Chapter 38
The War is over. Good guys Lost

Spanners had the transport fired up and ready for lift off before
Rimmer cleared the airlock. Partially blinded by the smoke from the ignited retros Rimmer's eye were filled with hologramatic tears as he entered the cockpit.

Moments earlier a red illuminated light on the cockpits console told Spanners that the airlock was secure and that's all the prompting he needed. The Blue MIdget leaped from the grassy plains into the sky rocketing southward, towards Ace and Kryten. Leaving the Cat troops, both Tabbies and Red Hats, to question the meaning of it all.

A message sparked to life on the surveillance monitor to Kryten's immediate right. It was filled with a panicky Spanners speaking with more of a scouse accent than usual.

"Spanners is that you old love?" Ace questioned in a voice matter of fact, when in fact she and Kryten were in the middle of some detailed electromagnetic spectrogram readings and dangerously pushing the limits of Kryten's RAM. If he froze up now, they would lose all the current data.
And possibly fry Ace's light bee.

"That's a yo Ace. I think we have a problem."

"Well the immediate problem that I can see is that you've left your post."
I assume you have a good reason for this old turnip?"

"Sure do, first of all. sssskrasskllllllllleeeeeeeeee," interference
that shouldn't have existed garbled Spanners' words and corrupted his image less so.

"Afraid I didn't receive that last transmission. Repeat please."
Nothing came through the speakers but static.

''Well that about does it for that. Look I have you on our scanners. You'll be here in minutes. Whatever you have to tell me certainly can wait that long."
Lister's response had more static in it than a video tape of dubious origins.
Minutes later when the airlock hissed open Ace's attention was completely engulfed in his work and so he didn't notice the extra set of foot steps.

"Spanners old plumb cake don't forget to wipe your
boots off before entering. Kryten just mopped and you wouldn't want to get him cross. She joked good naturedly."

"Oh we won't," said a voice as cold as death.
At first Ace thought that in her volatile state she had heard wrong because in fact Spanners was coming through the airlock. Unfortunately he was followed in by Ace of Black Hearts, who seemed to have a hold of Spanners neck with a garrote of some sort.

"Sorry Ace, the war is over." Spanners choked and fell. Before he lost consciousness he said "The good guys lost."

"Spanners!" Ace shouted and stood up. Kryten, his pupils replaced by hourglasses, stood frozen a few feet behind her.

"I'll have to insist you stop right there miss," he said, a laser pistol seemed to have appeared in his right hand.

"So you've finally arrived for the tea party. Couldn't have a good party without my evil twin from another dimension." She smiled. "Beard doesn't suit you. How did you find us?"

"Good God did a version of me really say that? You are something of a prat for someone so gorgeous."

"You really are tying to take narcissism to a new level aren't you?"
The Ace of Black hearts moved nearer.

"Oh come now my pretty double. It doesn't have to be this way. Why should we fight so, when we have so much in common. Maybe we could work together." He effortlessly dragged Spanners with one hand and held a laser
pistol in the other.

"Don't make me sick." A hologramatic blue crackle wavered Ace's image a moment as she disconnected a lead from the console, unobserved. "You're not really my type. I tend to like my men brave and honest. Weasly and cold aren't my turn-ons."

Ace of Black Hearts was taken aback. No one talked to him like that.
He took his pistol off Ace's light bee and turned it on the unconscious Spanners.

"So this is the smart one then. Are you sure you wouldn't like to reconsider." The evil Ace smiled.
"He is so much like my Lister. I assume he's a lot like yours too. Smells more."

Again unnoticed, using her light bee with great skill, Ace depressed a button on the console, yet her image remained unchanged.

"I better kill him as soon as possible then." The Ace of Black hearts continued gloating.

"The git version in my dimension was far to clever for my liking. I could never quite manipulate him the way I wanted. Especially when I decided I was
going to have a taste of his little Krissy."
These words seeped through Lister's semiconscious brain.

"You're telling me that you and his Krissy? In my reality he wasn't tilted in the field of Astro Jocks. Only to a certain grease monkey."

"Well I didn't say she was exactly willing."
After a moment for the thought to sink in she said, "You bastard!"

"Thank you. Too bad I had to leave so quickly. You know how lonely it gets in space. Too bad I didn't turn up a bit later. When you had a little more, shall we say, substance." The Black hearted fiend stroked his fiendish goatee in a provocative manner and leered into her eyes. "So you don't like the beard?"

The words had ripped through Spanners mind like really really urgent words ripping through someone's mind. Suddenly all his doubts and accusations were possible, even plausible. He didn't just imagine it. True it happened in a reality completely different from the one he left, and the one he was in currently in. But it was possible. It had a quantum probability factor above zero. It could be calculated. He wasn't crazy. He was rightfully suspecting. Kind of.

With this strange sense of relief, Spanners also went through a not so strange sense of rage. What the smeg does this bastard mean, "Wasn't exactly willing?"

With these new ingredients his mind started to work. Work on a plan. Too bad he only had about forty five seconds to come up with one before he got his fool head shot off. "Guess I'll have to improvise."

"Aren't you afraid that the Lister of this dimension is out there somewhere undoing all the work you did. You know they do regard him as their god."

"That was precisely the reason that I kidnapped his kids and sent him a ransom note. Telling him to surrender himself to me, or I let his children grow old and die in days." "He was pretty easy to handle after that."

"I suppose you don't mind being locked in here while the ships self destruct mechanism counts down," she said. "You triggered it when you came through the door. It was set to your specific brain waves."

"You're lying!"

"Naw. I'm not that kind of girl."
Ace placed the muzzle of the gun to the back of Lister's head.

"Now I'm going to ask you once before I fry his brains. What is the disarming code."

"Go ahead. He set up the rigging mechanism. He knew the risks. Brave lad you're holding a gun on."

"You see I know what happened to the Ace of Dimension 459. I was there shortly after you pulled your disappearing act. I saw the security video monitor's tapes."

"Well then you understand what happened was self defense. It was him or me."

"You lying dirty son of a prosti droid. You shot him in the back when he was rescuing a child trapped in a blaze you started."
The Ace of Black hearts Rimmer smiled a serene smile. A sinister twinkle came into his eyes. "Yea the poor sap didn't know what hit him. But you, you're going to see it coming." He raised his laser pistol and took careful aim at Ace's light bee and squeezed the trigger.