Doctor Who_ Sleepy - Kate Orman [53]
God, she was tired. Yemaya wasn’t going to explode, slime creatures from outer space weren’t going to invade, hideous forces from the dawn of time were not about to be unleashed. But there were kids, and people with guns, and she knew the Doctor would be trying to keep the colony balanced on that knife edge.
People with guns.
Roz was out there in the TARDIS somewhere, doing something. All Benny wanted was a bit of normality, a bit of familiarity before they plunged back into the unknown. Even so, she was regretting asking the Adjudicator to save the Doctor’s instructions until she felt human again.
She’d been on the business end of too many guns to feel wholly comfortable around people whose job it was to be on the other end. Oh, there was duty and necessity and self-defence and all of that, none of which mattered a damn when someone you knew got their head blown off. Or, she supposed, if your head was the one that got blown off.
The lad looked terrified.
She tried not to go into their rooms.
The bullet ripped through the boy’s stomach, and he fell to his knees, gasping, coughing up blood.
She knew they did target practice sometimes, down in the Doctor’s archery range, his straw targets pushed to one side.
Behind her there were cries for a doctor. It was too late, though.
If the Doctor’s plan meant she had to carry a gun, she was going to have a very serious problem.
Wolsey meowed and rubbed against her shoulder. He wanted feeding. ‘Warm milk all round, I’d say,’ said Benny, dragging herself out of the tub.
Roz just walked, letting the TARDIS and her tired feet take her where she needed to go.
She passed the gym. She and Chris had spent hours together remodelling it. They hadn’t been detective and squire, but just friends, getting covered in grease, laughing.
The Doctor had told her he would keep an eye on the young man — somewhere among everything he was juggling right now. How he was keeping it all in the air she wasn’t sure: there hadn’t been time for more than hurried instructions, not even any questions.
The gym had belonged to someone else. Roz guessed it had been Ace. Partly from the careful way everything had been maintained, partly because the Doctor and Benny didn’t go there and didn’t talk about it. Chris had stumbled across it one day after getting lost on his way to breakfast.
It was a little like getting a new job, and constantly being introduced as ‘the new Fred Nerk’, or whatever the last person’s name had been. Finding the gym, and the other little traces of the soldier who’d travelled aboard the TARDIS, had made Roz very aware that she and Chris were only the latest in a long series of passengers.
Not surprisingly, Benny had chosen to waste time, didn’t even want to know yet where they were going or what they were going to do. Roz was already wondering if pairing them together was such a good idea. Chris could be a git, but he was a professional git. Ah well, needs must as the Doctor drives.
There was another room that must have been Ace’s. Roz hadn’t had time to explore it properly. According to the preset flight plan, it would be several hours before they arrived.
There was time now. She flexed her newly healed arm (muscles still a little sore) and pushed open the door.
The weapons room was divided neatly down the middle.
One side was a jumble of stuff: swords from dozens of historical periods, scabbards, spears, antique guns, even a ludicrously ornate cannon. It was all junk, the kind of things the Doctor picked up on his travels the way other people picked up coffee mugs or plastic snowstorms. He had probably piled it all into here like rubbish in a cartoon cupboard, slightly embarrassed. Benny hadn’t known it existed, even though she’d shared the TARDIS with Ace.
The other half of the room was spotless, the floor swept, a single bench with a shelf holding perhaps two dozen weapons. Largely low-tech, blades for the most part. The rest were a