Through the Lookingglass.
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: I own neither Castle or anything by Charles Dodgson. And I absolutely refuse to accept any responsibility for any Vorlags. Rating: K Time: Sometime after The Pilots and the Frontier.
Castle had first seen Lindane when she was about twelve standard years old. He quickly calculated that she must now be nearly twenty. She had been tall for her age when they first met and now, she was as tall as Castle was. She had been slender then, but she had filled out and was now quite voluptuous. Her dark brown hair was still worn long, and her green eyes flashed with humor. She was wearing what Castle found was the height of fashion on Earth for young ladies: A tight black skirt falling to her ankles but slit to the knees up the front so she could walk easily, over that she had a long and very colorful blouse with a flower motif which was tied off by a bright scarlet sash. He thought she had little or no makeup and wore only a small silver ring on her right ring finger.
"Tell me, Sir Richard, what do you know of wormholes?" She asked.
"I think, Professor Lindane, that we could use each other's first name.'
Lindane laughed happily.
"It's so good to see you again, Rick, and everyone else. I've really missed all of you."
"Miss, bliss and then a kiss." Intoned the Quinncunx.
Castle smiled back.
"As to what I know about wormholes, it's no more than any spacefarer. Stable wormholes are a boon to any space going race. They open and close with perfect regularity and always deliver you to the same place. When I was a cadet, we were sent from al Andalus to Po Kin via the wormhole. It took us fifty-one hours to make the transit. Going strictly by FTL drive would have taken some eight weeks."
"Rogue wormholes are another matter. They open and close in no sequence anyone has ever discovered, and you never know where you'll come out. Some fifteen years ago the destroyers HIMS Quiberon and Quentin were driven into a rogue wormhole. In spite of entering the wormhole only milliseconds apart, they exited some seventy-eight light years apart. Many ships have gone in and never come back."
Castle glanced at Kate.
"I was chased into a rogue wormhole and was only shot some seven plus light years. That's when I found the love of my life, so rogue wormholes are not all bad."
"What if we could tame those rogue wormholes. Rick?"
"That would be amazing." Then it hit him. "That's what you've done, isn't it?"
Lindane laughed.
"That we have."
"Professor Lindane is in charge of what's called Project Lookingglass, named after some old human folk tale or another." The Patriarch said. "We've been sending drone ships through the wormholes Professor Lindane has found mapping the routes that thousands of them take. Many of them are of no use to anyone, but now were ready to send a warship to explore a number of them."
One problem with even stable wormholes is that they didn't necessarily go where you wanted to go. There were three wormhole terminals near Earth, but none went anywhere near Earth's nearest neighbor, Alpha Centauri. That trip had to be made with normal FTL ships.
"I'll be happy and proud to volunteer my whole fleet, Patriarch." Skinny said.
"We already have a ship fitted out, Duke Skinny."
Skinny tried not to look disappointed.
"We have the new heavy cruiser HIMKS Ambush."
Skinny tried to hide his disappointment, until the patriarch added, "You'll be in command, of course."
"A heavy cruiser, Your Majesty?"
"Indeed, a brand-new heavy cruiser, larger, more powerfully armed and better armored and longer ranged than any other cruiser we have. Professor Lindane, Andine, Ladies Simone and Jane will accompany the ship and I would assume you'd like to take your younger brother along?"
Spotty was practically wagging his tail when Skinny said, "Of course."
"Course and horse and every tree." The Quinncunx said sadly.
"We'd like Sir Richard to come along, and we understand that with three children at home, Lady Kate might not wish to leave."
Kate spoke at once.
"I'd like to go. I'll worry myself sick if I'm not with Rick, and we have four excellent babysitters here in the form of Buggsy, Muggsy, Puggsy and Marie."
Marie, who resembled a giant grasshopper, had been a waitress at the original Jolly Spacer Pub back in the Sky Cave. When the Castles had had to leave Lily behind when they went on a mission, the four had taken care of the little girl. Marie did not allow the three Vorlag brothers to spoil Lily as they had doubtlessly intended to. She was definitely a no nonsense businessbeing.
"Are you taking the Quinncunx along?" Castle asked.
The Quinncunx had turned out to be a biological key to a planet wide mining facility abandoned hundreds of thousands of years before by an unknown race. Left behind to guard the mine was a sentient computer that had waited patiently for one of many Quinncunxes to show up. The mine had endless cubic miles of rare metals that previously had been made only in Imperial laboratories in minute quantities and at extravagant cost. The use of these metals had set Imperial science ahead by decades.
As a reward for his part in the discovery, Skinny had been made a Duke and given a habitable moon to govern. Kzin flocked to volunteer to serve Duke Skinny. Landless peasants became landowners, younger sons with no hope of an inheritance gained vast estates, governors of the equivalent of counties became governors of provinces, and wandering soldiers and spacers became part of a well-founded military.
Rick and Kate on the other hand had been promoted one rank by the Terran Empire. But, they had been given an equivalent rank in the Kzin Imperial Space navy and made the equivalent of Imperial Terran baronets, accordingly he was Sir Richard and Kate was Lady Katherine, at least to the Kzin.
"I wouldn't dream of leaving him behind." Lindane said.
The Quinncunx hugged her leg.
"Reams of dreams fall among the beams." The little pink fellow said.
"I'm curious." Rick said. "Why isn't this a joint mission with the Terran Empire and the Kzin Empire? That would seem more logical. The more ships, the better."
Admiral Zek looked embarrassed, as if he'd hoped no one would ask that.
"The Terran Empire is a bit…over stretched right now."
"Over stretched?"
"A victim of its own successes." Martha added. Seeing that hadn't satisfied anyone, she continued. "We, and our great friends the Kzin, have defeated the Pannonians. In addition, the Zenetian pirates were crushed at Barker's Star and the Spican Marches barbarians are fighting each other. In addition, the Confederation of Trou has asked us to take over their formerly Commonwealth planets with human populations. The Confederation has indicated they'd like to join the Empire."
"Even the Glimmer Reach, where we're based is proving more difficult."
Castle nodded.
"So, all around the periphery of the Empire, people are screaming for more ships, more troops, more of everything. Nothing is left over for even a small scientific expedition."
"I wouldn't put it exactly like that." Zek said.
"But it's close enough."
"I'm sure that Duke Skinny wants to get aboard his ship with his new crewmates and start getting ready." The Patriarch announced, moving Skinny and the rest towards the nearest exit.
"We need to speak to Captain Castle, Your majesty." Zek said. "It's very important."
"Oh, no time for that. We're burning daylight, to use the human expression."
Zek and Martha tried to follow the Patriarch and the others, but a dozen armed and armored Kzin guards blocked their way.
"What was that all about?" Kate asked as they were hurried down a companionway.
"I'm sure Zek and Martha wanted to give us secret orders to do our best to get as much as we could for the Empire. The Patriarch made sure they couldn't."
Skinny was thrilled with his new command.
"I'm not just in command for this mission, you know." He said. "The Patriarch has given the ship to me as part of my fleet. He's also told me that I should place my own crewman and officers aboard. I know they'll all want to go. How will I ever decide who to take?"
As Skinny pondered that, Rick and Spotty, so named because instead of stripes on his tiger-like face, he had spots, checked out the ship's fighters and boats.
"Twenty-four brand new Bloody Fang fighters." Spotty said. "And look. Two of them have been modified to be piloted by humans."
"I've never flown one of these before." Rick said. "You'll have to take me out so I can get checked out on it."
"He'll have to take us out." Kate said, coming up behind them. "I'm a pilot, too, remember?"
"I was hoping you'd stay on the nice, safe heavy cruiser."
Kate just laughed.
"We have landing craft as well." Spotty said. "I'd say we can land a reinforced company."
They also examined the ship's boats and found that in addition to the usual array of boats, they had a large number of drones.
"We can use those to scout anything we see that worries us." Spotty said.
Skinny recruited his new crew and they worked up the ship. On two occasions, a gig from one of the Imperial Terran Navy vessels nearby tried to come aboard the Ambush. They were advised that all the landing stages were under repair and couldn't be used.
"Can you at least give a message to Captain Richard Castle?" Someone in the second gig asked,
"I'm sorry we're now training in a no communications environment. Out."
Castle imagined how unhappy Zek and Martha were.
Finally, they were ready and with the Patriarch's good wishes, they set off for the nearest wormhole junction.
For reasons that Lindane hadn't figured out, wormholes ended at least a light month from the nearest star, sometimes further. They cruised to where Lindane said they'd find a wormhole, and as she worked her equipment, a wormhole opened in front of them.
"Here we go," Skinny said, as they dove into the wormhole.
They came out a light month from a star. None of the drones that had been sent before had done more than chart where the wormhole had taken them, and then searched for the nearest wormhole going somewhere else.
"It's a red dwarf." Lindane announced. "Very few of them are at all interesting."
"But we'll check it out anyway." Skinny said.
"Any way, many way, see the seaway." The Quinncunx chortled.
The red dwarf was surrounded by three airless rocky planets. Skinny insisted on checking each one in hopes of finding something worthwhile. They found nothing.
"I guess if someone wants to go into the rock business on an interstellar scale, this the place." Moecious said as they headed away for the next wormhole opening.
That wormhole shot them out near a G class sun.
"There appear to be planets with atmospheres." One of the bridge officers said.
"Perhaps we'll find something useful here." Skinny said, hopefully.
The only Earth sized planet in the Goldilocks zone had a nitrogen atmosphere with only traces of oxygen. There was no life on it.
The only gas giant planet in the system was different.
"Sir, we're picking up radio traffic from the planet." The communications officer reported.
"Any sign that they have any spaceships?"
"No, sir. No satellites and no ships."
"We'll go into a high orbit and snoop. We may have found a useful planet."
"Yes, sir."
Lindane examined the planet.
"It's a Jovian type planet, such as Jupiter in Earth's solar system, or Kraithos in the Kzin home system. It's inhabited, but I don't know how useful a society that can't even get a satellite in orbit might be."
"In addition, there's very little trade between societies such as humans, Vorlags, or Kzin that breathe oxygen and live on Earth type planets. The gravity and air pressure on a planet like the one we're studying would crush almost any material object the Empire might try to trade. I doubt if I could sell them many Makalla Sunrises. I don't even know if they drink." Moecious opined.
"Drink the blink." The Quinncunx said.
"We're here to gather information and that's what we'll do. We can spend a few days here." Skinny said.
The computer that Lindane had brought aboard the Ambush was far more powerful than what would normally be found on a heavy cruiser. She worked for many hours trying to decipher the radio traffic emanating from the planet.
"I think I have it." She announced. "I've deciphered this so far: Twelve basars; one container of ltrambull three fresh dorgals…I think we have someone's shopping list."
"Perhaps it's time to try the next wormhole." Skinny said.
TBC