Deadenders
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: Castle reached a dead end with Season 8, but it's going strong here. Rating: K Time: The far future.
Author's note: I first thought of this as a prequel to Dome 27, but I soon realized that the prequel could have no Caskett. Change of plans. So, this is a slightly alternate universe prequel to Dome 27. Okay, maybe more than slightly AU.
Prologue
Solar System PBT 1604
The heavy cruiser Tejas came out of FTL within two astronomical units of its target, the fifth planet of the system. Four seconds later, the light cruiser Inconstant snapped out of FTL some ten thousand kilometers from Tejas. Within microseconds, the destroyers Sluys, Harfleur, and Ypres appeared in front of the two cruisers.
On the bridge of Tejas, Commodore Llanes, who commanded the small task force, looked at all of the sensor readings.
"Is anybody at home?" He wondered out loud.
The sensor officer replied.
"We're not getting anything now, sir, but…Wait one. Ships engines, just coming up from behind planet five. The Xanks are at home, sir."
"Can we ID them?" The commodore barked.
The sensor officer talked quickly with his team and then replied.
"I make it one Project 2209 light cruiser, one Project 7007 destroyer, possible an upgraded model and one we can't ID. I can't be sure, but it looks like it might be a Took privateer."
"What the hell is a Took privateer doing getting involved with us? Their privateers are only well armed enough to take down a lightly armed merchantman at best. He should be running like hell from us."
No one had a reply to that.
"Sir, we'll be in optimum range for our missiles in three minutes plus a bit. We won't be in their maximum missile engagement range for eight minutes after that. We can loose a whole spread at them and then make a sharp turn towards the planet. That's got to be where their base is, and they'll have to come to us." That was the offensive systems officer.
Commodore Llanes thought for a second.
"Okay. We and Inconstant will fire at their cruiser, Sluys and Harfleur can take on the destroyer and that leaves Ypres to take out the Took."
Orders were issued and in some three minutes the ship killing missiles were on the way. No one would ever know why the Took privateer was there as it was hit by two missiles and vaporized.
"The Took is destroyed. Near misses on the destroyer and the cruiser." The sensor officer reported. "Sir, even before we fired, their cruiser looked like it was trying to keep one side away from us. They might have problems there."
"We'll turn into the cruiser. Have Inconstant conform to our movements. Have the destroyers head at max speed and try to get in position on the far side of their cruiser."
It looked like they were right. The enemy destroyer headed as fast as it could to protect one side of their cruiser.
"All fire is to be concentrated on the cruiser." Llanes ordered.
Again, ship killing missiles soared toward their target.
"Hits on the cruiser. She's gone. One piece looks like maybe the forward part is still intact, but they have no power. Should we fire again?"
Llanes shook his head.
"If anyone survived, and I doubt anyone did, it's now just a piece of junk. That'd be a waste of a good missile."
"Sir, the destroyer is heading straight for us."
"Nobody said the Xanks weren't suicidally brave." Llanes said. "Order a full spread from all ships."
The Xank destroyer was soon reduced to radioactive atoms and the human task force headed for the base. The Xank base fired missiles and directed energy weapons at the attacking task force, but the base was soon destroyed. Three more undefended bases were found and destroyed. A harmless cave was shot up as it looked like it could have been a base. It wasn't.
"Okay. That's that. We'll head for PBT 1607 and see if anything's there."
"Sir," Captain Seguin, the captain of the Tejas, said to Llanes, very quietly. "We should go back to Franklin Base instead. The men are very tired and morale is low. There was another suicide on Inconstant yesterday. He found out his planet had been wrecked by a Xank suicide attack. Everyone was killed. The whole colony. Sir, the war is over for all intents and purposed. The Xank home world and all of their colony worlds have been reduced to radioactive rubble. Their fleets are gone except for a few remnants."
"I can read reports as well as anyone, Captain Seguin." Llanes said acidly.
"Yes, sir, but…" Seguin began.
"I know. I know." Said Llanes. "We just barely beat the Xanks. Nearly every human planet has been attacked. There are tens of millions of dead from those attacks. Hell, even Earth system was attacked. The attack on Luna killed over a million people. Some of the poorer colonies will probably never recover. They'll fall into barbarism because the richer worlds can't or won't help them."
"The crews just want to get back to Tejas and try to resume their lives, sir."
Llanes just shook his head.
"The only thing that could get all the human colonies to work together was the Xank threat. Now that the threat is almost gone, Human Command is starting to fall apart. Newhome, Asturias, Galicia and the Banat have all pulled their warships back to their home systems. They'll convoy merchant ships to planets that are important to them, but that's all. Other rich colonies are planning on doing the same. That leaves too many human colonies that couldn't stand up to a Xank force like the one we just destroyed. And until our government tells me otherwise, I'm going to hunt down any Xank or Took ship left out here. Now, set a course for PBT 1607."
"Yes, sir."
Resettlement Camp 5
The colony of Aotearoa.
He had gone down four of the long, tent-lined streets before he finally found what he was looking for.
"Doc Ryan. Are you in there?"
It wasn't Doc Ryan who stepped out of the tent, but a surly man with a baseball bat.
"No one is here, pal. Now move along before I move you."
"Javi, wait. I know him. He's okay." Ryan called from inside the tent.
Javi didn't look convinced, but he lowered the baseball bat.
"Come on in, Captain." Ryan called.
He went in and was directed to a seat on a military cot.
"Javi, this is Captain Rick Castle. He was my instructor at Recon School."
"Yeah. What unit were you with?" Javi demanded.
"Second Aurora Scout Company. First Company was wiped out at Little Blue Moon, and we were ground down until there were just enough of us left to instruct. How come you're so unfriendly?"
Ryan gestured behind him at six large barracks bags and two large crates.
"Those. I have enough meds to set up my own damned hospital. There are addicts in the camp that would kill for some of them, and people who'd kill for a chance to sell them. Plus, I have a first-class medical computer and a miniaturized lab. Worth a lot of money on the outside."
"All you have to defend yourself is a baseball bat?"
"it's enough." Javi said.
Castle reached into the bag he'd brought. He handed Javi a 9mm pistol, four loaded magazines and two boxes of ammo, fifty rounds per box.
"This will keep bad guys away better than that baseball bat."
"How the hell did you get a weapon in here. They're strictly prohibited."
Castle shrugged.
"I know a guy."
"You must know one hell of a guy to get a weapon in here." Javi said.
"How come they call this camp the deadenders camp?" Castle asked, although he had some idea.
"Because this is as far as we're ever going to go." Ryan replied." We've got no homes to go back to. Javi and I were from PUMP 9. That's Parson's Unified Mining Planet number nine, although it's actually the moon of a gas giant. The Xanks blew the shit out of the place. It'll be decades before Parson's gets it up running again. If they, or anyone, ever does."
"There's no place else for you to go?"
Ryan shook his head.
"There's an inhabited planet in the same solar system, La Plata, but they always thought Parson's stole the moon out from under them. They aren't taking any rock apes like me and Javi. As a qualified medic, I could probably find some colony that could use me, but Javi was a sniper. Not much call for them. At least not on the kind of peaceful planet we'd like."
"And the Parks would like." Came a voice from the tent's entrance.
"These are our tentmates, Sergeant and Sergeant Park. They're from Chosen, which doesn't exist anymore."
The two Parks looked almost identical, short, slender, and Asiatic. But Castle decided one had just barely- there breasts and wider hips. He wondered if they were brother and sister or husband and wife.
"I'm good with explosives and my dear wife keeps people from killing me while I blow thing up."
Castle reached back into his bag and brought out another pistol with extra magazines and ammo. The wife took it.
"How much do you have in that bag and just who the hell do you know?" Ryan asked.
"I have a few other things and there's more where that came from."
"I have the feeling that you didn't come here to hand out goodies like Father Christmas." Ryan said.
"True. I'm trying to raise a small force to go back to my home planet, Aurora. Maybe a large squad, fifteen people, maybe more."
"So much for peace and quiet." Ryan said. "Why should we go?"
"One, it has to be better than staying here for the rest of your lives and, two, I can provide you with plenty of medical supplies, Ryan."
"Tell us more." Ryan said.
"First, let me tell you about Aurora. Do you know anything about it?"
"I've heard about it. That's about all."
"You'll be interested to know that Aurora is the only colony that was settled on a planet with a native intelligent race."
"I thought that was illegal." Javi said.
"it's not illegal. No planetary government claims any jurisdiction outside of its own solar system, and that includes Earth. But Earth has ninety percent plus of all humans, ninety percent plus of all the human industry, ninety percent plus of FTL shipping…Well, ninety percent plus of anything and everything. So, when they say it's against their policy for humans to go around setting up empires lording it over less advanced races, people listen. Otherwise, Earth comes down hard on them. No one wants that."
"So how did Aurora manage that?"
"Nearly three hundred years ago a colony ship headed out from Earth to a planet called Aurora about thirty light years from Earth. Something happened, no one knows what, but they found themselves over three hundred light years from any human planet with a damaged ship. They could never make it back home since the ship was too badly damaged, but they did find a habitable, but inhabited world. They called it Aurora. Having no real choice, they landed."
"The ship had some twelve hundred colonists, half men and half women, plus about a hundred crew, also half men and half women. They were all in good physical shape, very well educated with lots of engineers, agronomists, medical people, the usual. And they had plenty of machinery for setting up their new home. They also had seeds of every kind of Earth plant you could imagine, and fertilized eggs of all manner of Earth livestock. Even with all of that, they only had thirteen hundred people to try to settle a completely unknown planet."
"What about the locals?" One of the Parks asked. "Were they technologically advanced enough to help?"
Castle shook his head.
"The most advanced had just about figured out how to smelt copper. They also had begun agriculture rather than herding, or hunting and gathering. They even had the start of cities, if places with several hundred people can be called cities."
TBC