The Peacekeepers. Books 1 - 3.

by Ricky Sides

  Maggie marked the spots of the latest damage and then the crew added samples of the chest, back, side plates, and shin guards from a neat stack on one of the nearby tables. They inserted the thigh guards into the soft armor and once more struggled to dress the dummy.

  Since this test would include bullets fired from a rifle at all manner of angles, Maggie insisted that the crew exit the test room until the firing was over. Sergeant Wilcox radioed the men in the ship once more to expect several rounds to be fired from a high caliber rifle, and then he radioed Pete that they were ready. Almost immediately, the rifle fired inside the test room. Ten times the rifle fired over a period of several minutes, and then Pete signaled the all clear.

  They stripped the dummy and examined the uniform. The bullets had penetrated the uniform but the plate armor beneath was intact. They removed the armor pieces and Maggie winced as she saw the area that would be bruised. “The patient would live, but he might wish he hadn’t,” Maggie quipped. “That would hurt for weeks,” she concluded.

  “But you’d survive,” Pete said grinning.

  “All right, people, I think we’ve seen enough for now, so let’s get organized,” Jim said. “Tim, you can operate a forklift can’t you?” he asked.

  “In my sleep,” Tim said grinning.

  “All right, get back to the maintenance section and see if you can get one of the lifts started. It would save us a lot of backbreaking work,” Jim pointed out.

  “You can say that again,” Tim said and trotted back toward maintenance.

  “Sergeant Wilcox, please escort the ladies back to the ship, and assign a detail of men to get the bay door nearest the ship open. Patricia, send a message to the base. Use codes don’t send it in the open. Give them this location and tell them to get the tractor-trailer fleet on the move. We need transportation, and we need a lot,” Jim said with happiness, for this discovery would save countless lives in the future.

  “Tell them I said to get the construction crews back to work on the base. Pay them what they have to pay them, but get us a warehouse under construction. Make it as large as the food storage warehouse,” Pete said in excitement. Pete acutely felt the loss of every peacekeeper and he knew better than most what this really meant for their people.

  Lacey said, “I’d like a bolt of that cloth and some of the thread. I used to be able to sew fairly well. Maybe I can make the kids some clothing.”

  “Be sure to get the special scissors at the sewing stations then,” Pol suggested. “The material is very hard on scissors and those are specially designed for cutting the fabric. And may I suggest gathering the smaller components and then cutting them down in size? That would save a great deal of experimental fitting would it not?”

  “That’s a splendid idea, Pol,” Lacey said grinning.

  “I’ll send some of the boys to get the gear for you, Lacey,” Sergeant Wilcox promised.

  “Thank you, Sergeant,” Lacey said and followed the man as he led them back to the ship.

  Rolling up his sleeves, Jim said, “Ok to our immediate needs,” he said as he closed the bay door and secured it once more. “We will want a set for all crewmembers. Actually, we need multiple sets of the soft armor for laundry reasons. One set of the hard armor should suffice for now.”

  “The strike team needs multiple sets of both,” Pete disagreed. “Theirs will come under the most intense fire, and we have no idea how many hits the armor can take before the part becomes stressed.”

  “Good point, Pete,” Jim concurred. “All right, we’ll start with the hard armor then. Let’s go see if Tim needs a hand,” he said and led the way back to maintenance.

  They found Tim installing a new battery in one of the forklifts. “All the batteries were dead, so I went in maintenance storage and found a new battery and the acid to top it off. This thing hasn’t been used in a long time so it will be a pain to start.”

  It took the men thirty minutes to get the forklift going. Meanwhile, Pete had sent word that they needed a crewmember with mechanical experience. Two arrived just as Tim got the forklift started. Pete explained the situation and both men happily stripped off their uniform shirts down to their t-shirts as they prepared to work in a motor pool of sorts as they had once done in the National Guard. Tim told them where to find the new batteries and acid saying he thought that there was enough in the maintenance storage to get two more forklifts serviceable. They laughed and waved him off, promising to have six going in a couple of hours.

  Seeing the t-shirts the men were wearing, Tim turned to Pol and asked, “Did they also make soft armor t-shirts and underwear?” he asked and then he explained, “I ask because you said layering the material would augment the protection.”

  “Indeed they did my friend. I skipped that segment of the tour because of our mixed gender at the time,” Pol said in embarrassment.

  “Well then you can just redress the dummy by yourself. I am not going through that again,” said Tim laughing, and then he turned to Jim and instantly his demeanor became businesslike. “You want the hard armor first?”

  “That’s fine. We have to start somewhere and that’s the closest,” Jim replied.

  ***

  Two hours later, they were loading the new uniforms and hard battle armor into the back of the Peacekeeper. The mechanics soon had a small fleet of forklifts operating. They used the two new batteries to start the lifts and then swapped out the new batteries for some old ones, still in good condition and let the running lifts charge the old batteries, and then repeated the process. True to their word, they had six more lifts operating in a couple of hours.

  The crew took a break for an hour and ate a hearty meal prepared by the duty cook who’d long since taken over cooking the onboard meals, since Lacey’s duties had expanded dramatically as she mastered several of the operating systems of the ship and went deeper into the medical field to assist Maggie when she was needed.

  Jim insisted that the entire crew locate uniforms that fit and change into the new soft armor at that point. They needed a good working field test and this was a good opportunity to accomplish that goal.

  “It would be great if we could actually get this factory up and running again,” Bill observed.

  “Yes it would, but the raw materials would soon run out and besides it would take a monumental effort to accomplish that goal. You’d need people to do the work and housing for them. Logistical needs alone would be staggering.” Pete pointed out.

  “I know, and it’s a shame. A ready made factory and we can’t use it because of things like power, housing, staff, and a lack of know how when it comes to some of the machinery and the processes needed to manufacture the goods,” Bill admitted with a sigh. Then he said, “At least there is a vast amount already manufactured just waiting to be utilized. We’ll have to work out the means to distribute the gear needed to the extended bases.”

  “Yeah that will certainly take some doing,” Pete agreed.

  “Could you not just summon men from each base to come to the main base with trucks?” Pol asked, “Or do you fear the messages would be intercepted and the cargos hijacked by Marauders?”

  “We could get the word out to them, yes. You’re absolutely right, Pol.” Pete said grinning. “I’m afraid I’ve fallen into a pattern of not giving the extended bases the credit that is their due. They are full peacekeepers now. And they are as well trained as any of us from the main base.”

  “Many are better trained than some of our men in the beginning,” Bill agreed with a smile.

  “That’s exactly what we’ll do then, and we’ll tell them to be sure they have the sizes for new uniforms. They just have to come to the base to pick them up,” he said in conclusion.

  ***

  In view of the fact that work at the factory could only be done efficiently by day, the work of emptying the contents of the facility took a month. The new bunker that would ultimately house the armor was not yet ready, so they stored the equipment in the weapons bunker u
ntil it was nearly full, and then began storing it in the food bunker. When that became crowded as well, they stored some in the command bunker for Pete was adamant that the material be stored at the base. Yet still more trucks arrived and had to be offloaded. Just when they thought that they would have to stop the process of clearing the Missouri facility, the trucks from the outposts began to arrive and line up to receive their allotted gear, which had been organized by Bill Young in advance and occupied places in the storage facilities that they could easily reach. Loading brigades lined up to pass box after box from the facilities to the waiting trucks. Each box loaded was scrupulously accounted for and checked off the supply officer’s master list. Each truck left under a heavily armed guard. The occupants of the vehicles already wearing the new soft armor, and when conditions warranted the occupants left in full armor.

  They chaffed at the delay, but finally had to halt the convoy for a week while the last of the work was completed on the new bunker. Pete knew intellectually that the bunker had been completed in record time, but he was anxious to get the transfers completed before one of two things happened. He was fearful that a winter storm could halt the transfers and that the constant transfers might have led marauders to backtrack the convoys and find the factory. For this reason, he’d had the hard armor concentrated on during the first two convoys. It was Pete’s hope that if marauders found the facility, they would just find battle dress uniforms and take little interest.

  Nevertheless, he also had to bring in the soft armor. It would be irresponsible not to do so since men’s lives might depend upon that armor. Therefore, it was not possible to compose the loads exclusively of one particular item. Until every member of the peacekeepers had at least one set in their possession, he had a moral responsibility to see to it that full sets were transferred.

  A semi-permanent camp was established in Missouri at the facility. The team at that temporary base loaded the trucks from sunup to sunset. The convoy drivers would drive to Missouri during the night to be loaded by day. The drivers traveled with a relief driver who would drive the truck back while his partner rested. The extra man was also there to help defend the cargo, should the need arise. More than once, marauders had buzzed the convoys, but had always turned and ran when they’d seen the rifle barrels emerging from the passenger windows along the length of the convoy. The one marauder band too stupid to back off was slaughtered to the last man when they tried to block the highway with their vehicles. The lead drivers had barreled through them like tin cans and those behind the lead trucks had slowed to a crawl to shoot the survivors and then traveled on without ever having come to a complete stop.

  Chapter 23

  The crew of the Peacekeeper was in route to the Missouri facility when the radio came to life and a frantic call for help assailed their ears as the voice on the radio said, “Peacekeeper base one. Peacekeeper base one. This is convoy leader one. Do you read me? Peacekeeper base one, please answer!”

  A moment later they heard the reply from the base, “Convoy leader one, this is the base. I am listening,” stated the calm voice of the radio operator.

  “Base one, the convoy is under attack. Repeat, the convoy is under attack. The enemy has forced convoy ten off the road. They killed both men but we kept going. There was nothing else we could do! There’s too many of them. If I stopped they’d kill us all!”

  “Convoy leader one, what is your position?” asked the now excited voice of the radio operator.

  “We just crossed the state line into Arkansas, base, and we, oh hell here they come at us again. Damn they just got truck 9. Base, should I stop to assist?”

  Pete got on the radio then, saying, “Convoy leader one, this is Pete. Are the odds of affecting a rescue hopeless?”

  A moment of awful silence came and then the voice said, “The odds are impossible, Pete.”

  Pete knew the convoy leader. The man was no coward. If he believed the odds were impossible, then they probably were, so he said, “Negative then, convoy leader one. Do not stop. Repeat, do not stop. I take responsibility for this decision. Highball your trucks out of there. We are close, and will be there in a few minutes.”

  “Thank you for understanding, sir,” the man said sadly.

  “God be with you all, son. Help is on the way,” Pete said to the convoy leader and sighed. What he had feared for weeks was now happening. The Marauders had organized a massed attack on the convoy. Keying the microphone, Pete said, “Base one, this is Pete. We’ll go there at once and give you an update ASAP. Our ETA to the area is…,”

  “Ten minutes, if I push it!” Tim shouted and deftly maneuvered the ship around an especially tall tree.

  “ETA ten minutes,” Pete finished and signed off.

  “Put me through the intercom, Lieutenant,” Jim said in anger.

  “Done, sir,” Patricia said.

  “This is the captain speaking. Our convoy is under attack. We expect to arrive in ten minutes. Prepare the battle bikes for deployment. All strike team members in full body armor. This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill,” he said and rose to address the control room crew. “Lacey, get to the infirmary and update Maggie. Tim, they’ll be spread out. Take the first pass at them from the south. Pete, take out as many as you can. When we reach the northernmost truck, we’ll deploy the bikes and turn back south. I’ll be in the cargo bay,” he said and darted out of the room.

  Maggie entered the infirmary just as Jim started down the hallway. He rushed past the door and skidded to a halt in the cargo bay. He saw the men frantically donning body armor and he noted that no one was putting on the thigh plating because Lisa was in the cargo bay. “Lisa dear, you and Evan please wait in my quarters. The men need to change,” he said politely but firmly.

  The two children ran out of the room and Sergeant Wilcox thanked him. He yelled out for the men not to neglect their thigh armor or he would skin them alive. “I intend to do an armor check when this is over! God help the man that isn’t fully equipped!” That was enough to spur the men into making certain they had every single piece of their body armor.

  “Keep dressing, Sergeant. I’ll brief you as you do so,” Jim said. He then outlined the initial plan and at the end he said, “Things could change, but for now that’s the plan. Be watching the door and as soon as you mop up the men at the wrecked trucks, join us south at the main column.”

  “God help the man that forgets his damned radio this time!” Jim yelled as he walked out of the cargo bay. It was a reference to a man forgetting his radio during a drill. He poked his head in the infirmary, for once not bothering to knock. “I asked the kids to wait in our quarters so the men could dress,” He told the women who were frantically preparing emergency supplies and then he said, “Got to go,” and shut the door jogging back to the control cabin.

  “Good timing,” Pete said over his shoulder. ETA is two minutes.”

  “I see them up ahead!” Tim exclaimed and slowed the craft to about two hundred miles per hour. Pete opened fire a moment later, causing the lead Marauder vehicle to skid off the road and burst into flames. The convoy drivers waved out the windows as the Peacekeeper hurtled past, destroying enemy vehicles to the right of the convoy.

  “Patricia, tell them to hold their trucks steady and not try to knock the enemy off the road. If they bob to the right at the wrong time our weapons may hit them,” Jim ordered, and Patricia dutifully relayed the command.

  Within moments, they had swept past the convoy and their Marauder tormentors. A few minutes later, Tim was turning the ship after passing the tenth truck and the Marauders swarming around the back.

  “Prepare to disembark,” Patricia said over the intercom as Tim brought the ship to within three feet of the surface of the road and slowed the craft to a crawl. Moments later, four motorcycles swarmed past them at a high rate of speed. Their machineguns were chattering as they bore down on the Marauders attempting to loot the truck.

  “Cargo bay door secure, sir,” Patricia
notified the captain and he signaled to Tim to get back to the convoy.

  ***

  Sergeant Wilcox and his three men charged the marauders looting the truck. The sergeant felt something slap his chest hard but didn’t pay it any attention. He assumed it was one of those pesky hard shell bugs that are such a nuisance to a rider. He triggered another burst with his machinegun and the unit chattered until it ran dry.

  He was reluctant to use the rockets on their own property. That gear was invaluable, so he drove past the truck and pulled his service pistol and then signaled the men that he was turning for another run. He felt something slam into his shin hard, and for a moment his foot slipped off the footrest but he quickly got it back into position. He shot a man aiming a rifle at him as he thundered by, and two more men who were scrambling for the ditch to the right of the truck. The peacekeepers behind him fired several shots as well.

  He turned the bike and surveyed the scene. All of the Marauders were now down. He ordered one of the men to check for survivors among the drivers and thundered away followed by the other two men mounted on their bikes.

  The peacekeeper found both men still alive. Apparently, someone had fired a shotgun at them at close range, and the force of the impact had knocked them out. They were wearing full body armor. He radioed his findings. He was ordered to guard the unconscious men. To that end, he went to check the Marauders around the truck. He didn’t want one coming after him from behind.

  He found four men barely injured who seemed to be unconscious. He made sure they stayed that way.

  South of him, Sergeant Wilcox and the other two men came up on the second truck that had been forced off the road. Here, the peacekeepers had won their private battle with the truckload of Marauders who’d tried to take them. Five dead Marauders lay sprawled on the ground and the two drivers waved cheerfully at the battle bikes and then waved them on to the south. Sergeant Wilcox saluted the men as he rode past and roared on southward followed closely by the other two men.