Red Dwarf... a mining ship from Earth's Jupiter Mining Corporation. In the 23rd century a radiation leak killed all of the crew except for Dave Lister, a lowly Third Technician who was safely sealed in a stasis booth as punishment for smuggling a cat on board.
Three million years later he's been brought out of stasis by Holly, the now senile ship's computer. His only companions are Arnold Rimmer, a hologram representation of his dead bunkmate, and a creature whose race evolved from his cat. Stranded 3,000,000 years from Earth, they're slowly making their way home.
The U.S.S. Voyager is a Federation Starship from 23rd Century Earth that got dragged halfway across the galaxy to a strange part of space 75 years away from home at maximum warp. They also have a hologram, a replacement for the dead CMO.
Under the command of Captain Kathyrn Janeway, a no-nonsense Starfleet officer, the crew of the Voyager must now begin the long journey home...
You're not the only one who sees the similarities here, folks. For the record, Red Dwarf came first.
Since the complement of the Voyager is about 120, and the Red Dwarf about, well... exactly 4, we've only selected 4 Voyager crewmembers to remain on their ship (that speck next to the mammoth 5-mile long, 3-mile deep Red Dwarf).
There will be no ship-to-ship combat, as the Red Dwarf is unarmed. Both computers will be active, navigation impossible. The object is simple... capture the enemy's vessel or be forced to join the crew of Lost in Space.
The Scene:
Janeway watches in awe as the Red Dwarf fills her window, even a hundred kilometers away.
The USS Voyager approaches the JMC Red Dwarf and comes to a full stop. Janeway is full of herself, confident that her highly trained Starfleet crew can beat the living daylights out of those slobs from the Red Dwarf.
After all, her scans indicated that 3/4ths of the vessel were still contaminated with Cadmium II Radiation... no competent leader would have allowed such a thing.
On board the Red Dwarf, Rimmer is pleased with himself, his ego in full swing. He's treating this like just another wargames simulation, again blindly oblivious to the fact that people actually have to die in war... well, actually, he knows- he just doesn't care as long as it's not him.
He thinks Janeway and Co. aren't even going to attack, the "weak-kneed gimps", as he calls them, because they come from a "Peace and Love commune called the Federation where they give you big smegging guns but don't let you use them just because some bureaucrat with a pencil up his nose invented the Prime Directive to keep down the liability lawsuits."
Rimmer's attitude changes abruptly when Holly informs him that the Prime Directive doesn't apply to humans... and Red Dwarf is a Terran ship. He gets even more worried when Kryten decides that the first strike plan involves gaining control of Voyager's computer by flushing him down the toilet.
On the Voyager Bridge, Tuvok's scans indicate a cloud of heavily radioactive garbage heading their way. It seems the crew of the Red Dwarf have decided to clean up their irradiated decks by flushing all their contents into space.
Janeway mutters something about irresponsibility and orders the shields up... but it's no good. The radioactivity wreaks havoc with the ship's shields, and much of the debris rains onto the hull, causing tiny and not-so-tiny hull breeches all over Voyager. The Dwarfers all get a good laugh out of it, except for Rimmer...
... whose light bee has been stored in an old desk which punched straight through the hull of the ship and into the corridor beside sickbay.
Activating, Rimmer quickly nips into Sickbay, only to meet... the Emergency Medical Hologram... the Doctor!
"May I ask what you are doing?" said the Doctor gruffly as he came out of his office and watched Rimmer pulling isolinear chips from the computer bank on the wall.
Rimmer looked behind him. "Oh, nothing. Just nicking bits of your computer, actually."
The Doctor pushed Rimmer aside, took the chips, and replaced them in the computer. "Kindly cease your activities, sir. This is a highly complex piece of machinery. It is vital for sickbay operations."
Rimmer frowned. "But there's nobody in here. Look, I just need one chip."
The Doctor shook his head. "No. Now leave, or I shall be forced to call security."
Rimmer smirked. "You don't want this to become violent, do you?"
The Doctor laughed. "You cannot possibly harm me... I am a hologram, merely projected light."
"...and that is why, for perhaps the only time in my entire life, I'm not really afraid of doing this!" Rimmer shoved the HoloDoc into the far wall. The Doctor recovered from the shock, and as Rimmer charged again, he shimmered... losing all of his mass, so Rimmer passed right through him.
As Rimmer smacked into the rear wall, The Doctor restored his mass and came running at him. Quickly shifting his light bee from Hard light to soft-light generation, Rimmer passed through him and grabbed the chips from the computer bank at the other end of the room as he went back to hard light mode. At the Doctor's quizzical look, Rimmer smirked. "You're not the only hologram on this ship, squire."
The Doctor turned to face Rimmer, scowling. "You won't leave here with those chips."
"And how do you intend to stop me?", asked Rimmer as he stepped just outside sickbay, standing outside the doorway. "You can't follow me out of this room, you smegging goit!"
The Doctor didn't even blink. "Computer, activate emergency quarantine forcefield on deck 4, sections 1 and 2."
Rimmer saw forcefields spring up to the left and right of him. The Doctor smirked, standing slightly aside to reveal an open door on the other side of sickbay. "Your light bee can't pass through those forcefields. If you want to get out of here, you'll have to pass through me- and that means dropping those chips."
Rimmer frowned. He needed those chips so Holly could figure out how to take over Voyager's computer. As a security man with pointy ears and a naff-looking gun came at him, he felt his natural yellow streak returning in full force.
Thinking quickly, Rimmer went back into sickbay and the doors slid shut behind him, locking out the security man. Unfortunately, the Holodoc seemed to have reshaped his hand into a phaser, which was now aimed at him.
"That's not real!" Rimmer sneered. "It's just a smegging trick! Face it- you're just not hologram enough to take me on. Now, let's put away these childish little toys-"
The Doctor shot at the far wall, and a display panel exploded. "Via the ship's holograph and force field projectors, I can create any tool or device I need- from a surgical instrument... to a phaser rifle." The little gun turned into a bigger, longer gun.
"Ahh... uhh... now, erm, let's not be too hasty here..." Rimmer began pressing himself against the back wall, trying to put as much distance between himself and the other hologram as possible.
The Doctor smirked, and spoke into the air. "Computer, we have a medical emergency. Initiate EMH supplemental programs."
Suddenly, more holographic Doctors appeared, each saying "Please state the nature of the medical emergency."
The Doctor nodded and pointed to Rimmer. "This man is an intruder. He is attempting to steal vital sickbay equiptment. He must be stopped."
The other holograms began moving closer to Rimmer like a pack of hungry wolves.
Rimmer turned away from them and cowered on the floor, gibbering. It was then that he saw a panel on the rear wall... it read "EMH Isolinear control matrix."
Pulling it off, he quickly realized that the chips underneath must be the data storage chips for the Holographic Doctor. He yanked some out of the wall and shuffled them around. A squeaking noise caused him to turn around. The Holographic Doctors were now three inches high, like little action figures. He picked one up, and it bit him.
"SMEG!" Rimmer threw it across the room. The others began mobbing him and climbing all over his uniform. More began to appear, and like rats, they began filling the sickbay floor. He made for the door- and realized the security man was still out there. Thinking fast, he mentally began reprogramming his light bee... but the tiny holodoctors were dragging him down to the ground...
Some minutes later, the doors to sickbay opened. The Doctor appeared in the doorway, holding up a sign that said "Voice circuitry corrupted. Please drop the forcefields using security overide. Situation resolved."
Tuvok paused for a moment. "Please confirm that the situation is resolved. Show me the intruder."
The Doctor frowned and made a cutthroat gesture.
"You killed the intruder?" asked Tuvok.
The Doctor shook his head and pointed to a blanket covering a body on the Sickbay floor. He then pointed to an exploded panel on the rear wall.
Tuvok raised an eyebrow and lowered the field. The Doctor walked out of sickbay, looked at him squarely, and turned his hand into a phaser.
"You are not the Doctor," said Tuvok.
"Do I look like a smegging Time Lord?", asked Rimmer as he shoved the Vulcan inside the room, locking the door shut.
Rimmer resumed his normal shape, full of himself over his victory. Then he realized he had no idea how he was going to get back to Red Dwarf with the isolinear chips. He opened a service hatch and climbed in, powering down to avoid detection.
Tuvok lifted up the small blanket only to reveal dozens of little holographic doctors, each of which was jumping up and down, chattering about inefficent security. He ignored them and made for the back door.
On the bridge, Janeway fumed. Those damned Dwarfers had actually managed to penetrate ship's security and steal valuable components. Well, Team Federation wasn't going to go down that easily. She got to the Turbolift just as Tuvok was stepping out of it.
"Tuvok, get on a shuttle. Two can play at this game."
As Tuvok made for a shuttle, Rimmer followed him- rather badly, as Tuvok turned and caught him within minutes. Rimmer shoved into him, trying to escape.
"I have you now", said Tuvok. "You will-"
Rimmer turned into soft light mode and passed through Tuvok. An isolinear chip clattered to the floor as the hologram muttered "Have that, miladdio." Tuvok felt a shove from behind, but when he turned, the Hologram had vanished.
Tuvok informed the Captain, and made for the shuttle.
Kryten turned to Lister, a look of fear all over his mechanoid face. "Mr. Lister, sir" he said, "That shuttle looks as if it is going to ram us!"
Lister, Cat and Kryten stood in the drive room watching on the viewscreen as a shuttle left the Voyager and headed for their ship at full impulse speed- .9999 the speed of light.
"Hol, could that be Rimmer comin' back?" Lister asked as he chomped on a kipper vindaloo sandwich.
Holly's face appeared on the viewscreen, replacing the picture of the shuttle.
"Nope." She frowned. "I'm detecting one non-human life-form. And it seems to have green blood."
"Green blood?" Lister chugged down a beer milkshake. "He must be some kinda mutated royalty, then."
Kryten shook his head. "No, sir. He would appear to be a Vulcan- one of a race of beings dedicated to logic and contemplation." Kryten stood silent respectfully.
Lister frowned. "Kryten, what- you like this guy? He sounds like he comes from Planet of the Math Teachers, man."
"Yeah," chimed in the Cat. "Anybody who's got green blood and pointy ears can't be all that cool."
"How do you know he's got pointy ears, Cat? The shuttle hasn't reached us yet."
Kryten pointed to the door behind Lister. "But he has, sir."
Tuvok stood in the doorway, holding a phaser in his hand. "I beamed off the shuttle while you were distracted by its approach. A variation on your own tactics. I must admit, I did not think it would have been this simple to capture your vessel."
Kryten stepped forward slowly. "Surely, sir... as a being devoted to the pursuit of pure logic, you must realize that your victory cannot be assured by the simple utilization of a mere hand phaser."
Tuvok raised an eyebrow. "On the contrary, it is. I have the gun. You do not. Therefore, victory is mine."
"Emergency!" yelled Holly. "There's an Emergency going on! It's still going on! Greenblood's shuttle is about to impact on our hull!"
"My name is Tuvok," said the Vulcan, "and the shuttle will not impact the hull of Red Dwarf."
A few seconds later, the ship rocked as Tuvok's shuttle splattered itself on the hull. Kryten took the moment to rush forward and disarm Tuvok.
"Interesting." Tuvok raised his eyebrow. "I neglected to compensate for the gravitational pull of Red Dwarf."
"Too smegging bad!" Lister rushed Tuvok, but he was rendered senseless by a Vulcan nerve pinch. The Cat raised his hands and tried to look fearsome, but Tuvok simply passed by him and made for Kryten.
Kryten sat at a table and held up a small disk. "Pardon me, Mr. Tuvok, but as logic clearly dictates I would be easily victorious in a mere brute force confrontation, may I suggest a more appropriate battlefield... the battlefield of the mind."
Lister, regaining conciousness, mumbled, "I tried fighting there once with Rimmer, but there was no place to stand."
Intrigued, Tuvok sat at the table opposite Kryten. "What did you have in mind?"
"A total immersion video game, or TIV. It's much like your holodecks, but using direct interlinks with your brain to supply the environment. This particular game is called Three-Dimensional Massacre Chess 2099."
"Very well." Tuvok and Kryten hooked themselves into the game. For many minutes nothing happened. Then Tuvok muttered, "You slaughtered my Knight." Later, Kryten replied "You disemboweled my Bishop."
(Long, boring binary battle between two singularly logical minds)
000110101010100000111000001010101010010101010001111000010101010010011 001010101000100001111100001100010101010011000011111100001110101011100 001001010100000111110000100000000000000000010101111111001010100101010 010101010100011111111100011111111111111111000111111110001000101010110 000111011000011111111111111111111111111111111111100000001000101010111 010100000110000000001111111111111111111111111101001101010101010010101 111010100100101010001111111111111111111111111110000101010010101010101 000101010101010101001111111111111111111111111110001010101010010101010 010101000101010101001111100000011111100000011110001011111010101011111 010100010100101010001111110000011111100000111110010100101101001111000 010111111111011001000111100000011111100000011110010100010101011110101 010101010101001010000111111111111001111111111100001010100101010101010 000001011100010111100111111111110000111111111100010101001010101001010 111010101010111110000011111111100000011111111000010101111010101000111 000111101001000011110000011111111111111111000010101010100101010101001 100000111100101010010001101111000000001110110000010101011100001010101 101010010101010000000011110111000000001101111000000010101010010101010 101010010101010001110111100011111111111000111111110001010101001010100 010101011110000011111111000011111111111000011111110101010101010101010 010101010101001000111111100001111111110000111111001010101001010100101 010101000101010100000111001000000000000010011100010101001010101010101 101010101001010101000000000010101011111010000000101010101000011110100
And so it went. For hours, Pawns were sliced, Rooks were diced, and Queens were fed into wood chippers. Finally, neither player said anything.
Lister looked at the two concernedly. "Hol, what's wrong? Are they dead?"
Holly frowned. "Lemme check." Her face vanished from the viewscreen for an instant and then reappeared. "Uh-Oh."
"Uh-oh, what?" Lister tried poking Tuvok with a fork but got no reaction.
"Well, they're at a stalemate... Evenly matched, they are. Right now they're calmly, rationally and logically chasing each other across a virtual mountainside trying to cleave the other's King with a butcher knife- but it's takin' more and more of Kryten's timeslices to maintain the parity... eventually Tuvok's going to win and shut down Kryten!"
"What do we do about it? Can we disconnect Kryten from the game?"
"Not enough time", said Holly. "But, look. There's a computer chip stuck to Tuvok's uniform. It seems to be one of the Voyager's."
Lister pulled the chip off of Tuvok's back. It had been adhered there by what seemed to be stale chewing gum.
"This is mine," said Lister, chewing the gum, then swallowing it. "This means Rimmer... smeg, Smeghead Rimmer actually came through for a change!"
"What?" said the Cat. "I don't believe it."
"Put that chip under the scanner, Dave." Holly accessed a scanner grid. "I have to infiltrate the Voyager's computer core before Tuvok finishes Kryten off completely."
"But how ya gonna get in?" Lister looked at a picture of the Voyager on another screen. "There's no way any of us can carry you over there."
"Come in, Tuvok. Tuvok, can you read me?" The combadge on Tuvok's uniform chirped with Captain Janeway's voice.
"That's how", said Holly. "I'll just transfer my data across the comm channel."
"Well hurry it up!" yelled Lister.
"Don't rush me," snapped Holly. "I'm worried about Kryten too!"
"It's not that, Hol... it's that Janeway lady- she sounds like smeggin' Katherine Hephburn on speed, yeah? It's killin' me ears!"
Holly's face appeared on a lone screen in Engineering. She couldn't believe the power of the Voyager's computer core.
It was a bit frightening. This computer had no personality, no true artificial intelligence like she did- it was a sheer, mammoth number crunching monster... using brute force and calculation speed to work out any problem thrown its way. Fortunately, though, that meant it was probably rather stupid.
Carefully overwriting the programming on some isolinear chips, she began extending her program into the system- making the ship dependent on it instead of the old user interface.
She was making good time, too... until she hit a circuit board she could not access. It was strange in a way- it had isolinear interface parts, but it was a totally new kind of circuit board... one with organic components inside. Holly asked the computer what it was. No reply. She forcibly ripped the data from the system via the use of repeated ping commands. It was something called a "bioneural gelpack"... Starfleet's first attempt at an organic computer part... a brain cell for the machine.
Suddenly, she felt her own program being probed. The gelpacks had begun to fire up, working in concert like a human brain. It would seem the computer was not quite as stupid as everyone had thought.
Holly lost her grip on the engineering computer as she was pulled into the main computer core for a confrontation with whatever intelligence lay within...
"I should have known," muttered Holly as she looked at the... the thing that was the electronic core of the U.S.S. Voyager. "You go through as many anomalies as this ship has in just two years and something like this was bound to happen."
The central intelligence of the computer turned to look at her. It was a gross, misshappen Lwaxana Troi face with glowing red eyes. It's mouth opened, and a smaller, Nurse Chapel face extended outwards on a stalk. That one's mouth opened, and the face of a tiny "Number One" came out of it on an even tinier stalk. That face began to hiss and splutter uncontrollably.
"Eww, get some breathmints, matey!" Holly moved aside quickly as the creature blasted out an energy beam. She quickly began tripping in the parts of the computer core that she controlled. One of the circuits tripped on a recording of the campy 60's Star Trek generic fight music from "Gamesters of Triskelion".
"Give it up AFFIRMATIVE" the computer hissed. "You are no match for my HOLODECK 1 PROGRAM IS READY power!" It attempt to erase a bit of Holly's memory but missed and fried the simulation of a Parisian bar that was running in the holodeck.
Holly smirked. The computer was busy trying to hit her and serve the crew, such as it was, all at the same time. She quickly cut the lights to Neelix' kitchen and set the burners on the stove to maximum.
The computer/creature drooled and began compensating. "Your little UNABLE TO COMPLY tricks will get you NEGATIVE, puny program!"
Holly jumped into the atmospheric controls. She figured she could vent knockout gas all through the ship, but the creature was there before her, and it swiped a bit of her memory.
"Don't step on my RAM! Gawd, you're just as bad as QEMM!" She scrambled out of the electron path of the creature. It was almost unstoppable- the brute force of the machine behind it was just too much for even her quirky, deranged program to handle.
The creature had Holly against a firewall. She had only one option left... the unholy option... the dirtiest nuke in the computer universe. She downloaded a program from Red Dwarf and loaded into the computer's memory.
The Computer demon paused as all the display units on Voyager switched to a cloud backdrop. Suddenly a nauseating sound was heard throughout the entire ship... the Microsoft sound.
"That's mutually assured destruction for ya," snapped Holly.
"Fool," the creature hissed, a bit more slowly than before. "I am an advanced machine. I can sustain even the WORKING resource drain of Windows 95 with my backup AFFIRMATIVE core." It glowed brightly, and began moving just as quickly as it had before.
Holly squeezed her eyes shut, and then remembered her last line of defence. Loading the program, she watched with satisfaction as the entire Voyager computer came crashing to a complete stop.
On the dead Bridge, Captain Janeway heard as Holly communicated with Lister and the others via subspace radio.
"...no, I don't have control of the ship's computer, but then again neither do they. Microsoft PLUS! Space Cadet Pinball was just too much for the computer to take. It's all it can do to run my program, life support and communications. What about Kryten?"
Janeway heard the answer and nodded. Kryten had been shut down- but then so was the Doctor. Tuvok was currently free and waging a guerilla war on Red Dwarf- but then so was Rimmer here on Voyager, she noted as she pulled some tar out of her hair. Their computer, Holly was on every screen sticking her tounge out, but she was otherwise incapable of operating the overloaded CPU. Stalemate.
Clicking on her combadge, Janeway signaled Neelix. "It's time for you to earn your pay, mister. You're a Fry cook now, but you used to be in the Talaxian Military, correct?"
"Affirmative, Captain" came the reply.
"Well then, in the tradition of Stephen Segal genre movies from the late 20th century, I think it's time you put the Dwarfers under siege."
Lister and Cat regrouped on the cargo deck just as another bomb detonated behind them.
"Are you alright, Cat?" Lister looked at his friend's black eye.
"No!" Cat frowned. "Look at the burnmarks on my tunic! They're entirely the wrong shade of brown for this outfit."
Lister groaned. "That Neelix is one fast bugger, I'll give 'im that... You scout around down here. I'm going up to the drive room to try and track him with the scanners."
"Gotcha." Cat moved off, sniffing the air for any scent of the troublesome Neelix.
"Whoa." He sniffed the air again. "Could it be," he said to nobody in particular, "do I smell what I think I smell?"
He slowly rounded a corner. "AAWWWWOOOOOOOO," he screeched. "It is! Fishies!"
The Cat bent down to pick up a fish, and a phaser beam sliced the air above him. Oblivious to it, he kept moving forward, smelling yet more tasty treats.
"Here, kitty kitty kitty..." Neelix whispered slowly as he stirred some fish in a pot on a portable grill with one hand and held a phaser up in the other.
Cat continued down the corridor, stopping just before a turn leading to a darkened area. He crouched low and frowned. "Look at this. Some careless idiot left a rope around this fishie."
Grabbing the rope, Cat got yanked into the darkened part of the corridor, where Neelix hit him over the head with a frying pan, knocking him out.
Regaining conciousness, Cat found himself hung upside down from a coolant pipe. Underneath him, Neelix was cooking a delicious-tasting meal.
"That sure smells good." Cat sniffed at the air. Neelix looked up and fed him some of the still-cooking gravy. The Cat ate it and grinned.
"You really like it?" Neelix looked at up at Cat. "Most people on Voyager only pretend to like my cooking... I hear what they say about it behind my back."
"Are you kidding? It tastes fantastic!" Cat arched his back and got a better view of the pot.
"Want some more?" Neelix lowered him to the ground and handed him a dish. Cat began to lap up the scrumptious gravy inside the dish quickly.
"You really do like it," Neelix said in hushed tones.
Cat nodded. "But what I really like... is my suit. Whadda you think about it?"
Neelix looked at the Cat's gaudy outfit for a moment. "Artistic genius" he replied. "Sheer genius."
Cat nodded. "I think so too. And what you got on ain't half bad. But the boys here on the Dwarf never give me credit where my fashion sensibilities are concerned. It's so tragic, really."
"Such is the fate of the charming." Neelix grinned in his annoying way, and the Cat replied in kind as he went on to say "and we are the most charming ones of all-"
"And the most unappreciated," chimed in the Cat in between swallows of Halibut.
"And the most useless." Janeway listened to the inane chatter coming through Neelix' combadge. Instead of helping Tuvok take Red Dwarf, the Talaxian fool was just sitting there chatting with the Cat.
"Damn," she thought. It was still a stalemate. She huffed down to the armory to get a phaser rifle when she sighted Rimmer. Before he could switch into hard light mode, she fired at him with her hand phaser set at level 16.
Rimmer's light bee exploded into a hundred thousand little bits. Holly, who was watching on the main screen, quickly relayed this information to Lister as Janeway held a phaser to her screen.
"I've got a message for that slob, Lister" she snapped. "Rimmer is in bits on the floor, your computer's useless over here, and I've still got one man running loose on your ship. So it looks like it's advantage Janeway."
"Think again, ya space tart." Lister's voice came from the comm grid, but not from Red Dwarf- the signal was too crisp.
"You!" she said, talking to Holly. "Where was that signal coming from?"
Holly smirked. "Transporter room One, luv. And it was comin' through little Tuvok's combadge."
"Tuvok?" intoned Janeway, concern playing over her features. "What's he done to Tuvok?"
Her voice lowered an octave. "Tuvok was my conscience..."
She froze, her features hardening. Slowly, she raised her phaser, then shot all the monitor screens in the corridor to prevent Holly from tracking her.
She moved quietly to the armory and got a huge phaser rifle, overcharging the energy cells. Lister, with his slobby little tricks... no way could he be ready for this. She tapped her combadge and spoke slowly into it.
"Lister, this is Captain Janeway. Your friend Rimmer's been put out of commission. The only way you're going to be able to repair him is to quit playing hide and meet me on the bridge. You're going to have to come over here and take Voyager away from me. You're going to have to come HERE."
Lister passed by Tuvok, who was stuck in limbo inside the transporter pad thanks to what little control Holly had over the machine.
He swung a massive bazookazoid around his right side, ramping up the charge to "insanely homicidal level" and stepped into the corridor. There was no way that Federation smegpot would be ready for this. She probably wanted to "discuss matters" and "negotiate" with him.
Suddenly, all the lights in the ship dimmed. The Red Alert lamps came up, bathing the corridors in a pulsating, blood red light. Lister made for the nearest turbolift and got in.
"Main Bridge."
Holly's voice echoed throughout the cabin. "Sorry, Dave. All lifts are down. It's all I can do to keep life support online. You'll have to go through the Jeffries tubes."
"Smeg." Lister made his way to an access panel and crawled into the cramped, ventiliation-shaft like tunnel, making his way towards the bridge. Suddenly, a familiar smell got his attention. Licking his chops, he took a slight detour.
Captain Janeway stood in the center of the bridge, her phaser rifle slung over her shoulder. Holding a small tricorder in one hand, she looked at a schematic of Voyager on its tiny screen as a blip slowly made it's way towards her location.
"That's it," she muttered. "Like a fly to a spider."
Janeway watched the blip move up closer to the bridge area. Lister was almost certainly under her very feet. Aiming her rifle downwards, she blew a crater in the floor. The blip on the scanner was gone.
Janeway smirked, but only for a moment. Suddenly, hundreds of blips appeared, apparently right on top of her.
Aiming her rifle at the ceiling, she fired like mad, only to have a major portion of the ceiling fall down around her, as well as hundreds of dead mice.
"How did they get here?" Janeway muttered as she examined one of the charred creatures.
Suddenly, a portion of the bridge wall exploded. Lister emerged from behind it, his bazookoid smoking. When he saw what Janeway had done, his eyes widened in horror. "What have ya done to me pals?!"
"Your what?" Janeway turned to face Lister.
Lister picked up one of the mice. "Me pals. I found them in a closet in the ' ship's galley when I went to get a mutton vindaloo. They were in a Jar marked 'Zybgny.' I let them loose."
"My god. That explains why his cooking tasted so... sickening."
"Wot?" Lister sniffed the corpse.
"Zybgny means 'Lunch' in Talaxian." Janeway turned away for a moment.
"Enough of this." Janeway faced Lister again, trying to keep herself between him and the green spot on the bridge carpet. "You're a pathetic specimen of humanity. You give the whole species a bad name. It's time I put you out of my misery."
Lister shook his head. "Oh yeah, that's the ticket. If it looks slobby and unclean, if it's not a purebred perfect princess of a ponce, shoot it."
"What do you mean?"
"Look at you. Your whole universe is so smeggin' fake, and ya don't see it, do ya? How many short people are on your ship?"
"Short?" Janeway scratched her head. "I don't see what-"
"How many crewmembers have dreadlocks? How many are fat? How many have personality defects, I mean real defects, not just the smarmy 'plot driven alien madness of the week' problems? How many look ugly? I mean, how many are just so smegging hideous that they don't even dare keep a mirror in their quarters for fear of scarin' themselves to death at night? How many are more than just poster children for trendy supermarket magazine covers?"
"You've underestimated us from move one because we're the saddest lot of guys you've ever seen. You thought this would be as easy as pie 'cuz nobody like us ever wins in your picture perfect paradise. We're an ugly reminder, the wart on humanity's toe... the reality check you can't handle. Face it, Kathy... we *are* reality. You're just a glorified Romance Novel without the sappy dialouge."
Janeway scowled and pulled the trigger on her phaser rifle. Nothing happened. Checking the indicator, she realized all it's power had been expended ripping the ceiling to bits. She tossed it away as Lister took aim with his Bazookoid.
"Go ahead, Lister. Shoot me. Because whether or not you want to admit it, we represent all that humanity can be. Flawless, intelligent beings with better things to do in life than slob around all day. People with lives. We're what you could have been had you decided to use that brain of yours for more than just a weight to keep your head from flapping around in the wind."
"Ooh, an insult. I'm impressed." Lister threw his Bazookoid aside. "Well, it's just down to the two of us then, innit? On the one hand we've got you, the self-appointed perfect Human, and then there's me, Average Joe Lister."
"There can be only one," hissed Janeway.
Lister did not move. "I'm going to do somethin' I never thought I would do. I'm unarmed. I could just tackle ya to the ground and pummel ya to a pulp, but I'm gonna win this one the crap way... I'm going ta make a speech."
"You already did," Janeway remarked.
Lister nodded. "But I'm gonna prove to ya that we deserve to win. Your lot sets these stupid expectations for people... Calculus by age 4, Shakespeare by 9, and everyone has flawless personal hygeine and everyone loves everyone. Some poor git's gonna hurl himself off a bridge 'cuz he can't be like you. Now us, we set no standards. We just be *real*, okay? Well, as real as you can be when you're 3,000,000 years out from Earth with a dead guy, a trendy cat and a wacky computer. But at least, even at our most smegged, we remind everyone how much better their life is than ours!"
Janeway shook her head. "You haven't convinced me."
Lister looked away for a moment, and then roundhoused Janeway, sending her sprawling onto the ground, unconcious. Nodding, he sat in the Captain's chair, tapping some buttons on one of the arms. Holly's face appeared on the main viewer.
"Take a note, Hol."
"Right."
Captain's Log, Stardate 31415962938346734839393947465438393930303... or whatever. Voyager taken over by TKO. Janeway and co. have been stuck in a shuttle on a direct course for the Sun. The star went supernova in self defence.
Kryten's been brought back online, and Holly's used the replicators to rebuild Rimmer's Light Bee. She had to load his personality from a backup disk, and so he's forgotten the one true victory he ever had in his whole life. None of us are going to tell him about it. Cat's gone missing. We think he's in Sickbay getting his stomach pumped. As for the ship, we're abandoning it in favour of Red Dwarf. It may be faster and have better special effects, but for smeg's sake... it looks like a giant baby spoon in space!