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.
"Get the senior medic in here to look at these girls. And they need clothes." Moreno barked. "Sullivan, your spare shirt would make a damned ball gown for either of these girls. Get one dressed and if one of you assholes touches one of them, I'll strangle him with his own guts. And where the hell is the clothing for the other girl?"
The medic arrived and began checking the girls as gently as he could. They held onto each other, cried and spoke in a language that none of the soldiers understood.
"Check out all the pirates for any that are still alive. Those that can be patched up here will be taken back to Harmony City for trial. Anyone who won't survive the trip, put them out of their misery." Kerr ordered.
Only three pirates were still alive and they were dying. Each was shot in the head. Very few pirates were ever found lightly wounded enough to take back to Harmony City.
"Captain Kerr." Wisnewski, the senior medic said. "One of the mortar gunners from the heliborne says he can understand the girls. He says they speak some kind of bastard German. Their accent's a little off, but he can communicate."
"Get him and the girls in here."
Corporal Bohm claimed to be rightful heir to a barony on one of the Core Worlds that had been settled mostly by Germans. He was an educated man and spoke German, English and Spanish with an upper-class accent. He claimed he'd been kidnapped and sent to Crater by an ambitious younger brother. Some of the soldiers believed him.
"I didn't get much useful out of them. They're from a colony that was started a century or so ago so everyone could live without anyone being wealthier than anyone else. From the sound of it, the whole colony was dirt poor. Hannah, the oldest one, says they never saw a spaceship from the time the colony was founded until the pirates raided the place two years ago. She said their planet is called Welt, which is German for world and the sun is called Sonne, German for sun. They have no idea where their planet is in relationship to anything and I doubt we'd ever find it. I doubt if a place like that is in anybody's records."
"We'll take them back." Kerr said. "Although I don't know what we'd do with them. They have any skills?"
Bohm shook his head. "They can't read or write, or count much beyond their fingers. They lived on a farm and did grunt work. If the farms out here weren't all shot to hell, they might get work, but the farms closer to the city are all mechanized. I hate to say it, but they'll probably end up working in a knocking shop."
"Fuck that." Moreno said. "The airborne doesn't save people from pirates to let them become whores. We'll get 'em in a school somewhere."
Bohm and Kerr looked at each other.
"The schools on this planet are big on teaching people how to live harmonious lives, not teaching teenagers how to read and write." Kerr said.
"Then we'll just have to build our own school, won't we?" Moreno said. "These two aren't the only uneducated ex-slaves here. And Colonel Esposito will help and so will Colonel Castle, I'll bet."
Bohm smiled at the thought of rough and ready soldiers running a school. A year later, Herr Headmaster Bohm would feel differently.
"All right." Kerr said. "We've fucked around here enough. Gather up the pirates' weapons to give to General Hughes' merry men, get our gear together, and call in the lift birds. We're done here."
Colonel Javier Esposito had been up for over thirty-six hours, supervising an operation that eventually took two companies of foot mobile soldiers through a tangled forest in driving rain to try to track down a suspicious set of infrared images picked up by satellite that no one could find or identify. When he'd finally gotten the use of one scout helicopter, it had lost its sensors as soon as it got near the forest. On the way back to its base to repair the sensors, the engine had begun overheating and it had to make an emergency landing.
After all that, the "enemy" had turned out to be a bunch of rurals out hunting a large herd of bush pigs for meat.
"When this is over, I'll spend all of our money on choppers. Lots of them." He muttered as he relaxed on the couch in his office and prepared for some well-earned sleep.
"Sir, someone's here to see you." A sergeant said, knocking on his door.
"Can't it wait?" He snarled.
"Colonel Esposito, can I see you?' Said a feminine voice.
Esposito decided it couldn't wait. "Send her in."
She was a curvy, dark complexioned woman dressed in green hospital scrubs. She looked vaguely familiar, but Esposito couldn't place her.
"Come in and sit down, Ms…?"
"I'm Doctor Elaine Parish. We met on my first day on the planet. I'm afraid I was very nasty to you and I'm here to apologize." She hadn't sat down.
Esposito waved her towards a chair as he sat behind his desk. "Don't worry about it, Dr. Parish. In my line of work, people who are nasty to me are trying to kill me."
"Still, I was very rude to you and I need to apologize. Is my apology accepted?"
"Certainly."
"I understand you're from a Hispanic colony?"
"I'm from the colony of Extremadura, on the planet Catalina, in the Europa Cluster. But it's been a long time since I was there."
She pulled a small package out of her purse. "I cook a bit, so I thought I'd make you some paella. I also made some flan for dessert."
Esposito smiled. He hadn't had either dish in years. "Won't you join me, Dr. Parish?"
"Oh, I'm afraid I've already eaten, but I will have some flan with you. And please call me Lanie. It's short for Elaine."
Esposito quickly demolished the paella and sent for two dishes and to spoons for the flan.
"Colonel Esposito, there was another officer…"
"Please, call me Javier."
She smiled at him. "Javier, there was another officer there when I insulted you. I'd like to apologize to him as well. Is he nearby?"
Esposito shook his head. "The other officer is Colonel Richard Castle. We were both hired by the ECDO, the Europa Cluster Defense Organization, to track down the pirates that are left on this world. Colonel Castle commands an armored battalion task force and I command a light infantry regiment. Colonel Castle is the senior officer."
"I'm afraid I have no idea what that means." Lanie said.
Esposito explained the organization of the two units and said that Castle was in the field now and wouldn't be available for a week or perhaps more.
"We've found that the pirates have broken up into very small groups, so instead of using one of our battalions to chase them down, we need to send out small, platoon sized units to try to track them down. Castle keeps half of his unit in the field at any time and when they run into a pirate unit, everyone in range piles on. We've also set up small airmobile and paratroop units, but they are quite small."
"Won't the pirates just be able to fade into the uninhabited areas of the planet?" Lanie asked.
Esposito shook his head. "They have to stay near the inhabited areas of Harmony for the food. This is a planet that has never had humans on it for millions of years. Some plants and animals, like the bush pig are edible. They look a bit like wild boars from Earth and taste a lot like pork, and their proteins in their meat are compatible with humans. However, nothing on this planet has the vitamins that humans need in their diet. That requires plants and animals from Earth. It's getting on to harvest season now, and it'll be easy for small groups of a dozen or so pirates to raid a small farm, grab corn, apples, chickens, or whatever is there and run for it. We don't have enough troops to garrison every cornfield and chicken coop on all of Harmony."
"It sounds like you'll be here for a while."
"We're wearing them down, and unlike the pirates, we get supplies and reinforcements from off planet. In the end, we'll win. But the end will be some time from now."
They chatted for a while longer and then Lanie had to get back to the hospital. Esposito stretched out on his couch again and pulled a blanket over him. He decided he'd need to check on Surgeon-Captain Marroquin who had set up the Tercio's medical company in the hospital more frequently.
When Esposito woke up, he received more good news.
"Sir, we got a message torpedo from HMS Surprise. They're escorting a supply ship to us. I downloaded their cargo manifest for you. It's the usual weapons, ammo, food, medical supplies, but we are getting five more assault lift helicopters and a scout. They're for Colonel Castle, but I'm sure they'll go to our heliborne troops. We also have advisors and enough arms to outfit another two battalions for General Hughes. We also have some recruits for us from Las Cruces, and Castle is getting some replacements, including a hundred and twelve Tarkai."
"Sounds good."
"There is a downside, sir. When Surprise leaves, she'll be taking Sunflower with her. We won't have any warships in the Harmony system then, just the Valeria Victrix.
Esposito thought about that. The Tercio owned the Valeria Victrix, which was to say that Esposito owned it. It was a lightly armed transport and by no means a warship. Esposito shrugged. "We'll just have to make do with what we have."
Castle was in the middle of a dust storm on a seemingly endless prairie. He stood in the hatch of his command vehicle and called to the tank commander who was helping his gunner remove the rear decking of the tank so they could get to the engine. "Can you tell what's wrong?"
"Sir, I'm sure it's the damned air filters again. This dust clogs them up and we don't have any spares anymore, so we'll have to clean them over and over again."
Castle cursed and looked around him. Ahead of him was a line of three tanks. To his left and right were two infantry combat vehicles on each side. The crews were already getting out of their overheated vehicles. Behind his command vehicle was a boxy armored carrier that carried his communications. He could talk to anyone on the planet through it. Behind that was a self-propelled artillery rocket launcher, the longest-range weapon on the planet. Last in line were two armored supply vehicles. They were laden with plenty of ammunition for every weapon they had, but they were running short of everything else.
He ducked back inside.
"Kate, I think it's time to call it a day. We'll have Bandit Company replace us."
Kate raised an eyebrow, but didn't mention she had said the same thing two days ago.
"Good idea. It'll take me a week to get all of the dust out of places that shouldn't get dusty."
He smiled. "It'll only take a week if you have no help."
"Why, Colonel Castle, what a marvelous idea."
Castle had decided that sitting in his command vehicle in the middle of Harmony City was not going to work. He had divided his command into units of reinforced platoon strength and sent them out, one or two companies at a time to track down the pirates. He had attached his command group to one such unit. It had not been successful. In two weeks, they had chased a group of fifteen pirates into an ambush by the Tercio and he had loosed an expensive long-range missile at a group of pirates and had killed exactly three of them.
TBC