Freebooter
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: Castle and Star Trek: Enterprise belong to vast corporations. UCSBdad is not any kind of corporation. Rating: K, but maybe more. Time: Some vague time in two alternate universes.
He stopped and listened. He couldn't hear or see anything that made him think that there were any other pirates around. The Vulcans by the dead female pirate were helping each other up. He decided to go outside. The two pirate rapists appeared to be still alive, although just barely. He fired a round into each head. He checked the other two and confirmed they were dead.
As he turned around, T'Pol came running up to him. She wasn't wearing her full robes, just a top and a short skirt. My god but she was gorgeous.
"What have you done?" She screamed.
"I don't like slavers, and I don't like rapists. I killed them. So?"
"You cannot do this!"
"You're wrong because I just did. See?"
"Do you know why we are pacifists? We used to fight and kill like you do. We had a war thousands of years ago. Our cities were obliterated, billions died. We cannot return to that time."
Trip nodded.
"Okay, I absolutely promise not to blow up your planet. Not even a little bit. Okay?"
"That is an absurd promise. You do not have the ability to blow up the planet."
"So, you know I'm not lying to you."
"What will you do now?"
"I'm gonna take care of the dead humans."
"We will do that." She said sharply.
"Do you understand human funeral rituals?"
That stopped her.
"We know nothing of human funeral rituals."
"I'll handle it then."
She just nodded.
"Could clean up the place?" Trip added. "You know, clean up the blood and brains, pick up the expended cartridges."
"Of course."
T'Pol turned and walked away from him. He was absolutely positive he'd never seen anything as great as her walking away, except her walking towards him.
He went to the truck and moved the driver into the passenger seat. Then he hauled the dead woman and her submachine gun to the truck. The would-be rapist who'd been holding the woman's hands was small and he had no problem moving him. The last corpse was a lot heavier, and it took forever for Trip to drag him back to the truck. To get the body into the back, Trip had to tie a rope around the man's leg and haul him in. He walked back to the village and made sure he'd gotten all of their equipment.
He started up the truck and began driving south. The truck had come from the south, he thought and the area south of the village was a rocky plain. Five miles from the village he saw tire marks in the sand. He drove a bit on the rocky plain and then drove onto the sand. He drove for another hour and stopped the truck. He maneuvered the driver back into the driver's seat and pulled out the driver's submachine gun and fired a half a magazine into the air. He then moved the three remaining corpses to one side of the truck and fired their weapon into the air. Then he walked around the truck to examine his handiwork.
"If anyone finds this, they'll come to the right conclusion. The truck was ambushed out here and the driver was killed first, which stopped the truck. The other three took cover on one side of the truck and were eventually killed. And all of this had nothing to do with the village of T'Okar, or me."
Trip checked his map and compass and got ready to march back to T'Okar. He stopped at nightfall and made camp, then got up at dawn and kept marching. It was afternoon when he finally saw T'Okar. He walked in and went straight to his vehicle and got a cold beer. No one said a word to him.
"You're all very welcome, T'Okarians. I was more than happy to save your ungrateful lives and make sure no one connects this place with four dead slavers. No, no. You don't have to go overboard like that and thank me. Happy to be of service."
He was working on his second beer when T'Pel, the elderly Vulcan healer, came up to him.
"Did you succeed in taking care of the human funeral rites, Healer?"
"Yeah. I'm sure their souls are going where they should go."
"I wonder if I might impose upon you?"
Trip sighed.
"What?"
"T'Kal's son, Brod, suffered an injury to his arm. I wonder if you might try to help?"
Trip was about to refuse, but then he thought that T'Pel was the only person in the village that would talk to him without complaining about his actions. She was about his only friend, so he'd better keep her friendly.
"Sure. Let's go see him."
"We've got a good one." Lieutenant O'Rourke said to Castle and his staff. "The satellite's picked up a good-sized pirate force." The lieutenant showed a still taken by the satellite. "They hit a fair-sized village here. They got about a thousand slaves. We make the pirate force at about a hundred people. Kill them and we've taken a good chunk out of the pirates' manpower."
"Where are they now?" Rick asked.
Another vid came up.
"Here. They look like they're headed for a smaller village, here. The Vulcans have to walk, so they aren't moving very fast. We could hit them about here, in two days."
"Let's get planning."
Once again, Sergeant Gorad and his scouts checked out the slaver's camp once it was dark. He didn't like what he saw.
"They're either learning, or the pirate in charge has either experience or brains." Gorad said once back to where the HMS Minerva had landed.
"How so?" Rick asked.
"They're dug in, they've had their slaves fill sandbags to give them cover. The sentries are alert. I saw several men going about, checking on the sentries."
"Weapons?" Rick asked.
"Light infantry weapons only, sir. No machine guns, mortars, recoilless rifles, or missiles."
"Any good news?"
Gorad smiled.
"There's dead ground here." He pointed to a section of the map. We can crawl to within twenty meters of their lines."
Castle smiled back.
"Okay, the slaves are all in the center of the camp with the slavers on the perimeter. We can use the mortars to hit the slavers, but none of our heavier weapons can be used. Machine guns, recoilless rifles or missiles might go right past the slavers and kill the Vulcans. We can't take that chance."
Within an hour, one platoon of Castle's company was crawling through the dead ground towards the slavers' camp. Rifleman Pebo stopped with his head almost to Lieutenant de Gautier's feet. De Gautier himself had stopped at the very end of the dead ground, only twenty meters from a slaver sentry post. To the right of de Gautier was his radio operator, Lance Corporal Siwa. To his left was his platoon sergeant, Sergeant Branna.
De Gautier turned and held up five fingers. That meant five seconds until the mortars fired. Then four fingers, three, two, one and then none. Pebo heard the thunk of the mortars firing. The slavers appeared to have no idea what the sound meant. Seconds later, they knew and many died not knowing.
"Up and at 'em" de Gautier yelled as the whole platoon rose and charged.
Pebo charged and as he ran past a downed pirate, he felt three heavy thumps on his flak jacket, and he was knocked over. In seconds, Corporal Charles, a human medic, was kneeling by him.
"Where are you hit?" Charles yelled over the din of weapons fire.
"I'm not sure. I think my flak jacket caught it."
Charles checked Pebo, running his hand under the flak jacket.
"Your flak jacket didn't get penetrated, and I think all you'll have is a nasty bruise on your chest. Anyplace else hit?"
"No, Doc." Pebo used the nickname for combat medics that dated back centuries.
"Then get moving."
Pebo got up and ran to the nearest group of two Tarkai, who were sheltering in a hole. Pebo dropped in beside them.
"Nice of you to join us." Said Lance Corporal Sedant, who was carrying a squad automatic weapon, basically a light machine gun. The Rifleman with him was faced away from Pebo. He didn't recognize him, but Pebo saw he had a grenade launcher.
"The slavers have them a nice bunker made out of sandbags and are firing like they have all the ammo on this planet with them. Neither of us can shoot because there are a bunch of Vulcans right behind them tied up in a standing position. We try to kill the pirates; we'll kill a bunch of Vulcans.
Pebo thought for a moment.
"Can you shoot in front of the bunker? Keep them occupied?"
"Sure thing."
When both soldiers were firing, Pebo put his assault rifle on semi-automatic and looked through his night sight. He could see movement in the bunker, but it was hard to get a clear target. Then he saw a pirate lean forward to get a better view. Pebo centered the man in the crosshairs of his sight and squeezed the trigger. The man fell back.
Pebo could see a line of bullets hitting the ground just to the right of him. He thought a pirate had an idea of where he was. Pebo picked up the muzzle flashes and fired one round. The shooting stopped.
Then he got lucky. Someone fired a flare that landed behind the bunker, bathing the inside of the bunker in light through the rear entrance of the bunker. Pebo took two quick shots, and two more pirates dropped. Pebo ran forward and tossed a grenade through the firing slit of the bunker, then ducked down. After the blast, he looked through the firing slit. They were all dead.
There were a few more firefights and then the pirates were dead or prisoners. Now the only problem was rounding up a thousand hysterical Vulcans. Even with the help of the Vulcans Castle had recruited for the job, it was late in the afternoon before all of the Vulcans were rounded up.
Castle had his troops destroy all of the pirates' weapons, except for a few that were compatible with his own weapons. Any ammo he could use was also saved. The dead pirates were left as they were. Hopefully, someone from Ringo's group would come along, find them and draw the obvious conclusion. Someone was hunting them.
Trip had fixed Brod up. The kid really had no more than some bad scratches, plus he'd had the shit scared out of him. Oddly, he was thanked by Brod and his whole family for his work, but no one said anything about Trip stopping a slave raid and a rape.
He walked back to his eight-wheeler and had a beer and then dinner. After his exertions, he felt he deserved a reward, even if no one else thought so. He had a cold can of Guinness and then ate one of the fine meals Melody had for the customers she had to woo.
The next day he decided he'd look around for any signs of dilithium crystals in the area. He had some idea of where to look and what to look for that would indicate crystals in the area.
He decided against taking the vehicle since he wasn't going far and didn't want the vehicle spotted from the air, assuming JOM Cubed was even looking for him.
He took his flak jacket with its attached gear, extra water, three meals, just in case, and one of the heavier battle rifles and ammo.
T'Pel saw he was getting ready to leave and came over to talk to him.
"I hope you are not leaving us, Healer."
"No. I came out here to look for dilithium crystals. That's what I'm going to do. Any idea where I might find some?"
"We found some of them a few years ago and used the payment we got to pay for the solar power unit. I do not know where the crystals were found."
Trip thanked her and headed into the desert.
TBC