Deadenders
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: Castle reached a dead end with Season 8, but it's going strong here. Rating: K Time: The far future.
"Don't they make rifles on Aurora?" Espo asked.
"Sure. They make bolt action, repeating rifles with iron sights."
"Why? With a little more effort, they could make a modern battle rifle or an assault rifle."
"Sure, we could, if we didn't have a thousand other things we need to make with our limited industrial base. Remember the old saying: Better is the enemy of good enough."
"Speaking of your uncle's ranch, what can you tell us about it?" Kate Beckett asked.
"We raise mainly beef cattle, although we have a small dairy herd. We also raise some horses, of course. In addition, we have pigs and chickens. There are other people who raise sheep and there are a few streams and lakes that have been stocked with Earth fish."
"Any coffee?"
Castle shook his head.
"It's too cold to grow coffee. The first settlers tried to grow some in specially heated greenhouses, bit it was too expensive, and the quality was poor."
"No coffee? I'm not going."
"Kate!" Dr. Parish said. "Don't be foolish. You can't spend your life in that camp just because they have coffee. Awful coffee as you've said. What did you say? It tastes like a monkey peed in battery acid?"
"There's no coffee, Kate." Rick said, "but there is a native plant called chatka. It contains a local analogue to caffeine. I've tried both. I think you'll like chatka."
"I'd better."
"Why do you have two complete medical clinic sets here?" Parish asked. "I thought Ryan and I would be at your uncle's ranch."
"It would be better if you stayed in Alphaville, Aurora's only town. They have a helicopter they can use to either move patients to you, or you to patients. Plus, Doctor Bernard is in Alphaville. He's getting along in years though. Ryan will be based at the ranch."
"Okay. That explains that."
"Your town is called Alphaville?" Espo asked.
"When the colony first ship got there, they named the place they landed first Landing Zone Alpha. Then they realized the colony was too small to be spread over the planet. So, the LZ was just called Alpha and eventually the town was called Alphaville."
Satisfied that Castle could deliver what he'd promised, they all headed back to the camp. Once again, no one checked their IDs or searched them for contraband.
"I notice that you have grenade launchers." Michael Grant said." Have you talked with Fredo Landini and Pal Maleter. They're really good with grenade launchers."
"I haven't. Espo, Ryan, anyone? Know anything about them?"
No one did.
"I'll take you to meet them." Michael said. "They're not too far."
The two men were sitting outside of their tent. Fredo was tall and slim while Pal was shorter and had the very pale and scabbed arm of someone whose arm had been regrown. Once again, Castle explained what he intended to do.
"Your arm okay, Mr. Maleter?" he asked.
"Looks like shit, but it works."
"What kind of grenade launchers do you use?" he asked.
"I use a single shot GL under the barrel of a 7mm battle rifle. I remove the handguard to mount the GL. The normal range of the 30mm GL is four hundred yards. I can hit a man at six hundred yards and have hit further than that, but not all the time."
"I use the 30mm pump action GL." Fredo said. "I'm as good as he is, and I can put more rounds out."
"You don't have much close in fire power if someone gets close. Or a lot of someones." Castle said.
"Maybe you could bring John N'Kosi along. He'd a former assault trooper and he's really good with an assault rifle."
"Where is he?"
"Hey, John!" Fredo yelled. "Man here might have something for you."
John N'Kosi was short but heavily muscled and very Black.
"What do you want?" he asked Castle.
Once more, Castle explained what he wanted to do.
"Better than here, but what isn't? Sign me up."
"One thing," Castle said, "your accent says you're from Earth. Why not just go back?"
"I was in Officers Candidate School on Earth. I noticed that some candidates did little work, failed their tests and got commissioned anyway. They were sent to nice, safe staff jobs on Earth. I complained to the chain of command and was told to mind my own business. So, I went to a politician I knew. Big scandal. Lots of rich people were paying to get their children into nice safe jobs on Earth. There were lots of court martials, but somehow, I got dropped from OCS and sent to an assault division. I'm not sure I'd live very long if I went back to Earth."
"Welcome to the team."
Castle found out he had more work to do when he got back to Ryan's tent with his new recruits. Alexis Rodgers met him there.
"I've been researching three-hundred-year-old computers." She tapped her own portable computer. "I'm going to need some stuff." She handed him a list.
"I don't even know what this stuff is."
"Any competent computer jockey will know what it is. I absolutely need to have this for your computer if you want it fixed."
"Not it, but her."
"Pardon?"
"The computer's name is Charlie and she's decided she's female."
"Computers that old had personalities? Shit." Alexis grabbed the list back and added a few more items.
"Anything for a computer that old will be rare, but it shouldn't be that expensive."
Rick found out just how rare the items were. He spent three days contacting computer companies before he finally found one that had what he wanted. To get there, he had to leave the camp, go to the dirtside spaceport, take a shuttle to the orbiting spaceport and then get on a ship to one of Aotearoa's moons.
When he got there, the place looked more like a junk shop, but he went in. As soon as he stepped inside, he found that the owner hadn't bothered to put in artificial gravity. Gravity was about twenty percent of normal. Fortunately, Rick was trained in low gravity work.
"I'm Rick Castle. I called you about some computer stuff."
"Got it right here." The man said. Man was perhaps pushing it. To Rick he looked about ten years old. Maybe he was.
"Mind if I check it?"
"Please do."
Rick began checking although he really had little idea of what he was looking at.
"You a collector?"
"What?" Rick said.
"Do you collect old computers?"
"No. My home world's only sentient computer is three hundred years old. It needs to be updated."
"Three hundred years old? Why not just get a new one? They're dirt cheap now that the war's over."
"How expensive is dirt cheap?"
The man thought.
"Maybe six hundred thousand Earth credits. Maybe a bit less."
"You ever hear of the colony Aurora?"
"Never."
"That's because it's far away and poor. That kind of money is not dirt cheap to us."
Finding that everything seemed to be there, Rick turned back to the man.
"You said three thousand Earth credits for this? Isn't that kind of expensive for some stuff that's just going to clutter up your shelf space for years if I didn't buy it?"
"I already gave you the price for not cluttering up my shelf space. Three thousand it is."
Rick paid and left.
When he got back to the camp, Espo had an idea for him.
"Castle, I noticed you had some mortars, but we've got no mortar crews. None of us know of any, but I'm sure if we ask around, there must be some in this camp."
"Then ask around."
Asking around got them the name of one "Pappy" Walden, supposed to be an excellent mortar gunner.
When Castle tracked him down, Rick decided he looked like a pappy. Although he had rigged a hammock up and was sound asleep outside his tent, Rick could see that Pappy was grey haired.
"You Pappy Walden, the mortar expert?"
Pappy didn't open his eyes.
"That's me. Expert in all of your mortars: 150mm; 122mm; 105mm; 90mm; 76mm and 55mm. Now if that answers your question, I'd like to go back to sleep."
Once more Castle explained what he was looking for and why.
"What kind of mortars are we talking about?" Pappy asked, yawning.
"I've got a 55mm and a 90mm."
"You're going to need more than just one gunner. You'll need a bunch."
"I plan to leave the 90mm dug in at the ranch. Once it's dug in with aiming stakes and range cards all set up, I figure you can train some of our people to handle it well enough. The 55mm will have to be mobile. I can recruit some Ka Raras to carry mortar rounds and whatever else you need."
"Two gunners would be better for what you want."
"Yeah, but all I have is you."
"You got more than me." He turned towards his tent, "Hey, Sonny. You been listening?"
When he came out of the tent, Sonny looked about the same age as Pappy, but with snow white hair.
"I heard."
"You wanna go with this fella?"
"You wanna stay here?"
"Hell no." Said Pappy.
"Then we'll go. By the way, Castle, I'm Sonny Santino."
"You look to be the same age. How come he's Pappy and you're Sonny?"
"Cause I've been shooting mortars for twenty-five years and Sonny has only been a mortarman for twenty-four. He's just a kid."
A day later they got a line on another possible recruit. This was from a camp guard.
"You ever heard of Silent Smith?" The guard asked.
"Never." Castle replied. "He doesn't talk much?"
"He works very quietly. Uses nothing but suppressed weapons and sometimes a bow and arrow or a crossbow. Supposed to be good."
Silent Smith was the oddest-looking recruit Castle had seen so far. He was tall and well built, but he had painted his face in blue, green and yellow colors, plus he had feathers braided into his hair. He was dressed in moccasins, a breechclout and a blanket over his shoulders.
"Are you Silent Smith?"
"That's me. In spite of my White man's name, I'm a Cree. The First Nations of Canada."
Castle knew Canada was someplace on Earth but had no idea what a Cree or a First Nation was.
"So why not go back to Canada?"
"Because I was born on a planet we call Athabasca. Our neighbors to the south refer to it as New Baluchistan and our neighbors to the north call it Kwantung. Our neighbors fight each other all the time and as far as they're concerned, we just get in the way. Any Cree in their right mind will look for a new home."
"You use suppressed weapons?"
"Yup. Suppressed 9mm pistol, 9mm submachine gun, 7mm assault rifle and 7mm battle rifle, plus the bow and arrow, crossbow, blowpipe, knife, garotte, and anything else that's silent."
Castle began to explain what he wanted and why, but Smith cut him short.
"The whole camp knows who you are and what you want. Anything's better than sitting here waiting for them to get tired of feeding us and kicking us out to starve in the streets."
Apparently, the whole camp did know about Castle and his plan. A few people came to volunteer, but lost interest when they found out that Aurora really was a poor backward planet in the back of beyond.
However, a new volunteer did show up.
"Rick Castle, get your useless ass out here and offer us a drink! We're parched."
When the man yelled that, everyone but Rick came out carrying weapons.
"Smiling Jack Reynolds. I heard you were dead." Rick said.
"So did I. In fact, I heard it so many times I've taken to checking my pulse to make sure I'm alive. Now, how about a drink?"
TBC