Friendly Planet

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I own neither Castle nor planets. Rating: K. Time: After my story Deadly Planets.

When dawn came the next morning, for the first time since they had been on the planet, there was a thick mist. Visibility was limited to a few hundred yards. Even thermal imaging scopes were of little use.

"Can't you see anything?" Castle asked Esposito.

"Yeah. A nice blur. It could be a billion chipmunks or an armored division. We'll have to wait until the fog burns off."

In the meantime, the drums kept pounding.

It took two hours, but they fog was burned away and they saw their opponents.

"That looks like something out of the Arabian Nights." Janice Milton said.

"More like out of Hollywood." Rick said. "It looks more like one of those sword and sorcery movies."

He examined them with his binoculars.

"Those are Earth elephants, I'm sure. I count twenty-one of them. The elephant drivers sure aren't from Earth, though. They look like some sort of lizards."

"Mahouts." Janice said.

"What?"

"The people who control elephants are called mahouts. And the big boxes with troops in them on top of the elephants are called howdahs."

"How does a lawyer end up with such a fund of odd knowledge?"

She shrugged.

"I've always been curious about things."

Castle resumed studying the opposing army.

"The rest of them are humanoid. They have light orange skins and kind of Mickey Mouse ears."

Anber snorted.

"Not as efficient as my ears."

"I don't think they're going to try to kill us with their ears." Castle shot back.

"Okay, it's a big army, but not at all well-armed. I see pikemen and soldiers with shields and swords and…Shit. They have some firearms. Looks like matchlock muskets. Their musketeers are forming up behind the pikemen. I remember reading someplace how an army like that deployed and fought, but I don't remember anything else."

"We'll find out soon enough, babe." Kate said.

The drums began to get louder.

"This may be it." Rick said.

But it wasn't.

Over a hundred alien women came out in front of their army and began to dance. It became quickly clear that they were doing a strip tease. Soon they were all naked.

"I admit I'm not conversant with humanoid standards of beauty," said Kanakredes, "but those women look…"

"Butt ugly." Kate finished for him.

"And elderly." Janice added.

"Perhaps this is some sort of a war dance." Kanakredes said. "Perhaps I should do one of my ancestral war dances. I was always renowned for being light on my feet."

"We don't know anything about this culture. If you danced for them, you might be volunteering to be their bedmate."

"No dancing then."

But Castle had an idea. He got on the radio and told the sniper team to join him.

"I remember one thing about war elephants." He said, once everyone was there." They can be as big a problem to their own army as their opponents' army. If they're injured and panic, they can turn around and run right through their own troops. Herftood, the elephants are in easy range for your X-ray laser rifle, right?"

"Yes, Company Commander Castle."

"When the dancing stops and they attack, I want you to start shooting the mahouts, those are the guys who control the elephants. When you kill all of the mahouts, shoot at the elephants. I don't want you to kill them, just give them painful wounds. Try shooting at their legs, their ears and their trunk. That's their big, long nose."

"Captain, "Sergeant Esposito said, "the rest of the snipers should try to wound the elephants as well. They're too far away for shooting at a human sized target, but we should be able to injure an elephant, no problem."

"You might bring Gunner Choda up as well." Added Herftood." The elephants are in the range of his 15mm machine gun."

"Good idea."

Gunner Choda and his troops were tall and green and very slightly resembled a frog. They were from an ancient and dying world and the world's surviving technology was more or less a match for Earth's. Their machine gun fired a very powerful round and used a gun barrel made of manufactured diamonds. He began setting up his machine gun.

The drums stopped. The women stopped dancing, picked up their clothing and walked off and behind their army.

"They're putting a screen of infantry around the elephants to keep us from shooting them. Not that that'll do any good."

The elephants began to advance and Herftood began killing the mahouts. When half a dozen had been killed, the mahouts began jumping down off their mounts. Other people, presumably officers, sent them back up at swords' point.

One infantryman was told to mount an elephant and began to climb aboard. The elephant used his trunk to toss the hapless soldier aside.

Without guidance, the elephants began to huddle together. By now, they were being hit with a barrage of bullets.

One elephant had apparently had enough. He raised himself onto his hind legs, trumpeted loudly and headed for the entrenched hill. However, he ran right into another elephant. The two trumpeted and butted heads, then the first elephant turned and headed away from the fire, picking up speed as he ran ponderously away.

The other elephants turned and followed him. One man tried to climb from the howdah to the top of the elephant's head. He was grabbed by the elephant's trunk, tossed to the ground and stomped on. Soldiers in the howdahs began to jump off.

The rest of the army, seeing the elephants coming towards them, began to get out of the way. Some went right, some went left, some went back and some, deciding the elephants would go by them stayed where they were.

The army dissolved in chaos.

Soon there was nothing left but dead and wounded soldiers and one angry elephant, busily stomping on anything that offended him.

"That's got to be the oddest battle in human history." Rick said.

"Don't limit it to just humans, Captain." Herftood said. "The oddest battle anywhere."

"I don't think they'll try elephants again, but they still have a lot of people. I'm going to double the sentries again tonight."

There were no drums that night, but as dawn broke, the drums began pounding again. This time there was no fog, and they could see the enemy army forming up. There were only two elephants present and they were behind the army, barely out of the trees on the hill across from Castle's troops. Once more, the elderly women came out in front of the army and did their striptease. When they were done, the army about faced and marched away.

"We'll stay here for a day or two." Rick said. "I don't quite believe they just turned around and went home."

The next night several patrols were sent out. They found wrecked equipment, bloody bandages and large piles of elephant dung. But there was no sign of the army. Castle decided to move on the next day.

Another day had past and it was just after noon when they heard it.

"Airplane." Rick yelled. "Everyone spread out and take cover."

They all searched the skies and they all saw the two airplanes at once.

"Two of them." Rick said. "One's swept wing and in natural silver and the other one is a delta wing and has brown and green camouflage paint. I think they're fighting each other."

Castle knew a little bit about aerial combat and tried to describe what was happening to his command.

"They are dogfighting. I think the silver one is more maneuverable, but the delta is faster. Yeah, the delta is climbing and leaving silver behind. I lost delta in the clouds. Wait! There he is. He's diving and fired a missile at silver. Silver is turning hard and…the missile missed him. But delta is climbing. Now he's diving. Both of them have fired missiles. They both missed. Or did they? Silver is kind of shaking. No, he's okay now. But that let delta get close to him. He's firing cannons at silver. I think silver's hit. Yes. I can see pieces coming off of silver. Delta's fired another missile. Oh! It hit silver. He's lost a wing. He's done for. I don't see a parachute. Wait. I think delta's flown through some debris from silver. Yes! I can see delta's engine is smoking. Oh, shit. He's headed this way. He may be trying to crash land."

The delta winged plane flew over them at a very low altitude and crashed a half a mile from them.

"Let's go see if the pilot's all right. If we can make friends with someone with that kind of technology, we'll be in a lot better shape."

They took off with Castle's command group in the lead, and the medics right behind. The rest of the troops were not far behind.

The aircraft had crash landed but wasn't in bad shape, considering. It wasn't burning. The canopy was pulled back and the pilot, in a brown one-piece jumpsuit and a green, visored helmet jumped out. At first, he seemed disoriented, but when he saw Castle's troops coming, he drew a pistol, aimed and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. The pilot pulled the trigger twice more, then put the muzzle of the pistol under his chin and pulled the trigger. Again, nothing happened.

Kanakredes grabbed the pistol and examined it.

"Definitely not trained for ground combat. There's a clip in the pistol, but no round in the chamber."

"Go ahead and kill me. I have no fear of dying for the Gods."

Castle noticed at once that the voice sounded both young and female. He also noticed that the pilot wasn't even five feet tall.

"Are you female?" he asked.

"Does it make any difference? You'll kill me anyway."

"We're not going to kill you. Look around at the people with me. We enlist people we find, if they're interested, we don't kill them."

She pulled off her helmet. She was a human girl with black hair cut rather like the Beatle's haircuts with dark eyes and fair skin.

"How old are you?"

"I don't know. It's not important."

Anna, the Ukrainian medic spoke.

"Have you menstruated yet?"

"You mean my monthly bleeding? No."

Anna turned to Rick.

"As a guess, she's preteen, maybe twelve years old. Maybe younger. But just a kid."

"I'm not a kid." She yelled. "I'm Pilot Tharon Abbler and I have shot down eight of the God's enemies." She smiled. "Now nine, counting today. But I got shot down myself so perhaps it doesn't count."

"How long have you been a pilot?" Rick asked.

"All my life. My earliest memories are of training when I could barely walk."

"They start you as toddlers? Why?"

"We need to fight the enemies of the Gods."

"Who are the Gods?"

She looked confused.

"The Gods are the Gods. What else could they be?"

Rick decided not to get into any theological disputes just yet.

"How far is your base from here? We can take you back."

"You can't take me back. There's no way to get back."

"How could there be no way to get back?"

"The airbase is surrounded by minefields and gun emplacements. If anyone tries to enter, the mines, which lie underground will fly up and attack the intruder. The guns will fire. If the intruder is really powerful, like the large white ones, the green ray fires. It'll chop the large white ones to bits."

"That sounds like the White Death." Kanakredes said. "Anything that would chop them up is bad news."

"Sir," said Rifleman Than, "I don't believe this aircraft has an ejection seat or a parachute."

"What use would that be?" said the pilot. "Once you're outside the base and on the ground, you're dead."

"We can at least try to call them on the radio and let them know what happened."

TBC