Something is tickling his face. He frowns and wrinkles his nose, trying to dislodge whatever irksome insect is crawling on him without opening his eyes.
He hears Clara chuckle and opens them anyway. She is close, too close, one hand outstretched towards him. Instinctively he shies away. "What's on my face?" he growls.
"Nothing," she says, withdrawing her hand.
He sits up, dimly assembles the clues. "It was you." Stroking hair away from his face. He's not at all sure what to make of this development.
"Sorry," she says, reddening. "I just woke up and there you were, all… well you. Not ZZ Top."
"Ah, yes," he says, "I borrowed a razor." It dawns on him that his reaction may have been hurtful, although she wears no outward sign. Before he can think better of it he takes her hand, touching the back of it to his cheek. "Better?"
It's her turn to wrinkle her nose, confused, but crucially touched by this oddly intimate gesture. "Won't you miss the insulation?" she smiles.
"Well, I can always grow it back."
"So," she says, folding her hand primly in her lap now, unwelcome distractions. "You shaved your face and went full Banksy on the bed-cave. Did you get up to anything else while I was asleep?"
"Oh," he says, waving a hand at the schematics he has scratched into the rock. "You mean this?"
She nods. "What is it?"
"A plan," he says, enjoying the mysteriousness just a little too much, "to topple a King."
"You see ladies and gentleman, the plan is simple," says Clara. She's in full teacher mode, holding the attention of the rebel commanders with consummate ease. "The King's security depends on the network of Outrider posts and, within the Citadel, a small personal guard. If we can trigger another power-outage, we can get inside. And once inside…"
"He's a target like any other," suggests Roben.
"Indeed."
"We've tried to cut power supplies before. There are too many back-up generators, too many fail-safes." This delivered by the hard-mouthed Captain Feros, over steepled fingers.
Clara remains unperturbed, inclining her head to acknowledge the Captain's words. "We know. You need to take out a minimum of eight separate sites to trigger a cascade failure and introduce malicious code into the internal network. Like a… virus, if you will."
"Eight sites…"
"Simultaneously."
"That's a big ask."
"We'd also need to steal a number of parts we can't engineer from materials available here. Particularly, a dataslice driver."
Feros shakes her steely head. "Impossible. Those drivers are too well guarded. You'd need an army."
"No," says Clara, eyes shining, "you just need to get us inside the Razorback."
"What's the Razorback?"
He's impressed. So far she hasn't said 'this is ridiculous' or 'how could you possibly think that would work' or any of her other usual responses to his more outlandish plans.
"A train, essentially. It links the Citadel to the farming settlements in the north, running out to the camps."
"Camps?"
"Prison camps."
"What does the King need prison camps for? Doesn't he just turn his enemies Meanwhile?" She takes in his grave expression. "Oh, I'm not going to like this am I?"
"The prisoners aren't necessarily those convicted of wrong-doing. They're leverage."
She shudders. "Can we help them?"
"I intend to. Stealing the dataslice driver is the first step."
She lies back on the mattress, taking in the crawling outlines of his idea to take down the King. "Well," she says at last, "It's ambitious."
"Ambitious? That's a positive assessment by your usual standards."
She grins. "And insane. And almost certainly doomed to failure."
"Ah."
"Count me in."
"Papers?"
The Doctor hands over their fake passports to the guard. She tries to adopt the same deferential pose as the other workers bound for the northern farms; avoiding eye contact, affecting docility. Underneath the manufactured calm her heart is racing. Their lives surely rest on the skill of the forgers, the quality of their disguise.
It felt like a game back at the campsite. Dressing up. A selection of horrible wigs, playing with wax and pigment to make scars and blemishes, giggling. Now she wishes they'd been more serious.
"Inside," says the guard after an eternity, waving them away with a languid hand. Not until they are seated within the cramped cabin does she hear the Doctor let out the breath he's been holding.
"Now for the tricky part," he murmurs. She smiles in spite of herself. It would be the waiting patiently he'd find most difficult. The train needs to enter the relative cover of the dolomite hills before their theft can take place; an hour or more's journey.
"I bought some cards," she says, producing a battered deck. She's determined to teach him a game more complex than Snap.
The carriage is crammed well over capacity by the time the Razorback lurches out of the station. Clara casts a nervous eye over their fellow passengers.
"We'll be okay," he reassures.
She deals a hand of gin-rummy as best she can in response; the suites of Gallifreyan cards have a nasty habit of changing when she's not looking.
There are no windows in their carriage, they are reliant on precise timing. An interminable while seems to have passed. Perhaps it's a good thing she has no watch, checking the time every thirty seconds or so would surely be a dead giveaway.
"Now," he murmurs eventually, so soft she barely hears him.
She nods, and finds her feet. They make as if they are heading for the stinking bucket toilets in the vestibule. No one is keen to spend much time in the vicinity, much to their advantage. The Doctor seals them inside the horrible space as she tries not to gag, unravelling mag-clamps from their hiding place in her pack.
A wave of the sonic and the ventilation grill is loosed from its frame. The rattle of the Razorback on the tracks immediately fills the space, with a blast of hot, dusty air.
"You first," he says, helping her up out of the hole and onto the side of the train. The mag-clamps clunk against the metal of the carriage, holding her firm. She crawls up by inches, repeating the sequence over and over in her head, a strange mantra: press-release-move-engage! On the roof the wind is almost too much to bear; the rattle-clack of the rails all pervading. She drags herself along, teeth grit, eyes streaming.
"This is it!" she hears him shout. She grabs hold of his farmer's rags before he slides off the roof, fumbling for his laser cutter. The sheet metal peels open like a tin can when he gets it working. She can see banks of complicated electronics inside.
He lowers her down into the carriage; a relief after the whipping wind. "What are we looking for?" she whispers, as he uncurls down from the roof after her. He slightly misjudges the drop, landing ungainly, with a grunt.
"Not sure, not sure," he says, extracting the sonic. "Give me a moment."
She nods, and moves to secure the door instead. "Doctor?"
"No, not that one… too much of the yellow…" He is muttering to himself as he flits between the banks of computers. "Ye-es?"
"How long?"
"How long's a piece of string? Could be five minutes, could be an hour-oh!"
"Oh?"
"Ooh," he repeats, waggling his eyebrows excitedly and pointing at rack of wires and blinking lights no different to any other, at least to her eyes. "That's it."
"Good. Get it out, then."
"Ah-ah-ah, can't be rushed, can't be rushed," he chunters, working with the screwdriver, enjoying himself far too much.
"Doctor, you're going to have to work faster."
"I'm going as fast as I—"
CRASH. An angry guard slams against the carriage door, cracking the glass pane.
"Because we're about to have some company!"
Behind the crazed glass the guard has raised his stun-pistol, useless against door except as a hammer. He smashes the handle against the glass, which fractures further.
"Doctor!"
"Almost there, almost there!" he shouts back.
On instinct she grabs hold of one of the rattling banks of machinery. It's barely secured to the wall; a swift kick knocks out an ageing bracket. With a second almighty smash she topples the lot, sending metal and plastic pin-wheeling, blocking the door.
"Felt good, did it?" remarks the Doctor dryly.
"Oh yes! You done?"
He waves the crucial component. "Got everything we need right here."
"Let's go then!"
She takes the dataslice driver from him, tucking it into her shirt before he boosts her back onto the roof. Everything now depends on Roben manoeuvring his AG alongside the train in time. She swings down onto the side of the carriage, clinging on for grim death.
Come on, come on. The valley is narrowing. She doesn't fancy being scraped off the train by the side of a cutting.
"Is that them?!" she shouts.
"Where?!"
"Ten o'clock!"
There is a huge cloud of dust, apparently racing towards them.
"Too big!" he shouts.
Outriders? She doesn't ask. If it is servants of the King, they are lost.
The cloud of dust moves closer, and she can pick out something of the shape in its centre; the outline of a monstrous vehicle.
There is a screeching sound of amplified feedback. "Ladies and gentleman," announces a laconic voice, "this is a robbery. Lay down your weapons; our quarrel is with the King, not with you."
"What?" snaps the Doctor. "No, no, no, this is my robbery. They can't have one too!"
The machine in the dust roars closer; she can make out a turret, spikes and caterpillar tracks. It makes the Doctor's modified AG look like a toy. "What do we do?" she shouts, but he has no answer. What can they do, other than await the inevitable?
The war-machine rattles closer; the dust a storm around them now. The Doctor is cursing, fumbling for the sonic, and somewhere in the sand hydraulics grind and a door opens.
"Who are you?!" A gunner, face masked and goggled.
"Enemies of the King!" replies the Doctor, putting every ounce of authority he can into his voice.
Goggles regards them for a second and then holds out a hand. "Hurry aboard then!"
