Red Dwarf characters owned by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor and Blackadder characters by Richard Grant and Ben Elton.
With thanks to Cmar for beta reading this for me!
Also thanks to Sunrise over the tango factory, Cazflibs, Cmar, Radar-fox and Cyborg-Garfield for the reviews so far! All very much appreciated! All reviews welcome
Chapter Six – The Red Adder
Blackadder was currently in a bit of a quandary. He wasn't too sure whether to hit Lister and the Cat with his fist or let his foot do the hard work. In the end he decided just to subject them both to a withering look.
"You did what?" he asked again. He had been listening the first time to their inane witterings but his brain had refused to believe such warblings.
Lister sucked on his lip and started again. "We kinda gave a woman a beard, got the Gelf deck evacuated and couldn't go after Baldrick because if we did she would kill us."
"She would kill you?"
"Yep."
"She had the same kinda look you've got now," said the Cat, pointing at Blackadder's face - which had a look that wouldn't just curdle milk, it would give it legs and send it back to the cow it came from.
"Brilliant, just brilliant!" said Blackadder. "We've only got one dunderhead left to send in." He looked over his shoulder. "Kryten!" he shouted. "Where's that robotic moron gone?"
Kryten's face appeared from the cockpit door. "Hello sir, I'm just cleaning all that nasty gunky oil out of the engine."
"The oil the engine needs to run?"
"I'm no engineer, sir, but I do recognise a mess when I see one."
"Kryten, take off that pink frilly hat and put the duster down, you have a chance to save humanity!" He gave his best friendliest smile; well, he was showing his teeth anyway.
He turned to the console and expertly pressed a few buttons. The ship winked out of existence in exactly the sort of way that shows they had spent all the special effects budget on bacon sandwiches and a pickled egg the evening before.
The Starbug nestled close to the Space Station. Now if this story could afford one of those expensive cameras that swoops and soars over the expensive model of a space station, and not one of those that gets caught on the string and accidentally zooms in on the chap gluing bits of silver painted egg carton to the outside, you would see several identical Starbugs next to the space station on different sides. The camera zooms in through the window of one of the Starbugs to see a rare sight.
"Right, Kryters," said Blackadder, a friendly arm round his shoulders. For Blackadder a friendly arm was one that wasn't hitting you. You've got more chance of seeing Elvis knock on your door at 2 am with the winning lottery ticket than seeing this again, so concentrate. "All you have to do is avoid Lister, the Cat and Rimmer and stop the past Baldrick from releasing those Gelfs. Remember, if you bump into the past selves of Rimmer, Lister or the Cat there is a chance the universe could implode."
"Say hi to Neville if you see him," said Baldrick.
"Which one's Neville, sir?"
"He's the Gelf with the broken tooth." He smiled and shook his head in happy memories. "He broke it when he was chewing that nuclear missile and it blew up in his mouth. Just because he ate something he shouldn't have."
"What was that?"
"I think it was the Space Station Minerva and three battalions of Space Marines. The little tyke! They annoyed him by breathing. I mean he's only human! Well, not really human, more a huge armour-plated indestructible Gelf, but close enough."
"Off you toddle," said Blackadder, miming a walking motion with one hand.
The door hissed open and Kryten waddled down the walkway to the space station. His anxiety chip was overheating and giving him strange error messages.
"5346540 – Unknown error. This error is unknown and is caused by something that is unknown and is causing unknown problems. Troubleshooting – see ref 544064.5466a."
He quickly flipped through his internal troubleshooting charts.
"544064.5466a – Recommended action. Unknown. If you find the solution to this problem please e-mail the helpdesk so we can help you in future."
He shut it down and the overheating anxiety chip cooled down, but that caused his worry chip to start sending lots of strange messages to his CPU. He tried to ignore them and carried on waddling down the corridor.
What was he doing here?
He was a cleaning droid! He wasn't one of those hero droids he watched on the ship's vid when the others had gone to sleep and he had finished his cleaning duties. Not like Arnold Schwargnut&bolt4564. He was forever fighting evil IT departments who wanted to dismantle him and upgrade him with the latest model. He would know what to do! Normally after he had bravely lost his arm and had spent half the film screwing it back in.
An officer walked past; he had a small moustache and looked as if he had some ferret in his ancestry. "You! What are you doing?"
He had to keep walking. He had to save the Earth, but his programming got the better of him.
I can't tell him the truth? But I can't lie!
Yes, you can! You've done it before, you can do it again!
"I'm just off to marzipan to count my meringues."
The officer shot him a strange look. "Are your audio circuits malfunctioning?"
One lie was too much. His honesty chip was turning blue with heat. "No sir."
"Good. Someone has spilt red wine in the officers' mess. Clear it up, please. Quick as you can."
"Certainly, sir." He stood still.
The officer was staring at him curiously. "Well?"
"Where is it, please sir?"
"Deck 45. Room 54. Move. We might be showing Admiral Rimmer around shortly and we cannot have mess. I'll show you where it is; follow me."
Kryten was in a quandary. He had to save the Earth! But here he was being given an order.
It was only red wine.
It wouldn't take long.
He bustled happily along the corridor, trailing behind the officer. This was more his kind of job! He wasn't like Schwargnut&bolt4564, he wasn't a hero.
Cleaning though!
That was him alright. He quickly accessed his data files. Red wine stains.
"Red wine stains – First of all ascertain it is red wine by tasting it. It is recommended that you drink several bottles of red wine to make sure. After this you won't worry about the red wine stain or even be able to see it."
If Kryten had a heart it would have sunk. Lister had got hold of his files one night when he was in down time, and as he said it, "changed 'em since it's a giggle, isn't it, and you shouldn't be so tied to the system."
He cursed in machine code (roughly translated:
10 Print "Git!"
20 GoTo 10. )
He had first noticed it last week when Rimmer had asked him why he was trying to clean the fridge with Chicken Vindaloo.
Damn his programming!
Kryten followed the officer. "Bit of luck I found you actually. We were getting in a fearful tis about this."
Kryten's anxiety chip started to cool down. Even without instructions it should be easy enough to clean up a wine stain. It wouldn't take long, would it?
The door hissed open in front of them and there was Baldrick, the past one, the one he had to stop rescuing the Gelfs! He was industriously pouring various liquids on the stain to make it go.
"What the devil are you doing?" asked the officer.
"Well, Captain Darling, Commander the Lord Blackadder asked me to get rid of this wine stain. I then tried to get rid of the stain by pouring on white wine. That seemed to make it worse so I added ketchup to stain the whole carpet the same colour, then added a beef burger because you always have ketchup with that. Then onion rings since I…"
"Shut up! Shut up!"
Baldrick stopped talking. The only sound was the gloop of a bottle of mayo that was slowly emptying onto the carpet. Some people would pay a fortune for a carpet like that, it is the kind of thing that should be hanging up in the Tate gallery above a sign saying something like 'man's struggle with his humanity' or more realistically 'I don't understand modern art, this belongs in a skip'.
"We might be showing Admiral Rimmer this place soon, and it needs to be clean and tidy!" Captain Darling was wringing his hands together nervously. "Any ideas?"
"We could serve him the carpet as a snack?" said Baldrick. "I even added bacon, it's probably quite tasty."
This it had to be said was true. Well, it had to be true; it was currently being enjoyed by several thousand cockroaches, and we all know what finicky eaters they are.
Captain Darling paled and looked at his feet which were now a mass of insects. "Okay, if you two can clean up this mess, I'll just be off."
Kryten looked at Baldrick. Baldrick looked at Kryten.
"What we need is something to eat this carpet and these cockroaches," said Baldrick. "And quickly."
"I know," said Kryten, his CPU whirring on overtime. "Gelfs! They'll eat anything!"
Baldrick's small mousy face lit up at this. "Genius! I know just where there are some as well! You stay here; I'll go and get them! That was a great idea of yours, I would never have thought of it on my own!" Baldrick scampered to the door and opened it.
Little warning bells starting ringing in Kryten's CPU. These quickly realised they weren't being paid attention to, so they changed to klaxons. Now before you start reaching for your dictionary a klaxon is a very loud siren, and not one of those aliens that always ask Captain Kirk, "So show me how humans kiss."
Kryten stood there as if rooted to the spot. He tried to follow Baldrick and then realised he was stuck to the sticky food-covered carpet and his feet were a mass of cockroaches. This is not a nice image, so try and think of something nice like chocolate ice cream or Brighton winning the FA cup.
He had to stop Baldrick releasing those Gelfs!
With a strain of effort, he unstuck his feet from the carpet and plodded heavily towards the door. Walking on this carpet was like walking in a muddy field. Every step gives you an extra layer. By the time Kryten reached the door his head was scraping the ceiling.
The door hissed open and he staggered out. He shook the layers of food covered carpet off each foot, showering several passing officers with layers of carpet, food and insects.
Ignoring the cries of alarm behind him, he waddled furiously down the corridor towards where Baldrick had gone. The Kryten Series 4000 mechanoid is a marvel of technology, but they had only designed him to be able to outrun lime scale.
He needed speed!
He waddled past an automatic vacuum cleaner. Like one of those you see dispersing rubbish in town centres. They basically move it to the areas that voted against the council that are in.
He clambered on and pressed the throttle. It would be nice to say something like: the powerful V8 engines rocketed the vacuum cleaner to speeds unheard of in human imagination, and throw in a few words like vortex and blur, but it would be a lie. It pottered along at the kind of speed that would give a dead snail time to get out of the way.
Still, it was faster than he normally went.
Where had Baldrick gone! Who would have thought that the little man who looked like he had been out-evolved by a squashed apricot could run so fast?
With one robotic tongue sticking out the side of his mouth (this enables concentration and stops people asking you stupid questions since they are wondering why you are doing it) he headed towards the lift. But not fast enough.
Klaxons erupted around the space station as the Gelfs were given their freedom by Baldrick.