Chapter 31
Let's make our move
"It can mean only one thing." Said Ace.
"War."
Arnold Rimmer had been manning the scanners for roughly most of the day and decided to call a night once ten o'clock came round.
When he returned to his post at the scanner, some twelve hours later,
there was something of a bit of a confusion about.
It seems that some person or persons unknown failed to hit an auto scan switch before they left the previous evening.
"Well how was I supposed to know they'd start a war in the middle
of the bloody night."
"Great," said Lister. "Perfect. The one thing you were in charge of,
the one thing you were supposed to look out for and you slept through it. Brilliant Rimmer. Absolutely brilliant."
"Well a lot of tossing the blame ball around isn't going to help us now lads." Arnie Ace Rimmer interrupted. "Truth to tell, it's my fault lads."
"How is that possible?" Asked Spanners, still wearing a pair of welding goggles around his neck.
"It's my double down there causing the real problem. No other
fiend could manipulate an entire civilization into war in less than forty eight hour." A strange tension filled her voice. "I should have expected this."
She paused and turned around to face Lister.
"No use crying over toppled dairy products Davie Boy."
Her voice resonating with confidence again she continued. "We'll just have to move up our schedule a bit, now won't we."
"But Ace, an entire planet is at war. How the smeg are we five..."
He stopped in mid sentence. "Where the hell is Kryten?"
"Worry yea not Davie boy. Kryten is currently downloading some
complicated files and data that we'll need once we leap into the fray as it were. And don't you fret about our limited numbers old cucumber." Ace tossed her head back to dislodge a blond wave of hair that seemed to continually creep down towards her right eyebrow. It fell back roughly in the same spot. "We'll manage."
Looking at her watch she said; "OK gents, Kryten will be off line for another two maybe three hours. Let's use that time to finish our respective jobs preparing to save the day and win the proverbial coupie doll."
"A coupie doll? How utterly charming," Sneered Rimmer. "Well Madam Bond, it would seem that I don't have a job here respective or otherwise. And sadly, since I can not accompany you brave warriors below,I think I'll slip back into bed. Goodnight. Ta Ta." Rimmer headed off.
"Hold on a second Arnold," Holly said. "Spanners and I put our heads together earlier and he may have come up with something.
We could rig the Hologramatic projection booth relays into
one of the landing crafts mainframe."
"Why on Io's name would we possibly want to do that?"Annoyed by
Holly's intervention Rimmer questioned him rather unpleasantly, "
"Well if we can rig up the projection beam to just the right
frequency," Spanners stepped in. "We could transmit your image from Red Dwarf through Starbug and outside, without the cumbersome projection booth. Once were on the planet we activate it and bingo." Spanners smiled at Ace. "You're there."
"You could project my image onto the surface of a planet, without the booth?" Rimmer paused trying to grasp the depth of it all. "How will that help?"
"Well old lemon tart, for one thing scouting and recon work. You're composed of light and no longer hampered by the booth, no one can hear you and no cat could smell you. You'd be practically invisible."
Rimmer didn't respond still contemplating the change and how it could effect his life.
"Bingo, it's settled then." She said, "Spanners and Davie will finish up
on my ship, then start on Starbug. I'll come help you as soon as I check on Kryten's progress. If you can't finish before lift off, we'll finish it on the trip down. If there's no questions I suggest we get cracking."
Off they went.