The Pilot

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I do not own Castle or the Planet of Infinite Stana Katics. (Sorry, this story is not set there.) Rating: T, maybe. A little bit. Not much. Time: A future AU.

"Rambler Five One to all Rambler units. Report."

He listened, but all he heard was the hissing static of the space between the stars.

"Rambler Five One to any unit. Come in."

"Rambler Five One, this is Rambler Five Three. I saw Igor collide with a Zenetian fighter and blow up. I don't know about Raoul."

"Rambler Five Three, what's your status?"

There was a pause. "Bad. The ship is shot up and so am I. The med sack has deployed, but I hurt like hell."

"Rambler Five One, this is Rambler Five Three Charlie." The sultry female voice of the AI cut through everything as it was supposed to. "Lieutenant (jg) Govind is badly wounded. I wish to instruct the onboard medical care unit to sedate him."

"Govi? Are you okay with that?"

"Sure, Muddy. Whatever you say." The last words were weak and slurred.

"Rambler Five One, this is Rambler Five One Alpha."

"Dammit, Al, you can just talk to me, you know."

"I wish to advise you that there is a debris field five hundred and fifty kilometers from here that is consistent with the remains of a Type 47 fighter craft."

"Any chance it's a Zenetian?" The pilot asked.

"That is not possible."

Shit. The pilot thought. Half my division is gone and I have two damaged ships and one damaged pilot left. "Al, Charlie, can you give me the status of both ships?"

There was apparently some communications between the two AIs. Al spoke. "It will take a few minutes to evaluate the damage."

The pilot waited impatiently for a reply.

"Your ship has lost two of your four fusion pods, the flux capacitor is damaged, as is the drive unit. I would not recommend using more than 61% of military power."

"How about Rambler Five Three?"

Charlie replied. "Only one fusion pod was destroyed, but the flux capacitor is more badly damaged than yours, as is the drive unit. I recommend no more than 57% of military power be used."

"Shit! It'll take us forever to get back to the task force." He grumbled.

"Hardly forever." Charlie said. "I calculate that we should be back to the task force in under twenty two hours, however they will likely send a patrol to look for us and then have a frigate or destroyer come pick us up and we'll get back much sooner."

'Great. And we'll have to spend the whole time going back listening to the big boys bragging about how they had to save the little boys. Shit." He muttered. "Okay, let's set a course for the task force. Charlie, take over Rambler Five Three and conform to my movements."

The next three hours were boring, which is not always a bad thing for a fighter pilot.

"WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!" Al's voice bellowed. "Twenty-seven unidentified ships approaching from 12 o'clock green 10."

"Are they a patrol, looking for us?" He demanded.

"Negative, sir. They're Zenetians, and they've spotted us. They're headed this way."

"Reverse course and increase power. How much more can we add on?"

There was a slight delay. "Unless you want to leave Rambler Five Three behind…"

"I don't!" He yelled.

"The best we can do is 60% of full military power."

"Okay, do it. Maybe the Zenetians will decide not to chase us."

"That is highly unlikely. I calculate the chances of that as.."

"Al, shut up."

A stern chase is a long one, but the Zenetians were catching up, slowly but surely.

"Al, we need more power."

"That is inadvisable, sir. We could blow up if we try."

"And we'll be shot to bits if we don't. Do something. That's an order."

Power went up by a few percentage points, but the Zenetians kept gaining.

"WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!" Al's voice bellowed again. "Wormhole opening at ten o'clock, red 15, approximately 18,000 kilometers away."

"Change course! Head straight for it. Charlie, conform to my movements."

"Sir, I am required to warn you that it is a serious violation of safety regulations to enter an unknown wormhole. And the one ahead is certainly an unstable wormhole."

"Duly noted. Now get us the hell to the wormhole." The pilot screamed.

Stable wormholes were a boon to spacegoing civilizations. They always connected the same two places and they opened and closed with perfect regularity. A ship, or ships, could enter a wormhole and take days or weeks to complete a journey that would otherwise take months.

Unstable wormholes were another matter. They appeared and disappeared at will and never in the same place. Some remained open for months, but others lasted for only a few minutes. Few people entered unstable wormholes and even fewer ever came back to tell the tale. The crew of one such ship had taken decades to return. But, the pilot had no other options.

When the ships entered the wormhole the ship's instruments went wild. The pilot had no idea what was happening, but he was going straight down the middle of the wormhole. A check behind him showed Rambler Five Three was right behind him.

Suddenly, they were in normal space again. The pilot turned his craft around to face the wormhole, with Rambler Five Three conforming.

"If the Zenetians come through, we'll start shooting. Maybe we can get them."

But the wormhole closed five minutes later with no Zenetians appearing.

"Charlie, how's Govi doing?"

"Lieutenant (jg) Govind is critical, sir."

"Any idea where we are, Al?"

"I've compared the local stars with my star charts. We've only moved 7.485 light years from our last position. This solar system is not on my charts, sir."

"Not surprising. We lost a lot of things in the Collapse. Not hard to misplace an entire solar system if you really try."

"There appear to be fourteen planets in this system. There is a moon of a super-Jovian planet that would be marginally habitable, but the fourth planet seems to be highly compatible with human life."

"We'll head for there, then. Give them a call and see if anyone's home." Having escaped death, the pilot was feeling better already.

Ten minutes later, he wasn't so happy.

"Sir, there appear to be no communications of any sort emanating from the planet. There are two ships in orbit, however…"

Images of the two ships appeared on the visor of his helmet.

"That's just half a ship, Al. The other one is more holes than ship. We'll get no help from them."

"However, sir, they appear to have been old Commonwealth types. I believe we're approaching a former Commonwealth world."

Once over the planet, things looked no better.

"Sir, I do see a city just on the dawn line, by an ocean." Al dropped a targeting pipper on the city to show the pilot where it was.

"Let's look it over." He said and put the ship in a deep dive.

Once over the city, things looked worse again. "The city's been shot to hell." He said, looking at mile after mile of ruins.

"But there's no sign of any thermonuclear weapons and I do pick up a few energy readings. A properly built fusion plant would last for centuries. And there are a few signs of life. There was a herd of some kind of animals around a small lake."

Another minute passed. "Sir, we've been shot at."

The pilot craned his head around. "Where? I don't see anything."

"A small pellet of metal moving at no more than 300 meters per second. Even at point blank range, the weapon could not penetrate the ship. But someone did shoot at us."

They were almost at the end of the city. "There!" He cried, "There's a large building on a peninsula. It's got a flat roof even if part of it is covered with debris from the collapsed building next door. How's Govi doing?"

"Critical, sir." Charlie answered.

"Charlie, I want you to set down as close to me as you can, but facing the other way. That way our guns can cover 360 degrees."

Once down, he grabbed his own ship's med sack and ran to Rambler Five Three. The canopy opened as he arrived. He saw that the readouts on the medical sack were all red. He quickly attached his med sack to the one helping Govi. The readings went up for a bit, but then began to decline. Then they were replaced with the word "Deceased."

"Dammit! He can't be dead. I can't have lost my whole damned division in one day. Isn't there anything we can do?"

"Sir, if we could find an emergency resuscitation facility in the next fourteen minutes and eighteen seconds, we could. But the readings I have don't correspond to such a facility anywhere near here."

"Shit." The pilot sat and began to cry.

"Request permission to deploy both ship's DRDs to evaluate the damage."

He just nodded. As he did, four tubular shaped droids emerged from each ship and began to open inspection hatches.

He had no idea how long he sat there, but eventually Al spoke to him. "Sir, we have sustained further damage to both ships from the strain we put on our drives from trying to escape. We will not be able to get anywhere near 50% of full military power.

That sank in. "Without 50% power, we can't go FTL, right?"

"Correct. We will not go faster than light."

"Shit." He sat there for a while longer.

"Can we do repairs?"

"We can do some, but there's no way that any combination of you and the DRDs can lift a three-quarter ton fusion pod. The entire flux capacitor will have to be removed to repair it and that would require lifting over a ton."

"Shit."

"However, we have plenty of power if we don't go FTL." Al said. "You can go anyplace in this solar system. And perhaps we can find some sort of repair facility that survived the devastation here."

"Yeah, with the trigger-happy locals taking pot shots at us."

He sat until he finally made a decision. "I'm going to bury Govi. Return the med sacks to their appropriate bays." When that was done, he unharnessed Govi and lifted him out of the cockpit.

"Sir, you should remove Lieutenant (jg) Govind's ship suit and space suit."

"He's smaller than I am." He snapped.

"The ship suit will adapt to your body, as you know and, if necessary, if your space suit is damaged, we can make repairs from the other suit."

"All right, dammit." He stripped his friend's body and carried it to the pile of rubble at the far end of the building. There were numerous blocks of a marble-like stone present. He began making an above ground mausoleum for his friend, using his directed energy pistol to melt the stone blocks together, gradually covering the corpse. Then he found a larger block and used his blaster to etch Govi's tombstone. When he was done, he melted it onto the top of the mausoleum. He stood back and read what he had written.

Hari Govind

Lieutenant, Junior Grade

SO 317BR57QC57MO

Imperial Terran Space Navy

H.I.M.S. Warspite

Fighter Wing

10 Month 8 Day 121 YE

2 Month 15 Day 144 YE

He came to attention, saluted and walked away.