THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RED DWARF

PART 8

Back on Red Dwarf, Gollum was cowering in what had once been Todhunter's cabin.

Gollum, looking for food, had found Todhunter's cache of expensive imported chocolates.
Unfortunately, they were very old expensive imported chocolates.

"My precious feels very sick." he groaned.

He lay down on the floor and moaned. Had he only known that a food dispenser was right outside the door . . .

"Shouldn't we be going the other way, Mr. Rimmer?" Sam asked. "It's dark down here."
"Don't tell me you're afraid of the dark, miladdo," Rimmer snapped.

"Aren't you?"

"Of course not," Rimmer lied.
They came to a dead end. The only way out, besides back the way they had come, was through an air duct. Rimmer removed the rusted grille.
"You, Shorty," he said. "In there. Move it!"

"Is it too late to send him back?" Boromir asked Kochanski.

(Rimmer hadn't realized he had left his communicator on.)
"Let's see what they get up to first," Kochanski said. Her own team hadn't found anything useful yet, but they were near the Drive Room, so hopefully soon they would get some answers.

"Well, go on!" Rimmer ordered a terrified Pippin. "What are you waiting for?"
The Hobbit looked up at that dark hole with growing dread. Nobody was getting him in there, not for anything!
Frodo noticed Pippin's distress and said, "Give me a boost, Sam."
"What for?" Then he realized what for. "Oh, no you don't! You're not going in there alone!"
"Someone has to."

The creatures watched and waited . . . .

"Can you see anything yet?" Rimmer called.

"No," Sam called back, "but something certainly smells odd . . ."

A bright blue light suddenly flooded the tunnel.

"What the . . . I thought it only did that when Orcs were around," Sam said.

Sure enough, at that moment, the creatures attacked.

"I'll hold them off!" Sam yelled, brandishing his own sword. "You go and warn the others!"
"No! I won't leave you!"

"Man, this day just can't get any worse!" Cat complained as he fired his bazookoid at the creatures.
"Trust me, miladdo, it can." Rimmer pointed out, hiding—er, supervising from under a table.
One of the creatures shouted, "Give yourselves up! You cannot beat us!"
"Smeg off."

Frodo scrambled out of the duct, swinging his sword at anything that moved. "Come on, Sam!"
"I'm right behind you!" Suddenly he was grabbed by one of the creatures.
"Goood eating, this one. Good meat."

"Stand back, I'm going to shoot it," Cat said.
Legolas waved him off. "Allow me."
He nocked an arrow, said a silent prayer, and fired directly into the shaft.
The arrow thudded home into the Orc's right eye. It screamed and let go of Sam, who crawled as fast as he could to the opening.
"Thanks!"
"Behind you!" called Gimli.

Cat whirled and fired another shot from his bazookoid, blasting three Orcs to kingdom come. "Team 2 to Team 1!" Rimmer shouted urgently into his microphone. "We're under attack! Repeat, we're under attack! The distress signal was a trap! Team 1, come in!"

Kochanski stared at her communicator. Rimmer's panicked message had taken her by surprise. Under attack? From whom?
"Okay, I need someone to come with me to the Drive Room to set off the self-destruct," she said. "The rest of you go help Team 2!"

"Smeggin' 'ell." Lister gasped . . . .

The Bocelli was swarming with dark, vaguely humanoid creatures. There had to be hundreds of them. "No life signs, Hol? Smeg!"

"Blast it!" Gandalf muttered in frustration, feeling his powers being seriously taxed as he helped the others fight off the Orc attacks.

Meanwhile, Kris and Boromir were in the Drive Room, attempting to access the self-destruct program.
"Access denied," the ship's computer said. "Captain's voiceprint required for activation of self-destruct."
"The smegging captain's dead!" Kochanski cried in frustration.
"Could we bring him back as a hologram?" Boromir asked.
"That might work. Computer, give us the captain's personnel file."
"Accessing . . . personnel file. Elessar, Aaron, Captain."
The file displayed a photo which looked very familiar . . .
"It can't be," Kochanski gasped.
"It's got to be his descendant," Boromir told her. "Maybe we could fool the computer into believing he's the captain."
"It's the only chance we've got right now."

"Who?" Lister asked Kochanski and Boromir.

Then he saw the picture.
"I'll go get 'im."

Lister found Legolas a few minutes later. "Yo, man, we need you."
"What for?"
"To impersonate a captain."

"A captain?"

"No time to explain. Just come with me!"
"I'm a little busy right now!"
There was a strangled cry of pain from behind them. Aragorn had been hit.

"Kryten, get them back to Starbug!" Kochanski ordered. "Start the engines and get ready to move!"
"But what about you, ma'am?"
"We'll be along as soon as we set the self-destruct going."

Kryten obeidently led the wounded Aragorn and his teammates back to Starbug . . .

"What do I do?" Legolas asked.

Lister ,meanwhile, had his hands full trying to keep the attackers back with just a bazookoid.

"There's too many of 'em!" he shouted in alarm.
"Need a hand?"
He looked down to see an unexpected face at his elbow.
"This is better than riding skutters," Merry admitted.

The Orcs glared at Merry in annoyance . . . but soon enough they were fleeing for their lives. The Hobbit fought harder than one twice his size . . .
. . . but that didn't keep him from getting a nasty gash down one leg. Lister winced at the sight of it. It was at least six inches long and looked fairly deep.

"We'd better get you to the medibay."

"Too bad there's not a skutter here for me to ride."

Elsewhere, Kochanski and Boromir waited to see if the computer would accept Legolas as the captain.
"Voice print identification confirmed." the ship's computer said. "Awaiting code to begin final five minute self-destruct countdown."

"This is it right here," Kochanski said.

"8-1-6-5." Legolas repeated to the computer.

"Confirmed," the computer announced. "Beginning self-destruct countdown. Five minutes till self-destruct."
"Let's get the smeg out of here!"

Back on Starbug, Rimmer instructed Holly, "Boost those engines to maximum power and keep them on standby until Lister and the others get back."
"OK, matey."

Kryten was tending to the wounded. "Please don't fidget so, Mr. Aragorn."

"But I have to get back and help Legolas!" Aragorn insisted.

"Mr. Legolas can take care of himself."

"Not against all those Orcs he can't!" Aragorn shouted. "Now let me up!"

"Four minutes and twenty seconds to self-destruct." the computer voice announced as Kochanski, Lister, Legolas, and the others raced down the Bocelli's corridors. "Four minutes and ten seconds to self-destruct. Four minutes and twenty to self-destruct. Three minutes and fifty seconds to self-destruct . . . ."

Back on Starbug, Rimmer ordered Holly, "Keep those engines going full-blast! When Lister and the others get back, we'll bloody well have to leg it out of here in a hurry!"
"Me for my hobbit-hole." Frodo groaned to himself.

"Three minutes and ten seconds to self-destruct." The computer voice continued counting down the time left until the Bocelli's thermonuclear self-destruct charges detonated. "Three minutes to self-destruct. Two minutes and fifty seconds to self-destruct. Two minutes and forty seconds to self-destruct."

"There's Starbug!" Kochanski shouted, pointing down the airlock at Starbug's hatch.
"And not a smeggin' minute too soon." Lister said, signalling Holly that they were coming aboard.

"Can we get clear in time?" Kochanski asked Kryten.
The Mechanoid checked his calculations. "Only just."
"Stop the yakking and start traveling!" Rimmer shouted, in full-on panic mode. This was not helping the general morale level at the moment.

"Hold on to your seat belts!"Lister shouted as Starbug detached itself from the Bocelli and fled back towards Red Dwarf at maximum speed.

Starbug wasn't really built for speed, but it seemed to sense the imminent explosion, and raced for the safety of Red Dwarf like never before.
Unfortunately, that made the ride a little rough, especially on the injured members of the party (including one who up till then hadn't realized he'd been injured) . . .

"Kryten, how much time till that thing goes off?" Lister asked.
"Two minutes and forty-five seconds, sir."

The creatures inside the Bocelli frantically looked for a way out.

"Two minutes and fifteen seconds to self-destruct...."

"So," Aragorn asked Legolas, "how did your descendant end up with my name?"
"That's the funny thing," the Elf said. "I've traced it back, and it seems the bloodlines merged about 200 years after our time. So technically, he's your descendant as well as mine."

"One minute and forty-five seconds to self-destruct . . ."

"For God's sake, Kryten, are we out of the way yet?" Rimmer exclaimed.

"We stil have a good one hundred kilometers to go before we're safely out of the blast zone."
"I don't suppose," Lister said to Gandalf, "you know some kind of hocus-pocus that can make this thing go faster?"
Gandalf pondered this for a moment . . .

"One minute and thirty seconds to self-destruct...."

One of the Orcs got the bright idea to find one of the Bocelli's escape pods.
Unfortunately he had no idea where they were. By the time he finally found the circular hatch that said "ESCAPE POD", it was too late.

Gandalf raised his staff. "Couldn't hurt," he said . . .

"One minute to self-destruct...."

Suddenly, Starbug took off at just under light speed.

"Forty-five seconds to self-destruct...."

"Way to go, man!" Lister exclaimed. He made a mental note never to diss the dude in the pointy hat.

"Thirty seconds to self-destruct...."

"We are now outside blast range," Kryten announced.
Starbug began to decelerate back to its normal snail's pace.

"Thirty seconds to self-destruct...."

"You just said that, Hol!" Lister pointed out.
"Oh. Well, how many is it now?"
Rimmer checked the readout. "Fifteen."
"Right. Fifteen seconds to self-destruct. If you look out the window to your right, you'll get a good view of the Placido Domingo or whoever he was going kaboom. Five seconds . . . four . . . three . . . two . . ."
"I love a good explosion," Merry commented.
"Remember the fireworks at--" Pippin started to say, but Frodo shushed him.
"You're going to miss it."
"One . . . there we go," said Holly.
The Andrea Bocelli blew apart in a tremendous and quite spectacular explosion.

A thermonuclear explosion the likes of which the universe hadn't seen in centuries erupted behind Starbug, sending a thunderous shock wave in all directions. They were tossed about a bit, but safely out of the blast range. All that happened was that several of them ended up spilling celebratory soda all over their trousers.

"My good suit!" Cat complained.

"Mr. Frodo, you're hurt!" Sam exclaimed.
Frodo looked down. "No I'm not. That's just Mountain Dew."
"No, it isn't." Sam pulled up Frodo's shirt to reveal a nasty-looking gash in his lower abdomen.

"Oh, smeg." gasped Lister.
"Oh, smeg indeed." echoed Rimmer.

"How soon till we get back to Red Dwarf?" asked a visibly concerned Kochanski.

"Thirteen minutes," Kryten announced. "The skutters are preparing the Medical Unit as we speak."

Back on Red Dwarf, Gollum cowered in the drive room. He was lonely, and thought they had all left and weren't coming back.

But then he heard a noise . . . .

The skutters were on the move.

"My precious follows the little metal men, yes." Gollum said, tottering off after the skutters. "Maybe they knows where food is?"

But there was no food to be found in the Medical Unit, so he went off to find some more elsewhere.
He missed the arrival of the Starbug crew by mere seconds.

"Smeg, I could go for a curry." Lister said as he stepped off the gangplank and into Red Dwarf's main docking bay. "How about you guys?"

"As soon as we get the wounded taken care of," Rimmer said, "I think we could all use a night out. I've got some great telegraph pole slides to show you . . ."

Kochanski looked at Rimmer as if he were insane. "We are not," she said, very slowly and deliberately, "spending the evening looking at telegraph pole slides."
"Not without a couple of pints, anyway," Lister added.
Pippin stopped short and smacked his forehead. "That's it! We forgot the lager back on that ship!"
Everyone stared at him for one long moment.

"Lager?"

"Isn't that why we went?"

Lister rolled his eyes. "For smeg's sake."

Later that evening, they all went down to Parrot's for a curry, but since the ban on alcohol was still in effect, no lager.