Thanks to those that have reviewed/added as a favourite, much appreciated. Now for a bit of Ace action methinks....
As you know from my profile, I often write a chapter in line with a song. Korn's, 'Freak on a Leash', is a song from my mis-spent grebby youth *whimsical sigh* It's my 'angry song', and inspired this chapter greatly. Plus I felt it hearkens to the devastation that is due to happen at the beginning of 'Rimmer's Return'.
Enjoy!
Feeling like a freak on a leash
Feeling like I have no release
How many times have I felt diseased?
Nothing in my life is free, is free
Sometimes I cannot take this place
Sometimes it's my life I can't taste
Sometimes I cannot feel my face
You'll never see me fall from grace...
- Korn, 'Freak on a Leash'
The ancient metal door creaked open with reluctant petulance before clanging loudly against the far wall, sounding its annoyance at being awoken from an otherwise undisturbed sleep. Undisturbed for many decades, Rimmer noted silently as he stepped through the airlock doorway and into the ship, judging by the flurries of dust that the resulting resonation cast out into the flickering shards of the emergency lighting.
His brow furrowed in confusion. Odd.
The looped SOS distress signal that Wildfire had picked up from the SS. Aquarius was weak but still clear in its intent. The ship had been ravaged by simulants who had slaughtered the rest of the crew, and a lone, desperate voice now pleaded for anyone out there to help them reach the nearest colony.
The computer had urged caution. After all, the message could have been a few hours old or a few months old; the static clouding the survivor's face and a corruption in the signal made dating the transmission almost impossible. Rimmer, on the other hand, had insisted that he should check the derelict anyway in order to ascertain whether he could be of any assistance. Although they agreed to disagree, there was one point that the pair had found mutual, unspoken understanding on for many years now.
The survivor was a she. Rimmer hadn't gotten laid in six weeks. Simple enough.
Lonely booted footfall resonated across the walls as he stalked cautiously along the corridor, his hands instinctively hovering millimetres above the guns holstered in his belt. Something wasn't right.
"Computer?" he called out. "Can you hear me?"
The computer's usual smooth, sultry tones offered no response, replaced instead with the echoed return of his own nasal voice. Rimmer sighed. The computer had been experiencing signal problems and comms corruptions for the last couple of hours, which could be the culprit. Either that or she was in a huff with him. Both were fairly plausible.
A distant scream shrieked down the corridor, wrenching Rimmer from his musings. Something definitely wasn't right. Drawing the guns from their holsters, he broke into a run, following the dying echo that faded quickly into eerie silence.
Rimmer skidded to a halt at the entrance of the Storage Bay and immediately noticed the source of the scream. A woman, presumably the one who had made the distress call, sobbed as she struggled to free herself from the simulant that towered above her, gripping her roughly by the cropped, dark locks of her hair.
Rimmer's eyes narrowed as he levelled his aim. "Hey!" he called out angrily.
The simulant didn't have much time to react. By the time he'd whipped back to the sound of Rimmer's voice and shoved the woman to the ground to pull out his gun, a single bullet was already streaking towards him. The droid's head exploded in a flurry of sparks, limbs twitching absently before dropping to the floor, lifeless.
Hastily reholstering his guns, Rimmer raced over to the woman still curled defensively on the floor and dropped to his haunches beside her. His eyes traced the curved silhouette of her hips before tracking up to her face, obscured in shadow by her long, ruffled bangs.
"Hey, are you ok?" he asked softly, placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
The woman chuckled softly. "Oh, Ace. You know me," she replied smoothly. She raised her head slowly, the bangs slipping back to reveal seductive, violet eyes. "I'm always pleased to see you."
Rimmer's face sagged under the weight of dreaded realisation at the sight of the tell-tale eyes and he scrabbled back hurriedly, watching with mounting horror as the woman stalked towards him on all fours. It had become painfully obvious that this was no survivor in need of rescue, but an all-too familiar symbi-morph he'd hoped he'd never cross paths with again. Tearing his gaze away from her sparkling eyes, his focus dropped to her breasts that snuggled teasingly in her black tank top – a sight no less hypnotic.
"What's the problem?" She pressed teasingly. "I can read your thoughts like a book. You were more than up for it, a few minutes ago – "
"Juno!" Rimmer cut in, anger and frustration registering on the edges of his voice as he fought to keep his 'Ace' tones in check. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"She's with me."
The pair glanced up at the source of the disembodied voice, although its low, harsh tones were immediately recognisable. Sure enough, Pizzak 'Rapp stood above them on the metal gantry, peering down on the pair with ill-concealed contempt.
"Juno!" he called out, in the same manner as one would speak to a small child or dog. Once he'd ensnared her attention, he jerked his head towards the door, indicating her job was done.
Rimmer's face hardened into a scowl as he pulled himself to his feet, hands hovering above his guns once more. Juno reluctantly followed suit, sidling up towards him.
"If he lets you live, look me up, won't you?" she breathed into his ear.
Rimmer felt a chill up his spine as her image rippled with a cold, swift breeze, shifting back into her neutral, black humanoid form. He stiffened visibly, his stare still fixed on the simulant standing above him.
"If he lets you live, I'll finish you off myself," he replied tightly.
A mocking hiss of air whistled through Juno's teeth. "I'll watch my back," she replied smoothly with a playful wink as she brushed past him before slinking out the door.
Rimmer flicked an unamused eyebrow as Pizzak stared back at him. "What do you want?" he huffed impatiently.
The simulant leant forward on the railing. "Mr Rimmer, you know all too well from the last time we met what I want." He flicked absently at the loose paint and rust that curled away from the iron underneath. "I would like nothing more than to torture you to the precipice of unbearable agony until you're begging me to end it for you. Care to join me?"
Rimmer pursed his lips and nodded thoughtfully. "Interesting proposal, but I think I'll have to pass."
"I'm afraid, Mr Rimmer, you don't have a choice."
The hologram snatched out his guns and snapped his arms up towards Pizzak. "You going to make me?" he challenged with a smug grin, the slides snapping loudly into place to reiterate his point.
"Me?" Pizzak asked playfully, his face splitting into a cheshire cat grin that displayed a row of sharp, jagged teeth. "Oh no. I think I'll leave it to them."
The buzzing of servos interwoven with wicked chuckles emanated from the shadows around him, closely followed by hordes of simulants that crept forth from the darkness. Each was armed with guns trained towards him or brandishing lengths of metal piping salvaged from the derelict as rudimentary weapons.
Rimmer's mouth dropped open as he slowly turned to realise that he was now completely surrounded, his panicked eyes flitting across the lines of guns winking at him in the low lights. Beads of simulated sweat stood out cold on his brow, the guns in his outstretched arms visibly quivering as he fought to keep calm. He had never been fantastic at maths, but even he could work out that seventeen rounds were not going to take out forty, perhaps fifty simulants.
He swallowed hard, his long-dormant expression of dismay uttered in a forgotten voice.
"Oh smeg."
Pizzak's double eyebrow cocked in smug triumph. "Check mate, Mr Rimmer," he announced, linking his fingers and extending his arms lazily until his knuckles sounded a satisfying crack. "Have your fun, gentlemen," he called out to the hordes of snarling simulants with a nod of the head. "But leave him alive so that I can have mine."
Rimmer's grip on his guns tightened along with the scowl on his face, his flaming anger fanned by a combination of Pizzak's arrogance and his own stupidity at such a dangerous mistake. He swivelled carefully to survey the simulants gradually closing in on him; their faces split with murderous grins as they stalked closer. Although his trigger finger twitched nervously, he resisted the urge to fire first. Each bullet was sacred, affording him precious seconds of defence before things turned really nasty.
He waited.
The anticipation was swiftly broken as a lone simulant leapt forward, brandishing his lead pipe above his head ready to strike. Artificial adrenalin seethed through Rimmer's projection as he let instinct take over; his right arm quickly aligning towards the simulant's head and his itchy trigger finding its release. The bullet blasted through the bitterly cold air and tore through a mix of metal and organic matter. There was a clatter of iron as the pipe fell to the floor, followed by the simulant itself, which instantly shut down and collapsed to the floor.
Chaos erupted, the air thick with the sounds of angry, rallying cries and gunfire. Rimmer whipped around continuously to return fire, dodging some bullets as they squealed past his face and arms, whilst others carved white-hot streaks across his skin or thudded mercilessly into his chest and back. His vision blurred with simulants as the pain responses from his light bee kicked in with a vengeance, clambering for attention against the surge of adrenaline.
Silence descended once more as he stopped, yet his world continued to spin. His shoulders heaved with effort to suck in the breath that he didn't need, his image flickering in and out of focus like a bad TV reception as he fought to stay on his feet. As the smoke curled up lazily into the flickering lights, two hollow clangs sounded by Rimmer's boots as the two spent cartridges fell to the ground.
"What are you waiting for?" Pizzak cried, his distorting voice echoing around the Storage Bay. "He's unarmed! Get him!"
As the simulants rushed forward to take him down, Rimmer's features retreated into a primal snarl. He wasn't entirely unarmed.
Flipping back the guns in his hands so that the barrels steadied themselves against his slick palms, he locked eyes with the nearest simulant snarling towards him and cracked the sturdy steel of the handle as hard as he was physically able across its jaw. He did the same with another, and another as his desperation rose, fighting back the inevitable until he was grabbed from behind, arms pinned by his sides by an inhumanly strong grip.
A trio of simulants before him seized upon the opportunity quickly, beating him hard in the stomach and across the face with the butts of their guns in earnest. With an audible growl, Rimmer braced his weight against the simulant holding him fast and pushed his feet off the ground to kick out with steel-capped boots, sending them sprawling back into the crowd. A forcible shoulder throw sent his captor tumbling into the tangle of metallic limbs on the floor.
With distressed static ringing in his ears, Rimmer staggered back weakly to regain equilibrium, his pulsing sight just about registering his arms as they flashed in and out of focus in his peripheral vision. He knew that his light bee had taken a lot of damage from the gunfire earlier, and now struggled to avoid shut down. If he lost consciousness now, he'd lose everything.
Without warning, a hot bolt of pain lanced up and down his spine, locking his body in a painful, electric shock. The melting puddle that remained of his mind at first swore blind that he was being tasered. But he then noticed beyond the blue flashes his vision had now become that the hordes of simulants surrounding him seemed to be suffering the same affliction; all buzzing, twitching and writhing in mutual agony.
He grit his teeth involuntarily as he screwed his eyes shut, his ears screeching with an unbearable sound akin to electronic feedback at a rock concert; a noise that seemed to not only resonate in his ears but through his skull, cutting off all coherent thought. He was vaguely aware of collapsing to the floor.
His awareness kicked hard to surface above the thick darkness of unconsciousness enough to hear fragments of a voice calling to him urgently, before falling blissfully back into its depths.
" – hear me? The name's Michael McGruder. I've come to help y– "