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.
Standing operating procedures said everyone stayed in battle armor until it was absolutely certain there were no germs, viruses, or other poisons about.
Their first problem was not with microscopic organisms, however.
"Duke Skinny, we've been attacked." Yelled one of the Kzin soldiers.
The nearest guards formed armored protective circle around their Duke. Everyone else, Kzin, human and Vorlag, scanned the surrounding area for threats. They saw none.
"Move." Skinny barked. "I'm a Kzin duke, not some child. If there's danger, I want to be in front."
The danger, however, was now past. And dead.
"What the hell is it?" Castle asked.
"Looks like part six-legged panther, part alligator around the mouth, with maybe a scorpion's tail."
"The tail has some sort of solvent, Duke Skinny." Said the soldier who'd killed it. "It ate away part of my armor."
"How did you kill it?" Skinny asked.
"I hit it with my fist, Duke."
Considering that the fist was inside an armored battle suit that increased the wearer's strength, that had been sufficient. The beast's skull had been crushed.
"Return to the ship and have whatever he hit you with analyzed. And get checked by the medics yourself."
The soldier nodded and trotted off.
"Where did the beast come from?" Skinny asked.
"The building over there, Duke." Said a non-commissioned officer.
"We'll check it out."
The building was tall and blocky. When they went inside, they eventually found it has eighteen stories.
"From the size of the doors and the height of the ceilings, whoever built this place was about the height of Kzins, or perhaps Vorlags."
They found the creatures lair which was surrounded by many chewed up bones.
Skinny knelt to examine the bones.
"They're too badly chewed up to tell what kind of creature he ate." He looked around the darkened lair and examined the walls and the windows.
"Do we know what the buildings are made of?"
"Both are made from some sort of ceramic matrix, Duke." Said one of his officers. "Very strong and quite thick. This city is very old, we think. How old, we cannot tell yet."
Skinny thought.
"So, they didn't just throw the city up in a hurry. They intended to stay here. I wonder why they left."
"There are abandoned cities throughout known space, Duke Skinny. "Lindane said. "Each of them has a slightly different story."
"Keep looking. If we can find out how the ceramic matrix was made that'll be a plus when we return home. It's better than anything we have."
They continued searching the city and did eventually find something.
"The Castles, Lindane and Andine, Simone and Jane, please join Moecious and me at the far end of the plaza in the center of the city." Duke Skinny commed them.
The humans trotted to the plaza and saw a group of armored Kzin at the far end. The soldiers seemed to be more alert and again had formed a protective barrier around Skinny.
"What is it?" Lindane asked.
"The glass in this door was broken and it's now covered by a piece of wood. The wood is new, not weathered at all. And the metal fastenings holding it onto the door aren't the least bit corroded. Someone put this on recently."
"Perhaps they're inside." Moecious suggested.
"Then we'll look. Can we get the door open without damaging the patch?"
"Yes, Duke. Whoever did this wanted to keep out beasts who lacked hands and opposing thumbs. We can enter easily."
The troops went in ready for anything and found little.
"Someone has been in here taking out metal fixtures, Duke." Said an officer. "There's a pile of them in the corner and more that have been pulled out of the wall. One pipe has been cut halfway through."
"Then where are the inhabitants?" Skinny wondered.
"Maybe they're nocturnal." Kate suggested. "On the planet of my birth a lot of people went out only at night because the day was so dangerous."
"I'd like to meet the city dwellers." Skinny said. Then he turned to the senior officer of his guards. "We'll leave here and leave everything exactly as we found it. When we get back to the landers, we'll outfit a squad with grav impellers. At night they can fly to spots around the building here where they can keep an eye on whoever comes this way."
That night the squad was set up around the building and everyone watched live video feed from the troopers.
Hours went by and nothing happened.
"There." Said Kate. "Across from the building. Movement."
In seconds a dozen beings sprinted to the building, slipped inside and were gone.
"They're tall." Castle said. "At least seven feet. They have noses that look like bananas and that looks like flowers growing on their head."
"We'll let them get busy and then I'll go in and talk to them." Skinny said.
One of his officers said it was too dangerous for the duke to go in person.
"Nonsense. This is first contact with another race. I have to be the one to go."
Once armored and armed and with grav impellers, Duke Skinny, Spotty, Moecious and the humans, as well as a squad of Kzin, floated towards the building. Duke skinny went in first.
"Greetings, I am Duke Skinny, representing the…"
Pandemonium erupted. The city dwellers scattered in every direction, heading for escape routes only they knew. However, one Kzin guard managed to track one of them to tunnel some distance away.
"That didn't work well." Castle said. "A fully armed and armored Kzin might just be too intimidating."
"Perhaps I should take off my armor and leave my weapons behind?"
"You're still pretty intimidating."
"I suppose I am." Skinny said proudly.
"Duke, one of our soldiers tracked one of them to a tunnel. It may lead to their home."
They all went and gathered around the tunnel entrance.
"Perhaps we should send a drone in first." Lindane suggested. "See what's down there."
A tiny drone was brought from the lander and sent into the tunnel. They found the city dwellers in a very large cavern, armed with mostly clubs, lengths of metal and an occasional edged weapon. They also found an alternate way in that the armored Kzin could use.
"I don't see anything like these people in the Imperial database. I'd bet we don't have a common language." Lindane said. "In can tap into the main computer aboard the Ambush and start a translation program, but it'll be a while."
"Let's go down to see them and show we mean them no harm."
They followed Skinny down to the large cavern. The city dwellers were jammed against the far wall, with all of the armed members standing in front of those who had no weapons. What appeared to be children were sobbing.
"It'll take a while to get any kind of translation going." Lindane said. "In the meantime, I'm going to look around."
She walked over to some sort of pipe coming out of the wall and examined it.
"This is for gathering water. It takes water out of the air, and it then flows into a storage tank. I'd guess they don't get much rain. But there's hardly any water coming down." Lindane kept looking and pulled a part off of the pipe. "I see. She said. "It just needs is some room temperature superconductors and…: Lindane worked on the pipe. "And we get water." There was now a nice flow of water coming out of the pipe.
"Let's see what else we can find." Lindane said as she headed down a hallway hewn out of the rocks.
She was followed by four Kzin guards, Moecious and the other humans.
"Look at this." She said, stopping at a large machine. Do you know what this is?"
No one replied.
"It's as nuclear fission power plant."
"Don't you mean a nuclear fusion power plant?" Jane asked.
"No. Before they had nuclear fusion, they used nuclear fission. I've never seen one of these except in museums." She pulled some instruments out of her pockets and began examining the machine.
"No wonder we didn't detect this thing. It's running at about ten percent of its capacity. We'd hardly be able to distinguish it from background radiation. Will someone get me my case from the cavern?"
The guards seemed disinclined to leave, so Moecious left and got the case.
"Are you sure we should be fooling with this?" Castle asked. "I remember from my ancient history class that these things could explode."
"Not if you know what you're doing." Lindane answered, busy examining the machine.
Moescious came back with a large case. Lindane opened it and began working on the machine.
"If we don't have a common language, how can you read all of the…" Castle began.
Just then, the lights went from very dim to quite bright.
"Nothing to it, Rick."
He reflected that Lindane was probably the most brilliant being in the Empire. She could probably make a functioning fusion reactor out of old ration packets. Not that he wanted to see her try.
"I have it up to about eighty percent. I'll leave it there for now. Let's see what's further down the passageway."
Remembering the horror that the Kzin guard had killed, everyone took positions around Lindane.
"Some kind of subway, I think." She said, standing on a platform at the end of the tunnel. Below the platform was a crude wooden cart with metal scraps in it.
Moecious looked both ways in the tunnel.
"There's a blockage headed back to the city, but it looks clear going out of the city. I imagine they're trading with someone at the other end."
She hopped down to stand beside the cart.
"There's some kind of vehicle in an alcove over there." Lindane said, and immediately headed for it. Everyone followed her.
"Not just one vehicle, but three." Lindane began examining the vehicles. "I think they're too small for passenger service. I'll bet they were used to carry maintenance parties around. Let me just examine…"
She examined all three carts and then came to a decision.
"Now that power has been restored, I can start one of these up. They're all damaged in one way or another, but I can cannibalize parts from two to get one running."
She worked for half an hour and suddenly the vehicle rose in the air and lit up.
"Counter gravity?" Kate asked.
"No. It's a maglev machine. Magnetic levitation. Opposing magnets repel each other so ones buried underground push the magnets in the vehicle upwards. There should be…" She touched something and the vehicle lurched forward a bit and then began to slowly move.
"We should go back and see how this is affecting the city people." Moecious said.
"Good idea."
When they got back to the now well lighted cavern, they saw that the city people were no longer terrified of them, even if they weren't quite ready to hail Skinny as their new duke. Lindane got busy with the translation program.
After a few days, they managed to have some conversations with their new friends.
"They were abandoned here centuries ago by the "Gods", as they call them. Who the gods were, why they left here and why the left the Kobboi behind, has been lost." Lindane sat in the conference room on the Ambush explaining her researches. "I've done enough work to improve their lives and Duke Skinny has provided them with weapons to protect themselves from the local wildlife. Their trade with their folk on the coast has improved both groups. The city Kobbois get more food and the coastal Kobboi get actual machinery."
"There are no more than two thousand Kobboi all together." Moecious said. "That's not enough people to keep up the level of civilization we now have provided them. Eventually they'll go back to reciting the operating instructions for the reactor by rote and sacrificing small animals to it."
"I think Duke Skinny has that in hand." Lindane said.
Duke Skinny smiled, a rather fierce sight if you didn't understand that his fangs weren't going to tear you apart.
"I took this planet in the name of both Empires. Imperial law prohibits colonization of planets with indigenous sentient natives, but the Kobboi aren't native to the planet. They were brought here. By Imperial law, the Kzin gets first crack at settling this planet, which I have named Lindane. Under Imperial Kzin law, I get first crack at colonizing the planet. Since it's an excellent planet for Kzinkind, it'll be settled by my kind and under my rule. The Kobboi will be under my personal protection as will their city and coastal enclave and a large area for them to grow into. Many Kzin will be happy to move here and live prosperous lives."
TBC