Fragments of the Reclaimer

Ten Minutes Came and Went

Minutes quickly became months. Ten minutes had come and gone. Aria was still alive; only just. Leaving Rimmer and the rest of the Dwarfers had led to her giving up on her well-being; she barely ate, didn't sleep much, she was overemotional and anxious. The only thing that kept her going was finding a cure for Rampancy. She had spent the last sixteen months searching different dimensions for one. No luck. The closest thing she had was an upgrade for Rimmer's light bee, buried somewhere on Io, oddly enough. Most of Io was destroyed long ago. It was nothing but a barren wasteland. With no way of knowing where it was buried, eventually she gave up. Even if it was still there, she doubted it would work.

Aria sat down at a computer console, and started to transmit a video message to send back to base, which was three million years back in time. "Guys? It's Aria... I've found him." she said.

A Englishman, who was well into his thirties but still looked and dressed like a teenager, was on the other end, talking with her. Aria sent over a photo of someone.

"That's him?" the man asked.

"I know he's not much - definitely not what we expected but... he is something else." Aria smiled from fond memories. That smile faded when she recalled something terrible. "Due to complications, I haven't been able to—" Suddenly, alarms started blaring. Her eyes looked upward, and she sighed heavily. "What now?!" she griped.

"You alright?"

"Yeah." she sighed. "I'll be back later." She closed transmission and left the room.

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Back on Starbug Lister was zonked out at the flight controls. The cockpit filled with red while warning alarms went off. Not once did Lister wake up; not until the rest of the crew piled into the cockpit and assessed the situation.

"Guys, keep the noise down. I'm trying to sleep here." he griped. It took Lister a few seconds to realise what was happening as the alarms still blared. "Whoa! What's going on? We're way off course here! Who's the joker in charge of navigation?"

Kryten answered, "You are, sir!"

"Seriously?" Lister incredulously asked as he shut off the alert. "Oh, man. I think I might've dosed off."

"You think?!" Rimmer snapped. When he saw just how far out they were, Rimmer freaked out. "Lister, we're five thousand clicks off course! All you had to do was engage autopilot! Your watch, your fault!"

"You can't blame me for this." Lister said. "What kind of lunch was that to give your pilot? Roast beef with all the trimmings, followed by seconds, followed by sticky toffee pudding, followed by seconds, followed by beer and coffee and cheese and brandy and port and cigars and a little chocolate mint. What chance did I stand after a Sunday lunch like that?" He asked, "How long have I been out?"

"It's Monday, sir." Kryten replied.

"Oh, man." Lister sighed.

Rimmer griped, "It's gonna take us forever to get back to Red Dwarf now."

"Maybe we could take a short cut across that asteroid belt." Lister pointed to his flight navigation monitor.

"What? In GELF country?" Rimmer asked.

Kryten started to explain which particular tribe inhabited that area of space, but then sat on a screwdriver, causing him to talk gibberish for a few seconds. "Why does no one clean up around here but me?" Kryten muttered. He finally explained, that the tribe are the Nakhi Ninkas, a vampire GELF tribe that only feasted on the blood of virgins.