The Pilots

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: You know I don't own them. Rating: K. Time: In an AU future.

Author's note: This is a sequel to The Pilot. I will try to cover all the necessary information from that initial story. However, you might wish to read The Pilot and then nominate the author for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Also, you might see some familiar faces in this.

"Turn left at this corridor."

The voice seemed to come from the glowing green ball that was their guide, but Castle knew it came from the artificial intelligence somewhere deep in the bowels of HMS Warspite. It was a bit embarrassing that he could not find his way around the four million-ton warship without a guide, but, he consoled himself, he had been on detached duty for nearly two years.

"You have arrived at your destination, Deck KK, office number 2136. Please enter." With that, the green guide disappeared.

"Shall we go in?" His wife asked.

"I suppose so, since I've been ordered to come."

He stepped through the hatchway and stopped. "Lieutenant Richard Castle and wife. I was told to report here."

The yeoman behind the desk smiled at them. She was human, young, female and pretty. To Castle, that said he was meeting a senior officer. The only ugly yeoman he'd ever seen outside a senior officer's office worked for an extraterrestrial admiral who resembled a walrus. Well, that admiral probably thought she was gorgeous.

"Yes, sir and ma'am. The captain is expecting you. Go right in."

Castle opened the door to the inner office and walked in. He stopped the regulation three feet from the desk and saluted the two officers seated behind it. "Lieutenant Richard Castle, and Mrs. Castle, reporting as ordered, sir."

"Please, relax and sit down both of you. Coffee?"

Kate nodded at once. "Yes, please." Then she got up and got a cup for her and Rick.

"I'm Captain Zek, Intelligence Branch. I assume you know Captain Huang."

"Yes, sir. I do know the commander of HMS Warspite."

Castle took a peek at Captain Huang over the rim of his coffee cup. He thought Old Krakatoa, so called for his volcanic temper, looked, unusually volcanic today. Not a good sign. Captain Zek looked friendly and jovial. Doubtlessly a good cover for someone in his line of work.

Zek spoke. "I've been reading your record, young fellow. Quite interesting. You joined the militia on the planet Christmas as a teenager and when the Empire arrived to reintegrate Christmas you ended up as an infantryman. In spite of a lack of formal education, you were selected for flight school and became a pilot, and a very good one. You had your own four ship division almost at once."

Castle remembered he was the only survivor of his four division mates, but said nothing.

Zek continued. "While on patrol, your ship was damaged but you managed to reach the planet we now orbit, Kate's World, named after your wife. You made friends with her and the two of you took over the badly damaged main planetary library and began putting it in working order. I must say, the information in the library has been an enormous help to us, not just here, but throughout the entire sector. When the old Commonwealth collapsed, so much was lost. So much."

Zek got a faraway look in his eyes, but then continued. "You made friends with two very useful groups, repaired your ship, and, oh, you also taught your wife to fly. I understand she's an excellent pilot."

"My husband is an excellent teacher." Kate said proudly.

"Then you returned to the fleet and advised everyone of this planet. And you've spent the past two years on detached duty helping to put Kate's World back on its feet, bringing the peace and prosperity of the Empire to one and all."

Huang finally spoke. Or growled. "The Castles are perfectly aware of their histories. Can we get on with this?"

Zek smiled. "Certainly, certainly. Come with me." He said, rising from the desk.

They went through a series of corridors until they came to a docking bay, open to space but for a force field. Castle recognized where he was, although he'd never had occasion to come here before. This was the docking bay for flag officers. Lined up in the bay were three shuttles and one type of ship he'd never seen before.

"Go take a look at it, Lieutenant." Zek said.

It had a delta shaped planform and was considerably larger than the fighters he was used to. It was a bit smaller than the company sized landing craft used to shuttle troops onto and off of planets. He guessed it massed about six hundred tons.

"Do you recognize it?" Zek asked.

Castle shook his head. As a fighter pilot, he had to know both friendly and enemy spaceships by sight. This one was unknown to him.

"Go closer, my boy."

He took three steps closer and stopped, shocked. There on the side of the ship was the stylized sunburst of the long-vanished Commonwealth. "It can't be." He whispered.

"But it is. Go inside." Zek said.

As he approached the ship, a hatch swung open. He went inside. The interior was cramped with him, Kate and the two other officers with them. He sat at the pilot's console and looked it over. One thing caught his eye at once. "These speed indicators can't be right, can they?"

"They are. Our very best experimental ships can do about eighty percent of the standard military power of this ship, and then only for an hour. You can put this right below the red line and keep it there for as long as you wish. Check out some of the other controls."

Castle did so. "I assume these are correct, so its sensors are superior to anything we have and stealth mode is…unreal."

"We lost more than just knowledge of planets when the Commonwealth collapsed, Lieutenant Castle. We lost technology. We found forty-eight of these in a giant stasis chamber on an airless moon in an uninhabitable solar system three years ago. Pure luck we found them. Pure luck. This is a Commonwealth scout ship. And the only one they've turned over for actual use with the Fleet."

Castle felt Kate's hand on his shoulder. He took her hand in his. "Don't worry, Babe. I'll never, ever love a ship anywhere near as much as I love you."

Kate grinned. "But I'd guess this ship is in second place?"

"I imagine you want me to fly this some place?"

"Have you ever heard of the Sky Cave?" Zek asked.

Castle thought. "Never."

"What about the Red Lion Nebula?"

"I have heard of that. It's not far from here, as interstellar distances go."

"The Red Lion Nebula?" Kate asked.

"Six thousand or so cubic light years of everything from single hydrogen atoms to suns in the making." Rick said. "From afar it looks like it's solid, but it isn't. Rather it's mostly vast clouds of gas which if you look right, resembles a red lion."

"But it's dangerous." Zek added. "Hard to get good readings from your sensors in there, so you might run right into a planet that's coalescing from the clouds of gas and spatial debris. We always thought that the Sky Cave is inside the Nebula. It's just a very big rock that's been carved into tunnels and caverns. It's a meeting place for every manner of law breaker. Not just your common, garden variety criminals, but terrorists, secret societies, political exiles and all manner of anti-Empire sorts. We've been getting vague intelligence reports about the place for years. The reports showed it as being in a thousand different places, hundreds of light years apart. We recently found a very old Commonwealth report showing its location. The report says it's been in use for over five thousand years by one race or another, some now vanished from this part of the galaxy, anyway. We want you to go look for it."

"You're not going anywhere without me." Kate said quickly.

"Since you're not in Captain Zek's chain of command, and you are in mine, "Huang spoke, "you would have to volunteer and I recommend you not volunteer. He doesn't just want you to go take a quick look at the place, he wants you to go inside and look around. This is a job for an intelligence professional, not one of my men."

"You're not going without me." Kate repeated.

"You heard my wife. And she can't go because she's not Navy."

"We're prepared to commission Mrs. Castle as an ensign." Zek said.

"She's not going." Rick said determinedly.

"Yes I am." Kate shot back.

"No. You are absolutely not going with me and that's final."

Three months later…

"The Red Lion Nebula is dead ahead. From this angle it doesn't look at all like a lion or any kind of an animal."

Castle grunted.

"Are you still mad at me for coming?"

"Yes." He waited a second and added, "And I'm frightened for you. I love you and I hate the thought of you being in danger."

"I've spent most of my life being in danger."

"That doesn't make me feel any better about this."

Kate changed the subject. "Shall we go in?"

"I'd love to." He said, wiggling his eyebrows.

"Later."

Their sensors were excellent but they still had to go slowly to avoid hitting anything larger than a molecule. The first night they settled the ship into a small rift in a planetoid. They had to sleep, after all. The next night the ship drifted through a glowing band of stardust. Then they found their target.

"Doesn't look like much." Kate said.

"A couple of hundred cubic miles of rock. You could store an awful lot of evil in there."

They were interrupted by a communication from the Sky Cave.

"Unknown ship! Identify yourself and give the authentication code or be destroyed."

"This is Free Ship Love Nest. Wait one while I send you the authentication code." Luckily Naval Intelligence had found that piece of information. Castle tapped the computer and it sent the code.

"That's last year's code." Said the voice.

"It's the only one I have. Do you people want to do business or what?"

A second voice spoke. "What cargo do you have?"

Castle began to rattle off the high value, low volume cargo he had.

"Wait!" Cried the second voice. "You have a Nexikitawny whiskey? How much?"

"One hundred and two and a half cases."

"Fifths?"

"No, quarts."

"What distillery?"

"Frosnellers. Eighty six proof. Blue label."

"Five bottles and you're in."

"You can't do that." Cried the first voice.

"I just did. Five bottles, Captain, take it or leave it."

"Five it is."

"Enter bay seven. You'll see a flashing green light above it. Park anyplace. I'll meet you at the entrance."

To Rick and Kate's surprise, they were met by a young human girl, probably just barely in her teens. She happily took the whiskey and gave them advice. "If you want to sell the rest, go to the Jolly Spacers Pub. The owner will give you the best price." She pointed down a long, wide street.

Before heading off, Rick and Kate took a look around. They were in a vast cave, how big they couldn't tell, but there was a holo representation of blue sky and white clouds above them. The city itself was an odd mixture of wealth and poverty. Naked children of many species played in front of shacks made from old packing materials which were right next to garish mansions that sat in the middle of wide, orange lawns. Delicate blue towers soared into the air looking down on trash filled vacant lots where some sort of gladiatorial contests took place.

The holo of the Jolly Spacer showed a human male in a spacers' coverall with a naked human woman on his lap. As they watched, they changed to a couple of Merseians, then a pair of octopoids. They went in.

TBC