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.
It didn't take too long to find the next planet, and soon they were in orbit over it.
"Okay, we're going to send down a recon drone and have it look around. And I don't care if the natives spell out in perfect Anglic, "This is it.", we're going to be very careful. Got that?"
No one seemed inclined to argue with Rick.
They released a drone and waited for it to drop to about five thousand meters over the planet.
"Okay, not bad. A nice sandy beach, blue waters, nice warm weather…."
"Looks like a great place to surf." Moecious interrupted.
"You surf?"
"Cowabunga, Moon Doggie. Of course, I surf. Vorlags are great surfers. Everybody knows that."
"Something's going on down there." Kate broke in.
"Jesus! Look at them." Rick said.
"What are they?" Skinny asked.
"Part shark, part alligator, part octopus and part nightmare. And there are thousands of them."
They watched as thousands of the creatures tore into each other, ripping each other apart, being eaten while eating another horror, with blood and body parts staining the water. In the middle of all this, something very large, with a very big mouth, shot to the surface and inhaled a dozen or so of the creatures and disappeared under water. After five minutes the victors were gorging on the vanquished and ignoring the others.
"So much for a nice place to surf." Rick said. "We'll look elsewhere."
They found a large clearing with a herd of what Rick thought might be animals resembling wooly mammoths. The mammoths were in a circle with their heads facing out, surrounded by a hundred or so beasts that were a cross between a bear and a gorilla. When the bearillas attacked, they were sprayed with something from the mammoths' trunks. The attackers howled in agony and fell to the ground. A few who got too close were put out of their misery by being stomped to death by the enraged mammoths. Eventually, the remaining attackers went away.
"Over there!" Lindane pointed. "A giant spider?"
"Giant is right. He's damned near as big as one of the mammoths."
"Furry, though." Skinny said. "He might be the local analog for a mammal rather than an insect."
"I don't care." Rick said." I vote we give this planet a pass."
Skinny shook his head. "I disagree. We're safe in orbit. We can observe in perfect safety."
'The spider looks like he's about…" Jane stopped. Tree branches reached out and grabbed the spider, pulling it up against the trunk of something that made a sequoia look small. The tree was covered in thorns and the spider was quickly torn apart.
"Carnivorous trees?" Rick said, "I really don't like this planet."
Kate put her hand on his shoulder. "I'm with you, lover."
"There. To the north." Again, Lindane had spotted something on the horizon. "It looks like it's on fire."
"Probably poison gas." Rick said.
When they got closer, they were in for a surprise.
"That's some kind of flying machine." Skinny said. "There are people on it."
"There are two of them." Lindane added. "One is towing the other, I think."
They moved the drone closer. The two vehicles appeared to be some sort of dirigible and there were clearly people aboard. One airship had a hole in the envelope and must have been leaking whatever was used to lift the ship into the air.
"They're pretty damned low." Moecious said. "Could we put the drone under them and lift them?"
Rick shook his head. "It doesn't have that much power. But I have an idea that I don't like already. It means going down into the atmosphere. Anybody want to talk me out of it?"
No one did.
Rick put the nose of the ship down and they dove into the planet's atmosphere and approached the two airships from above. Rick hovered about twenty meters from the damaged one and deployed a light, but very strong patch, normally used to seal any breaches in the hulls of space ships. The patch attached itself to the airship and sealed the hole, attaching itself firmly to the envelope.
"I hope they think we're friendly now." Rick said. "I'm going to open the hatch and see if we can communicate."
Rick stood in the hatch and tried to talk to the people on the airship. There appeared to be two races aboard, one quite human looking and the other with what looked like purple fur. They carried crude weapons, with bows and arrows the only ones that could have hit Rick.
"Wait!" Jane cried. "I can understand them. They're Brigantes, a race friendly to the Empire. What the hell are they doing out here?"
Jane took Rick's place in the hatch and spoke with the captain of the damaged airship.
"They want us to come aboard. They can tell us about this planet and they have a grounded starship near here. It won't lift, but it can provide them with power."
Rick wasn't sure. "Suppose they try to take the ship?"
"I'd like to see them try." Skinny snorted. "I'll go over with Jane if you're afraid to go."
Rick wasn't afraid, but he did have a mission to accomplish, and he had no faith in Skinny's diplomatic skills.
"Skinny, Jane and I'll go. Everyone else stay here, arm yourselves and be prepared to pull us out in a hurry if things turn to shit."
Rick moved the ship as close to the airship as he could, until the edge of the hull touched and then passed over the rail of the gondola beneath the gasbag.
Their ship was delta shaped and the hull tapered to a point. Rick knew that if anyone started to slide, they might end up falling to their deaths.
"Are there any parachutes aboard?" He asked, hopefully.
"None at all, lover. But you wouldn't last long on the ground." Kate said.
"No, but you could catch me as I fell."
"Oh, by the gods." Skinny said. Then the Kzin grabbed some rope from a locker and strung it between the ship's hatch and the rigging of the dirigible. "There." He said when he was done. "Perfectly safe."
Before anyone could say anything, Skinny picked up Jane and carried her to the other ship, casually jumping onto the deck and putting Jane down. He turned to do the same for Rick, but was waved away.
"I'm fine." Rick said, with a confidence he didn't feel. He walked to the other ship, holding onto the rope until he finally got to the other ship. He found Jane busily talking to someone while Skinny looked around.
At closer inspection, the Brgantes didn't look as human as he'd thought. There was a slight greenish cast to their skin along with very faint signs of scales, indicating a reptilian ancestry. They appeared to all have boobs, indicating to Rick that they were female. They also wore their hair long and in a braid. They were barefoot with thick toenails, their legs in puttees below the knees and baggy pants above. All wore armor, mostly mail shirts with one or two having brigandine armor, small metal plates sewn in an overlapping pattern to a thick hide shirt.
All carried large axes. The captain's was as tall as she was, with a crescent shaped blade on one side and a long, sharp point on the other.
The second group weren't at all human looking, although humanoid in shape. Their eyes were large and bulging, their ears shaped like seashells and their mouths showed may sharp teeth. They were covered in purple fur down to their very long, wide feet. Their only garments were tunics that fell to their knees. All were armed with bows and arrows.
"Rick, "Jane said, "this is Captain Bescet. She thanks you for rescuing them. They couldn't have repaired the damage in time to get back to their base. That would have meant abandoning her ship, which they can't afford."
Rick had looked over the ship. "How does it fly? I've never seen or heard of any kind of a flying machine that uses steam power. That's what that is, isn't it? A steam boiler with the smokestack going up through the gasbag?"
"The bag is filled with helium, which is lighter than air. The boiler heats the helium, just like a hot air balloon. When the helium heats up, it rises."
"How did they get damaged?"
"That's hard for me to understand. They said it was a medusa, which is a mythological being from Earth, way back before space flight. I remember hearing the word and a little about it, but that's about it."
At that point, everyone on the ship began yelling and pointing.
"That's the medusa, according to Captain Bescet." Jane yelled.
The medusa was flying right towards them, wings a good hundred meters long slowly flapping over a dark grey body. Hanging from its body were hundreds of rope-like tentacles. When they touched, Rick could see electric sparks flying.
"Captain Bescet says this must be the parent of the one they chased off." Jane yelled as the archers gathered on the side of the ship nearest the medusa.
"Beckett!" Rick yelled into his radio, "Knock that thing down. Now."
There was a moment's delay, then a turret popped up from the top of the scout and a blast of directed energy neatly severed the medusa in two. It fell to the ground.
"That impressed the hell out of everyone." Skinny said, laughing.
Everyone relaxed and Jane began to piece together the story of how the Brigantes arrived, and survived on this dangerous planet.
The other race, called the Iceni, had arrived some six hundred years previously. They were from a technologically advanced society, but one that had no interest in establishing colonies on other worlds. They did have scientific curiosity, however, and an expedition of several thousand Iceni had come to this world to explore. Alas, their ship had been damaged and was unable to use their FTL drive. The Iceni were stuck on a murderous planet.
Among other things, they were masters of bioengineering. They had found an island and used their ship's reaction engines to kill all life on the island. They had bioengineered a local, poisonous tree to grow around the periphery of the island and kill all life that attempted to land, but not attack anything behind them on the island. They then grew their own plant and animal life from their own planet to sustain them. Once finished with the one island, they had done the same on another two dozen islands. Over time, their tools and equipment wore out and they were forced to improvise, using dirigibles instead of airplanes and bows and arrows instead of blasters.
Eighty-one years ago, the Brigantes had arrived. Like the Iceni, they had had an engineering casualty to their ship and were also unable to use their faster than light drive. Like the Iceni, they had a ship that was fully functional but for the FTL drive. Unlike the Iceni, there were less than three hundred Brigantes who were starship crew and not highly trained scientists. The two races agreed to cooperate and had done well together.
"We'll be at the main island in half a day." Jane said. "I've told them that we'll give them all the help we can, and once back in the Empire, we'll notify the Brigantes' government where they are. I would imagine they'll send a ship to rescue everyone.'
They sailed over the perimeter of the main island and looked down on the trees. They soared over four hundred feet in the air and their branches intertwined so that even if they were not poisonous, any attack from the sea would have been difficult.
They had no radios, so the first that anyone on the island knew of Castle and his ship was when it soared over the small village and came to a gentle landing. The two dirigibles were hauled down and tied up.
TBC