A/N: One of the problems of sticking rigidly to a challenge is you get thrown curveballs like this. Anyway, I've put the first ten chapters of this on my LiveJournal along with .mp3 files of all the songs that have appeared in it, if anybody wants to know what inspired these ficlets.

10. Red Dwarf Theme (Extended Mix) – Howard Goodall

Jounouchi groaned as the airlock door opened and he staggered out. He hated it in there. Bad enough he was frozen, without it having to hurt like a bitch afterwards. And it hadn't even been that big of crime in the first place that landed him in suspended animation in the first place. Personally, he thought Commander Otogi looked better with a buzz-cut and lipstick, and he'd highlighted the very obvious problem of the commander sleeping too deeply too wake up even if the ship was being attacked.

Not that anyone would actually attack the Red Dwarf, since it was just a mining ship and all, but still. He'd done the officers a favour, and they'd just stuck him straight in the cells. Now there was gratitude for you.

Otogi still made a better butch lesbian than an effeminate man.

Jounouchi expected to see his captain, or at least one of those mangy lieutenants waiting to chew him out some more when he emerged, but was surprised to find nobody around at all. Apparently the detention cell had shorted out and that was why he'd been released; not because anybody had pressed a button to let him out.

"Hello?"

Nada.

He stumbled along the corridor and keyed in the pass code to exit the penitentiary area and re-enter the main ship. The door groaned as much as he did. Probably one of the bots needed to get its wheels down here and oil the damn thing. The best technology in the solar system and it still fucked up if you forgot the WD40 – which would probably account for why his cell had shorted out. Well he wasn't taking the flack for waking up early.

"Hey, yo! What's going on here?"

He went from cafeteria to hallway to bunk-rooms to bridge, but there was nobody anywhere. Since the Red Dwarf was six miles long, four miles tall and five miles wide he was tired and bored within half an hour, and there was no way he was going to traipse the entire length and breadth of the ship. Still, it was weird. Usually the place was crammed with people.

Several times he passed piles of dust, like giant mounds of salt. They reminded him of the time he and Honda, a fellow-student from the training programme (who'd done a lot better than Jounouchi and moved beyond his job of refilling the vending machines all trip), had put bio-caplets into some bots' fuel cartridges and watched them explode. It'd been great – seeing their little arms wave about, and smoke coming out of their joints, and then KAPLOOEY! Disintegration. Not that Captain Mazaki had been too impressed. That was the first time Jounouchi had ended up in the suspended animation cells, and it hadn't been the last. If they hadn't been lurking in deep space, no doubt he would've been tossed out onto his ear. He got the feeling that sometimes she was considering jettisoning his ass into deep space anyway.

Finally he entered the main control room, but it, too, was empty. "Hey, what the hell is going on?"

The computer screen buzzed and a digitised replication of a human face appeared. Jounouchi knew from the training programme that it was meant to resemble the beloved grandson of the man who invented it – though he doubted that was true. Nobody in real life could have hair like that.

The image blinked at him in a very human manner. "Oh my."

"Hey, Y.U.U.G.I." Now he'd find out what was up. Y.U.U.G.I. was the most intelligent computer in the universe, after all. "What's going -" Jounouchi's question died on his lips at Y.U.U.G.I.'s next words.

"So one of you humans is still alive."

One of you …? "Uh-oh."

Uh-oh was right.