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.
At precisely 0850 on the second day of the invasion, the Connaught Lady stopped jamming the communications in Santa Cruz City. The residents rushed to their comm gear to try to find out what was happening in their colony.
But, at precisely 0900, the same message came onto all of the communication channels. It showed a tall, broad shouldered man, quite handsome, with short brown hair and piercing blue eyes. He wore an unadorned combat uniform.
"I am Major General Richard Castle. I command a mercenary armored division, with a mercenary airmobile division and other units under command. We have been hired by the government of Free Santa Cruz to remove the illegal government of President Grivas, and this we intend to do."
"As any soldier does, I regret unnecessary violence. The power arrayed against your army, police and the Han volunteers here are overwhelming. You have no chance of winning, only of surviving. I call upon the government of the so-called President Grivas to surrender, and to order their Han supporters to do the same. I ask that the people of Santa Cruz not to oppose my troops and to enjoin your leaders to surrender."
Castle smiled. "Some of you are already doing just that. I have been advised that large numbers of Santa Cruz's army and police have already deserted. Follow their example and live."
The message ended.
The last part of Castle's message was correct. All over Santa Cruz City, soldiers and police were fleeing. Some took their weapons with them, but many did not. In any case, thousands of small arms were left unguarded in abandoned military and police armories. Many of these armories were looted by people who supported the Free Santa Cruz government. Large numbers, however, were seized by criminal gangs.
As the criminal gangs knew that the richest targets were in neighborhoods that most strongly supported Grivas, they headed there.
All that it took was a carload of armed men driving through a wealthy neighborhood to cause all the residents to call for police and military backup. Little or none was available.
Colonel Luis Zelinsky's family had moved to Santa Cruz decades before from the Atlantean Cossack Host. Zelinsky was in charge of intelligence for the Santa Cruz police. He normally had a squad of half a dozen bodyguards on hand at his home, but as soon as the invasion began, he started ordering his subordinates to bring their families and as many armed men as they could find to his home. The home was surrounded by lots of open space, giving them great fields of fire, it had thick walls, a well-stocked armory, and food and water for days.
Three truckloads of heavily armed gangsters entered Zelinsky's street. The men dismounted and as they approached, were hit by heavy fire. The thugs, being interested in loot and not in combat, quickly left.
Zelinsky sent off a frantic report to Grivas that he had fought off a company sized attack, supported by tanks, a considerable exaggeration of what he had faced.
Hundreds of reports like this convinced Grivas, Chen and Zhu that the city was full of heavily armed commando companies, with the support of heavy weapons.
Sergeant Mike Bennett was on edge. He was certain that the Han troops would try to probe them to get an idea of their numbers and dispositions. He had fought the Han before and they were good. Not as good as his unit, but good.
He stood on the roof of the building and searched for any sign of enemy movement. He called over one of his Tarkai snipers to take a look. The Tarkai had better senses than humans, and sure enough, the Tarkai pointed between two tall buildings several kilometers away.
"There, Sergeant Bennett. A helicopter is coming. It's not one of ours. A Han K-9031, I think. A scout."
"MANPADS!" Bennett yelled. "Get off your asses. We have an enemy chopper inbound. Move it."
The two-man air defense system team ran to where Bennett and the Tarkai were standing.
"Where, Sarge? I don't see nothing."
"Lucco here says there's one out there. What more do you need?"
The men had worked with Tarkai before and trusted their senses. The team chief lifted the missile launcher onto his shoulder and began scanning for an infrared signal. His assistant used binoculars to try to get a visual sighting.
"There! Just in range. The bastard's hiding between two buildings. He can just barely be seen from the hotel, but I've got a shot at him."
"Then shoot, dammit." Bennett barked.
"The missile's tracker hasn't acquired him yet. I gotta wait for the music." Almost as soon as the last word was out of his mouth, they heard a soft, warbling sound." There's the music."
Just as the missile shot out of the launch tube, the enemy helicopter began to veer away.
"Shit! He's moving."
The helicopter went behind a building and the missile lost it's tracking and eventually slammed into another building. The helicopter escaped, but brought back word that the enemy had air defense missile systems, type and number unknown.
Meanwhile, the Han infantry battalion made its way slowly towards the Magnifico. From almost as soon as they'd left their base, they'd been under sporadic fire. The battalion commander easily convinced himself that he was being shadowed by large numbers of enemy commandos. Actually, they were just squad sized Gendarmes units, occasional groups of underground Free Santa Cruz partisans, and even the occasional criminal who just didn't like the Han. The battalion commander radioed he was sure he was walking into a trap and asked for permission to return to base. He kept going when Chen explained to him that there were much, much worse things than walking into a trap.
The Gendarmes squads were able to keep track of the Han column and radio its location to the battalion in the Magnifico. The battalion, in turn, asked for fire support from the Connaught Lady and Princess Patricia. Each ship mounted two 155mm howitzers. Soon, artillery rounds were falling among the Han troops. Unused to being under artillery fire, the advance stalled.
The Han battalion commander, convinced he was facing a dug in brigade with heavy artillery support, in addition to the commandoes he imagined were hovering on his flanks, asked for and received permission to return to base.
While the Hans were retreating, Chen had gone searching for Grivas. He found him sprawled on a bed with three naked women, too drunk to stand by himself.
When he returned to General Zhu, they decided that their best option was to dig in on their well-fortified base and hope that the mercenary general would offer them a chance to leave the planet peacefully rather than expose his own troops to the meat grinder that attacking a dug in brigade would involve.
By the fourth day of the invasion, Castle's battalion, Esposito's Tercio, and all but the foot mobile Gendarmes were in the city. The scouts explained what they faced. Castle just smiled. He still had a trick up his sleeve.
As it approached the city from orbit, the light cruiser HMS Ajax prepared to fire "rods from god" into the fortified Han base. The rods were four-meter long steel rods, 100 mm in diameter, weighing 250 kilograms and coated in an ablative substance that would keep them from vaporizing in the atmosphere. They were controlled by a tiny computer controlling four small stub wings. They weren't very accurate, but they were an excellent area weapon. One thousand of them would be dropped on the Han base.
The fortified portion of the Han base was triangular shaped. One battalion was dug in on each side of the triangle. In the center were the few lightly armored vehicles the brigade had, and the quick reaction company, made up of the best soldiers in the brigade. Artillery, aerospace defense missile launchers, and other heavy weapons were placed within the triangle.
The fortifications consisted of steel reinforced concrete trenches and bunkers that could resist artillery fire up to 155mm guns. The command post, where Chen, General Zhu and the now somewhat sober President Grivas, were, was buried deep underground, with layer of steel armor above the steel reinforced concrete.
Chen and Zhu were certain they were prepared for anything.
They weren't.
The rods were not overly accurate, but almost all of them landed within the triangle. However, they did not land in an even distribution. The first battalion was hit very hard, losing well over half their troops and almost all of their heavy weapons. The third battalion was hardly hit at all, losing only a few dozen men and a few weapons. However, the rods seriously damaged the officers' golf course just beyond their perimeter. The second battalion, being the one that had been driven back from the Magnifico, took casualties of about a third of their troops and weapons. Their morale, already shaky, collapsed completely. The brigade's artillery and other heavy weapons lost about half of their number and two ammunition storage sites blew up spectacularly. The underground command post wasn't penetrated, but cracks appeared in the ceiling and walls.
After the attack was over, Castle sent a radio message on all channels to the Han.
"My forces are now in control of almost all of Santa Cruz except for your fortified position. It will take the ship orbiting above you about six hours to reload and another hour after that to get in position to attack you again. I estimate that two more attacks will turn your position into a mass grave. I suggest that you surrender to the new government of Santa Cruz. If you wish to do so individually, put down your weapons and walk towards our lines with your hands in the air. We will not harm you."
Almost at once, soldiers began leaving their bunkers and heading out of their base.
Deep underground, everyone turned to Chen.
He shook his head sadly. "Call General Castle and tell him we surrender. But before we leave here, destroy all classified information."
Castle allowed General Marti to take the surrender, feeling it would be more politic. He kept his own troops well out of the way, not wanting the Han to discover that his "armored division" was actually only a strong battalion. That trick might be useful again.
Aboard HMS Liverpool, in orbit around Welland
"Mr. Pennington will see you now, Colonel and Mrs. Castle."
Rick nodded to the secretary in Pennington's office aboard ship and the two went in.
Pennington rose to greet them, shaking hands and smiling. "Good to see you two, especially you, Colonel Castle. I've spent the day reading the reports of your actions here. Splendid. Just splendid. Oh, forgive me. Would you like some coffee? Of course, you would. James, coffee for our guests."
The same steward they had seen before with Pennington came out with the coffee. This time Kate noticed she got a grande skim latte with two pumps of sugar free vanilla.
"You've done very well here, Colonel. And on Harmony and Big Rock as well. Just superb. As you're officially a mercenary officer, we can't give you a medal or anything, but I understand that you and your wife never got to have a proper honeymoon after your marriage?"
"We were rather busy." Kate said.
"We'll be sending you and your troops back to the UK, and for the first three weeks you're there, you'll be staying at lovely lodge in the Ben Nevis Mountains in Scotland. The lodge is fully automated, so you'll have plenty of time to yourselves."
Both Rick and Kate were surprised.
"Thank you, sir. It's so generous…I really can't say…We're overwhelmed…."Rick rambled on.
"But we'll take it." Kate finished for him.
"But when you two come back, you'll have plenty of work to do. We're reorganizing your unit, Colonel Castle. As you know, as the ECDO has increased its power, the Han Worlds and their Chinese friends on Earth have become more aggressive. They're building more powerful ships for their pirates, and sending more, and more powerful, volunteer units to oppose us."
"We've decided to turn your unit into a brigade sized unit, but a rather unique brigade. You'll have a tank battalion, an armored infantry battalion, an airmobile infantry battalion, a helicopter battalion, two artillery battalions, an armored engineer battalion, an aerospace defense battalion, and the usual support units. We may even add some ground attack aircraft to your unit, but we shall have to see about that."
"It is a rather unique brigade, sir. What exactly is its purpose?"
"You'll be a heavy unit that we can send to colonies threatened by the Han. You'll provide the hard core around which more lightly armed local units can gather around."
"I can't wait, sir." Rick said.
"And you'll be getting brand new UK weapons for your units. No more second hand weapons for your unit, Colonel." Pennington checked the time. "There'll be a transport leaving for the UK, leaving in about eight hours. See Charlene outside. She'll have your orders, travel warrants, and information on your new command. Now, hurry along."
As they walked down the corridors of the ship, Kate took his hand.
"I'm afraid you'll have to find a new headquarters company commander."
"Why?' Rick asked, surprised.
"Remember what I told you about when I wouldn't be able to go with you?"
He thought for a moment. Then it hit him. "You're pregnant?"
Kate just smiled.
The End
Authors note: Up next is To Love and Die in Manhattan, you should be able to figure out what it's based on. I'm currently working on The Pilots and the Passengers, a sequel to the Pilot, and to The Pilots. I have an idea for a sequel to this story. As Castle becomes more senior, it's harder for him to get into action, as opposed to staying in his headquarters as a good brigade commander should. But I may have a solution to that problem. Now I have to see if that idea can be turned into a story.