Chapter 8

Ace of Black Hearts Rimmer

Ace of Black Hearts Rimmer kneaded his neatly trimmed, yet stylishly sinister goatee, and behind the eyes and handsome face there
lay evil thoughts. Wicked thoughts, which until now had to survive hiding in the recesses of his mind.

"Now that I 'm free of restraints I can do anything I damn well please," he said to no one in particular. This caused a cruel smile to drift across his face.
He recalled his early pre-flight meeting with the Admiral, before his name was yanked from the top of the old flight list.

"You'll be transported to another dimension. A dimension that will contain another Arnold Rimmer. Some decision made in your lives. A decision that you went one way and he went the other. You may find he is quite different than you."

"Yea, let's see how different." Ace thought about this and it agitated him. Or maybe it was his underwear riding up on him after dimension jumping.
Either way Ace's mood shifted like a manic depressant and thought;

"Maybe he's the kind of Arnold Rimmer that thought to blast the old man out of existence, before jumping."

The scanner began to sound, it picked up something. A derelict of some sort with mixed interior readings. Lots of interior Ice build up too.
One moment he was considering blasting it out of existence, for the sheer thrill of simple wanton destruction, so soon after dimension jumping. That was shortly after he stole the new dimension jumping ship, in order to escape a rather nasty situation dealing with the Admiral's daughter, and a hot tub, and another man's wife. Quite probably, if that old codger Tranter had it his way, old Ace himself would be facing firing squad.

But something about this pod intrigued him. Besides the fact that he had popped into a dimension some distance from anything recognizable, no class M planets within scanning range, he seemed to be alone.
Then the derelict showed on the scanner.
When he magnified it at full, he thought he could make out what could only be described as a face in a single porthole, nothing else. Although he couldn't be sure, due to the craft's rotation, and the distance. It could be explained away by the ice build up but.

So in some foolhardy reckless abandon, which he was known for, the Ace of Black Hearts Rimmer moved in closer for a look see. As he entered the planets orbit, he came parallel with the craft and, with the right magnification, could definitely make out a frozen face in the view port. Rescanning the ship at a closer range revealed that their were scores of frozen people within the ship.

But the face in the window is what really drew Ace in. The sheer hate that radiated, the cold frozen leer that had been adrift for who knows long.
That's what piqued his curiosity. Any creature that has to be sealed away and cast off into deep space and is still defiant, that's Ace Rimmer's
kind of scum. He took this as an omen.

Five minutes after that Ace was suited up and sliding his hand magnets outside the pod. Knocking on the window, good heartedly Ace asked if the lady of the household was at home, and if she were in, would she be available for a quick shagging. Even though he knew all inside were probably dead, he couldn't resist a good laugh around that kind of carnage.

Slipping a tether through a convenient handle on the wreck Rimmer expertly attached the other end to his ship. With this done he spidered his way along the tether and back to the Wildfire.

"O.K. lads, return all seats to their upright positions, and store all luggage
that you may have opened during the trip, we are a go!"
With that the Wildfire engines ignited and burst to life. Ace's
gloved hand smoothly caressing the joystick.

"O.K. Computer let's get this tea chest out of this orbit and into the big black."
With that Ace, the Wildfire, and the pod containing the questionable remains of Slate and his followers boomed out of existence, and into the
great unknown.

When Ace and his trailer boomed into existence this time however, their
seemed to be a little more going on than the last time he dematerialized. This
time he was still in an unfamiliar sector of space but there was a class M planet within visual. Not only that but there was a civilization within scanning range.

This was more like it.
Finding a suitable planetoid to leave his prize, Ace calculated the distance,
speed, and trajectory without bothering to consult the ships mainframe.
Ace depressed an illuminated button on his console and released the grab mechanism unhitching the pod and it's passengers in the direction of a small
uninhabited moon.

The craft silently fell towards the surface, almost
in slow motion. Until landing in a crater seemingly filled entirely with ash.
The pods weight and trajectory had been estimated so as the pod sat half
way submerged in the ash, while the settling ash which had been disturbed by the initial impact slowly fell and covered the pod's roof.

Ace swung back his ship toward the civilization his scanners had picked up and headed straight for the strongest signal.

He thought to himself, "I can't believe my luck. I'm finally away from my own reality," and contemplated the ramifications for a moment. "Hell I guessed I used it all up like a can of fizzy drink, crushed it, and tossed it into the old waste disposal unit of life." A dark smile neoned across his lips.
Depressing a small series of buttons Ace's ship board computer
lit up like a Christmas tree for the first time since the trip began.

"Computer give me full readouts on the power source were driving at."
Numbers and images appeared on his view screen, he studied each quickly
and thoroughly. When the entire three hundred forty two page report was finished in an astonishing forty two minutes Ace said,

"Well they don't look to put up too much of a fight. Let's see if I just can't swoop in and make myself king for the day. Or if I happen to like it
King for a year."

With that Ace hit the after burners and the ship lurched to life.
Something happened to this Ace, something horrible and unspeakable . A decision seemingly so innocent, blossoming into this black hearted creature.
As if possible an unholy union twix Commander Ace Rimmer, Space Corps finest and Arnold Judas Rimmer. Bonehead.

When the original concept of dimension jumping was hammered out, it was postulated that whomever did the popping would pop somewhere within or near his destiny line. He would meet another Arnold Rimmer. A Rimmer which was the same as him but different. A choice was made in their lives where he went one way, and you another as it was explained to the actual
pilot, who wasn't to be Ace Rimmer, as had been planned so many months earlier.

Ace was reprimanded one too many times and finally grounded.

"Me. Ace Rimmer, Grounded." Smeg how much flying time did they think he had. A few good years is all any Astro jock to hope for, then retirement and obscurity. Neither of the two did Rimmer particularly approve of, never mind like.

The ultimate insult was that he, the best damn pilot in the Space Corps by his Admirals own admission, was scrubbed from the mission. Hell practically everyone on Europa owed him something, especially after the Hyborian Wars. How could they forget those ungrateful commoners. To take away probably the greatest chance to up his career, to be the test pilot to break the last true frontier for human kind.

"Sorry chums no choice option," is how he explained it to the technicians
giving the craft a final once over. When they awoke, Ace, the craft, and their watches were gone.

"What a guy," mumbled one of the techs, as medic bandaged his head. Sure it was a one way trip, and sure all the things and people he had known in his dimension, he would never see or hear from again.
Good. The stupid gimboits.

If having to sit around and grow old with commoners, as Ace liked to put it, is the price for friends, then no thanks, one commoners' company is the same as another. So the trip for Ace, and for many of the people in his home dimension, was a good thing.

Unfortunately for our beloved crew of the mining ship Red Dwarf, Ace realized that if there was any chance that these frozen people sticks were alive, they'd have to be thawed in a ship with a large enough, cargo hold.

Getting them down to the planets surface was no longer Aces' plan, but to land on Red Dwarf. And take it from whomever had it at the moment.
In what could only be described as a messy way. With a yahoo that would have made a Texan proud the Ace of Black Hearts Rimmer started.