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.

The two staffs worked for several more hours trying to work out all of the problems they might face. Then Castle and Beckett spent more time working on the requests they'd make to Pennington. They wanted to get everything right.

Kate leaned over and kissed him. "We should get to bed. You don't want to be all tired out when you go see Pennington tomorrow."

Castle checked his watch. "It's only 2200 hours. We can work on this for another hour and still get plenty of sleep."

Kate walked away from him, rolling her hips. "I said go to bed. I didn't say a word about going to sleep."

Castle got up and followed her to their quarters. "Pennington can wait. I do my best work on my feet anyway."

"That's not how I do my best work, lover."

Rick was surprised the next morning by a call from Pennington's office.

"Colonel Castle, could you possibly see Mr. Pennington at 11 o'clock this morning?"

"Of course. 11 o'clock. I'll be there."

"What was that?" Kate asked.

"Pennington wants to see me at 1100 hours."

"Did they say why?"

He shook his head.

For the next several hours, Castle worried. Had the mission been called off? Was someone else commanding the mission? Had they decided not to give his unit a permanent contract? By the time Castle had gotten around to worrying about whether they had found out about his minor, and not so minor, indiscretions as a cadet, he had arrived at Pennington's office and was ushered in.

"Ah! Colonel Castle. Do sit down. I have a question for you."

Castle was about to confess to giving a wedgie to George Collins which caused George to spill his milk on their teacher, but Pennington spoke first.

"Have you ever thought of making Major Nagurski your intelligence officer?"

Castle had no idea how to respond. This was one question he'd not anticipated. "Major Nagurski, sir?"

Pennington nodded. "Yes, Nagurski. Branko Nagurski? Major? Commands your aviation unit? Surely you must have seen him about."

"Yes, sir. I know who Major Nagurski is and I've never thought of him as an intelligence officer." Castle had no idea what was going on.

"Too bad. He seems to have some excellent connections. Somehow he found out that an X-boat came in last night with news that the revolt on Lacedaemon had completely collapsed and that the reinforcements we had intended to send from here to there would no longer be needed."

"I wasn't aware of that, sir."

"Major Nagurski called up the commander of the aviation company we were about to send away, a Captain Ross. Ross was advised that Nagurski had a mission that could use Ross and his company. Apparently, this was just two old friends talking about good assignments that were coming up. Happens all the time, you know. And Ross assured me that you had no knowledge of this discussion, because if you did, I might view it as a commander trying to make an end run around me to get the unit he wanted. I wouldn't like that at all."

"No, sir. Neither Nagurski, Ross, or anyone else ever said a word to me."

"I didn't think they did, old boy. But Captain Ross and his company is available, so they might as well go with you. He has a standard aviation company with scouts, gunships and lift ships. He also has four J-45 Frelon heavy lift ships. They should be able to lift a half battery of Colonel Esposito's light artillery pieces and a good bit of ammo."

"Yes, sir. That would be perfect. Thank you, sir, but I think…"

Pennington cut him off. "You know, with all the aviation assets you have, you might consider increasing your airborne/airmobile company to a small battalion. We do have a battalion of the Rhodian Light Infantry here. Sadly, the battalion is down to two small companies, but I imagine you could use them. Should I ask Captain Andreou to see you? Sadly, he's the ranking officer in the battalion."

"Yes, sir. I've heard nothing but good things about the Rhodians."

Castle decided that he'd wait to ask about the other unit he wanted. He asked about getting more intel on the areas he and the staffs had talked about. The issue of how to land his force in northern Pennsatucky without alerting the Han and Santa Cruzeros had not been decided yet.

"I do see your point, old boy. We can't just have your dropships just crash past the pirates in orbit, or even wait until they're out of the way and try to land you in downtown Santa Cruz. God, what a mess that would be. But the Navy is working on it, never fear. They'll come up with something."

Castle hoped that what the Navy came up with wasn't fatal.

"Sir, there's one more thing. We'll be fighting in the city and we could use more combat engineers trained for urban warfare. I understand that…"

"Ah! I was wondering when you'd get around to them. You want the Peoples' Sapper Commando Company 352 of the Peoples' Liberation Army of the Peoples' Democratic Republic of Oklahoma. In spite of their rather odd political beliefs, they are very good and they have armored vehicles that specialize in urban warfare. They are a bit short of people, I fear. We have no suitable replacements for them, but I'm sure Leader Frank will be happy to go with you."

"Leader Frank, sir?"

"The PLA only has two ranks, soldier and leader. It'll take a bit, but you'll catch on. And they are better at gutting a city's defenses than any other unit I know of. Anything else, Colonel?"

"That's it, sir. I will see if we can think of some way to get my people down to Pennsatucky unseen. And thank you, sir."

"My pleasure, Colonel."

Castle spent the next two weeks integrating his new commands into his existing battalion, and the newly raised joint airmobile battalion. As he had hoped, both the RLI and the new aviation company were excellent and easily adapted to their roles.

The Sappers were a bit odd, he found. For one, Leader Frank had the habit of referring to himself and/or his unit as "the people". Instead of saying, "My unit will do that, Colonel.", he'd say, "The People will do that, Comrade Colonel." He also found out that the Oklahomans were ideological mercenaries. Their colony had been thoroughly trashed by raids by Han pirates and the Oklahomans hated the Hann with a deadly passion. The hatred was so intense that Castle felt he had to remind Leader Frank that there were laws of war that had to be obeyed. Frank answered, "The People will obey, Comrade Colonel."

After two weeks, Castle was starting to get worried that the mission was never going to go off.

"Don't get too worried, lover." Kate said. "Interstellar communications are slow. The fastest X-boats can only go a couple of hundred times the speed of light, warships are slower and transports slower still. They can't leave the Cossacks in the lurch, it would make the ECDO look powerless in the face of the Han Worlds. We'll go."

"I know. I know. It's just that my imagination gets the better of me. I'm imagining that the Han are bringing in reinforcements and building up their defenses as we just sit here."

"You know you could use your wonderful imagination for something else." She whispered in her ear.

"Good idea. I'll play a video game."

She took his hand and pulled him towards their quarters. "You'll pay for that, Colonel Castle."

"And I'll love every minute of it."

Two days later, Castle was called to see Mr. Pennington.

"Two pieces of good news for you, Colonel. The smaller bit of news is that you're getting two more 155mm self-propelled artillery pieces. Now you'll have ten. The big news is that you'll be leaving in four days. We received a message torpedo from the convoy and they're only four days away."

"Then the Navy has found a way to get us down to Pennsatucky without alerting the enemy?"

"They have. And I think it's rather imaginative."

The planet Welland.

Ground Control at the dirtside Santa Cruz Spaceport was rather sleepy. A couple of ships a day were about average. Sometimes there were none and all and sometimes there were more. The most that had ever come in at any one 26-hour day was six.

"Hey, Jorge. I think something may be wrong with my unit. It looks like half the damned ships in creation are heading this way."

Jorge got up and strolled over to see what Miguel had fucked up this time. The damned punk's dad got him a job where all he has to do is sit on his lazy ass all day. He thought.

He pushed Jorge out of his chair and began to troubleshoot. It soon became clear that there was nothing wrong with the equipment.

"Mierda! There's all kinds of ships out there. We gotta let everyone know."

The news sped up the chain of command and in very little time reached President Grivas. With him was Mr. Chen Jiang, officially the liaison with the Han Worlds to Santa Cruz, but in reality, the power behind the throne.

"Are they invading us?" Grivas asked, nervously.

Chen shook his head. "If they are, it's the worst planned invasion ever. By our count there are seventy- seven merchant ships out there and nineteen warships, the largest of which is a heavy cruiser. It seems to be a large convoy with an adequate escort. Certainly, no Han privateer would attack a convoy guarded by a heavy cruiser."

The Han referred to the ships they outfitted as privateers, not pirates.

"We should wait for a few hours until they're within radio range."

So, they waited. Grivas waited nervously, drinking rum as they waited. Chen sat quietly and used his comm device to ask for updates from the orbiting Han ships.

The intercom on Grivas' desk buzzed. "Mr. President, the convoy commander has contacted the ground control. Mr. Cerillo, the port manager is ready to talk to them. Should I patch you in so you can listen?"

Grivas looked at Chen, who nodded.

"Certainly. Do that." Grivas said, slurring his words slightly.

"Santa Cruz ground control, this is Commodore Andrews, Royal Navy, commander of the escort for a convoy bound for Earth and the Core. We've had an engineering casualty on one of our ships. We've already talked to the Atlantean Cossack Host and they don't have what we need. We didn't bother talking to Pennsatucky."

"What do you need?" Cerillo asked.

"We have an engineering casualty aboard the Gargantua, a Mammoth class merchantman."

The Mammoth class was the biggest ship built in the entire Europa Cluster at some twelve million tons, and one of the fastest merchantmen there was. It had been built to run between the UK and Earth, but as it was unarmed, it now travelled in a convoy.

Cerillo smiled. "The Mammoth class are noted for having temperamental engines, but I doubt we have any parts for one of those monsters."

"We don't need parts for the Gargantua, we can manufacture the parts, but we don't have all of the material we need to make the parts. I have a list of what we need. I'm sending it to you."

Cerillo nodded. "I'll have to check and see what we have." He smiled and added, "We're kind of short of materials ourselves. It could be costly."

"See what you can do."

Chen laughed as the comm cut off. "This is interesting. We can charge them an arm and a leg for the materials, and while they're in orbit, we can listen in on them and get an idea of their communications and copy their sensors. We'll get a lot of good intel out of this."

"Aren't you afraid they'll do the same." Grivas asked.

"Not after I take a few simple precautions."

TBC