"Sirs, Ma'am, is this a bad time?"
Lister, Rimmer and Kochanski could only stare at the mechanoid.
Rimmer got control of his raging bile duct, stood up and dashed a fist across his cheeks, wiping away the tears. "No, Kryten. No problems at all. I got something in my eyes, is all. Lister's cigarette smoke. You know." He affected a hacking cough, waving his hand in front of his nose. "Horrible stuff, that cigarette smoke."
Kryten cocked his head curiously, seeming to sniff the air. "Really, Sir? That's curious. I don't detect any smoke in this room. The oxygen-to-foreign-particles ratio is less than 2 parts in 10 billion. Are you sure that it was the cigarettes...?"
"Oh, shut the smeg up, you overgrown can opener," snapped Rimmer. He flew towards the door and was gone. Lister jumped up and went after him, but when he got out the door, Rimmer was nowhere in sight.
Lister gently slammed his fist into the bulkhead. "Damn," he whispered. For Rimmer to admit that he actually liked someone... and for it to go so disasterously wrong...
Kryten looked after Lister with wonder. "I'm sorry sir, was he telling the truth? Or was Mr. Rimmer realy crying because you caught him cheating at poker?"
Lister waved a hand at Kryten, half placating, half annoyed. Kryten knew when to take a hint. He turned back into the room proper, picking up a dust bunny as he went. Lister stood for a moment looking down where Rimmer had disappeared to. For all the teasing and joking and bickering that Lister instigated with Rimmer, (and vice-versa, of course...) Lister actually cared about Rimmer.
He couldn't tell exactly when it had begun. Sometime after the "old" Rimmer had gone off to become Ace. And then there had been The Dream, which he'd never told anybody about, not even Krissy. Which, he supposed, was all for the best, really.
When the nano-bots had re-created the Dwarf, and resurected the crew, it hadn't even occured to Lister that Rimmer would be included in the list of the dead. Of course, he should have, what with Rimmer whinging on about being dead constantly. But, lo and behold, there he was, very much alive, in the tall, gangling, large nostrilled flesh. He was exactly the same. The same smeg-head that Lister remembered. There was no trace of the man who could become Ace Rimmer there. There was only the smugness, the cruelty, the cowardess, the banality, the...
Well, no point in listing them all. We could be here all night.
And yet, for all of that, Lister found that he still cared.
Of course, there was the time that Rimmer had tried to sleep with Krissy, on the ship where Cassandra had set up shop...
A small red cloud descended over Lister's vision. I know that he was doing what he thought was supposed to happen. But did he have to keep her bra afterwards? he thought to himself. One of these days, he may very well have an "accident."
He was shifted out of his reverie by a hand on his shoulder. He turned his head, and looked right into Krissy's big brown eyes. He sighed, and lowered his fist from the bulkhead.
"It's not your fault, you know." She smiled gently at him. "Rimmer is messed up in ways that nobody could help. That was entirely his fault."
"I know, Kris, but... Well, if I hadn't brought it up..."
"Still, you couldn't know that she'd overhear."
Lister blinked. "Wait a minute, why'd she show up anyway? How'd she know he was in here? These are your quarters!"
It was Kochanski's turn to blink. "I don't know. Hang on..."
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" asked Lister, his eyes growing wide with an unpleasant thought.
"God, I sincerely hope not. Because I'm thinking that you turned on your communications pocket watch thing..."
As one, they turned and dashed into the room. They began hunting for the device, ignoring Kryten's confused pleas for enlightenment as to what it was they were looking for.
"Where is it, where is it?" muttered Lister, throwing aside the poker chips and cards on the table, looking for that tell-tale glint of silver.
"I don't know, I don't know!" wobbled Kochanski, rooting through the towel and sheet laden floor, searching for a glowing green indicator light that would show that the device was on.
"Sir, Ma'am..."
"Not now, Kryten!" huffed Lister, who was digging through his pockets, pulling out all sorts of nasty paraphenailia that looked like it had been through the Laundry Day of the Damned.
"But Sir, Ma'am..."
"Kryten, please! Now is not a good time!" whined Kochanski, as she ran into the bathroom, throwing aside bottles of goo that could be hiding the thing behind them.
"Sir, Ma'am, I really do think..."
"WHAT IS IT, KRYTEN?!?" they screamed together.
"I do believe that you're being contacted on the senso-matic watch here." Kryten held up the "dust bunny" that he'd picked up earlier. Lo and behold, there was the device, glowing brightly. Lister and Kochanski dashed over to the mechanoid, and snatched it away from him.
Lister peered into it. And peering right back at him were the craggy features of Marone. And he did not look too happy.
"Lister," came his bass voice, made tinny by the lousy hardware within, "You and Miss Kochanski will report to me in the captain's quarters at thirteen hundred tomorrow afternoon. I wish to speak to you both about your 'relationship.'" And then he was gone as the device went dead.
Hippolyta was seated in her quarters, smoking her sixteenth cigarette of the day. She was surrounded by objects, that, in any other person's room, would serve the purpose of brightening it up, making it looked lived in. A poster for a popular rock-hip hop-grunge metal band. A bookshelf, totally filled with classic, first edition books, like The Fountainhead, and collected short stories of Theodore Sturgeon. A few mostly used candles. A stuffed monkey with bunny ears. To the casual observer, the room looked loved. Filled with personality.
To the critical eye, however, the details were slightly off. A sheen of dust here. An un-opened book there. Exact and perfect drips down the sides of the candles, like they had never been burned, but bought off the shelf that way. The poster had only one pin-hole in each corner, suggesting that it had gone up once, and then been forgotten about. And so on.
The only part of her quarters that looked even remotely disturbed was her closet. All of the clothes were on the floor. The hangers stood empty, soldiers lined up for a war that never took place. Her official JMC uniform was buried somewhere in the bottom of the pile. She hadn't worn it in two years.
She sat in her brightly lit room, inhaling her niccotine stick, not blinking, even though the smoke made her eyes water and burn. She was staring off into middle distance...
She was fifteen. Her uncle Frank Hollister had just been promoted to Captain, and his first assignment was a ship that had just been commissioned. The Red Dwarf. Her father, Peter, was throwing a giant shindig in her Uncle's honor. She stood in the midst of the crowd, wearing a dress that was appropriate if you happened to be a street walker. Her mother, Aphrodite, was rather miffed at her choice of dress, but had had the sense not to cross wills with her stubborn and iconoclastic daughter. Affy, as she was known to her friends, was studiously ignoring her. Hippolyta danced with a few young men, cadets in the academy. They asked her what she wanted to do when she "grew up." She responded with the truth. She was studying... Blah, blah blah. The cadets paid her no mind, but instead took every opportunity to glance down her already impressive cleavage. She was flattered. She allowed herself to be led to the punch bowl, which was being presided over by her tipsy father. He handed her a sweet punch, given to her in a sparkling cup. It contained vodka. She did not have any experience with alcohol. When the room started to spin, she put it down to her dancing, and had another cup of punch. And a third...
Hippolyta glanced at the clock on her wall. It was nearly midnight. She hadn't finished any of her paperwork. Of the four prisoners assigned to her tender ministrations, three were swiftly floating down the river of re-incarceration. The fourth was... Rimmer.
Rimmer. Fuck.
"Peter, she's drunk."
"How could she be drunk? She's only fourteen!"
"Fifteen, Peter. She's fifteen now."
"What the hell does that matter, Affy? She's DRUNK! Who gave her the booze?"
"One of your spacer friends, no doubt. Or possibly even that brother of yours..."
"That brother of mine is the captain of a JMC ship! He'd know better than to give a minor alcohol! And if you say one more word against him, I swear to God I'll..."
"Well, you're the one who insisted on bringing all of these... these PEOPLE into my house!"
"Dammit, Affy! She's out of control! It's nobody's fault but HERS. She should know better than to take a drink. YOU TOLD HER NOT TO DRINK, RIGHT?"
"Keep your voice down! The neighbors will hear!"
"FUCK THE NEIGHBORS!"
"Peter!"
Hippolyta wondered what was missing. She was missing something important... She stared at the piles of paperwork that were threatening to engulf her desk. She had no desire to touch them. She didn't care about her job. She hated her job. She was thrilled that the ship was three million years into deep space. She could do what she wished, and happily thumb her nose at anyone who said otherwise. What were they gonna do, throw her in the brig? Not bloody likely. Especially since she was the captain's niece. Of course, she hated that. In fact, she hated everything about being in the corps.
She had wanted to become a...
Meh. Water under the dam. Bridge. Whatever.
She was sprawled across her bed, having spent the entire night vomiting. She was still wearing her cocktail dress, but had thrown her bathrobe on over it. Her eye make-up was off her eyes, and on her cheeks in little black rivulets, due to the involuntary tears that came with her sickness. Dawn was just beginning to break outside her window. In just a few moments, the car would be there. Her father had told her to get dressed, that she was being sent away to a very strict school. She hadn't done it. She was through playing his little mind games. She had always eventually bowed to his wishes, and he had gotten his way. This time, she was going to resist. She was going to do things her way. She heard the crunch of a vehicle pulling into her gravel driveway. Her bedroom door opened, and there was her father. She sat up to look at him, feeling nothing, not even a sense of elation from her new resolve. Nothing.
"You're not ready." It wasn't a question, but a statement of fact, delivered in a flat monotone.
"No." Equally flat, equally impassionate.
"Who gave you the booze last night?"
"You did."
"You lie to your own father, now. You're obviously disturbed, Letty. You're going to school."
"No." Same as before, with a bit more steel behind it.
"This is not up for a majority vote, Letty."
"My name is Hippolyta. And I'm not going."
He was across the room in two strides, and pulled her up from the bed by her arm. She hoped that it would leave a bruise to remember him by.
"I'll call you whatever I damn well feel like, and you're going off to Miss Prattchet's Boarding School for Disobedient Girls."
With that, her father had hauled her bodily out of her room, swept her out the door and down the hall. She tried to go limp on him, but he was prepared for this tactic. He tackled her at the waist, using his shoulder, and hauled her up like a sack of potatoes. He jogged her out to the front door while she gaped to get her wind back. They zoomed past her mother, who stood at the open door, holding a few pieces of luggage, looking like she had been up all night as well. She had a look of pure anguish on her face, and she had been crying as well.
There was a groundcar in the driveway. It was black, with orange stripes racing along the sides. The bright yellow and red emblem of Tri-Techno Security was scorched on the hood. Her father had hired a private security car to transport her, behind bars, to her new place of schooling.
He was serious about this.
Hippolyta's mind raced, trying to think what she had ever done in her relatively short life to deserve this mistrust from her father. Then it hit her.
She was too much like him. She had inherited his sneakiness, his ingenuity, his distrust and dislike of pretty much every other person alive. And last night, when she let her guard down, she had disappointed him. In his eyes, he was doing her a favor. To inflict this drama upon her, the boarding school, the private security guard, not allowing her to get dressed... it was all a part of his master plan to get her to grow up, to harden herself to what life would throw at her.
She stopped struggling, and allowed herself to be belted in by the gorilla her father had hired. She could have put up a fight, and possibly gotten away. But now that she knew the game, she was determined to win. And the only way that she'd win was if she came back from school exactly the same as when she left. She'd show him. She could out-stubborn the old bastard.
She heard the muffled thump of the boot closing, and saw her mother turn and run sobbing into the house. Hippolyta felt sorry for her, in an anemic way. Her mother was a soft woman, curved in all the wrong places, like a pillow that's been drop kicked a few times. How her mother and father managed to have a (mostly) quiet and civilized marriage was beyond her.
Hippolyta briefly wished that she had been born a boy. Then her mother wouldn't fret so much.
Her father came to the side of the car she was belted into, leaned in the open door and said, "Letty, I'm willing to give you one last chance. I'm not trying to punish you, I'm trying to do you a favor. Who gave you the booze last night? Tell me the truth, and you can stay home."
She looked her father right in the eyes and said, "You can't win now, Daddy. I know the rules, finally. I won't lie, and you won't believe the truth. So close the car door and leave me alone. And my name is Hippolyta."
He blinked at her, stupidly, looking for all the world like his doughy brother. Then, without another word, he closed the car door and walked back into the house.
The car pulled away, and though she didn't know it, it would be the last time she saw her home, or her parents.
She got the bruise that she wanted, too...
The next three years went by swiftly. She had little to no contact with her parents, and she did not miss them. Miss Prattchet was a sweet old lady, with an unfortunate tendency towards cats. She believed in Spare The Rod And Spoil The Child. And that Naughty Girls Were People Too. Of the sixty other girls at the school, Hippolyta was the smartest and the weakest. But when she discovered the joys of martial arts, she soon was the smartest and the strongest. This was even taking into account that a few of the girls had rap sheets as long as their arms. Hippolyta outshined them all. Miss Prattchet once commented on it to her. "My dear, why are you at my school? You don't seem the type."
Hippolyta had responded with, "I made the mistake of trusting someone who wasn't worthy of it."
This deliberately ambiguous statement had caused the rumour to go around that Hippolyta had had a sordid affair that ended in an abortion. One girl, a big hulk nicknamed Brick, (after the "Brick Shithouse" of yore) made the mistake of calling Hippolyta a slut to her face. Brick then spent six weeks in traction, sucking her food through a straw. She found it difficult to eat with no teeth. Hippolyta, meanwhile, spent that same six weeks forced to write many papers on the topic, "Violence; The Last Refuge of the Weak." She got outstanding marks on all of them, and was never bothered by anybody ever again. She needed no further lessons.
A few months before she was to turn eighteen, she received a letter from her mother, informing her that her father had run off with a cocktail waitress from Las Vegas. Her mother asked her politely to return home that day, and she could resume her studies in the thing that she loved most, veterinary care. Hippolyta pondered for about 15 seconds, and sent her mother a reply that she was not interested in that anymore, thanks, and that she'd be joining the Corps. A week later she got another letter saying that if she did join the Corps, she would no longer be welcome in the house. So, the moment she turned eighteen, she left the school without a diploma, and hitched a ride to Chicago. Upon arriving in the Windy City, she marched right into the JMC recruiting office, told them that she was related to the captain of the Red Dwarf, and asked if there were any available openings for a job. It wasn't that she wanted to ship out, but rather to show her mother that she no longer had any hold over her. She expected to be told to smeg off.
To her horror, she realized that she was signing her enlistment papers, and that she was leaving on a transport bound for the Red Dwarf. But she wouldn't back down. That stubborn streak got her into trouble again. She was now a Second Technician, assigned to Charlie shift.
The first thing that she realized was that being a glorified janitor on a ship the size of a city really sucked.
The second thing that she realized was that her uncle, the captain, was an incompetent boob with the leadership ability of a sloth. So she plotted. If she couldn't be what she wanted to be, then she'd be in charge. She would command Red Dwarf.
She noticed that the officers who were the highest among the elite were those that had started careers in security, not engineering. She applied for an open position in the security team. She was laughed at by the existing Security Officers, men and a few women who were right nasty bastards. But she remembered Brick, and laughed to herself. These people in khaki were like Brick, only more subtle. She could handle subtle. Todhunter, the Second Officer, had told her, condescendingly, that a short little girl like her wasn't Security Officer material. Simply out of the question. But the catering staff needed a good sous chef... She challenged him to a sparring match, and wiped the floor with him.
Todhunter had his revenge, though. He was the one in charge of all entrants exams, and gave her the 6th level written test instead of the 1st level. She, of course, failed.
So she waited another year. She studied, and read, and watched everybody like a hawk. She was known down at the Disco as the Staring Tech. Or the Arctic Ice Queen. Or just plain old IronBritches, as her looks and family connections had drawn the attentions of several men. Not only did she rebuff their advances, but she waxed poetic, at the top of her voice, as to their ablutionary habits and lack of intellect. If she had been a man, she would have been in the brig in three seconds, as a basic peacekeeping measure.
When the year was over, she submitted a report to her uncle that increased efficiency for the Technicians by about 200%. They allowed her to take the test again, and she surprised everyone but herself with a perfect score. She discovered later that Todhunter had given her the 6th level test again. Her first act as a Security Officer was to jot down snide comments in the margin of his personal file. She caused "sensitive" information regarding his sexual proclivities to make the gossip rounds. If her uncle suspected her hand in the graffitti on the bathroom walls that said, "Keep Todhunter away from the scutters, he'll corrupt their hardware," he said nothing.
At the tender age of twenty-one, Hippolyta decided that it was time for a shake down. She was the junior member of the Security staff, being 45th down on the ladder from department head. She watched as those who were bigger and dumber than her get assigned to the jobs that were least suited to their abilities. The last straw was Stuey. Stuey was an ok guy, but dumber than a piece of driftwood washed up on the shores of Los Angeles.
Stuey was her first victim.
She called him into a private conference and told him, confidentially, that he was being considered for a commendation. But please, don't tell anybody, because I'm wasn't supposed to know about it! She explained to him that she found it in a memo that was accidentally given to her. She begged him to keep his mouth shut, so she wouldn't get into trouble. So Stuey did the natural thing. He bragged to everybody that he had an inside track on the decisions of the Department heads, and could tell for sure that he was going to be promoted. This had the effect of the head officer to pull his file from the "Advance" pile and shunt him off sideways into Paperwork Hell. Leaving his promotion open to the next officer in line, Hippolyta.
When Stuey commented on this turn of events, it was dismissed as the bitchings of a discontent.
For another year, Hippolyta stuck to this plan. Her rise through the ranks was swift and uncontested. She had little contact with her uncle, and she preferred it that way. She didn't want any familial connections to mar her aloof demeanor. No one could say that she leaned on her uncle for assistance in her duties. It had the bonus effect of people confiding things to her that should only have been revealed under court order. They assumed that she didn't like her uncle, and therefore she would be the perfect person to complain to. She amassed a considerable amount of information on the weaknesses and foibles of the captain, and planned to use every syllable of dirt on him, when the time was right.
That time came about two years later, when she was Third Officer in charge of security. In this position, she heard pretty much everything that went on. A man by the name of David Lister had been put into stasis due to a violation of the quarantine regulations. Her security team was charged with finding the beast that had put him there. But they were stonkered. Not only could they not find the cat, but they actually dared to claim that there was no cat. Hippolyta, having seen the picture of Lister with his pet, was not put off by their lack of feline-finding. She studied Lister's personal file, seeing all of the reports written on him by one Rimmer, Arnold Judas. She figured out, from those reports, what kind of man Lister was, and found where he had hidden the cat. By this time, however, Frankenstein had had her kittens.
Hippolyta held one of the kittens in her arms, and remembered her aborted desire to be a veterinarian. She blinked at the tiny, mewling critter, and made the stupidest decision of her life. She took the cats and put them in the hold, away from the prying eyes of Holly, away from the possibility of dissection and death. Then, using a computer unconnected to the mainframe, she created photos showing a dead cat down in the science lab. She then presented the report to her uncle, and the matter was considered closed. She asked that Lister be removed from stasis and restored to duty.
That was her mistake. She made it personal. Becuase Lister was willing to give up his life to save a cat, she empathized.
Her uncle looked at her coldly and informed her brusquely that Lister had broken one of the most dire regulations, and, regardless that the creature was dead, Lister must fulfill his sentence. She, as a security officer, should know that. Perhaps his reccomendation that she be promoted should be reconsidered. In fact, maybe she should be demoted instead. He heard that Floor 13 was in need of a woman guard.
She blinked at her uncle, seeing her father in his pasty face. She began to open her mouth to protest, to tell him that if he dared, she would expose him as Dennis the Doughnut Boy... when a tall, gangling man rushed around the corner into the captain's office. She recognised him instantly. It was Arnold Rimmer.
She had never seen him in the flesh, as it were. She had only seen the picture in his file. At first, she had thought that he was just very unphotogenic. Seeing him in person, she realized that his nostrils really were that big. She recalled that he had failed his astronavigation exam 10 times, that he had asked for his gazpacho soup to be warm, and that he had filed 162 complaints against David Lister, the man whom she was trying spring from stasis.
She despised him on sight.
She listened with half an ear while Rimmer explained about some sort of malfunction in the Drive Plate, her mind racing over the possibilities of her conversation with her uncle. How could she turn this to her advantage? Obviously, that Rimmer had been assigned to repairing the Drive Plate showed that her uncle was either suicidal or stupid.
But before she could jump into the conversation, there was a deafening klaxon, and she felt a strange wave of heat wash over the back of her head.
The last thing she heard was, "Gazpacho soup..."
When she awoke, she was surprised to find herself sitting behind her desk, with paperwork piled high before her. This puzzled her, as she distinctly remebered shredding this particular batch of paperwork three months previously. But there it was, fully restored and sitting on her desk again. She also noted that many of her personal belongings were... off. There was no other way to describe it. Her clothing, painstakingly amassed and cared for over several years, lay in a heap on the floor. Her books were out of order, and a quite a few were missing their dust jackets. Puzzled, she ran a hand through her hair. It was short. She gasped in shock, as the last time she checked, her hair was mid-back length. Now it barely went past her ears.
It was at this point she realized that something very peculiar had happened. And when peculiar things happened, the shit started its roll down-hill. She prepared herself for a cock-up of giant proportions, and realized that on this ship, with her uncle as captain, it would be even bigger than giant. It'd be gargantuan. Enormous. Godzilla-sized.
Todhunter, who had never forgiven Hippolyta for the clock-cleaning she had given him, knocked on her door and informed her that the captain was calling an emergency meeting. All senior officers and all security officers were obliged to attend. Now.
Hippolyta followed the second officer up to the Drive Room, where everybody stood around looking very, very confused. Hippolyta noticed that Kristine Kochanski, Navigations officer, was not at her post. She should have been there, as she realized that she and Todhunter were the last to arrive.
Yes, something was definitely rotten in Denmark. Too bad that she was on the Red Dwarf.
After a long speech having something to do with wormholes and top secret information, the captain dismissed the officers, but called out, "Hippolyta, a word, if you don't mind."
Hippolyta returned to stand in front of her uncle's desk. She didn't even try to hide her contempt. She knew what was coming. "Yes, Captain Hollister?"
"Letty, dear, I've been going over some of your reports. I must say that I'm duly impressed."
"Thank you, Captain."
"However, your attitude has been, well... let's just say that you've stepped on a few toes in your tenure as Third Security Officer. I'm not disappointed, per say, more... disappointed."
She raised an eyebrow at him, and said nothing. He was such a smeghead.
He squirmed awkwardly at her cold silence. He had apparently expected some sort of response. An excuse, a denial, anything. But silence wasn't on his mental list of options. He bulled onward. "You see, Letty, there's a certain SOP in regards to being an officer. And while you certainly have been nothing but an island of competency in an ocean of doofuses, your demeanor is not commanding material. I think that perhaps you have been promoted too swiftly, and not had a chance to really understand what being an officer means. Now, I don't want you to think that I'm punishing you. In fact, I'm doing you a favor."
Hippolyta started to hear the words of her father coming out of the mouth of her uncle, and knew that, no matter what she did from this point on, she would never, ever command this ship.
"So I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to offer you the job of Parole Officer for some of our rehabilitated prisoners from Floor 13. It'll give you the opportunity to grow up, as it were. This way, you can keep your security clearance, and save face with your fellow officers. And you'll be able to help with a vital project that has been assigned to Red Dwarf and me. How does that sound to you, Letty?"
"I'll tell you how that sounds, Captain. I'll tell you that that if you had any hope of keeping things from cocking up any further, you just blew it. And then I'll give you the finger." She did so. "And then I'll walk away from you." She turned to walk from his office. She turned her head over her shoulder and said, "And my name is Hippolyta."
She was halfway down the hall when she heard him call after her, "Either take the job or go into stasis!"
She paused. "Sure. Why the smeg not?" And then she went to report to her new commanding officer, Ackerman.
It took two years for her hair to grow back. She spent that two years as a parole officer. The rest of her sort of... died inside. Her books, her things, the last connection to her family, meant nothing. Because she knew.
She knew exactly how far they were into space. It was an open secret. She had heard the rumours circulating, spent 15 minutes with Holly, and did a little math. The ship was 3 million years into deep space. And she would never, ever go home again.
No one spoke to her. They knew that she was persona non grata now. She hadn't had any friends before, but at least she had contacts and aquaintances. People who told her the scuttlebutt. Now... she only had the deranged ramblings of former prisoners to keep her company.
Then, the unthinkable happened. Rimmer, Arnold Judas, was up for parole, and she was assigned to be his P.O. She already hated him for making so many outrageous comments about Lister. And she had hated him even more for the cock up with the drive plate. (She correctly guessed that that had been what killed them all so many, many millenia ago...) So when he appeared in her office, looking so smug and babbling like a lunatic, she decided to have a bit of fun with him. It worked.
It worked too well.
She should have known that toying with him like that would cause him to like her. She knew enough about psychology to know that a screw up like Rimmer would be attracted to her for it. For some reason, she did it anyway.
So when she listened in on his poker game, and heard the way the conversation was going, she told Marone to contact Lister ASAP, and made her way down to Kochanski's quarters. She wanted to hear it from his mouth, not over a crappy communications channel.
And she did. Every single nasty syllable. She stood at the door, almost shocked senseless at the vehemency of his diatribe. Then, with a parting shot across his bow, she retreated, to gloat over her success. Let him be infatuated with her now! He'd never live it down. He'd never be able to look her in the face again, let alone entertain romantic notions.
But as she sat in her quarters, and it approached midnight...
She regretted it.
It wasn't that she liked him. God, no! How revolting. Rather, it was hearing him say that her name was Hippolyta.
He insisted on calling her by her right name.
Fuck. That was going to get her into a heap of trouble, right there.
What was missing? She was missing something... A smoke. She needed a cigarette. She retrieved the pack from her side pocket, rattling it around. There were still a few smokes in there. It was almost midnight, and she hadn't finished her pack. She was cutting back. She felt a dim surge of pride over that. She blinked repeatedly at the paperwork on her desk, holding her unlit smoke, thinking, If I finish this tonight, then I can skive off tomorrow... Tomorrow I'll be able to rest for a bit. Maybe get a beer... Of course, what would be the point... Nobody to share it with...
She was startled awake by the call on her door chiming. Her head was resting on a stack of paper, which transferred some of the ink onto her cheek. Her hair was tangled and matted, and she was wearing no makeup, but was wearing her ratty blue bathrobe. She glanced at her clock. It was just past 3:30. Smeg.
The door chimed again and she called out, "Just a second." She secured her bathrobe more fully, and opened to the door.
It was Rimmer.
Her first instinct was to close the door in his face. She didn't. Why she didn't was a question that she asked herself for years to come.
"May I come in?" He asked her this as if it was a common thing, a reformed prisoner popping in on his PO at three thirty in the morning.
"No."
"Can I talk to you?"
"It's three thirty in the morning." Like telling him the time was the answer to his question.
"I know."
"Good."
"So can I talk to you?"
"I don't know. Can you?" Oh, sweet mother of pearl. She was talking like Miss Prattchet. Like she was some idiotic grade school teacher.
"May I talk..."
"Fine. Start talking."
"I'm sorry."
She stood there for a moment, not believing her ears. Rimmer had just apologized to her? Not possible. He continued.
"I'm sorry about earlier. About this morning, when I insulted your outfit. It was a bit odd, but I shouldn't have said anything. I'm sorry I said all of those nasty things tonight. And I'm sorry I called you a bitch. You're not. I'm a total and complete loser, and you have every right to loathe me."
He turned away from her, and started to walk away.
"Rimmer...?"
Rimmer stopped, his back towards her, his shoulders scrunched up to his ears.
"Yes, Hippolyta?"
"It's ok. I accept your apology."
And she closed the door to her quarters, leaving Rimmer in the hall with a big, shit eating grin on his face.
"Yesssss!" He pumped his fist in the air and danced his way down the hall.