by Rob Grant
'Nice.' M'Aiden nodded in genuine appreciation.
'Either that,' Chi went on, 'or I'll rip off his limbs one by one and bugger him to death with the soggy end of his right arm.'
'Not bad.' M'Aiden nodded again. 'What it lacks in finesse, it makes up for in spectacle.' He noticed that a couple of other agonoids had spotted Chi'Panastee's vulnerable state, and were edging towards them. One of them was limping, courtesy of a missing foot, and the other was shy of a nose.
'Or' — Chi warmed to the theme, oblivious — 'or, I thought I might split open his stomach with a pair of rusty scissors, forcefeed him his own spleen, liver, pancreas and kidneys, raw, then tug out his bowels and hold them over his face until the offal works its way through what's left of his digestive system, and drown him in his own crap.'
'Ah! Now that's what I call style!'
Chi leered at him with drunken pride. 'And you? How would you do it if you were The One?'
M'Aiden leaned forward, as if bestowing a confidence. 'Personally, I plan to make it a long, long, lingering death. First off, I intend to pluck out one of his eyes with my teeth. Much like this...'
He sneered back his upper lip, opened his jaws and lunged his head at Chi'Panastee's face.
As they tumbled off the stools and hit the floor, the two agonoids circling hyena-like behind them dived into the fracas.
In the bloody, lethal melee that ensued, M'Aiden managed to acquire not only his replacement eye, but a fine pair of back-up ears and an extremely useful spare heart.
FIVE
'I don't get it.' The Cat caught his reflection in Holly's dead monitor and paused for a few seconds to admire it. Slowly, he became aware the others were waiting with mounting impatience for him to speak, so he tore himself away reluctantly and continued his thought. 'We're supposed to be afraid of a bunch of dooh-dooh brains like eraser-tipped pencil-head here?' He nodded at Kryten.
'Begging your pardon, sir, they are not mechanoids,' Kryten hrumphed, 'they're agonoids.'
'What's the difference?'
'Well, the basic difference is that a mechanoid would never crack open a human's ribcage and use his right lung as a bedpan. Agonoids are purpose-built single-minded mechanical killers with the sole objective of slaughtering every life-form they encounter.'
'Nyah,' Lister whined sarcastically, 'I'm really, really scared.'
Rimmer cast his eyes at the engine-room ceiling. Their survival probability, already slenderer than an anorexic tapeworm with bulimia, had, incredibly, just lost even more weight. And on top of that, he had to face this new, apparently insurmountable threat with a couple of simpering pubescents who would appear immature to a remedial kindergarten potty-training class. 'Lister, why don't you and the Cat pop upstairs and run around pretending you're aeroplanes for a few minutes, while the grown-ups discuss the problem rationally?' He turned to Kryten. 'Look, just how bad is this? Didn't Holly say it all happened ten months ago? Surely they'll be way out of range by now.'
'I fear not, sir. They will undoubtedly have discovered the news of our impending arrival from Holly. They must have known we'd pursue Red Dwarf. In fact, I believe they left Holly out here for us to find, to entice us onward into some kind of trap. I think we have to face the very real probability that they will be lurking somewhere very close by.'
'Well, that's that, then.' Rimmer shrugged. 'We're out of choices. We have to abandon the search for Red Dwarf, and use what little time remains to us to seek out some kind of habitable planetoid.'
Kryten shook his head. 'That's no longer an option, I'm afraid, sir. Powering up Holly has dramatically reduced our range. There is now zero possibility of a breathable atmosphere being within our reach. Recapturing Red Dwarf is our only chance.'
'Well, buds,' the Cat straightened up from his crouch. 'Discussion over. The only outstanding issue is what people of taste are wearing for killing agonoids this season. Personally, I lean towards a box jacket in shimmering silver satin, with razor-thin lapels, and black vinyl trousers that taper into boots with winkle-picker toes' — his grin exposed his pointed incisors — 'but I'm open to suggestions.'
'Don't you think,' Rimmer asked quietly, 'that it might be a neatish idea to formulate some kind of planny sort of thing first?'
'I already have a plan,' the Cat shrugged. 'Put on the jacket, grab a bazookoid and let those bad-ass robot dudes eat laser.'
'Agonoids are almost indestructible, sir, they could easily withstand a volley of bazookoid fire at point-blank range with only minimal damage. They would certainly survive long enough to make balloon animals out of your lower intestines.'
'Well, I'm with him,' Lister flung his arm around the Cat. 'If we're going to go down, at least let's go down fighting.'
Rimmer smiled and shook his head. 'There are, I agree, times when the situation calls for such impulsive, courageous and, dare I say, stupid thinking. Before we reach that point, however, I believe we should consider employing guile, tactical manoeuvring...'
'... and cowardice.'
'Indeed, Lister. Cowardice has its place in military strategy. Sometimes, even history's boldest generals have had to dig deep into their souls and find the courage to be cowards.'
Lister cocked his head. 'You're going to suggest we surrender, aren't you?'
'Actually, that hadn't occurred to me, but now you mention it, such a tactic would have its merits, yes.'
'Surrender is not a viable option,' Kryten said flatly. 'They're not interested in keeping us alive.'
'That can't be true!' Rimmer surprised himself with the sudden anger in his voice. 'If all they wanted was to kill us, they could have stayed aboard Red Dwarf where we left it and blasted us out of existence as soon as we popped up on the radar screen.'
'Sir, they live to kill. It's all they do. Yet they must have gone for centuries now without finding anything to slaughter. At last they have some worthwhile prey, and they'll want to make the most of it. Who knows when they're going to get another opportunity to maim, de-gut and dismember again?'
What little colour remained in Rimmer's transpicuous face dribbled down to his see-through boots.
Kryten carried on, oblivious to the effect he was having on Rimmer's sphincter. 'They're toying with us, making a sport of it. They lured us through the asteroid belt, and let us know they'd be waiting for us, knowing that we'd have no choice but to carry on into their trap. They want our fear. It will make the slow, painful, lingering, screaming agony of our certain brutal deaths all the more relishable.'
There was a long silence, broken only by an embarrassing lolloping noise from the direction of Rimmer's stomach.
Finally, Lister spoke. 'So, what you're saying, Kryten, is we can't run, and we can't give ourselves up?'
'I'm afraid that's true.'
'Well,' Lister grinned, 'that's exhausted the entire contents of Arnold Rimmer's Tactical Guide to Warfare. Looks like the Cat's right. The only thing left to work out is what kind of jackets we wear to die in.'
The Cat held up his hand. 'Wait a minute! If it looks like we're going to die, the satin box jacket is a no-no — it creases too easily when you lie in it.' He sighed. 'This is going to be a lot tougher than I thought.'
Kryten opened his mouth to speak. He wanted to put a more positive spin on the situation. He was going to say that, on the bright side, things couldn't possibly get any worse. On reflection, it was a good job he never got the chance to iterate the thought, because at that instant, things did get worse.
A lot worse.
There was a gigantic dull thung, like an explosion inside a massive bell, and the wall of the hull behind Kryten suddenly ballooned inwards, blasting him across the metal-floored aisle towards the others.
Lister barely managed to duck out of the way in time to avoid being decapitated by the helpless mechanoid's flailing hands.
Kryten's head thumped into the top corner of the engine-room, where the bulkhead met the ceiling, and, simultaneously, Starbug went into an uncontrollable s
ideways spin, which sent the crew tumbling against the wall, then the ceiling, then the other wall, then the deck, like dice in a Las Vegas dicing cage.
After six or seven bruising revolutions, they had all managed to grab on to stanchions or gantry railings, where they dangled, shocked, winded and battered, and started wondering what the smeg had happened.
All except for Rimmer, who carried on tumbling.
'The gyroscope!' he screamed. 'Somebody get the gyroscope!'
Kryten looked above and behind him. The gyroscope had been knocked from its housing by his own body when he'd been flung across the engine-room.
He started crawling towards it as best he could, but the mad spin of the craft was extremely disorienting. The injury to his head hadn't helped things — he was going to have to spend several hours panel-beating it back into shape if they survived this mess.
One moment he was climbing up towards the displaced gyroscope, the next he was sliding down to it.
Eventually he managed to lurch, stagger and tumble close enough to make a grab for it. Then, just as his fingers began to tighten around the housing, the motion of the ship sent him slipping right past it and thumped him into the ceiling. His plastic-coated hands scrabbled at the ceiling mesh below him, but there was nothing to hang on to and he was flung against the wall on his backside.
'Like this! Rimmer yelled. Kryten looked over to see Rimmer running against the motion of the ship like a desperate hamster in a motorized wheel. 'You've got to get into the rhythm like this.'
Kryten staggered to his feet just in time for the floor to smack him in the head and throw him, stunned, to his knees again.
'Get up!' Rimmer screamed, his arms pumping furiously and his cheeks puffed with exertion, which only served to make him look more hamsteresque. Kryten, in a state of impact shock, found himself giggling. 'Get up, you. dozy metal bastard! I can't keep this up much longer!'
Kryten shook himself to clear his dented head, then looked up and tried to gauge the spin of the oncoming wall. As the ship whirled round, he leapt to his feet and began running in the opposite direction.
After a few slips and stumbles, he managed to match the speed of Starbug's spin, and began to edge sideways towards the gyroscope.
On the next revolution, he edged closer still.
On the third pass he was close enough to bend down and grab on to the gyroscope's housing. The motion of the ship pivoted him over like a monkey on a stick, thumping him hard into the oncoming wall. The impact activated his automatic lubricant purge system, and his vision suddenly blacked out as thick geysers of sticky black oil pumped over his face.
When his vision cleared, he was still holding on to the gyroscope. He dragged his head level with the housing and, in a brief moment during the spin when the ceiling actually was the ceiling, he leaned forward and nudged the displaced gyroscope back towards its correct position with his nose.
The ship stopped turning.
It stopped turning so abruptly, Rimmer had run halfway up the oncoming wall, and Lister and the Cat were yanked from the safety of their stanchions and sent crashing to the floor.
Kryten heard the unmistakable, sickening sound of bones snapping against metal.
Dangling from the gyroscope housing in the sudden silence, he looked down at the still bodies. Though he dreaded the answer, he asked the question anyway: 'Is everyone all right?'
'I'm fine, thank God,' Rimmer panted, flat on his back.
There was no reply from the Cat and Lister.
Kryten contemplated letting go, but the drop would almost certainly compound his injuries beyond the point where his auto-repair system could cope. Irreparably damaged, he could be of no use to either of them.
He looked up at his hands above his head, then towards the gantry opposite. If he judged his leap correctly, he might be able to trapeze over there and clamber down.
He began to swing his legs back and forth.
Suddenly, he heard an unearthly sigh. He looked down towards the bulging hull wall.
It was beginning to split.
Another inhuman sigh, and the breach in the hull grinned wider.
Oxygen hissed out through the gap, freezing into a beautiful, fragmented ice cloud as it hit the terrible cold of space.
Kryten pendulumed to and fro, helpless with terror. Lister began, to stir. He slithered from under the insensible Cat and began to crawl towards the hole.
That was the antithesis of the optimum course of action. Fleeing the engine-room and sealing it off was their one small hope of survival. Kryten was about to yell at him to stop, to run for the stairs as fast as his injuries would allow, when he realized the situation was even more hideously lethal than he could have dreamed.
Lister had not regained consciousness.
He wasn't crawling in the direction of the wheezing gap.
His body was being sucked towards it.
SIX
The hull rupture leered wider.
A clutch of metal tools hurled themselves through it, and Lister's slither accelerated.
His comatose body juddered over the cruel metal rivets of the floor, like a scarecrow being towed over a frozen, ploughed field. His lifeless hands reached out for the lethal vacuum lurking beyond the expanding hole.
Kryten yelled 'No!' and swung towards the hull. He released his grip at the apex of the swing and dived for the gap.
He kept his legs swinging forward in flight, tucking his knees up to his chest, so he span top over tail, and when he hit the hole, he was facing inwards.
He lodged in the gap, upside-down, and the oxygen stopped escaping.
Lister's fingers were only inches away from his face.
Rimmer staggered over to the jammed mechanoid and crouched down to his eye level. 'Nice move, Stromboli,' he said. 'Only, now what?'
'You've got to get them out of here. I don't know how long I can plug this gap.'
'How am I supposed to do that?' Rimmer waved his transparent hand in front of Kryten's face. 'I'm a hologram, remember?'
Kryten's eyes flitted left and right. 'I don't know! There must be something around here — a voice-operated forklift or something.'
'A voice-operated forklift! Of course. That would do it!' Rimmer's panicked eyes wandered giddily around the deck. 'D'you think there's one on board?'
Exasperation and frustration over-rode Kryten's politeness protocols. 'I don't know, you encephalopathetic donkey gonad! Look, dammit!'
The insult did the trick. Rimmer snapped out of his pathetic shock state, leapt to his see-through feet and started running down the aisles.
He streaked towards the nearest bay, paused just long enough to establish there was nothing that could help, and raced off to the next one.
Nothing there, either.
At every empty equipment bay, his panic grew. With Kryten jammed in the hull and the others unconscious, he had never felt so helpless. So utterly ghostlike and helpless.
If the breach in the hull widened any further, Kryten would be sucked out into deep space, and Lister and the Cat would tumble out after him. In a matter of seconds, their inner organs would expand to bursting point and they would explode like fat, ripe water melons falling from a tree.
And Rimmer would be alone.
He skidded into another empty bay. He heard Kryten yelling. 'Quickly! You have to do something quickly!'
'They're all empty!' Rimmer screamed back at him, and took off for the final bay, his last hope.
He couldn't possibly pilot the ship alone. There would be no escaping the agonoid menace.
The agonoids! He'd forgotten them.
Fear gripped his testicles and ground them together like Tibetan worry balls. If he were the only surviving victim these psychopathic robots could vent their anger on, what would they do to him? Hack into his remote projection unit and whittle away the rest of eternity devising new and ever more heinous methods of inflicting pain and misery on him, most likely.
They'd probably set up s
ome kind of round-the-clock rota system so that the entire agonoid population could get in a couple of hours of Rimmer torture a week.
He wasn't even aware that he was gibbering these pusillanimous thoughts out loud as he swung into the final equipment bay.
Nothing.
He swayed in the bay's orange emergency light, his eyes and mouth at full aperture in a grin of disbelief and terror. He looked away and looked back again, as if, in the millisecond of his glance, a voice-operated forklift might spring magically into existence, fully charged and primed for action, simply because he wanted it so badly.
From around the corner at the far end of the engine-room, Kryten's yell echoed towards him. 'Please! There must be something!'
Pointlessly, Rimmer shook his head. There was nothing voice-activated on the entire deck. He looked down at the floor, just in case there was an extremely small voice-operated forklift he might have missed. Some kind of miniature, kiddie-sized version hiding in the recesses of the bay, but again, he was disappointed.
He staggered backwards out of the bay, at a loss what to even think about trying to do next.
He was so focused on panicking properly, he didn't even register the motorized remote ore scoop the first time his eyes fell on it.
He ducked under the gantry and was halfway back to Kryten before his brain processed the image and made sense of it.
He pirouetted around and raced back.
A voice-operated ore scoop wouldn't be ideal — its shovel was too small to carry a full body — but at least he might use it to shove Lister and the Cat towards the stairs. At least there was a chance it would nudge them awake.
He skidded up to the metre-long buggy and crouched, breathless, to peer at the controls. Five buttons. Start, forward, reverse, left and right.
At first, he couldn't see a voice-activation unit.
