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.
They all watched the planet Lindane recede as they sat on the bridge.
"It'll be months before we're back in the Empire." Castle said. "I hope our new friends last that long."
"They should." Kate said. "We've done everything we could for them."
"The next star we're headed to is a red giant." Skinny said. "Almost invariably they have equally massive planets. No one has ever found one that's inhabited or even habitable. But we'll look it over."
"Who knows." Said Lindane. "We might be the first to find intelligent life around one. Or at least a habitable planet."
"I'd bet against it." Moecious said. "Any takers?"
There were none.
"Well, I'm off to the galley. I'm working on a little something as a snack for the Jolly Spacer back on Skinny's Moon."
"What is it?" Castle and Kate asked at the same time.
"It's a rare Terran delicacy called a s'more. It's made with something called a graham cracker, chocolate and marshmallows, all heated. But there are all sorts of recipes that add things like nuts, fruit, candy, ice cream…All sorts of things."
"Need any help?" Castle asked.
"Well, this could take a long time. No telling how many things we'd have to try."
"I'm game."
"A game of snow ends with leaves." The Quinncunx whispered.
And off they went.
Duke Skinny went to his quarters, quickly followed by his younger brother, Spotty.
"Um, older brother, Duke Skinny, sir?" He said hesitantly.
"What is it, Spotty?"
"I was wondering…if perhaps you'd consider… I mean I'd really like to…"
Skinny held up one massive paw.
"What you want to know is whether I'd appoint you as my governor for Lindane's World. Am I correct?"
"Yes, sir."
"I won't."
Spotty was downcast but tried not to let it show.
"You'd make a good governor, but quite frankly, your talents would be wasted governing a newly colonized planet. You've been studying the humans and the way their society and military works for longer than any of my officers. When we get home, I plan to promote you to commander and put you in command of the light cruiser Cutthroat. The officers and the crew have been studying human ways so having you promoted over some more senior officers shouldn't be a problem."
"A light cruiser? The Cutthroat? Me?"
"Do you see anyone else here? Now remember, plans can change, so don't go around acting like you're already a commander and the captain of a light cruiser. And make sure you do your job here as well as you can. Understood?"
"Yes, Duke Skinny."
"Now take a minute not to smile and then go about your duties."
It took three minutes for Spotty to stop smiling, but he eventually did.
Andine found Kate, Simone and Jane sitting in an alcove in the mess hall, drinking coffee and chatting. As the Kzin were not coffee drinkers, there was plenty for the humans.
"May I sit down?" Andine asked.
"Certainly." Simone said. "I'll get you a cup of coffee. And a bear claw as well?"
Andine nodded. Simone was soon back.
"You have the look of a woman who wants to talk about something." Simone said, smiling.
"I do. It's Lindane. I'm worried about her."
"Why?" Kate asked. "She seems to be doing fine. More than fine, really."
"In her professional life, she is, but she has no social life. None at all."
"None?" Asked Simone.
"She had no friends her own age until we got to the Empire and the Imperial Institute of Technology. She proved she was brilliant almost at once. She was only twelve years old but was correcting students twice her age on more subjects than most of them knew existed. The males were terribly intimidated by her and so were the women. Lindane is very polite, but she has no trouble pointing out other people's mistakes to them. I thought that being raised in a bordello had given her the idea that the only relationship between the sexes was sexual and monetary. I talked to her about that, and she corrected me. Naturally."
Andine stopped and took a long drink of coffee. Then went on.
"Even the other female students were intimidated by her. But she didn't seem to mind having no friends among the students. I decided to try setting her up with someone who wouldn't be intimidated by her intellect."
"By the good God!" Said Simone. "There's someone smarter than Lindane?"
"No, not smarter at all. I arranged to have Farley Gowan come by. He was the upper left wingback on the Institute's zero gravity ball team. He was very good looking and quite buff, but… Well, he wouldn't be intimidated by anyone's intellect."
"She was polite to him and accepted his offer to go watch some other team's play zero G ball. Lindane analyzed the teams' players, the offenses and defenses they used and correctly predicted the winner and the final score. That upset poor Farley since his one claim to fame was his knowledge of zero G ball. That's the last we ever saw of him."
"She has no friends at all?" Jane asked.
"Well, she has one. Professor Klatt. He's the head of the Philosophy Department at the Institute. Lindane has never had much interest in philosophy, but she does enjoy chatting with him."
"An older boyfriend might not be a bad start." Kate said.
Andine sighed.
"Professor Klatt is a Sauroid, a large, intelligent green lizard. Oh, he tries to look the part of a college professor. He wears a tweed jacket with leather patches at the elbows and smokes the most godawful pipe imaginable. I really think he grinds up old rubber tires and smokes them."
"At least she has a friend." Simone said.
"I worry that after being brought up in a bordello, she'll get curious about sex and just have some meaningless fling. I want her to have more than that. I want her to have more than I had."
They chatted for a while longer and the best the women could come up with was for them to try to include Lindane in their activities. After all, she had never shown any aptitude for spying or flying fighters.
They passed through the wormhole and arrived at the red giant star. At first, they found what they expected to find.
"Three airless rocks, make that three, very large airless rocks, for planets, nothing in the Goldilocks zone, one rocky planet with a methane atmosphere and two super Jovian planets. They're almost big enough to have become stars themselves." Lindane announced.
"We'll look around a bit. Just because there are no suitable planets for colonization here doesn't mean that there's nothing of value." Skinny said.
They looked around for three days before they saw something.
"This is odd." Said the Kzin sensor officer. "There's an absolutely round hole in the asteroid we're passing."
"Are you sure?" Spotty asked.
"Look at the readings, sir. The asteroid is somewhat egg shaped, about two hundred kilometers by one fifty at the widest and the hole is perfectly round, about a kilometer across and seems to go fairly deep into the rock, sir."
"We'd better get the duke and Lindane up here."
After examining the hole, Lindane suggested sending a drone in to look around.
The drone found a perfectly circular passageway leading to a hollowed-out globe in the center of the asteroid.
"We'll go take a look." Skinny announced. As the ship's captain, he led the away team. A heavily armed squad of his troops accompanied him, along with the humans and one Vorlag.
"Really?" Moecious said. "I had just about perfected my s'mores ice cream. With nuts and candy bits."
"Not at all." Said Castle. "There were still dozens of combinations we hadn't tried yet."
"Another dozen combinations of those s'mores and you'd never fit in a fighter." Kate snarked.
"Hey. Those fighters are designed for huge Kzins."
"Exactly." She replied.
They found the whole complex to be something created by intelligent beings but had no idea what purpose it served.
"You could park the Patriarch's entire fleet in here with a little doing." Skinny said.
"Maybe it was used by smugglers." Simone suggested. "Come to a solar system that everyone knows has nothing of interest, drop off your smuggled cargo here and your customer picks it up later."
"What would they be smuggling that would need something this size?" Jane countered.
"The galaxy's biggest barbell?" Castle suggested.
No one agreed with that.
They checked the rest of the asteroid and found nothing of interest. There were caves and crevices throughout the asteroid, but none were artificial, and none had anything the least bit interesting in them.
They headed for the next wormhole terminus.
"A large F type main sequence sun, at least two planets in the Goldilocks zone, and I count thirteen planets all together." Lindane announced.
Spotty was looking over her shoulder.
"That's not all. At the very edge of our sensor range. Those are ships, or space stations and they're right by our next wormhole junction."
Skinny brightened up.
"We should go visit them. Perhaps there are trade possibilities here. And if the ships are guarding a wormhole, perhaps they have the technology to travel through them as we do."
As they approached, they got a comm call.
"Put it on the screen, and let's see who were dealing with." Skinny said.
Who they were dealing with shocked them. The screen showed a bridge full of skeletons, some of which still had moldering uniform bits on them. But they got a voice message.
"Greetings, travelers. Welcome to the mighty Oberonian Dispersal. You may use the wormhole after paying a small fee. Based on your size a fee of eight thousand krendars is established. Please note that we are authorized to use deadly force against any who try to escape payment. And under no circumstances may you pay anything to the pirates manning the other station."
"We don't have any krendars. "Skinny said.
"No problem. Merely go to the fourth planet from the sun and convert the currency or sell some goods. Have a pleasant day."
"Do not listen to those criminals!" Screamed another voice. "The wormhole is under the sole legal control of the Concordance of Bogen. We charge only six thousand krendars, which you may get at the fifth planet of the solar system. We also have authority to use deadly force, and should you pay any funds at all to those criminals from the so called Oberonian Dispersal, we'll open fire."
The second voice also came with a video feed. Once again, they saw the skeletal remains of the crew.
"Those certainly aren't human, Vorlag or Kzin remains." Simone said. "They appear to have horns on their heads and their eye sockets are far too large for any of our species."
"They must have run into humans someplace." Lindane said. "Their message was in Anglic."
"We'll go back to the nearest planet and see if we can make some kind of a deal." Skinny said.
No deal was to be had.
"If you want to cook up some s'mores, this is the place." Rick said.
"Not likely." Moecious sniffed. "The whole planet is nothing but overlapping missile craters. And while it's hot, it's from the residual radiation from nuclear weapons."
"Any idea how long ago this occurred?" Skinny asked Lindane.
"At least eight hundred years ago. An early Commonwealth ship could have gotten here via a wormhole. A lot of early ships just disappeared with no one ever knowing why. That would explain why they know Anglic. Maybe."
"I think we know what the other planet will look like, but we need to go see."
The other planet was as dead as the first they'd visited.
Skinny brought his team together in his ready room.
"Okay, it looks like two planets got into a war and destroyed each other. All that's left are two battle stations of some sort with crews of corpses. Any suggestions as to how we get past them?"
"There's only one wormhole leaving this place, so we have to go past those two stations." Lindane said. "If they're old, they may not be fully operational. We should try to send a drone past them and see if they intercept it."
That did not work out well. After losing three drones, they met back in Duke Skinny's ready room.
TBC