327. Chapter 327

After Punked

Episode 3.04

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I do own Castle! Have you ever been punked! Rating: K Time: In a Steampunk AU.

The famed inventor, scientist and explorer, Lord Richard Castle, stepped lightly down from this steam powered dirigible, and touched the ground in Africa. He turned and assisted his lovely wife down. The rest of his party soon joined them.

"At last! I have found the source of the Nile! This lake is the source of the greatest river in Africa. I shall name this Lake Katherine!" He announced proudly.

His beautiful wife, the American Lady Katherine Houghton Beckett-Castle blushed prettily. "Richard! That is too great an honor for me." She said modestly.

"Nonsense, mother dearest. For you are as dear to me as my own dear, sweet, lost mother. This expedition owes its very existence to you." The speaker was that flower of English womanhood, Lady Alexis Castle. Unbeknownst to the rest of the world, Lady Alexis was the creative mind behind all of Lord Castle's inventions and discoveries. In Lady Katherine she had found a mind as brilliant as her own.

Indeed, after their last adventure, involving a stolen Zeppelin, upon which Lady Katherine had been kidnapped, both Lady Katherine and Lady Alexis had thoroughly examined the vessel, noting many places where improvements could be made. Once the vessel had been returned to Graf Ferdinand von Zeppelin, the two had designed and had built their own airship, a far superior vessel.

Leagued behind Lord Castle were the other members of the expedition. There was an old Africa hand, Javier Esposito, late of the Legion Etranger, where he had tramped many a weary mile over the plains, mountains, deserts and jungles of Africa. For this expedition he had left behind his beloved Lebel rifle and now carried a Lee-Metford rifle. British, of course. Esposito had joined the Castle household as Lord Castle's gentleman's gentleman.

Standing next to Esposito was Constable Kevin Ryan, a doughty son of the Emerald Isle, seconded to the expedition by Scotland Yard. Constable Ryan had assisted Lord Castle in many of his adventures, especially those involving Demon Drink.

Standing by her husband was Jenny Ryan, a lovely daughter of the Olde Sod, who had taken service with Lord Castle as a maid and had insisted on accompanying her husband on this dangerous expedition. She had proved her worth upon finding a large number of Guinness Stout bottles secreted on the dirigible. Over Kevin's pleas, she had dumped them all out as they weighed too much.

Last and least was Demming. He had been Lord Castle's manservant, but found that activities such as folding socks was beyond his intellectual abilities. Lord Castle, unwilling to throw the poor fellow onto the mean streets of London had used him as a paperweight on his desk, but, alas, this was beyond poor Demming's abilities. Lady Katherine had suggested allowing Demming to stay in the kennels, but the dogs, using a clever speaking device invented by Lady Katherine, had vetoed that idea. While admitting that Demming was perfectly capable of scratching behind his ears with his hind leg, and had a real talent for licking his…Um, nether regions, they felt that he lowered the intellectual level of the kennel to an unacceptable level and, besides, he had fleas. Demming was being used as ballast for the dirigible. A task he had so far managed fairly well.

Using a clever lens of her own devising that she had inserted in her eye which could be used as both a telescope and a microscope, Lady Alexis saw something on the horizon. She regretted that the male dominated society in which she lived was incapable of accepting her as the intellectual equal, and sometimes superior, of any man, however, she did love her dear father and was happy to give him credit for her innumerable inventions and discoveries. Using the secret sign language she had perfected, she advised her father of what she had seen by adjusting her Paris made bonnet.

"I say." Lord Castle announced. "There's a Zulu impi approaching from the south."

"Sacre bleu!" Said Esposito. "A regiment of Zulu warriors! What can they want?"

"We shall soon find out." Lord Castle said calmly.

Soon, a regiment of Zulus arrived at Lord Castle's dirigible, led by their king, Cetshwayo. "Lord Castle! So you did find the source of the Nile." Said the burly king, in the cut glass tones of the English upper class as inculcated at Oxford University where he had studied. Seeing Lady Alexis, the king bowed deeply. "Ah, greetings, beloved peacemaker."

Some years before, when Lady Alexis was but a slip of a girl, she had occasion to travel to Africa. Finding the British Empire and the Zulu Kingdom on the brink of war, she had used her intelligence and well known British sense of fair play to craft an agreement between the two countries to avoid a war. This was why the Zulu impi was dressed in red coats, and King Cetshwayo was dressed as an English gentleman, with a top hat, and a morning coat, cravat, waistcoat and striped trousers. Lord Castle couldn't help but notice that the king had added that most recent of sartorial fads, spats, to his ensemble.

"Greeting, great king." Lady Alexis said, curtsying.

"What brings you so far north?" Lord Castle queried.

"I had to find you, Lord Castle. She Who Must Be Obeyed needs to see you."

"The legendary She Who Must Be Obeyed?" Lord Castle said quietly. "I thought that She was a myth. A legend?"

"Like the world at the center of the Earth that you found, Father?" Lady Alexis asked. "Or the Holy Grail that now reposes in the Castle Wing of the British Museum? Or the…"

"Silence, Alexis." Lord Castle said, blushing. "You're embarrassing me." Secretly he hoped she'd continue, but she did not. Instead her eyes were fixed on the horizon.

"We have more company." Lady Alexis said quietly. "Slavers, down from the Soudan. A scouting party of Baggara horse. But only twelve of them." Lady Alexis raised her Lee-Metford rifle and fired six round so rapidly that it sounded like one continuous explosion. Far, far in the distance, six horses fell.

"Name of a name!" Cried Esposito. "You killed six of their horses. But the rest of the rascals are getting away."

"I only grazed the skulls of horses, rendering then unconscious. I would not kill or maim a poor, dumb animal." She noticed Demming give a sigh of relief. "I am not a pacifist, although I had a most illuminating chat with Mr. Gandhi on the subject. But I only chased those villains away. With two riders, those remaining horses will take a long time to get back to the rest of the slavers." Seeing the rascals slowing down, Lady Alexis fired the remaining four rounds exactly six inches above the heads of the closest four.

King Cetshwayo nodded approvingly. "I would have killed them all, but I admire your sense of honor and fair play, Lady Alexis. But, now we must head for She Who Must Be Obeyed."

And so, with the Castle expedition in the dirigible and King Cetshwayo with his impi on the ground, they passed the Elephant's Graveyard, the Realm of Prester John, Great Zimbabwe and finally arrived at the home of She Who Must Be Obeyed.

There before them was a red haired beauty that looked strangely familiar to Lord Castle.

"Meredith?" He gasped in wonder. "Is that you?"

"Of course it's me. Do you have any idea how long I've been waiting for your alimony check? And the lack of quality shopping around here is scandalous." As Meredith complained endlessly, Lord Castle shot a glance at King Cetshwayo. "Sorry, dude." He whispered. "She Must Be Obeyed or she'll drive you crazy."

Lord Castle took out his cheque book. "Meredith, I shall be happy to pay you all of your back alimony if you will only be quiet." As Meredith held her tongue, Lord Castle wrote as fast as he could. As he handed the check over, he noticed a look passing between Meredith and King Cetshwayo.

"What about it, Big Boy?" Meredith said to the King. "What kind of shopping is there in Zululand?"

"We've opened something Lady Katherine and Lady Alexis came up with. It's called a mall. We named it Rodeo Drive."

"Shall we go?" Meredith asked, coquettishly.

Lord Castle, and the rest of his party breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank God." Lord Castle said.

"Amen." His followers muttered.

"At least that's over." Alexis said. For all that she loved the mother that had born her, she had to admit that Meredith could be something of a …flibbertigibbet.

"Not entirely over." Said a sinister voice.

"El hadji Josh!" Cried Esposito. "The most vicious slaver in all of Africa. I recall that the famous Nineteenth (African) Army Corps chased you out of French Africa. I last saw you running from Fort Zinderneuf with the Geste brothers in hot pursuit. I do not think you will find the realms of the Widow at Windsor any more salubrious."

Alexis noted with pride that the formerly rough spoken Legionnaire's English had improveddramatically under her tutelage.

"I know him!" Said Lord Castle. "He's Josh Davidson, the Prince of Insufficient Light, as he is known in the London underworld."

"I'll be the Prince of Darkness when I kill you and take your women as my concubines." He laughed maniacally.

Lord Castle reached for his trusty Webley revolver, only to be stopped by Davidson's henchmen.

"I will have to think long and hard about the manner of your death, Castle." Then he smiled salaciously at the women. "Speaking of long and hard, I think I'll start with the blonde English maid and work upwards on the social scale."

"What did you call me?" Jenny Ryan said in a preternaturally calm voice. "Did you call me English?"

Davidson ignored the question. "Come here, unbeliever. A real man wants you."

As her face reddened, Jenny swore an oath in Irish Gaelic which we will not translate for fear of upsetting our gentle readers, and, singing A Nation Once Again, attacked Davidson with a bottle of Guinness Stout that she had saved back for her beloved husband.

Before he knew what hit him, Davidson was on the ground, minus his teeth and badly bleeding. Seeing their leader overthrown by a woman, his minions fled.

"Call me English will ye?" She said, her accent reverting to that of her native Connaught. "The de'il take ye."

"Quite." Said Lord Castle, calmly.

Now floating northward towards the distant Mediterranean Sea, Lord Castle's dirigible sank ever so slightly as the sun set and the air cooled. "We need to throw some ballast overboard." Lady Alexis said, in her capacity of captain of the mighty vessel of the air. Hearing Demming's heart rending scream, she quickly added, "Sand. We need to throw some sand overboard."

Regrettably, Constable Ryan had smuggled a small still aboard and had distilled a batch of poteen, the Irish version of moonshine and was, alas, somewhat inebriated. For an Irishman somewhat inebriated would be stone cold drunk for the lesser breeds without the law, such as Russians with their vodka, Mexicans with their tequila, or the sons of Kentucky with their bourbon. Forgetting that Davidson had been imprisoned in the ballast, the happy constable dropped sand and the Prince of Insufficient Light into the River Nile from a thousand feet up. Oops!

As Lord Castle and the lovely Lady Katherine watched their nemesis fall towards a river filled with crocodiles, Lord Castle shielded his wife's eyes from the sight that no Anglo-American lady should see and held her close whispering that he loved her as much as an Englishman could without getting all mushy. Accordingly, she did not hear Davidson's final curse to them.

"In a week, I'll be the king of the crocodiles and then we'll see who wins the women, Castle!"

Lord Castle pulled the woman who had won his heart to him and passionately kissed her. "I love you more than anyone or anything, Kate. You are the world to me."

"As you are to me, Richard. Always."

"Yes, always, my love."

And so the great dirigible headed north to as yet unknown adventures.

Author's note: If you wish to follow Lord Castle's prior adventures, please see chapters 84 and 187. If you don't, the de'il take ye.