Chapter One: Some 3 Million Eight Hundred Years Later (Relative Time), in a very distant reality…

"Ace, there's thousands of those monsters out there. Thousands! And my Home Guard has already been through the wringer. We're a peaceful people, normally. We only have minimum defenses. What are we to do?"

"Fear not, Sultan," Ace replied over the comm. system, staring through his cockpit window at the dense cloud of saucers hovering over the blue-green planetoid. "If there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that you don't need numbers to win the day. In fact, in this case, the sheer size of that Simulant fleet out there is its own Achilles heel."

The Sultan's quaking voice filled with hope. "You mean, you have a plan?"

Ace flashed the Sultan's viewer image a confident smile. "Worry ye not, Sultan" he said. "I'll have your daughter home safe and sound before you know it, with plenty of time left for cake and presents. Computer," he called out as he cut communications with the palace.

"Yes, Ace?" the Wildfire computer responded in her sultry voice.

"I'm transporting over to the lead ship. I'll need you to set a trap while I rescue Princess Angela."

"What would you like me to do?"

"You know those Tranq'mutanian fire-bombs we've got stashed in the back, left over from that party in Dimension 11349082?"

The computer cottoned on immediately. "The asteroid field!"

"Pepper the field with a few of those babies, but make sure you stay within transport range. I'll let you in on Phase Two of the plan when I get back with Princess Angela."

"Ace—" the computer started, then seemed to think better of what she was going to say. "Take care," she finished softly.

"I always do, old girl," he said affectionately. "Smoke me a kipper. You know the rest."

With those parting words, the hero activated the teleport, his photons reforming in a sweaty, humid corridor at least thirty degrees too hot for human comfort.

"Thank goodness I'm a hologram," Ace muttered to himself, and glanced down at his wrist scanner/communicator/compass watch to get a lay of the land. Clusters of Simulants glowed a sickly blue in several of the branching rooms, but they didn't concern him. Only the little red dot up ahead, trapped in what seemed to be the main airlock.

With all the speed and stealth of a highly evolved cat, Ace dashed to the airlock with barely a sound and slapped his keypad decoder over the coded doorlock. Within seconds, the decoder had run through all possible permutations and hit upon the correct numbers. Ace pulled it away and stuffed it back into his pocket as the airlock doors rolled open with a heavy, metallic sigh.

Princess Angela sat inside, strapped to a metal chair, her pale face red and puffy from sobbing into her gag. Two Simulant guards towered over her, mocking her tears and threatening her with their guns. They turned when they heard the doors unlock, and were already firing when they opened.

Ace ducked and rolled under the barrage, unholstering his guns and firing a charged tag at each guard in a single, fluid move. As the Simulants stood jittering in a fizzing fury of electrical feedback, Ace used the knife he kept strapped to his boot to cut the princess free. Hoisting the young girl into his arms, he raced a sudden flood of Simulant soldiers, who'd no doubt been alerted by the noise, back up the corridor, locked onto his ship's position, and activated his transporter just in time to see a hail of Simulant bullets pass harmlessly through their fading forms.

The pair reappeared in the cramped, one-man cockpit of the Wildfire, the disoriented princess curled up in his lap.

"There, now, Princess," he said, supporting her with his arm as she sobbed into his shoulder. "Not the best way to spend your thirteenth birthday, perhaps, but no need to fret. You're with me now, and I'm going to take you home. It'll be as if your birthday celebrations were never interrupted."

The girl looked up at him through bleary blue eyes, and Ace was slapped with a disorienting jolt of déjà vu. This girl, the Princess Angela, she looked exactly like a girl he'd known at school. Jumping from dimension to dimension, Ace had become rather used to seeing familiar faces in strange settings, but this was something different.

Angela Parker had been a student at the girls' school counterpart of his own Io House. A few times a year, the two schools would embark on joint field trips to Earth or Mars or Titan, and once…one shining, magical trip…Angela had let him, Arnold "Bonehead" Rimmer, sit next to her on the green school shuttle. Both ways, to Earth then back to Io. They hadn't talked much, but she'd smiled at him whenever he'd dared to glance her way. They'd been real smiles, too. Genuine, without a hint of the malice or disgust he was used to seeing in his peers.

There had only been that one trip, he hadn't seen her again after that. Still, Angela Parker's golden smiles had warmed his daydreams for the remainder of his childhood, where he'd often cast her as the damsel in distress to be rescued by his heroic creation, Ace Rimmer.

Now, surreal though it was to contemplate, it seemed that childhood daydream had actually come true. After all, it was basic Multiverse 101 that every possibility, every choice, every dream was played out somewhere. Hard as it had been for him to accept at first, the Ace Rimmer legend he'd dreamed up as a boy was real. He was living it. And now, a real, living incarnation of the Princess Angela was cradled in his arms. Only, she was still a child, while he had grown up a long, long time ago. Even if she had been the same Angela he'd known, he could never expect her to recognize him as the shy boy from the shuttle trip to Earth.

"We're really going home?" the girl asked, drying her eyes on the sleeve of her torn and filthy party dress. "But…but what about…" she stared out the viewscreen at the fleet of Simulant saucers.

"Ah, yes. Phase Two," Ace said, shaking off the bittersweet memories of a lonely boy, long gone, and turning his concentration to the task at hand. "Computer!"

"Here, Ace. I scattered the fire-bombs as you asked."

"Excellent." Ace smiled. "Now comes the fun part."

The princess shifted on his lap so she could see the controls. "Are you going to blow up the Simulants?" she asked.

"That's up to them," Ace replied. "The trick is to get them angry enough to chase us blindly. Then, we manipulate the fire-bombs."

"How are you going to do that?" the princess asked.

Ace smiled at her. "Strategy, my dear princess. Always know your enemy. Computer, open a channel to the lead ship."

"Channel open, Ace," the computer replied.

"This is Ace Rimmer calling the Simulant leader," the hero said in his smooth, confident tone. "I have rescued the Princess Angela, and I warn you now, unless you leave this system, never to return, I shall personally see each and every one of you destroyed."

A crackle of static burst from the viewer, fading to the image of a gray-faced Simulant warrior scowling up from the screen. His expression was made all the fiercer by his pointed brown teeth and the red optic lens glaring out from the ragged hole where his left eye should have been.

"Ace Rimmer," he ground out with a voice like rusty gears. "I'd know that arrogance anywhere."

"It's not arrogance if I can pull off what I promise. And I promise, if you go near that planetoid again, I'll—"

"He'll blow you out of space, you metal-hearted monsters!" the princess shouted. "He's got a plan that will—mmMMmm!"

"Shh, that's enough, Princess," Ace hissed, his hand clamped over her mouth. "While I appreciate your enthusiasm, we don't want to give away the whole strategy, now do we?"

Princess Angela nodded and stopped struggling, but he needn't have worried. The moment the Simulant leader caught a glimpse of the princess, he shouted, "He has our prisoner! After him! All of you, after him now!"

"Heh, will you look at that. Good job, Princess. The entire Simulant fleet is on the move. Computer," he said. "To the asteroid field! Let's give those cyborg bastards a chase they won't soon forget."

"Yes!" the princess cheered, and wrapped her arms around his neck. The Rimmer in him stiffened in surprise, but Ace just chucked warmly and said, "I'm going to need both arms now if this is going to work. I know it's tight quarters, but if you could just scoot to the left a bit…"

"Yeah, of course," the girl said, and slid her small frame off his lap to crouch in the narrow space just behind his chair. "Ace, when you're ready, could I push the button?"

"Princess?"

"To blow up the Simulants! They wrecked my birthday party, destroyed my pool, wiped out my Dad's army, and nearly tossed me out an airlock! If they're going to die, I want them to know I pushed the button!"

"Princess, there isn't any button," Ace said. "The fire-bombs are activated by proximity—as soon as the Simulant ships get close enough, they'll go off all on their own. What I'm doing is programming the shape of the explosions."

"Shape?"

"Fire-bombs are essentially high-powered fireworks," Ace explained. "When they go off, they can take any shape you like."

"What shape are you programming, then?" she asked eagerly. "Space stingrays? Fire-breathing toads?"

As the Wildfire's auto pilot cleared the far side of the asteroid field, Ace typed in the last of his instructions and hit 'enter'. Sitting back in his chair, he said, "Now, we watch the show."

The Simulant fleet had spread out as it entered the field, clearly aiming to surround the Wildfire. As the rear guard passed the first few rocks, the front guard encountered a startling surprise. A flaming orange battleship, twice the size of a Simulant saucer, flared up before them. Another ship appeared toward the middle, then another, then another, hemming the Simulants into a dangerously tight cluster. As the insubstantial battleships began to fizz and sputter deadly sparks and cinders, the Simulants tried to mount an attack, only to see their torpedoes and lasers pass through the ships and hit the Simulant saucers on the other side. Frustrated, several tried to ram the ships, and ended up as craters on the craggy face of an asteroid. Within minutes, the pointless assault had reduced most of the fleet to flaming debris. Then, as a glorious finale, the fiery battleships zipped toward the center of the remaining fleet, leaving glimmering trails behind them as they collided in a spectacular light show of reds and greens, oranges and yellows and blues and purples. The Simulants scattered, only to meet up with giant rocks and spinning chunks of wrecked saucers. For a moment, just before the lead ship was smashed into asteroid pizza, the viewer in Ace's cockpit sputtered with static. Then, space was silent once more.

"Well, Princess?" Ace asked as he set them on a course back to her homeworld. "What did you think?"

"Wow," she breathed, her eyes wide and her jaw slack. "And you didn't have to fire a shot! You just basically set up the fireworks and let the Simulants destroy themselves!"

"The Wildfire isn't a war ship, Princess," Ace said. "But Simulants only think in terms of war, of offense and defense. If they feel their back's up against a wall, they have to fight. Under normal circumstances, those fireworks would barely have registered against the Simulants' defensive shields. But throw in an asteroid field and an apparent advance from an unidentified alien battle fleet, and poof! Instant recipe for a Simulant barbeque."

"You are so clever," the princess sighed, climbing back onto his lap. "When I grow up, I want to be just like you!"

Rimmer blinked. "What, really?" He cleared his throat, realizing she meant Ace. "Yes, well, first we need to get you back to your dad. Can't have much of a birthday party without the birthday girl, now can you?"

"Will you come to my party, Ace?" she asked. "Please? I want all my friends to meet you, and then we can tell them about the Simulants and the fireworks and—"

"Princess Angela," Ace said kindly, "I thank you for your invitation. But, you see, now you're safe and the Simulants are gone, my work here is done. There are a billion other realities out there. A billion other people who need my help. And I have to go to them. Do you understand, Princess?"

The princess nodded and rested her head against his shoulder. "But don't you ever get a break?" she asked.

"Can't afford it," he said. "When you have a reputation like mine, there's always someone out there to challenge it. Every time you think you can relax, trouble always has a way of finding you. That's why I can't stay in any one place too long. Instead of being a protector, I'd end up drawing danger to the people I care about. Ah—here we are: the royal palace. I'll just take her down on that cricket pitch, and then we'll have to say good bye."

"It isn't fair, Ace," the princess said as he initiated a manual landing sequence. "Someone as good as you should be happy. But you're not, are you." She sighed and snuggled even closer into his arms. "I think you must be the loneliest man in the galaxy."

"Princess…"

"I could come with you," she said, sitting up to look him in the eye. "I could be your daughter, and we could roam the multiverse together, and then you wouldn't have to be lonely, and I—"

"Princess, your father is outside," Ace said gently, pushing the button to raise the roof of the cockpit. "He's waiting for you."

The girl's expression flickered, caught between her fantasy and encroaching reality. For a moment, Ace felt like a boy again, watching Angela Parker join her parents at the far side of the shuttle lot at the end of the trip. Even then, he'd known he'd never see her smile again.

Leaning forward, he placed a soft kiss on the princess's forehead, then helped her down from the cockpit and into her father's waiting arms.

"Oh, Angela, my darling girl!" the Sultan sobbed as he hugged her close. "Oh, thank the heavens you're safe! Ace— Ace Rimmer, how can I ever repay you. You've saved our world, and restored my kingdom's greatest treasure."

"Happy to do it, your Eminence," Ace replied from the cockpit. "You have quite a girl, there. Perceptive, quick witted…" He smiled. "I wish you all the best."

The Sultan's eyes widened. "You're not leaving, Ace? Not so soon? I've organized a parade and a banquet—"

"Sounds like a marvelous way to celebrate your daughter's birthday. Set off a few fireworks for me, yeah?"

Princess Angela smiled at that, as he'd hoped she would. With that image locked in his memory, Ace lowered the cockpit's roof and snapped the Sultan and his daughter a sharp salute, lifting off to their shouts of "Good-bye, Ace! Thank you!"

As the Wildfire cleared the planetoid's atmosphere, Princess Angela sighed, and her smile turned bittersweet. "What a guy."

To Be Continued...

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