The Pilots and the Passengers
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: You guessed it. I don't own Castle. Rating: K Time: An AU future, and see below.
Authors note: This is a sequel to The Pilot, and The Pilots.
Author's note: Some sci fi fans may note some things that I have borrowed from other fandoms.
They left the ship in a diamond formation. Skinny was in the lead with Moecious on the right and Rick on the left. Andine was behind with Lindane and the Quinncunx in the middle. The Quinncunx had wrapped itself tightly around Lindane and was quietly sobbing.
Once inside the tower, they found it was all open space, all the way to the roof, far above them. At the perimeter of the inside were rows of statues.
Moecious raised his weapon and aimed it upwards.
"What is it?" Rick asked.
"I thought I saw movement up there. I think there are walkways on the inside of the tower. One, two, three, four, five…Maybe more."
"Anyone else see anything?" Rick was looking around as quickly as he could.
"Nothing moving, but I do see something odd." Skinny said. "The tower is open to the elements and there's a forest just outside. But, there are no leaves or debris of any sort inside." He walked over to a statue and ran his hand over it. "Perfectly clean. Not a spot of dust. Not what I'd expect."
"The place is kind of freaky." Rick admitted. Then he turned to look at the statues. "This one is the babe with boobs and a mustache, like the one outside, but it looks life size. Assuming they were about human sized."
"The next one is an old human man, I think." Moecious said. "Bald and with a beer belly."
"You thinking of opening a bar here?" Rick teased.
"No customers."
"The next one isn't human at all." Lindane said. "It looks kind of like a snake, but the tail is split, like maybe they act as legs."
"And it has arms." Skinny noted.
"Rick. What's happening in there?" Kate's voice came over the radio.
"We're fine." Rick explained what they'd found inside.
"Well, leave your mic open so we'll know if something goes wrong."
"Roger that."
"This one is kind of human." Skinny said, pointing to a statue. "But a really short, squat one."
"Could be from a high gravity world." Lindane said.
"And this one looks like a crab, or something."
"This one's human looking, but her boobs look like two basketballs stuck onto her chest." Rick said. "They are really big."
"Are they?" Kate's voice came over the radio. "Do you have a thing for big boobs?" She asked icily.
"I have a thing for your boobs, babe, as they're attached to you."
There was laughter from the ship.
"Nice save." Jane said, then kept laughing.
Rick suddenly whirled around and raised his carbine to his shoulder.
"What? Where?" Yelled Skinny.
He slowly lowered his weapon. "It's nothing. I just felt like there was something behind us."
Lindane raised her own weapon and swept through 360 degrees. "Master Po told us that our senses sometimes pick up information our conscious mind can't yet process. I feel like we're being watched as well."
"There's something at the end of the tower." Moecious said. "We should stop fooling with the statues and see what it is."
"Good idea." Rick said as they picked up the pace.
Two hundred meters later, Skinny suddenly whirled and knelt. "There's something behind that statue, the one that looks like a pile of worms. Moecious, go to the left, I'll go right. Rick, you and the rest stay here and cover us."
Rick nodded. "Lindane, Andine, watch our backs incase this is a feint."
The two women did so, but kept an eye on the others.
Moecious and Skinny moved slowly and cautiously towards the row of statues. When they reached the statues, they stopped.
"On three." Skinny said. "And let's make sure we don't shoot each other."
Moecious nodded and the two counted down.
"One, two, three."
Both disappeared behind the row of statues.
"Rick! Is there anything coming towards you?" Skinny yelled.
"Nothing. All clear."
Both walked back out from the statues.
"There was nothing there." Moecious said.
"I saw something." Skinny said "I know I saw something."
"What did it look like?" Rick asked.
"I just got a quick look, but it looked more human-like than anything. Like some of the statues. I know I saw something. I didn't imagine it."
"Could have been a drone." Lindane said. "Used a hologram projector and then hid inside a statue, or part of the wall. It's like something is toying with us."
"Everyone okay in there?" Kate's voice came over the radio. "Do you want us to bring the ship in? There's plenty of room."
"No." Rick said quickly. "We're going to get through this as fast as we can. From now in, unless something walks up to us, we ignore it. I think Lindane is right. Someone or something in here is playing games with us. Maybe if we ignore them, they'll go away."
They continued to see things, very briefly out of the corner of their eyes. Once Moecious stopped and insisted he'd heard something like footsteps. They all stopped and listened, but no one heard anything at all.
"I have good hearing." He said. "It sounded like footsteps with one foot dragging."
"Nothing now." Skinny said.
They reached a large staircase at the far end of the tower. It was half the width of the tower.
"The risers on the stairs are about a third of a meter high." Rick said. "A bit high for humans, but not overly so. I count thirty steps and then there's some kind of white thing on top. Ready?"
"No, and I never will be." Moecious said. "But let's get it over with."
They climbed the steps and found themselves facing a white, intricately carved platform some twenty meters long, ten meters wide and only a meter high.
"Perhaps they had dinner here." Moecious said.
"Or sacrificed to their gods." Rick added.
"Or both." Skinny finished.
"Lindane, put the Quinncunx down on this thing and let's see if he's some kind of key."
The best Lindane could do was hold the Quinncunx against the platform as he was holding onto the girl too tightly. Nothing happened.
"Rick, poor Quinny is practically catatonic. We need to go." Lindane said, taking the quivering being off the platform.
"Sounds good to me. Skinny take the point, Moecious on the right, me on the left, Lindane in the middle and Andine is drag. And, same as before, unless something stops us, we keep going."
They moved quickly and in spite of things that seemed to hover just out of their line of vision, they made it outside.
"I feel better all ready." Rick said. "That place is weird. Totally weird."
Everyone agreed.
The ship's engines were running and the guns in the turret swept the horizon. Jane stood in the open hatchway and beckoned for them to come on.
"What happened in there? We could hear part of it." Kate asked.
"Recover the drone and get us into orbit." Rick said. "We'll tell you all about it later."
As they left, the building slowly went back to sleep.
They found the next planet exactly where the old records said it would be. Having learned to be very, very cautious, they exited FTL at the very edge of the solar system, not far from the beginning of the Oort cloud. They sent a drone cautiously forward and monitored the sensors.
"It looks like the fourth planet has an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere and is in the Goldilocks zone, but just barely. It'll be awfully cold." Kate said, after she, Simone, Jane and Lindane had gone over all the sensor readings.
"I have heard of that term." Skinny said. "Who is this Goldilocks? A renowned human scientist?"
Rick was not sure how to explain an old Earth fairy tale involving three anthropomorphic bears and a human to the Kzin. "It's an old Earth fable about a young girl, Goldilocks, who gets lost and is hungry. She finds a house in the woods and sees three bowls of food. One is too hot, the other is too cold and the other is just right. So, the Goldilocks zone for planets is one where it isn't too hot, nor too cold, but just right."
The Kzin growled. "I assume the girl was punished for her theft?"
"There are a number of versions of the story. In some she's punished, in some, she just runs away and in some, the householders help her out."
"Humans!" The Kzin grumped.
"I think we should go in to take a look at the planet." Rick said, quickly changing the subject.
For hours they moved closer to the planet. Then Kate yelled for them to stop.
"There's a fleet orbiting that planet."
"A fleet?" Skinny asked. "How big?"
"I can only see the half of the fleet on this side of the planet, but assuming there's more on the other side, between six and seven hundred ships. All in a polar orbit."
"Six or seven hundred? There are damn few planets that would ever have that number orbiting around them. We haven't seen any other sign of a large political unit out here. I wonder if the rumors and legends are true?"
"What rumors and legends?" Moecious asked.
"That there are other interstellar empires beyond known space. Given the size of the galaxy, there could be."
"Why?" Moecious asked.
"The Milky Way galaxy is two hundred thousand light years across and about ten thousand light years thick. It has maybe 400 billion stars. Our Empire takes up a portion of the Orion spiral arm and is a rough sphere about four hundred light years across, containing about two million stars. Counting everything, planets wealthy and populous enough to be represented in the House Planets, mining colonies, scientific bases, military bases, allied planets such as Kzin, trading posts, and anything else, the Empire controls maybe a hundred thousand planets, to some extent or another. The Empire has always worried a little bit about what might happen if we ran into a really big empire."
"We should go see who our new neighbors are." Skinny said, stroking the butt of his blaster.
"We'll do that, very slowly." Rick replied.
It took ten days, but finally Kate, Simone, Jane and Lindane were ready to discuss their findings.
"We think the ships are inoperative. We haven't seen any evidence of any kind of communications in the whole system."
"Unless they use mental telepathy." Rick said.
"There's no sign of any power usage on any of the ships, or on the planet below."
"Unless they have technology beyond anything we have."
Kate just nodded. "And when the ships are in direct sunlight, they're very hot and when in the planet's shadow, very, very cold. We think it's a ghost fleet. Long dead. We think we should go take a look."
"I agree." Skinny said enthusiastically.
"Okay." Rick said, with considerably less enthusiasm. "We'll go slowly and be prepared to run."
They did so and the closer they got, the more it looked like the women's conclusion was correct. They finally got within a few thousand kilometers of the fleet.
"The ship's data banks have identified one ship. There." She tapped the view screen to indicate the ship.
"That's a Constitution class cruiser from the old Commonwealth Navy. It was one of the earliest classes of cruisers ever built by the Commonwealth. It's old. Centuries old."
"That one." Lindane pointed. "It's a Luxan assault piercer. The Luxans are on the other side of the Empire from here, And the ship is very old as well."
"And that's a C-57D class cruiser. That ship predates the Commonwealth." Jane said.
"I've seen holos of that one." Simone said. "I don't know the class or anything about it, but it's from the Sword Worlds. It dates back to the Collapse of the Commonwealth."
Most of the many hundreds of ships were not in the scout's data bases.
TBC