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.
De Gautier waited and then the flares burst over the pirates' positions. He got back on the radio.
"Bravo Saber Six to Redleg Six. Splash. Fire for effect. Over."
"On the way, Bravo Saber Six. Out."
"Lieutenant?" Said a voice. De Gautier turned around.
"I'm Corporal Pirad, sapper squad sir. Could you have the Vulcans toss all of the ammo they're carrying and put it in one place? I'll need all the weapons left behind tossed in as well. We're gonna blow the lot."
De Gautier got busy organizing the med evac of the wounded, getting the unwounded or lightly wounded Vulcans headed to safety, and helping the sapper team get ready. Once the wounded had left, the Vulcans were safely away and the explosives ready, da Gautier and his platoon took cover behind a small rise.
"Fire in the hole. Fire in the hole." Yelled the sapper corporal, followed by a substantial blast.
Unknown to anyone, an almost complete, but damaged, submachine gun flew into the air and landed on top of Lieutenant de Gautier's helmeted head.
"Are you okay, sir?" Sergeant Mollo asked.
"No, but I'm gonna walk back to company headquarters anyway."
"Are you sure about that?"
"Yeah. Now let's get the hell out of here before something else hits me." He knew he was going to have a hell of a headache tomorrow.
By dawn, the pirates had, more or less, moved into one clump about five kilometers from Castle's company.
"You won't believe what we got on the radio from them, sir." Lieutenant Gran, the intelligence officer said. "They think they were attacked by a brigade sized force. Some of them are saying they got hit by artillery. We never shot anything but flares at them."
"Well, "Rick said with a smile, "they did get hit by a brigade sized force. But it was their own people shooting at them."
"One group said that the pirate gang we did overrun was hit by tanks. Tanks. Can you believe that?"
"Oui." Said Simone Renoir with a smile. "I think our pirates are trying to talk themselves into retreating back to Ringo's base. After all, if they are facing a brigade sized force, complete with artillery and tanks, they are badly outmatched. And who knows? We may be a division sized force with aerospace attack craft and all the panoply of modern war. It is only wise to retreat. After all, none of these cochons signed up to actually fight anyone."
Sergeant Saava spoke up.
"Sirs, it looks like the pirates are all gathering together."
Castle and the rest grabbed their binoculars while Lieutenant Gran tried to get something on the radio.
"I think they're all having a great big argument about what to do next. We should help them decide. They should be in range of both our 81mm and 60mm mortars. What about the recoilless rifles?"
"We could easily overshoot the pirates and hit the Vulcans." Lieutenant Piran, in charge of the heavy weapons said. "The guided missiles would be better since we can control them all the way."
"Let's make our voices heard in their discussion, then."
No more than a dozen mortar rounds and three guided missiles were fired before Castle had to order cease fire.
"They're too intermixed with the Vulcans to keep firing." He said, "But as closely packed as the pirates were, we got a bunch of them."
"Two groups of pirates are running, sir." Sergeant Saava said. "We could go after the smaller group and do some damage."
"No." T'Pol said. "Both groups are headed for the Forge. That'll kill the pirates and allow many Vulcans to survive."
"What's the Forge?" Rick asked.
"The worst part of Vulcan. There's little water, and great heat. Vulcans can stand lack of water and high heat much better than humans. Plus, there are sehlats in there, and…"
"What's a sehlat?" Castle interrupted.
"A great big nasty thing with big teeth and a really nasty temper." Trip answered.
"I had a domesticated sehlat as a pet when I was a young girl." T'Pol added.
"Anything else in there?"
"Sand fire storms." T'Pol said.
"What are they?"
"Fatal. Fatal to both humans and Vulcans."
"Okay." Rick said. "We'll have the satellite keep track of the two groups. If any Vulcans come back out, we'll use the ship's boats to take water to them and pick up and injured or wounded. Assuming the boats aren't needed militarily."
"It looks like the pirates are headed back to their ship." McRoberts said. "They've had enough. We can trail along behind them and pick off stragglers and maybe shoot up the main body."
"We don't want them to get too good a look at us." Rick said. "If they figure out we're only a company, they may get some of their courage back."
"Unlikely," Said Sergeant Fa'an, the sniper, "but I have an idea."
Lance Corporal Firant loved Sergeant Fa'an's idea. Dozens of Tarkai had been given a chance to try to ride the two captured motorcycles. Firant and one other Tarkai had proved to be naturals. Now, their jobs were to drive as fast as they could, trailing tarps studded with engineer stakes and make a whole lot of dust.
Firant was to drive back and forth behind the mob of pirates, simulating a large force following them. Rifleman Trant, the other biker, rode parallel to the pirates to the south, moving them further and further from Ringo's ship. Meanwhile, Castle was marching his company to the north, paralleling the pirates.
They did begin finding wounded or exhausted pirates that had been left behind. Having no spare troops to guard them, they were left where they were. The desert would take care of them. The Vulcans they found had invariably been executed by the pirates.
By marching hard all night, Castle had gotten his company to a ridge overlooking a place the pirates would have to cross. Regrettably, it would now head the pirates back towards Ringo's ship. But the pirates would have to cross an area less than a kilometer wide, making them perfect targets for Rick's troops.
He walked among his troops going over, again, how important it was to try not to kill any Vulcans. Most of his heavy weapons troops were using only their assault rifles, except for a few medium machine gun teams who had been repeatedly ordered to fire only short bursts and only when they had a clear target of a group of pirates with no Vulcans around.
As Castle walked away, Lance Corporal Minkis gently stroked the breech of his machine gun.
"We're not amateurs." He muttered. "We know not to kill civilians. I can just stroke the trigger of my little friend here and get off a nice, three round burst as pretty as you please. And it'll go right where I want it to go."
Rifleman Prebo speared a piece of pineapple from a can and held it on the tip of his fighting knife.
"That you can. But the captain is probably trying to impress the Vulcan lady. She doesn't know anything at all about combat. No one on this planet knows anything about war. Pretty nice if you think about it."
Minkis just grunted.
"Nice, until someone like Ringo comes along." Prebo said, popping the pineapple chunk into his mouth. "Or someone like us."
The first of the shambling mob heading for Ringo's ship were mostly Vulcans, who, after all, were much better accommodated to the heat and higher gravity of their home planet that the humans. There were a few humans intermixed with the Vulcans, but Rick ordered his people to hold their fire. He wanted to get the bulk of the pirates into the kill zone before opening fire.
Finally, a mob of over a thousand pirates with more than twice that number of Vulcans made it into the kill zone. Better yet, the pirates were bunched together with some distance between them and their hostages.
Rick looked up over the lip of the ridge. The enemy was just where he wanted them. He took the mic of his radio from Corporal Tarn and ordered, "Open fire."
All of the platoon leaders and squad leaders yelled, "Open fire."
There was a slight delay while the troops pulled themselves from behind the crest of the ridge and took aim. Then gunfire sleeted down onto the pirates.
The sniper, Sergeant Fa'an, had been using a small periscope to track the targets he wanted to hit. His first choice was a pirate who was dragging two naked and very young Vulcan girls along by a rope around their necks. As soon as he heard the order to fire, he swung himself into position and fired. He hit the pirate in the head. He methodically went through his choices for targets, killing one after the other. For a very well-trained sniper, it was like shooting fish in a barrel.
Lance Corporal Minkis stroked the trigger of his machine gun and sent three rounds down range. He was disappointed to see that two rounds hit one pirate while the single round shattered the spine of the other pirate. The pirate that Minkis had missed with the first burst was hit by all three rounds of his second burst.
Rifleman Prebo chewed methodically on a slice of pineapple while sending single shots into the mass of pirates. He saw one pirate trying to protect himself by holding two Vulcans in front of him. The terrified Vulcans kept trying to pull away, which caused the pirate to move from side to side. Prebo was unable to get a clear shot. Then he saw that the pirate's foot was well in front of both Vulcans. Prebo took careful aim and put a round into the pirate's foot, causing him to stumble. One Vulcan managed to get away, but the pirate held the other one in front of him.
"You still have a foot in my sights." Prebo said happily, sending another round into the pirate's ankle. This time the pirate fell over, allowing his Vulcan hostage to get away. Prebo sent one more round into the pirate, this time hitting him in the head.
As this was happening, the Vulcan auxiliaries were using bullhorns to tell their fellow Vulcans to lie flat.
The little discipline the pirates had, completely disappeared. The pirates dropped their backpacks and in some cases their weapons and began to run. The Vulcans stayed behind.
Castle got on the radio.
"First and Third platoons, go after the pirates. Third platoon, the weapons platoons and Surgeon-Captain Renoir, start checking the Vulcans. Anyone who can move, send them on their way. Any wounded, we'll treat as best we can, and Renoir will triage the wounded and process them for dust off."
Castle stopped for a moment and watched his company go from combat chaos to a well drilled team. Then he got back on the radio.
"Sergeant Fa'an, Sergeant Gorad, and Mr. McRoberts, you can go after the pirates. Sergeant Pha'al, your sapper squad will stay behind. We'll probably need to make stretchers, or splints, or some other damned things. Report to Surgeon-Captain Renoir."
The troops who had been sent after the pirates soon began to catch up to them. The pirates knew that if they were sent to and tried on a civilized planet, they'd be subjected to brain scrub. That would leave them with enough of an intellect to be able to push a mop around, but not much more. On a less civilized planet, they'd be lucky to just be hung and not subjected to a longer and more painful death.
Corporals Ffoft and Green, two soldiers from McRoberts' team came upon five exhausted pirates that had one submachine gun between them. The two soldiers stopped and watched the pirates. The pirate with the weapon fired a short burst that went wide to the right. Ffoft shot the man. A second pirate picked up the weapon and fired. This time Green shot him.
"Tell you what." Ffoft said. "I'll bet you a brew back at the base that I can hit this one in the head, but above the eyebrows."
Green looked at the pirate who was swaying slightly from exhaustion.
"A brew?" Okay, you're on."
Ffoft took aim and hit the man just at the hairline, He staggered back and swayed slightly.
"Come on, you bastard, fall."
And fall he did.
TBC