Doctor Who BBC872 - To the Slaughter

Chapter Two
‘Halt!’
Fitz heard the holler the moment he ran into the loading bay, but it took
him a moment to spot the guard among the chrome crates and high-tech
sarcophagus things littering the place.
Suddenly Fitz was running at full whack towards the barrel of a gun. He
skidded and skittered on the gleaming floor, raised his hands.
‘Halt!’ the guard bellowed again.
‘I can’t!’ shouted Fitz. ‘Your mates are right behind me!’ He raised his arms
higher, gave the guard a pleading look. ‘If I stop now they’ll catch me!’
For a moment the guard’s face clouded as he processed the argument. A
fraction later Fitz brought down his fist in a wild punch.
Grabbing the man’s gun, Fitz crouched behind a silver crate for cover and
looked about for the TARDIS. He was sure this was the place where they’d
landed – all burnished bright and vast, more like an exhibition space than
a loading bay whatever the signs said. And with the fluid links knackered,
the ship couldn’t take off anywhere without a fresh supply of mercury. So
where. . . ?
The four guards who’d been hot on his heels thundered into the bay. Fitz’s
heart raced, his finger tightened around the trigger of his. . .
Hang about. There was no sodding trigger!
Fitz looked at the gun in his hands, turned it around looking for a switch
or a button or something that would fire the bloody thing. He squinted down
the barrel, tapped it against his hand. . .
He was so busy wrestling with the baffling blaster, he failed to notice his
cover drifting away. The chrome crate he was cowering behind was slowly
rising up into the air, apparently of its own accord.
Fitz finally noticed and stifled a squawk of alarm. Even the boxes were
against him in this place! He rolled backwards – a quite passable action-hero
manoeuvre, he felt – and scrambled behind another high-tech tea chest.
‘We know you’re in here,’ shouted one of the guards, though actually he
didn’t sound all that certain. ‘There’s no way out. Give yourself up now, and
we. . . ’ He trailed off. Was he reading this warning off a card or something?
These guys really were out of practice. ‘We assure you, you will not be mistreated.’
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