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 Planet England, the United Kingdoms.
"What do you think of them, Captain Castle?"
Two things occurred to Richard Castle. One, Sir James Pilkington had called him Captain, although at the present he commanded barely a platoon of mercenary troops. Sir James looked every bit the middle ranking civil servant he wished to appear. In fact, he was in control of the dozen or so "mercenary" units that the United Kingdoms used to oppose the Han Worlds in the long Shadow War between the two starfaring powers. It would not do for significant numbers of UK regulars to fight any Han Worlds' regulars. That might bring in the Chinese from Earth, and possibly the other members of the Triple Alliance which controlled Earth and its nearer and richer colonies, the so-called Core. According, the UK used "mercenaries" and the Han used "volunteers". All was officially peaceful between the two star-nations.
Secondly, he had never seen so many armored vehicles in one place before. They were in a huge warehouse that was at least five hundred meters across and much further than that deep. Castle could hardly see the far end of the warehouse and it appeared to be filled with armored vehicles of one sort or another. They were in the middle of the main commercial spaceport of England, as Castle could plainly hear and see.
"Go, ahead, Captain. Walk about if you wish. You can even climb up on them if necessary."
As Castle walked around, Sir James kept talking. "Things are a bloody chaos now. We thought we had Wend all taken care of, but the Han sent in more volunteers. And Ste. Marie! How can one planet manage to attract fourteen colonies, all of whom hate one another? Bloody shambles and it's tying down two first class units of ours. Then there's Wallonia and Courland and…Well, you know what's going on as well as anyone. Every bloody one of our mercenary units is tied down someplace where we can't move them and now, we have more problems."
"Is that why you asked me to call on you, Sir James?" Castle asked, hoping to get some information. His specialty was light infantry reconnaissance and not armor. He had no experience commanding any kind of an armored unit.
"We've had to bring in some units we really don't know enough about to fully trust. There's a Colonel Esposito and a Tercio Corazon Negro. Tercio is Spanish for a third, and apparently also for regiment. He terminated the command of a very nasty pirate and made enough money to put together a very nice regiment. The pirate raided a place called Eden, founded by some sort of religious sect. Damned nuisance these people, setting up a colony in the middle of nowhere with no defenses. May as will send a written invitation to get raided. The place was run by an Elder von Demming. The fellow got bitten by some kind of local fish. Causes all sorts of painful ulcerations. The stench is awful, or so they say. Fatal, eventually."
"Would I be going to this Eden?" Castle asked.
James made no direct reply. "There are other mercenary units out there. The Sibrski Cossack Host. Half of them are bloody barristers I'm sure, always arguing about the bloody contract. McLaren's Light Cavalry, excellent in the field, but given to looting. The Poona Horse, wonderful fellows, but their weapons belong in a bloody museum. Then there's…." Sir James stopped. "What do you think of these vehicles, Captain Castle?"
"They're obviously based on the Prussian Panzerkampfwagen X, the Puma. Most of them use the hull and chassis of the tanks for infantry fighting vehicles, engineering vehicles, weapons carriers, self-propelled artillery, armored ambulances as well as the tanks."
Sir James smiled. "Excellent, my boy. Excellent. But what do you think of the vehicles themselves?"
Castle shrugged. "For many years, our friends and allies, the Prussians, built our tanks under license. Oh, they'd make some changes in the comm gear or defensive armament, but they were basically our tanks. The Puma was the first tank they designed and built from the ground up. It was not a success."
"Indeed, it was not." Said Sir James, with a smile. "Would you care to tell me why?"
"Basically, it was the engine and power source. They tried to use cutting edge technology…"
"Bleeding edge technology is more like it." Sir James interrupted.
"Yes, sir, but it never worked properly. The tank was underpowered. Good armor and good weapons and comm gear, but too damned slow."
"And now our dear Prussian friends have decided to build our tanks, again under license. "Sir James said. "However, Powys Heavy Industries over on Wales bought almost all of the Pumas and installed new engines and power packs and built new vehicles on the old tank hulls. Not the fastest vehicles about, but better than before." Sir James sighed. "The new Europa Cluster Defense Organization is selling these vehicles to the members at a reasonable sum."
Castle nodded. That was another problem the UK had. The ECDO had nineteen members on fifteen worlds. Some, such as Prussia and Oranais had militaries as good as any among the stars. Others did not and needed help.
"A battalion of these would help out a lot of the new ECDO members." Castle said.
Sir James nodded and his smile faded. "And they need help with their navies, as well. We have the only battleship in the Cluster. Prussia and Oranais have fine navies with good heavy cruisers, but the best the others have are bloody frigates. Good enough to protect commerce from the bloody Han pirates, but there are hardly enough of them. And since we're helping out financially, this means less money for our mercenaries."
The Han Worlds denied supporting pirates of any sort, of course. They could even show that their own ships had occasionally been taken by pirates. A pirate ship needed to be fast enough to outrun a warship and only needed weapons powerful enough to over awe an unarmed merchant ship. Once taken, a merchant ship and its cargo could be sold with a bit of creative paperwork and the crew and passengers held for ransom. Best of all, for the Han, a pirate ship could be built for a third of the cost of a naval frigate.
The solution, for the ECDO, was to convoy merchant ships protected by warships. But there were far, far more merchant ships than there were escorts.
"Well, my boy. I've taken up too much of your valuable time. I know you'll want to be getting back to your lovely wife. But, could you come and see me at the Ministry on Tuesday? About two o'clock? We may have something for you." Sir James spoke over his shoulder. "Michael, I need to return to the office now."
A large limousine came through the door and stopped in front of Sir James. The door opened, Sir James got in and Castle was all alone. Luckily, he lived in another warehouse not too far away.
Castle walked through the open warehouse door and saluted the sentry on duty. Then, in a flash, his wife was on him, throwing her arms around him, kissing him and mumbling.
He broke the kiss. "Kate, are you trying to tell me something?"
She kissed him again and then pulled back. "What did Sir James say? Do we have a contract?"
Castle told her what had happened.
"I'm not sure we can expect a contract." He said after the explanation. "He had me inspecting armored vehicles. I've never commanded an armored unit and my Tarkai scouts are foot mobile. Put them in an infantry fighting vehicle and their they can't use their excellent senses to find the enemy."
Kate sighed and led Castle back to the small office. As always, she touched the small sign that said "Team Castle" for luck.
"There was an express boat in today with news from Earth. Good news."
"We won the lottery and can buy a planet to retire to?" Castle teased.
She stuck her tongue out at him. "Senator Marlette of Washington State died."
Castle, who did not follow Earth's politics, just shrugged.
"He was an ally of Senator Bracken. The Governor of Washington appointed a woman named Hamlin to take his place. Hamlin is a political enemy of Bracken."
"Anything that hurts the bastard who wants my wife dead is good news, I suppose."
"There's more. Marlette's death means that Senator Moran takes over as chair of the Senate Finance Committee. He's another enemy of Bracken's. And other shuffling moved Senator Borrago from the Armed Services Committee to Interstellar Trade. He's another of Bracken's cronies. He can do less damage there."
"Do you think Bracken will be too busy to worry abut you and Alexis?" Castle asked hopefully.
Kate shook her head. "All he had to do was to manufacture some evidence that I had helped assassinate Senator Daley with Alexis' help and then pass the word to his thugs." She tapped the pistol at her waist. "I'll be wearing this for a while. Doubtlessly the same thugs that did kill Daley will be after me." Kate smiled grimly. "At least I dropped Bracken's idiot nephew."
They were interrupted by Sergeant Saava at the office door. "Excuse me, sir, but you wanted to sit in on the class on radio procedures for the new troops."
Rick kissed Kate. "I shall return."
"You'd better." She said with a wink.
Rick and Kate had just finished dinner when his radio buzzed. "Castle."
"Sir, this is Corporal Bennett. I've been giving my snipers a little training up on the roof. I think you should come up here."
"On my way."
Before Castle had gotten up, Kate had grabbed their flak jackets, helmets, and weapons. "If Bennett thinks you should see something, it's got to be bad. Otherwise, Bennett would have handled it himself."
Michael Bennett was the leader of Castle's four-person sniper team, and the only human on the team. He'd been a soldier for twenty years and loved his job. He was a self-described adrenaline junkie who loved the high he got from risking his life in combat.
Once at the roof, Rick and Kate crawled to where Bennett and the three Tarkai snipers were. Bennett had cut a set of small holes in the parapet of the roof for observation. "Sir, take a look through the spotting scope. We've been examining an office building about two clicks away. Check the window."
Castle settled in behind the scope. At first, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Then he saw something.
"Someone is looking this way with a night vision scope. It looks like he's looking right at this building."
"I'm pretty sure he is, sir. There's nothing but the flat spaces of the aerospace port behind us and nothing to his left for five clicks and the spaceport is to his right. Just more nothing there. He's watching us."
"Oh, hell." Castle said. "Do you think they'll come tonight?"
Bennett shrugged. "We've been keeping an eye out, so I don't think they've been there long, but we should be ready."
"Corporal, keep an eye on that building and on the approaches to this building. In the meantime, I need to do some planning."
That night everyone not on guard duty slept with their flak jackets on and their weapons handy. Rick and Kate moved out of their tiny room behind their office and slept behind a steel shipping container that held all of Team Castle's spare weapons, ammo and other gear.
Dawn arrived with no problems.
Bennett called down to Castle on the radio." Sir, we still have people watching us. All humans, but so far six people have been at the window looking us over. I think it's an assault team giving each member a chance to look us over."
"Okay, have your snipers keep their eyes open and get down here yourself. I have an idea."
TBC