Finally found the time to write another chapter, yay. Also, I watched the whole of Red Dwarf X in one sitting the other day. Soooo good! Much much much better than Back to Earth IMHO. Happy bunny I was :) Please RnR guys!
Anneke sat flicking a grape around the table in the quarantine bay, letting out a sigh, her left arm outstretched. She winced as Kryten withdrew a blood sample from the inside of her elbow, the small purple fruit rolling off the rim and onto the floor.
"One more moment, ma'am," Kryten said, screwing the vial closed, then removing the tourniquet. He pressed a wad of cotton wool to the tiny crimson mark, Anneke putting her finger over it while he tore a piece of micro porous tape and tacked it down.
"There we are, miss Anneke. All done."
Anneke pumped her fingers, flexing her arm a couple of times to bring the feeling back into the joint.
"Same time tomorrow?" she asked.
"Afraid so, ma'am."
"Alright," she said despondently, getting up to pick up the grape. She threw it up in the air and caught it a few times, eyes tracing it as Kryten fussed around her, picking up an abandoned glass and bowl.
"Can I get you anything, ma'am?"
"No, thank you Kryten. I'm fine."
"Very well. You can always call on me should you change your mind." The droid stepped into the airlock between the room and the rest of the ship, pausing to receive a spray of decontaminate mist. Anneke watched him walk past, then threw the grape at the window, watching it bounce off and roll under her bunk. She chased after it, falling onto hands and knees to grapple under the bed for it. As she wriggled out again, she heard a laugh behind her and spun around, seeing Lister stood out in the hall, a few books tucked under his arm.
"Having fun?" he said, leaning with one elbow on the glass.
"Do I look like I'm having fun?" the girl replied, tossing the grape into a wastepaper basket on the other side of the room and wiping her palms down her trousers.
"Not really," Lister said with a grin, tapping one of the books on the glass. "Here. I brought ye these, thought they might help." Kneeling, he punched a combination into a small bright keypad under the window and a chute shunted out. He shoved the books in and it sucked back in, then popped out the other side in the quarantine room. Anneke bent to pick them up, looking at the titles, nose wrinkling at the smell of decontaminate chemicals sprayed on them.
"The Count of Monte Cristo. The Picture of Dorian Gray. You have good taste," she said in surprise.
"Nah, never read em. I got Holly to print me out a copy of the library's top one hundred," Lister chuckled, cocking his hat. Anneke hugged the books to her chest, tucking one ankle behind the other.
"Thank you. Look, I… I'm sorry about the other day… For shouting at you…"
"Aah, s'alright," Dave said, tucking his hands in his trouser pockets. "It's not easy, is it? Honestly, you actually took it better than I expected."
"Kryten says I have to be in here at least six weeks."
"S'not that long really," said Lister.
"No, I suppose in comparison to three million years, it isn't…" the girl replied with a wry smile.
"And when you're out, I can show you round the ship, give you the full tour. Ye can have a life here, with us."
"Hm." The smile widened slightly and she hugged the books under one arm, reaching the other out towards the side of the window. "Thanks for the books, Dave."
Lister leant closer to the window, smiling toothily.
"And then maybe we can go for a drink, ye can tell me about yourself and then-"
"Bye, Dave."
She pressed her palm to the switch and the window blacked out, leaving Lister staring at his own reflection.
"Bye, Anneke…"
He turned and wandered down the corridor out of the quarantine deck, exhaling loudly as he did.
Inside the room, the girl sat on her bunk, legs crossed, flicking the copy of Dorian Gray open in her lap. Licking her thumb she turned the pages, scanning over the first few paragraphs, before coughing into her hand, the chemicals catching in her throat.
Rimmer lay on his bunk, hands clasped beneath his head, feet resting on the wall. Above him Lister was snoring noisily, one arm hanging over the edge of the top bed. He blew a raspberry, before glancing at the neon clock over on the wall opposite. It was past three in the morning. Tutting, he rolled over onto his side, closing his eyes and tried to force sleep to come.
Anneke paced around her room in a slow circle, swinging her arms idly. After a few circuits she paused, looking around herself, letting out a low breath and rubbed her upper arms briskly, shivering with tiredness. Wandering to the dispenser on the wall, she ordered a cup of builder strength tea, hugging it to her chest. Then she went to the window, peering around at the seams semi-curiously, blowing across the top of her drink before she slurped cautiously from the bright plastic cup, her pale reflection in the opaque glass mimicking her.
"Mmhm…"
The girl blinked as she heard someone clear their throat. Slapping her palm on the privacy switch she saw Rimmer melt into view, looking slightly sheepish as he tucked his hands in his dressing gown pockets, giving her a small nod.
"Hi," Anneke said in surprise, sipping her tea.
"Morning," he said softly, rubbing the heel of his hand on his brow with a yawn.
"Just about. It's four o'clock… Can't sleep either, hm?"
"Mm. Holly said you were awake. Is everything alright? Chair please, Holly." He perched himself in the middle of the corridor, linking his hands in his lap.
"I've not really slept since I arrived," she said, sitting on the edge of the table in her room. "I suppose I got it all in one lump, all that time in cryo…" She sat on the table, crossing her legs, resting her cup on her knee.
"Is there anything we can do to help?"
"I don't think so," she said, shaking her head slightly. She took a sip and they sat in awkward silence for a minute, before she looked up at him, tapping her fingers on the plastic.
"Do you mind if I ask you something personal?"
Rimmer swallowed, arching an eyebrow. He gripped his hands together tighter.
"I suppose it depends what it is," he said, feeling his voice quiver.
"How did it happen?" she asked, untucking one leg to let it dangle. "I mean, you know… How did you become a hologram? If it is ok to ask…"
"Oh. That." Rimmer coughed, rubbing his forehead next to the H emblazoned upon it. "In the accident. It was a radiation leak. Cadmium. Someone forget to seal a drive plate properly..." He coughed again, feeling his face colour.
"Gosh," she breathed. "Nasty. Sorry, it was probably a bit insensitive of me to bring it up."
"It's alright," Rimmer replied, shuffling back slightly in his seat. "You were more polite than most."
Anneke smiled up at him tentatively, her leg swinging back and forth slowly.
"I'm going to ask a lot of questions. I know some of them will be stupid. But time and things just seem all… higgledy piggledy now. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. I'm not quite sure how to, but, I am trying."
"It's alright," the hologram said again, more slowly. "We're here to help. If that means answering questions, we'll do the best we can. Of course, given who we've got to provide the answers, I can't put any guarantee on their quality."
She smiled again and Arnold felt himself doing so in return, albeit with great caution.
"Everyone keeps saying that to me. 'We're here to help you.' I don't know what I did to deserve all this fuss," she said, swilling the last of the tea round and round in the bottom of the cup.
"We don't get much in the way of luck round here," Rimmer replied, resting back in his chair, arms folded. "I think it's just good to see a fresh face."
"I can't believe I'm the only one you found," she said, staring into the cup. "There were so many of us. We followed proper evac protocol."
"Can I be honest with you?" Rimmer asked carefully, his voice low. "I don't want to upset you, but still…"
"What is it, Mister Rimmer?"
"There are no records of what happened to your ship. Literally nothing. No black box, no pods coming back. It vanished. You are the first person from the Andromeda to ever be found. At all."
The girl closed her eyes, thin lines crossing her brow, her fingers blanching on her cup.
"Oh God," she whispered.
"What happened to that ship, Anneke?" he said softly, leaning forwards on his thighs.
She took a deep breath, shaking her head a little as though trying to clear it, her eyes misty as she opened them again. She stared down at the cream linoleum floor, her leg twitching.
"Fire. My God, fire like you've never seen. We were sprayed by a meteor storm. These little bullets of ice and dust ripped their way through us, tiny, tiny things. They just tore us to pieces, straight through the bulkhead, into the guts of the ship. One of the coolant radiators was caught and exploded. The engines were spilling out into space and this… this wall of fire swept it's way along the deck. It fried the comm-systems."
She paused, running her hand through her hair and holding onto the tips tightly.
"I was a communication officer. It was my job to make some sense out of this chaos and get people to safety. But there were no channels anymore. We were trying to be professionals. To get the pods loaded and launched. I was running around with bits of sodding paper between stations because I didn't even have a bloody radio. There was no guidance for the pods at that point, no homing beacons. All the relays were frazzled. I made the choice and I flushed them into space. Like throwing a message in a bottle into the sea and hoping it gets somewhere to be read.
"I was going to stay. I was doing my job until I couldn't do it anymore, it's what I swore when I signed up. But the captain made me take his pod. It was the last one. He said the only noble thing for him to do would be to go down with Andromeda. That was his job. So I got in and then I woke up here. Oh my God, all those people…"
She dropped the cup then, her head sinking into her hands, breathing rapid through her fingers.
"I killed all those people…" she choked.
Rimmer shot to his feet, going to lean his hand on the glass before remembering he couldn't. He hissed through his teeth in frustration, then stepped as close as he could, his voice urgent;
"Anneke. Anneke, listen to me. You didn't kill anyone. Believe me, you didn't. Anneke, look at me, please."
She pushed her hair out of her face, fingers resting on her jaw as she looked up at him, eyes rimmed scarlet, wet tracks on her cheeks.
"You didn't kill anyone," he repeated. "You gave them a chance. Who knows, they could have all drifted to moons and planets and space stations and quietly lived out their days in peace. Just because no-one knows what happened to them doesn't mean it was something awful. You did your job and got them away from the ship. You couldn't have done any more than that. You're not a killer."
"How do you know?" she whispered, almost pleading with him.
"Honestly, I'm not a terrific judge of character usually. But anyone who heard what I just heard knows you did everything you could. Besides, I know who didn't seal the drive plates on Red Dwarf. You are nothing like them. You did the right thing, Anneke…" He tailed off rather helplessly, not sure what else to say to the woman. Grief and comforting were hardly his fortes. Although he did know guilt. Guilt he hoped he could help with.
She looked up at him in a daze, shadows beneath her eyes, sliding off the table to stand.
"I think I would like to try and sleep again now," she breathed, inching towards the privacy pad. Rimmer straightened up, shoving his hands awkwardly in his dressing gown pockets.
"Probably a good idea," he murmured.
"Maybe you should too."
"I'll leave you in peace."
"Come talk to me some more soon?" she asked, tilting her head as she wiped her face with the heel of her hand. "Preferably sooner than a week from now? Dave's doing my head in. His level of keen is a bit bonkers."
Rimmer looked at her in surprise, feeling his jaw slacken. An uncomfortably long pause passed before he remembered his voice.
"You want me to visit you again?" he asked, trying to sound nonchalant and failing spectacularly as the words wavered and squeaked.
"I feel as if you're my only friend in the universe right now. I'd appreciate it if you did."
"Right… Right, yes. Of course," he managed, gripping the linings of his pockets tightly. "You should sleep for now though."
"Mmhm. Goodnight, Mister Rimmer. Or good morning. Whichever." She left him with one last, thin smile before the glass blacked out, leaving him staring at it blankly for several long seconds before he finally willed his legs to work.