Friendly Planet
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: I own neither Castle nor planets. Rating: K. Time: After my story Deadly Planets.
The eleven women walked up to Castle.
"Are you Captain Castle?" One asked.
"That's me."
"I'm Team Leader Daran 4179 and this is my team."
Castle looked them over. Daran 4179 and one other woman was carrying a submachine gun that had a magazine mounted on the left side of the weapon. The rest had long barreled battle rifles. The one other woman with a submachine gun had what looked like a rocket propelled grenade launcher over her shoulder. Every woman was carrying two rockets.
"When did you get here, Team Leader and what's happened since then?"
"We arrived two days ago. Shortly after we arrived an Elder appeared and told us to find a Captain Castle and serve with him. We were given a map and a compass heading and then the Elder vanished. We were attacked later that day by some sort of humanoids. There were about a hundred of them and they carried muzzle loading smooth bore muskets. They fired a volley, but none of us were wounded. Our protective vests stopped their bullets. We opened fire and killed about half of them, the rest fled. Then we found you."
"One other thing, Captain Castle, our weapons had been changed when we got here."
"Changed? How?"
"The bullets for our submachine guns are a bit bigger as are the bullets for our rifles. The RPG rounds are the same."
"Can I see one of your submachine gun rounds?"
Daran 4179 handed over a round.
"It looks like a standard 9mm round. Mind if I try this in my pistol?"
She agreed and Castle loaded one round in his Sig Sauer pistol and fired at a tree.
"No problem. We have 9mm ammo that'll fit your weapons. What about the rifles?"
Daran 4179 handed over a rifle round.
"Looks like a NATO 7.62 MM round. Milton, come here and bring your M110 rifle."
Castle fired the new round through Milton's rifle. Again, no problems.
Castle checked the position of the sun.
"I think we'll be staying here for the night. Pick a place for your troops and eat. You do have food?"
"We found food, water, ammo and anything we needed. Um, sir, can I ask you a question?"
"Sure?
"What race are you?"
"I'm a human, like you."
"Sir, we're human, but you're obviously not. You don't look anything like us."
"That's because I'm a human male."
"What's a human male?'
Janice Milton interrupted.
"Daran 4179 how does your race reproduce?"
"When more children are needed, you're taken to the reproduction center, some cells are taken from you and fertilized. Ten months later you get however many children were fertilized to raise and take care of."
Janice turned to Rick.
"Sir, I'm pretty sure these women are clones. That explains the twins, triplets and quadruplets. We need to explain to them how the rest of the human race makes babies."
"Janice and I can handle that." Kate said.
"Me too." Added Sharon.
"As a female medic I should go to." Said Anna, the Ukrainian medic who was now Ryan's wife.
"Okay, get to it." Rick said.
"If you think I'm going to explain sex to these women while surrounded by a bunch of horny, testosterone filled soldiers, you have another think coming, babe." Kate said and led the women away about thirty yards.
They couldn't hear what Kate and the others told the clones, but occasionally they heard the clones speak.
"He puts it where?" Shrieked one.
"Nine months! Nine freaking months?"
They all came back, but the clones looked at the human males as a plump lamb might look at a hungry tiger.
"Sergeant Major." Rick said. "Talk to the human males and tell them the clones are off limits from now until I say otherwise."
"Of course, sir."
Castle then caught up with Zoe.
"I have some questions."
"About what?"
"Before we got sent back here, we were on a Morean ship with a Morean crew. We were also with a submarine from something called the Royal Visigothic Navy and a landing craft, Number 119, from Sergeant-Aspirant Kirta's people, the Salwesians. In addition, we were with an artificially intelligent aircraft that Kanakredes named Gonfalon. Where are they? Are they okay?"
"They are on this planet, but at sea. To the best of my knowledge, they are fine. The Great Game doesn't transfer many warships to this planet. I'm not sure why."
"Any reason you couldn't have just left us all on board the ship?"
"I am not aware of the reason. However, if you were all on the ship, you would have left the two groups that just joined you on land. They would certainly have all died."
"Lucky them, I guess."
They were up before dawn and ready to go by sunrise. Castle called Corporal Gurung and Team Leader Daran 4179 to him.
"I've decided to put both of your units in the center of the column with my command team. It's not that I don't trust your abilities, rather it's because you just got here. We've been here a long time. We know what to look out for. I'm going to let you get acclimated for a day or two. Understood?"
They understood.
"While they're close to the command group," Zoe said, "I can brief them on what's going on here."
Once on the march, Zoe began explaining things.
"The so-called Great Game began some three centuries ago. The race that began the Game is rather long lived, so some of the original founders are still alive. Most are second generation. They discovered that humans, along with some other races had been scattered about this sector of the galaxy. No one knows why this is so, but humans and others have been on other planets for between a few thousand years and a few hundred thousand years. Other groups, mostly humans, were settled on other planets by the Great Game."
"They found that humans and others were quite warlike. They found and uninhabited world and began moving soldiers here. The players, as you are called are mostly from technologically advanced worlds and arrive in groups of ten to twenty. Some groups are larger, some are smaller. They've begun bringing in less advanced groups and more advanced groups. The less advanced groups are larger, up to several hundred. Captain Castle recently ran into a group armed with muzzle loading muskets. His group also witnessed a fight between a group armed with muskets fighting against cavalry armed only with lances and swords. The mre advanced groups are smaller, often no more than three people."
"Bets are taken on the outcome of any battle and so the great Game makes a great deal of money. Their operations are spread over hundreds of planets."
"Don't any planetary governments object to this?" Corporal Gurung asked.
"No planetary government takes jurisdiction over anything outside of its own solar system. And the Great Game is very wealthy and powerful."
"Where do you fit in?"
"I'm with the Anti-Great Game. We began infiltrating the Game some years ago in hopes of finding that the Game was cheating to make more money. Alas, they were not. However, we decided we'd cheat to make money to fight the Great Game. We've arranged for Captain Castle's group to absorb other teams and so grow stronger. We bet on Castle's team and because we cheat, we win, and they win."
"There are four groups you should know about. There are the centaurs. I don't think the Great Game realized just how advanced the Centaurs were when they first brought them here. They're masters of chemical and biological warfare. If they attacked you, you'd be dead before you knew you'd been attacked. They seem to communicate by some form of mental telepathy."
"Secondly are the grey cannibals. They are badly armed, usually with double barreled shotguns or crude repeating rifles and they are cannibals. They even eat their own dead. Unlike other races, when two groups of grey cannibals meet, they always join together. Tactically, they're awful. They have no command and control that anyone has noticed. Instead, each cannibal decides how and when to attack. But once they get going, they're an inhuman wave."
"Next are the White Death. They are, like me, a construct, made by the Game. They are huge and protected by an artificial skin, much like your protective vests, but far more advanced. The only places they aren't covered is their nostrils, eyes, ears, anus and sex organs. They're very difficult to kill and use something like a submachine gun but firing .50 caliber rounds more powerful than .50 caliber machine guns."
"Lastly are the tanks. They were built by a race that was so good at designing and building weapons that they eventually exterminated themselves. But the tank factories remained and still churn out powerful tanks controlled by an artificial intelligence. They will attack other tanks only, unless they are attacked. Do so much as throw a rock at them and they slaughter you."
"You were brought here by bending the space-time continuum. We had thought that we could easily change the process to send Captain Castle and each group back to their home worlds. We've found out that that's far more difficult than we thought. However, we think we can get you all to a safe place."
"When?" One of the clones asked.
"I don't know. It's on a need-to-know basis and apparently, I don't need to know."
"Are there any questions?"
There were none.
After two days, Castle decided to put the new troops into existing platoons. Corporal Gurung and his Gurkhas went with First Platoon that consisted of Castle's old squad, Sergeant La Pierre's US Marines and Sergeant Grant's Scots. Castle figured the Gurkhas would get on well with the Scots as they were from the same army. The clones were put in Second Platoon with the Moreans. Castle wondered how that was going to work out.
"The Moreans come from a world where men are so rare that all they do all day long is have sex to continue the race. For them, having your very own man is heaven. The clones have never had sex with a man and look and sound like they want to keep it that way. How will they get along?"
Kate shrugged.
"If they can't adapt, you can always move people around so that they'd be in a platoon with just non-humans."
"I'd hate to do that. It might look like we were discriminating against the non-humans by putting them all in one platoon."
First Platoon was leading the column, and the Gurkhas were on point when the lead Gurkha Rifleman suddenly stopped, dropped to one knee and shot his arm up in the signal to stop.
Castle came running forward, followed by Kate with his radio and Sergeant Major Kanakredes.
"What is it, Rifleman Thapa?" He asked.
"Smell, Saheb."
Castle inhaled deeply.
"Oh, shit. Something's dead. On this planet that probably means dead people. Any idea how far they are, Rifleman Thapa?"
"Over the next hill for certain, Saheb."
"Okay, we'll go slowly up the hill and take a quick peek." Castle used his radio to inform the rest of his company.
They crawled up the hill and peeked over.
"Oh, shit. It's worse than I thought."
"There must be over a hundred dead there." Kanakredes said.
"Any sign of who killed them or of any survivors?"
No one could see any of either.
They went to check out the dead, calling up the rest of the company.
"They look Asian." Rick said. "Chinese, maybe?"
"Not well equipped." Replied Kanakredes. "A cheap and well-worn grey uniform. This one has straw sandals and that one there has rope sandals. No packs and I only see a few blankets." He turned one dead man over. "He has a leaking canteen, some kind of food bag, an ammo bag all held on by straps over his shoulders."
Sergeant Grant, whose section had arrived examined a dropped rifle.
"Not well made. Not as bad as the grey cannibals, but not good." He pulled back the bolt, "One round up the spout and one in the magazine. Looks like he got some rounds off."
"Put the bluidy rifle doon, man! Ye'll kill yersel'." A Scot screamed.
TBC