897. Chapter 897

After Meme is Murder

Episode 7.05

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: There are no naked pictures of me on the internet owning Castle. Rating: K Time: See above.

Author's note: This is a sequel to chapters 785, 788, 808, 830, 842, 859 and 875.

Captain Katherine Beckett, of the pirate ship Revenge smiled as her ship left the cold and grey Atlantic and passed through the Windward Passage and in to the fair Caribbean Sea. After rescuing the former Royal Agent, Jordan Shaw, from prison in England the Revenge had sailed north around Scotland where they found the summer Scottish weather unusually balmy. It has actually stopped raining for several minutes at a time. Once out of the North Sea and into the Atlantic, Kate had set a course for Boston where Shaw had friends who could protect her from the evil Governor of Jamaica, Sir William Bracken who had falsified evidence that Jordan was part of a conspiracy to murder the English King. Shaw hoped to use her contacts in Boston to gather evidence against Bracken.

Suddenly, the helmsman, Javier Esposito, tensed and turned his head. "Captain, do you hear that?"

Captain Kate listened intently. At first she heard only the creaking of the rigging and the sound of the gentle Caribbean rollers slapping against the ship. But then she heard it, "Gunfire. To the west, I think."

Esposito nodded. "West and a bit south, I'm thinking." Espo looked upwards. "Ahoy aloft. Do you see anything?"

Alas, the crow's nest was manned by Old Blind, Deaf, Dumb and Stupid Tom Demming who had been accidently put on watch rather than his usual duty of cleaning bedpans. Once OBDD&S had been relieved of duty, Kate decided to forgo keelhauling him, considering the damage his head had done to the ship the last time. Demming then accidently walked overboard and was immediately surrounded by a school of sharks. The sharks at once threw Demming back aboard the Revenge. Sharks have principals you know.

With the Revenge headed in the general direction of the gunfire, Kate retired to the cabin she shared with her husband, Dr. Rick Castle, the ship's doctor.

"What happened just now?" Rick asked.

"We can just hear gunfire off to the west. We're heading for it, but we may not find anything. The sea is a big place as you well know."

Rick nodded. "I meant with Demming. Did the sharks throw him back again?"

Kate nodded.

"I don't know how, but the bedpans are always dirtier after he's cleaned them than before. Can't we find someone to take him? We left him on an ice floe and a group of polar bears brought him back. Cannibals ran in terror when we tried to get them to take him. And those headhunters….." Rick just shook his head.

"Let me make you forget all about that." Kate said in a sultry voice, and she did.

Just before two bells of the morning watch, the lookout spotted a series of orange flashes dead ahead and called down to the officer of the deck, the navigator, Lieutenant Alexis Castle, who soon had her father and step-mother brought to the quarterdeck.

Kate put her telescope to her eye and studied the scene ahead. "I don't recognize the ship nearest to us and it's between us and the second ship, so I can't tell who she might be."

"Captain!" Cried the lookout, high on the masthead. "The farthest ship's mainmast has gone down. The other ship appears to be getting ready to board."

Captain Kate ordered Esposito, once again at the helm, to steer towards the two ships. She then had the drummer boys beat to quarters. As the crew went to their battle stations, the gun crew captains made sure that the cannons were properly loaded. In the heat of battle mistakes were sometimes made, which meant that the first, carefully loaded, broadside was often the best.

Kate and Rick watched the battle through their telescopes as the Revenge neared the two other ships. It appeared that the boarding party was successful as all fighting had stopped.

"Captain, I can see the farther ship. It's the Lady Jacinda, and she's struck her colors." Esposito said.

Rick scratched his jaw. "That's a hermaphrodite brig. I wonder if the other Lady Jacinda….?" Rick decided to take that line of thought no further.

Kate smiled. The Lady Jacinda was one of the so called privateers that Governor Bracken had outfitted that were actually nothing but pirates. They attacked ships of all flags, even English shipping, stole the cargos and sold the crews into slavery to the North African Barbary states.

Alexis spoke. "Mother, it appears that the victorious ship is a brig of war, and is pierced for some fourteen guns, less than half our number and certainly less than our weight of metal."

Kate nodded and smiled at the redhead. Although not Alexis' birth mother, the two felt as close as a mother and daughter could possibly be. "We'll see who this stranger is. Although he's taken one of Bracken's ships, it does not follow that he's a friend to us. He may be just another bloody pirate."

The other ship, however, signaled for a parley and soon after a longboat set out from the brig to the Revenge. The captain of the brig, a lanky, bearded young man with a devil may care smile and a roguish glint in his eye, made a leg before Captain Kate.

"Captain Kate Beckett of the Revenge, I believe?"

Kate nodded. "You have the advantage of me, sir. You know me, but I don't know you."

"I am Captain Pi of the brig Bumblebee. Much like yourself, I found myself destitute and alone at the hands of Governor Bracken and, like you, I have been able to make him pay for that."

Both Rick and Kate could not help but notice that while Captain Pi spoke to them, is eye was always on Alexis.

"Your name is Pi, sir?" Kate asked.

"As the Greek letter. I have found it safer to use a nomme de guerre, so to speak."

"Can you stay for dinner, Captain Pi?" Alexis asked boldly.

Kate woke up the next morning with a pounding head and alone in her bed. She staggered up and called for her husband, but got no answer. She checked the adjoining cabin and found Alexis' bed unslept in and her gone. Then she saw the note on her desk.

Dear Captain Beckett,

I did not entirely lie to you. Governor Bracken treated me horribly when I was unable to recapture Jordan Shaw for him, but I believe I have redeemed myself in his eyes. By the time you read this your husband and step-daughter will be enjoying a new invention of mine. In two day's time, when the sun is just right, a magnifying glass will focus the sunlight on a trail of gunpowder that leads to two kegs of gunpowder. Your husband and Alexis are sitting on those kegs. You can imagine the rest. You will doubtlessly understand that this is a trap. But one that you will be very willing to stick your neck into until it is stretched by the hangman.

You're obedient and humble servant,

(Not really)

Captain Pi

Disguised as OId Moll, a witchy woman who came to Kingston on occasion to sell love potions and tell fortunes, Kate walked through the streets, trying to get a sense of what was happening in the capital of Jamaica. All of her crew had begged her not to go into what was so obviously a trap, but she was insistent. However, after hours of walking in the hot sun all she found was that the governor had moved to the fortress with all the troops he could muster.

Kate walked into a shady alley and leaned against a wall, tired and depressed. Then she felt an odd crackling coming from her dress pocket. Reaching in, she found a square of parchment with a message in block letters.

The two that you seek are at the ruins of the old Beckett plantation.

The note was unsigned.

Kate thought. Was this a trap? If so, why was she not taken when whoever had left the note discovered her? It was, however, the only clue she had.

The next night, just before sunrise, Kate, Princess L'Anie, Ryan and Esposito as well as LT crept through the jungle towards Kate's old home. Suddenly, LT stopped.

"Captain, there are men ahead. Armed men at that. Some are in your old home, but most wait in the jungle in front of the ruins of the place. What do you want us to do?"

Kate thought furiously. "I'm sure this means Rick and Alexis are here. And those inside will leave as soon as Pi's infernal machine begins its work as they won't want to be blown up. They'll leave as early as they can to get far away. When they do, I'll go in the back and get them out."

They waited until it was nearing noon before there was a sudden rush of soldiers from the old Beckett house. Kate ran to the back door and opened it. She wondered where they would be, for although in ruins, the house was still large. Then she heard a sound.

My old room. She thought. She ran as quickly and as quietly as she could to her old room and looked inside. There, sitting on barrels of gunpowder were Rick and Alexis. Above them was a huge magnifying glass, focused on a trail of gunpowder. Kate quickly moved the magnifying glass and cut the bonds of her husband and daughter.

"Can you run?" She whispered.

"If it means getting out of here." Rick replied.

"Wait." Said Alexis. "They'll expect an explosion. We don't want to disappoint them." The redhead quickly refocused the glass on the trail of gunpowder, then they ran through the back of the house and into the jungle.

Fifteen minutes later, the home erupted in a roar and the ruins caught fire. By the time anyone could search the wreckage and find no trace of any dead bodies, the Revenge with her Captain, and her family, were far, far from Governor Bracken.

Kate held onto Rick as tightly as she could that night. "I could not live without you, Rick."

"You must, for you have our daughter to care for, and justice to be gotten for all of Bracken's victims."

"Perhaps, but it would not be life, merely an unendurable prison."

"Then I'd better not leave you."

Kate laughed. "You had better not."

But later that night, Kate sat at her desk as Rick slept, looking at the scrap of parchment that had led her to Rick and Alexis. Somewhere out there, I have an ally. But who?