The Mercenoid transport ship heading towards a Black Hole
The Mercenoid transport ship was a spaceship used by the Mercenoid. It was a long, cigar-shaped spacecraft, complete with cargo bays, and a force field-contained prison area.
History[]
The boys from the Dwarf came across the ship whist out in Starbug 19, shortly after scavenging the Medi-Station.
Lister noted that the energy signature of the transport ship was barely registering. Rimmer was initially hesitant to investigate since it was in the vicinity of the asteroid belt Juno 98, and being so close to GELF country he feared that it could of been a GELF battle cruiser. However, Kryten had already hacked into the ship's mainframe, finding out that it was a transport ship with a crew of two - one Mercenoid guard, and one prisoner of indeterminate origin. However, Rimmer also noted that the transport was into a death dive into the middle of a super-massive Black Hole. With Lister believing that the prisoner could of been human, he decided to dock Starbug with the transport and rescue the prisoner, taking Kryten and the Cat with him armed with bazookoids. Rimmer, as usual, was scared and stayed aboard Starbug, guiding the others remotely.
Rimmer continued the hack of the transport mainframe, telling the others of the new intel as they search the ship. Apparently, it was transporting scientific equipment to a bio-station on Orta 15. However, nothing else was available, since the log and Black Box have been erased. As the others entered corridor Beta 12, Rimmer panicked, telling the others that something organic and part organic is right in their location - sending the others into a panic too - before realising that Rimmer is actually seeing Lister, Kryten and Cat on the radar.
Going deeper into the transport ship, Kryten picked up EM emissions on his Psi-Scan, and the gang moved towards it and eventually they bumped into the Mercenoid, who was armed with an energy weapon. Hiding round the corner, Lister tried to ask it who it's prisoner is and what crime they have committed, but the Mercenoid merely said that it it's own business. Lister proposed a trade, but the Mercenoid refused, and ordered the "humies" to take it's advice, and leave or die. Lister rounded the corner with his bazookoid, telling the Mercenoid to drop its weapon, but instead it opened fire, narrowly missing Lister and hitting a pipe instead. However the Mercenoid was distracted by a human voice - which turns out to be Rimmer's dictaphone that Lister had thrown a short time earlier, and contains Rimmer talking to himself about how he is beautiful, and how size doesn't matter. The Mercenoid is tricked into picking up the device, which backfires with a massive electrical burst, activated by Lister remotely, and completely disables the Mercenoid.
They moved up two floors to Bay 12, where the holding cells are, and find the prisoner. Much to the Cat's amazement and excitement, the prisoner was a female Felis sapiens named Ankita, identical to Cat in personality and dress sense. Cat blasted the emitter which generates the laser bars of the cell, freeing her, and the group then quickly headed back to Starbug with Ankita and the Black Box of the transport.
Presumably, they left the transport to fall into the Black Hole. They then began the journey of heading back to Red Dwarf. However, when they got back to Red Dwarf, Kryten made a disturbing discovery whilst recovering deleted data on the Black Box of the transport - namely that the Mercenoid had been deliberately flying his ship into a Black Hole kamikaze-style, since his prisoner Ankita was actually a polymorph. Unfortunately, it was too late and the Cat had already had sex with her... ("Can of Worms", Series XI)
Trivia[]
- It is unclear whether the Mercenoid owned the transport ship, or alternatively whether it had commandeered it to complete the mission of destroying the polymorph.
