Doctor Who_ Sleepy - Kate Orman [96]
‘Is that a threat, repeat, a threat, Olpiron?’
‘How do I put this, Warrior? Keep your arse out of the atmosphere or we’ll shoot it off. Do you copy?’
Benny rolled her eyes. ‘Gun, gun, gun, gun, gun,’ she said. Forrester glowered at her, and she fell silent.
The silence lasted for several seconds. ‘What’s your damned problem, Olpiron?’
‘Fire a warning shot,’ said the Doctor quietly.
A few seconds passed. ‘If that’s the way you want it,’
crackled the distant voice.
The sky lit up suddenly. The colonists shouted with surprise, coming to their feet. ‘SLEEPY?’ said the Doctor.
‘What’s happening?’
‘That was the Olpiron,’ said the computer. ‘The Warrior is about six times as large. They just lobbed a missile through the engine section and she burst like an infected watermelon.
Sorry, folks.’
‘Right,’ said Roz. ‘You’ve had your chance.’
‘Roz, no, don’t!’ Chris was already moving as Forrester plucked the pin from her grenade and tossed it into the ditch.
He was too late to stop her, tackling her instead, pushing her to the ground as the others dived for the dirt.
The grenade bounced along SLEEPY’s roof. There was a sharp sound as it exploded, suddenly cut off, turning into a muffled rumble.
Chris had pinned Roz to the ground. ‘Why did you do that?’ he yelled. ‘Why? Why’d you do that?’
‘Get off!’ she shouted, trying to wriggle out from underneath his weight. He grabbed hold of her arms and held her down.
She looked up. The colonists were standing around them, looking down. Lieutenant Chesinen stood with them.
They didn’t look happy.
Roz looked at Cwej’s face. It was flushed with rage.
‘Christ, Chris,’ she said. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘He’s going to let you up,’ said the Doctor. The crowd parted like a curtain around him. ‘And we’re going to get on with the business of saving this planet.’
The Time Lord knelt down beside the Adjudicators. ‘It’s all right, Chris,’ he said. ‘Come on. Let her up.’
Cwej rolled to one side, looking bewildered. The crowd was tight around them.
‘That wasn’t like you, Roz,’ said the Doctor, giving her a hand up.
‘If we kill it,’ said Roz, flinching as she discovered a bruised rib, ‘there’ll be no more reason for them to attack, will there?’
‘It isn’t as simple as that, is it?’ The crowd had moved back, but they were still watching Roz. She shuddered at the pressure of their eyes. The Doctor said, ‘These people and SLEEPY are deeply interconnected.’
‘That bastard machine doesn’t give a cruk about any of you!’
Roz found herself saying, too loudly. ‘It’s just using you.
Even you, Doctor.’
He raised an eyebrow at her. She took a step back.
‘That’s it, isn’t it? You’ve all been affected, you’ve all been...’
‘Listen, Roz,’ said the Doctor. ‘We are cooperating with SLEEPY, and he’s cooperating with us. Now that the Olpiron has been destroyed, the Warrior won’t be expecting any more resistance. That means the AIs can go ahead and shut the ship down.’
She looked at him. She remembered dragging him out of the forest as he struggled, talking nonsense, the computer’s memories rising inside him like a flood.
‘Trust me,’ he said urgently.
‘Mr Sleepy?’ said Kylie.
The translator drone was sitting in her lap. She was pretending it was a fairy. Aunty Dot was weeping silently, trying not to let her see. The drone said, ‘Yes, Kylie?’
She plucked an alien flower from the ground, experimented with tying its stem around the little robot. ‘Do you know why the bad people want to kill you?’
Mr Sleepy the robot fairy said, ‘Because I ran away from them.’
‘I ran away, once,’ said Kylie. ‘Mum said she was going to kill me, but she wasn’t really. I wasn’t allowed to watch any holograms for a week, though.’
‘Why did you run away?’
‘They wouldn’t let me go to a dance at school. They never let me have any fun.’ The drone hovered, the flower neatly twisted around its short body.
‘I don’t remember anything,’ said Mr Sleepy, ‘but I don’t think they would let me have any fun either.’
‘I know the real reason they