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.
"What do you mean, nothing?" Colonel Valens demanded.
"I mean fucking nothing!" Glass screamed into the mic. "There are none of our soldiers here, there are no bodies, all of the vehicles are blown to shit and there's no supplies or ammo here. All that's here is one of our own fucking radios with a note on it. The note says, "Suckers." That's all that was ever here. A fucking enemy soldier using one of our radios."
"Okay, Captain. I understand. You should return to base now."
"Return to base? I lost half of my fucking command just getting here. I've got wounded, I'm short of machine gun ammo which is all that's useful against those fuckers in buildings, and my anti-missile defenses are damaged. I try to go back and we're all dead."
Valens shook his head. "Okay, Captain. Stay where you are and fort up. There are enough buildings where you are now that the enemy won't have any direct shots at you. We'll get you out somehow. Valens out."
Glass positioned her vehicles inside the ordnance company's perimeter, arranged for a 360-degree defense. She was relatively satisfied until a mortar round hit the roof of the building her tank was in.
"Not to worry, Captain." One of her NCOs said. "The roofs here are really thick. They'll have to drop a lot of mortar shells on us to get one through."
Glass was about to say that the Tercio had a lot of mortar shells, but refrained.
Just after sunset, Glass heard three metallic clanks in rapid succession.
"What was that? Talk to me, people."
"This is Alpha Two Seven, ma'am. A damned sniper just shot out my right forward sensor array. I won't be able to see anything coming at me from there."
Glass cursed. Career enhancing tour, my ass. She thought. If I get out of this, I'll go back and work for the old family firm.
Two and a half kilometers away Sergeant Mike Bennett smiled to himself as he moved to another sniper's hide. The 15mm sniper rifles they'd captured from Davidson's troops were beasts. They were so damned heavy that it took two men to move them, and another two to carry the ammo and spotting gear. Plus, the muzzle flash could give the position away if the enemy was paying any damned attention. But, they had five of the monsters, so Bennett would keep moving from one place to another. Yes, life was good for Sergeant Mike Bennett.
Valens knew what he had to do, but he hated doing it.
Colonel Davidson was angry. He had lost some vehicles and men on the trip back. Now he was dug in about five kilometers from the outskirts of Harmony City. He had laid mine fields, dug both his troops and his vehicles in, and had put observers in camouflaged hides as far out of twenty kilometers from his main position. He had assumed that Castle would attack to relieve pressure on the Tercio, but that hadn't happened. His observers occasionally saw Castle's patrols, but for the most part he remained outside of the range of Davidson's artillery, but kept Davidson's position in range of his own guns. Castle was keeping up a rather leisurely fire, but every day Davidson lost a few men and suffered damage to his vehicles.
"Sir," His orderly said, "Lieutenant Colonel Valens is on the horn for you."
Davidson walked to the comm room and picked up the microphone. "Have you wiped out Esposito and his damned grunts yet?" He demanded.
Valens took a deep breath. "No. It's more like he's wiping us out." He was interrupted by a tirade of obscenities from Davidson. But when Davidson finally calmed down, Valens explained. He had lost, or lost the use of, one complete company, and with the loss of vehicle here, or a fire team there, he was down to basically three weak companies in his battalion.
"Colonel Davidson, we lost the Military Police HQ yesterday. The commander reported Esposito's troops were inside the building and he was short of ammo. Then the radio cut off. Damn! I lost a platoon of four IFVs within the sight of my HQ. There was a huge bomb in a sewer tunnel and then a barrage of anti-tank missiles."
"What the fuck do you suggest?" Davidson yelled.
"Pull your command back into the city. We can all dig in on what they call Pill Hill. I have my HQ in what was Esposito's headquarters building. They won't use their heavy weapons on Pill Hill because the civilian hospital is right next door. Once he's in the city, Castle will have the same problems we do with fighting in such enclosed terrain. And we'll still outnumber him."
Davidson and Valens talked about it for a while, but eventually Davidson decided this was his only option.
Davidson was unaware that, many kilometers away, Castle and his staff was listening in to his conversation. Castle still had intelligence people inside the city, and thanks to Esposito's people, they were now well protected. The also had excellent electronic warfare equipment and were able to unscramble Davidson's scrambled radio conversation.
Castle smiled broadly. "So, Davidson thinks we'll have the same problems in the city as he does. We won't have three battalions of very good light infantry shooting at us like he does, and we still have some tricks up our sleeves. Beckett, are we all set for Operation Gopher?"
She nodded. "Since I'm the only person here from Earth, I had to explain to everyone what a gopher is, but we're ready."
Davidson pulled his troops out in the middle of the night, and attracted more artillery fire than he had anticipated. But, once he was inside the city, he relaxed. The artillery fire stopped and they only got some sniper fire and the occasional hand held anti-tank rocket fired at them.
"Castle doesn't want to take the chance of shooting up the Tercio, or the civilians in town." Davidson said to the people in his command vehicle. "If it was me, I'd knock the whole damned city down. And then I'd make the rubble bounce."
Everyone laughed.
A day went past with very little combat. But then light and medium mortars began to bombard Davidson's position. That was quickly followed by shelling from heavy 120mm mortars that the Tercio had captured from Davidson's troops. Esposito's own artillery began shelling soon after. The Tercio had artillery forward observers all around Pill Hill and were able to bring accurate fire down. It didn't take long for Castle's artillery to join in.
"Colonel." Valens called out to Davidson. "Something's wrong. Some of the shells are going over us and hitting the hospital. They've always been very careful about shooting at civilians. I'm sending a patrol over."
The patrol soon radioed back with bad news. "Colonel Valens, the hospital is damned near empty. They cut through the foundation of the hospital from the sewers and evacuated all but a few patients and a couple of staff.
Davidson broke in on the conversation. "There are people there? Shoot them. Shoot them all."
"Sir, these are hospital patients and medics, civilians. We can't just…"
"If you can't, I can send someone over who can. And they'll shoot you as well. Now, shoot them."
The patrol leader complied.
Each day, Davidson's command got weaker. Knowing he had to do something he called Captain Lee, still orbiting above the planet. He explained his situation and demanded help.
Lee managed to sound upset at the predicament. "I wish I could help you, Colonel Davidson, I really do. But my orders do not include getting involved in a ground war on Harmony. There's nothing I can do for you."
"I was told that your orders were to give me any and all support I needed. And when I get back to Earth, I'm going to tell Senator Bracken exactly what happened here."
Lee looked very solemn. "You should do what you think is right. However, I assure you that my orders are perfectly clear. I was to escort you here, pick up the criminals once you'd apprehended them, and take them back to Earth for trial, and escort you to Earth as well. I'm sure that my commanders will back me up on this."
Davidson savagely broke the connection.
"Things couldn't get any worse." He said to himself.
In fact, they could and did.
"Captain. Somethings coming out of FTL. Make that several somethings."
Captain Lee walked quickly to the sensor officer's station. "They came out of FTL pretty deep in the system's gravity well."
"Yes, sir. I'm pretty sure they're military."
"See if you can figure out who they are."
The sensor officer gathered his team together and began to work. It didn't take that long.
"Captain Lee, they're UK Space Navy for sure. I make them a City Class heavy cruiser, a Battle Class light cruiser and six destroyers. Probably J or K Class. It'll be hard to tell until they're right on top of us."
Lee sighed. "Are we ready to depart?" Lee had long since decided that Davidson was a buffoon and was prepared to leave in case Davidson did something even more stupid than usual.
His Executive Officer replied. "We can leave in half an hour, sir. Faster if you want to strain things a bit."
Lee nodded. "We'll stay around for a bit and see what our friends from the UK are doing here."
The sensor officer spoke. "Sir, more ships coming out of FTL. Still military, but not warships. Probably transports."
"I believe Colonel Davidson is in more trouble."
It took several hours before the UK task force was close enough to the Taichung to make radio contact.
"Good day to you. I'm Commodore Reid-Daley, Royal Navy. Whom do I have the honor of addressing?"
"I'm Captain Lee, commanding the Triple Alliance Navy light cruiser Taichung.
"My, my. "Reid-Daley said. "We don't usually see Alliance vessels this far out."
Lee smiled. "Oh, we like to come out and look about every once in a while. And, may I ask what brings you here?"
"We received a request from the government of Harmony for assistance."
"You certainly have a powerful task force for a planet with no space navy or spatial defenses."
Reid-Daley nodded. "I have the heavy cruiser HMS Liverpool, light cruiser HMS Culloden and six K-Class destroyers: Kelley, Kingston, Killarney, Kenya, Kimberley and Kelvin."
"You appear to have more than that, Commodore."
"Oh, yes." Reid-Daley said absentmindedly. "We are escorting some troopships. We have a full rifle division with us, reinforced with an armored brigade and an airmobile infantry brigade, plus extra artillery, engineers and such. We understand there's combat on the planet."
"Yes, there is. We've been monitoring combat between some mercenary units." Lee lied smoothly.
"If you're planning on staying around, you should be careful. There just might be space combat."
"No, we were just about to leave. We'll be headed out in an hour."
"Have a good trip home, Captain."
"Thank you. Same to you, Commodore."
As they got ready to leave the system, Lee contacted Davidson to let him know what he would soon be up against.
A reinforced division would crush him, Davidson knew. He could surrender, but he had ordered the execution of prisoners of war and civilians. He'd either be shot, or brain channeled into some near brainless biological machine, fit only to clean toilets.
"Gina, will you come in here, please?" He called. "And lock the door behind you."
The woman smiled. "Yes, sir?"
"On your knees, Gina."
She did so and when she looked up, she saw the barrel of Davidson's pistol. It was the last thing she ever saw.
"I just can't stand the thought of another man using you, Gina." He said to her corpse.
He took a drink of the very expensive whiskey he saved for special occasions, then poured it on the floor. He didn't want anyone else drinking his whiskey. Then he put the barrel of his pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
TBC