FicWad

Ackerman was not pleased.

He had not had jiggy-jiggy with the science officer's wife since that ill-fated day when he had such trouble getting out of the costume. She had apparently not appreciated their liaison becoming general knowledge. Well, why not? Wasn't it flattering for all to know that she had attracted the affections of Nicey Ackerman? Apparently not. The last time he had dropped in, she had attached a small tunneling explosive to his utility belt, lit it, and kicked him back outside. That had left a mark.

The blame lay squarely with Rimmer and Lister. His grievances with them did not stop there. Although Ackerman had no evidence that the distinctly oniony smell in the living room and the distinctly fishy smell in his bedroom that had turned off his red-hot date two weeks ago was due to those two, he did not need evidence. Evidence was for wimps.

These thoughts had Ackerman in high dudgeon as he stalked into the captain's office in response to a rather perfunctory summons. Hollister was far too preoccupied with a phone conversation to notice that Ackerman was in a terrible mood. Insensitive prat, Ackerman thought.

Hollister covered the mouthpiece of his phone as Ackerman walked in. "Ackerman. We're coming up on an S3 planet. The lab boys say there is one big life sign down there. Never a good thing. Send down some Canaries you wouldn't mind seeing the last of, would you?"

"Yes, sir!" Ackerman said, feeling good for the first time in weeks. He saluted Hollister briskly. Hollister did not notice; he had gone back to shuffling papers and talking to whoever was on the other end of the phone. Ackerman turned on his heel and walked out, wondering if Hollister had read a word of what was on those papers. He rather doubted it; he could not see how lemon poppyseed cake had any relevance to the drive plate issue discussed thereupon.


A rather sweet voice drifted out of the cell Rimmer and Lister shared, followed by a teeth-gratingly out-of-tune guitar chord, two strings muffled to a buzz by rolled-over fretting fingers. "Mmmmm... Awwwww... I traveled across the rivers of..." ptwannrgggnnn

"LISTER!"

Lister looked up from his guitar. "Whoa? What's up?"

Rimmer looked up from the table, where he had been attempting, unsuccessfully, to ignore Lister's train wreck of a guitar recital by reading. Lister sat cross-legged on his bunk, grinning with an all-too beautific expression on his face. "Lister, that guitar will never heal if you keep picking at it."

"Hey, man, I wrote this song for you!" Lister protested, shifting on his bunk.

"A funeral march?"

Lister sighed and scratched at his rasta plaits. "I just can't do anything nice for yeh, can I?"

"You could let me smash that guitar into tiny tiny pieces."

Lister shook his head with a grin. He had strings again, and even Rimmer's whinging could not put him in a bad mood. He loved his guitar like a girlfriend. Better than a girlfriend. He strummed it again, tenderly. pwranng thwang peeeeang "A've waaaaaiiiiiited so long..."

Rimmer leapt to his feet and tried to grab the guitar away from Lister. Lister tried to kick him in the nuts and pull it back. When the guard entered the room ten minutes later, Rimmer had Lister in a headlock and was attempting to jam said head into the toilet, and Lister had managed to rip one leg of Rimmer's jumpsuit up the side and tied his legs together with the free end. The guitar lay forgotten on Lister's bunk.

"Prisoners!" the guard bawled. Rimmer dropped Lister and attempted to leap to attention and salute. His legs caught in the knot, and he crashed to the floor. Lister giggled and jumped back on his bunk, smiling genially at the guard.

"Canary suicide mission!" the guard yelled, once he saw that he had their attention. "Report at oh-seven-twenty!" He paused, looking at them both, and added, "Today!" He spun on his toe and left.

"Just enough time to finish me song," Lister said, grinning, and managed to get another two verses out before Rimmer got himself untied and leapt at Lister again.


When the two of them finally reported for duty, fifteen minutes late, they could not help noticing that the mission for which they had been summoned was being conducted by a somewhat less-than-elite group of the two of them, Cat, Kryten, and Kochanski. Ackerman glared at them, but made no other mention of their lateness.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Lister hissed at Rimmer.

"You have a bad feeling about a suicide mission? What on Io gave you that idea?"

Ackerman strode down the stairway. "Canaries!" he said, his formal manner more appropriate to a gathering of the whole community, rather than the very small group in front of him. "We have another opportunity for you to serve the Corporation. We have located a planet. We need you to investigate the single life sign that we have detected from its surface. I expect," he glared at them pointedly, "a very detailed report." He turned and walked back up the stairs, staring down at them imperiously as they were herded out by the guards.

"That wasn't much of a briefing," Kochanski muttered as they ducked into the lander. They sat on the bench that was usually far more crowded, and the door swung shut. Rimmer sat back with his arms crossed and sulked. Lister hunched forward, his elbows on his thighs, and brooded. He kept forgetting that he had something to lose. It's all to easy to prank and make mischief when you're in the Tank - after all, what are they going to do? Throw you in prison? No, you tit, they are going to throw you somewhere with an even lower survival rate than a Wagner festspiele.

"No, ma'am," Kryten replied. "I would venture to guess that they are less concerned with the life sign on the planet than with the ones on this lander. Ackerman has been unusually hostile to us in the past twenty-seven days; I would imagine that this mission is, in some way, a revenge for some slight he believes we have perpetuated on him."

"What did we do to him? Or what does he think we did to him?" Kochanski asked, puzzled.

"Well," Cat interjected, smoothing his hair back and re-tying it, "baldy hasn't gotten any action since last month. He smells like sexual frustration on legs."

"Yes, last month!" Kochanski repeated, the look on her face indicating that much was coming clear to her. "Ever since you..."

The three of them turned to where Lister and Rimmer sat, and glared.

"Brilliant prank, that was," Lister muttered. Rimmer nodded, frowning sadly. "He mighta been in a better mood," Lister continued, "if Hollister really had stayed in the hole for twelve months. He sure got over that fast, though, din' he?"

"Someone slipped him a donut, and he forgot all else," Rimmer muttered.

"So, let me get this clear," Kochanski said with some heat. "We are being sent on a suicide mission because Ackerman is sexually frustrated because of a prank that you two pulled because...?"

"Because we thought it'd be a laugh," Lister sighed.

"It was!" Rimmer insisted stubbornly.

"That is great consolation to the rest of us," Kochanski snarled, turning her back on them. Lister could not blame her. She was guilty by association of everything that the rest of the group did, even when she had nothing to do with it, and it would rankle on him, as well. He did not mind getting into trouble. He would mind it very much if he did not get to enjoy the prank that had gotten him into trouble.

The lander landed, jolting him out of his reverie. It nearly jolted him out of his skin. It landed with a shot-from-a-cannon plunge, and all were tossed about as the lander plowed to a halt with the sound of stressed metal creaking and wailing. The interior lights flickered out, and the door grated open onto a snowstorm borne on a howling gale.

Lister groaned and extricated himself from a tangle of limbs. He felt a lump on his forehead gingerly. However, the rest of him appeared intact. He turned to try to sort out the mass of Canary that was twitching and struggling on the ground. Kryten was, of course, fine, if terribly apologetic about anyone he may have inadvertently hit; Kochanski was convinced she had cracked some ribs, and walked to the corner of the lander, hunched over and glaring. Cat's hair was a mess, and he snarled obscenities at Lister as he attempted to put it back into place without the help of a mirror. Rimmer had a split lip and a bruised shin.

"Right! Not bad at all; coulda been a lot worse, yeah?" The other four glared at him. He swallowed and lead the way out into the snowstorm.

The canary uniforms were far too hot for the ship, and they were not nearly warm enough for this weather. Despite mutual animosity, the four living creatures ended up huddled in a pack to try to conserve warmth. The planet itself was a wasteland of snow. No mountains, not even much in the way of a hill; the gale whipped its way across the surface unobstructed, carrying snow flurries that stung like birdshot. The sky was leaden; only a token amount of dull sunlight filtered through what appeared to be an eternal winter. The planet was in grayscale; no greens, reds, or other vaguely lifelike colors appeared. The five Canaries stood out like a saxophone solo in a requiem.

"Life?" Lister bawled over the gale, shivering. "What on earth would anything out here live on?"

"Don't ask things like that!" Rimmer yelled back, his teeth chattering. "Probably Cat starters, human and bum main course, and juicy Kochanski for afters."

"Maybe it'll be too full when it's done with the rest of you," Kochanski suggested, hopefully. "Or too sick."

"Kryten," Lister asked, trying to head off another argument, "what does the psi-scan say about that life sign?"

The mechanoid took out the scanner and considered it as they walked. He frowned. He hit it on the side. The frown deepened.

"Kryten?" Lister repeated.

"The readings are ambiguous," Kryten replied, still looking as puzzled as an andriod with an igloo for a head can look. "It appears to be in the vicinity, but I can't pinpoint it. The scanner might not be designed to function correctly at this temperature. It's a great value for the money, but it's not exactly all-terrain."

Lister sighed. Kochanski pointed at something that looked exactly the same as every other part of the scenery. "Look! Shelter!"

Lister squinted. 'Shelter' seemed to be overstating the case somewhat. A very small, white hillock rose up from the blasted white ground. You would have to be neurotically possessive to play King of the Hill on it. But still, it was more shelter than was visible anywhere else. They headed for it, and the four living beings bunched together tightly on the lee side of it. Kryten sat opposite them, fiddling with the psi-scan.

Rimmer looked at his gun dubiously. "Will these work in this weather?"

Kochanski shrugged. "Who cares? This will," she said, hefting the tranquilizer gun she had taken from the lander, "and it will do us more good."

Rimmer frowned at it. "You don't get bonus points for bringing it back alive, I think."

"Given previous experience, it's bound to be a GELF, isn't it?" she asked, patronizingly.

"Yes..."

"Most of the GELFs that were designed for military use were designed to be blaster-proof, weren't they?"

"Sure..."

"And they were designed to be vulnerable to tranquilizer darts, so they could still be controlled, weren't they?"

Rimmer crossed his arms and sulked.

"I just wish I knew how big it was," Kochanski fumed, tossing a handful of differently-sized darts in her hand, each tapering to a needle-thin point. "I don't want to give a gerbil dose to an elephant." She sighed and loaded the biggest dart into the gun.

Lister, meanwhile, had taken off his backpack and dug out a dull metal container. He was not going out without a good lunch. He pulled off the top, and inhaled deeply as the self-heating unit instantly took it up to a comfortably toasty temperature. He opened his eyes and saw Cat, Kochanski, and Rimmer staring at him.

"Mutton vindaloo. Bob got it for me," Lister grinned. He took another inhale, then dug a titanium spork out of his backpack and started to dig in. He paused after one delightfully messy bite. "Sorry - do you want some?"

Looks of acute disgust settled onto the faces of Cat and Kochanski. But Rimmer was looking at it with interest. Lister dug out a sporkful of dripping meat and held it out. Rimmer took a bite and chewed for a moment. His eyebrows shot up, and he fell face-first into the snow and started to eat it.

"Y'ok?" Lister asked.

Rimmer's voice was muffled by the snow. "HOT!" Smugness had displaced disgust on Cat's and Kochanski's faces.

"Actually, it's kinda bland 'til you spice it up a little." Lister dug into his medikit and pulled out his precious bottle of Tabasco, sprinkling it liberally on the dish.

Kochanski's eyes widened. "You replaced your emergency antibacterials with Tabasco?"

"Sure," Lister replied. "This'll kill any bacteria it touches." He smiled at her grimace, then downed another sporkful of curry and closed his eyes, savoring it.

A noise drifted to them over the sound of the gale. It sounded like the moan of an ancient jar of pickles being opened. Rimmer sat up, snow on his face. Kochanski and Cat looked around. Kryten fiddled with the scanner.

"Please tell me that's your stomach," Kochanski said nervously, grasping the tranquilizer gun to her chest.

"Neh," Lister replied, looking around. The noise returned, slightly louder. "Cat, can you smell anything?"

"I can smell you," Cat growled. "If you think I can smell anything else over that, you're nuts."

Any retort Lister might have come up with was forgotten as a loud roar sounded. All five leapt to their feet and looked around, clutching guns and psi-scans and, in Rimmer's case, Lister's shoulders. "What the hell was that?" Rimmer gasped.

Kryten's eyes widened. "I believe we have found the life-form, sirs."