Shipwreck
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: I feel wrecked not owning Castle. Rating: K Time: Far in the future.
The passageway on the ship was mildly chaotic. That didn't bother him at all. He was used to functioning in massive chaos. So, he made his way through the passageway with his case following behind him, a foot off of the deck.
Suddenly, his way was blocked by a chubby blonde woman.
"I don't know where my husband is. He went to one of the exercise rooms but I don't know which one. I can't contact him."
He smiled at her. "You should go to your assigned lifeboat. Your husband should be there as well."
She glared at him. "Suppose he isn't there?"
"Then I have no idea what to do." He walked past her and heard her ask the same question to someone behind him.
A bit further on the passageway was blocked by two middle aged couples who were arguing.
"I don't see why we have to stop the card game just for some stupid lifeboat drill. You should have seen the hand I had."
"Harry, you always have a great hand when something interrupts us."
The other couple nodded and laughed.
"Excuse me, can I get through?' He asked.
They stepped back. "Sure, sorry to get in your way, young fellow."
"No problem." He said with a smile.
He managed to get through the rest of the passageway and came to the lifeboat dock area. There he found an elderly couple looking rather confused.
"Excuse us, sir." Said the man. "Do you know where our lifeboat is?"
"May I see your tickets?"
They showed them to him.
"Your lifeboat is Alpha Alpha 21. Over there is Alpha Alpha 27, so your just a few boats down that way."
"Are you in our lifeboat?" Asked the woman.
"No, ma'am. I'm in Alpha Alpha 35." He headed off to his assigned boat.
He found that Alpha Alpha 35 had a crewperson in it, waiting for the passengers. It appeared he was the first passenger there. He decided he was lucky in his lifeboat assignment. According to the tags on her uniform coverall, her name was Beckett and she was from engineering. And, she was gorgeous.
"Is this your lifeboat, sir?"
"Yes, it is."
"May I see your ticket, please, sir?"
He handed it to her and she checked it against an electronic pad.
"Please come on board, Mr. Castle. You'll have to put your case in the rack there. Just put it on top and it'll be secured automatically."
After the case was secured, she put a hand on his arm. "Could I ask a favor of you, sir?"
"Of course."
"I can't see the lifeboat's control station from here. There are supposed to be two crew members per lifeboat, but there's just me. Would you keep an eye on the control station for me? It's very easy." She said as she took his arm and led him to the control station.
"You just need to keep an eye on the lights in the center of the panel. There are thirty-six of them and they're all green now, as they should be. If one turns yellow, call me. If one turns red, scream."
He nodded. "Yellow, I call you. Red, I scream. Got it."
She went back to the airlock and checked in passengers. There didn't seem to be any rush to board the lifeboats.
Then there was a problem.
"Sir, you and your wife can only bring on one case apiece. You have at least a dozen there."
"I have fifteen and I'm bringing every one of them aboard. There are valuable antiques inside and I am not leaving them in our cabin for the riff raff to loot. I paid for a first class ticket and I expect first class service."
"I'm sorry, sir, but the ship's regulations and those of the Interstellar Transportation Commission are quite clear."
"Another damned petty bureaucrat and their damned regulations. Would a contribution to the Beckett retirement fund help?"
"Sir," she said angrily, "I'm not trying to extort a bribe from you. I'm doing my job."
"Well, Beckett, I'm not without influence and we'll see if you have a job after I get through reporting your insolence and incompetence to the captain."
"George? The man in the next lifeboat is waving to us. I think he'll help us."
And then they were gone.
There was a lull in the activities. He was by no means a qualified spacer, but he did know a bit about spaceships. He looked over the control panel, trying to figure out what every control and instrument was for.
Then things changed.
"Beckett! All the lights have turned red."
"Why didn't you tell me when they turned yellow?" She yelled.
"They didn't. They went from green to red. No yellow."
"Which lights are red?"
"All of them." He yelled back.
"All of them? That's not possible."
She came to the control station and stopped. Every light was red.
"This just isn't possible. They can't all be red. It must be a problem with the instrumentation."
She began working on the controls and trying to call engineering. The lights stayed red and she couldn't get any response from anyone.
"This can't be happening. This just doesn't happen." She said.
"It appears it is, though." He said.
Then, a mechanical voice spoke.
"Attention. Attention. Emergency lifeboat airlock closure, beginning now."
They heard the airlock slam closed.
"Wait!" She screamed. "We don't even have a quarter of our passengers aboard. Reopen the airlock."
The voice spoke again.
"Emergency lifeboat launching in ten, nine, eight…."
That went no further. He felt himself being slammed back in his seat by the force of the acceleration.
This is wrong. He thought. We shouldn't feel any acceleration. The inertial dampeners should cancel that out.
As if to mock him, the lifeboat accelerated even faster, causing his blood to flow away from his brain. He began to lose his peripheral vision.
There was a blinding flash of light from somewhere behind them. Then all hell broke loose. They were still accelerating, but the lights and the artificial gravity went out. He could hear the passengers screaming from the back and heard the door between the passenger compartment and the control station slam closed. More ominously, he thought he could hear the sound of something hitting the hull of the little lifeboat.
Then he lost consciousness,
When he woke up the lights and artificial gravity were still down and he tasted blood in his mouth. A quick check told him he'd bitten the inside of his mouth.
He could hear Beckett breathing beside him. Her breathing sounded normal, so he hoped she wasn't badly injured.
"Beckett. Wake up. We're in trouble."
"What?" She said, woozily.
"The lights and gravity are off and I think something, maybe a number of somethings hit the hull."
Beckett began checking the control panel.
"Shit. We have an air leak. I have to go fix it."
She got up but he put his hand on her arm to stop her.
"Suppose there's no air on the other side of the door?"
"There's a light by the door controls and it's green. That means there's air there. But there won't be if I don't seal the air leak."
She opened the door and sailed off into the darkness.
He heard some noise from somewhere in the back and soon she was back.
"The passengers aren't awake. I hope they were just knocked unconscious. I'm going to get the lights and gravity back on."
"What happened back there?" He asked.
"I have no idea."
"There was a bright flash of light and then we got hit by…something. I think the ship blew up."
"That's not possible. They run hundreds of billions, trillions of computer simulations and they run them constantly. Ships don't just blow up. It would take thousands and thousands of things going wrong and the crew completely ignoring them for a ship to blow up. It's impossible."
"Then where is the ship? I don't think a mile long passenger clipper is just going to play hide and seek."
"It's around here someplace…Wait! There something on our sensors, to the port about two hundred kilometers away. I'm going to put it on the viewscreen."
They both stared at the viewscreen. Finally, Castle spoke.
"According to the data from the sensors, that's about eight hundred meters long and two hundred across. And it sure looks like part of a ship's sensor array to me."
Beckett stared at the screen for another long minute.
"That's what it is. I apologize. The ship did blow up. That's the only explanation."
It took another two minutes to get the lights and gravity back on. Then they checked the passenger compartment.
"Oh, shit." Castle said.
A heavy piece of equipment had come detached from the rear bulkhead and was thrown with great force down the left hand passenger seating area. Castle was sure the four people sitting there were dead.
"We need to check them." Beckett said.
Castle had seen some people survive some pretty catastrophic injuries in his time, but not this time. All four were dead.
"We need to check the people on the other side." Beckett said.
The first one was a non-human. He was covered in brown fur but was wearing a conservative blue business suit. Castle thought he was just a shade shorter than he was, but much slenderer.
"Sir, are you all right. Do you hurt anyplace?"
The fellow opened his eyes. Then he began checking himself.
"I seem to be all right." His eyes widened. "Oh! Matilda! Miss Janice!" He turned around to look at the row of seats behind him. There was what appeared to be the female of his species, dressed in a flower print dress and holding a little human girl in her arms. The girl was crying.
Castle wasn't any good at telling the ages of children, but he was pretty sure the girl was pre-teenaged.
"I'm fine, Walter. But Miss Janice is quite upset. He saw her mother…" She gestured to the other row of seats where a woman was sitting with a badly broken neck.
The next row of two seats was occupied by what seemed to be a pile of black cloth. However, when Beckett touched it, it moved.
"Are you all right?" She asked.
The pile of cloth resolved itself into a shapeless, baggy dress of some sort that covered every part of the body except for a small slit in the cloth. Castle could see a pair of light blue eyes and a little bit of very pale skin.
"I'm…I'm all right." The voice was female.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes…Oh! Dear God! Is that Father George? Is he gone?" She was pointing to a man in a black suit and a white clerical collar who was across from her.
Kate nodded.
"I'm afraid he is."
"I'm Sister Alexis of the Jerusalem Catholic Church. I need to give Father George extreme unction."
"What?" Both Rick and Kate asked together.
"The last rites of the Jerusalem Catholic Church. If you wouldn't mind stepping to the front of the lifeboat?"
Castle could see Sister Alexis running her hands over the dead priest's body and pouring some kind of liquid on him. He could also hear her talking, but had no idea what language she was using.
"What's she saying?" He asked.
"I believe it's Latin, a very old language used by some Catholic religions. I'm not sure why." Walter said.
Sister Alexis stood up. "I would like to administer the last rites to the other deceased persons. Do you know if any of them were members of any Catholic Church?"
"Mrs. Johannsen was not," Matilda said, "but it would do no harm, I suppose."
Sister Alexis repeated her actions on the three remaining corpses.
TBC