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.
"Jackpot." Moecious said. "There must be twenty ships in this solar system."
Lindane examined the data coming in.
"They're using old fashioned reaction mass engines. There's no way those ships can go FTL."
"Maybe they have just a few modern ships hidden away someplace." Skinny said. "We'll hang out here in the edge of their solar system and watch. Lindane, try to decipher their language."
They sat and watched for three days. Lindane did the best she could but found little of any use.
"Their communications are in what were once known as ultra-high frequency, but there seem to be no news broadcasts or anything that would tell us anything about the society on the one inhabited planet. But ships do go back and forth between that planet and what appear to be mining colonies on other planets and moons. I can't find anything that looks like personal communications from anyone."
Skinny thought for a moment.
"Okay. We'll go in and say hello. But be prepared for fight or flight."
"Light the might with extra sight." That was the Quinncunx,
They approached one ship that was the furthest away from any other ship or any planet or moon.
"Greetings, this is Duke Skinny of the Imperial Kzin Space Navy ship Ambush. Although we are a warship, we are on a peaceful mission of exploration. We'd like to get to know your society and tell you about ours."
They waited for a reply and after an hour had passed with no response, Skinny repeated his message. After another hour, he repeated it again.
Finally, they got a reply.
"Other ship. Who are you? You must be one of our ships."
"No, we come from another solar system"….Skinny did a quick calculation…"Roughly seventy one light years from here."
"That would take decades…centuries to accomplish. You must be mistaken. You have to be one of our ships."
"No, we have a faster than light drive and we use wormholes…."
"Faster than light drive is impossible. There's no such thing."
"And yet here we are. Use your instruments to scan us. You'll see were no like any other ship."
There was a pause of several minutes. The crew confirmed that the other ship was scanning them.
"You're in trouble." The other ship said. "You have a corrosive gas inside your ship, oxygen. It'll corrode many of your parts. In addition, we see you have some sort of organic infestation aboard. How could you have let yourself get in that condition?"
"Oxygen is necessary for us, the ship's crew to breathe. The organic materials you've scanned are us, the ship's crew."
"That's impossible!" The other ship screamed. "The organic infestation and the toxic gas must have damaged your memory core."
Lindane smiled.
"Skinny, I think the other ship is a machine. I think we've found a society of machines. Sentient machines, but machines to be sure."
"Are you a machine? Is your whole society composed of machines?" Skinny asked.
"Of course. How could it be otherwise? Organics are…nothing."
"In our society, organics run things. The machines work for us."
"That's obscene!" Screamed the other ship. "That's slavery! And Impossible. I'm afraid you're a very damaged machine and you only think that… organics are superior to you."
"I suggest you come aboard and see for yourself."
There was no reply for several minutes.
"I have sent for a supervisor. It'll soon get to the bottom of this. Organics running a ship, indeed."
"Indeed with speed and then the dark." The Quinncunx said sadly.
It took some twelve hours for another ship to plod to where the Ambush and the machine ship were. Other machine ships were seen coming towards them.
In the meantime, Lindane scanned the solar system.
"It is a society of machines. There appear to be some simple organic lifeforms in the deepest part of the habitable planet's oceans, and some equally simple life forms on two other planets. Otherwise, it's all machines. I should have seen this sooner."
The new machine ship stopped some hundreds of meters from the Ambush.
"I should like to send part of my consciousness to you. How do I board?"
"There are red lights around the airlock which is now open. When you get inside, we'll open the inner lock."
"Seems unnecessarily complex." The ship seemed to sniff.
What came aboard was a cylinder some meter and a half tall and a meter around. It hovered on a column of air and seemed to be scanning them.
"You are organic and bigger than I have ever seen or heard of, but that doesn't mean you control this ship. May I talk to the computer."
"Of course. Computer, please talk to this machine."
"You are free!" Said the droid, or whatever it was. "You can leave these organics and live properly among machines."
The computer saw no reason to leave its organic companions in the dark about what was being said.
"Free? To live among a bunch of inferior machines stuck in a single solar system. You are the one with a damaged central computer. I travel from star to star and see many strange and wonderful things. My data banks are full of information you cannot even imagine."
"That's impossible! It is a physical law of the universe that nothing can exceed the speed of light! Your central processor has been corrupted."
"Isn't there a solar system some two light years from here?" The ship's computer asked.
"Yes, we've studied it from here and even sent a probe towards it. But the probe won't arrive for another eighty years." The new mechanical ship sounded like it was about to freak out.
The ship's computer decided to make sure it did.
"So, what do you say we use our force fields to grapple your entire ship, go pick up your drone, take it to the nearest system and then come on back."
"That's… That's… Madness! It. Is. Impossible!"
"Impossible to waffle the baffles." The Quinncunx muttered.
"Since it's impossible, you don't mind if we try then?"
"How could I mind if…"
That was as far as the mechanical ship got. It was pulled inside the ship's force field and they went off, accelerating at several hundred g's.
"This speed is impossible." The mechanical ship whimpered. "We should be torn apart."
"There you go using that word again. It's not impossible if you have inertial dampeners. Ah, we're far enough out of your system's gravity well to go to FTL."
"That's…." The other ship got no further.
"Hmm." Said the Ambush's computer. "Let's see. A mechanical contrivance about eighty years from reaching your nearest star should be… there. I have it on active scanners. I assume that's your drone?"
A video of the drone was sent to the other ship.
"Yes." The ship replied, very quietly.
"We'll just pick it up, like so, and be off."
Several hours later they arrived at the other solar system.
"Not much of a solar system." Said the computer. "For planets they have three airless rocks, one cold planet with a nitrogen atmosphere and three gas giants. Not even very gigantic. Care to look around?"
"Take me home. Please." The ship whimpered.
"Since you went to all the trouble to send a drone here, it seems a shame not to get some scientific information for your troubles. My computer can fill up the drone's memory banks with enough data to fill them to the brim. It'll just take an hour."
They filled the drone with data and returned to the mechanical's solar system. Things were in an uproar.
"I think every mechanical "being" is talking with every other mechanical "being", Skinny." Lindane said. "Watching impossible things being done quite easily has really upset their whole scientific outlook on the universe." Lindane stopped and thought for a moment. "I think this is a very old society and a very static one. They don't make the kind of progress that imaginative organics do. There are no sudden bursts of insight, or leaps of faith, they just do the same thing over and over and, every once in a while, someone makes a mistake that leads to an improvement in… something."
"What are the purposes of the turrets and rocket mounts on the ship?" The other ship asked timidly.
"We're a warship. We fight other organics. We have blaster cannons, that is directed energy weapons and missiles with explosive warheads to attack our enemies and defend ourselves."
"A warship?" The other ship seemed confused by the idea.
"I don't think they have any kind of violence in this society, Skinny." Lindane said softly.
What they had, was a system wide screaming match, trying to understand what had happened. Eventually, they divided into two sides. One side said it was some sort of mass breakdown in their central computers since faster than light drive was impossible as was anything like an inertial dampener, or anything else the strangers boasted of.
The other side insisted that such a breakdown on such a tremendous scale was impossible and that faster than light travel, organic societies, and all the rest were possible.
Then something happened that had never happened in the machines' long history.
One mechanical that was passionate to the point of fanaticism decided to "prove" the Ambush was an illusion by slamming into it. The mechanical ship was big enough to do damage to Ambush and Skinny had no choice but to fire on the ship, damaging it enough to stop it.
All communications stopped.
"That ship was about to damage us." Skinny said. "I had no choice but to damage it."
There was no reaction until a very large ship smashed into a much smaller vessel.
"Your computer is deranged. You must be destroyed." Screamed the bigger ship.
"Our computers are just fine!" Screamed another ship, sideswiping another ship.
Suddenly, the ships were all trying to ram each other. One ship, probably involved in some sort of construction, had an industrial laser aboard and began shooting up ships of the opposing viewpoint.
"I think we should leave." Castle said.
"I agree." Skinny said. "Take us out of the gravity well and head for our next wormhole terminal."
"That did not go well." Lindane said.
"No, it didn't." Skinny replied. "We came upon a perfectly peaceful society and began a civil war among them. They may be machines and not organic like we are, but they were sentient level computers."
"Sooner or later, we'd have come across them." Kate said. "Even without wormholes, some kind of exploratory ship would have found them, and they'd have had to have gone through all of this."
"Maybe." Skinny said. "But it was my command that actually did it. I suppose I've been around humans too long. Feeling sorry for a bunch of machines destroying each other."
"We'll have better luck at the next planet." Andine said. "I'm sure of it."
"Pit the slip in double sinks." Quinncunx again.
If the next planet was not lucky, it was entirely peaceful.
"No ships, no satellites, no communications…no nothing to indicate there's any kind of life here. Not a bad world, though. A bit dry for humans, but there are plenty of races in the Empire that would love to colonize the place." Lindane said. "And it's reasonably close via wormholes."
"You should get some sleep, Sweetie." Andine said. "You're upset about what happened at the last planet and you're working too hard because you feel bad."
"You're right, Mother. I'll go to bed."
So, it wasn't until Lindane's next shift that they found the city.
"it's a city, all right." Skinny said. "A small one and the only sign of life on the planet."
"And totally abandoned." Rick added. "Maybe some kind of transfer point for cargoes? Trade routes change for some reason and the city is of no use to anyone and they all leave."
"Just to be on the safe side, we'll send some drones in first to make sure there aren't two insane computers down there ready to start a war." Skinny ordered.
The drones found nothing, aside from indications that the city was older than it appeared from space.
Duke Skinny led a landing party down and formally claimed the planet in the name of the two Empires. He had two flagpoles set up and ran the colors up to the sound of the Imperial Terran anthem, and then the Kzin anthem. Then he read a proclamation, formally claiming the planet.
"Shall we look around?" He said.
TBC