Chapter Two
Gateway To Home


"And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
William Shakespeare
Macbeth Act 5 scene 5


"It's okay, Charlie," Kate soothed as she petted the cat and stared at her sleeping husband in a way she might have called creepy once upon a time. "We made it, Charlie-boy, we're all home safe. I'm sorry I scared you. It'll be all right. It's going to be all right."

She wished she could convince herself of that. Perhaps she could eventually believe it, if only she could get the dreams to stop.


Glass doors sealed off the atrium - the closest the station had to a public park - where Rick and Kate sat from the rest of Gateway Station. Unlike most of the people who sat at the benches, they weren't there for a picnic, but to meet the company rep assigned as their minder before Kate's fate was decided by a Board of Inquiry.

Both Rick and Kate wanted off the station in the worst way, both of them longing to stand under their home planet's pale yellow sun and blue skies and put their nightmarish foray into the black behind them.

A double set of glass doors that sealed the atrium off from the rest of the station parted to admit Eric Vaughn. For a moment Kate found herself regarding him as a man and not just a corporate cipher. Her appraisal of him mitigated both by the knowledge that he was not her husband, and that when the Nostromo had departed on its ill-fated voyage twelve years ago, he'd barely been out of college, though they were now approximately the same physical age.

"Sorry." Vaughn replied, his smile seemingly genuine, enough so that she could feel Castle stiffen at his appraisal of her. "I've been running behind this morning. Finally managed to get away."

Neither Rick nor Kate were much in the mood for small talk, especially now. They wanted to go home and get on with the business of living, especially now that their enforced quarantine prior to Kate's board of inquiry was nearly over.

"Anything about our families?" Castle asked, unable to contain himself any longer.

"I guess this is my morning for being sorry," Vaughn replied as he brought up the information requested on his tablet. "Mr Castle, I regret to inform you that your mother died eight years ago, a stroke. From the lack of hospital files it was apparently very sudden. She was cremated and interred in the Forest Lawn Repository in Manhattan. There are no records of your father, other than the reference on your birth certificate. Not even an image or a set of fingerprints, damnedest thing I have ever seen, other than a marriage certificate to a woman named Rita Hunt he doesn't seem to exist."

Kate's eyes were locked on her husband as his face fell, his mind's eye fixed on some invisible landscape of the past, blinking back tears she knew he was holding back by force of will until Vaughn left.

"I haven't been able to get a clear track on your daughter," Vaughn continued, "She changed her last name shortly after your mother's internment with privacy protocols engaged."

Castle seemed to crumple even further in on himself with the knowledge of how completely his family had fallen apart during the eight extra years they had slept the cold sleep. He looked for all the world like a lost little boy who couldn't find his mother. It tore her heart to pieces to see him so cast adrift.

'I promised Alexis we'd be home in time for her graduation from college," Castle muttered, clearly in shock, "guess we missed that one."

Vaughn nodded, trying to appear sympathetic, which was difficult for him under ordinary circumstances, at least he had the sense to keep his mouth shut instead of muttering the usual platitudes.

"You always think you can make up for being away later, you know." Castle muttered to no one in particular, "But now I know I never can."

Kate wrapped an arm around her husband sympathetically as he tried to hold himself together while Vaughn slipped a data-card into her hand. "Your father is still alive, Kate. One of the last things Castle's daughter did before she disappeared from the public record was to set him up in rehab and an independent living center, he's still there."

Kate nodded, a small smile brightening her features for a moment. 'Dad relapsed and Alexis took care of him, certainly sounds like her,' Kate thought to herself 'she's got a big heart, just like her dad.'

"Kate, the board of inquiry convenes at oh-eight-thirty." Vaughn mentioned quietly. "It would not look good for you to be late."

Kate nodded, and rose from her chair to stand with her husband.

Meowing, softly as if knowing how somber the occasion was, Charlie sauntered over and allowed Castle to pick him up as she wiped self-consciously at her eyes.

"We've got to change. Won't take long." Kate replied as she and Rick stroked him softly and Vaughn turned his back to them as the doors parted to permit Castle and Beckett egress from the atrium.

"You know, that cat's something of a special privilege here." the company man offered, hoping to lighten the mood and subtly show he had pull here, "They don't allow pets on Gateway."

"Charlie isn't a pet." Kate stated as if explaining to a small child while she and Rick scratched the tom behind the ears. "He's a survivor and as much a member of Nostromo's crew as we are."


As promised, both Rick and Kate were ready in plenty of time.

Eric Vaughn elected to wait outside their room, studying his reports, until the pair emerged. Though Rick cut a strong figure in his uniform recovered from the shuttle, his writer persona on full display, Kate's transformation was clearly impressive. Gone was the broken and fragile woman in hospital scrubs and flat hospital issue slippers. In her place was the completely put together warrant officer from her file photo. She was dressed immaculately in her own cleaned, pressed uniform, hair fixed in a professional low hanging pony tail standing tall in her high heeled boots. She looked not only radiant, but determined and positively formidable.

Determination Or just a clever front? Vaughn wondered to himself as they headed for the central corridor. Castle took up a position just off her left shoulder with a hand at her back, the two of them presenting a united front, a solid, unbroken line of support. For a few fleeting moments he wondered what it might be like for her to be his instead of Richard Castle's. He wasn't foolish enough to entertain the thought for long though. One of Vaughn's greatest strengths was his ability to read people and size them. He was quick to realize that any attempt to come between them would be a doomed effort.

Besides, he preferred his conquests to be a bit more compliant with a lot less baggage, not the complicated alpha female that was Kate Beckett. These two were a means to and end, a stepping stone on his way up the corporate ladder. She looked like she would be an impressive lay, but chaining himself to her would drag him back down into the corporate obscurity from which he meant to elevate himself. So he would play the role his superiors wanted him to play. The affable, friendly face of the evil Weyland-Yutani empire. He needed Kate Beckett's trust, not her body between the sheets, Though he would not turn down the opportunity to bed her if given the chance, he was well aware the price the Nostromo's executive officer had paid for that attempted transgression.

Once they set off for the conference room in the main hub, there was not a word spoken between the three of them until the elevator they'd boarded arrived at the sub-level where the hearing room was located. Kate and her husband walked with a purpose to their strides he would not have expected, considering they were facing the end of their careers. The silent communication between them an almost palpable thing.

"What are you planning to tell them?' Vaughn finally asked her, he despised being the fifth wheel and their silence had become too much for him to handle.

"You read my deposition, and Castle's. It's complete and accurate," Kate replied crisply, her command presence firmly in place. "I'm gonna tell them the truth."

"Look, Kate," Vaughn replied, "I might be willing to believe you, but the heavyweights in there, are intractable bureaucrats You got feds, Interstellar Commerce Commission, Colonial Administration, insurance company guys and every single one of them is going to try to pick holes in your story."

"I get the picture." Kate cut in, impatient for her and Castle to get this over with.

"Don't let them rattle you, don't fall into their trap," Vaughn offered, "the important thing is to stay cool and unemotional, anything less will be like blood in the water, and these guys are sharks."

Right, Kate thought to herself, All of our shipmates are dead, Castle lost his mother and his daughter has dropped off the face of the galaxy while we were sleeping. Cool and unemotional. Sure.


Despite Kate's stubborn determination, by midday her cool and collected facade was long gone, followed by her patience. Castle's solid presence seated next to her was the only thing helping her keep it together.

The near endless repetition of the same questions, the same narrow-minded bureaucratic disputations of her account of the last voyage of the USCSS Nostromo, the same aggravating blind focus on nonsensical minutiae that left the major facts she found more important untouched, combined to render her frustrated and angry. Which they seemed to pounce upon like ravenous wolves on a wounded deer.

Kate tried not to think about the large video screen behind her cycling through images and dossiers of the Nostromo and her crew. From Castle's near rigid stance in his seat, it was clear that she was not the only one glad that it was behind them. The knowledge of its very presence behind their backs rattled them enough as it was.

Neither of them wanted to look upon the faces of their Nostromo crew-mates. Banhov's resolute scowling face. Brett's placid and bored expression. Tom Richwood's smug misogynistic grin, and Angela Olivera's olive complexion and probing eyes. Ash the traitor, his soulless face and programmed placidity, which he'd maintained even as he'd tried to choke the life out of her - the memory of which made her hand drift absently to her neck. Captain Kim… whom she'd last seen right before turning her flame-thrower on the woman at her desperate request, the first time in her life she had ever committed murder.

Better the pictures were behind her, the terrible memories of those last desperate days aboard the Nostromo would likely haunt nightmare and waking hours for the rest of her life without having to see their faces. She would see them again the very next time she closed her eyes as it was.

After the third go-round, it had finally become too much for her to bear, even with Castle's calming presence by her side, a hand on her knee under the table.

"Are you people soft in the head?" she snapped. "We've been here for three hours and I've gone over this three times. How many different ways do you want me to tell the same story? You think it'll sound better in Russian? Or perhaps French? How about Latin?"

There was not a single friendly face among the entire eight member Board of Inquiry.

Executives. Administrators. Adjusters, all of them bureaucratic paper-pushers none of whom had logged a single day in space. All of their minds were firmly closed and padlocked shut with expressions of smarmy bureaucratic disapproval. Kate was used to dealing directly with the real world, ever since her introduction at age nineteen to the harsh realities of life on that cold January evening when she and her father had come home from dinner to find Detective John Raglan at their door. The intricacies of political and bureaucratic maneuvering were beyond her, which made her wonder how she'd ever even entertained the notion of a career in politics.

"This isn't as simple as you seem to believe, Officer Beckett," The chair of the inquiry board told her, his tone reminiscent of a long-suffering teacher scolding an errant schoolgirl. "Look at it from our perspective. You freely admit to detonating the engines of, and thereby destroying, a Bison Class interstellar freighter. A rather expensive piece of hardware."

The insurance investigator nodded in agreement, she was possibly the unhappiest member of the board.

"Forty-two million dollars," the woman added, "not counting payload. Engine detonation wouldn't have left anything salvageable, even if we could locate the remains after eleven years."

The board chairman nodded absently before continuing. "It's not that we think you're lying. We do believe that you believe what you're telling us. The shuttle's flight recorder does corroborate some elements of your account. The Nostromo did set down on LV-426 at the time and date specified. That repairs were made. That it lifted from the surface and resumed its course after the brief layover and was subsequently rigged for self-destruct. That the order for engine overload was provided by you. For reasons unknown."

'Look, I told you..." Kate began, but the board chairman interrupted her.

"It did not, however, contain even a single entry concerning a hostile alien life-form you allegedly picked up during your short stay on the planet's surface."

"We didn't 'pick it up', Kate shot back. "Like I told you, it..."

Kate broke off, staring at the group of faces gazing either stonily or patronizingly back at her and only then realized she was wasting her breath. This wasn't a board of inquiry, it was a witch hunt. She could explain her actions to them until she turned blue and collapsed for lack of oxygen and would never budge them. She saw that now.

Her fate had been decided before they'd set foot in the room. The inquiry was a mere formality to satisfy the record that due process was served. She decided at that moment to stop playing nice.

"Since I know for a fact that MIRA transferred all of our logs and records from the Nostromo before we abandoned ship," Kate stated angrily, going on the attack for the first time since this so-called inquiry began, "that means somebody tampered with the shuttle's memory core and doctored the files, which a competent computer tech could do in an hour. Who had access to it?"

The representative of the Extra-Solar Colonization Administration sat up in his chair and regarded her with undisguised contempt.

"Do you even hear yourself?" the man shot back at her. "Do you really expect us to believe what you've been telling us? It's clear to me that you believe it. It seems clear that your abnormally long period of hyper-sleep has messed with your head."

Castle shot from his seat for the first time, the anger in his posture clear for all to see, sending the man backpedaling away from him, his posture not-so-sure when confronted with Castle's aggressively angry six foot, broad-shouldered frame. Kate was very nearly all he had left in this world, and there was no way he would let this arrogant piece of shit talk down to her that way. He was about to take another step into the man's personal space, when Kate stilled him with a hand to his arm.

"The analytical team that went over your shuttle centimeter by centimeter and found no physical evidence of the creature you describe or anything like it." the man stated after relocating his spine, "No damage to the interior of the craft. No etching of metal surfaces that might have been caused by an unknown corrosive substance."

"That's because Castle and I blew it out the goddamn airlock!" she exclaimed.

The insurance man leaned forward and peered across the table at the ECA representative. "Are there any species like this "hostile organism" native to LV-426?"

"No," The woman replied, exuding smug confidence. "It's nothing but a a rock in space. No indigenous life more complex than single celled organisms."

Kate ground her teeth as she struggled to stay calm. "I told you twice already that it wasn't indigenous to LV-426. There was a signal coming from the surface. The Nostromo's AI picked it up on sensors and woke us from hyper-sleep to investigate, as per standard regulations."

"When we arrived," Castle stated, picking up the thread from Kate and finishing the thought for her, "we found an alien spacecraft like nothing you or anyone else has ever seen. I know because I was on the survey team and saw it for myself. The ship was a derelict, after an apparent collision with the USCSS Prometheus thirty years before. We homed in on one of that ship's emergency beacons. During our survey of the craft, we found an escape pod with Elizabeth Shaw aboard, her chest had been opened up from the inside and something had accessed the pod's distress beacon."

Maybe the story bothered the ECA rep. Or maybe she didn't like the united front the Castles were putting up. Whatever, she felt it was her place to respond.

"To be perfectly frank," The bureaucrat stated dismissively, "the ECA has surveyed over three hundred worlds, and none of our survey crews have ever reported the existence of such a creature, which, using your words..." she paused to find the right page on her tablet bearing their formal statements, "gestates from a living host and has concentrated molecular acid for blood."

Nothing Kate said had even made a dent, except to give them more ammunition to use against her. It wasn't that she had any desire to go back into space again anytime soon, but she had the sinking suspicion that her options for even a terrestrial career might be hanging from a thread. Without the corroborating evidence from the shuttle's flight recorder, Kate had nothing to offer the review board but her word, and it was abundantly clear just how little weight that carried and they were using that as a reason to label her as "unstable" and unfit for duty.

Her instincts as a detective led her to wonder who'd doctored the recorder and why. It was possible that it could have malfunctioned on its own, but the disappearance of a single set of files and not the whole recorder was far too convenient given what it revealed about Weyland-Yutani's misdeeds, not that it mattered much, the deed was done and she had long since grown tired of playing their game.

"Look, I can see where this is going." Kate stated coldly expression devoid of either warmth or amusement. If they wanted to play hardball, so be it, she'd rattle their cages good and proper on her way out, even though she knew she didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting anywhere. "The whole business with the synthetic, why we were directed to the beacon in the first place – and make no mistake about it we were directed there - it all adds up, though without the information on the shuttle's computer core, you all sit there smug with the knowledge that I can't prove it."

Kate glared across the table, her eyes pausing to focus on each and every one of them, her interrogation face fully engaged, her eyes probing as if looking into each of their souls.

"Somebody's covering all this up, and as Nostromo's acting captain, I'm the obvious one to be left holding the bag. Fine, but there's one thing you can't change, one fact you can't doctor away, no matter how hard you try."

Kate glared across the table again, her shoulders set as she took charge of her life like she had them all in the box. Two of them swallowed hard at her death glare, and Castle almost felt sorry for them, having been on the receiving end once upon a time.

"Those things I described do exist. Brush me off and bury me in bullshit if you wish, but you can't wipe out the truth I'm telling you. Back on LV-426 is an alien ship with thousands of those eggs on board. Thousands. Do you understand? I suggest you send an expedition to find and deal with it fast. Preferably with an orbital nuke, before one of your survey ships comes back with a little surprise."

"Thank you, Officer Beckett," The board chairman began, 'that will be..."

"You don't get it, do you?" Kate shouted him down. "Just one of those things nearly wiped out my entire crew within twelve hours of bringing it aboard."

The administrator rose. He was making it clear that it wasn't just Kate who was out of patience.

"Thank you. Officer Beckett," He stated forcefully enough to have Castle up out of his seat again, "That will be all."

"That's not Goddamn all!" Kate shouted back as she rose to her feet and glared at him. "If just one ofthose Goddamn things gets back here, that will be all. You can just kiss everything goodbye, all of this bullshit you care so much about won't be able to save you!"

The ECA representative turned calmly to the administrator.

"I believe we have discussed this enough to come to a determination. I think it's time to close this inquest and retire for deliberation."

The Review Board Chairman nodded his assent. His mind was no more open than it had been when he'd walked into the room.

"Officer Beckett, Specialist Castle, Mr. Vaughn, if you'd excuse us, please?"

A security guard pointed politely to a door leading into an adjoining room where they could see a receptionist waiting with a tray of coffee.

Trembling with frustration, Kate turned to leave the room with Castle hard at her heels. As she turned for the door, her eyes fastened on the picture of Elise Kim that stared blankly down at her from the video-screen. Captain Kim.

Kate strode out angrily, her head held high. She knew that the result was a foregone conclusion. The so-called "Board of Inquiry" would go through the motions of an honest deliberation, but it was merely a formality. The company loved formality. As long as the right boxes were checked all of the "i's" were dotted all the t's were crossed and the formalities were observed, it was okay that their predecessors had sacrificed an entire ship's crew to unleash a nightmare.

Kate didn't care that they made her the scapegoat for the entire affair. She didn't care that her career in space was all but over. She didn't care that they would paint her as unstable and unfit for further service. She could let all of that go as long as she still had Rick at her side. Nor did she care that they didn't believe her. Given the absence of any solid evidence, she could understand their resistance that much. She'd dismissed enough of Castle's half-baked conspiracy theories over the years with just as little proof.

But to ignore her story out of hand, to refuse to even check it out, even if it was just in the interest of public safety? As a former public servant who had hunted killers to make her home a safer place to live that she could never forgive. These things had the potential to wipe out the entire human race and because it didn't show as a profit or a loss on their godforsaken spreadsheets, they didn't care.

"You had them eating out of your hand, kiddo." Vaughn said, not realizing the gaffe he had made until the words - Phrased exactly as Martha Rodgers would have - were out of his lips. Martha's words coming from the mouth of somebody clearly not Castle's mother nearly pushed her anger over the edge.

"Do not call me that!" Kate spat, her eyes ablaze as if to flay Vaughn alive with her gaze alone. The man had the good sense to backpedal quickly, spluttering apologies.

It was Castle's hand on her shoulder, however, that blunted her anger and took the wind from her sails. One look in the sad eyes of her husband - who had only just learned he'd lost his mother that very morning - and all of her anger dissipated like ignited flash paper. She turned to him and their foreheads met for just a moment as he held her and then the moment was gone.

"They had their minds made up before I even went in there." Kate muttered darkly as she turned back to Vaughn, "I've wasted an entire morning I could have spent consoling my husband and helping him find Alexis. Would've been easier just to recite what they wanted to hear instead of trying to convince them of the truth."

It was clear that Vaughn was still just a little afraid after Beckett's display of barely controlled rage to offer any meaningful comment.

"They think I'm a headcase, Castle." Kate whispered.

Castle paused only for a moment before changing the subject, "Have a cronut, Kate. Chocolate or buttermilk?"

She eyed the ersatz "cronuts" her husband proffered distastefully.

"You can taste the difference?" she whispered, a slight air of mischief in her tone, letting Castle know his attempt to lighten the mood had succeeded, if only just for now. Though Kate could still see the determination in his eyes to find his little girl hidden behind his glib facade.

"Not really," Castle replied, "but the colors are nice."

Kate couldn't find it within herself to grin, but she did give him the eye-roll she knew he'd been fishing for as she selected the barely identifiable chocolate one.

The 'deliberations' didn't take long. Likely only long enough to have a cappuccino and comment on how to word her guilty verdict, Kate thought to herself as she and Castle reentered the room and took their seats.

Vaughn resumed his own seat at the far side of the chamber. He started to wink at her, thought better of it, and aborted the gesture. Kate didn't miss the moment of indecision on his part and let it go. Had she known that the man had been sent by the company to ride herd on her and monitor the proceedings she may have had a more visceral reaction to his borderline flirting.

The board chairman cleared his throat to bring the meeting back to order.

"Acting Captain Katherine Beckett, it is the finding of this board of inquiry that you acted with questionable judgment in the events leading up to destruction of the Weyland-Yutani commercial tug Nostromo and the deaths of six members of her crew. As to the charge of gross negligence and dereliction of duty, this board finds you guilty. You are hereby declared unfit to hold an ICC license as a commercial flight officer. Said license is hereby suspended indefinitely, and your employment with Weyland-Yutani is summarily terminated."

If any of them expected a reaction from the condemned, they were sorely disappointed. Kate simply sat there and stared silently back at them, shoulders rigid, tight-lipped and defiant.

The chairman continued, clearing his throat, and his conscience. "In view of the unusual length of time you and your husband have spent in hyper-sleep with possibly deleterious effects on both of your central nervous systems, no criminal or civil charges will be filed against either of you at this time."

At this time, Castle thought humorlessly to himself as they dismissed the woman he loved like she was nothing, which infuriated him beyond words, Corporate speak for 'Keep your mouth shut, stay away from the media and maybe you'll still be allowed to collect your back pay and pension.'

"You are hereby released on your own recognizance pending a six-month period of probation, to include monthly review by an approved ICC psychiatrist for treatment and/or medication as may be prescribed. This board of inquiry now stands adjourned."

Castle's eyes smoldered at the arrogant bastard who'd down the very same punishment that had been intended for Tom Richwood for what he had done to Kate. His hands flexed under the table with only barely controlled rage. He wanted to hit something, preferably the smug corporate bastard who thought this was a novel way to show Kate who's boss.

Kate sat at the table and spoke not a word as the board chairman gathered up his flimsies, closed his briefcase and turned to leave the room. She rose from her seat, determined to try one more time to get through to him.

Vaughn saw the look in her eye and moved to stop her as she followed him out, Castle following close behind, he stepped into her path and grasped her elbow to keep her in the room. Castle bristled at his invasion of his wife's personal space, straightening his spine and coming to his full, imposing height, making his displeasure quite clear.

"Beckett, please, let it go," Vaughn whispered to her, "it's over."

Kate shrugged out of Vaughn's loose grasp and continued up the corridor, the threatening look from Richard Castle rooting him to the spot and caught up with the man as he stood waiting for the elevator.

"Why won't you at least check out LV-426?" Kate asked.

He glanced back at her.

"Ms. Beckett," he replied, his tone almost patronizing, "the decision of the board is final."

"This isn't about the board's decision," Kate shot back, her tone almost beseeching, "It's not about me, but the next people who find that ship. Why you won't you at least check it out."

"Because I don't have to," he told her brusquely. "The people who live there mapped every square centimeter of the surface three years ago and reported nothing about a "hostile organism" nor even any mention an alien ship. Do you think I'm a complete fool? Did you think the board wouldn't seek some sort of verification, if only to protect ourselves from future liability?"

Kate was struck dumb from what the man had said.

"What are you talking about?" Castle asked, picking up Kate's line of inquiry when the words were trapped in her throat as always, "What people?'

The Company suit stepped into the elevator car and turned back to face them again, but Kate thrust an arm between the doors to keep them from closing, it's sensors obediently waited for her to remove it.

"Terraformers," the man explained. "We've made significant advances in colony development while the two of you were sleeping. LV-426 is what we call a shake-'n'-bake colony. We set up atmosphere processors to make the air breathable as long as there is at least some sort of gaseous atmosphere to work with. Hydrogen or argon works to kick-start the process, but methane gives the best results."

Kate was still a little gobsmacked as the man continued giving his recitation on colonial development from memory, a subject he was obviously much more upbeat about.

"LV-426 was practically swimming in methane, along with just enough trace amounts of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide to move things along. By now, phase one should be complete and they've long since begun phase two, the introduction of oxygen producing plants and lichen. As we speak, LV426's capacity to to support terrestrial life should be increasing exponentially and will be completely habitable and ready for full scale colonization within the next ten years. Once the mineral deposits are played out, LV-426 could find new life as an emergency repair depot given it's position near the midway point between Earth and Thedus in the frontier."

Kate's hand did not waver in the door, and she studiously ignored the other passengers' annoyance.

"How many colonists?" she asked.

His brow furrowed as he tallied the figures in his head. "At last count, sixty, maybe seventy families."

"Oh, my god," Kate and Rick whispered in unison, the same nightmare scenario playing out in both of their heads.

Kate dropped her arm to her side and let the elevator doors close on the company suit. Turning her thoughts instead to the colony on LV-426, horrified by what her mind's eye showed her. She knew there was a potential tragedy brewing for the three hundred plus people on that small dust-covered planetoid as certainly as if an oracle of Delphi had risen from the deck plates and pronounced their doom.

She'd tried to warn them, but they wouldn't listen. There wasn't a damn thing she could do about it, not without going back out into the black, and she didn't think she was ready to face the darkness and monsters she knew were waiting there.

How the hell can I save anyone? Kate thought to herself accusingly, I can't even get a decent night's sleep without waking up screaming.


The commercial shuttle ride to Earth's surface had been uneventful, a much less bumpy planet-fall than the one they had made to the surface of LV-426. Kate had kept the window open so she could see the sunlight and blue sky once suborbital insertion had given way to entry into full atmo.

It hadn't seemed real until the ship's landing struts kissed the landing pad, the Captain had announced their arrival at JFK international and the flight attendants had begun to herd them toward the exit. Neither of them had much with them. Most of their personal effects had been lost with the Nostromo and they literally had nothing but Charlie in his cat-box, the uniforms on their backs, back pay credit chits for twelve years and a small bag of toiletries each to carry along on the short flight.

Castle called Black Pawn publishing and then his publicist Paula Haas and they were rather pleasantly surprised at how little convincing he'd had to do to convince them that the reports of his death had been greatly exaggerated. Within minutes a town car had been sent to pick them up and deliver them home.

Another pleasant surprise awaited them when the car dropped them at 495 Broome Street. Though Eduardo – who had quite a few more gray hairs on his head – looked at them like he'd seen a ghost the loft was still registered in his name, and the front door still responded to their biometrics.

No sooner had the front door closed behind them, than Kate had stooped to open the box to release Charlie from his confinement. Charlie took off like his tail was on fire, their last sighting of him, a flash of orange streaking up the stairs.

For the next two hours, the two set themselves to the task of setting up the house for habitation again. Covers were removed from furniture, and takeout was ordered for the night.

A conversation with "Lucy" the loft's virtual intelligence, Castle had been able to determine that Alexis had set up Rick's Black Pawn royalties into paying for the loft and associated fees required. It was clear that she intended to return as soon as her stint in colony development was over. They even had her new name, Alexis Rodgers, and the name of the terraforming colony she had left earth to join.

Archeron.


For the next six weeks, life for Castle and Beckett fell into a mostly comfortable routine. They attended their mandatory counseling sessions, took the medication prescribed for their overly long dose of hyper-sleep and each endured the nightmares they both had of their last trip into space. Both of them awakening from sound sleep either screaming the other's name. Clinging to each other and tumbling into panic driven sex to reassure each of them of the other's continued existence.

Sometimes when Kate couldn't sleep, she would hear her husband whisper his daughter's name in his sleep, see his shoulders shudder. They had sent a message to Archeron colony to let her know they were alive, but it was sufficiently far away that their message would not be arriving for another week. Though both of them felt s inking feeling where Archeron was, they avoided looking too closely. Not that they didn't want to look, but confirmation would crush them both.

Until the knock at their door that they had been dreading since they learned of the colony on LV-426 finally came.

When Kate opened the door, Eric Vaughn stood in the doorway, with a colonial Marine in his undress khakis standing right behind him at parade rest.

"What do you want, Vaughn?" Castle asked brusquely, "he had never liked the man, never liked the way he looked at Kate as if she was a piece of meat."

Kate stilled him with a glance before inviting Vaughn and the marine who's name pin identified him as Lt, Gorman of the United Earth Colonial Marine Corps, inside.

After the usual niceties had been observed, which Rick knew was Kate's way of delaying the inevitable she was unprepared to deal with. Vaughn finally spoke, his words dropping the bottom out of both of their worlds.

"We've lost contact with the colony on Archeron."


**Author's note** Yes, I admit it, I am hiding from what is going on with the show and hoping it isn't gonna go on on much longer. This story will also serve as my escape from that reality. My opinion on the current arc can be found on both twitter and tumbler under the same name I use here, so please don't bring it with you into further reviews. Fanfic is my escape valve and I really don't want to discuss it here so I will ignore you. Thank you for your cooperation.