Chapter Twenty-Two

"Lister! Pick up the pace!" Kochanski urged, calling over her shoulder in a loud whisper. "Those GELFs set a ten-minute time limit, and four are gone already!"

Lister wheezed, huffing and gasping like an asthmatic walrus as the fleeing group scurried down the steep, grassy slope, rushing to put some trees between themselves and the crowded garden before the guards noticed they'd escaped.

"Smeg, Rimmer," he said. "Whose brilliant idea was it to put the parking dome so far from the main house?"

Rimmer slowed his own pace to jog alongside his former crewmate. "Come now, Listy. Don't tell me you've gone soft!"

Lister bristled, then winced despite himself, pressing a hand against the cramp growing in his side. But, with Rimmer striding along beside him like a gawky antelope, he couldn't stop to catch his breath...not with Kochanski so far ahead…

"You need to get out more, miladdio," Rimmer's voice grated against his nerves. "Stretch those legs!"

"Oh yeah? An' go where?" Lister snapped back. "We've been three million years out in deep space up 'till now, in case you've forgotten!"

"There are planets, Lister," Rimmer said, keeping up an irritatingly Ace-ish air of encouraging bonhomie. "Moons. Even Starbug's good for a few morning laps to get the ol' heart pumping. But, if I know you, Listy, I'll bet you spent the time I've been away lying about with your feet up reading bike mags and comic books, all the while stuffing yourself with curries hot enough to sear the lips off an alligator."

"Not all the curries were as hot as that, Mr. Ace, sir," Kryten corrected as he jogged awkwardly, but effortlessly, ahead. "We had the misfortune to run out of Mr. Lister's favorite chili powders about two months ago."

"A tragedy indeed." Rimmer smirked, and gave the struggling Lister a sharp clap on the shoulder.

"It's time you shaped up, my lad," he said. "Apart from Kochanski here, back in your own time you're the last human living. You really want to go your whole life as a flabby, madras sauce-slathered slob?"

"Like you know," Lister snarked bitterly through his panting gasps. "Like you'd know anything about what we've been through these past months. It's not like we can all run off to be dimension-hopping superheroes!"

Rimmer blinked.

"I'm only trying to encourage you, Listy," he said. "Take your mind off the—"

"Don't do me any favors!" Lister snapped, stopping their progress to lean against a tree. "God, you're just like you were. How far is this smeggin' parking dome, anyway!"

"Farther than you'll ever get," a rich, plummy voice spoke from the dimness behind the trees.

The group froze in place to the sound of blasters being primed and cocked for action. Many, many, many blasters, from every direction...all aimed at them…

"Oh, god…" Frank gasped, his warped nose twitching and his dark eyes going very wide. "We're surrounded. They must have been tracking us, tracing our movements from the security room…"

"John?" Rimmer moved cautiously in the direction of the threatening voice, his eyes scanning the shadows under the trees for any sign of movement. "Howard, is that you?"

"Stop right there, you spying scum," the voice came again. "Don't move."

Rimmer stilled, his nostrils flared in frustration.

Lister released a growling sigh.

"How many times, man!" he exclaimed. "We are not spies!"

"And, apart from the rather noxious stench of stale beer and petrified kebab grease eking off of Lister's clothing, we're not armed," Rimmer added, slowly holding out his open hands in demonstration. Lister gave his multi-stained shirt a deep sniff and shrugged.

"If you've been monitoring the situation, as I believe you have," Rimmer went on, "you must know by now that we're not the threat you should be going after. Frank and I – we are your family, even if you refuse to see it. And, I'm telling you, those miners aren't playing a game up there. They are angry and they're hurt, and they will destroy all life on this moon in just under five minutes unless we stop them."

"I'll tell you what I see," a second voice spoke up. A voice that triggered a tooth-grinding dread so longstanding and deep, Rimmer knew it could only belong to his father. "I see a group of deceptive, disloyal squirrels scurrying back to their nest! Shoot now, lads! Don't let them get to the trees!"

"No – Father! You don't understand!" Rimmer tried, but the shooting had already begun. Blinding flashes of blaster fire forced Rimmer, Frank and the Dwarfers to shield their eyes and dive for the shelter of a nearby hedge as energy bolts sizzled through bark and leaves above them.

"Hey – watch the suit!" Cat cried. "Grass stains and magenta silk don't mix!"

"Smeg!" Rimmer swore, cringing back despite himself. Everywhere he looked, armed soldiers were stepping out of the shadows into the light. John, Howard, and their small, balding father strode ahead of the shooting pack: the two brothers with their gleaming blasters held at the ready, their father brandishing his trusty squirrel gun.

"No!" Frank shouted, struggling to get up, to plant his furry bulk between the blaster fire and the Dwarfers. "No, no, you have to stop!"

"Frank! Stay down!" Rimmer cried, helpless frustration feeding his fear, his anger at his family, at himself as he felt himself sink deeper and deeper into a dank, familiar pit of self-loathing fury. It whispered to him with cold, sickening certainty, telling him he'd torn off his wig and mask only to reveal the sham beneath for all to see. After all, it was his fault Frank was there, his fault Lister and the rest were even in this mess. As usual, his presence in his family's lives just seemed to make everything worse. He'd failed to reach John and Howard, antagonized his parents, and now—

"The situation seems hopeless, sirs," Kryten moaned from his awkward huddle, echoing Rimmer's own dark thoughts. "I've analyzed our position from every angle, and I can find no viable route of escape. They have us outnumbered by at least five to one."

"Hey, Kryters, look at the bright side. At least if they shoot us now, it'll save us the trouble of suffocatin', or worse, after those GELF miners blow the dome's energy shield," Lister quipped grimly.

"You're both forgetting," Kochanski said, her voice bright with confidence. "We have Ace Rimmer!"

Rimmer sputtered in disorientation, squinting past the flying energy bursts in search of the smarmy git with the Bacofoil flight jacket – only to realize Kochanski was looking straight at him.

"Ace, we've less than four minutes left to stop the GELFs!" she spoke over the noise, crawling closer to look him in the eye. "How are we going to get out of this?"

Rimmer stared at her for a long, blank moment, absently marveling at the determination, the trust on her face. This woman, this officer… She really believed he could handle this, that he knew what to do. But he wasn't… That is, he couldn't…!

Or, could he…?

The seed of a memory sprouted in his turbulent mind…the memory of another time, another dimension. His odd moment of detachment snapped away and he shouted, "Computer!"

"Here, Ace." His ship's sultry voice sounded through their private comlink, and a surge of unfamiliar joy rushed through Rimmer's chest.

"Computer, I need you to initiate tactic 51348-71295!"

"Tactic initiated. In eight…seven…"

As the countdown continued, Rimmer turned to the rest of his team, huddled and frightened among the bushes, blaster fire pinging and fizzing all around them, and he caught each of their eyes in turn.

"Listen to me, everyone," he said urgently. "I need you to start singing. A folk song, a child's rhyme, anything. It doesn't matter what, as long as you know the words and you sing it loud."

Lister stared in incredulity.

"Singin'? That's your plan?" he cried. "We've got a rogue GELF fleet ready to strike, a horde of soldiers tryin' to kill us, and you want us to—"

"Don't question me, Lister," Rimmer ordered. "There isn't time! Just do what I say, before—"

A hideous skittering, buzzing, scraping, grating noise vibrated through the air around them. Frank, Ace and the Dwarfers clasped their ears and screamed out loud, but theirs weren't the only screams. One by one, the soldiers fell like dominos, dropping their weapons and clutching at their ears as the agonizing sound grew in strength, volume, and intensity. They writhed and twisted, their tortured cries only adding to the din as Frank, Ace and the Dwarfers desperately broke into song, each screaming out a different tune in a desperate attempt to combat the pulsating sound waves building and swelling in their brains. Even Kryten seemed to feel the excruciating pressure…

Just when they thought their vibrating skulls would shatter, the sound died away, leaving a roaring, throbbing silence in its wake.

"Oooeeerrrr…" Lister groaned, holding his pounding head in both hands as he slowly, tentatively opened his eyelids and took a look around. Soldiers lay motionless on the grass all around them, thin lines of blood trickling from their noses, their ears…

"Man," he whispered, wincing against the piercing headache prickling behind his eyes. "It looks like a smeggin' battlefield…"

"Are they…dead…?" Frank rumbled, his dark eyes fixed on the prone bodies of his father and brothers as the hulking GELF climbed to his feet.

"Unconscious," Rimmer told him, rising slowly to help Cat and Kochanski to stand. "They'll be all right, once the headache fades. Come on, there's still time to—"

"Not so fast!"

Rimmer turned to see Howard lurching painfully to his knees, then his feet, his blaster shaking as he took aim with a trembling arm.

"Ace, I'm sorry," the Wildfire computer said through Rimmer's comlink. "I tried to shield you and your friends as best I could, but his brainwaves were the most similar to yours."

"It's all right, Computer," Ace said.

"Is it true, then?" Lister asked, looking from Rimmer to Howard, then back again. "Are you really twins?"

"Not twins," Howard snarled, his eye twitching with the pain of an obviously severe headache. "If that is Arnold's hologram," he spat the word, "come back to wreak his revenge, you should know that I was implanted to absorb this Nehbee freak! But, the procedure didn't work, and the stubborn bonehead continued to develop behind my back. Literally. Even the doctor was surprised when Mother gave birth to two boys. She tried everything with him, sacrificed for years to give him every advantage, but time and again the little Judas betrayed her. Betrayed all of us! Nature will always win out over nurture, she said. That's why those of us with pure genes will always be superior to you filthy, germ-riddled, non-enhanced—"

Frank roared and knocked the blaster from Howard's hand with such force, the young man spun completely around before sliding to the ground, unconscious.

"That's for Janine, you little prick!" the GELF snarled, and wiped the drool from his sharp, bared teeth. "Damn. I should have done that long ago. How much time is left?"

"Barely two minutes," Kochanski informed them, her eyes wide and anxious.

"Ace," Frank rumbled. "Arnold. If we don't make it, I think you should know... It wasn't you. Howard was the Nehb. Mother just said it was you because Howie was the one who did as he was told. You…well…"

"I know." Rimmer snorted grimly, his eyes fixed on Howard's prone body. "I'm not even surprised! Nehb or not, I failed to live up to her expectations. It seems even as a zygote. But, I never had the full picture before. I never truly realized what she was…how far she would go or how many lives she would harm in her self-serving quest to elevate herself. Our dear mother, Frank, is a human black hole: attracting and crushing everything that comes near to her orbit, yet never satisfied, never full. And despite everything, somehow, some way, I patterned myself to be just like her. The worst kind of empty, entitled, elitist snob…"

"Ace?" Kochanski queried.

Rimmer took a breath, straightening his shoulders to face his brother, and his friends.

"I know how much you all wanted to help, and I appreciate it. I truly do," he said. "But, I'm afraid we're out of time, and the Wildfire's teleporter can't handle all of you. Smoke me a kipper. I'll be back. I promise."

Frank and the Dwarfers burst into protests, but Rimmer's hardlight form had already dissolved into tiny sparkles of light that quickly faded away.

"Come on," Kochanski said once they'd all finished staring at the place Ace used to be. "We should gather these weapons before these soldiers start to wake up."

"You think he'll make it, then?" Lister asked. "That he'll be able to stop them in time. On his own."

Kochanski regarded him.

"Don't you?"

Lister looked up through the dome's greenish curve, his eyes finding and following a brilliant streak of red-gold light that could only be the Wildfire.

"Yeah," he said, a broad, proud smile stretching across his face. "Yeah, I think I do."

To Be Continued…

References include: Terrorform; Dimension Jump; Emohawk: Polymorph II; Rimmerworld; Officer Rimmer; Better Than Life. The 'not twin' stuff, I made up long before 'Trojan' came out, but I decided to keep it in anyway since fanfic stories are, by nature, AU. ;)

Thank you so much for reading! Your comments and reviews are always welcome! :D