The Advisor
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: I've been advised I don't own Castle. Rating: K Time: Shortly after Battle Group Castle.
They had stopped all weapons development of any sort. They didn't want any other nations discovering any weaponry that would erode the Triple Alliances' massive superiority over the rest of humanity. In addition, the three nations didn't trust each other not to develop weapons the other two didn't have.
Research in other areas was stopped as well. Medical research could accidentally discover a new biological weapon and so medical research was stopped. Computers were another area that could lead to improved weaponry and so research was stopped there as well. And so on and so on.
One of the Saint Georgians thought he saw some odd movement and took a shot. His rifle fired a blank cartridge which activated the laser.
Sergeant Saava checked the readout on his pad.
"That was a miss, Lance Corporal Boyle, and you gave away your position."
Another ten minutes passed with no action. Then two soldiers fired almost simultaneously, but at different areas of the scrub.
"You both missed." Sergeant Saava announced. "You'll have to do better than that, people."
Another twenty minutes passed. Suddenly there was a burst of automatic weapons fire from behind the Saint Georgians. They turned around to find their weapons were deactivated and see Sergeant Michael Bennett, the sniper instructor and the NCO in charge of Battle Group Castle's snipers. Bennett was a self-confessed adrenaline junkie who'd been a soldier for over twenty years and had no desire to be anything else. He'd been an orphan on some slum world but had managed to grab a cheap automatic pistol from the hands of a dying thug when he was a teenager. That was when Bennett discovered he had a talent for violence and indeed, a love for it.
"Why are you attacking us?" Cried one of the Saint George soldiers. "We're supposed to be trying to spot snipers."
"Always remember than the enemy has a vote on what happens. Just because your job is to watch for snipers doesn't mean the enemies' job isn't to send a fire team after you, such as us." Bennett motioned to the three Tarkai with him. "And one other thing. Your job is still to watch for snipers, and not to stand there arguing with me."
No sooner were the words out of his mouth that two shots rang out.
"Private Gilliam and Private Wells, you were just shot by the two snipers you were supposed to be looking for. Now, each and every one of you is officially dead." Bennett raised his voice. "Corporal Bata and Corporal Odine, you can stand up now."
Two Tarkai, wearing high tech ghillie suits to camouflage them, stood up. They were about three hundred yards from the dug in soldiers.
"Those two could have killed you all from a thousand yards away, but they got within three hundred yards without you noticing them. You can be damned sure that Colonel Castle and Captain Beckett saw them, and you can be double damned sure that Sergeant Major Saava smelled and heard them before any human did."
Bennett smiled happily.
"Now, since we don't have any snipers to find right now, pick up your weapons and your rucksacks because we're going for a little run. We'll run back to the barracks." Bennett waited for a beat and added. "Then we'll run back here, and you can try to spot the snipers again."
The sniper trainees, the Tarkai snipers, the Tarkai members of the fire team and Sergeant Bennett ran off.
"What does Sergeant Bennett think of his possible snipers, Sergeant Major. He didn't sound too happy with them."
"Actually, he is happy with them, sir. They're all from the outer islands, no city boys among them, and they've all had to hunt to eat. They need work, but he'll get you your sniper team." Saava stopped, then added. "Sergeant Bennet thinks he could use more than one sniper team, sir."
"Sergeant Bennett would like us to form a sniper company and I'd like my battle group here. The company we're forming has room for one sniper team and one only. When we're putting together a battalion for the Saint Georgians, we'll set up a sniper squad."
Castle laughed.
"And don't tell Bennet this, but I had no idea where the snipers were."
"Neither did I." Kate added.
Saava laughed as well.
"The wind was blowing towards them so I didn't hear or smell them. But I did spot both of them when they were about five hundred yards out."
The patrol craft was pitching up and down as was Castle's stomach.
"Is it always this rough?" He asked the Chief Petty Officer in charge of the boat.
"Sir?"
"Is it always this rough?" Castle repeated.
"We don't consider this to be rough, sir. Actually, the sea is pretty calm. Are you, um, having trouble, sir?"
"I suppose not." Castle replied. Wondering why a ground pounder like himself had ever let himself be talked into riding on a boat.
Next to him was Sergeant Breda, a Tarkai from the area around the Great Southern Sea, who had been born on a boat and lived most of his life on one until he enlisted. He appeared to be having the time of his life. Castle really wanted to order the sergeant to stop smiling, but knew he couldn't do that.
"Sir, we'll be at the wreck of the hijacker we caught in about five more minutes." The CPO shook his head. "I guess I shouldn't say we caught the bastard. He ran onto a rock at high tide and has been there ever since, minus his weapons, of course."
In five minutes, they were at the wreck site and the patrol craft pulled up alongside it. Castle examined it. The boat was about seventy feet long and rather narrow. There were hatches for cargo both fore and aft with the bridge in between. Castle could see three gun-mounts, now minus their guns.
"What kind of weapons did you take off of her?" He asked the CPO.
"A single 35mm cannon on the foredeck and a fifteen-millimeter machine gun on each of the bridge wings. They also had two surface-to-air missiles aboard."
"Any idea of the manufacturer?"
"The 35mm looked to be a copy of a Neue Bayern cannon, but it had no markings. The 15s were copies of Russian 15s, but again, no markings. The SAMs were from La Plata over in the Latin Cluster. They'll sell anything to anybody. Of course, all of the weapons could have been built anywhere and just copied."
"Shall we go aboard, sir?" Sergeant Breda asked cheerfully.
"How?" Castle asked. They were a good twenty yards from the wreck.
"We'll take you to the other side, sir." Said the CPO. "Then we'll launch our rigid hull boat and you can just walk up the rocks to the wreck. No problem, sir."
It wasn't much of a problem and Castle was able to walk slowly up the rocks to the wrecked boat. Sergeant Breda had scampered up as easily as you please.
Castle hauled himself on deck and looked around. The cargo holds were empty, as he'd expected. He checked the small bridge. A few pieces of equipment had been taken out, probably for intelligence purposes and the rest had been wrecked by gunfire. He then checked the weapon mounts and found nothing of any interest. If he had to guess, they had been manufactured locally.
"They have quite a pair of engines, sir." Said Sergeant Breda. "Care to take a look?"
Castle followed Breda below decks to the engine room.
"Hydrogen burners?" Castle asked.
"Yes, sir. One of my uncles back on Tarkai has a boat that has an engine much like these two." Breda scraped some dirt and grease off of an information plate on one engine. "Just like it, sir. This is a Fennerty 2600D, a damned good engine. With two engines like this, given the size of the boat, I'll bet she could hit thirty knots before she wrecked. Anything else you'd like to see, sir?"
"Dry land." Castle muttered.
"Sir?" Breda said.
"No, there's nothing more I'd like to see. Let's get back."
Castle did have a question for the CPO when they were headed back to shore.
"Why didn't you salvage the engines from the hijacker?"
"One of them had the guts torn out of it from below, you can't really see it except from under the boat at really low tide and we have damned little use for one engine when we have no way to get spare parts except from off-planet. Too expensive." The CPO looked like he wanted to say something else. Castle decided to encourage him.
"Did you want to say something else, Chief? Remember, I'm here to learn what you need first and then advise afterwards. If you have something to say, I'd like to hear it."
"Sir, it's just we've been chasing these bastards in patrol craft that have half the speed we need and no useful armament. When are we going to get real warships and what kind?"
"My naval specialist, Commander James, could tell you more about that, but I'm not sure he's made any final decisions yet. I can tell you that it's our intent to provide you with ships and aircraft that'll be more than a match for the hijackers. You'll have better sensors and comm gear and long-range missiles for armament. And you'll have combat aircraft overhead. All of the colonies on Ambrosia continent have far, far smaller economies than you do, so they can't hope to compete with you in an arms race."
Castle did not add, Unless the Han Worlds decide to get involved.
Meanwhile, back on land, Sergeant Bucky Doyle was going crazy as a Saint Georgian would-be combat engineer set off another small charge, simulating a booby trap.
"Jesus Christ, Samuels. Why do you think you have mini-drones? You use them to look for booby traps."
"There was no booby trap on the step, sergeant."
"No, it was under the step and your weight set it off. What you got was a small pop, but out there in the really cold, nasty world, you'd be in Saint Peter's Supply Room getting issued with a used halo and a pair of wings that're two sizes too small. Now, use the drones like I showed you. What do you check for?"
"Booby traps under the stairs leading to the house." Samuels stopped and something clicked in his head. "And I should check all under the porch." He thought a second and added, "And the porch itself."
Doyle smiled.
"You may be learning something after all, Samuels. Send out your drones."
There was another practice booby trap under another stair and five under the porch, two of them under comfortable looking chairs. The chairs themselves were also booby trapped. This was all part of what the combat engineers called "the fun house". It was a small four room house quickly put together and filled with every fiendish booby trap that they could devise. In fact, no combat engineer would ever have put so many real booby traps in one structure. Given the number there were, setting off one booby trap would have set off all the others as a sympathetic explosion, leaving nothing left but a large, smoking hole. However, as a means of making trainee combat engineers sweat and curse, it was perfect.
Samuels managed to clear the porch and the front door. He made it three steps inside the fun house, but forgot to look up. A small charge buried in the ceiling was set off when Samuels tripped a motion sensor.
An open four-wheel drive vehicle pulled up in front of the fun house and a gorgeous blonde waved at Bucky.
"Dinner time, Lover." She called to her husband.
Bucky checked his watch.
"Dinner time and then some, Melody. Be right there." He turned to Samuels. "Study your manuals tonight because we'll be back bright and early tomorrow."
"And I should assume that there'll be new booby traps set, shouldn't I, Sergeant."
"Why Samuels, I think you may be getting the hang of this."
TBC