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.

Castle worked very hard over the next month turning his new, expanded unit into a well drilled team. All the while, other units, both "mercenary" and regular UK troops came and went from the planet. But he finally got a call to see Mr. Pennington again. He was surprised to see Colonel Esposito in Pennington's office when he arrived.

"Colonel Castle, I believe you already know Colonel Esposito from Harmony?"

"Yes, sir. Will we be working together again?"

"That you will."

At that, both Castle and Esposito smiled.

Pennington continued. "Have you gentlemen ever heard of the planet Welland?"

Castle answered. "I've heard of it, but that's about all."

"Me too." Esposito added.

A holographic map of the Europa Cluster appeared over Pennington's desk. A single sun blinked not too far from the Core, but still within the Europa Cluster.

"That's where it is. It's in a perfect place to interfere with out trade with Earth and the other Core worlds. And that's exactly what's happening."

The hologram changed and now showed a planet. Pennington went on. "The planet of Welland is named after the colony of Welland, but they aren't our problem. They provide food, machinery and recreation services for a mining colony at Blue Bell, a collection of gas giants some 2.8 light years away, with moons that have just about every manner of valuable ores known to humans. The mining colony is run by a very wealthy and politically connected Earth corporation. Because of that, Welland Colony has no problems with pirates."

"Our problem is with the colony of Santa Cruz, on the other side of the planet from Welland, on a continent called Atlantis. Atlantis was some sort of lost continent in Earth mythology, or so I'm told. There are three colonies on that continent. There is the Atlantean Free Cossack Host, better known as the Atlantean Cossacks. That colony numbers about three and a half million people and since the Cossacks are a military people, has a large, if not well-equipped army. Their space navy is a pair of ancient frigates that couldn't outfight a Han Worlds pirate. They have asked to join the ECDO and have asked for help."

"They need help from Santa Cruz, a colony that's only slightly smaller than the Cossacks. It's an authoritarian state, but the dictator, President Oswaldo Grivas, likes to appear to be a good democrat and holds elections that he always wins. He'd rather bribe his enemies, or blackmail them, but he's not above seeing that they have "accidents." Santa Cruz is a hub for Han Worlds pirates. They bring hijacked ships in to be sold, along with their cargoes, all with appropriate paperwork, of course. The pirates get their ships repaired and supplied there and they have a whole section of the City of Santa Cruz set aside as their entertainment district. In addition to some four thousand fairly well armed police, they have a three thousand-man Han "volunteer" brigade for protection."

"How well are the police and volunteers armed, sir?" Castle wanted to know.

"The police have assault rifles, submachine guns, some machine guns and a few rocket propelled grenade launchers and some lightly armored vehicles. Their biggest fault is that they have no training for fighting above platoon level and very little of that."

"The Han volunteers are another matter. They're a well-armed light infantry brigade. I'll have a complete intelligence summary of your opponents for you."

Pennington smiled. "However, you will have some help on the planet. As you can see," He pointed to the hologram, "the Atlantean Cossacks and Santa Cruz border each other. The border runs along the Parana River. However, to the south of Santa Cruz is a colony called Pennsatucky. Odd name, I know. Technically, the border between Santa Cruz and Pennsatucky runs along the Briarpatch Mountains, here." He pointed again to the map. "But almost all of the colonists are here, in the far south, a good six hundred kilometers from Santa Cruz."

"They don't sound much like useful allies."

"Oh, they wouldn't be. The colony is small and poor, less than a million people and damned little industry. Mostly just family farms. Your allies will be the old Santa Cruz Gendarmes."

"Isn't gendarme the word for a policeman, sir?" Castle asked.

"Correct. However, when the colony was first established, the Santa Cruzeros were a bit nervous about their Cossack neighbors. The Cossacks back on Earth and elsewhere have a reputation for violence, although the Atlantean Host seems to be a peaceable sort, at least as far as Cossacks go. However, the government of Santa Cruz turned their police force, which was already a paramilitary force, into an army. Rather a lightly equipped army, but an army none the less."

"How would the enemy's army be a help to us, sir?" Esposito asked.

"Oh, they're not the enemy's army any more. When President Grivas first cheated his way into office some twenty years ago, the people demonstrated against him in massive numbers. He ordered the Santa Cruz Gendarmes to suppress the demonstrations with as much force as they could muster. The Gendarmes refused. That's when Grivas called in Han volunteers. Most of the Gendarmes' senior officers were arrested and shot. The rest of the Gendarmes were told to hand in their weapons. They refused and fought their way to the south. They've been living in the northern border area of Pennsatucky ever since."

Castle frowned. "Their youngest soldiers must be in their forties by now, sir, and whatever weapons they have are getting old as well. Will they be of any use to us?"

"Yes. The Gendarmes took their families with them when they retreated and over the years many people have left Santa Cruz to join them. Grivas seems to think that allowing dissidents to leave his country is better than making martyrs out of them, or having them in Santa Cruz working against him. The Gendarmes' colony has a population of seventy thousand or so people, with about six thousand serving in the Gendarmes."

"How about weapons?"

"The Gendarmes got lucky. They found a significant amount of rare earths, mostly cerium, erbium, lanthanum, and thulium, although I understand all seventeen rare earths are found there. There isn't enough to make them an economic power in the Human Worlds, but they sell to the Cossacks and get weapons, ammunition and other supplies. They have been able to set up small industries. They make their own small arms ammunition, up to 120mm mortar ammunition and their own uniforms, and other military personal gear, such as webbing, canteens, first aid kits."

Pennington looked around him and lowered his voice. "This is not to leave this room until your command is on Welland planet. We've been sending them weapons and equipment for the last seven months or so through the Cossacks. We also have a small Special Forces training team there under a Captain Bullock. Apparently, and I stress the word "apparently", neither Grivas or his Han friends have noticed any of our recent activities. They still think of the Gendarmes as a very lightly armed force with minimal logistics and incapable of doing them any harm. We intend to disabuse them of that notion."

Pennington glanced at his watch. "I fear I have another meeting. Mr. Cebulski, my aide, has an intelligence packet for each of you. Good day, gentlemen."

Castle and Esposito were given a large packet of information upon leaving Pennington's office.

"Javi, since were going to be working together, we should get our staffs together and go over the intel."

Esposito smiled. "You're still the senior colonel, so were not working together, I'm working for you. But you're right. Your headquarters are nicer than mine. Meet you there in an hour?"

Castle nodded and both men headed for their respective headquarters.

An hour later, Castle called the meeting to order. "Okay, I'd like you to just quickly run through the documents and see if there's anything good or bad that jumps out at you. "

Kate came up with the first observation. "There should be lots of good tank country on the planet."

"Why do you say that?" Rick asked.

"It's an old planet, a billion or more years older than Earth. Erosion has ground the mountains down to mere stumps. There's little or no tectonic activity, so no earthquakes or volcanoes. The rivers are all slow and shallow. Good tank country."

One of Esposito's officers spoke up. "True, Captain Beckett, but we'll need to fight in the city of Santa Cruz itself, not in the countryside. The three spaceports are there and all the groundside repair facilities are there. And all of the pirates will be in the entertainment zone on the south side of the Panuco River. And the Han pirate ships will be in orbit above us. They won't mind shooting the hell out of the planet below us if it means they can shoot us up. The open country won't give us much cover."

Castle nodded. "All true. We'll gave to use tactics much like those we used on Harmony. Send the light infantry in first and use my armored unit to back them up. We have Colonel Esposito's three battalions and I'm going to ask Mr. Pennnington if we can recruit our joint airborne/heliborne company up to battalion strength. And get some more helicopters."

Castle looked at his pad. "According to this Captain Bullock, the Gendarmes are well trained, and well-motivated, if not as heavily armed as we might wish. I hope Bullock is right, but we won't know until we get there."

Captain O'Hara, Castle's intelligence officer, spoke. "I've been looking at the political briefing, sir. The Han seem to be making quite an effort not to step on the toes of the ordinary Santa Cruzeros. The pirates on leave are kept in the area set aside for them in the south of the city and any pirate who goes outside and gets into trouble is savagely punished. The policing is done entirely by the local police. According to the report, you never see any Han volunteers on the streets. They're confined to a military base to the west of the city. It's not a big base and it's surrounded by farmland. There's enough room on the base for company sized exercises, but nothing bigger. If they aren't having regular battalion and brigade sized exercises, they may be getting all rusty, sitting there all the time, scratching their bums. We should look into that."

Again, Castle nodded. "We'll ask for more intel on that, Johnny."

"One more thing, sir. They have a luxury hotel in the southern zone for their VIPs, ships captains, visiting Han dignitaries, people doing business with the pirates. It's quite a place with large, comfortable suites, gambling, alcohol, drugs and sex. We should think about hitting the place ASAP to decapitate their leadership."

Captain Marti Brennan, a tall, slender, grey haired woman who was in charge of training spoke up. "We didn't do as much work with the light infantry as I'd like, sir, and the new people haven't done any. There are several urban training centers here. We should ask for the use of one or more and get everyone up to speed on how to fight in cities. City fighting is a bitch. We could use more engineers for that, and I understand there's a sapper company here that specializes in that. Could you ask for them, sir?"

Castle nodded as he made notes of what was said.

"One thing that worries me," Esposito said, "is how the hell are we going to get all of our people down to the Gendarmes' base without all the damned Han pirates noticing? As far as I can tell, they don't get a ship a year there. All of a sudden there are ships landing all the time? The Han will notice."

Castle sighed. One more thing to worry about.

TBC