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.
Sometimes the room clearing was easy. On the third floor they found an attractive woman holding the door open for them.
"Please don't shoot." She said. "This floor is the barracks for the sex slaves. We have no weapons and no desire at all to fight you. Please come in."
The platoon cautiously entered the corridor. There were more than a hundred attractive young women there, dressed and carrying their meager belongings in purses or bags. With them were perhaps thirty attractive young men, some mere boys. They were searched, but no weapons found.
"Is there anyone else here?" The lieutenant asked a leggy redhead.
"Wang. He's in charge of us. His door is locked, but I can take you to it."
To be sure, the platoon checked every room. They were much smaller and shabbier than the guests' rooms. Finally, they arrived at Wang's locked door. A small charge blew it open. Wang was laying on his bed, an empty whiskey bottle and empty pill bottles on the night stand.
"Medic! Check him out."
Wang was quickly checked over.
"Sir, his heart rate and BP are shitty." He started examining the pill bottles. "If he took all this shit, I got no idea what to do with him. He'll be dead before we can get him to a real doctor."
"Leave him, then."
"Wait." Said the redhead. She pulled her skirt up over her hips, showing she had no panties on, straddled Wang's head and peed all over his face. "I wish I could have done that when he'd know it." She said, pulling her dress down.
The prisoners and freed slaves were marched to the spaceport where dropships took them to safety in orbit.
But, clearing most of the floors was hard.
On the sixth floor, opening the door from the stairwell to the corridor set off a booby trap that killed the platoon leader and his radioman, wounding two others. Bullets from inside the rooms zipped through where the doors had been.
The platoon sergeant found another radio and called to fire support. The Princess Patricia turned its light guns, mostly 25mm and 40mm on the sixth floor. The platoon on the other side of the hotel added to the fire.
When the Han fire had slackened, the platoon began clearing the rooms, one by one. They were in no mood to take prisoners.
One fireteam found a well-dressed woman on the floor with a large pool of blood around her head.
"Shit, Corp. Think she was a sex slave?"
"She's lying on top of a fucking submachine gun. What do you think?"
The grenadier called from the bedroom. "Hey, there's two little boys in here. Don't look like we got 'em. I bet she killed the kids so we wouldn't save them."
Although it did no good, the fireteam leader put three more rounds into the woman's head as they left.
The top floor turned out to be the easiest. Fifty or sixty well-dressed Han citizens were waiting at the top of the stairwell.
"Good evening, gentleman." One said. "We are all citizens of the Han Worlds and have nothing to do with whatever your problems are with the government of Santa Cruz. However, we do realize that in war, one must take no chances. We are surrendering to you and expect to be treated as required by the laws of war."
The lieutenant smiled. "Of course, sir. Major General Castle's Mercenary Armored Division, and its attached units, always obey the laws of war. We will have to search you for contraband, and then search your quarters. I regret that it'll be necessary to cuff you until your identities as Han citizens and not citizens of Santa Cruz can be established."
"We fully understand that." The man turned and put his hands behind him to be cuffed. The others were cuffed and all were searched. Nothing was found either on them, or in their rooms.
At the same time as the Connaught Lady and the Princess Patricia began their attacks, the warships above went into action. The heavy cruiser HMS Liverpool moved to a geosynchronous orbit over Santa Cruz in case it was needed. Two light cruisers and nine destroyers headed for the Han pirate ships and the captured merchantmen orbiting on the other side of the planet. Two pirates tried to run and were destroyed. The rest surrendered.
Royal Marines, based on what had been assumed to be merchant ships, took over all of the prizes. In fact, all of the ships in the convoy had military crews and had been armed as best they could be.
Far to the south, Colonel Castle sat in his armored command vehicle, waiting for word from Santa Cruz City.
"Sir." Captain Beckett said formally. "The Lady and the Princess are down. We can proceed."
"Very well, Captain Beckett. Give the word to begin the operation." Then he leaned down and kissed her.
He was still kissing her when their artillery began to fire. There was a company sized Santa Cruz army post about five kilometers from the border. It was blanketed with fire and destroyed. At the same time, their remaining helicopters carried the assault elements of one of Esposito's battalions to three bridges some twenty kilometers away.
Scout helicopters went further afield, looking for the enemy, but finding little sign of them.
Further out than the scout helicopters were long range reconnaissance patrols, mostly composed of Tarkai from Castle's battalion. They had been very carefully inserted into the enemy's rear areas a few days before the start of the operation.
Furthest out were intelligence agents of the Gendarmes, some of whom had been in place in towns and villages in Santa Cruz for years.
After the artillery had fired short barrages at minor enemy posts, the first of Castle's vehicles crossed the border into Santa Cruz. First to cross was his armored cavalry troop, reinforced with engineers in armored vehicles. They found a small mine field about a kilometer on, but nothing else.
"Sir, Garry Owen 6 reports no mines after the initial field. He doesn't think they were expecting us at all."
Castle winked at Kate. "Good. I hope it's like that all the way to the city."
Castle's armored unit took the main road heading north, with the remainder of the Tercio following to the west on minor roads, and the Gendarmes doing the same to the east. Every vehicle capable of movement was jammed full of soldiers, but even then, several thousand Gendarmes were marching north.
Just past dawn Castle crossed the bridge that had been seized by Esposito's troops.
"Rick," Kate said. "Esposito says he's almost across his bridge and the Gendarmes are just getting to theirs. But none of them were wired with explosives. And, the Gendarmes report passing two police posts that were abandoned. Our scouts have seen military and police vehicles heading north rapidly."
Castle laughed. Things were going well.
Things were not going well for Mr. Chen and President Grivas.
"General Zhu, what are we facing here?" Chen demanded of the brigadier general commanding the Han volunteers in Santa Cruz.
Zhu looked to the members of his staff, who obviously had no useful information to give him. "There is a light infantry force besieging the Magnifico. They came from a dropship that landed in the park across from the hotel. Another dropship landed at the spaceport. We assume they offloaded troops as well, but our communications with them are down."
"What class of dropships? How large a force is in the city? Are they're other forces heading this way? I'd assume there are."
"There are scattered reports from the south that three large armored columns have invaded from the Gendarmes area of Pennsatucky."
General Zhu was handed a slip of paper by an officer. "According to this, there are scattered attacks in the city. Probably no more than platoon sized. Probably just to keep us off balance. I'll show you on the map where they are."
Unknown to General Zhu, the attacks were by squad sized teams of Gendarmes, and a few Free Santa Cruz resistance agents who were based in the city.
Chen shook his head in anger. He knew that neither General Zhu or his brigade were first class, otherwise they wouldn't have been in some backwater colony.
"Sir?" That was a naval officer, who approached Chen. "We've received word from our ships in orbit. The UK warships have attacked them. Two destroyed, the rest taken."
Chen made a decision. "We need to find out what we face here in the city. Use your scout helicopters and drones to check the hotel and spaceport. Have a battalion probe the hotel area. If we no longer have friendly ships above, taking the spaceport back will do no good."
Zhu scurried off to give his orders.
By dawn, the hotel had been taken and the troops were digging in to hold that part of the city until the main force arrived. However, the platoon on the building behind the hotel was left in place.
Corporal Bucky Doyle had been very busy booby trapping the lower floors of the building to slow down any attackers. He was just about to get some sleep when Melody came over.
"Hi. Remember me?"
Under any circumstances, Melody would be hard to forget for any young man. Bucky just nodded.
"I got some pants from a sergeant. I can bend over without exposing myself now. Oh, what's your name? You never told me. I'm Melody. Melody Miller."
"I'm Bucky Doyle."
"Your parents really named you Bucky?"
"No. I'm Emmett Brinsley Doyle, but kids teased me at school, so I asked them to call me Bucky. After a couple of fights, they did."
Melody giggled. "What do you do?"
"I'm a corporal and a combat engineer." Then he had to explain just what that meant to her.
Then he asked her. "Did your parents really sell you as a slave?"
She just nodded.
"Do you hate them?"
"Of course not. How can you ask that?" Then she thought for a second.
"I should explain. New Ark is a shitty planet. The old Brethren picked it because no one else would want it. There'd be no "worldly" colonists tempting "godly" people to leave the colony. Shows what they knew. It turned out you couldn't spend all day Sunday in church listening to sermons, because if you did, the natters'd eat up all your crops." She shook her head. "People died as fast as they got born. Faster, sometimes. Everything on that planet would kill you."
"When I was fourteen, the red rust hit our farm. We worked night and day to try to save some food, but in the end, we didn't have enough to get through the winter, let alone seeds for spring planting. So, when the Buyer came in his ship, they sold me. I was pretty hot, even at fourteen. I'm hot at twenty, too."
"Wouldn't your neighbors help?" Bucky asked, shocked.
"Nobody had anything to spare. With the money they got for me, they had food for the winter, warm clothes, and seed for spring. I swore if I ever got out of the Magnifico, I'd work and get money and go back and get Ma, and Pa, and my brothers and sisters, and anyone else I could get off that hellhole. But, whatever I did, I'd never whore again."
She took his hand. "Bucky, I'm not some dumb whore who can only spread her legs. I can read and write and I know my numbers. I read everything I could in the Magnifico, which wasn't much. But the hotel owners were cheap. They wouldn't have maids clean and cook for us, so I learned how to cook, and sew, and clean, and I even learned a bit about medicine. I'm smart. I know I am. Do you think I could get a job with this General Castle's division?"
Bucky thought. "In garrison, we hire civilians to do cooking and cleaning and such. Do you mean you want to be a soldier?"
"Does it pay better than being a civilian?"
"Yes."
"Then that's what I'll do. But, I could use a friend to help me out. Show me the ropes and things, and keep guys from trying to take me. And if I had a friend, having sex with him wouldn't be whoring."
She held out her hand and Bucky shook it.
"It's a deal."
TBC