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.
Far to the west, on the endless prairie, Castle read the intelligence briefing from Lieutenant Briscoe.
"What did we find out?" Kate asked, looking over his shoulder.
"Something very interesting. What have I always told you?"
Kate made a show of thinking very hard. "I know. You like me best flat on my back with my legs spread as far…"
"Not that!" Castle said, embarrassed. He looked around to see if anyone was close enough to notice. "About strategy."
"Oh that. You always say that in war, amateurs talk about strategy and the professionals talk about logistics. So, we're going to talk about logistics?"
Castle nodded. "When we left the city, we loaded everything we could onto out own vehicles and took every truck we could find and loaded more supplies onto them. We destroyed any supplies we couldn't carry and also destroyed as many as we could of the civilian vehicles we had to leave behind. Colonel Davidson doesn't have an over abundance of supply vehicles and the farther he moves from his base in Harmony City, the longer his supply lines get. We, on the other hand, have our supplies with us. Colonel Davidson is going to have real problems with his supply lines."
Finally, after a month on the planet, Davidson's regiment went off to fight Battle Group Castle. Morale was high as the outnumbered their enemy three to one. However, the column stopped not five kilometers from the outskirts of the city.
"What the hell do you mean the bridge is unusable?" Colonel Davidson screamed into his mic. "It was fine when our drone flew over it yesterday."
"Sir, it just looked fine. The bastards damaged it, but not badly enough to bring it down, but if we try to drive any kind of vehicle over it, it'll collapse, sure as shit."
"Get the god damned engineers out there and get it fixed." Davidson yelled.
The engineers put up a temporary bridge, but the column was stopped for the whole day and night. Two nights after the column had passed over the bridge, it was blown up again.
Davidson's tracked vehicles, tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, self-propelled artillery and such could easily drive cross country. His wheeled supply vehicles could not. The next day they came to another wrecked bridge, although it was a small one. As the column halted, a rotary winged drone from Battle Group Castle sped low over the prairie and hovered about three kilometers from the head of Davidson's column. Seventy-five kilometers away, Castle's 155mm guns got their firing data from the drone. Each gun fired two rounds and then moved. They were not sure whether or not Davidson had artillery that could reach them. He did not.
Castle had not brought a lot of either armor-piercing artillery rounds or guided rounds. Of the sixteen rounds fired, twelve were set to detonate some ten meters above ground, scattering shrapnel all around and the others were set to explode on contact. Most of Davidson's troops were inside their vehicles and only three were killed by shrapnel and eight wounded. Three of the other rounds damaged two tanks, but they were easily repairable. The other exploded on a four-wheel armored scout car, blowing it apart and killing the crew of four.
The column drove on once the bridge was repaired.
That night a column of civilian vehicles, mostly cars, bringing supplies to Davidson was ambushed. The only escort, another small scout car was quickly destroyed and the vehicles and their supplies were destroyed. The raiders were then picked up by helicopter and blew up two bridges that had previously been repaired.
By the time he had moved one hundred and twenty kilometers from Harmony City, Davidson had been forced to detach one company from each of his battalions, one company from his reconnaissance battalion and half of his engineers just to keep his supply lines safe and functioning.
They did manage to shoot down one of Castle's scout helicopters that ventured a bit too close. Davidson ordered the surviving crewman shot.
Through all of this, Castle managed to keep his main force our of the range of Davidson's artillery, but within range of his own. There was no massive barrage, but a constant rain of up to twenty rounds at a time which kept the enemy troops cooped up in their armored vehicles, and did damage to the unarmored vehicles.
Davidson was again on the radio and screaming at Captain Lee, orbiting high overhead in the Taichung.
"Dammit, Lee! You have enough firepower to reduce this whole shitty planet to radioactive slag. All I need is for you to shoot up Castle's damned command. He has no defenses against an attack from space. Can't you see that?"
"Of course, I can, Colonel Davidson." Lee said soothingly. "But my orders are quite clear. I can only attack if my ship itself is attacked. Neither Colonel Castle, nor anyone else on the planet has posed the slightest threat to me. I'm afraid my hands are tied." Although Captain Lee kept a perfectly straight face, he was enjoying the American's discomfort immensely.
"Then how about leaning on Hughes or Esposito? I know those bastards have vehicles I can use to supply my forces."
Lee shrugged and spread his hands beseechingly. "I'm afraid that "leaning on" those people, as you call it, would also be in violation of my orders. My sole purpose was to escort you here, allow you to arrest the miscreants, and escort you back to Earth. Nothing else."
Davidson angrily broke the connection.
Davidson got another call on the radio. This was from the commander of his reconnaissance battalion.
"Sir, we had a drone off to the south pick up something before it was shot down. All it could see was a big cloud of dust heading east towards Harmony City. Castle must be making a run for the city. If he gets to our supplies, we're done for."
"God dammit!" Davidson yelled and began ordering the whole column to turn around and go back the way they had come. For two days they worked rebuilding bridges, removing mines and suffering under intermittent artillery barrages. At dawn on the third day, the dust cloud that had hovered on the horizon was gone.
As Davidson cursed and wondered what had happened, Castle's helicopter pilots were congratulating themselves on the wonderful dust storm they'd stirred up by flying very low in a dense formation.
Davidson headed back the way he'd come. Two days later, he had to stop.
"We're short of damned near everything, sir. If Castle were to turn on us, we'd probably beat him, but it'd be a damned close-run thing."
"If I put any more of my units protecting my supply lines, Castle sure as hell will turn on us. Shit, if we go another fifty kilometers, he can just drive down the damned road to Harmony City, picking us off one platoon at a time. What the hell are we going to do? Sooner or later a damned ECDO ship is going to show up, see what's going on and then we'll be in deep shit. They'll bring all kinds of reinforcements here."
"I do have an idea, sir."
Colonel Davidson liked the idea. The captain of the Tannenberg did not.
"You want me to land one of my dropships in the middle of a war zone? Hell, no." The captain said forcefully. "It's not in my contract and if anything happens to my dropship, insurance won't cover it. I never got insurance for any kind of war damage. Absolutely not."
But, with a mixture of promises and threats about what Senator Bracken could and would do, Davidson got the captain to agree to land a dropship at Harmony City, load up with supplies and take them to Davidson's stalled column. All this would be done, they hoped, before Castle could react.
They had overlooked two things. Castle still had intelligence agents in Harmony City and they had very good electronic eavesdropping equipment. They didn't actually need very good equipment as the civilian Tannenberg had no facilities to decode scrambled radio messages, so all communications had to be done in clear. And all were heard by Lieutenant Briscoe and his troops.
The dropship landed and took on all the cargo it could carry. By this time, Briscoe had a landline to a distant farmhouse where a radio team was stationed. Castle knew the dropship was coming before it was out of sight of the spaceport.
The dropship landed and Davidson's men rushed to unload her. They had unloaded very little when for the first time, Castle fired his long range, hard hitting, and very accurate missiles at the ship. Spaceships have to be very sturdily constructed with thick, tough hulls to stand the rigors of spaceflight, even within a solar system. The first two missiles only damaged a communications array and a space boat dock. The commander of the dropship wasn't going to hang around to see what further damage would be done. He headed back into space, leaving so rapidly that several crewmen were left behind and a few soldiers were still aboard the ship.
Davidson cursed, raved and threatened, but nothing would convince the captain of the Tannenberg to send down another dropship.
Davidson was at wits end trying to decide what to do. Then things got worse.
"You're being attacked?" Davidson screamed into his mic early the next morning. "By who?"
Lieutenant Colonel Valens, who had been left in charge of Harmony City answered. "Colonel Esposito's Tercio Corazon Negro. They infiltrated the city last night and attacked this morning. They've taken the spaceport and our main fuel dump. They've also captured a large amount of infantry weapons and ammo we had hoped to send to you by dropship. I managed to hold onto the artillery and tank ammo dump long enough to move most of it to our headquarters, along with damaged but still useful armored vehicles. I have them all at Esposito's old headquarters on Pill Hill. We're in good shape here because they won't use heavy weapons on us for fear of hitting the civilian hospital next door. There are a small number of support units holding out in the rest of the city, but we need help."
Davidson felt like shooting someone, but there was no one to shoot. He took a deep breath. "Okay, Phil, we'll have to suspend our offensive and head everyone back to Harmony. I'll get a battalion headed to you ASAP. Davidson out."
He called his staff and commanders together and explained what they'd have to do.
"We have the equivalent of a strong battalion protecting our supply lines. If I send another battalion back to deal with Esposito, I'll only have one battalion to face Castle. That could be dicey. Jimmy, I want you to take your battalion back to Harmony ASAP. Pick up the detachments from your battalion on the way as well as the company of recon troops. We'll head back, picking up the rest of the troops guarding our supply lines, but we'll stop on the outskirts of Harmony. An armored battalion should be able to shred Esposito's damned light infantry. I want him and every one of his troops hung by their balls. If Castle comes after us, he'll have to attack my two battalions. We'll be ready for him.
"Now, go."
TBC