by Rob Grant
The burgeoning malice fomented in Rimmer's mind, and formed itself into an idea. The commander's arrival had been strangely convenient. He'd arrived within minutes of the collision that breached Starbug's hull. And just what was it that they'd collided with? They were stationary — the long-range radar would have warned them of approaching asteroids.
Rimmer's face split into a wide, wicked grin of satisfaction.
He had the bastard.
It was Ace Rimmer himself who'd caused their near-lethal accident.
EIGHT
Lister pushed himself up off the deck and sat back on his haunches. His brain was flopping around in his skull, and his eyesight was decidedly dodgy. He tilted his head and tried to make sense of what he was seeing.
Whichever way he looked at it, Kryten appeared to be jammed upside-down in the hull, with a large girder welded across his chest, like some bizarre, robotic parody of the crucifixion of St Peter.
It didn't help when Kryten smiled and winked at him and asked him how he was feeling.
Just as he was thinking things couldn't get any weirder, he heard a forklift trundle up behind him, and turned to see Rimmer dressed in a neatly tailored space jock suit and a floppy-haired wig looking down at him. 'What the smeg is going on?' he asked no one specific.
The wigged Rimmer spoke. 'You've had a bit of a tumble, my old apple tart. You'll be feeling a little groggy for a while. Here...' he slid a small, silver flask out of his back pocket and tossed it to Lister. 'A belt of that should smooth out the edges for you.'
'Commander,' the upside-down Kryten spoke. 'With respect, although Mr Lister is chronologically above the appropriate watershed age for the consumption of alcohol, he is physically only fifteen.'
Ace hoisted a metre-square metal plate on to the deck with his good hand. 'It's not alcohol, old love, it's ginseng and royal jelly. Best pick-me-up in the known universe.'
Lister span off the cap and sniffed the liquid. He drooled some down his throat and shuddered. 'I'm not with the programme here, guys,' he replaced the cap and tossed the flask back to Wiggy. 'Why is Kryten welded to the wall? And why are there two Rimmers?'
Ace glanced over his shoulder. Rimmer was standing behind him, arms crossed, wearing a curious lop-sided smile. 'All in good time, Davey boy. Our first priority's your buddy here.'
'He's from another dimension, aren't you, Commander?' Rimmer said. 'He arrived, rather conveniently, just after something smashed into the hull over there and nearly split us in two.'
'Nothing convenient about it, Arn, old cabbage.' Ace bent over and ripped the material away from the Cat's leg. 'The collision was my fault.'
Rimmer's smile sagged. 'You're admitting it?'
'Absolutely. My crate materialized too close to yours. Shockwaves damn near splatted us both out of existence. When I got my damage under control, thought I'd better pop along, see if I could lend a hand here.' He looked over at Lister. 'Davey, lad, I'm going to need you to put some pressure on your friend's thigh.'
Rimmer stared in slack-mouthed disbelief as Lister stepped over the Cat's body and put his hand on the injured thigh. What a slimy way of wriggling out of blame. You do something wrong, admit it, and then simply carry on! 'Is that it? That's all we get?'
Ace cupped his hand around the Cat's heel. 'I'm not with you, old turnip.'
'You blast into our dimension, damn near kill us all, and you don't even think an apology is required?'
'Ready?' Ace looked up at Lister, who nodded back, and then he tugged hard on the Cat's heel. 'That should do it.' He tossed a pair of flat wooden planks to Lister. 'Think you could rig up a quick field splint? It's only got to hold till we get him up to the ops room.'
'No problem.'
As Lister bent to his task, Ace stood up and faced Rimmer. 'Look, Arnie, I'm not altogether sure what you're driving at. We're still in deep marmalade, here. We've got one of the team out of com, and he's going to need surgery fairly pronto if he's going to pull through, we've got another one wedged upside-down in the wall with his arse hanging out in deep space, and a hull that's likely to collapse if someone breathes on it too hard. Let's all try and hunker down and get the job done.' He tossed back his perfect fringe and smiled. 'Then you can bend me over the desk and give me a damned good spanking, OK?'
He turned around and bent down to Kryten. 'Here's the plan, old munchkin: I'm going to fix these plates to the hull. It's going to be easier to do that from the inside. That means walling you in, effectively. Then I'll go outside, cut you free, and we should all be home in time for Christmas. Sound peachy?'
Kryten smiled and nodded. 'Peachy dandy, Commander.'
'That's the ticket.' Ace straightened. 'We're going to construct a frame around this bulge and create a false hull with these metal plates. Obviously, it's got to be space-tight, and that means riveting and welding every single joint and coating it with sealant. How are you at welding, David?'
Lister looked up from the splint. 'I get by.'
Ace laughed. 'I'll bet you do. In my dimension, you were the best in the business.'
Lister wrinkled his brow. 'I was?'
'None of the jocks on Europa would even dream of taking up a kite if it hadn't been given a damned good sorting by Spanners Lister.'
'Spanners Lister?' An involuntary grin spread over Lister's features. 'He works at the Europa test base?'
'I'll tell you all about him later. First things first, let's get our friend up to ops, then we'd better crack on with the hull repair. I reckon there's a good fifty hours solid work in that.'
Kryten smiled with his lips and panicked with his eyes. The hull damage must have savagely depleted their available oxygen supply.
There was a very good chance, that fifty hours was more than they had left.
NINE
M'Aiden surveyed the work with his newly implanted eye, and felt as close to satisfaction as he could possibly get without some warm, bloody entrails lying at his feet.
It had been many months in the making, and had required more cooperation than agonoidkind had ever achieved before. It was a magnificent accomplishment, undeniably. The first and only example of agonoid interior design.
They called it the Death Wheel.
Fundamentally, it was series of corridors that led out from each of Red Dwarf's docking bays to a central point. But there was much more to it than that.
Once the simpering human and his crewmates landed on board, automatic systems would begin draining away their oxygen. They would be forced to flee the docking bay and race into the corridors that formed the spokes of the Death Wheel. The doors would seal behind them, and then the temperature would begin climbing to unbearable levels, compelling them to head towards the next corridor, which would again seal off their retreat. There, they would gradually realize that the ceiling was moving inexorably downwards, threatening to crush them like garbage in a waste compactor, and driving them onwards to the next corridor.
With each new corridor, the dangers would become more and more intolerable, and they would have less and less time to move on through.
Finally, they would stagger, breathless and cowed with fear and panic into the Hub of Pain.
The Hub of Pain was the piece de resistance: a huge, dome-shaped room, with a viewing gallery circling the ceiling. The walls were lined with every conceivable kind of cutting and bludgeoning weapon, and every instrument of torture ever invented by the extremely inventive human mind: maces, pikes, swords and sabres; switch-blades, daggers and laser-cutting tools; chain-saws, buzz-saws, tenon-saws and hacksaws, dentist drill, scalpels and a whole range of gleaming metal apparatus designed for gynaecological surgery; mallets, sledge hammers, claw hammers and jack hammers; racks, iron maidens, gonad electrocution kits; testicle handcuffs, jock-straps lined with razor-blades, acid-filled enema bags and easy-listenin' music... you name it, if it caused pain, if humans feared it, it was there.
M'Aiden drooled at the beauty of it all.
The bleating human and
his human-loving friends would be given time to allow the full horror of what awaited them to sink in, and then the signal would be given.
The race would begin.
The entire agonoid population would be locked, lurking in individual chambers. Once the signal was given, the doors of these chambers would be sprung simultaneously, and the agonoids would each charge down a corridor. These were arranged in a series of V shapes, so that two neighbouring corridors met at the apex of the V in a single doorway. The door would seal after allowing one of the agonoids through.
An agonoid could use any means, fair or foul, to beat his rival to the next corridor, where the process would be repeated, then repeated again, each time reducing the combatants by half, until there were just two rivals left to fight for the right to pass through the door to the Hub of Pain.
For the right to be The One.
Of course, there would doubtless be a great many agonoid deaths along the way, but that just added to the fun nature of the event.
The agonoid survivors would then hobble and curse their way up to the viewing gallery, and the gore Jest would begin.
With careful planning and a lot of patience, the despicable human and his fellows could last many months without dying — possibly even years if the lucky agonoid were sufficiently well-versed in human anatomy.
The door to the Hub of Pain slid open behind him, and M'Aiden half-turned to see Djuhn'Keep limp inside.
Djuhn had masterminded the Death Wheel's design, and been the driving force behind its completion. Now, he was just adding the finishing touches, the little bits of finesse that would immeasurably enhance the pleasure of the occasion. He placed a small rubber sheath on the wall, just beside the screw-action nutcrackers. He saw the query in M'Aiden's glance. 'Condom smeared inside with vapour rub,' he said by way of explanation. 'Apparently it burns like a demon.'
M'Aiden smiled and nodded. Although Djuhn was unquestionably the brightest and most inventive of the agonoids, M'Aiden pitied him. Over the years, many of his parts had ceased functioning, and he was dangerously weak, lacking the physical strength to win himself replacement bits in combat. The only reason he hadn't been attacked and dismantled was his capacity for invention and design — his skills had kept the agonoid fleet operational these many years. But it was only a matter of time before too much of him broke down for him to function effectively, and he would become nothing more than a spare-parts repository and so much scrap metal.
In short, there was no way Djuhn would become The One. His mind had conceived the Death Wheel, and yet he would be nothing more than a spectator when it was put to use. He wouldn't even make it through the first doorway.
Djuhn placed a series of small boxes on a shelf 'Contact lenses made of scouring pads... barbed wire dental floss... nipple-sized pastry cutters...' he listed, '... foreskin clippers... small, metal cocktail umbrella...'
'What's that for?'
'Anything you like, really, though I thought it might come in handy for scraping out the inside of the penis tube.'
M'Aiden nodded approval.
Djuhn carried on. 'Leg-waxing strips... staple remover — I thought that might be useful for clipping off scabs — keep the wounds all fresh and runny... rectal thermometer, coated in sandpaper... yes, I think that's the lot.'
He stood back and examined the newly arranged torture paraphernalia with a critical eye. 'Oh! I almost forgot...' he reached into his belt bag and tugged out a card. 'This should really put the rave into "grave".' He placed the card in prime position on the torture shelf.
'What is it?'
'It's a scramble card. New design. It eliminates temper loss, so The One can keep his head if the human annoys him, not get carried away and end the spectacle too soon. It also cuts out fatigue, improves reaction time and amplifies the pleasure nodes. Well' — he rubbed his hands together -'can't hang around here all day. I've got a battery-powered fingernail plucker to wire up.' He smiled at M'Aiden and turned to go.
'You will be ready in time?' M'Aiden asked. The grand opening of the Hub of Pain was scheduled to take place in less than twelve hours' time. The entire agonoid population would gather to inspect the delights of the chamber, and get familiarized with its intricacies. There would be much merriment, a lot of scramble-carding, and, of course, a not-inconsiderable amount of unnecessary mindless violence. Such agonoid gatherings only took place every few centuries or so, largely because the death toll was so high. This evening's party could be expected to result in a twenty-five per cent reduction of the population.
Djuhn'Keep nodded. 'Everything will be ready, I assure you,' he said, and hobbled through the door.
M'Aiden crossed to the torture shelf, picked up the scramble card and turned it over in his hand. 'Improves reaction time...' he mumbled to himself. If this card really did that, it could give him a good enough edge to win the Human Race. Ultimately, it was a race, after all, and speed was paramount. No matter how brutally you disposed of your rival, if you didn't make it through the door before the victor of the struggle in the adjacent corridor, he would have a clear run, and you'd be shut out without a fight.
He slipped the card into his head socket, and waited for the effect to kick in.
But it never did.
He felt nothing. No amplification of the pleasure nodes. Nothing.
Disgusted, he removed the card and flung it back on the shelf.
He would win the race on his own merits, he told himself. But he was wrong.
For M'Aiden Ty-One there would be no race.
The damage had already been done.
TEN
The Cat moaned and opened his eyes. He heard an unfamiliar voice say, 'Steady on there, laddie,' but it didn't occur to him to try and find out who the speaker was. He tried to move, but his arms were pinioned by his side. He could feel a strange sensation in his right leg. He thought about it for a few moments, and decided it was pain. It didn't bother him much at all, which struck him as amusing, somehow. He giggled.
Lister said, 'He's coming round.'
'Worry ye not, Davey boy. He's shot full of jolly jelly. He's happier than a bunch of hippies at a ganja harvest.'
The Cat raised his head and looked down at his body, and saw the rip in his apricot-coloured skin-tight silk trews, with the inflatable field splint below. Blood had soaked all over his trousers from the wound in his leg. 'Oh, boy,' he moaned. 'That looks real bad.'
'I shouldn't fret, my old roly-poly pudding,' the voice behind him said. 'We'll have that leg sorted before you know what's happening.'
'Leg? Who's worried about the leg? It's the colour combination that's bothering me. Red and apricot?' Cat's head slammed down on the stretcher's blow-up pillow. 'I'm bleeding a tasteless colour!'
Ace bent down and grabbed the front end of the stretcher with his good hand. 'Better get him up to ops. He's getting delirious.'
'Not necessarily,' Lister stooped and grabbed the rear. 'He's always like that.'
They hoisted the stretcher waist-high and hauled it up the stairway. Ace paused on the landing and called down to Kryten. 'Hang in there, old pal. Smoke us a kipper — we'll be back for breakfast.' And they carried the Cat through the door.
Kryten watched them go. He shook his head, smiling. 'What a guy!'
Rimmer looked down at Kryten, incredulity twisting his face into a one-sided grin. 'He's taken you in, hasn't he? He's taken you all in.'
'I'm not sure I'm following you, sir.'
'He's got you all believing he's a combination of Captain Courageous, the Scarlet Pimpernel and James bloody Bond. "Smoke me a kipper"? I ask you. Ace! What a tosser!'
'Sir, I don't understand. You appear to be resentful of Commander Rimmer.'
'I'm not resentful. I can see through him, that's all. It's all an act, the bravado, the snooty space jock lingo, the calm confidence in the face of danger. Underneath, he's a quivering, jelly-spined under-achiever.'
'With respect, sir, I don't think so.'
'He mu
st be — he's me, remember? And I swear before you now, Kryten, if he once again refers to me as a fruit or vegetable, I'll take that welding torch and set his pouffy fringe on fire.'
'Well, he certainly seems to be getting our situation under control.'
'Under control? Kryten — turn on the radio and tune into Sanity FM. Even with all his poncy prancing around, the best we can hope is he'll get us all in good shape in time for the massed army of psychotic agonoids to show up to mangle us slowly to death. If that's the situation under control, then give me mindless, bleating panic, every time.'
There was a footfall on the landing and Rimmer glanced up to see Lister racing down the stairs, bubbling with an enthusiasm Rimmer found repugnant. 'He's operating on the Cat's leg.'
'Well,' Rimmer smiled, 'that's the last we'll see of that, then.'
Lister dashed straight for the welding gear. 'No, apparently field microsurgery's all part of basic training in the Space Corps Special Service. What a guy!'
'He told you he'd been in the SCSS? And you believed him?'
Lister tugged on the welding mask. 'Why should he lie?'
'He's building himself up. Trying to make you think he's something he's not. And you're all buying it.'
'You're not making sense, Rimmer. He's definitely a test pilot, right? Otherwise, he couldn't have crossed dimensions, and his ship wouldn't be floating around outside.'
'Well, yes, I'll give him that... "
'And unless he stole that uniform, he's a commander.'
'Probably, yes.'
'And he's charming, clever and witty, and he's got leadership charisma...'
'Hang on a second.' Rimmer held up his hand. 'Is it going to be a simple Register Office, or a full church do for you two?'
Lister shook his head, and tugged on the welding gauntlets. 'I don't get your attitude, Rimmer. He's you.'
'He's not me. I'm me. He's a me who had all the breaks, all the luck, all the chances I never got.'