Ghost Train (audio story)

Ghost Train was the sixth release of the BBC Torchwood audio stories.

Publisher's summary
It's not easy being Rhys Williams. You're married to the sexiest woman in Torchwood. She saves the world for a living, you move lorries round in a timely fashion.

Suddenly, you've got a mystery of your own. Oh, it starts off being about missing fridges. But it leads to a midnight train pulling into an abandoned platform at Cardiff Station. What is the mysterious cargo that Rhys is unloading from the train? Where's it going? And what can be behind it?

Rhys Williams is going to get to the bottom of it. All by himself, thank you very much. Soon Captain Jack is missing, his wife's dead, and it's up to Rhys to try and put everything right. And find those fridges...

Plot
A number of fridges mysteriously vanish from Harwood's lorries and Rhys, suspecting aliens or the Rift, asks Gwen to look into it, but he instead decides to investigate by himself given her apparent lack of interest and being busy with Torchwood. He plots the drivers' routes and the locations that the missing fridges were last seen on a map, forming an arrow pointing at Queen Street station. He finds nothing there, however, and notices that a delivery slip he has with him has inexplicably changed to read "Powell knows". Returning to Harwood's, Ruth tells him that a Mr Powell has Darren collect boxes from Queen Street late at night.

Rhys briefly sees Gwen at home before she heads back with Jack to join Ianto in combating a series of biblical plagues spreading from Penarth to Splott. Despite the police calling for people to remain in their homes, Rhys goes to Queen Street at eleven at night to meet Mr Powell and is directed to transport him and several boxes from a steam engine to an industrial estate. He tells Gwen everything when he gets home, but he realises that she is an impostor just before the real Gwen bursts in and shoots her, explaining that she was a shapeshifting assassin targeting Torchwood. In the morning, Ianto bursts in and takes Gwen to go and find the missing Jack and Rhys sees crowds of doubles of Mr Powell standing in the streets.

Researching the midnight train at Queen Street, Rhys learns of a train that went missing on the way to Grangetown in 1951 and which had been driven by a Mr Powell. The Powells follow him to Queen Street and Gwen and Ianto arrive with guns, telling him to run as they race to the platform where the train has just arrived. The station explodes with light and Rhys finds a note on his van informing him that he has gone back in time to the night before and must take the ghost train to avoid meeting his past self. He finds Jack tied up in a carriage and learns that something is fighting through the Rift Manipulator to arrive in Cardiff, causing time to fall apart and allowing it to build a railway through the Rift.

Rhys and Jack throw one of two Powells aboard the train into the Rift and alight at a copy of Grangetown station where they find the skeleton of the original Mr Powell, holding a box like the ones that Rhys transported. The voice of the station manager, a computer built by the people of a colony world to run its transport systems, explains that Mr Powell and his train came through the Rift and that it copied him and built more trains. Following Mr Powell's death, it had the Powells transport it in pieces to Cardiff where it is being reassembled and started stabilising the Rift, inadvertently creating a route for whatever destroyed the colony world to travel to Earth. Rhys and Jack take the box onto the train and they speed away from a fireball of demons.

Pushed from the train by Jack, Rhys finds himself at Queen Street two weeks in the past and visits Ianto at the Hub on Jack's orders, telling him about parts of the future without mentioning his and Gwen's apparent deaths. Ianto tells him that he will have to ensure the future by stealing the fridges to lead himself to Queen Street and leaving himself notes. He does so by sabotaging traffic lights and sneaking into work, staying at Ianto's flat to avoid his past self and Gwen, and directs the Powells to Harwood's when they arrive. Over the course of two weeks, he and the unquestioning Darren transport boxes and Powells to one of Ianto's storage facilities.

A shapeshifting assassin takes on Ianto's form and gives itself away by kissing Rhys, who incapacitates him and learns that the assassins have come to destroy Torchwood as they believe them to be responsible for the Rift's stabilisation. He persuades the Powells to stand around on the first day of their invasion rather than integrating themselves into society and tries to keep Gwen and Ianto from going to Queen Street, but Gwen assumes that he is an assassin and tasers him. He manages to chase them into the station, however, and they survive the explosion of light that is caused when Jack crashes the train into the Powells. Jack wires the computer into the traffic lights and he and Ianto return the missing fridges.

Characters

 * Rhys Williams
 * Jack Harkness
 * Gwen Cooper
 * Ianto Jones
 * Mandy
 * Derek
 * Lewis
 * Powell
 * "Gwen Cooper"
 * "Ianto Jones"
 * Bernard

Worldbuilding

 * Mandy mentions Columbo.
 * There is a Spar opposite Queen Street station.
 * The train to Radyr leaves from Platform 3.
 * Mandy puts sweetener in her tea.
 * Mandy eats Jaffa Cakes.
 * Gwen saves a boy from a fire.
 * Robert Powell played Jesus.
 * Ruth mentions Hercule Poirot.
 * Gwen makes Rhys a cup of tea.
 * Gwen starts pairing socks.
 * Rhys makes spaghetti bolognese.
 * Rhys thinks about Andy McNab.
 * Rhys listens to Red Dragon FM.
 * Rhys and Gwen pay council tax.
 * Mandy plays FarmVille.
 * Facebook, Google and Wikipedia are all mentioned.
 * Rhys mentions Hogwarts.
 * Ikea is in Grangetown.
 * Rhys likes roller coasters.
 * An Asda is blown up.
 * Rhys's aunt had a café.
 * Jack and Gwen walk past a Turkish restaurant in Cardiff Bay.
 * Rhys uses the invisible lift.
 * Ianto has a calendar of Rio Ferdinand.
 * Rhys and Ianto eat pizza.
 * Ianto lives in a flat.
 * Rhys loves Jeremy Kyle.
 * The Fear of Despair makes people miserable through radio and television.
 * Rhys makes a pie.
 * Rhys once promised to go with Gwen to DFS to buy a new sofa.
 * Rhys once threw Gwen a surprise birthday party. She was not pleased.

Continuity

 * Ianto is evasive when Rhys suggests that it's possible to hide someone in the Hub, a reference to the events of TV: Cyberwoman.
 * Rhys sings a bit of the Harwood's jingle, previously heard in TV: Meat.
 * Pound Paradise is mentioned. It was previously mentioned in AUDIO: Department X.
 * Rhys mentions the trouble with the ATMOS systems. (TV: The Poison Sky)