Deadly Planet

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I don't own Castle, or a planet. Rating: K+ for rough language. Time: The near future and quite AU.

He must have been wounded. He felt pain everywhere. It must have been an IED or maybe a mortar round to cause so much damage. He tried to move. Nothing happened. He tried to open his eyes. Nothing. He took several deep breaths. Surprisingly, the pain began to recede.

He opened his eyes. There was blue sky above him with fleecy clouds.

No angels, anyway. He thought.

He tried to move his arms. They did nothing but flop around, but he did feel his rifle laying across his chest. He decided to take several more deep breaths. He tried again. The rifle seemed to be in one piece. More deep breaths.

He sat up. He almost fell back down, but remained sitting upright. He removed the magazine from his rifle. It was clean and fully loaded. He pulled back the bolt. It was clean with no round in the chamber. He reached forward and removed the suppressor. It was perfectly functional. He pushed his thumb into the ejection port, then looked down the barrel of his rifle. The bore was clean. He replaced the magazine and allowed the bolt to slam forward, seating a round in the chamber. He replaced the suppressor.

Now he looked around him.

Shit. He wasn't on the Horn of Africa anymore. He was laying on a small hill, on a vast rolling plain, dotted with stands of trees. Looking around, he discovered he wasn't alone. Another soldier was lying face down some twenty meters up the hill. The camouflage was unfamiliar to him, but he could see the butt of a weapon under him.

Who the hell is he? He wondered.

His thoughts were broken by a scream. A blonde ran out of a small copse of trees, hair flying behind her. Behind her lumbered something he'd never seen before. A man in highly polished chrome armor was chasing the blonde.

"Hey, over here!" He yelled.

The woman stopped and looked around, almost allowing her pursuer to catch up with her. Then she headed up the hill at a run. She was followed by her pursuer.

The blonde ran passed him and collapsed behind him. Her pursuer stopped some thirty meters from him.

"So, you do not run. Tell me your name so that I may carve it on your skull when I have made it into a drinking cup." As he spoke, he waved what looked like a long fluorescent tube around.

"Fuck off!"

"Ah! You will die well."

He brought his rifle to his shoulder, centered the crosshairs on the man's helmeted head. There was a T shaped vision slit in the helmet. He aimed for that and slowly squeezed the trigger. The armored man fell to one knee. He took a second shot and this time the man flopped onto his back. Now he could see the man's unprotected throat. He fired one more round and saw the helmet fly off in a spray of blood and brains and go rolling down the hill.

He looked behind him. The blonde was laying on the ground, gasping for breath and the other soldier was just starting to move. He stood up and headed down the hill. As he got closer, he saw the dead man was enormous, at least seven feet tall. When he saw the face, he wondered if "man" was the right word to describe him. The hair was long and grey but turning green at the ends. One eye had been destroyed by his bullets, but the other was solid black and twice the size of any eye he'd ever seen. Worse, there were two six-inch tusks growing from the being's lower jaw.

He picked up what he assumed was the weapon. It had glowed a bright white before, but now was grey. He looked for some kind of control, but found none. Looking down, he saw that the weapon, if that's what it was, had landed on a large rock. The rock now had a deep groove scored in it. Checking, he found the weapon fit the groove perfectly. He tossed the weapon away and headed back up the hill.

He almost stepped on a magazine when he turned. He checked his ammo pouches. They were full. He examined the magazine. It appeared to be standard issue. He put it in his pocket and continued up the hill.

"What did you do?" The blonde demanded, now standing up.

"I saved your life."

"No!" She screamed. "I mean this. Why did you take me here?" She waved her arms around.

"I didn't take you anyplace. I don't know how I got here myself."

"Bullshit. I wake up in a strange place with two soldiers and you expect me to believe this isn't some deranged military plot?"

"I'm not a soldier. I'm a cop."

She not only wasn't a soldier, she wasn't a man as he'd first assumed. And she was gorgeous.

"Who are you?" The blonde snapped.

"Kate Beckett, Homicide Detective, NYPD."

"New York! That's absurd. I was in rural Virginia. I must be somewhere near there. Pennsylvania, perhaps?"

"I was in the Horn of Africa, Somaliland, to be exact." He said.

"Do you expect me to believe that? Do you know who I am?"

He just shrugged.

"I'm Janice Norwood and I'm practically a junior partner for Holmes and Bledsoe, one of the most powerful law firms in DC. Now you had better get your superiors to get me back where I belong or else. And who are you, anyway?"

"Staff Sergeant Rick Castle, Third Ranger Battalion, US Army and to repeat myself, I have no idea where we are, or how we got here."

Before anyone said anything else, there was a burst of automatic weapons fire in the distance.

"That's a SAW." He said, turning around.

"A saw?" The cop asked. "Sounds more like a machine gun."

"S-A-W. Squad automatic weapon." He grabbed his radio. "Castle to….any Ranger. Anyone."

"Castle? It's me, Lloyd. Damn, I have seen some weird shit. You won't believe it."

"You'd be surprised what I'd believe. What's your nine?"

"No idea where we are."

"We? Who's with you?"

"I've got a chick with me. Believe that?"

"I've got two."

"I am not a chick, asshole!" The blonde screamed.

Suddenly Castle saw them, coming out of the trees across the valley.

"You're coming straight for me. Just be careful. Some…thing's already tried to kill me."

"No shit. We got attacked by a six-foot tall grasshopper with an axe."

Castle just shook his head as he watched the two people cross the valley towards him.

He looked at the two women with him. The lawyer, Norwood, had on hiking boots, tan cargo pants, and a vest over a blue tee shirt. The vest appeared to have all kinds of gear on it. She also carried a backpack.

The cop wore a set of cammies of a type he didn't know, and she had a protective vest of some sort, but with an old style Kevlar pot helmet. She was armed with a pump action shotgun and an automatic pistol.

"Jesus, Sarge. What is this thing? Or what was it?" That was Lloyd and the other women. She looked like a soldier as well, cammies, protective vest and helmet as well as an assault rifle.

"I have no fucking idea. Who's your friend?"

The woman smiled at him. "Corporal Anna Livovna Konev, Ukrainian 501st Separate Battalion of Naval Infantry. I am a combat medic."

"Glad to have you with us, Corporal."

"I'm glad to be with an American unit where everyone speaks excellent Ukrainian."

That stopped Castle for a second.

"What? I'm sorry, but I don't speak Ukrainian and you've been speaking English."

Konev shook her head. "I speak only a few words of English."

"I speak Russian." That was the cop, Beckett. "Where are you from in Ukraine?" Her eyes widened in shock. "That came out in English."

"Are you all out of your minds?" Norwood screamed. "Have you ever been to France?" She stopped and looked around her. "I spoke French. Why did it come out as English?"

"We can deal with this later." Castle interrupted. "I want to get to the top of this hill and see if anyone else is around." Everyone followed him up the hill, including Norwood, who did lag behind.

The hill was covered in trees, but they found a place where they could see in both directions across the valley they'd been in and one on the other side of the hill. The other valley with had small stream running through it.

"No one here." Castle grabbed his radio again. "Sergeant Castle to any Rangers. Anyone. Anyone at all, dammit."

He got back a babble of voices, all trying to talk at once.

"Shut up, dammit. Does anyone know where they are? Can you see anyone else?"

No one could.

"Okay, I'm going to pop a flare. I'll wait five minutes and pop another one. Pay attention out there."

He grabbed a flare and shot it off.

"Oh, shit!"

"What is it? Didn't the flare work?" Lloyd asked.

"It worked, but look up there."

"What the hell are those?"

"I'd say they're moons. A nice red one and a nice green one."

"I don't think Earth has two moons." Konev said.

"I know it doesn't." Castle said.

"So were on another planet? Like Mars?"

"No other planet in our solar system has a breathable atmosphere. We're in another solar system."

"That's impossible!" Yelled Norwood. "We haven't gotten past our own Moon. This I some kind of trick. It's special effects. It's a fake."

"Special effects are done with green screens and computers. Do you see any of those?"

"Hey!" Beckett yelled. "Someone's coming."

Across the valley in front of them two men came out of the tree line not fifty meters from each other. They stood in the open valley and looked around.

"Hey, I can flash my shaving mirror at them." Lloyd started digging in his pack.

"It's supposed to be a signal mirror, Lloyd." Castle snapped.

"Yeah? Well it works two ways, just like the can opener that fits on the end of my rifle."

When the men got closer, Castle recognized them.

"It's van Ott and Tomassi."

"Great. Alpha fire team just needs Gurwich to be complete."

"And there he is, running to catch up. And they see your mirror. They're waving and heading this way." Castle grabbed the radio again. "Listen up, everyone. Be careful. We've had two strange things try to kill us."

Beckett spoke. "Someone's coming. Right behind us."

Castle turned around.

"Doc Ryan and he's got a woman with him."

Ryan and the woman stopped to look at the dead…whatever, as well.

"What the hell…"Ryan began.

"No fucking idea. But it wanted to kill us. Who's your friend?"

The woman was stocky and looked to be thirtyish with short, dark hair under a Red Man tobacco ball cap. Boots, blue jeans and a camo jacket complimented a rifle over her shoulder and two pistols.

"Name's Sharon Hayes. How the fuck did I get here and what the fuck is going on?"

"I wish I knew. What were you doing and where are you from?"

"I'm from Zapata County, Texas, along the Rio Grande. I was out hunting deer and all of a sudden, I'm here. Where ever here is."

"Your weapons and ammo?" Castle asked.

"I got me a Remington 7mm rifle with four rounds in the magazine and one up the spout and twenty on my belt. Plus a hundred more in my backpack. I carry a Colt 1911A1 with four spare mags and a box of fifty rounds in my pack. And I got a .22 caliber Colt pistol. I carry that for snakes and use birdshot. Got two days' worth of food and water, too."

"You got a lot of weapons and ammo for just hunting deer."