The Pilots and the Passengers
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: You guessed it. I don't own Castle. Rating: K Time: An AU future, and see below.
Authors note: This is a sequel to The Pilot, and The Pilots.
Author's note: Some sci fi fans may note some things that I have borrowed from other fandoms.
Kate was outvoted. Everyone else wanted to see what was on the ship.
Rick maneuvered them to within a hundred meters of the other ship.
"That looks like an open cargo hatch at the rear, or maybe a boat bay." Skinny said. "We should be able to go in there."
"Okay, I'll take Skinny and Moecious. Kate, Jane, Simone, Andine and Lindane, and the Pink Bowling Pin can stay here."
"Why do I have to stay?" Kate demanded.
"Because we only have two fully trained pilots aboard and one has to stay here. That's you."
Kate was a bit mollified when Skinny got his spacesuit on. He had enough weaponry on it to lay waste to a small planet, let alone a spaceship.
Once they boarded the ship, they found they were in a small boat bay.
"It looks like all the boats are here." Rick said. "The crew didn't jump ship."
"That's got to be an airlock." Moecious said, pointing. "Do you think we can get it open?"
"Probably." Rick said. "If you're running out of air, you don't want some complex procedure you have to go through to get inside."
The airlock was simple. Rick went in first followed by Moecious, then Skinny.
"I checked the air." Rick said when the other two had cycled through. "It's a pretty standard oxygen and nitrogen mixture, but the air pressure is so low we wouldn't be able to breathe and it's damned cold. It looks like we're in the engine room now. I want to check it out."
Rick spent ten minutes checking things out.
"Okay, this is a pretty standard matter/anti-matter engine, but this is either a very old ship, or it's an early model. I think there's something else wrong, but without being able to read the computer readouts, it's hard to say."
"Don't keep us in suspense." Skinny said, one armored hand dropping to the butt of his blaster.
"It looks like they only have a tiny fraction of their original consignment of anti-matter left. Less than one percent. Enough to keep lights and artificial gravity going and maybe a few things I can't figure out. But, I think this ship literally ran out of enough anti-matter to keep the engines going and dropped out of FTL."
"That can't happen." Moecious insisted. "Anti-matter lasts forever. Well, the next best thing. Why, the original human built anti-matter engine is still running back on Earth's Moon and that's over…"
"Fourteen hundred years." Rick finished for him. "This could be a very old ship."
"I wonder what happened?" Moecious wondered.
"We could ask the engineer here, if he wasn't dead." Skinny said.
He was sitting in a small office just off the main engine room. He was sitting at a desk with some sort of a book open in front of him.
"He looks to be humanoid, maybe." Rick said.
"Hard to tell." Moecious said. "He's mummified, I think. Cold, dry air does that."
"Look at his tools. Everything is in its place." Skinny said." He was a good engineer. He wanted everything to be perfect if and when the ship was found."
"Do you think there are other dead people on this ship?" Moecious asked, looking around.
"Probably. We'll go look."
"Should we let our ship know what we found?"
Rick shook his head. "I tried to contact Kate, but our radios won't penetrate the hull."
Next were two large cargo bays, filled with boxes and bales and crates and barrels of who knew what.
"Do you suppose any of this could be valuable?" Skinny asked.
"Sure, unless it's what killed the engineer. We'll leave it behind."
Once past the cargo bays, they were in a long corridor with rooms on each side.
"Look at this." Moecious said, pointing to an open door.
Inside was one of the crew, dead, sitting in a chair facing the door. Castle slowly entered the room and looked around, then at the dead person.
"I think she was female, at least I can see what might be withered breasts under her dress. I think she used makeup, and she has a lot of jewelry on. I'd say she put on her best clothing, all of her jewelry, and made herself up to face death looking her very best."
Skinny growled. "A good way for a female to go. I salute her." He growled again. "And when I die, I want to be facing death, fighting it with fang and claw." He waited a beat, then added. "And with a blaster or two."
Rick picked up something on a table in the small cabin. "This looks like a hologram holder. I'm sure the battery or whatever power source it uses is long dead, but maybe…." He began trying to hook it into the power system of his suit. "There we go." He walked over to show Moecious and Skinny.
"She looks rather human." Skinny said.
"She has an epicanthic eye fold, but here eyes look too big for a human. Not by much, though. The iris is dark green and it's yellow around the edge." Rick said.
"She has a notch in her ears, otherwise the ears are human-like."
"The nose is a bit flat." Rick added.
"And she's long dead." Skinny said. "We need to check the remainder of the ship."
They moved along to the next cabin. One person was there, flat on the floor, surrounded by bottles and boxes.
"I'm guessing this one decided to go out drunk and stoned." Rick said.
"I could go that way." Moecious said.
The next door led to what must have been the dining room/recreation room. Four men had died sitting around a table. In the center of the table was a round board with game pieces on it. Each man had a glass and a small bowl that had probably once held food by them.
"Four friends playing one last game together." Rick said. "I wonder who won?"
"None of them." Skinny replied.
Moecious went to the next to the last door in the passageway, followed by the two others.
"Someone died in bed." He said.
Rick looked in. There was a much smaller corpse in the bed, surrounded by what appeared to be toys, books and what might even have been the remains of a pet. A small glass and bowl sat on a table by the side of the bed. Attached to the wall by the bed were crude drawings in very bright colors.
"A child. He or she died surrounded by favored toys." Moecious said.
"A girl, I think," Rick said, "from the toys. But it's hard to tell. I wonder if she died naturally or if her parents gave her poison."
"Why would they do that?" Moecious asked.
"So she wouldn't be frightened by everyone dying around her. She wouldn't be all alone on a ship, terrified and unable to understand what was going on. She's very small, probably very young."
"Or the parents killed her as a sacrifice to their gods to appease them and save their lives."
"You are such a romantic, Skinny." Rick said, sarcastically.
"Yes, I am, aren't I."
Rick made no reply.
The next room was empty. From the size of the cabin and the size of the one bed in it, Rick guessed it was probably the cabin of the captain and his wife, and perhaps the parents of the child.
At the end of the passageway was the ship's tiny bridge. Two people were seated side by side on the bridge, close enough for them to hold each other's hands.
Something was buzzing around in Rick's mind, but he couldn't quite put a finger on it.
"Something wrong?" Skinny asked.
"Yes. No. I missed something someplace. Something important."
"Hopefully not a giant space monster tracking us down to kill us." Moecious said, looking around nervously.
"Hopefully that's exactly it." Skinny said, drawing twin blasters from their holsters.
Rick retraced his steps to the captain's quarters and then to the little girl's cabin. He was about to leave when he saw it, on the floor, partially covered by a blanket. He bent down and picked it up, then turned to show it to his companions.
"I've seen this statue before."
"Of course, you have." Moecious said. "You were just in this room."
"No, I mean I've seen the statue elsewhere. This is a small version of a very old Earth stature called the Winged Victory of Samothrace. It was sculpted thousands of years ago, about two thousand years before humans ever got off their own planet. The original on Earth is missing its head and arms and this little copy has both."
"You'll forgive me if you don't look much like an art expert." Skinny said.
"I was a Flight Cadet and we got three days off for the Emperor's birthday. I spent almost all of my meager pay the first night, but I wasn't about to hang around the barracks for two days. I went off base and wandered into a museum. It was free, after all. There was an exhibit of classical sculpture that had been brought all the way from Earth and I sat down right in front of this statue."
"I was bored and was about to leave when this beautiful girl sat down next to me. Her name was Marianne, and she wasn't just beautiful, she was educated, sophisticated, and came from a very wealthy family. I was just a muddy boots grunt from a backwoods planet, trying to become an officer and a gentleman, and a pilot. She impressed the hell out of me."
"She started talking about the exhibit and she led me around the whole thing, but concentrating on the Winged Victory of Samothrace. She thought it was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen. I thought she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen, but I was too shy to say so."
"After two hours her parents showed up. They'd been trying to contact her for hours, but her phone was off. They dragged her off before I could find out her last name, or get a phone number. Every time I got a pass, I checked the museum, but I never saw her again. However, that day, I did buy two small, cheap copies of the Winged Victory of Samothrace. One as it looks now, and one based on some sculpturer's idea of what it had originally looked like. I still have them and every once in a while, I wonder what ever happened to her."
"I assume we shouldn't tell Kate that part." Moecious teased.
Rick laughed, then was serious. "But now we know what happened."
"What did happen, then?" Skinny asked.
"Thousands of years ago, a trader from another solar system came to Earth. They landed and decided to try to blend in. I'm imagining them entering the Roman Empire probably. Some bored border guard looked them over, thought they looked odd, but passed them anyway. All kinds of people looked odd to the Romans. I wonder where they went? Some provincial town? One of the great cities? Alexandria? Antioch? Rome itself?"
"They made some purchases, including a little statue for the captain's daughter. Probably better than a tee shirt that said, "My parents went to the Roman Empire and all I got was this lousy tee shirt."
His companions stared at him, not getting the joke.
"Anyway, they left, but they took something with them: A virus; a bacteria; maybe something poisonous. And when they found they were dying, they decided not to infect their home world, where ever that may be. So, they went into FTL and went off to meet eternity."
"We need to get back and get a level one decontamination." Moecious said. "Are you going to keep the statue?"
Rick shook his head. "It belongs here. Forever."
As soon as they exited the ship, Kate called. "Are you okay, lover? What did you find?"
"The Flying Dutchman." Castle replied.
He had to explain that, once they had returned to their ship and been decontaminated, but no one quite understood the allusion. They did understand that everyone was on the ship was dead.
"Let's find the damned planet we were searching for and forget all about that ship." Castle said.
TBC