Castle's Recon
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: I've found that I don't own Castle. Rating: K Time: Following Castle's Tanks.
"If you don't mind, ma'am, we were about to eat. It can be a bit difficult eating in a moving track, so if you'd like to wait…"
"No, I am hungry, and I do have food."
"Our food is Tarkai food grown back in the United Kingdoms. Many humans find it too spicy."
"That's no problem." Simone said digging into her backpack. "Oh, dear. I forgot to fill my water bottle at the village."
Since most of the Tarkai had seen their families murdered, wounded or enslaved, they worked very, very hard at helping civilians who had problems, even small problems.
"Ma'am," said Rifleman Prebo, "we have a case of bottled water. If you rap the cap against something, it'll chill the water." Prebo reached into a cardboard box and drew out a bottle and handed it to Simone.
"Oh, thank you so much. Dear me, I've forgotten my manners. What is your name? I'm Simone Renoir."
"I'm Rifleman Prebo, ma'am."
The rest of the squad introduced themselves except for the driver and gunner who were both busy. Corporal Twaan told her who they were.
"Um, ma'am." Rifleman Prebo said, "I have some human food. Pineapple slices. Would you like some?"
"Oh, perhaps just one slice. I don't want you to run out. Pineapple must be a favorite of yours."
"Don't worry about that, ma'am." Corporal Twaan said. "Prebo has enough pineapple to last him until retirement."
"One slice will be fine, Rifleman Prebo."
The squad and Simone ate in silence. However, Simone noticed that the Tarkai were staring at her. Some were obvious about it, others quickly looked away when she looked back at them. When they were all finished, Simone spoke.
"I notice that you are all looking at me. Am I doing something wrong? Something that offends you?"
"No, no." The Tarkai all said.
"It's just that we don't see many human women." Corporal Twaan explained. "There are very few in the brigade. Mostly in the brigade headquarters."
"Captain Soloman is a female. She commands the brigade intelligence company." Rifleman Ormat said.
Rifleman Prebo nodded.
"There's a female gunship crew in the aviation battalion. They call themselves the night witches."
"Usually, when we go back to the UK, we go to see our families. There's a sizeable colony of Tarkai on Wales. That's the habitable moon in the UK system. We see few human females there." Twaan added. "And almost all of the human females we see are dressed in combat fatigues as we are."
"You use an artificial scent to make your aroma more attractive." Prebo said. "It's very pleasing. We have an excellent sense of smell."
"And you use some sort of coloring to highlight your eyes." Ormat added.
"And you use something on your lips and fingernails to make them seem redder."
"I like to make myself look more attractive. Many women do." Simone said, blushing slightly.
"The human females we do see dressed like you are engaged in some sort of human romantic ritual that we don't really understand fully. Are you engaged in some sort of romantic ritual?" Twaan asked.
"No, not at all. I just like to look my best."
"That's too bad." Twaan said.
"Oh, dear, you weren't thinking…" Simone began.
"No, not us." Twaan said. "Captain Castle. He needs a wife. He's more than just our commanding officer. He's the chief of all of the Tarkai whom want to liberate Tark. A chief needs a wife so that he can provide children to strengthen the tribe."
"I'm afraid I'm not in a position to be your chief's wife, but I'm sure he'll find a good one."
"We hope so." Prebo said, taking another slice of pineapple out of the container with his knife. Then he noticed the sword and dirk that Simone had taken away from the village champion.
"Interesting weapons." He said. "May we examine them?"
"But of course." Simone handed the weapons to Prebo who passed them around to all the squad members.
"Good steel. The hilt on the sword covers the whole hand. Very useful."
"It's called a basket hilted sword." Simone explained. "I did notice some Scots in this company. They used to use that type of sword. Many people did, of course."
"I think the dirk was made from a sword that had been broken." Prebo said. "A bit unbalanced for my taste. I prefer our own knives." He removed his knife from its sheath. "We all carry one of these. It's a traditional Tarkai weapon. Most of us have issue weapons made by the UK government. Corporal Twaan has a knife passed down from his great, great grandfather."
Twaan unsheathed his knife and handed it to Simone so she could examine it. The blade was longer than the issue knives and slimmer.
"Very interesting, but I would prefer an assault rifle, non?"
They had stopped for the night and Castle had set up his company in a defensive position. The night passed with no problems. That changed at daylight.
"Radio from Brigade, sir." Corporal Tarn, Castle's radio operator said, handing him a mic.
"Bydand Six Actual. "Rick said, using the call sign the Gordon Highlanders had chosen for him. "Go ahead."
"Rick, we have a problem." Schram said. "We really have a problem. The Duke of Caen has been assassinated, which happens so regularly that it hardly even makes the news. But one of his subordinate nobles has proclaimed himself the king of his little domain. The problem is there was a diplomatic mission from Saint Ann there. The last anyone heard from them was a radio broadcast where they said the new king's soldiers were breaking into their quarters. That was yesterday. No one's heard from them since. I'll send you our intelligence for the area and I can have air cover from the Flying Circus standing by. We've got other problems, but I can probably shake loose some airmobile infantry for you if you need it. Go rescue the hostages, Rick."
Rick read over the intelligence he'd received from Brigade. It wasn't much. He called his officers together to brief them.
"We have good maps from Brigade. There's a good, paved road that we can hit about five miles from here that'll take us straight to the capitol. Intel on the king's army is sketchy. Apparently, the Duke of Caen and all his subordinate nobles were disliked by the Han, so when they left, Caen got the worst weapons. At least that's what intel thinks. Be prepared to be surprised."
He showed them several satellite photos of the town they were headed for and a large mansion.
"The mansion is the palace. Its solidly built, but it wasn't built with defense in mind. That said, it's big and room to room fighting could be deadly. The diplomatic mission was quartered in the palace, on the third floor somewhere in the south wing. Our job is to recover them. Teaching the new king some manners comes second."
Castle checked the pad he was reading from.
"One more thing. The people in the kingdom are Sami. They're from someplace around them North Pole of Earth and they speak a language not well known anyplace else. Saint Ann has no translators as the only people who spoke the language are the missing diplomats. We can't get any help from computer translations either. The language is so obscure that no one on the planet thought to program a computer with the language."
"Okay, gentlemen, you now know as much as I do. Let's get moving."
They found the paved road easily enough and the first few miles were no problem. Then they ran into hills.
"Good place for an ambush." Castle said. "We'd better send drones out to see what's ahead of us."
The drones had only gone three miles ahead when they found trouble.
"Damn. A roadblock." Rick said. "We can't go around it, the hills are too steep. The road is too narrow for us to advance more than two vehicles abreast, and they have two guns of some sort at the roadblock."
"We can use our mortars to knock them out." Saava said.
Castle thought for a moment.
"Let's get a closer look at that roadblock."
Saava increased the magnification and they both looked.
"That's strange." Rick said. "There are only four soldiers in uniform there. Two at each gun."
"There's one with a military hat on." Saava said. "But he's in civilian clothes otherwise."
"And one with a camo shirt on and civilian shorts." Castle said. "And they don't seem at all happy to be there."
"Probably conscripts."
"I have a cunning plan." Rick said. He got on the radio to Lieutenant Mackenzie, who commanded the heavy weapons platoon.
"Mackenzie, I'm going to try to scare the troops in the roadblock away. I want you to drop an 81mm mortar round a hundred yards in front of the roadblock. Then wait thirty seconds and drop two rounds a hundred yards out. Wait another thirty seconds and drop a round seventy-five yards in front, then drop two rounds at seventy-five yards. If they don't run when you reach twenty-five yards, start dropping rounds right on them."
Rick and Saava watched the roadblock through the feed of the drone. The first round caused confusion at the roadblock. The following two rounds caused people to stand up and start yelling at each other. When the first round hit seventy-five yards away, one man stood up, threw down his weapon and started running away. One of the four uniformed soldiers aimed his rifle at the runner, but then saw others running away. He put his rifle down. In seconds only the four soldiers were at the roadblock. Then they ran to a small, open car and drove rapidly away.
"Cease fire." Castle ordered." Have Lance Corporal Horbo and his sapper team to check for booby traps."
When Horbo and his team had reported there were no booby traps, Castle went to examine the roadblock.
"They had two 120mm recoilless rifles. One of those could knock out one of our tanks."
"They left behind two trucks plus ammo." Saava said. "We could take them with us. They'd blow a nice hole in the palace walls. We wouldn't have to use doorways or windows."
"Good idea." Rick said and called Lieutenant Mackenzie to hitch up the recoilless rifles and take them with them.
Rick went to examine the weapons the king's troops had left behind. He picked up a carbine.
"This has been obsolete for over fifty tears. The Han did leave them with the dregs of their armories. And look at that. They cool that machine gun with a water jacket. They used to do that back before spaceflight, and before we had modern metallurgy and…"
Whatever he was about to say was drowned out in the roar of a recoilless rifle. The shell went over company and hit a hill over a mile away. Everyone turned to look at what had happened. The backblast of the recoilless rifle had set the truck on fire. Sprawled on the ground by the gun was a Scot. People ran towards him.
"Will the truck explode?" Castle demanded.
"No, sir." A Scot yelled. "It had no ammo in it and it's an electric vehicle. The tires are burning nicely, though." As indeed they were.
"McAuslan, what did you do?" Mackenzie yelled at the Scot sprawled by the gun.
"It wisn't me. Ah dunno wha' happened, sor."
"I asked you of the gun was loaded and you said it wasn't." Mackenzie had stopped screaming.
"Ah thought ye meant were it loaded ain the lorry, sor, an' it weren't."
"Lieutenant Mackenzie, it looks like we'll be taking just one recoilless rifle with us. Load the ammo by the roadblock onto the remaining truck and hitch the gun to it. And if I might suggest…"
"Yes, sir." Mackenzie interrupted. "Private McAuslan comes nowhere near the gun or truck."
"Excellent idea, Lieutenant."
The truck was loaded, and the recoilless rifle hitched to the back of the truck. The small force resumed its march.
TBC