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"Oh c'mon, how difficult can it actually be?" the Doctor calls out, and Rogue has been travelling with him for long enough now to know that the likely answer to that question lies somewhere on the spectrum from 'wildly difficult' to 'humanly impossible.'
It's tough for him to actually say anything in response, though, what with how the wind is whipping past him and stealing the breath from his lungs, and it's all Rogue can do to stay clinging to the side of the train. It's picking up speed as it comes out of the last gentle curve that will take it down out of the foothills and across the northern plains proper. Through watering eyes, Rogue has a vague impression of the waves of peach and blue grasses that lie ahead of them under a lavender sky, and then off on the horizon he can see the garnet spires of the capital, glistening in the light of the rising sun. If the train explodes once it reaches the city walls, it's going to make one hell of a mess.
He's not going to say that, on the whole, his life as a bounty hunter had been easier or safer on average than today has turned out, but there had definitely been fewer kilometres-long goods trains that had been turned into massive, self-driving bombs.
At least Rogue has two things now that he didn't have then: a Time Lord at his side, and a pair of stolen anti-gravity NaźaigTek boots on his feet.
"Ready?" the Doctor yells over the rushing wind. "Go!"
Rogue doesn't feel particularly ready, but it's not like there's an alternative. They're the only two people around who can stop this thing, and Rogue's no one's idea of a hero but he tries not to be a monster, either.
He clicks his heels together, activating the boots, and then plants both soles firmly against the metallic sides of the freight car. The boots latch on and now all Rogue has to do is straighten up and trust them to hold him perpendicular to the train. He lets out a breath. Trust: nothing to it. He stands, and seeing the world rush sideways past him is such a profoundly strange experience that Rogue lets out a giddy laugh.
The Doctor is laughing too, coat whipping around him. "Like learning how to ride a sideways bike! Once you know how, your body never really forgets."
"If you say so!" Rogue yells back.
"Just got to swing your hips a bit with each step." The Doctor reaches over and takes Rogue's hand in his, his clasp tight. "Gets a rhythm going. It'll help the boots know when to disengage and reengage. Come on!"
And then they're clunking their way up the side of the speeding train, and it makes Rogue think of their first dance together—which depending on how you marked time had happened either ten months or several hundred years ago. This is slower, sure, and less elegant, but they're still hand in hand, moving in improvised sync in a way that anyone around them would think reckless; there are just fewer wigs and more high explosives involved. Rogue finds that he's grinning. Swing, step, swing, step, swing, step, and then with one last heave they're up onto the top of the train. Rogue's thighs burn with the effort of it.
"What now?" Rogue calls out.
"We find the bomb and we deactivate it! In my experience, cutting the red wire generally works. Either that or the blue. Or the green. Fun to find out, eh?" The Doctor starts making his way forward along the top of the freight car, still using that odd rolling gait that the boots require. On anyone else—on Rogue himself—a walk like that would just seem silly. The Doctor, well, he knows how to put his hips into it.
Rogue sighs—a sigh that even he can tell is more than a bit besotted—and follows him.
They find the bomb at the front of the second freight car: an out-of-place metal box welded to the train's sleek lines. Rogue and the Doctor hunker down next to it, locking the boots into place to give them stability while they work. The box bristles with buttons and lights and wires and what looks like text in a writing system that Rogue's entirely unfamiliar with. One thick cable runs from the side of the box and punches down through the roof of the freight car into the hollow darkness below. The Doctor looks at the assemblage. with an expression on his face like someone seeing an Old Earth Christmas tree for the first time.
"Look at this beauty! Look at that, that's... oh, let's see, that's twenty-seven separate wires! Twenty-seven! Absolutely no need for that much wiring in a device this straightforward, no need for any of the different coloured lights, but this was manufactured by someone who's got respect for classic design. Craftsmanship. Look at that dial! Hand-painted! Brilliant."
"It's a bomb." Rogue feels like he's required to point that out. He can't tell if any of the flashing bits of the bomb are a countdown, but he does know that at their current speed, they can't be more than a half hour out from the capital. "And if it explodes, it's going to take out this train, and us, and a whole year's worth of food supplies for the city at the same time."
"Yesssss," the Doctor says, drawling out the word in a way that means he thinks Rogue is being delightfully eccentric. "But I'm the Doctor, and you're you, so it's not like there's ever been anything to actually worry about."
"Oh, well, in that case," says Rogue, whose legs are starting to cramp from holding this position too long.
The Doctor digs his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket and scans the bomb from several different angles. He frowns at the screwdriver and hums to himself and turns it upside down and frowns some more and then says, "Ohhhh, old-school exterior but with some new-school weaknesses. You're going to have to spit on it."
Rogue blinks at him. Surely the wind whipping at them has made him mishear what the Doctor's saying. "What?"
"Spit on it!" the Doctor says, cheerfully matter-of-fact. "It's made of... well, that's not what's important, time is of the essence, the key thing here is that this thing is not at all resistant to a whole bunch of enzymes that are present in common-or-garden human saliva. Spit!"
Rogue doesn't know whether he should be insulted or not at the implication that his spit is boring, but the Doctor has rarely been wrong about something like this in the time that Rogue has known him—and when he has been wrong, at least he's been wrong in interesting ways. Rogue shrugs. He angles his head to make sure nothing gets blown back at him and—ugh, maybe he should have listened to his parents, maybe he should have let his cousin get him into a nice steady job at the factory—he swishes saliva around in his mouth and spits a gob of it onto the bomb.
For a long moment, nothing happens. The bomb sits there unchanged, just a bit more visibly disgusting than it had been, but then all of a sudden it starts to fizzle and bubble spectacularly. Whatever reaction is happening, it picks up speed as it goes. Rogue watches, agape, as the bomb collapses into itself with a squelching noise and a puff of blue-tinged smoke. Beneath their feet, the train gives a brief shudder and the engine turns off. The train starts to coast gently to a stop.
The Doctor whoops in glee. "See? You've got a knack for this kind of work."
"I'll keep that in mind," Rogue says dryly, standing up and powering off the boots, "for all the times in the future when my enzymes are going to come in handy on a job."
"Excellent," the Doctor says, and the dimple in his cheek deepens.
While they wait for Ruby and the others to appear in the airship to pick them up, Rogue and the Doctor take a seat on the edge of the freight car. They watch as the sun rises higher in the sky, and great chirping birds whirl overhead, and nothing at all goes boom. Rogue holds the Doctor's hand in his, and thinks idle thoughts about great journeys and better destinations.