Chapter Three

The jump ended in a sickening lurch and Rimmer straightened at once, scanning the space around the ship for any sign of life. A relieved smile twisted his lips as his eyes fell on a small, green craft chugging doggedly through the star-studded blackness ahead.

"Well, Computer we made it. My home dimension," he said. "And, unlike two previous Aces I could mention, I got us here without all the near-collision dramatics." His expression changed as he looked back at the craft outside, the smugness fading to be replaced by something more pensive. "Looks like I'm heading back to Starbug after all."

"You really believe there's something there that can help me?" the computer asked weakly.

"I'm counting on it," Rimmer said. "Costume and silly voice be damned; without you, Computer, there is no Ace Rimmer."

"Please hurry, Arnie. I don't know how much longer…" Her voice ended in a sort of hiccup.

"Don't worry, Computer, I've switched the controls entirely to manual," he said gently. "Why don't you offline for a bit, save your runtime? I'll contact the 'Bug and purge this virus quicker than a bulimic cheetah at a Roman banquet."

"I know I can count on you, Arnie," she whispered.

A moment later, all power on the ship went out, save for communications and minimal thrusters. Holograms didn't need life support, and Rimmer had long ago upgraded his hardlight drive to be both self-sustaining and self-charging, so the hologram simulator was offline too.

Rimmer tapped his finger against the comm. button, but before he could press it, a fist of trepidation grabbed hold of his abdominals and squeezed. It had been five years since he'd last seen Lister, Kryten, and the Cat. Five years since his old bunkmate had snared him into assuming the persona of his dying predecessor.

What would they think of him? Would they even know it was him? He didn't think he could handle playing the role in front of his old crew—particularly not in front of Lister, who knew the truth. It had felt strange then, and it would be even more awkward now.

But no, Lister had probably told them. He couldn't have kept a story like that buried under his leather deerstalker for five years. The real worry was, would they view his stint as Ace in the same light he, himself did, jeering at the inept fool beneath the wig and costume? Would they welcome him home? Or had they been all too glad to see the back of him?

"You're wasting time, you fetid smegbrain," he muttered to himself. "What does it matter what those morons think of you? The Wildfire is dying. Just push the smegging button and be done with it!"

His finger sank down, the button clicked, and the viewscreen fizzed to sudden life. It was only then that he remembered he wasn't wearing Ace's wig.

"Smeg!" he hissed under his breath. But it was too late to search the cockpit. Starbug had already responded to his hail.

"Ri—Rimmer? Oh my God, Rimmer, is that you?"

"'Fraid so, Listy," he said, and was surprised by a sudden powerful inclination to break into a broad smile. It wasn't that he was happy to see the little gerbil, he told himself. It was just, there was something oddly reassuring in knowing that this was the Lister from his universe, the one he'd served with before he'd died, and not some alternate from a different timeline.

"But—but what are you doin' here, man?" Lister asked in his Liverpool drawl. "I thought you were off bein' Ace!"

"I am! That is…" Enough of this, Rimmer thought to himself. Time to cut to the chase. "Look, Lister, I need your help. I had a bit of a scrape with a Simulant battle fleet a few dimensions back, and it looks like the Wildfire's contracted a version of the Armageddon Virus. Does Kryten still have that Dove Program saved?"

"Hold on, I'll ask him," Lister said. "He's just in the back, doin' the ironin'. Meanwhile, you're welcome to dock here, on Starbug. I'm sure the others'll be glad to see ya."

Rimmer couldn't stop himself from asking, "Glad to see 'me'? Or Ace?"

Lister averted his eyes. Rimmer's gut gave a sinking lurch.

"I don't believe it," Rimmer said. "You didn't tell them, did you. They still think I'm dead, don't they? And now I suppose you expect me to put on that ridiculous wig and prance around pretending to be that pompous goit?"

"But I thought you were that pompous goit! I mean—" Lister's expression narrowed. "You did do it, didn't you? You did become Ace?"

"Of course I did, you feckless gimboid. But that doesn't mean I want to have to play him all the time. I thought, at least in my own reality, I could drop the act for a few hours."

Lister seemed to chew on that. "Yeah," he said. "OK, I'll tell them you're coming. And, uh, Rimmer…"

"What?"

"It's, uh…" He cleared his throat. "It's good to see you, man."

Rimmer swallowed, an unexpected lump lodging just above his Adam's apple. "Uh…yeah," he coughed. "Yeah. I'll just…" He gestured at the controls.

"Right," Lister said. "See you in a tick, then."

Lister's image faded and Rimmer let out a long breath. So, Kryten and the Cat still thought he was his predecessor. He could just imagine their faces when Lister told them the truth: the shock, the denial, the snide remarks at his expense. They probably wouldn't believe a word of his adventures. Gits.

Well, he'd show them. He may not 'be' Ace, but he had been out in the multiverse for five years doing Ace's job. He wasn't the same self-defeating, petty-minded wreck of a man he'd been before. He'd helped people, saved lives, toppled dictators.

His anxiety trickled to the background as his ego began to inflate. This was his chance to prove how far he'd come, not as Ace, but as himself; to finally win the respect of his three closest acquaintances. He'd left them Arnold Rimmer, Second Technician Nobody. He'd return Arnold Rimmer, Second Technician Somebody.

Looking down at his shiny silver flight suit, he made a face and fished his light bee remote from his pocket. After a momentary debate, he deftly swapped Ace's flame retardant tin foil space jacket and trousers for an outfit he'd always longed to try, but which the Wildfire computer had repeatedly told him wouldn't fit the legend's flashy, futuristic space-hero image: the classic leather jacket, beige scarf, tan trousers, and high black boots of a 23rd Century Space Corps flying ace. It was a perfect match for the garb young Rimmer used to envy his eldest brother, John, on his rare visits home from the Space Corps testing base on Mars; the very uniform, in fact, that had inspired his boyhood fantasies about the adventures of Ace Rimmer to begin with. Peering at the darkened viewer screen, he watched his reflection's lips turn up in a satisfied smile. This was his Ace. This was the man he'd always dreamed he'd become.

Quickly smoothing his short, neatly parted curls—which had gotten a little flattened by Ace's wig—Rimmer linked with Starbug's automatic docking system and eased the Wildfire to a gentle landing, ready to greet his old crew.

The Cat, Kryten, and Lister rushed in the moment the landing bay repressurized, just in time to meet Rimmer's grin as he jumped down from the cockpit, his boots hitting the floor's metal grating with a solid clang.

Kryten stopped short, his expression shifting from neutral to reverse. "Mr. Ace, sir...?"

"Hey, Ace buddy!" the Cat cried happily, his pointed incisors gleaming in the artificial light. Then, his features collided in confusion, jolting his nose into a wrinkle of disappointment. "Wait, what happened to your hair? And your flashy suit! You used to look so dangerous, man! Now, you look like old toilet brush head, only dressed up in some dull, old fashioned uniform!"

Cat's words hit Rimmer's pride like a sock to the gut with brass knuckles. Rimmer stared at them both, speechless, then shot Lister a murderous look.

"I thought you said you'd explain things to them!"

"I tried, man," Lister protested, revealing a fresh lager stain on the graying t-shirt he wore under his heavily patched black jacket. "But as soon as I said 'Ace,' they both came runnin' so fast, I didn't get a chance to finish. Guess you can't blame 'em if they're jus' a little disappointed."

"A little disappointed...?" Rimmer squidged up his face like a fist, his teeth pressed together so hard it was amazing they didn't crack. This wasn't what he'd imagined. It's what he should have expected, knowing the cruel, shallow, heartless creatures they all were, but he'd dreamed of his homecoming so many times over the years—of the admiration, the respect, the eagerness to hear of his adventures—and it wasn't supposed to be like this. His return wasn't supposed to be an anticlimax.

"No, right," he said, his facial muscles relaxing but his voice still tight. "Of course you can't. Who wouldn't race to bask in the presence of that over-inflated windbag. I'm sure if you had explained to them that it was only me, the only way I'd have caught a glimpse of any of you would have been to run a scan for life forms and track you down myself."

"Wait, I'm confused," said the Cat. "Why is Ace talking like Goal Post Head?"

"Perhaps, Monsieur Chat," Rimmer snapped, "it's because I am 'Goal Post Head.' Yes, that's right, Kryten, and you can push your optic sensors back into your rubber-tipped head. Like it or lump it, your old hologrammatic crewmate is alive and well and, more than that, I'm a success. In fact, I wouldn't be here now, except the old dimension hopper's come down with a bit of a bug. So, if Kryten could just hand over the code for the Dove Program antidote to the Armageddon Virus, I'll be on my way and out of your hair for good."

Lister blinked. "You mean, you're not stayin'?"

"Why? Should I?" Rimmer retorted archly.

Lister seemed to sink into his jacket. "It's just, I thought…"

Rimmer deflated a little. The Cat's reaction to his uniform had completely shattered his confidence, bringing all his snarky old defenses to the fore, but Lister's manner took him rather off guard. Before he could say anything, Kryten snapped out of stare-mode.

"Oh my goodness, sir, is it true? Are you really Mr. Rimmer?"

"Yes, of course I'm me, Kryten," Rimmer said. "I took over from Ace five years ago. That was his charred lightbee you lot shot off into space, not mine."

"Wait, five years?" Lister said. "Did you say you've been gone, bein' Ace, for five years?"

Rimmer shrugged. "Well, three of those were training, but on the whole, yes. Why? What's it matter?"

Lister, Kryten, and the Cat shared a long look.

"Well, sir, you only left Starbug five months ago."

"Yeah, buddy," the Cat added. "Your scent hasn't even completely gone from your seat in the cockpit. Every time I walk by, I get a blast of hard-light hologram right in the olfactory glands. It's like a cross between the microwave and the structural integrity field."

Rimmer stared, rather disconcerted by Cat's description of his scent. Although he was quite aware he was, essentially, an electronic life form, he'd never stopped thinking of himself as a human being.

"Yes, well, that's only natural," he said, covering up his discomfort. "Time moves at different rates in different dimensions. I've been gone for five years, relative time."

"You mean, you've been off visiting your relatives?" the Cat asked in confusion.

Rimmer rolled his eyes. "No, tuna brain. Relative time. Eigenzeit. The individual perception of time that can vary according to speed and perspective and which dimension you're in. Einstein explained it in his theory of relativity."

Lister stepped back. "Wait, are you telling me you understand the theory of relativity?"

"Don't look too shocked, will you," Rimmer said coldly. "I'm not like an expert or anything. But anyone who hops through space and time for a living should be familiar with at least the basic concepts. Now, Kryten, I'm sorry to whinge on about this, but I really do need that code. I got the Wildfire computer to offline, but she doesn't have long. If she succumbs to that virus, I'll be stuck here. For good."

"We wouldn't want that," Lister said, and Rimmer was surprised to hear the bitter sarcasm in his voice.

"What's with you?" he asked. "I thought you wanted me to leave here and be Ace. You were the one who goaded me into it all those years ago. If you hadn't—" He trailed off, not sure he wanted to admit his mixed feelings in front of the Cat and Kryten. "Oh, never mind. Kryten, do you have the code?"

"I do, sir, but—"

"Then come on up to the cockpit with me. I'll show you where everything is."

To Be Continued...

Thanks so much for the feedback! I'm really glad you're enjoying this story. I'm having a lot of fun fixing it up and plotting out the end...which is still a long way away. I know it's been sort of a slow start, but there'll be some action coming up as the real plot gets going and hopefully a few surprises, and some time travel as well. Thanks for reading, and for reviewing, I hope you'll stay tuned for next time!