On the forest moon of Endor, it looked like the Rebels' festivities could go on forever. The stars were bright, the Ewoks' home brewed liquor flowed and generals and starpilots alike enjoyed a cheerful relaxed ambience in the wake of the recent destruction of the second Death Star. Ships had been destroyed, lives had been lost, and there were still official reports to write, but for the moment, all seriousness was forgotten.
The crew of the Millennium Falcon – that ever-iconic, hamburger-shaped disc of rugged space-going perfection – were perhaps more enthusiastic than anyone else. A little too enthusiastic, one might argue. Certainly, all the organic members were going to wake up with a chainsaw hangover, none more so than Han Solo, who was even now waving goodbye to coherent thought and speech.
But for now, the morning was a long way off, and they would cross the post–plastering bridge when they came to it. At that moment, nothing mattered more than having a damned good time of it.
None of them noticed the small probe droid, a short-range version of the one that had informed the Empire of the Rebels' presence on Hoth, hovering motionless between the branches of a nearby tree, its repulsorlift generator making no sound. It was even now monitoring them with its array of different sensors, capturing the scene below it in a high definition visual recording and picking up snippets of conversation with its long-range microphones. Luke Skywalker suddenly turned round, his youthful but hardened eyes focusing on where the probe droid had been. But it had seen the movement coming and flitted behind the trunk. Those same youthful but hardened eyes, now ever so slightly glazed and dilated, saw nothing but disturbed leaves. Probably just the breeze, he thought.
In the other hemisphere of the moon, more or less diametrically opposite where the festivities were taking place, a man sat watching them. The probe was broadcasting the scene and the sound back to him in his base, the signals crossing countless miles of dense woodland in mere microseconds. In front of him was a huge screen, on which the video from the probe, picked up with a lens two inches wide, was displayed without the slightest hint of pixelation.
The man's name was Sonrai Axus Stralk. He had had a colourful history. The son of a second generation Fett clone and his unlawful spouse, he had joined the Army of the Republic out of nowhere and become a distinguished commando. He had been there to execute Order 66. He had seen service on Jabiim, Kashyyk, Utapau and, after staying on with the Empire, Hoth. Now in command of this not insubstantial base as a second to the shield generator array, he had seen it become a sizeable HQ with hangar, storage facilities and a large garrison of stormtroopers. And all of this completely unknown to the Rebels. He smiled at the thought. Those static cloaking shield generators had been a worthwhile investment.
Stralk was a large man, with a square jaw and hardened features. His hair was grizzled and unkempt, and his face was developing hard lines. But he was fast on his feet, good with a variety of weapons and a superb tactician. A noticeable scar ran down the right side of his face, not livid, for he had applied a lot of bacta, but something by which he could easily be recognised. It was a reminder of when he had executed Order 66, the last time he had underestimated a Jedi. The lightsabre had sliced through his helmet and his eye, and he now wore a metal vision device with a large red lens. His other eye was positively aglow with a fierce, restless intelligence. His troops found it hard to look him in the eye. Either of them.
He was dressed at the moment in stormtrooper armour with a thin polished plating of bronzium-chromium alloy, giving better protection against blasters. Over this was the gunmetal greatcoat and mantle of an Imperial officer, and on his shoulders were large fur epaulettes, trophies of a wampa he had killed in single combat on Hoth. Despite what this must have weighed, Stralk moved as though he was wearing nothing at all.
Stralk had a plan. Very soon, he would eliminate this pocket of Rebel generals and starpilots. He was playing the long game. This hadn't ended with the destruction of the Death Star.
* * *
Unbeknownst to either of the parties, the Death Star had not been completely destroyed. The trauma-retardant safe holding the spare hyperdrive units for the Star Destroyers had been damaged but remained intact. However, catapulted by the force of the explosion and caught in the gravitational pull of the Endor sun, it now met its fiery doom in the combustion-composed celestial body.
* * *
On the same probability matrix, the Jupiter Corporation's former flagship, the Blue Giant, was in a spot of bother. A huge fight had erupted on board because of a neurovirus called Steve, which made everyone passionate about realising their always different but now fudged and distorted views of Paradise. They were prepared to do anything to create their Heaven, even battling crewmates they had stood by for years, or doing all sorts of indecent and unfair things to the controls.
As a result, the ship was now travelling at lightspeed towards an undiscovered star named "Oh smeg, that's a-", by the crew. Even the ship's computer, Ivy, with the IQ of 9000 PE teachers, had been severed in several hardware connections by infected crewmembers and was powerless to stop the high-tech mining vessel's thrill ride towards carbonisation. The main loss, technically and financially, was the brand new prototype lightspeed drive. Oh dear.
* * *
The upshot was that two suns were implanted with hyperkinetic drive units for advanced and weighty starships. These were in turn inundated with heat and light energy from the suns, far exceeding their normal power intake, and had to find something to do with it. They, purely coincidentally, both decided to refine it into an ultra-focused strand of hyper-capable super-energy which could have destroyed many neighbouring planets and wiped out much of known and unknown life. However, in actuality, both went straight for by far the easiest targets – each other. Thus was created a corridor of hyper-motion energy capable of the virtually teleportic transit of objects. This freak occurrence, which, like many of those irritating up-and-coming freak occurrences nowadays, was so powerful that it bypassed all known restrictions (including time), was just what the crew of Red Dwarf happened to stumble upon.
* * *
David Lister, man of slobbishness and questionable personal hygiene but deep-down good stuff, was, not unusually, sitting on his bunk eating a flatbread so huge, and stuffed so full of kebab meat, salad, onion and sauce, that the floor directly below his groin was adorned with a mound of debris getting on for a foot wide and six inches high. This sort of thing could not go unnoticed by the Cat.
"Aaaoooww man! What is that weird thing on the floor? Whatever it is, it smells real nice, um-um."
The Cat dived into Rimmer's bunk, kneaded the duvet with his hands and turned around a couple of times before leaning over the side to lick at the mound of spilled filling. The two of them sat in amiable silence, apart from the enthusiastic munching.
After a couple of minutes, Kryten appeared in the doorway. He looked at the now significantly smaller pile of dropped food, with the Cat's face apparently buried in it, and then at Lister, who, now slumped in the top bunk, seemed to be actually embracing his snack. It was even now disgorging its precious contents onto the mattress and Kryten was horrified. He crossed himself, thinking of Silicon Heaven and how he would never get there now, and burst into gibbered apologies.
"Oh, I am so sorry! Mr Lister sir, are you all right? C-c-c-cat? I am so sorry, I-I-I should never have m-m-made you that thing in the first place! What a t-t-t-terrible mess, and now you are...you are..."
"Relax, Krytes! We're just tired. Stop beating yourself up mate, this is lovely." Lister announced in his thick Scouse accent.
"All the same sir, I will have to clean up that mess," Kryten fretted.
"Don't worry, I'm on it", the Cat confirmed, sauce and grease dribbling down his chin, "mm-mm!"
* * *
Rimmer was at that moment trying to teach some skutters not to give anyone the middle finger, or at least finger-like thing, least of all himself, when Hilly appeared on a screen at a terminal down the corridor.
"If you don't mind me interrupting," she said, which Rimmer did, "something a bit strange has happened."
"What is it now? Has Lister decided to wash his face? Did the Cat acknowledge another existent being? Did Kryten say something that might possibly offend someone while remaining unchanged by a chameleonic mutant?" Rimmer asked wearily.
"Nothing quite that extraordinary, I'm afraid", Hilly pronounced apologetically, "but we did just plunge into a sun. Now the interesting thing is-"
"YOU WHAT?!" bellowed Rimmer in a frothing cocktail of rage, shock and terror. "We plunged into a sun?! How did you not notice?! You smug inept goit!"
"Well, it wasn't huge. And anyway it hadn't been charted before, beyond being called "Oh smeg, that's a-" by the first crew to come across it, what with them travelling straight towards it at lightspeed at the time, see?"
Rimmer suddenly felt immensely tired. "Oh right, I sup – and anyway, why aren't we dead? Why aren't Lister and Cat dead?" he corrected himself. It was an almighty faff being dead already, that was for sure.
"Good to see you've got your priorities sorted." remarked Hilly drily. "Complain about a simple computing error first and then ask about a physical miracle later? Nice."
"Never mind that, how did we survive?"
"Stop interrupting and I'll tell you. Looks like two massive hyperdrive things drifted into two different suns and made a connection transporting things from each sun's location to the other sun's location."
"Is that it?"
"'Afraid so, your Majesty."
"Where are we now?"
"Funny you should ask that."
"Where?"
"Dunno."
"Any way you could find out?"
"You could gis' a map, I suppose."
* * *
At roughly the same time that the mining ship Red Dwarf materialised in the Endor system, Han Solo decided to take the Falcon for a spin, to clear his head a bit. The rest of his motley crew piled in, the engine was started and the great beast rose a few metres into the air, slewed forward, crashed into a tree and stalled.
"Roowwaaooorrrraaaooowww." said Chewbacca gormlessly, and slumped to the side. It takes a lot to waste a seven-foot Wookie but he had had more than enough.
"Yesh, and letsh shee you do any better." growled Han as he tried to make sense of the bewildering array of knobs and switches, which suddenly seemed to have multiplied and colonised much of the windscreen. He eventually found the right ones, did things with them in the right order and the Falcon was off, albeit in a distinctly erratic fashion.
The Falcon followed an involuntary zigzag course for several minutes, and then the crew did drunken double takes as they caught sight of the small rouge one.
"What a rushtbucket." breathed Solo.
"Terrible paint job." agreed Luke.
"Who does it belong to?" wondered Leia.
"Rwwwaaaaooooorrr-eeeooorr." stated Chewbacca.
Just then, the Millennium Falcon shook as it was struck by a concentrated beam of light energy fired from one of the cannons of a TIE fighter.
"Blasht it!" muttered Solo through gritted teeth, rapidly sobering. In their careless state, they had made themselves easy prey for any remnants of the Imperial forces, however small. He watched through the windscreen as two TIEs shot past, overhauling the Falcon. Their hexagonal solar array wings were unmistakeable. How many were there?
A further blast of laser fire from aft confirmed a third. Up ahead, the two who had overhauled them were turning. This was looking desperate. Luke and Chewbacca swayed up the corridor to the hub laser cannons, but Han knew that, in their intoxicated state, they might as well throw rocks at the enemy fighters.
"I-I do believe evasion may be the best course of action here, Captain Solo." stammered C-3PO.
"Really?" shot back Han, the hopelessness of the situation getting to him. "I'm actually trying to get ush outta here, if this damn thing would jusht go shtraight!"
"Han, there are three behind us!" yelled Luke as he pitched around the top laser cockpit as if in some bizarre waltz with the controls, further bursts of laser fire briefly drowning out his voice. They were still a long way off and fairly inaccurate, but they were closing rapidly as Solo pulled the Falcon into a steep dive.
"THREE?" exclaimed Solo, almost with disbelief. The two in front had been joined by a third. "Three and three, thatsh um, er..."
"Six?" offered Leia.
"Thatsh right, shix. SHIX?"
* * *
"Vwoop, vwoop, emergency. There's an emergency going on." Hilly's voice echoed down the corridors of Red Dwarf. Lister, the Cat, Kryten and Rimmer rushed to the control room, assembling in a ragtag phalanx. Rimmer and Kryten stood solidly to attention; Lister looked around in puzzlement with his shoulders slumped; the Cat smoothed down creases in his turquoise suit and straightened his cravat.
"As you may already know, we've exploited a physical improbability and ended up in a strange place. Now there's several small ships out there," announced Hilly, "and most of them are shooting up the other one."
"So?" asked Lister.
"Errr..." faltered Hilly, "Well, the fight could come this way in the near future, I suppose."
"And what do you plan to do about it? Let them knock out the ship and then board?" asked Rimmer, sounding almost whiny.
"Relax, Rimmer!" grinned Lister, putting his hand through the hologram's shoulder. "Whoops. It'll be fine! This is a mining ship, you smeghead! Covered in armour. And we have an armoury."
"Yes but aliens, Lister, ALIENS. Aliens with technology so far in advance of our own that we can't even begin to imagine."
"Oh, now don't start that again. Hey, they might just be really big garbage canisters."
* * *
Anyone watching the Millennium Falcon now would assume that there was some sort of dangerous, drunken madman at the controls. And they would be right of course. But right now, Han didn't care how they looked, he just wanted to get away. Away from this pack of fighters which were still hounding them, looking for any opportunity to deliver the killer blows.
He threw the battered old Corellian freighter into a series of utterly maniacal moves, even vertically banking and corkscrewing around TIEs in an attempt not to get blasted again. C-3PO started moaning softly. Luke and Chewie were spraying wide arcs of fire from their turrets but hadn't hit a single fighter yet. This tactic had been keeping them away, but the TIE pilots were growing bolder by the second, diving and weaving around the larger Falcon, and occasionally getting bursts of fire in.
Frankly, it was hard to see how they were going to get out of this one. The booze in Han's system was starting to catch up with him, overpowering his adrenaline and dulling his senses. He was slowing down. Soon, they would be sitting ducks.
A message started to bleed through the radios on Endor. The Rebels in the Ewok village stopped what they were doing and listened tensely, growing more concerned the more they heard. Stralk also picked it up, forwaded to him as it was from the sensor unit attached to the TIE commander's ship. He was getting the scene in 3-D high definition with surround sound, and now he could hear Leia's voice issuing from the speakers, punctuated by static and bursts of laser fire. It made him smile.
"Mayday...mayday...this is princess Leia...being attacked...fighters...too many...help...help...six TIEs...mayday...sustained damage...prolonged fire...mayday..."
Hilly also picked up the message, and played it on Red Dwarf. Lister watched the grim scene, picked up by an exterior camera, as the fight came closer and closer to them. Finally he turned back to the sleeping quarters and announced to them at large: "We've got to do something. Hilly, could you open the hangar doors and let 'em in?"
"What?" Rimmer jumped up out of his bunk. "How do you know they're even friendly? I personally don't think it's a good idea to say hello to people you've never met before, who possibly have very big guns, and invite them onto the ship lickety-split as if everything's tickety-boo!"
"Mebbe ye're right, Rimmer, but they seem a whole lot nicer than those guys," Lister gestured to a TIE on the screen, just as a burst of green laser bolts slammed into the side of the Dwarf near their window, "and we can bring some bazookoids up from the armoury if you like, jus' so they don' try anything."
"But what about "those guys"?" Rimmer asked. "They'll just follow them straight in! At least one of the parties is going to be hostile to us! Maybe they'll go back where they came from and get more! Opening those hangar doors will be death, Listy!"
"Smeg, I hadn't thought of that. So, we've got to let the people in the giant Frisbee in-"
"That's if they're even friendly, you goit. Do I get a say in anything on this ship?"
"Not in this you don't! So, let them in without the other guys followin' 'em. Or goin' home. This is hard."
"Whatever you decide to do, would you mind hurrying up a little?" Princess Leia's frantic voice came over the Tannoy.
"What the smeg?! You never told us this thing was two way, Hilly!"
"Quite funny though, don't you think?"
"Funny?!" exclaimed Lister, Rimmer and Leia in unison.
"You aren't the ones flying for your lives here!" continued Leia.
"We're doing all we can, missy!" flared Rimmer.
"Everyone shut the smeg up!" bellowed Lister. "I've got an idea."
"Oh dear." sighed Rimmer, slumping onto the bunk.
"Hilly, you remember that abandoned Space Corps ammunition ship we picked up last week with the electromagnetically unstable stuff on board next to the ordnance?"
"How could I forget?" replied the computer, grimacing. "That EM stuff gave me such a headache."
"It's in the hangar now, isn't it?"
"Certainly is. And it's on a double yellow line."
"Could you charge the engines with hydrogen?"
"Kryten's on it now, love."
"Are we on a closed frequency with them onboard the Frisbee?"
"At the moment."
"Right, Princess. We're going to open the hangar doors now," Lister explained, "and you have to fly towards them quickly but dodge the ship that comes out, 'cos that's loaded with fireworks. Hopefully it should draw their fire. Once you're inside, stay on your ship. Got that?"
"Yes. And thank you."
"Now open the frequency, Hilly."
"Done."
"Right, we're coming out to get you." stated Lister in what he thought was a heroic voice. "We'll see those other guys off right away."
"Frequency closed, engines partially charged." Hilly announced, and then added, "I can't believe you thought of that, Dave."
"Good, innit?"
"No, I just didn't have you down as being such a reckless pyromaniac. Oh well, this should be fun, whatever happens."
"Hey!" exclaimed Leia indignantly.
"Right," said Lister in an expectant manner, "open the hangar doors and...let 'er go!"
The Falcon shot towards the opening, and the six TIEs formed the points of a hexagon and set off in pursuit, laser fire flashing from their cannons. Stralk waited expectantly. The Falcon sustained several more hits, but the old girl could take plenty of punishment. At the same time, the new ship shot out of the hangar and past the Falcon, and then through the Imperial fighters' hexagon.
The topmost three fighters closed formation and pursued the Falcon, intending, if necessary, to enter the hangar and deliver the killing barrage inside the red mothership, but the doors closed too quickly, crushing the leader between them and creating a solid wall which the other two fighters smacked into. They promptly disintegrated, like flies on a windscreen.
The other three pursued and surrounded the new arrival, delivered a concentrated volley of fire, and then tried desperately to turn as the space seemed to light up in front of them.
The ship had been fully laden with munitions, now volatile after years of abandonment. Although the ship was no bigger than Starbug, the explosion seemed like a supernova to the TIE pilots, who plunged into it with their ships and were instantly atomised.
* * *
Stralk was astonished. Those Rebels had been in his hands, so nearly dead meat. And now this ungainly red...lump had come out of nowhere and spoilt it. The last thing the sensor package on the lead fighter had broadcast before the doors had closed on it was playing over and over on the screen in front of him. The lump had a name, painted on the front. Red Dwarf. He rolled it around his mouth a couple of times. Red Dwarf. The crew of that dammed ship would pay, along with the Rebels on this backward planet. A lesser officer came in.
"We've lost all contact with the entire group, sir. Would you like a bigger force to take off? Some shuttles and the rest of the wing, including TIE Advanceds, Bombers and Interceptors, are standing by."
Stralk thought for a moment, and then said, "No. We will wait. Keep the crews standing by, but wait." It had been a glitch, nothing more.
He got up, left the room and strode back to his quarters, his greatcoat flapping behind him.
* * *
Although the Dwarf would sustain no lasting damage, it had been badly scorched along the starboard side by the explosion, and the paint had run. The legend which Lister had painted so lovingly now spelled BAD BARF, with a few smudges. As he made his way to the hangar from the armoury, lugging two bazookoids and some small arms, Lister spotted the Cat by a viewing port. He had his head in his hands and was moaning softly.
"Come on mate, this one's for you." grunted Lister. "Are you all right? Oh smeg, the explosion, did it...did it blind you?"
"No," came a muffled, miserable reply, "worse."
He looked up. There were wet, black trails running down his cheeks.
"My mascara's running!"
* * *
The crew of the Falcon were grouped in tense silence around the boarding ramp. C-3PO and R2-D2 stood by the dejarik board, photoreceptors trained on the yet-to-open boarding ramp. Leia was roughly opposite them, still by the radio she had used to broadcast the distress call. Luke was in front of her, in a defensive stance. Han and Chewbacca were in front of the boarding ramp. None of the organic members felt up to facing their rescuers, be they foe or friend. The hangover symptoms were already beginning to kick in. No one even wanted to talk.
* * *
The motley crew of Red Dwarf stood facing the scarred, rugged bulk of the Millennium Falcon. Lister, Kryten and the Cat stood in line abreast, each clutching a bazookoid and with a sawn-off shotgun on the left hip. Rimmer bravely brought up the rear, with an absurdly large array of firearms conjured up by Hilly, which included several machine guns, multiple rocket launchers, a couple of mortars and what looked like a 16th century cannon. They would of course, being holographic, be next to useless in a fight, but they looked good, and Rimmer had to struggle to keep a smug smile from spreading across his face. Even the skutters had formed a block of sorts behind them, each with a grenade clutched in its appendages. The militaristic mood had also rubbed off on Hilly, who had applied some camouflage paint.
Lister nodded to the Cat, who nodded back. Lister then nodded to Kryten, who grimaced and nodded back to Lister, who passed it on to Rimmer. Rimmer grinned, amiably raised the muzzle of a rocket launcher and nodded straight back to Kryten, who passed it on to Hilly. Hilly then nodded and raised her eyebrows at the Cat. He nodded to Kryten, who promptly had a nervous breakdown. Something fell off his bazookoid.
The skutters had been eagerly watching this exchange, like spectators at a tennis match, but now they slumped their heads in a gesture of tired boredom. If robots could sigh, the combined materialisation of the skutters' impatience would have been gale-force.
"Are we going to let them out now, or carry on nodding till we need a tea break?" asked Hilly, rolling her eyes. "This must be killing them inside there." she added, giving one final nod toward the Falcon.
"Oh, all right, we'll let 'em out now." conceded Lister, disappointed. "Good effect though, wasn't it?"
"Right you lot, out you come, no funny business, blah blah..." ordered Hilly in a tired voice.
* * *
Inside the notorious Corellian freighter, the heroes of the original trilogy looked at each other with weary, baggy-eyed faces. Han pressed a button and lowered the ramp. Bright light flooded into the cabin.
"Ouch." was expressed universally.
* * *
The inhabitants of Red Dwarf watched as the ramp hissed down, hitting the deck with a clang that made them jump. A man walked out in a half crouch, wearing dark trousers, a utility belt, a white shirt and a black waistcoat. He held a pistol-like weapon at the ready in his right hand and with his left shielded his handsome face from the glare. He had glossy dark hair, now wild after what must have been a heavy night's drinking.
"Ugh," he said, "where ish thish?"
"This is the Jupiter Mining Corporation ship Red Dwarf." replied Lister. "Drop your weapon. God, I've always wanted to say that."
The man brandished the pistol, but it slipped from his grip and clattered to the floor. He tried a different tack, staggering towards the Dwarfers with his hands in the air. He managed to get out: "Hi, I'm Han Sholo, who are -" and then tripped and followed his gun.
The Cat watched him fall and looked at him for a moment, then looked at Lister and said "Wow, this guy is pissed. He stinks! Almost as bad as you after one of those vin-dey-loo things!"
The next person, well, thing, to exit the craft took the breath away from the assembled onlookers. It was a seven foot tall being, covered in fur, with a mouth full of teeth, and black beady eyes. Weirder still, it was wearing a bandolier and carrying a crossbow.
"Browarrr." it said softly, and then, louder, "Roooaaarrr!" It raised its crossbow.
"Bloody Hell, guys!" panicked Lister, raising his bazookoid. "Call the smeggin' thing off!"
"Hey, buddy, it'sh OK. They're not Empire." explained the man named Solo to the giant furry thing, briefly raising his woozy head off the floor. "Don't worry about Chewie, he getsh a little nervy shometimes." he said aside to Lister, before rolling over with a groan and passing out. "Chewie" went and stood next to Kryten, terrifying the poor robot almost out of his wits.
"Chewie?" exclaimed Lister. This was too ridiculous. "Come on then, the rest o' ya, we ain't got all day."
Next to descend the ramp was a lad about the same age as Lister, with blond hair that stopped just short of his shoulders. He was dressed in a black jumpsuit and also wore a utility belt, with an odd, shiny metal tube hanging off it. He looked around, and spotted the prone figure at Lister's feet.
"Han?"
He ran to his now unconscious friend and knelt by him.
"He'll be fine." assured Lister, nudging Solo with his boot. "I've been worse."
"Worse than this?" the new arrival asked. "You ought to see what he's like when he wakes up."
But Lister was no longer listening. He had just caught sight of a woman on the gangplank. She was one of the most beautiful women he had ever met; from many angles he thought she surpassed Kochanski. She had lustrous brown hair getting on for waist length, and was simply clad in something white with a brown tunic over the top. Her outfit's simplicity merely served to set off her natural beauty. Lister wanted to be the first to speak, but he was dumbstruck by her radiance, and it was the Cat who broke the silence.
"Well hello," he purred, lowering his bazookoid, "care to meet your rescuers?"
"That's if you define moving us from our previous situation to this bucket of bolts as a rescue." the woman drawled, surveying the hangar critically. The Cat and Lister exchanged shocked stares. Krytyen gave a small jerk and made a mental note to brighten up the place a bit. Rimmer recoiled and raised his eyebrows. Two skutters dropped their grenades, looked at each other and gave her their best two-fingered salutes. They then turned to Rimmer, as if to say "Is that any better?", and he sighed. The woman then flounced off to the internal hangar door, continued through it and set off aimlessly through Red Dwarf.
"Cat, go after her, would you?" requested Lister.
"With pleasure!" replied the fanged Casanova, and hurried after the mouthy girl.
The last two arrivals were robots. There was a hesitant and instantly annoying humanoid, rather like a skinny, gold-plated Kryten, and a white and blue contraption rather like a dustbin in size and shape, which trundled about as if on castors. This one seemed to look at Lister and then emitted a series of beeps and whistles. The humanoid turned its large, perpetually startled-looking eyes on Lister and said. "Yes, he is rather. Oh well." Both robots then merrily made their way past him.
Deflated, Lister squatted down on his haunches and looked at the younger man, who said: "So you've been worse than this, huh?"
"Yup."
"Wow, I'd hate to have been there." said the lad. "Chewie" walked over, picked up the unconscious Han, and then the two man plus furball combination made their way out of the hangar.
Kryten burst into mechanoid tears, Rimmer's face went white and his eye twitched, and Hilly's wide–eyed face just stayed on the screen, for once rendered speechless. They had been threatened, ignored and insulted.
It was Lister who spoke.
"Hell, I'd hate to know what they'd have been like if we hadn't rescued them."