Battle Group Castle
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: I own zero Castle. Rating: K Time: In an AU future and see below.
Author's note: This is a sequel to Vengeance and to Tercio Corazon Negro.
General Hughes was not what Castle had been expecting. To begin with, he was young. Castle doubted he was over thirty. He was tall, and lean and fit, however. He had coal black hair, grey eyes and a ready smile. He was dressed in a camouflage uniform no different from the uniforms of the other officer in the room except for the two sunbursts that indicated a major general and those were in subdued colors.
Castle saluted. "Colonel Richard Castle, sir. The United Kingdoms have sent me to help you. I command a reinforced armored battalion battle group. Allow me to describe my command to you."
He did so and when he was done, he introduced his staff. When he got to Kate, as the commander of his headquarters company, Hughes got an odd look on his face.
"Your wife is part of your unit, Colonel?"
"Yes, sir."
Hughes nodded. "I was married when all of this began. My wife was killed in one of the early skirmishes. She was pregnant with a boy." He looked at Kate for a long moment. "You're very lucky, Colonel. Please keep your wife safe."
"I do my best, sir, but she has a mind of her own."
Hughes nodded again. "So did my wife." Hughes shook his head, as if to dispel memories. "I know you've just arrived, but I need weapons and equipment. I have five thousand lightly armed men under arms, but I could arm twice or three times that number if I had the weapons. Our factories produce uniforms, boots, and web gear as well as a small amount of ammunition and other simple equipment. We're trying to build our own weapons, body armor, radios, night vision devices and everything else, but that takes time. Can you help me? Colonel Esposito has been very generous, but he has limited resources."
"Sir, when we win a battle, we collect the enemies' weapons. We've been successful. I can provide assault rifles for about a thousand men, plus a small number of machine guns, light mortars and ammunition. We can provide you with a full accounting later. I can also provide you with advisors and specialists, such as medics, forward observers, and logistics personnel."
Hughes smiled. "I see Colonel Esposito has advised you that I know little of logistics. I do know the old saying, though: Amateurs talk about strategy and professionals talk about logistics."
"General, I'll need to be briefed by your people and by Colonel Esposito's before I can decide how to use my battalion, but I have a couple of ideas already."
Private Thal was not happy with his job. He had walked for days to enlist with the man who had freed his people. He had worked hard in training to learn the ways of a soldier. He had fought on Big Rock. He was a combat veteran. Now he guarded a door in a hospital. He straightened up and stroked his assault rifle as he had seen other men do. He would guard that door better than any soldier ever, he decided.
"Someone coming, Thal." Said his fellow guard, Private First Class Rodinski, a stocky ex-miner from Crater. "Looks like he's emptying the garbage."
When the man approached pushing a wheeled bin with a lid on it, Rodinski had him halt.
"What do you have there, pal?"
"Surgical waste, pieces of people, blood, used bandages, human feces and urine, and worse."
"Open it up."
The man frowned. "Really? The stuff stinks like hell. No one has ever asked me to open it before."
"Open it. My comrade here is going to smell your load. He's a Tarkai and they have a great sense of smell."
"If he does, he'll probably die of this." But the man opened the lid. The stench was awful. Both Rodinski and the man moved back. Thal leaned over and inhaled. There was blood, body parts and feces there, but he smelled something else.
"There's something else in there. He'll have to empty the cart."
"Empty the cart? Are you kidding? I'm not going to do it."
Rodinski smiled. "Suit yourself, but if I have to get some of my people to unload it, I guarantee about half of it will go down your throat. Now, do it."
The man took a few things out of the bin, but then began to cry. "I had to do it. I had to."
Rodinski got on his radio. "Sergeant of the guard, this is Post Seven. We've got something. You might want to call out Lieutenant Clare as well."
Lieutenant Clare briefed Colonels Castle and Esposito and General Hughes. "His name is Walter Weidman and he's been an orderly at the hospital since before the invasion. His younger sister thought pirates were romantic and began living with one. From what Weidman says, the pirate, Augustus Brasco isn't a bad sort, for a pirate anyway. He went to ground in the city with Annalise Weidman and a few friends. Mr. Weidman has been supporting them by stealing medical supplies and selling them on the black market. Weidman wants to help, but he wants to keep his sister alive. She's all the family he has."
"Let me talk to him." Kate said. "I used to be pretty good at making deals with crooks to get bigger crooks."
Kate went into the interrogation room while the rest watched through a one-way mirror. Kate sat across from Weidman and silently read his file and that of his sister. As she read, Weidman got more and more nervous.
"I had to do it. Annalise is all I have. I'm all she has. Please, I'll do anything to keep her alive."
Kate put the files down. "We can't make any hard and fast promises. These are hardened killers your sister is involved with."
"Not Augustus. He's just a farm boy from some backwoods planet. He worked in supply."
"Do you want to save your sister or Augustus?" Kate asked sharply.
"Annalise, of course."
"Then you have one chance. If you don't cooperate, you go to jail and we look for Annalise and her friends with no reason to keep any of them alive. Understand?"
"I'll cooperate. I can tell you where they are. I'm supposed to meet them tomorrow."
The man who called himself Mike Bennett decided he liked being a sergeant. At least he liked this job. Riding heard on a squad of rookies would drive him up the wall, and the thought of keeping some green second lieutenant from killing himself and half a platoon made him ill. But running the snipers, he liked. His teams were all experienced combat veterans with plenty of first-class training, the best weapons and gear, and the brass left him and his snipers alone. Mostly.
He was set up with his spotter at the end of a shot up alley near where a group of pirates was supposed to be hiding. An assault team would go in the front, forcing the pirates to run out the back. When they did, they'd be covered by three sniper teams. But Bennett had a special job.
He heard the order for the assault team to breach over the radio, quickly followed by an explosion. In seconds he saw his two targets running down the alley. The man, wisely, stopped at a cross street so that he could carefully check what was down the street. Before he could look around the corner, Bennett shot him in the meaty part of the thigh and he went down.
"No muss, no fuss." Bennett muttered. "No broken bones and no artery hit."
There were three shots from where the man had fallen.
"Shit." Said his spotter. "The chick is shooting at us."
"All she has is a pistol." Bennett said calmly. "She can't hit shit at this range."
"She's taken cover. All I can see is her head when she shoots. Want me to drop her?"
Bennett laughed. "Hell, no. I'm going to show off."
He had checked out the whole alley while waiting for the fun to start. He knew exactly what to do. He fired one shot.
"What are you doing? You missed her by ten feet. "
"Oh, ye of little faith." Bennett said, taking his second shot. The second shot brought down a section of already damaged brickwork onto the girl's leg. "Now they can use his and hers crutches."
Bennett surveyed the alley. The rest of the pirates were down and dead. "Get on the radio and advise command we're done, just like I said we'd do it."
Bennett decided he really, really liked his new job.
At Kate's suggestion, Augustus, the "good" pirate was given a job at the hospital moving heavy things. Word was spread that pirates who cooperated might be punished by something other than a bullet in the back of the head. Very few cooperated.
Castle briefed General Hughes on his next plan, having first run it by Colonel Esposito.
"General, my battalion has a company of helicopters as does Colonel Esposito. You also have a small air arm."
Hughes held up his hand. "Small is the word, Colonel Castle. I have two ZipSpeeders, sport runabouts meant for two people that I use as scouts. By using lightweight pilots, I can equip the pilots with protective vests and a light machine gun with limited ammo. If I tried to armor the helicopters or give them real firepower, they'd never get off the ground."
"Correct, sir. But you have a half dozen damaged ZipSpeeders and with Colonel Esposito's help, we managed to cannibalize enough spare parts to put one more in the air. Plus, you have a local copy of a Tatra Air model 369 that'll carry ten fully equipped troops that just needed some repairs and spare parts. Colonel Esposito's company can carry two platoons of troops. My own helicopters can carry the assault elements of a company and I have aerial scouts and gunships."
"In addition, we have found you have three commercial freighter aircraft at the spaceport. They can carry thirty troops each."
Hughes nodded. "True, but they'll need a place to land."
"Colonel Esposito and I have troops that are trained as paratroopers, and we have people qualified to train paratroopers. We have thousands of pirates and collaborators spread over tens of thousands of square kilometers of this planet. Using Colonel Esposito's and my troops as a cadre with your troops, we can put together a couple of strong companies of airmobile troops to catch our enemies almost as soon as we spot them."
"Then we should do it, shouldn't we, gentlemen."
Sergeant-Pilot Grimes could see nothing in the scrub below him. He had long since learned that his instruments couldn't tell the difference between a man and the bush pigs that roamed half the planet.
"Got something on the right." Said his observer." Maybe five hundred meters away."
He had been flying the Tarkai scout around for too long to not believe he had something.
"What is it, Barlennan?"
Sergeant Barlennan smiled, showing his sharp teeth. "A bush was moving against the wind, like someone was trying to get a look at us. Do you want to fly over it or give them a burst from here?"
Grimes didn't have to think about that one. "Ammo is cheap, but helicopters and pilots are expensive." He waited just a beat before adding, "Not to mention the cost of a good Tarkai scout. Can you light them up with a laser?"
Barlennan swing the laser designator up and aimed at the spot where he'd seen the bush move. "Designating now."
Grimes swung around and fired a long burst from the two 15mm machine guns his ship carried. He watched as red tracers slammed into the area Barlennan had illuminated.
To his surprise, green tracers came back at him. Bullets bounced off the armored glass of the cockpit and his instruments showed damage to one of his rotor blades.
"Dumb ass pirates. If they'd held their fire, we might have thought it was just another damned bush pig. Call it in, Barlennan."
TBC