Vengeance

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: For the last time! I do not own Castle. Rating: K Time: In an AU future.

He took a job as a bouncer in a gambling den on the other side of the planet and pondered his next move. He knew by now that his future lay with using guns. However, he had the bad luck to beat up a young man who was drunk and had lost heavily at the tables. He had attacked the dealer, screaming that she had cheated him. The young man's father, a powerful local politician, wanted satisfaction. Once again, he changed his name and enlisted with a mercenary company. This time he picked one that was a good, mid -level force.

If you lived, you learned, and if you learned, you lived. In twenty years, he had become an excellent soldier, but one who had no desire to be a leader of any sort. He had never allowed himself to be promoted beyond lance corporal. He realized he was what people called an adrenaline junkie. He loved the high that risking his life gave him.

His reverie was interrupted by Corporal Thupt tapping his shoulder. Thupt was the leader of RT Asp and in charge of his own four-man team and three other soldiers with Bennett. "Bennett, something's wrong."

"What?" Bennett asked, looking around.

"It's past dawn. They should have the slaves out in the fields by now. Do you think they've seen something?"

Bennett looked through the telescopic sight of his rifle. He centered his aim on the guard in the tower overlooking the slave quarters. He shook his head. "The guard in the tower is just sitting there, all fat, dumb and happy. If they suspected anything, he'd be in cover."

It was another hour before they figured out what was going on.

"Oh, shit." Thupt whispered. "It's a damned punishment parade. They're bring all of the slaves out to see someone get punished. That's why the slaves weren't out at dawn. The humans wanted to witness the punishment and they didn't want to get up at dawn."

There were at least twenty humans watching the proceedings.

They watched as the slaves were herded together in front of a tall pole. Then a single Tarkai was led out and tied to the pole. A muscular human with his long blond hair in a pigtail down his back began whipping the Tarkai. The slave tried to be brave and not scream, but soon his screams were heard on the small hill where Thupt and his team were hidden. When the whipping was done, the Tarkai was cut loose and left at the base of the pole.

Bennett counted. The big man had given the slave fifty lashes. "If that bastard with the whip is in sight, leave him to me. Understand?"

"It's only twelve minutes to 0800." Thupt whispered.

Bennett grinned.

At 0800, the blond was standing staring at the forest, not three hundred yards from Bennet. His bullet struck the big man just below the Adam's apple, severing his spinal cord and killing him before he hit the ground.

Bennett and the rest of the team fired one magazine and ran. There was no pursuit.

Private Shilka was both proud of being chosen for the mission and worried that he could not accomplish it. He was the first of the new Tarkai recruits to be promoted from Recruit to Private.

His parents had worked for the Rodgers' family when they were young. Martha Rodgers had found them bright and eager to learn. Both had learned to read and write the human language and Martha had had Shilka's mother assist her in caring for the sick and injured Tarkai who came needing assistance.

When the evil men had come to kill the Rodgers' and their friends, Shilka's parents had grabbed their school books and all the books they could gather up and ran for their home village. Once there, they continued to read and to try to understand what the humans had tried to teach them. The village elders could not see why cleaning one's hands with alcohol would prevent women from dying after childbirth, but it worked, so no one complained.

Shilka's father continued to teach young Tarkai to read and write in the human's language and teach them as much of human knowledge as he could. Shilka was one of the few boys in his village who could read and write. This helped when Captain Castle and his troops arrived. Other Recruits had to have the working of weapons, radios, night vision devices and other technology explained to them. Shilka was one of the few who could read the manuals by himself, only having to have certain words explained to him. His instructors never had to explain the same word twice.

Now he was crawling in the dark night towards the plantation of Boss Henry, agreed by all to be one of the most violent of the slavers. He crawled very carefully, but in fact he could almost have strolled into the plantation, security was so lax. He reached the Golden Life leaves processing plant and used his excellent senses to find if anyone was about. No one was.

He crawled to the door and opened it. He carefully went inside. No one was there and the plant was shut down for the night. Quickly identifying the fusion plant by the descriptions he'd read in the books Castle had shown him, he slid under the fusion plant and attached a bomb with five pounds of plastic explosives to the underside where no one would see it unless they also crawled under the plant. He started the timer and watched as it began winding down to 0800 that morning.

He quickly left the plant and crawled a few hundred yards to the forest. There he met a squad that was waiting in case something went wrong and he needed covering fire. They would be miles away by 0800.

Karl Langenfeld arrived at the processing plant before dawn. As usual, he was in a foul mood. As he got the processing machinery running, he bitched to himself under his breath. "God damned fat assed Henry, too damned cheap to hire a helper for me. The dumb fuck has no idea how complex this system is. "Use the slaves.", he says. Like the damned furbutts aren't too dumb and too lazy to be any help. And the guards are even dumber. He's got kinfolk all over his damned house that have at least half a brain, but no, they're too damned good to get their hands dirty actually working."

As the slaves brought in bales of leaves to be processed, Langenfeld would hit them with a length of knotted rope to hurry them along. "Move your sorry asses." He yelled.

At exactly 0800, as attacks were made on fourteen more plantations, the bomb under the fusion plant blew. The fusion pod breached and exploded. Langenfeld and fifteen slaves were vaporized instantly. Most of the guards and all of the slaves were in the fields, but two guards and six slaves were injured. The warehouses for the Golden Life leaves and for the processed product caught on fire and burned to the ground. The slave pens were destroyed, although no one was in them, as was the guards' barracks. Three guards from the night shift were killed and one injured. The main house was damaged and Boss Henry's niece was decapitated by flying debris. Her younger brother, standing next to her lost an arm.

It took eight months to arrange for a bank loan for a new processing plant, then to send an order to the factory on New Hanover. Then the plant had to be manufactured and sent by freighter to Tark. Boss Henry also lost nearly a full season's worth of Golden Life product and leaves. What he was able to harvest had to be sold as raw leaves at a much discounted price. Henry also hired more guards and fortified his plantation. One small bomb had changed the plantation from a very profitable one to one on the very knife edge of bankruptcy.

Castle's troops suffered no casualties.

Castle and his intelligence staff spent the rest of the day and into the night listening to the radio traffic between the plantations. For many hours, there were so many people trying to talk on a limited number of channels that they couldn't make out much except that there was a lot of panic, especially as news, usually exaggerated as so often happened, of the damage done to the Henry plantation spread. But, as the radio traffic thinned out, Castle could discern a couple of trends in the conversations.

One, the plantation owners closest to the great forests, where the Tarkai dwelled, and from which they could most easily attack, were the most frightened. They wanted all of the plantation owners to band together to provide protection. The owners of the plantations away from the perimeter of the valley, who felt much safer, did not feel that they had an obligation to help their more endangered neighbors.

Secondly, what discussions there were almost all concerned with defensive preparations and not offensive. That suited Castle just fine. If all four hundred plantations could be convinced to huddle down in their own separate little defensive forts, they could be defeated in detail, one at a time.

Castle had an idea. "Ask Private Bennett to come here."

Bennett showed up quickly. "Private Bennett reporting, sir."

"Bennett, I have an idea that I think a man like you will just love." As Castle began to explain his plan, Bennett began to smile. By the end of the short briefing he was smiling hugely.

Three nights later, Bennett and two Tarkai were going down Thendabor Creek, a tributary of the Kambala River that ran through the valley. The creek was fast flowing for most of its distance and filled with rocks. Bennett was glad he had the two Tarkai to do the rowing. A human, even with first class night vision goggles would have ended in the water a hundred times. The Tarkai could not only see what was ahead of them, but they could hear the water breaking around rocks ahead and could even smell the differences in the vegetation in and around the water.

The creek began to widen out and the rushing water became slow. The banks, which had been steep were now hardly visible, the stream edging off into a broad wetland. An hour before dawn, the Tarkai stopped in the middle of what was now a swamp and pulled their boat onto a small island that was barely above the water level, but covered with tall, lush vegetation. It was unlikely that anyone would come out into the swamp, but if they did Bennett and his two companions would be hidden from view unless someone actually stepped on them.

The two Tarkai turned their boat over so they could rest under it, being first careful to cover the boat with leaves and other vegetation. Castle had told Bennett that the boat resembled a birch bark canoe, not used since pre-spaceflight days on Earth. Bennett didn't really care as long as the boat and the two Tarkai got him where he needed to go.

After a small breakfast, the three settled down to sleep. They woke before sunset, but remained perfectly still. The Tarkai had long experience as hunters and knew how to remain perfectly still. Bennett's long years as a soldier allowed him to do the same.

Once it was dark, they got back in the canoe and paddled to the Kambala River and went downstream. They stopped at a wooded island and Bennett changed into the stealth suit. He checked his weapon and his other gear and then was paddled to the west bank of the river. Once there, he headed for his target. Although he moved carefully and was almost invisible to the naked eye, he almost laughed at the lack of security anywhere other than the immediate area of the plantations.

TBC