Red Dwarf Fanfic
Chapter One
STARBUG LOG: /DATAFILE561_B
COURSE: LOCKED/SOURCE/RED_DWARF
STATUS: SYSTEMS_FUNCTIONAL
RADAR_OPERATIONAL
ALERT_(BLUE)_ACTIVATED
ALERT_(RED)_ACTIVIATED
RADAR: POTENTIAL_ALERT/POSSIBLE_CRAFT/#6530_C1/ "WILDFIRE"
--
Arnold Judas Rimmer was not happy.
The hard-light hologram was, in fact, pretty smegging hacked off. Indeed, one could say that his current stream of computer-generated emotions were off the 'angry' scale and high into the 'psychotic with boiling rage' area. So totally peeved was Arnie "Iron Balls" Rimmer that his faux-hologramatic skin was actually looking a bit red. But that might have been due to the blood-tinged light that glowed in the cockpit. The flashing ALERT sign had recently been altered from a standard Blue Alert to the more serious Red (after Kryten, the service mech, had changed the bulb, of course). It was this Alert that was providing the mood lighting apropos to Rimmer's fury.
The Cat, who was for the moment the focus of the boiling hologram, was totally indifferent. As a Cat, it was completely against his better nature to ever be anything BUT indifferent in the light of an angry almost-human.
"Look, bud," the Cat spat back, offended, "I'm tellin' you. I don't smell a thing. I didn't when it popped up out of nothing and I definitely don't smell it now."
"That's impossible!" Rimmer screeched, flailing his arms about, "its right in front of us, you scraggy feline fleabag! Right there! In front of us. There!"
"I know, Black Hole Nostrils. I can see it, too, ok? Now stop yelling and let me get back to hailing the damn thing."
Rimmer was given the distinct impression that had Cat been an actual Cat and not, in fact, a humanoid descendant of said household pet, his fur would have been standing on end and his tail would likely be twitching. Rimmer didn't need to pretend the bared fangs into existence. He could see Cat's sharp incisors just fine.
"Forget it, tuna-breath," Rimmer sneered, masking his cowardly panic at the sight of an angry Cat by playing up his own Holier Than Thou annoyance, "I'll hail it myself."
"You? Come on, Rimm'eh. All you're gonna do is surrender to 'em, anyway. Might as well give ourselves a smidge of a change, don't ya think?"
Rimmer and the Cat both turned slightly to see David Lister leaning against the door frame leading into the cockpit. Cat grinned toothily, glad to have someone else in the cramped space to distract Rimmer's arrogant attentions. Besides, even if the feline-descendant was loath to admit it out loud, he had a certain faith in Lister. If anyone could make things alright and ensure that Cat would live another day to lick-clean his suits, it was Lister the Space Bum. Goal-post Head, on the other hand, the Cat wouldn't even trust to spit-shine his shoes.
"Listy," Rimmer drawled, apparently not impressed with the Last Human's scroungy bed-attire, "nice to see you've bothered to pull yourself away from your deep slumbers in the midst of this serious Red Alert situation. Didn't disturb your latest X-rated dream, I hope?"
"Nah," Lister replied, easily, "Dun have those dreams anymore, Rimmer. Not since I got a hold of your blow-up girlfriend. Cheers, mate, for the puncture repair kit. Makes her a lot more receptive."
Rimmer looked near to going into cardiac arrest on the spot, and likely he would have if not for the fact that he was a hologram...and if not for the fact that he was interrupted by Kryten.
Kryten waddled awkwardly into his usual position as they spoke, and was frowning (a strange plastic parody of a frown) down at the controls before him.
"Sirs? I hate to interrupt, but I believe that the Starbug is receiving an incoming hail."
"What?" Rimmer snapped, surprised. He peered over the Cat's shoulder, but there was no indication of a hail on the pilot's monitors, "That's impossible! We haven't hailed them first, yet!"
"Smug mode. Indeed, Mr. Rimmer, sir. The frequency is a little strange. It appears that the ship that is currently docked in our flight path is running on a slightly different core operating system than our own. I am de-coding the message and feeding it into our monitors now, sirs."
No sooner had Kryten finished his somewhat 'smug-moded' explanation than the monitors flickered into life.
An out of focus black-and-white image shifted and swirled on the screen. In between bits of static and distortion, portions of what might have possibly been a humanoid countenance shimmered on the screen.
"Adjusting the audio frequency now, sirs," Kryten murmured.
A strangely mechanical sounding voice filtered, tinny, from their speakers, horribly out of synch with the video loop they were receiving.
"Re-ce. Com-miss-ard. Re-ques-erse. Ac-mmer-lp. Urg-fire. Re-..."
"For smeg's sake, what on earth is this garbled nonsense?" Rimmer snapped, glaring at Kryten, "Can't you manage any better than that? I can't make out a word of it, let alone see what's going on over there. For all we know the speaker is a Man-eating GELF who's kindly asking that we surrender ourselves to be the entrée at it's next dinner party."
"I'm attempting to record the data and fill it in with my own banks, Mr. Rimmer, sir, but I'm afraid that might take some time."
"No, no, wait a second," Lister piped up. His eyes were trained on the scrambled images, his ear turned toward the speaker nearest him. The semi-illiterate space bum had possibly never looked so intent or thoughtful, "It's kinda clearin' up, like."
For a while no one spoke except the garbled speech rushing from the speakers.
"Thi...Commander...permission...board. Repeat. This is....requesting. Acting...of the...fire. Repeat. Is...tening? Commander...mmer. Ace. Rimmer. Permission to...help. Rep...urgent...Wildfire. Re-"
"Hear that?" Lister stated, excitedly, "It said 'Ace Rimmer'. That's the Wildfire, out there. An' he wants to board us!"
Rimmer snorted, "I've no doubt that's exactly what he wants to do, the goity poof."
"I'm afraid that the possibility of the craft being the Wildfire is not well supported, Mr. Lister, sir," Kryten gulped a little, his guilt-chip itching, "In fact, by judging the projected size, weight, color, function, and general build of the ship, I can say that there is only an approximate 20% chance that it is actually Mr. Ace's ship. I'm sorry, sir, but I would advise against acting on such a small probability."
Lister huffed slightly, but took Kryten's advice, "Alright, then, Krytes. What are we supposed to do, then? We can't just sit like this, playin' chicken with it. We're loosin' Red Dwarf's vapor trail the longer we sit here, right?"
"I have an idea," the Cat offered, happily, "I say we go and take a nap and talk about this later!"
"No one is going anywhere," Rimmer said. He reached over Cat's shoulder, using his newly-founded hard-light abilities to slam his fist down on a blinking button. Instantly, the flashing Alert sign flicked off.
"We're going to surrender. Right now."
"Oh, please," Lister exclaimed, throwing up his hands, "I can't believe this. Someone out there needs help, no matter who they are, and we're just sittin' here discussin' cat naps and lengthy procedures to decode the smegging distress message!"
"There is no need to discuss the procedure any more, Mr. Lister, sir. I believe I've been able to suitably reconstruct the message. It's only the audio, I'm afraid, but it should suffice."
"That's what I'm talkin' about!" Lister whooped, "play it, then, Krytes."
The speakers around them whined piercingly for a brief moment before clicking into a reconstructed version of the distress message's audio feed. All Dwarfers turned their ears to the speakers attentively, expecting either disaster or adventure. Or both.
The feedback from the reconstructed message poured out of the speakers. The voice was computer-forced now, sounding monotone and artificial, each syllable carefully articulated and ringing hollow for it's sheer inhuman lack of emotion.
"Directive number 4415 AKA 'Ship Distress Message, Immediate Peril'. Hailing the JMC class Starbug within my radar range. Are you in activation? Please respond. Repeat, please respond. Very well. This is an official distress message as stated by the Space Corps directives, numbering 3102..."
The computerized voice went dead for a moment, replaced with a bit of data that sounded much like Kryten's own voice.
"Space Corps directive 3102: No single-man vessel may ever be painted in more than two primary colors, unless said colors are blue and red with white accent..."
"What?" Lister said, his expression pulled into one of confusion.
The computer-synthsized audio played in again.
"Oh. Damn. Sorry, no, that's not the right directive. Hold on a tic. Right. Uhm...sorry. This is it. This is...offical, yadda yadda, Space Corps directives, numbering 3103. Three. A-ha."
Kryten's data-bank voice broke in once more.
"Space Corps directive 3103: A single-man vessel may request help only while experiencing a fatal situation as specified by the Space Corps directives 4012-5102, please see note..."
"Nevermind that, Kryten, I think we get the idea," Lister broke in, sounding bored.
"Yes, sir. I'll just skip ahead a little," Kryten replied, obediently turning a dial on his control panel. A few minutes of the audio rapidly pulsed by, indicated by a strange tittering sound before it settled into it's computer-speech pattern once more.
"This is an urgent call for help. This is acting Commander Verse of the Wildfire Two. I am seeking out Rimmer, Ace. I repeat, I am looking for Ace Rimmer. I believe he may be on your vessel. This is acting Commander Verse of the Wildfire Two and I am in urgent need of assistance. My oxygen supply is about out, now, and I really really am politely requesting to board your stupid ship. Help me, please. I am operating on a frequency your piece of smeg ship doesn't seem to quite comprehend, but I hope that at least some of this message is going to do through. I've put it on loop, but I haven't a lot of time. Please respond, if you can. Message Repeat. Directive number 4415..."
"The message loops from there, sirs," Kryten explained, helpfully.
"Thank you, Captain Obvious," Rimmer sneered. The hard-light was frowning deeply, but it wasn't his usual bitter over-bearing frown. The hologram actually appeared to be a little...disturbed. He looked close to afraid, but, for some reason, he wasn't running off to hide or anything. Lister, observing him from the corner of his eye, wondered if maybe the smeghead had contracted some kind of holo-illness.
"So there's some dude in that thing that's lookin' for Ace?" Cat synopsised, confused.
"Well, s'looking for Rimmer, I guess," Lister replied
"And he's almost out of air?...but he's looking for Train Tunnel Nostrils? I say we let him go, bud. Anyone actually looking for Rimmer is probably space crazy."
"Maybe he wants ta find him ta kill him," Lister pointed out, thoughtfully.
The Cat instantly brightened, "Oh. Well, that's ok, then. Let's signal back. Right now."
"Now just wait a moment!" Rimmer burst, annoyed, "I hardly think that a little lack of oxygen and a convenient name dropping is any reason to let a perfect stranger board the Starbug."
"Rimm'eh, you're only sayin' that 'cos you think the tosser on board that Wildfire is gonna kill you. An' what do you care, anyway? You're already dead, and your hard-light body is practically indestructible."
"Practically," Rimmer echoed, sharply.
"Whatever," Lister said, turning to leave the cockpit, "Suit up, guys. We're goin' after the bloke. If he's looking for Ace, I wanna know why."
Cat and Kryten obediently trooped out of the cockpit to prepare themselves to cross the small distance between ships. Rimmer, however, stayed where he was, leaning moodily against the navi-comp. Hell would freeze over, thaw, and freeze again before anyone was going to get HIM to go traipsing off into certain doom. He knew a trap when it saw it, even if the bog-bot, the fleabag, and the bum didn't. Once the Bug had gone good and quiet, the hard-light hologram leaned over and pressed the playback feed. The computer-generated voice filled the small room once more. As each second of the reconstructed feed passed, Rimmer's frown deepened until there was a practical canyon in between his eyebrows and a gaping hole on either side of his thinly pulled lips. Something...seemed very off here. More than usual, in fact.
"I'm going to my quarters," Rimmer announced to no one at all.
"This is acting Commander Verse, of the Wildfire Two," the looped distress message replied, then it skipped a bit, the actual audio feed overriding Kryten's careful reconstruction. There was a tittering noise that filled the empty cockpit for a few seconds before the playback resumed as it was originally meant to. A low but obviously female voice washed over the tinny computerized sounds that had played before. The original audio was awash with barely contained desperation, the woman's voice cracking as she screamed into the microphone.
"For Goddess's sake, Ace. Answer me. It's Verse, damnit. I need you. Answer me! Don't let me die out here alone...Smeg it."
A snarled sound of pain shattered the end of the audio feed.
The tittering noise filled in again and the computerized sounds spoke up as they had before.
"This is an urgent call for help. This is acting Commander Verse of the Wildfire Two. I am seeking out Rimmer, Ace..."