Chapter 17

Ace not quite hard

Rimmer was driveling on to Ace scarcely twenty-four hours after she had been shot out of space and forced to make an unannounced crash landing on the planet below.

She didn't survive the impact.
Her black box did, and so did her hologramatic projection unit.
Her light bee.

Hence she was resurrected, and Rimmer was superfluous. He had found a certain likeness between himself and her. True for a woman she was bossy, arrogant, and independent. Rimmer hated these traits in a woman almost as much as he loved them.

Still they could touch.
Of course this never went on to anything beyond a slap on the back
or a firm handshake. But Rimmer didn't mind telling her his theories about hard light holograms. Soligrams were the word he coined and it stuck. Now that Ace had it in her mind she coordinated with Kryten and Holly in hopes of putting some physical form to the theory, and into was before she realized who had been behind the attack.

She should have known it from the beginning, the way the pilot flew, his moves, his deadly accuracy. There's only one pilot in any universe that could fly a craft like that.

It was Ace herself. Or rather himself.
Only someone with Ace's flying ability could have pulled off three hits with a
ship half out of control and on fire. Hell she's done it once before during the Hyghborion Wars.
Practically the same move.

She was wondering how different events in her life were destined to be played out in other universes, but at different times,
and with different goals and consequences
as Kryten entered the room.

"Ms. Ace Ma'am here are all the parts you ordered." Said Kryten
as he wheeled a tray of various parts and tools, some small and some big.

"Thanks Krytus old Love. I don't know where I'd be without you these last few hours. Any clue to the where abouts of the villain who put me in this pickle jar and screwed the lid down tight."

"We are picking up disturbances from the planet below." Kryten admitted.

"Any life signs old love?"

"Yes," Kryten admitted. "Several fair to midsize cities encircle
an inland freshwater sea on the largest northern continent. We
believe that's where the disturbance is coming from."

"Then there's no time to lose old blub. Gather up the posse.
We have to help those poor lads on the surface," said Ace, rising to her feet.

"Mum I hate to question you but what could we possibly do to help.
None of our craft is outfitted with weapons." Kryten felt it would have been
rude to mention to Ms. Ace Ma'am that being dead and a hologram that her
help would also be limited.

"I know what your thinking old love but your wrong. I had Lister assist Spanners this morning in installing a voice command unit into the ship.
The two of them also managed to replace some of the craft's lasers. We're armed now. You'll fly down with Spanners in Starbug One to the coordinates, I've preprogrammed into the bugs' flight computer. I'll lead off the battle in my souped up test ship and send the enemy into disarray. At the proper time we'll rendezvous and have a crack at some field surgery." She smiled warmly

"How's that strike you me old fruit cake?"

"Alone sir?"

It didn't strike Kryten well at all. But if they ever wanted to see Listers' boys again Ace was their only hope.

"You know best Mrs. Ace mum."

"Honestly," Kryten thought to himself. "At times like this I feel like a girl on a first date being asked to do more and more things, against her core programming."

In a secret base Slate is approached.
"What is it, Dennis?"

"We have a prisoner sir. The humans left one of their pack behind. The Sirens captured him."
Ace's gaze didn't waver, but he was listening all the same.

"Which one?"

" I don't understand sir."

"Which one did they leave behind. The mechanical one perhaps, to spy on us?"

"The hologram version of my other other self? To silently and stealthily spy on us? Tell me which one."

"He's a Cat sir. He's one of the Cat race. But he's not from the Cat cities
that we've been monitoring to the east. He's from," Dennis paused. "He's from Red Dwarf Lord Slate."

This was perplexing. He himself couldn't have possibly guessed that the
small pod of outcats could have a surviving mother colony out there somewhere. Only by grabbing them and dimension jumping with them was the
laws of dimension jumping useful to the Master. Knowing that the riders would probably run along the same destiny lines of their alternate selves they were about to meet, would in fact cause them to actually
meet up with another version of themselves.