Red Dwarf circumvolved in and out of various atmospheres, surrounding asteroids and dead planets in the darkest reaches of the space, where the only signs of life for miles were aboard that massive red ship, and were all at varying degrees of failure at being human. Be it in the sense that they had no real physical presence, belonged to a humanoid but entirely different species, were sentient programming, had a fusebox where their heart should be or just simply refused to adhere to the unspoken rule of humanity that one does generally not use a cup of chicken vindaloo as mouthwash. It was a remarkably silly and slightly sad existence that these five shared on board the behemoth mining mining vessel. When not mired by an all consuming boredom, they would often find themselves under siege by monsters, demons or even time itself simply deciding that it wanted to toy with them, they were no strangers to their ship coming under fire from strange deep space phenomenon. Today was one such day. Or at least it was in the afternoon. The morning rigmarole was just as usual.
"Lister, I need to talk to you about something" Rimmer strode in to the room, fists clenched and clearly on a mission. Lister refused to take his eyes off the miniature TV set he had perched on his feet at the end of the bed.
"Yeh?"
"You know your...socks?"
"Yeh man?"
"One of them gained sentience and attempted to strangle me, Kryten had to fry it in the microwave. Seriously Lister, how can you live like this?"
"Ha, did it? I need more socks!" Lister laughed with a gormless grin, into which he shoved another papadum.
"Lister!" Rimmer was more than a little peeved at this point. "My tether's tether is at the the end of it's tether! You have to do something about this! Your long-johns are listed as class-A threat to the stability of the monarchy on more than one Slithaxivion moon! Remember when we went to that one swamp planet and they thought you were the chosen one because you smelled even stronger than their highly sulphuric atmosphere and I narrowly avoided being sacrificed at their alter to you? Thank god I managed to untie myself, seeing as you, Cat and Kryten thought it was a jolly good laugh. You're dirtier than a Hungarian phrasebook."
"Aww come on! When you find yourself floating in the middle of nowhere for 3 million years, concepts like cleanliness of socks and smell become sort of irrelevant, don't you think? There's no society out here! The morals of sock washing are arbitrary." Rimmer stood sternly, flaring his nostrils somewhat.
"Well, you've got that correct. I'm absolutely amazed that me and The Cat didn't conspire, over throw you, assume control of the ship and tie you up an have a Lister-hog roast with apple sauce within the first week of this godforsaken journey."
"Like I'd be the one tied to a pike with an apple in my mouth, lord of the flies" Lister shoved a spoonful of pure chilli mango chutney past his lips, causing Rimmer to grimace. He should know, it wouldn't have been the first time he ended up on a spit roast.
"Ugh."
Rimmer's abrasive attempts at negotiating failed, he turned on his heels and stormed out of the sleeping quarters, making his way up to the bridge where the Cat was watching the screen, or rather his own faint reflection on the main control panel, making sure his hair was meticulous and his suit uncreased.
"Any news?" Rimmer enquired, loitering behind the main seat.
"None whatsoever, bud. I can't smell anything for miles!"
Rimmer thought it best not to provoke the Cat any further, lest he find himself the butt of a series of mean-spirited jokes for the next few hours, and left the bridge as quickly as he'd entered. It appeared to him at that moment that the rest of the day would consist of nothing more than him running through the ship with a fine tooth comb to find something to complain about. Or he could just spend another few hours adding to the list of reasons why he hated Lister and reel some of them off over dinner, no doubt something concocted by Lister that was so spicy you needed to eat it before the bowl dissolved. That would keep him occupied. As he entered the main recreation room, he was suddenly met by the sight of a very frantic Kryten, holding a pot and pan lid.
"Mister Rimmer sir!" He cried, flapping his arms. "Watch out for that thing!"
Before Rimmer could watch out for said thing, a huge woodworm like trail in the metal floor beneath him splintered in to being, excreting some strange pink powder as it did so, before the invisible floor burrowing creatures trail disappeared towards the bridge.
"What the devil was that!?" Rimmer demanded, standing tensely and frantically surveying his surroundings for the unseen creature. Kryten hobbled towards him in his jittery manner, a look of bemusement plastered across his angular features shaking his head.
"Oh Mister Rimmer sir, It's terrible! I'm not entirely sure what that it is, I found it somewhere in the engine room. We may have picked the blighter up when we stopped last to pick up supplies, It appears to be some sort of parasitic alien life form from which I took the liberty of sampling some of this...strange powdery excrement. As a Mechanoid, it didn't appear to have any effect on myself but you should be cautious, it could have a whole manner of effects on you all!"
"Don't say things like that Kryten, I could have inhaled some of the stuff for all you know!" Rimmer shouted with a cowardly anguish that he was so adept at.
"Well, we shall just have to wait and see sir!" Kryten's lips stretched into a down-turned smile, his eyes widening. Rimmer despised that matter-of-factly amused expression of his but saw little he could do, the fact that was potentially housing some kind of alien gunk in his hologram lungs taken precedence over his own pet peeves. He turned and ran back in to the bridge. By the time he reached it, the creature had already reeked havoc on the control room, Cat looking uncharacteristically bedraggled and wide-eyed in terror, the same thin pink dust lingering the the air.
"It got you too?" Rimmer asked.
"What got me?!" The Cat said. "I can't know if it got me if I don't know what it is!"
"I don't know either!"
"They how do you know it can even get me?"
"Wha- That's irrelevant! Apparently there's some kind of rogue pink dust bug lose on the ship, Kryten doesn't know what exactly it does yet, but we'll soon find out." Rimmer pre-emptively braced himself for some sort of unwarranted and biting put-down, but was shocked to see the Cat remained silent for a while, simply staring at him.
"Kryten." The Cat said flatly.
"Yes, wha-"
"I like Kryten!" The Cat exclaimed as if it had only just hit him. Rimmer furrowed his brow.
"There's something I never thought I'd hear, anyway, clean yourself up in here!" And with that Rimmer stormed off the bridge.
Mind racked with fear and doubt, he had planned to distract himself with his ever growing Lister hate-manifesto yet he found himself strangely light headed, even slightly dare he say...giddy? He didn't know quite what to do with this onset of oddly soft emotions save for simply ignore them until he found something useful to do with them. Much to his surprise, he found Lister standing on the table in the sleeping quarters with a plate of vindaloo raised protectively above his head, surrounded by the spiral like tracks of the space bug, once again the air was clouded with the fine powder.
"Rimmer!" Lister said, his voice adopting an odd sort of relief. "'The smeg is going on in here?!"
"How should I know!" Rimmer retorted with indignation. "A-are you hurt?" He hastily enquired, followed by a long period of silence. Lister slowly looked up, staring at his companion of several years as if he'd never seen him before.
"Yeah. Yeah man I'm fine. You?" He slowly began to descend from the table, placing the vindaloo he had held aloft to one side carefully. Rimmer nodded, his ability to make eye contact quickly wavering.
"Y-yes." There was a protracted silence.
"What was that?" Lister said quietly. Rimmer replied much louder than he'd meant to, still not finding it in him to meet Lister's eye.
"A-a space parasite of some description that we picked up, Kryten isn't too sure what it is or i-if it'll have any sort of effect o-on us but-!"
"Rimmer." The air quickly congealed in to a solid block of tension which invited knife lacerations whole heartedly. "A-are you feeling like I'm feeling?"
"I don't know how you're feeling." He couldn't help but notice that his bunkmate was slowly pacing towards him in his thick punk boots.
"I think you do."
"If I do then it's weird and wrong a-a-and shouldn't occur, not if, if...space corps directive...!" Rimmer found himself suddenly face to face with Lister whose expression leant dangerously towards hunger, and the vindaloo wasn't loitering in his peripheral vision even slightly. Rimmer gulped when he realised the two of them were slowly inching together, Rimmer tilting his head a little, they drew closer and closer until they stopped, Rimmer pulling himself away abruptly and throwing his hands in the air.
"Nope." He said flatly. "No, that isn't happening"
"What?"
"It'd be like sticking your tongue in to an ash tray at an Indian restaurant."
"I don't know what came over me man, I just sort of...it felt right for a moment there."
"Oh dear god, don't ever say things like that!" Rimmer shivered visibly. "That's disgusting."
"I-it's not...I'd just like you to know it isn't like that."
"No, good, because it isn't with me either"
"Right."
"Good."
"So we're agreed then."
"Yes."
"Nothing."
"Nope."
"Zilch".
If the tension had been any thicker Rimmer and Lister would have found themselves completely immobilised by its stranglehold. Rimmer clapped his hands together, the sound of which was so abrupt it caused Lister to jump a little.
"Right then!" Rimmer announced. "We need to track down the little bugger, whatever it may be!" In a moment of misplaced tenderness, Rimmer reached across and grabbed Listers hand to lead him out of the room, even though they both knew full well that no leading was required. Lister was initially taken aback but somehow didn't see it fit to pull his hand away as Rimmer directed him towards the door.
When they reached the upper decks, they found Kryten attempting to repair the gnawed trails in the metal floor with several sheets of steel and a blowtorch, as the scutters dealt with the debris of metal shavings strewn all the way down to the recreation room. His Mechanoid face surely would have been red and sweaty had he possessed sweat glands, as he'd worked his finger to the wire against the devastation he so despised. He spotted the two as he raised his head, taking on something of a disgusted perturbation when his synthetic eyes fell upon their hands, still very much interlocked and not entertaining detachment at any point.
"What's the report on the space menace?" Rimmer enquired.
Kryten ignored his question. "Why sirs, you...appear to be holding hands...Did you have some sort of...glue related accident?" Both Lister and Rimmer glanced down and immediately pulled away from one another as if they'd been bitten.
"Oh no!" Rimmer stammered.
"Not at all!" Lister added. "Naaw, we weren't holding hands, I'd something on my jacket and I was trying to wipe it on Rimmer's hand while he wasn't looking!"
Rimmer began to mock laughter. "Aha, yes, you sure got me Listy! Look at this...stuff...on my hand! You trickster, you!"
Neither Lister nor Kryten seemed too impressed by this transparent performance, and decided silently that nobody should mention the occurrences of the past minute or so ever again. Staring longingly at the unfinished cleaning business, Kryten stood to walk with his two crew mates towards the laboratory where the pink dust was undergoing more examination.
Holly greeted the three nonchalantly as they strode briskly in to the room.
"I've finished analysing the stuff you gave me Kryten." She droned. They turned their complete attention to their senile computer. "It's a Halporite War Bug, they feed on metal and excrete some sort of chemical"
"What sort exactly, does it have any effect on the human body?" Kryten asked.
"I dunno, I'm a computer, I didn't try it." Kryten turned his attention to a screen in the console that didn't contain the disembodied head of a sleepy eyed blonde woman to examine some slightly less senile statistics that had been brought up by the analysis, Rimmer and Lister leaning eagerly over his metallic shoulders.
"It says here that the Halporite War Bug native to the Halpol asteroid, on which a large steel vessel crashed billions of years ago."
"We stopped off at the Halpol to look for supplies didn't we?" Rimmer said, standing upright and crossing his arms. "Holly said there were multiple signs of life, place must have been crawling with the buggers."
"Not unlike Cat, the War Bug mutated from chemicals spilled during the ships collision with the asteroid and naturally existing cultures on the rocks there over the past millions of years or so, according to this they feed on the exact kind of metal that this ship is predominantly constructed from! If we don't catch it soon it'll devour the engines and eventually the entire ship around us!"
Lister clamped a hand on Kryten's shoulder.
"What about the dust? What's that?"
"The computer doesn't know but at the very least it isn't fatal" Kryten wrenched his shoulder free and hobbled away to the munition supplies. Pests needed to be dealt with. Rimmer and Lister ended up stood alone with only the dead eyed stare of Holly and each other for company. Lister looked at the slide of particles under the microscope with apprehension.
"Do you...think we should...test it?" Lister gestured.
"What?" Rimmer recoiled
"Well, Kryten said it's not fatal, what's the worst that could happen?"
"Oh, the list of replies to that exceeds the amount of times that the Cat irons his suits in a day" Lister refused to reply, simply raising his eyebrows. He looked to Holly for some sort of support.
"It won't kill you, it's fairly harmless." She said.
"Okay then!" Lister slapped Rimmer's shoulder. "You heard the computer, get testing". Rimmer gulped, staring cautiously at the slide as if it were rearing its back to attack him and began to edge towards it. Lister suddenly gave Rimmer a push, sending him crashing down onto the desk and the pink dust whirling in to the atmosphere.
"You complete and utter goit!" Rimmer screamed, dusting off his suit and scrabbling to save rolling test tubes. "It's everywhere now!"
"Relax, Hol said it wasn't fatal!" Lister laughed "Always trust you to make a total smeghead of yourself". All of a sudden, any joviality fell out of favour as the two silently scrutinised one another, the pause which in reality was only brief felt like an eternity, before Lister marched across the room, pressing himself against Rimmer, bending him backwards over the table and kissing him with an intense zeal. Rimmer's cries were muffled as he created more of a mess with his frantically flailing limbs. Lister pulled back, brows stooped seductively low and a small kink at the corner of his mouth. Rimmer's own mouth flapped in shock, his every base instinct telling him to dash Lister to the floor as make a run for the nearest facilities to enter the non-existent contents of his hologramatic stomach, but instead he found himself frozen beneath Lister, dead in every sense of the word. It was a little while before he resumed breathing.
"Lister!" He gasped, appalled. Lister looked confused at both of them.
"I kissed you." He stated as if he didn't quite believe it himself.
"Well that's one way of putting it, I'd call it a full frontal assault on an unsuspecting face with the tip jar of a street food establishment in Mumbai!"
"Why would I do that?" He asked himself quietly.
"WHY INDEED!" Rimmer was exasperated at this point, wrestling weakly against Listers leather jacket to no avail. "Do you think it could be the du-" Rimmer had little chance to finish that thought, Lister taking both of his wrists commandingly and pushing him back on to the desk, continuing their passionate lip-lock. Rimmer, despite his initial struggling, felt his resistance ebb away far too easily for his own comfort, a brief soft moan reluctantly escaping him. The two suddenly heard an unmistakable screech, causing Lister to release Rimmers bound wrists and step backwards, Rimmer scrambling to his feet and straightening his coat. The Cat was stood petrified in the door, mouth lopsidedly open in horror and eyes as wide as dinner plates.
"I'm going to pour bleach in my beautiful eyes." He announced and barrelled off down the corridor. Rimmer and Lister shared a glance for a brief moment.
"I've got that vindaloo to finish so..."
"I'll come with you!"
"Right"
As soon as Rimmer and Lister had the doors to the sleep quarters shut behind them, Lister lunged for Rimmer, taking his overly starched collar between two clenched fists and slamming him hard against the wall beside the bunk, abrasively pressing his lips to his. Rimmer initially found his hands flying, scrambling for somewhere to go, but eventually they fell along with his eyelids as he reached up and tightly gripped the back of Lister's jacket. The two suddenly wrenched backwards from one another like flesh to a hot kettle again, as though there was some small part of them telling them no.
"What the smeg are you doing?" screamed Rimmer who had wholeheartedly not expected Lister to jump him the minute they reached their room, he'd had something more of a talk in mind.
"What the smeg are you doing!?" screamed Lister in retaliation. This brief resistance didn't last long, as they both resumed the desperate, passionate kissing with little trepidation, Rimmer tentatively placing a hand on the back of Listers head, drawing him in deeper. Lister pulled back a little with a knowing smirk and gave Rimmer a light push backwards on to the bunk, straddling his hologramatic colleague. Rimmer's face immediately turned scarlet when he realised precisely what position he was in.
"This is...all kinds of wrong..." Rimmer said, eyes flitting as if looking for some excuse out of the situation although actively appearing too keen on rectifying it.
"No it isn't" Lister replied bluntly, before plunging back in to a kiss. He broke it quickly to give a voice command to the ships computer. "Lights please Holly." The room darkened, save for a warm light near the bunk.
"'Bout bloody time" the senile computer commented before taking her eyes elsewhere.
"Thank you."
There was a brief moment in the early onset of darkness where they lay nigh motionless, save for Lister reaching and tenderly brushing a thumb across Rimmer's cheek, staring in to his eyes faintly illuminated by the subtle orange light. Their collective breathing lingered heavily in the space between them before Lister leant down past Rimmers shoulder spoke quietly.
"I thought I'd never be able to touch you, not like this...After you died..."
Rimmer shivered slightly at the breath on his neck.
"Y...you wanted to?" His voice quivered.
"Yes..." Rimmer jolted slightly at the sensation of Lister teeth brushing teasingly against his ear, biting down gently. "You have no idea"
"After all that deliberate pestering and irritating and mocking?" Rimmer found himself becoming slightly shrill. "...When really all the time you just wanted to get into my trousers? Call me skeptic if you must but I'm having a slightly hard time processing this one Listy old chum"
"Shut up" Lister cut him off with another kiss, as he slid his hand behind Rimmers back and brought their bodies closer. He could feel the faint imitation of a heartbeat quickening, which he knew was probably only fluctuations in Rimmer's hologramatic drive, but the feeling excited him regardless. It gave him endless pleasure to finally hear Rimmer moaning by his hand, at his touch, feeling his skin prickle slightly as he slid a hand up Rimmer's coat and ran it across his chest. Rimmer was completely his, completely submissive to his will, as well as he should have been, it made sense to Lister that Rimmer wouldn't try to domineer given his nature. He loved every moment of it. It gave him even greater pleasure to see the faint blush on his cheeks as he made a move to unfasten the buttons at the collar of his uniform, exposing Rimmer further. Rimmer released a protracted thorough breath.
"D-dave..."
Just the mere dropping of that term of repulsion that was his completely refusal to address him by his first name drove Lister absolutely wild. Hungrily, frantically, the two felt one another, kissed each other, making short work of the clothing that separated them. At first, Rimmer was hesitant to make any sort of move, leaving the vast majority of the work to Lister out of some sort of strange embarrassment, but eventually began to comply, his hands scraping through Lister's hair and across his back. Lister stared in an odd disbelief at the man beneath him who refused to make eye contact, which he rectified by taking his head between his hands and pressing their foreheads together.
"I love you." He whispered almost noiselessly. Rimmer replied only with a sharp but short intake of breath. "I always have you smeghead, ever since I first clapped my eyes on your...smegging smegheadedness. And when I got to know you, got to know what a total smeghead you were, well...it only made me want you more."
"And they say romance is dead." Rimmer quipped sarcastically. "I'm glad I'm about to have it off with Liverpudlian, mango chutney munching Shakespeare."
"Shut up" Lister repeated.
Kryten had far from given up his mission to track down the space bug which had, from what his inspections told him, had devoured a fair portion of thankfully non vital metal upon the ship. He'd spend a fair amount of time exploring the lower decks with a large weapon in hand but had found only trails and machines covered in pink dust, leading all the way back up to the bridge again. After hours of searching, Kryten felt resigned. Trudging down the stairs in to the recreation room, he slumped at the table and busied himself with a conveniently handy deck of cards. He had little else to do, Rimmer and Lister were nowhere to be seen (and the lack of insults being hurled across the shop was almost something of a worry) while The Cat was still tending to the main console on the bridge. Or so Kryten assumed, when a large zebra printed suit shuffled in to the room with a jazzy screech.
"Kryten! My main man!" The Cat held his hands out as if presenting Kryten to an adoring audience, before doing a little en pointe twirl and sitting with crossed legs in a chair beside him.
"You seem awfully chipper this afternoon, sir" Kryten observed. The Cat rested a cheek on his hand and sighed wistfully, taking little note of the comment.
"Has anybody pointed out to you that I look beautiful this afternoon?" The Cat asked with an alarming amount of whimsy. Kryten was startled in to depositing his deck of cards all across the room.
"You are looking rather nice today" Kryten managed wearing a sincere but awkward smile.
"I'm so glad you said that." The Cat began to inch closer.
"Sir?" The Cat refused to reply, instead opting to rest a hand on Kryten's metal leg, which he quickly deflected by leaping from his chair and hurling himself halfway across the room.
"SIR! What ever is the meaning of this?" Kryten was very flustered. The Cat gracefully ascended from the chair and began to mince across the room towards Kryten who appeared to be feeling the walls behind him for some sort of blunt object.
"I say you're lookin' goooood today buddy. Better than good!"
"I simply don't understand, sir, in fact I find it quite preposterous that you, the vainest creature in being who would settle for no less than a mirror image of himself, is now trying to...to seduce-!" Kryten blurted. "-Seduce a mere android like myself! It's not acceptable!"
"I'd smash a thousand mirrors for you, I'd even consider wearing a caudroy pant suit for a guy like you!" The Cat raised an eyebrow suggestively. It suddenly occurred to Kryten then.
"My god! The bug is excreting... what seems to be an incredibly powerful aphrodisiac! The Cat is totally delirious!" Kryten made a dash for the kitchen, grabbing the pan he'd discarded earlier and returning to where the Cat stood with the utensil raised above his head.
"This is for your own good sir!" Kryten cried apologetically as he slammed the pan down in to Cat's forehead, incapacitating him briefly. "Must warn Mister Rimmer and Mister Lister quickly". Pan still in hand, Kryten made a dash for the sleeping quarters before Cat regained consciousness.
"I wouldn't go in there if I were you" Holly announced in a dull lilt to Kryten and his deaf ears as he made short work of the distance between the main bridge and the sleeping quarters, failing to heed the computers words and opening the door to a darkened room. He turned on the lights just in time to see a very sweaty and breathless Rimmer and Lister pulling away from each other, both fighting for lordship over what little modesty the bed sheet provided.
"My god, I'm too late!" Kryten despaired, turning away with a histrionic sob. "It's already made a mockery of Mr Lister! That you would even consider regarding yourself to engage in...carnal activity with Mr Rimmer!" Rimmers expression turned to slight annoyance briefly before straightening.
"I know this looks like what it looks like but it really isn't" Rimmer made a concertedly calm attempt to explain.
"It is actually" Lister said with a cool smirk, stretching an arm out and wrapping it round Rimmer's shoulder, shaking him playfully. Rimmer threw a pillow at him in retaliation, now noticeably flustered.
"I know precisely!" said Kryten pendulating rapidly between averting his eyes and not. "I narrowly escaped Cat's attempts to achieve sexual congress with me just now and I thought it somewhat peculiar that you two were holding hands earlier, so judging by these two factors, the produce of the War Bug is an aphrodisiac!"
"Aphrohoodywhatty?" Rimmer scrunched his brow.
"I refuse to talk to either of you until you put some clothes on!" Kryten whined and stomped out of the door. Taking heed, the two scrambled for their discarded articles of clothing around the room.
When time came for them to finally speak to an absolutely fuming Kryten, the back and forth consisted mostly of Rimmer attempting to cover his tracks and Lister reforging them. Despite the fact that their passionate encounter had been fuelled by an alien chemical, Lister seemed oddly proud of their indiscretion while Rimmer was trying his very hardest to write it off as an intergalactic worm manipulating his hormones and, for lack of women aboard the ship, Lister being his only target for release. Kryten didn't seem particularly interested in either side of the story, only opting to shake his head rapidly in shame at every excuse from Rimmer and every justification from Lister. Once the jumbled explanation had drawing to a close, the three made their hasty way to the munitions cabinet where Kryten handed them all rifles.
"We must stop this creature, otherwise it'll eat the floor from beneath us!" He continued to breif them as they walked the corridors. "See, I discovered in my research that the War Bug was mutated from a chemical with a tremendously high volume of serotonin, a chemical produced by sunlight among other things that creates an overwhelming sense of...happiness, so to speak, by stimulating the human brain in a certain manner, it of course having no effect me as my mechanoid brain lacks the ability to process such chemicals."
"Yeh, so we get a little buzz off it, what does that have to do with the aphrodisiac though Kryten?" Lister questioned.
"I'm getting to that sir. Anyway, the serotonin in conjunction with the leaked shipments of the chemicals bremelanotide, the usage of which on such a ship one can only imagine, mixed to create a powerful chemical secreted by the bug when it feeds on metal, which so happens to be just the right concoction for inducing intensely increased sexual desire and even dare I say, romantic love" Rimmer glanced silently at Lister, ambivalently wondering if what Lister had said to him was induced entirely by the drug or simply pre-existent but triggered by it's presence.
Suddenly, Red Dwarf jolted violently, the lights momentarily plunging the room in to a alarming red light and sending all three crew members tumbling in to the adjacent wall, crushed up against one another and painfully contorted.
"Holly!" Lister shouted, wincing in pain at his bruised arms that had unfortunately introduced themselves to a particularly sharp fuse box. "Holly, what was that!?" Holly's face crackled into distorted being on the overhead screen, only she looked bedraggled and as if she were about to pass out.
"War Bugs in the mainframe. Knocked some of my auto navigation circuits, I'm damaged to say the least"
"What do you mean auto navigation circuits!?"
"Red Dwarf has been thrown off course. Of course, off course, offal, off horse..." Holly coughed.
"How far?"
"Not too much, but we might be sent a drifting if one of you doesn't direct the ship manually or fix my circuit soon." The ship jolted again, only crushing the crew mates further into one another eliciting some cries of pain from each of them. Holly's screen began to splutter, a bruise appearing on her face beneath her left eye.
"Damage sustained to lower deck engines, Vocal centre damaged gone gone gone" Her voice began to skip and lapse in and out of different pitches. "Damage damage daisy daisy give me your answer do". Kryten made an attempt to push Rimmer and Lister upright, straining with his battered robotic limbs.
"It appears to have reached the ships inner workings and is slowly devouring Holly! Quickly!" Wobbling slightly, Kryten lead a brisk limp down the corridor towards the stairs.
"Kryten, I don't believe I've ever visited the mainframe computer base, what does it look like?" Rimmer asked breathlessly as they ran through the maze like halls of the floating city that was Red Dwarf.
"Oh it's quite something!" Kryten exclaimed. "You're only seeing a fraction of it upstairs, Holly's main presence is a huge core which runs through all decks of the ship, the one you see the most is on the main bridge where all the parts that need tinkering with frequently are easily accessible, the more hidden away parts are less vital but the War Bug seems to have found the most vital parts first unfortunately. He can only be working down from there." The ship made another violent manoeuvre, which finally woke the slightly addled Cat on the upper decks, who immediately ran to the first reflective surface to ensure that his painstakingly selected ensemble hadn't sustained any damage before then stopping to wonder what had happened to him and why it felt as if the ship was being tossed around at sea. The ship lurched in a way unfamiliar to Lister and Rimmer who had barely felt it leave the ground when it first launched from its docking back on a long lost earth.
"CAT!" Lister projected urgently up the grate metal stares as they approached the main corridors to the bridge "CAT, WHERE ARE YOU?!"
"I'm here Buddy!" Cat shrieked back from the bridge, before being hurled hip first in to a control panel, briefly incapacitating him.
"Christ, this is it, we're finished!" Rimmer cried, halting in his tracks to back in to a protective corner, hands clamped over his head. Lister skidded to a halt, quickly reversing to console his friend.
"We can repair Holly if we hurry Rimmer, c'mon! Before it eats her completely!"
"I-I can't!" Rimmer let out an exasperated wail. "You know me, I'm a complete and utter recusant at the first sign of danger, what good am I to you anyway?" Lister rolled his eyes and grabbed his colleagues arm, wrenching him to his feet.
"Look, I'll feed you some kind of inspirational smeg later, right now I just need you to come with me!"
"Just like you fed me some smeg about love, I guess that was just the mutant bug dust talking!" Rimmer laughed with bitter sarcasm. Kryten recoiled in disgust. Lister looked beyond gobsmacked.
"Rimmer! Arnold Rimmer, I-!"
"Sirs, this is not the best time!"
Manoeuvring through the upper deck corridors, they managed to find Cat and equip him with a rifle and promptly began their zigzagged descent through the darkest recesses of the ships core and engine rooms which were being torn to shreds around them, beams falling from the ceiling, control panels, generators and fuse boxes igniting and spreading fire throughout the rest of the works as the ship jolted, manhandling and tossing the boys from the Dwarf around like toys, clothes pegs in a basket, completely at the ships mercy. It tore in to them viciously, every time they lurched they were often hurled in to a panel or series of tubes that would puncture, gash and bruise their limbs. Warning lights and sirens glared and obscured their already rapidly deteriorating vision, disorientating and separating the group. Rimmer suddenly found himself alone on a deck he was sure that he'd never visited, not even during his hikes with the scutters. He searched frantically for his crew-mates but they were nowhere to be seen, they must have taken a different turn somewhere at the fork in the corridor.
"DAVE!" He cried. Only the sirens and clangs of breaking metal replied him. Every cowardly fibre in his body told him to curl up in a ball, to wait for the ship to deteriorate around him until he was left floating in space alone and dead but cruelly more alive than ever, wanting for a mouth so that he could scream a much needed scream. But there was a difference in his resolve, perhaps it was lingering serotonin so alien to his chronically dissatisfied self, as he found himself not diving for the nearest dark corner, instead soldiering on in this unknown deck in and unknown direction. This was a strange eldritch deck with no rooms, barely any lights save for sickly clinical arrangements of white LEDS on various wall panels, pipes began to burst and leak steam further clouding his vision and safe passage through this lonely maze. Rimmer suddenly burst forth from the fog, almost dropping his rifle in process, and skidding to an abrupt halt at the very edge of an unrailed platform suspended above a drop he assumed would take him to the bottom of the ship, which wouldn't be unlike falling all the way through London if you turned it on it's side. He looked up, shakily stepped back from the edge. The behemoth monolithic white and grey core he saw before him was Holly. She was in agony, her lights flickering. There was little sight of Lister or Kryten or Cat. But what he did see was the War Bug, gnawing away at the core that his platform was separated from by a far too slender walkway, which he assumed technicians would have to traverse harnessed. Again, the coward that was Rimmer wanted to give up there, he couldn't deal with heights, not like this, even if he wasn't particularly agoraphobic to begin with. That drop was certain death, if he fell that far, his hologramatic drive would take enough of a pounding to shatter it in to dust. Suddenly, he caught the distant sight of Lister, Kryten and Cat on a platform, somewhat higher than his an all the other way on the other side of this section of the core.
"ARNOLD!" Lister screamed down to him. Rimmer simply looked up and stared. The bug was closest to him. With a smile, he took a step on to the walkway. He could hear Lister shouting from above, telling him to leave it, that they'd come down and help him but he didn't stop, even when his knees faltered and he ended up having to go on all fours towards the core. He reached out, grabbing one of the many ridges on the giant computer, and pulled himself upright. The bug shot past him, grazing his hard light chest but with no blemish. It was approaching him again. He heard Lister call again, but this time he couldn't hear what his said. With a breath, he snatched at the creature as it attempted to blaze past him once more, grabbing the strange spiked cockroach like creature in his hand. The spikes impaled him, the pain was tremendous but he could not bleed. He heard Lister shout once more. It was then he lost his footing completely, toppling from the edge of the core and down into the abyss until he was less than a speck. Lister screamed, making a lunge for the edge on to be restrained by Kryten and Cat.
"Mr Lister Sir, you can't, it's certain death!"
"ARNOLD! ARNOLD NO!"
"Buddy, since when did you two get on a first name basis?" The Cat enquired, struggling hard against Lister's attempts to free himself.
"WE HAVE TO GO AND GET HIM!" Lister broke free, shouting in to Kryten's face, their noses pressed together.
"But sir, there's a possibility his drive will be permanently damaged by the impact! He could very well be dead!"
"Just a possibility." Lister's eyes began to cloud. "That's more than enough chance that he'd be okay!"
The metal ceases to fall, only the distant wailing of sirens remained and the ship bobbed slowly back into a horizontal position, lingering contentedly in space with its menace conquered. Kryten had assigned himself chief of repairing Holly's damaged circuits, while Lister took the two hour elevator ride right down to the bottom of the core, to a large bubble shaped room bathed in an eerie blue light. It was in something of state, scrap metal, smashed glass and stray everywhere. Lister saw no sign of Rimmer's body in the room. His heart began to pound with an all consuming melancholy. The drive must have been shattered. Regardless, Lister found himself pawing through the metal at the expense of his fingers, drenched his blood, which he would raise to wipe the tears from his eyes periodically, leaving his face smeared with dirt and blood and sweat and bitter bitter tears at the loss of his best friend. He daren't say that to Rimmer out loud before, before the bug had triggered what he'd always been dying to say and toyed with his inhibitions, but he loved Rimmer so much he could barely stand it. And the only way he could hide it was to make his life a living hell. But not now, now that Rimmer knew, they didn't have to be that way anymore, he wanted to spend the rest of their journey back to earth, their subsequent adventures, anything else that happened together finally as friends, not as friends in denial. His hands were in shreds at this point. He stopped, wiping the blood on his jacket, and fell to his knees.
"Arnold, Arnold Rimmer please, please no, you can't do this to me." He murmured desperately. "I need you please. You keep me sane. Please" It was then that he saw it, his fingers must have already brushed it unknowingly as it was smeared with a little blood, lying neatly in a pile of metal shavings next to what he presumed to be the pulverised corpse of the bug covered in pink dust, Lister reached forwards and scooped up the little pod of of a hologramatic drive in his hand and rotated it between his fingers a couple of times. There were no lights, nothing to let him know that Rimmer was still alive. With a heartbroken sob, he clutched the drive in his clenched, bloody, sweaty fists and hung his head, tears like he'd never felt splashing on to his tattered jeans.
By the time dusk rolled around, Holly was happily chuntering away, a little disoriented and not entirely sure where she was for the first half hour or so but for all intents and purposes, absolutely fine. Kryten had certainly had ball repairing the rest of the ship, which lasted him long in to the night. Lister on the other hand lay motionless in his bunk, staring dead eyed at the ceiling with the hologram drive resting in one hand. He felt too numb to cry any more.
"Holly..." He uttered.
"Yes Dave." She popped up on the bedroom screen, hair a little wild.
"We can fix him."
"We could try Dave." Holly sounded disinterested as always.
"Please."
"No need to ask me, I'm not your mother. Ask Kryten". Lister swung around, leaping from his bunk and heading towards the laboratory where he found Kryten napping in a chair, still gripping a dustpan and brush. Lister sighed and wrapped on Kryten's head which let out a resounding metallic clank. This startled him awake.
"Oh! Mr Lister sir! I-I must have-" Lister wordlessly held the drive out in his scratched hands. Kryten stared at it solemnly. "Oh my. I'm so sorry sir. You...appeared to have grown quite fond of him."
"Fix him." Lister said through gritted teeth, fighting another stream of tears.
"Bu-but I can't-!"
"FIX HIM!" Lister slammed a fist on to the lab table, sending a couple of beakers of liquid falling to the floor with a several loud smashes. Kryten looked up at Listers distraught face and found himself unable to reply, to tell him that it was almost impossible. He took the drive, examined it carefully then furrowed his square brow.
"Um..."
"What is it?" Lister demanded.
"It appears to be on standby sir."
"WHAT?!" Lister snatched the pod, and twirled it between his fingers. "You're telling me he just turned himself off?"
"So it would seem, yes." Lister stared open mouthed at the pod, and handed it to Kryten, who turned it slightly and placed it on the floor, a green light flickering in to being before the figure of a man materialised where it had stood before. Namely Arnold J. Rimmer.
"Good god, took you long enough" Rimmer yawned. "Felt like I'd been out for hours, the bug knocked my switch on the way down then in fact tried to swallow me, the kind of metal didn't agree with the poor things stomach and it cushioned my fa-" Before Rimmer could finish his sentiment, he received a very hard wallop from an irate Lister, sending him hurtling backwards into the wall, clutching his cheek.
"Ow!" He cried. "What was that for?" Lister didn't answer, simply shaking his aching fist and marching towards Rimmer again, pulling him into a deep tender kiss, before edging back, stroking his face affectionately. Rimmer stammered a little.
"I...it wasn't just the bug then?"
"No, you smeghead. It's always been me, the bug just...gave me a helping hand. I love you. For gods sake I love you. Don't ever do that to me again." Before Rimmer could offer any sort of reply, Lister wrapped arms around his waist, leaning in to kiss him again. Kryten narrowed his eyes at the pair who were paying little heed to his presence.
"Ugh, I wish we'd never made that stop!" Kryten sulked. "Not only do I have to put up with you two doing the underpants Charleston whenever you damn well feel like it but there's hardly enough damage caused for me to distract myself with."
Lister swivelled around and slapped Kryten heartily on the shoulder and beamed broadly at him. Kryten's head jittered a little, looking nervously between his hands and Lister. He smiled lopsidedly.
"Don't be like that Kryten, Rimmer might actually relax once in a while." Lister turned back to Rimmer and winked at him playfully, only eliciting a nervous recoil from his dead bunkmate.
"Hmm, I suppose."
Lister had seen so many things, he'd been to alternate dimensions and met himself in so many different capacities and flavours, be it himself female or a rotten toothed cackling cowboy on a derelict ship, he'd seen other versions of Rimmer, disturbing ones and dashing and confident ones, he'd married aliens, hallucinated entire lifetimes, witnessed Winnie the Pooh being shot at the stake unfortunately, he'd seen some of the strangest things in the galaxy and some of the most wonderful things. He'd say that it all paled in comparison to this but that wasn't true. Everything seemed so much brighter and so much more colourful to him now, knowing that it hadn't all just been bravado between them, knowing that they were friends and the prospect of witnessing even more amazing and bizarre things with Rimmer as a friend, as a lover, made being trapped 3 million years in space seem like the best thing that had ever happened to him.