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.
"Jesus fucking Christ, Doyle. Will you quit screwing around?" The sergeant said.
"I'm fucking blind!" Doyle screamed.
The sergeant reached over and pulled Doyle's helmet off. Suddenly, Doyle could see.
"There was a can of red paint inside the damned building. You got splashed by red paint is all. It's all over your visor."
Doyle staggered to his feet. He was red all over. At least in the front.
"Hey, Sarge." Yelled one of the paratroopers. "We're in luck. The grenade was pretty much a dud. Didn't hardly damage any of the weapons or ammo. Hughes can arm himself another platoon or so with this."
"Hear that, Doyle? We got lucky today."
"Fuck you very much." Doyle said. "I have to go clean up my suit."
"Inside and out I imagine." The sergeant said.
Doyle made some comments about the sergeant's ancestry and personal habits as he left.
Meanwhile, a squad from the Tercio was working its way through the sewers beneath Harmony City.
"Jesus, Corporal Ibarra. The stench down here is enough to gag a maggot." Private Quinones said.
"One more word out of you, Quinones, and I'll have you dive to the bottom to see what's down there."
Although the liquid waste they were walking through was only ankle deep, Quinones shut up.
Ibarra checked his map again.
"Okay, almost there. We go another fifty meters, turn right and there it is."
They went another fifty meters, turned right and found themselves facing a concrete wall.
"Quinones, Izquierdo, get your picks out and chop through this wall."
A half an hour layer, they were still chopping away.
Izquierdo stopped to wipe the sweat from his forehead.
"Corp, this wall has been here for a while. There's no way that the pirates put it here since we got here. We went wrong someplace."
Corporal Ibarra cursed and checked his map.
"I think we may have gone wrong at junction M-3." He finally announced.
"That's a damned kilometer behind us." Someone moaned.
"So, turn around and get moving." The corporal barked.
So, they marched back the way they came. Once back at junction M-3, Ibarra studied his map.
"Corp, I think I know what happened." Lance Corporal Olindo said, diffidently.
"What?" Ibarra growled.
"The tunnels here are marked with Roman numerals, right?"
"Right, genius."
"We went in this tunnel, which is marked above it with a V, Roman for five. But," Olindo picked up a rusty length of rebar and banged it on the concrete beside the V, bringing down a shower of dried crap, but showing the number was actually VI. "See? This is tunnel six, but we couldn't see the number properly. I think tunnel V is over there."
Corporal Ibarra walked to where Olindo had pointed, cursed and then said, "Okay, let's go."
They were halfway to their destination when they noticed something.
"Hey! Tide is coming in. The shit used to be up to our ankles, now It's halfway up my calves."
Before anyone else could speak, a foot-tall wave of sewage shot past them.
"That is rank." Quinones said.
"Don't the pricks upstairs know we're down here?"
"There's a maintenance platform about a hundred meters behind us." Ibarra said. "We'll make for that."
They climbed up to the top of the maintenance platform and found they were a good meter above the tide of sewage. But the stench was incredible.
"Put on your gasmasks." Ibarra said. His men quickly complied.
It was an hour before the sewage level went back down to more or less ankle level. The troops got down and trudged onward.
"Okay, this time we're just about there." Ibarra said, checking his map. "The pirates put a cache of stolen medicines down here to send to their pals outside the city. It'll be covered with some wallboard and a thin coat of old bricks. But be careful. Sometimes these things are booby trapped."
It wasn't booby trapped and it wasn't covered with anything. Instead, they found an opening cut into the side of the sewer about ten feet wide, four feet high and five feet deep. Inside were several dozen furry animals, all apparently sound asleep, and the remains of the cache of medicines.
"What are those things?" Ibarra demanded. "Are they dead? Sick?"
Olindo picked one up. "Corp, I think they've been eating the tricopamazine. It's a sedative. I think they're all stoned."
"Where are all the other medicines?"
Olindo used his foot to bring up a soggy carboard box. "I think they just tossed anything that didn't make them feel good into the sewer. No one is going to want this stuff now."
Ibarra swore. "Okay, there's still a few boxes and bottles of the medicines in the back. Grab them and grab some of the…whatever they are so they don't think we stole the medicines."
Quinones spoke. "I think the locals call these trash pandas, Corporal."
"Since you know so damned much about them, Quinones, grab and armful of them and let's get out of here."
When they got back to their barracks, they were sent quickly to the showers and their clothing and equipment was sent to be cleaned. When they were done, they reported to their platoon commander who took one sniff and sent them back to the showers. No one came near them if they didn't have to for a week.
They did find that they had two male and two female trash pandas, who became mascots for their squad. They were named Javier and Lanie, and Rick and Kate, although the names were never mentioned to any officer or senior NCO.
The destruction of the pirates' support network in Harmony City made things much easier for the troops hunting them. Lacking medicines, and suffering from vitamin deficiency diseases, some pirates preferred to surrender and face a quick death. Others made suicidal attacks on fortified farmhouses to find food and medicine. A few killed themselves when all seemed lost and some died alone in the wilderness after being abandoned by their healthier mates.
All seemed to be going much better.
It would not last.
The sensor operator on Valeria Victrix, in orbit above Harmony, suddenly sat up in his chair.
"We have someone coming out of FTL. Something pretty big."
The officers, including Captain Salzberg, came to the sensor station to see what had entered the system.
"That's a warship for sure. Bigger than we are."
"And we aren't a warship." Salzberg said. "Just a damned armed transport.
"Incoming message."
The view screen lit up with the face of an Asian man in the uniform of a captain in the Alliance Navy. He spoke. "I am directing this broadcast to the captain of the ship orbiting Harmony, to General Hughes, the leader of the government of Harmony, to Colonel Javier Esposito of the Tercio Corazon Negro, and to the criminals Richard Castle, Katherine Beckett and Alexis Harper."
He waited for a minute to make sure he had their attention.
"We have valid arrest warrants for Castle, Beckett and Harper. We intend to take them back to Earth to stand trial. If the three criminals are promptly handed over, we'll leave and that will be that. Otherwise, we'll have to come get them. We are escorting a ship carrying a powerful armored force that is fully capable of destroying any and all military forces on the planet. I leave you to make your own decisions."
The communication cut off.
The captain, Lee Quan Mu, shook his head once the communication was finished. "Assuming, that is, that that useless, wallowing pig of a ship that we nearly had to tow here arrives."
But, Captain Lee was happy. His command, the light cruiser Taichung was a fine ship, and no matter what happened on the planet below, his future was assured by this mission. He had no idea what kind of financial and political payments the American Bracken had needed to give up to get the Taichung to this god forsaken hellhole, but when the China finally ran Earth, the Core and all of the human inhabited worlds, Lee was certain to be high in the command structure of the Chinese Fleet that would control everything.
Almost a day passed without anything further happening in space. Then the Taichung's sensor officer called out. "Ship coming out of FTL. It must be the Tannenberg."
"Where is it?" Captain Lee demanded.
"Deep in the Oort Belt. It'll take him at least three days to get here."
"I suppose we should be glad the damned long-nosed ocean barbarians got here at all."
It did take the Tannenberg three days before it managed to go into orbit around Harmony. The ship was not military and had never carried troops before. The loss of the chairmanship of the Senate Finance Committee to one of Bracken's political foes had meant Bracken had to use his own resources to fund the attack on Battle Group Castle. While Bracken's finances were very large for one person, they were no where near what a government could use. Corners had to be cut, and were.
The crew of the Tannenberg had never heard of the concept of combat loading, that is, to load last that which will be needed most immediately when the troops landed so that it can be unloaded first. The troops discovered this when they found that their artillery ammunition had been loaded on pallets on top of the crated and disassembled fork lifts need to move the ammunition. Similar problems abounded.
In the meantime, Battle Group Castle had pulled all of its troops from Harmony City and moved to the plains to the west. The Tercio had declared itself neutral in the combat to come, but had prudently moved to the forests to the north. The Valeria Victrix had moved out of orbit and out to a gas giant surrounded by tens of thousands of moons, some large, some just rocks.
General Hughes kept his troops in Harmony City, but complained endlessly to anyone who would listen. Few would.
Eventually, dropships began unloading the troops and their supplies while the Tannenberg remained in orbit.
Two groups of Castle's troops remained in the city. There were four soldiers who were too badly wounded to be moved and two doctors. They were shot at once along with two civilian doctors who had complained.
The other group was led by one of the group's intelligence officer, Lieutenant Briscoe. They operated in civilian clothing and did their best not to be noticed. They did have the assistance of friendly barmaids, hospital personnel, a few hookers and just plain patriots.
Briscoe soon found out that the troops who had landed had abysmal information security. It was so easy to find out everything and anything about their enemies that Briscoe worried it all might be some fiendish trap. But, he eventually concluded that things were as bad as they seemed.
Two weeks after the enemy had first begun landing, Briscoe sat in a safe house making notes for the intelligence report he'd send to Colonel Castle.
First, he noted, the commander of the force attacking them was none other than their old enemy from Big Rock, Colonel Davidson. He had managed to grab an escape pod and eject before his ship had crashed. He had a score to settle with Castle.
Davidson's unit was regiment sized. Three battalions, each with two tank companies and two armored infantry companies plus a weapons company. However, they only had twelve 127mm artillery pieces, which would be outranged by Castle's own 155mm guns and his rockets. He had an engineer battalion, reconnaissance battalion, and a support battalion, but only an aviation company. But, his force was still three times the size of Battle Group Castle.
The troops were almost all political bully boys from Bracken's personal guards and supporters. They were individually fairly well trained but had little training as a unit.
They had a very few American officers from the Alliance Army, and fewer NCOs. The rest of the officers and NCOs had been picked for their loyalty to Bracken, and not for their military abilities, as they had little of those.
He stopped when Sergeant Bennett came in with a smile on his face.
TBC