiosity.  The disappearances at the club were whispered about in dark allies and the back pool rooms.  Anywhere folks might mingle far enough away from the music to share a word.  Dancers were going missing.  The most graceful ones.  After a night when perhaps that one dancer might shine, might make a space for themselves on the dance floor with the originality and flare of their grind, just might just go missing that very night.

Sarah Jane had had time to case the place, doing her best to fade in the background as a Plain Jane.  Tonight she wore the bead dress.  Thousands of the tiny beads that would some day wind up in a lab in 2014.  Tonight, she came to the Stardust to infiltrate.

And dance.  She was young, after all.