Driving Miss Beckett
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: I'd drive Miss Beckett anywhere, but I don't own Castle. Rating: K Time: In the same fictional universe as my story The Pilot and its sequels, but several centuries earlier.
The Collapse of the Human Commonwealth took almost three centuries, counting from the first withdrawal of the most distant and lightly populated frontier planets. The government of the day saw this as a minor frontier adjustment and not as the beginning of the end of the Commonwealth. After the Collapse was a century long Interregnum as the new Terran Empire struggled to hold onto what was, at best, some eight percent of the old Commonwealth and maintain the technology of the Commonwealth. The Empire has held onto a great deal of the old Commonwealth technology and has rediscovered more. The Empire has even advanced on some Commonwealth technology. Some star nations did hold onto such things as FTL ships and such, but most did not. Some, such as the disastrous case of the Dominion of Ste. Marie, saw the end of intelligent life in that Dominion. The vast majority, however, sank to barbarism.
One that did not was the Dominion of Teresa. Hidden in the Spider Nebula it was not visible from outside the nebula. In the post-Collapse era lacking in accurate star charts, this was a blessing to the Dominion. Further, approaching Teresa through the nebula meant navigating though gigantic gas clouds, and space debris ranging in size from grains of sand to the size of planets.
The Dominion of Teresa was only raided once. A rogue Human Commonwealth Navy cruiser defeated or captured the few light units defending Teresa and captured almost all of the FTL capable ships there. The cruiser raided the orbital shipyards and factories for whatever they needed and then destroyed them. They also carried away all of the engineers and technicians they could capture.
The government of the Dominion decided that it was best not to attract attention to themselves by sending their remaining FTL ships out of the nebula.
In a decade or two, they had to abandon the scientific and mining outposts on the other fourteen planets and hundreds of moons in their solar system, confining themselves to the planet Teresa and its four moons. Soon they had to abandon all but the moon Hesperus, a piece of cosmic junk measuring a few cubic miles that had been put into a polar orbit around Teresa when it was first colonized.
Eventually, secession movements set up their own governments in what had been the unified Dominion of Teresa. The remaining Dominion of Teresa was a continent spanning nation that was the largest, wealthiest and most militarily powerful nation on the planet.
The governments of what had been a single planetary government were able to halt the loss of technology to some extent and eventually settled into a level of technology approximately like that of Terra in the first century or so after man left Earth. That is an approximation, of course.
Excerpted from The Dominion of Teresa: A Case Study in Technological Loss and Recovery. By Dr. Joao Cabral, University of Nova Lisboa, Imperial Year 327.
"Captain Richard Castle, reporting as ordered, sir." He said as he snapped off a salute.
Admiral Barnes waited a few seconds and then returned the salute. He said nothing, but just stared at Castle.
Richard Castle took the opportunity to look at Barnes and his office. Castle decided that Barnes hadn't changed since Castle had known him back when Barnes was just a captain. He had a little more grey in his hair, a bit less hair on his head and perhaps an extra pound or two. He still looked like he subsisted on a diet of pickle juice and Castle still didn't like him.
His office looked like every other senior officer's office he'd ever been in. A large steel desk, a comfortable chair for the senior officer, less comfortable chairs for everyone else and the desk was covered with comm devices, computer terminals and the paraphernalia of a man who had to keep track of everything. Absolutely everything.
The flag of the Dominion of Teresa was to the Admiral's right and to his left was the flag of Task Force 8, his command. On the wall was a full color map of the Circle Sea. It was obviously decorative since it had no markings on it.
Finally, Barnes spoke.
"Captain Richard "Hot Dog" Castle and you're now working for me."
Castle colored slightly.
"My call sign is now King, sir."
"Now that you're a captain, you can have your underlings call you what you want. But to me, you'll always be "Hot Dog."
"Yes, sir."
"Oh, hell, Castle. Stand at ease. Sit down, in fact."
Castle did so and found the chair wasn't comfortable.
"I've been reviewing your files, Castle." Barnes said, tapping his computer. "Do you have any idea how many superior officers, politicians, bureaucrats, industrialists, aerospace engineers, journalists and just plain folks you've pissed off in your career?"
"No, sir."
"Well, I lost count. But here you are, a captain, the eighth ranking ace in the Navy, and still no one has kicked you out."
"I'm the seventh ranking ace, sir." Castle said defensively.
"You're the eighth. Chrissy Hood got two more to pass you."
"I trained her, sir. She's very, very good."
"And you, Castle, are very, very lucky."
"I may be lucky, sir, but I'm also very, very good. In fact, I'm the best the Navy has."
"Oh, I'm giving the Devil his due. You are almost as good as you think you are. My problem is, what am I going to do with you?"
Castle realized this was his chance.
"Sir, I know there are no combat slots open for a captain, but I could take over command of the MR&O facility. That would give me the opportunity to fly every type of aircraft in Task Force 8 and then I could go where I'm really needed and useful."
Barnes made a show of thinking about it.
"Hmm. Send you to Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul? So you could do what? Make sure the yard weenies hadn't installed the engines backwards? No that would be a waste of your talents. I have a much better idea."
From the smile on Barnes' face, Castle could almost see the steel desk he'd be flying for the next three years.
"Have you ever heard of Miss Katherine Beckett?"
"Katherine Beckett of Beckett Media Enterprises? Of course, sir. Everyone in the Navy has heard of her. Why?"
"Miss Beckett has decided to come out here to see what's really happening in the Circle Sea and in Task Force 8. She needs an escort to show her around. And Captain Richard Castle is just the man for the job."
"Me, sir? Miss Beckett thinks were all a bunch of war criminals out here, slaughtering innocents left and right. I'll end up with my face on the front page of the Christmas Landing Times with the word "Guilty" under it."
"Ah, it seems your three years riding a desk in the Arctic Fleet Headquarters has left you behind the power curve. Old Jim Beckett and his two brothers still run BME as a tight ship. Old Jim does give his favorite granddaughter some space in the Op-Ed pages of their papers, once in a while. But he tones down her language a lot. She does have her own newspaper, The Independent Progressive, which she set up with the money from her trust fund. And, in spite of her wild and very loud rhetoric, no one who's really important really pays much attention to it."
"I know a lot of people in the Navy see what she writes."
"And it riles them up, which is probably what she wants. However, Old Jim Beckett and his brothers will be running things for a long time to come yet. But eventually, they'll die off. Of the second generation of Becketts, only Young Jim Beckett, and his cousin Edmund Beckett have any interest in BME. But, Young Jim, and his wife Johanna are lawyers for the company. Hard to see how they'd fit running a media empire. And Edmund only wants to run Culture magazine. He has no interest in anything else."
"Of the third generation, only Katherine Beckett is interested in the media company."
"And an interest in making the Navy look like a bunch of psychopaths." Castle replied.
"You haven't heard the latest. Let me enlighten you. TIP's ace investigative reporter, one Tom Demming, wangled a visa to Laconia so he could see our handiwork up close. Demming is also Miss Beckett's boyfriend. He got the usual tour of bombed hospitals, schools and churches and the usual suspiciously well-educated peasants who blamed us for everything. Then when he was ready to leave, he was found to have classified information in his luggage. He was arrested at once and charged with espionage."
"According to our intel, he was given the documents and told he could keep them. Then when he was leaving, he was "unmasked" as a spy."
"They set him up." Castle said. "The usual penalty for spying is a two-minute trial followed by a bullet in the back of the head."
"The Laconians had a better idea. We understand that after being tortured for perhaps five or six seconds, Demming broke down and confessed. He also said that BME knew he worked for our National Intelligence Directorate. The Laconians were outraged, of course. They demanded a public apology from BME on the front pages of all their papers and read over their radio and TV stations. BME decided they had to get their reporter back and figured they could issue a retraction once Demming was safe and sound."
"Did the Laconians shoot him anyway?"
"No, they said Demming had further confessed that many of BME's reporters were actually spies. He even named names, allegedly. Again, the Laconians demanded a full public apology. And, again, BME apologized publicly. And so that went on and on. BME would confess to something, and Laconia would announce that Demming had confessed to some other crime or another and Laconia would demand another apology. Finally, the Laconians decided they wanted more. They wanted every news organization in the Dominion of Teresa to carry the apology, even if BME had to buy advertising in their competitors to do so. The other media companies flatly refused to get involved."
"Did the Laconians shoot Demming then?" Castle asked, now curious where this story was going.
"Our intelligence people say he's still alive and every day the Laconians have some new confession, allegedly from Demming, to broadcast to the world."
Castle nodded.
"So, Miss Beckett is coming out here to find out what the hell is happening."
"Exactly. And she's too smart to go to Laconia, or maybe it's Old Jim Beckett who's smart. Anyway, she's coming here. And you're going to be her escort. You'll drive her around. I doubt that she wants to do more than spend a few days here, touching base with whoever can give her some information on Laconia and Demming."
"I'm driving Miss Beckett? Don't I rate a chauffeur? Or doesn't Miss Beckett?"
"You have a certain reputation with the ladies, Castle. We'll all feel much better if your hands and your eyes are occupied driving."
"Yes, sir." He said glumly. If his career as a pilot hung on keeping Miss Beckett happy, he had no intention of touching her.
"Castle, look at this as an opportunity and not as some bureaucratic joke or some punishment. BME is a very powerful organization. In addition to newspapers, magazines, radio and TV stations and the internet, they own a lot of other things. Back in the day, Old Jim Beckett bought up thousands of acres of forests so he'd have wood pulp for his papers. He bought a plant that makes printers ink and one that manufactures printing presses. Hell, they have their own entertainment company for their TV network, and they own three professional sports teams. Because they're so involved with the internet, they own some hi-tech firms, and…We'll, they're a damned powerful organization."
"In addition, the Circle Sea is important in and of itself. About a quarter of the worlds good pass through the Sea each year and we're the only thing keeping it from blowing up all to hell and gone."
TBC