I, Spy
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: I'm positive I don't own Castle. Rating: M, here and there. Time: The future, after season eight but before kids.
Chapter Twelve. It's Déjà Vu All Over Again.
"Let's make sure before we say anything, babe." Kate said. Rick frowned, but watched the video. "How was this taken?" She asked.
"A drone recon bird." Ray said. "It also dropped a couple of ground recon drones."
Castle saw something familiar and nodded. "Watch this."
They saw a herd of elephants walk towards a river bank infested with alligators. The bull elephants tore trees out of the ground with their trunks and used them to batter the alligators until they fled. Then the elephants bathed and drank in the river.
"We were on this Earth. Sent by the Earth One people to try to rescue an Alexis Castle, not mine, but another one. We had to rescue a whole bunch of Alexises on the way. This was one of the places we were sent to. According to the Earth One people, a couple of hundred thousand years ago, some aliens came to that Earth and made all of the animals smarter. Maybe bigger and meaner as well. Sort of like 2001."
"You mean the movie by Francis Ford Coppola?" Montgomery asked.
"Francis Ford Coppola? Based on the book by Arthur C. Clark?"
"Of course."
"Well, anyway the animals got so smart and tough they killed off humans. We got to travel up the Mississippi on a Pibber, a PBR, Patrol Boat, River. You know, like in Apocalypse Now?"
"What's Apocalypse Now?"
Castle shook his head. "You're going to have to get me a movie DVD catalogue or something."
"No porn, babe." Kate warned him.
"You know the only porn I watch is the stuff we shoot in…." Seeing her look of shock, he stopped. "Um, that is…."
"Way too much information." Simone said.
"Or not enough." Tatiana said.
"Would you be willing to help us since you do know the area?" Montgomery said deferentially.
"We wouldn't be going in a small boat, would we? We'd go in the Montana?"
Montgomery shook his head. "It's way too big. We'll use a destroyer and a frigate. When the river gets too shallow for the destroyer, you'd go onto the frigate and continue the mission."
"What exactly are destroyers and frigates?" Simone asked.
Montgomery typed something into his computer and got another video. "A destroyer is about ten thousand tons, a bit over five hundred feet long and has a draft of a bit over thirty feet. They have two five inch railguns, she carries around a hundred missiles of various sorts, depending on her mission, a couple of twenty five millimeter guns and lots of 12.7 and 7.62 millimeter machine guns. She also carries two helicopters and various drones, again depending on mission."
Montgomery went to another video. "Frigates are smaller. A shade over four thousand tons, four hundred feet or so in length and her draft is twenty two feet. Weapons are one five inch rail gun, fifty plus missiles, type and amount depending on mission, two twenty five millimeter guns, plus machine guns, and two helicopters and some drones. They also carry rigid hull inflatable boats and they may carry something like the pibber you mentioned for this mission."
"Sounds safer than the boat we were in the first time." Kate said.
"I'll go. There's no need for…" Rick began.
"I go where you go, babe."
"Tatiana has no knowledge of this planet and…."
"And I'm going with you." Tatiana broke in.
"Me too." Simone added.
"You know, some of you could listen to me sometime." Castle griped.
"I listen to you all the time, lover." Kate said, winking at him.
"You listen, you just don't pay attention." Rick grumped.
They found themselves in what would have been the Gulf of Mexico on their Earth, heading for the Mississippi River. This Mississippi had a much wider delta than the on back home, going almost to Texas in one direction and nearly to Alabama in the other.
The two ships were crowded. In addition to the crews, six boats, a bit larger than their old pibber were on board, along with their crews, four on the destroyer, the USS John Basilone and two on the frigate, the USS Ira Hayes. They also carried more drones, both aircraft, underwater craft and land vehicles, and the maintenance crews and operators for them. On the other hand, Mr. and Mrs. Storm got a stateroom with a double bed for themselves. Simone and Tatiana shared a stateroom that was smaller.
For a short part of the trip, they'd have a third ship with them, a ballistic missile submarine, a "boomer", in Navy slang. The boat was one that had been modified to put satellites into orbit rather than fire ballistic missiles. A large part of the crew of the crews of both ships had gathered on the upper decks to watch the missile launch. Rick and the three women watched as well.
"Quite a fireworks show." Rick commented to Lt. Daly.
"Yeah, but you don't want to be around for the ones that explode."
"Point taken. How long before we go up river?"
"Tomorrow sometime, probably. We have to wait until the satellites achieve a stable orbit. One of them is a geosynchronous orbit some twenty three thousand mile up so it'll stay right over us."
Once the fireworks were over, the sub departed and the two remaining ships sailed in a lazy circle, just killing time. The sailors went back to whatever they had been doing and Rick, Kate and Simone briefed Lt. Daly and his team on all they had seen on this Earth the last time they were there.
It was nearly noon by the time they determined that the satellites were all in the proper orbit and functioning properly. At the same time, the sonar operator caught something and called to Captain Brodsky, the Basilone's commanding officer and the CO of their little task force. "Sir, I'm picking up a disturbance on the sonar, about fifteen thousand meters dead ahead. I can't be sure here, but it sounds like it could be whales. But big whales."
Brodsky nodded. "Okay, we'll give them plenty of room. Keep me advised."
Rick and the three women were on the bridge when the first of the whales was seen.
"Whales, all right." Someone said, "Killer whales and very big ones. Bigger than I've ever seen."
"They seem to be ignoring us." Tatiana said.
"Good." The captain said. "I doubt if one of those things could sink us, but we don't want to get damaged."
"Sir," the sonar operator called, "something really big headed to the whales. Now the whales are turning towards the second target."
Brodsky, as well as Rick and the women, moved to the side of the bridge to see better.
"Jesus H. Christ!" Brodsky said.
A huge green head attached to a very long neck reared up out of the water, reached down and picked up a whale and bit it in half. The other whales went into a feeding frenzy, but were not that successful. The huge green beast moved rapidly through the water, moving its head, filled with massive teeth and snapping up whales and chomping right through them. They saw some more of the beast when a whale bit into a huge front flipper and hung on. The green monster slammed his two front flippers together, stunning the whale, which fell off.
Soon the battle was over and the killer whales fled. The huge beast began to eat the floating whale carcasses and paid no attention to the two ships.
"Did you see anything like that upstream?" Brodsky asked Castle.
"No, and it's possible those are salt water creatures. But the fresh water killers are just as dangerous. I think swimming parties are a no no."
"You think so?" Kate muttered sarcastically.
"We have a channel through the Mississippi Delta onto the main river from the satellites, sir." The comm officer said.
"Let me see it." Brodsky studied the satellite video and photos that had been sent down. "According to this, we'll have to go damned near to Alabama to get to this channel. I want plenty of daylight when we go through the channel, so we'll head for there and launch some aerial drones and take a look see and then head up tomorrow morning. Hayes will precede us since we can pull her off a sandbar or whatever a lot easier than she can pull us off."
That night as others worked hard getting ready to go up the river, Rick, Kate, Simone, Tatiana and Montgomery ate with Captain Brodsky in the crowded wardroom of the Basilone. Rick couldn't help but notice that although they attracted some attention, the other officers seemed to be reluctant to make eye contact with any of them.
"These are odd sailors, Captain. I'd have thought that the unmarried men would be flirting with Simone and Tatiana, if not Kate. They can't all be married."
Brodsky laughed. "Your reputation has preceded you, Mr. Storm. No one wants to offend the legendary Derrick Storm by flirting with his wife. Plus, rumor has it that the ladies are all your agents and are cold blooded, highly trained killers who could dispatch a whole SEAL platoon without breaking a sweat. And there's also a rumor that you married all three of them in some barbaric ceremony on some far off Earth. I'm afraid your ladies are frightening my officers terribly."
"That's a shame. Should I…"Rick began.
"No. They can chase women when they're on shore. Here, I want them focused on their jobs and nothing else."
Tatiana shrugged. "Shipboard romances never last anyway. " Then she glared at young man who was looking at her and reached below the table as if to draw a weapon. The young man quickly looked away.
The next morning the two ships started through the Mississippi Delta preceded by two aerial drones. They sailed slowly with lookouts everywhere. On either side of them were swamps, filled with trees. Rick saw what might have been an octopus looking around a tree trunk. He could see one of its arms splayed out in front of it. He guessed it was twenty feet long and very thick. Further one, he could see two shadowy somethings keeping up with the ships until the trees thinned out, and they stopped. He heard, but did not see something on the other side of the ship that sounded like a fight between at least two large beasts.
Finally, they came out of the swamps into the main channel of the Mississippi itself. The river, lacking the levees of their own Earth was wider and in many cases deeper.
"I can't believe we sailed up here in a little pibber. "Kate whispered to Rick.
"I'm not thrilled were sailing back up in a destroyer." He whispered back. "But I'd go anywhere with you."
"Charmer." She said, giving him a quick kiss.
They found that they were getting readings from Storm's portable transfer device, but all they could tell was that it was somewhere ahead of them. They headed upstream.
"The drone has something." The drone operator reported.
"Is it our target?" Brodsky asked.
"No, sir. It's a bird."
"So?"
"It's the size of the bird, sir. It looks to be about the size of a small aircraft."
"Is it any danger to us?"
"No, sir. I have the drone over it, looking down. It's about two miles out and headed our way, though."
"Tell the lookouts to keep an eye out for it. Something that big could damage us."
Castle, Kate, Simone and Tatiana looked for the bird.
"There it is." Tatiana said. "He's diving and…." The bird swooped down and grabbed a large fish from the water, then climbed and headed for shore.
"Oh shit." Castle pointed upwards. "It's one of those poisonous butterflies." A monstrously huge butterfly in psychedelic colors moved slowly over the river, its colors attracting every eye for miles. The large bird dropped the fish on the river bank and soared out over the river, getting above the butterfly.
"Watch this. That butterfly has some kind of poison sacs that'll spray poison all over than bird. The bird is dead meat."
As the bird approached the butterfly, the butterfly flipped onto its back, getting ready to spray poison into the bird's face. But the bird skidded sideways in the air, and the poison missed. One of the bird's claws did rip into the butterfly's wing, damaging it. The bird dove towards the river, building up speed and then swooping up above the butterfly. The bird dove again, but pulled up just as the butterfly shot a stream of poison at him.
"The bird is trying to get the butterfly to use up all of its poison. That'll leave it defenseless."
The bird now circled the butterfly, feinting at it and making it shoot more poison. The bird did manage to damage its opponent's wing again and the butterfly began to drift slowly towards the river. With the butterfly concentrating on keeping airborne, the bird had a chance. It attacked and slashed at the butterfly with its talons. The butterfly fell a hundred feet into the river and began to sink. Then something rose quickly out of the river and pulled it down.
When it got dark, the ships moved more slowly up the river. Several times something bumped them, but it didn't look like anything was big enough to do them any damage.
Rick and Kate were sound asleep when the gunfire woke them. They pulled on their clothing as quickly as they could and looked out of their cabin. A sailor was passing by with an assault rifle over his shoulder and web gear full of magazines around his waist.
"What's going on?" Rick asked.
"We're being attacked by the stern." He rushed off.
"We'd better go try to help." Kate said.
They made it to the helicopter hangar to find one of the SEALs handing out weapons and ammunition to the sailors. Rick and Kate got in line and saw Simone and Tatiana ahead of them.
"Simone, what's going on?" Rick called.
"We're being attacked by something."
"What?"
"Crabs. "Replied the SEAL. "Huge god damned crabs."
They got to the helo deck and were directed to the port side. Just as they got there, a giant crab, a good six feet from claw to claw started pulling itself onto the deck. Rick and Kate both fired and he crab fell back.
"How the hell can they climb the sides of the ship?" Rick asked. "They're steel with nothing to grab onto."
When they got to the railing, they found out how. There were hundreds of crabs in the water around them. The crabs began climbing on top of the other crabs and soon the mass of crabs could reach the decks over the bodies of the other crabs. Rick and Kate began to fire into the mass of struggling crabs. They were soon joined by more sailors and then the SEALs began to fire machine guns and grenades into the mass below them.
Eventually, the mass of dead crabs brought more predators who began fasting on the living and dead crabs. The crabs left, leaving a dozen or more of their kind dead on the ship's deck.
"Crab cakes, maybe?" Asked a sailor.
"Not from these." An officer replied. "We have no idea whether they'd be good eating or fatal to us. Toss 'em all overboard."
Rick and Kate want back to bed. She curled up in her husband's arms. "You take me to the most interesting places." She said sleepily.
"Remind me to take you to a seafood place where the seafood doesn't want to eat us, though."
Kate smiled and was asleep.
When Kate woke up the next morning, something was different. She listened and then woke Rick. "Get up. I don't think we're moving."
"Do you think we're run aground?"
"There's just one way to find out."
Rick stuck his head out of their cabin. Two sailors we're working on some piece of machinery in the passageway. "Did we run aground or something?"
"No, sir. We've stopped. Some kind of trouble ahead. The Hayes is taking a look."
Convinced that a disaster wasn't afoot, they took a shower and got dressed. They sat with Captain Brodsky and had breakfast in the wardroom.
"Why are we stopped?" Kate asked.
"There's a huge sand bar up ahead. We can't get the Basilone through it and maybe not even the Hayes. We have aerial and subsurface drones looking for a passageway."
They were interrupted by a burst of machine gun fire. In seconds Brodsky was getting a report on the radio. "A really big octopus. Big enough so that one of his tentacles reached to the helo deck. Almost grabbed someone before a machine gunner lit him up."
"I do take you to the most interesting places, don't I?" Rick said.
Kate stuck her tongue out at him.
After breakfast they went on deck to look around. They were surprised to find that they were only a couple of hundred yards from the eastern shore of the river.
"Take a look at this, Mr. Storm." One of the SEALs handed Rick a pair of binoculars. "You can just see him moving a log on the river bank."
Rick looked through the binoculars and saw a huge bear pushing a log towards the river. Following behind were three small cubs. Although small in comparison to what Rick decided was probably the mother, the cubs looked to be about as big as he was. And probably a lot nastier.
The bear moved the log part way into the water and then placed her cubs on top. Then she shoved off, leaping onto the log at the last second. Then she paddled to an island some twenty or thirty yards from the bank. "Hey! I think she's used her claws to partially hollow out the log. It's a crude boat."
Once ashore, the momma and the cubs began gorging on some sort of melons on the island.
"I bet if we come back in a couple of million years, those bears will have nuclear powered subs." Rick said, only half joking.
"I'll put that on my calendar." The SEAL replied.
As they watched, something large and grey rose out of the water and shambled towards one of the cubs. The little bear ran to his mother. She stood on her hind legs and as the grey thing approached, decapitated it with on swipe of its paw. The grey beast collapsed and the bears went back to eating.
The SEAL shook his head. "You and the ladies came up this river in a freakin' PBR, sir?"
Rick shook his head. "Tatiana wasn't with us, but I did have two friends with me, so we were okay."
"Jesus." The SEAL said and walked away.
"I think the legend of Derrick Storm is growing." Kate said. "By the time that story gets around, you'll have paddled up the river in a canoe and talked the bears into becoming your army. And your wife will have been around just to be eye candy."
Rick kissed her." You've been more than eye candy since the day I met you, but you are the most beautiful eye candy I've ever met."
Kate laughed. "That sort of flattery will get you everywhere with me."
As they headed back to the helo hangar, they ran into Montgomery.
"Good news, good news and bad news." He said.
"Let's with the good news." Rick said.
"The Hayes' drone found a channel in the river that can take both ships. And the weather satellite shows that there's a line of summer storms moving across the upper Midwest. The rain will eventually raise the level of the river." Montgomery leaned forward so they wouldn't be overheard. "The bad news is that we can't track the transfer device that the real Derrick Storm took anymore. It seems he left. But we did pick up a burst of energy when he transferred. It was enough for us to pinpoint his location. He was about another seventy miles up the river. Captain Brodsky is going to stop about ten miles from the spot and send in some drones to take a look."
That night Rick and the three women gather in the Combat Information Center as the drones approached the site where Storm had been.
Lieutenant Chen was busy putting up one screen after another showing feed from the drones. "Sir, we can't get anything from above the trees except that there's a heat source down there. I'm going to have the helicopter drone drop under the trees and see what's to be seen."
She changed screens again and now they could see the greenish picture from the night vision camera. "There we go. Some kind of structure and there are a bunch of critters around it. There's a fence around the compound…."Chen had the drone move. "And there's some kind of net over the two buildings. Whoa! And we have two dead bodies there. Humans."
"I'll bet that the fence and everything is electrified." Castle said. "The fence probably killed predators who came by and that attracted carrion eaters."
"Any idea what killed the men?" Brodsky asked.
"Not a clue."
"Sir, I've gotten a look inside the larger structure. There's a heat source there, too. It looks like a human and he's alive."
Brodsky nodded. "Okay, we'll go in and get him. Chen, keep an eye on the compound and Lt. Daly can figure out how his SEALs can get the man out."
The plan was simple if not elegant. All of the helicopters aboard the two ships would carry the SEALs as close to the compound as they could get. They'd drop the SEALs and then hover, providing covering fire. One helicopter would use missiles to blast a hole in the electrified fence and then take out the power source with heavy machine guns, using missiles as a last resort for fear of friendly fire injuries to whoever was inside the compound. Kate was very happy that Daly did not want Rick along.
They stood on the bridge, watching the helicopters leave. "It looks like a miniature version of Apocalypse Now. I wonder if they ever thought of playing Ride of the Valkyries?"
"I doubt if the animals would appreciate it." Kate said.
"What is this Apocalypse Now?" Tatiana asked.
"We'll show it to you when we get home." Simone said. "We'll have a movie night with popcorn and everything."
They could hear and see the assault and in minutes the helicopters were on their way back.
Daly called the ship on the radio. "Two minor injuries, but we got him."
"Who is it?" Brodsky asked.
"He's beat up and a real mess, but I'm positive it's another Mr. Storm."