Doctor Who_ Set Piece - Kate Orman [14]
‘Yes?’
‘Ships have been disappearing from one of the less-used interstellar traffic lanes. Passenger ships.’
‘Any black holes lying around where they shouldn’t be?’ asked Ace.
The Doctor shook his head. ‘In one case out of three, the ships are found some time after their disappearance – minus the passengers and crew.’
‘Ransom?’
‘Slavers?’
‘No demands. Slavery isn’t economically viable any more, not really. Robots are cheaper than people.’
‘Is the cafe a re-creation, then?’ Ace wanted to know. ‘Or just a very well-preserved slice of Earth?’
The smile that normally flickered below Benny’s surface was extinguished.
She was thinking about her father. ‘How do we stop it?’
‘Ah,’ said the Doctor. ‘Well.’ He slapped down a handful of change on the table, a random mixture of denominations and centuries. ‘Come on.’
The sixth time they visited the cafe, it was on Argolis. The wood-framed windows had been replaced by hard plastic sheets, giving a good view of the burning sky. Now the clientele were tourists, every conceivable body shape crammed around tables and into corners. But the tables were the same, down to the initials carved into the wood.
‘I’ve got a simple idea,’ said the Doctor. ‘We allow ourselves to be taken along for the ride.’
‘Get ourselves arrested,’ said Ace.
‘And let the villains tie us up and tell us their plans,’ said Benny, six tequilas deep and still sober as a judge. ‘Someone would have to stay behind. Stay free, in case of emergency.’ She laughed. ‘I’ll come and rescue you when you’ve messed it all up.’
In Ace’s memory, the Doctor had developed a livid scar under his left eye, a great purple blotch with a red line running crossways through it where someone had hit him. She felt a hot lump of badness in her stomach as he watched her drink, as though she were responsible for the damage.
29
‘But we don’t know who’s doing the capturing,’ she said. He shook his head again. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Ace, as the memory echoed away into nothing,
‘’cos we’re experts at escaping.’
They’d paid their money, hadn’t they? Now they had to take their chances.
That, as the saying went, was the way the cookie crumbled.
She was sitting up now, leaning forward, trying to support the upper part of her body against her knees. She was wearing some sort of overalls, made of rough synthetic cloth, a lifeless beige that blended into the dawn light. Who had stripped off her combat suit, taken away her tools and weapons? What else had they done to her when she was naked and helpless? Why had they frozen her?
She leaned her head against her knees, taking deep breaths. Her body was full of pins and needles. Did she only feel like she was shaking?
The sun was a searing thumbnail of yellow pushed up above the horizon, lighting the emptiness: honey-yellow cliffs, scattered rocks like a Martian landscape, shadows sharp-edged and glowing black. She didn’t even have her shades. Would the force shield generator clamped to her wrist provide any protection against the sun? She’d save the batteries, wait until the heat became intolerable.
She needed to get up and start walking, but she could barely stay upright.
She needed to sleep for a hundred years, but if she lost the day she’d never wake up. And even if she did get up, where would she walk to, her bare feet slipping in the burning sand?
Don’t care. Her heart was still frozen, her stomach was a lump of ice. The rough defrosting should really have finished her off anyway. By now the three of them must have used up most of the spare luck in the universe. But after everything they’d been through, dying here would be slightly embarrassing.
She hoped the Doctor and Benny had landed somewhere soft.
The Doctor had had a sort of map with him. It was a flat plate of some white substance,