Chapter Nineteen

"March, you twonks! I said: MARCH! That means move your smeggin' legs!" the stocky sergeant roared, giving Lister's back a sharp prod with his blaster rifle. "Hut-two, hut-two, hut-two, hut-two…!"

"Hey, watch where you stick that thing," Lister snarked, obstinately slowing his pace as he and his companions were roughly quick-marched across the dais, through an elaborate set of French windows, into a rather striking octagonal ballroom with mirrored walls. He turned to face the little clot of soldiers Admiral Rimmer had dispatched to corral the group for questioning, jogging backwards a few steps as he gestured toward his electronic shackles with his chin.

"Go easy, will ya?" he said. "It's not like we can do much escapin' with these things jabbin' us with electric jolts any time we try to raise our arms or use our hands."

The sergeant curled his lip.

"You lot are to stay right here in this room," he snarled. "An' don't you twonks try any funny business. This room's under video surveillance, and my people will be stationed outside every door and window. One false move, and your butts are—"

"Toast, yeah?" Lister finished for him.

The sergeant glared.

"I knew it!" Lister crowed, a cheeky smile spreading across his face. "It's always the same with you shouty pushy types. Is it, like, some class you guys take? How to spout corny cliches at your captives?"

"Lister," Kochanski admonished.

The sergeant glared again and gestured for his people to follow him out of the room.

"You've been warned," he fired as a parting shot before slamming the doors behind him and taking up a stiff, guarding position on the dais just outside.

"Oooh…!" Lister pretended to shudder.

Kochanski rolled her eyes.

"So, what now?" she asked, turning to face the rest of the group. "Does anyone have a plan? Or do we stand here like a bunch of lemons and wait for the authorities to come and cart us away as terrorists?"

All eyes turned to Ace except the Cat's, which seemed permanently glued to his own preening reflection in the ballroom's mirrored walls.

"No one will be carting anybody anywhere," Rimmer told them. "Not yet, anyway. Not until Mother dearest has dropped in to have her say."

Lister snorted.

"You mean all that red-faced screamin' when she ordered those soldiers to march us in here wasn't her havin' her say?"

Rimmer smirked, just slightly, then turned away to face the windows, his expression distant and distracted.

There was something going on inside him, something he couldn't quite name. He'd been feeling odd since confronting his mother on the dais, but his lightbee's diagnostics insisted it wasn't a result of the electronic overload. The little device was working perfectly, his personality program showed no anomalies.

But then, where were his doubts, the familiar anxieties that kept him focused - that monitored and judged his every move and thought? Where was his self-hating rage, his well-worn resentment and pain?

Why didn't he feel afraid?

"They were aiming at me," Frank slurred, glumly licking the slobber from his oversized teeth.

"I'm sorry, sir, I didn't quite catch that," Kryten said, shuffling a little closer to the morose mutant.

"My brothers," Frank said. "My own brothers… They bought Metzeler's story, hook, line and trawler, and then they tried to shoot me. Not that I really blame them. If our places were reversed, I'd probably have tried to shoot them."

Lister shared a look with Kochanski.

Frank clenched his shackled fists.

"I can't believe that this is happening to me!" he roared. "When I woke up this morning, I was a man. An officer with his whole career ahead of him! Now, my mother doesn't know me, my brothers believe I'm some mutant terrorist. I'd probably be lying dead right now if 'Ace,' here, hadn't snagged the laser bolt that should have been mine..."

"You're welcome," Rimmer said.

"That wasn't a thank you," Frank retorted bitterly. "You think I want to live my life like this - looking like a reject from the Planet of the Apes, after a nuclear blast!" He snorted in disgust. "Right. Thanks but no thanks, 'little brother'."

Rimmer quirked an eyebrow, but didn't respond. He simply regarded his brother, eyes dark and expression thoughtful.

Lister looked at him curiously, not quite sure what to make of this strange attitude. He stepped closer but, before he could say anything, Kryten spoke up.

"Mr. Frank, sir," the mechanoid said, "if you would allow me to indulge my curiosity chip for a moment…"

"What do you want to know?" the mutant muttered.

"Well, sir, by all accounts, before your…shall we say…your 'transformation,' you were a successful, highly respected, upwardly mobile officer with a lovely wife and two charming children. My question, therefore, is as follows: What happened? What could possibly have convinced a man like you submit to a course of experimental injections with the potential to alter your genetic make-up? Were you kept ignorant of the possible side effects, like the unfortunate miners we've heard about, or were you just plain stupid?"

Frank let out an odd, strangled little chuckle and turned his gaze to the high, domed ceiling, skillfully frescoed with planetarium-worthy images of the solar system as seen from Jupiter.

"He doesn't understand…" he rumbled, low in his throat. "I doubt any of you do…that any of you could…"

"It was a fast-track to command," Rimmer stated flatly. "A way to reach those captain's bars."

"Yes…"

The mutant spoke hoarsely, a rising swell of bitterness threatening to overwhelm him.

"So, you know. Of course, you would know…"

Frank closed his eyes and shuddered, a terrible grimace twisting his already warped features.

"I would have done anything for that promotion," he admitted, the confession tearing from him like shrapnel being ripped from an open wound. "All my life, I've been caught in the middle. Always having to prove myself, to find ways to force Mother and Father to notice my achievements… John made captain at twenty-five. Howard - seventeen year old Howard - is already a junior grade lieutenant! But me…"

Lister frowned.

"Seventeen?" He glanced at Rimmer. "But, didn't you say that, in this time period, you were seventeen? How can you and your brother both be the same age?"

"Not now, Lister," Rimmer said, but Lister kept right on the same train of thought.

"Unless you were twins... But, you never told me you had a twin—"

"It's not like that," Rimmer snapped. "Not exactly. But, now is not the time for this."

He gestured to Frank, and Lister raised his hands and backed away.

"Right, right. Later, then."

Rimmer sighed through his teeth, but Frank was too involved in his own pain to take much notice of their brief exchange. He sniffled hard and swallowed, his nose running into his matted fur.

"Mother has never approved of anything I've done," he croaked. "Every choice I've made has seemed to backfire. I had the wrong wife, the wrong children… There I was, hurtling towards thirty, and my career was at a total standstill. Then Mother bought herself that position in the admiralty and left me languishing in some mid-level office down in Special Services, and I thought I was finished for sure. Dreary mundanity was to be my fate, and I had to learn to live with it.

"Then, this Project came up… And, Mother came to me. She didn't turn to Howard or John. She chose me, and I knew… I knew she'd offered it to me as chance to prove myself. To step out from behind John's shadow. To stand with the winners, and finally claim my place at the Captains' Table.

"That's why I had to accept," he finished quietly. "No matter the cost…"

"Extraordinary," Kryten commented, rather clinically.

Kochanski shook her head rather pityingly.

Lister cringed back with a wince.

"Yeesh…" He grimaced. "God, Rimmer, he sounds just like you!"

Rimmer snorted, regarding his brother with the slightest smirk on his otherwise somber face.

"So he does."

Rimmer set his jaw and moved toward the French windows, peering out at the activity on the dais. A trio of service droids were efficiently clearing sticky cake lumps from the polished marble. Just beyond, he could hear his mother's distant, muffled tones, employing her calmest, most patronizing voice to smooth a few loads of hastily sculpted BS over the reporters and anxious guests.

He ran his eyes over the crowd until, out by the garden hedge, well behind the hovering mikes and camera droids, he spotted Janine's pale face.

Her eyes were wide with worry, her clasped hands pressed to her mouth, her two children dashing around and under the abandoned tables and chairs like a pair of wild raccoons tussling over an apple.

Frank followed his gaze, shuffling slowly forward as if drawn by some invisible magnetic force.

Rimmer glanced at him, then back to Janine, noting that although there was no way she could actually see Frank from where she was standing - let alone recognize him - her gaze was fixed in his direction…and her husband's eyes were locked on hers.

Ace's thin lips turned softly upwards and he lifted his chin in a slight nod.

"It all must seem pretty hollow about now," he commented, keeping his gaze on Frank's family. "The promises of promotion, of positions of command and respect. There's something missing, isn't there. Some key ingredient you can only truly recognize when its gone. I know..."

He lowered his eyes, his lips tightening against the pang of bittersweet memories.

"There was a ship once," he said. "The Enlightenment. It seemed a paradise to me. Everything I had ever dreamed and more was there waiting if only I could find a way to secure a place on that ship. I would have done anything, risked anything, to become a part of that crew. And, in the end, I did just that. I won the Enlightenment but, in the process, I lost my Nirvana. Being an officer there meant nothing to me after that."

Lister regarded him with deep curiosity.

"Rimmer...?"

"What the hell are you blathering about," Frank snarled.

Rimmer straightened, his prominent Adam's apple bobbing slightly as he turned to face down his brother.

"Our family is broken, Frank," he said. "You know it as well as I do. Here, in this dome, we were taught to value authority and power above all things. Climbing the ziggurat of command was the only achievement worth achieving. It was the sole definition of a successful career - a worthwhile life. Selfish machinations, blackmail, backstabbing betrayals, these were framed as basic methods to get ahead, to force your way to the next step, the next rung of the ladder. Any other people you met along the way were to be viewed either as tools or as obstacles to ram out of your path. Why? Because, somehow, we were innately better, more deserving, more privileged than the rest of the sad, sorry losers out there. That's why, when things went wrong, it could never be a result of our faults, our failings, our poor decisions. No, the blame had to lie somewhere else. With fate. With a conspiracy. With someone we could scapegoat. A colleague, perhaps, or a friend."

Rimmer frowned.

"Your wife."

Frank snarled, and Rimmer knew he'd struck a tender nerve.

"This is what we were told to think," he said. "It's what I always believed."

He fixed Frank's bitter, angry eyes with his firm, direct gaze.

"I learned that I was wrong," he said. "There is more to winning than ruthless, self-centered ambition. And, I think, Frank…you're standing at the cusp of learning that too."

To Be Continued…

References include - Red Dwarf - Holoship.

Until next time, thanks so much for reading! Please Review! :D