by Ricky Sides
The weakest point of the ship was the aft cargo bay door. Weight restrictions on the hydraulics needed to make the door lower and rise as needed forced them to stick with the original design. Hydraulics sufficiently strong to lift a hardened door certainly existed in pre-disaster America, but none could be located. Such items were usually custom-built on demand and not stocked in advance. To rectify that shortcoming, a hardened blast door was installed. This door would slide into position at the activation of its controls. The controls could be accessed either from the control room or in the cargo bay itself.
The ship would be extremely heavily armed with forward and rear gunners manning laser minigun variants. There would also be two conventional miniguns with one fore and the other aft. In addition to its four minigun variants, the ship would contain the most powerful main laser attack weapon Pol had built to date. That weapon would be mounted in the nose of the ship. There was also a rear laser comparable in power to the main laser of the Peacekeeper.
In the center of the ship, below the deck was the bomb bay. Inside that bay, the ship would carry its complement of bombs in their vertical racks. The bombardier could target an enemy and release as many or as few of the bombs as he chose. There were thirty of the small but powerful bombs located in that compartment. The bombs would have to be loaded by ground personnel located in a munitions pit specially built for the battleship. There was no way to make the bomb bay accessible from inside the vessel without compromising the armor capability of the ship. However, three technicians could reload the bombs in less than an hour. Theoretically, each of those bombs had the capability of inflicting massive damage on any ship they hit. Pol thought that they lacked the power to sink most heavy vessels, but they would definitely inflict massive damage. Unfortunately, these bombs might actually be of little use during the coming conflict. Opening the bomb bay doors with sixty or more heavy machineguns aimed at the ship would be foolhardy. Should the deck guns detonate one of the bombs; a chain reaction would result, which would almost certainly destroy the battleship. A significant number of the deck guns would have to be destroyed first if those weapons were to be deployed.
In addition to these weapons, Pol had created Jim’s concept of the laser shotgun. Though such weaponry was not feasible for the fighters, it was possible to design one for the battleship. Pol still had some misgivings about that particular weapon. There were so very many components that there was simply too much that could go wrong. He had already decided that this weapon would be unique. However, when fired, that weapon would instantly unleash certain death on soft targets in an area twice the size of a football field. Escape simply wouldn’t be possible if the target was centered in that field of fire. The weapon required so much energy that at best the ship would get three shots. Then the gunner would have to wait for its battery to recharge. Recharge time was estimated at one hour on a sunny day. The weapon caused such an energy drain that Pol had opted to tie it to its own battery system. He didn’t dare tie it to the main battery for fear that a gunner could deplete the power reserves of the ship in the opening minutes of a battle. This was another reason Pol had no plans to build another such weapon. They were simply too inefficient.
In addition to these weapons, the battleship was to be equipped with ten drones. These drones, when not in use, would be attached to the hull of the ship in their storage channels. These storage channels would be protected from the wind by an overlapping curved cowl-like surface at the bow of the ship. The drones were to be parked facing aft and situated five to each side of the ship. The expanded size of the nose of the ship permitted the space necessary for the ten drone operators.
The ship would have a large crew. In addition to the captain, there would be a navigator, a communications and computer specialist, an engineer, and a main weapon gunner. The main weapon gunner would use either the main laser or the shotgun weapon. An assistant forward gunner would operate the conventional and energy miniguns. A bombardier would also be located in the control room, as would the aforementioned ten drone pilots. There would be two aft gunners. One would operate the aft main laser and the aft conventional minigun. The other would operate the laser minigun. In addition to these combat personnel would be a ten-man strike force team and their sergeant. These men would go on special assignments when ordered to do so by the captain. They would also serve as the security team for the ship. There would also be the four pilots who had trained under Namid for that plum assignment. A doctor and a nurse had volunteered and were receiving special tutelage from Maggie and Lacey. A custodian was to be added to keep the massive ship clean. Last, but not least was the cook who would take charge of the galley and his two assistants who would help with the cooking and cleaning the large mess hall.
These forty men and women aboard the ship would be the permanent crew. In addition to this permanent crew, the ship would be able to transport two hundred men and women into battle should the need arise.
Each permanent crewmember had a private cabin. Those cabins were ten feet wide by twenty feet long. Peacekeeper carpenters had constructed forty beds identical to those utilized in the original prototype ship. Each cabin contained one of those beds with their slide out storage drawers. In addition to this, the rooms contained five of Pol’s innovative cots like those he had devised for use in the battleship module, which was currently in use by the Peacekeeper. The frames for those cots were made of the same special alloy used in the hull of the ships. Those frames would be permanently attached to the walls of the cabins. This was why the cabins were so long. Three cots were to be attached to the left wall of the room and two would be attached on the right. Beneath each cot, mounted to the floor would be a military regulation size footlocker to contain the personal gear of peacekeepers being ferried into battle. If they were needed, then the two hundred extra fighting men aboard would actually have somewhere to sleep should the need arise. A small desk was attached to the right wall across from the head of the bed for the occupants’ convenience.
There would be two rows of twenty cabins. One row of cabins would be located on the left side of the interior if you entered the cargo bay door. They ran the length of the ship from the control room to the men’s latrine. The second row of cabins would extend from the cargo bay all the way up the length of the ship to the control room on the right side of the ship. Naturally, both rows of cabins were set inside the ship on a slight diagonal. This was necessary to conserve space. Since the innermost bulkheads followed a diagonal, then so must the cabins. The cabin walls would serve as structural supports to help support the upper section of the ship. So would all of the walls to the other compartments throughout the ship.
The galley would be easily three times the size of that of the Peacekeeper, and would be located adjacent to the control room. There would be a walk in storage room along the inner wall where large quantities of food would be stored. A door on the right side of the galley led to the mess hall that would be sufficiently large to contain twenty-one tables. The tables would be bolted to the deck. There would be dinner-style bench seats to accommodate the crew. These would also be bolted to the deck. Normally twenty-one tables would not be needed, but the battleship was also being designed to act as a troop transport, and the designs had to consider that matter. If the ship had hundreds of peacekeepers aboard for a mission, they would have to take turns eating, but they would eat well and in moderate comfort. The food would be served cafeteria style with the assistants acting as servers at the food bar when they had the time. Otherwise, it would have to be self-service.
Aft of the mess hall would be a large storage compartment for the weapons of potential personnel being transported into combat and the conventional munitions needed to operate the ship in combat.
The infirmary was to be placed aft of the galley. It was to be constructed with a great deal of input from Maggie, who was the most experienced physician in the peacekeepers when it came to ship board health care and emergency treatment. The infirmary would contain fo
ur beds. A rank of well-supplied medical equipment storage cabinets would line the wall. If an emergency surgery were needed, it would be performed in the small but well stocked operating room adjacent to the infirmary. There would also to be a small sink where the physician and nurse could scrub. There would be two small-wheeled carts, upon which the nurse could put the instruments and other supplies needed by the physician to treat a patient. Those carts had their own wall-mounted brackets to which they were to be attached while the ship was in flight, unless they were needed for an emergency. Those brackets would be equipped with quick release latches. The wheels of the carts would all have foot activated locking mechanisms to prevent them from rolling once the staff had them sitting where they were needed.
The cargo bay contained a very large storage cabinet in which the strike force team would be able to store their specialized combat gear when it was not in use. This would be attached to the right of the bay door when entering the ship from the rear. The storage area would extend from the right inner bulkhead to within six feet of the cargo bay door.
There would be a women’s’ and a men’s latrine on the other side of the cargo bay door. Both latrines were to be equipped with emergency showers. Due to the water restrictions onboard the ship, the showers would only be used in the event of an emergency such as decontamination. There would be commodes of course and a sink for washing hands. Wet shaving would be discouraged for the crew and passengers due to water issues, but there were to be outlets in the latrines to accommodate electric razors. Both latrines would have a small shatter resistant mirror mounted to the wall over the sinks.
The water would be stored in a special one thousand gallon tank that would have a sterile baffle plate system inside it to prevent the water from sloshing around violently during radical flight maneuvers. This was critically important because such transfers of weight at the wrong moment could easily destabilize the ship. That storage tank would be situated beneath the deck in the space not occupied by the battery system.
The cook and his assistants would have to be trained in the strictest of water management protocols. One thousand gallons of water could easily last the crew for several days, if the proper protocols were followed, but careless cooks and assistants could use that quantity in one day of feeding two hundred and forty personnel.
The colossal ship would require a lot of lift. It was easily the heaviest object that they had ever tried to lift. Pol had worked the equations numerous times. If he was going to err, he was determined to err on the conservative side. He was certain that the ship should have four main lift engines that would need to be synchronized. He had decided to go with a fifth engine just under the nose that would be used strictly for targeting highflying targets. Otherwise that engine would not be operating. This was easier on the equipment.
Sighing again Pol rolled up the plans for the night and put them away. Everything that could be pre planned had been taken into account. Most of the fabrication work was now completed and the furnishings were being installed even as the electricians and plumbers set about their final touches.
The ship would be ready on schedule. The question that remained unanswered was how many glitches they would have to repair after the ship was ready for testing. “Time will tell,” Pol thought, and headed off to his room aboard the Peacekeeper where he would get a few hours sleep before resuming the work on the new ship.
Since the work was rushed, there was little time to test anything before beginning the next stage. At least they had an experienced crew working on the ship. Some of those men and women had been building ships since the construction of the first battleship drone and were very competent. Pol took a great deal of comfort from that knowledge.
Chapter 12
Ramon Marino and the one hundred Cuban-Americans whom he had recruited trained hard. Ramon understood all too well the stakes that were involved. He had vowed to avenge the death of his wife and the deaths of his countrymen at the hands of the cartel and their thugs. The training he was undergoing was giving him the skills and the knowledge to accomplish that objective. The training was also conditioning his mind and body so that when the time came to attack the enemy, his mind and body would be ready.
The training was rigorous. Every night, he was so tired that he could barely stay awake long enough to put all of his gear away, before collapsing into his bunk and sleeping. At least he seemed to be able to sleep now. Until he had come to Base 1 for training, Ramon hadn’t enjoyed a decent night of sleep since the death of his wife. He didn’t know if it because he was taking positive steps to do something about the men who had caused the death of his wife, or if it was simply a matter of sheer exhaustion that had remedied his sleeping difficulties. He only knew that each morning he awoke refreshed and eager to begin another day of the training.
The peacekeepers took their training very seriously. Some of the Cuban-Americans with prior military experience stated unequivocally that peacekeeper training was at least as difficult as they had endured for the Army or Marines.
The strenuous physical challenges were difficult for Ramon. What others seemed to do with ease, he had to struggle to achieve. Nevertheless, he never complained about the training, made excuses for his shortcomings, or attempted to shirk any portion of the most physically demanding training. During what little free time the schedule allowed him, Ramon practiced on the things that were currently giving him difficulty. He strove constantly to improve his abilities. Such was his perseverance in this regard that he earned the respect of both the trainers and the Cuban-Americans who were going through the training with him. Indeed, several of the men could often be found with him doing the same drills as a gesture of camaraderie.
At night, when he could remain awake long enough for the men to talk to him at length, they often asked him to speak of the enemy whom they were training to battle. Ramon always spoke candidly with the men. He never embellished or exaggerated the severity of the atrocities committed by the enemy. He spoke of the mothers who pleaded for the lives of their children and how the men broke open the heads of the children like melons with the butts of their rifles. When asked why the men did this, he answered, “Because the children clung to the skirts of their mothers when the men came to take them captive.”
“What became of the women?” asked one of the men.
With sadness evident in his voice, Ramon said, “They were gang raped. Some went insane, and became like an automaton. They would sit silently and never speak. If a man took them, they did not resist. Their minds were no longer in their bodies. Most of those starve. The men won’t even try to feed them. Other women committed suicide, but most are killed.”
Pausing Ramon stared sadly at the faces of the men around him and then he said, “There are some among those whom we must fight who crave sex with the dead, and only the dead. I myself killed one such man I caught in the act in an alley. I… I cut his throat and dragged him off the poor woman’s corpse. I covered her face and her nakedness but I… I had to leave her there. It was too dangerous to try to carry her body away to bury her. God help me, I just left her there,” Ramon said and stared at the men gathered near him with tormented eyes.
“You avenged her death my brother,” one man said softly.
Ramon turned from them then and lay down to sleep. The men assembled there returned to their own cots. They knew he would speak no more that night. However, each of them carried with them to their own slumber the vivid images of roguish men breaking open the heads of helpless children, mindless women whose souls had fled reality, and the rape of a dead woman’s corpse in an alley. The next day these men trained with a grimmer purpose.
Soon the training shifted to a heavy emphasis on firearms training. Here Ramon found himself more at ease with the training. He excelled at marksmanship and rose to become one of the top ten men in the group of trainees. He also did extremely well at the live fire exercises with pop up targets that you had to shoot or hold your fire, depending on whether the targe
t was a friend or a threat. He was among the top three in that category.
When that stage of the training was completed, Ramon and four other men found themselves going in a different direction of training than that of the other recruits. For a week, they entered a leadership-oriented class. That training taught them about various strategies to utilize to overcome specific scenarios. The peacekeeper trainers had been informed as to the nature of the mission that the trainees would be conducting so that they could streamline their training to cover most possible scenarios that the Cuban-Americans might encounter.
Trainers laid out several different scenarios and then taught the men the most effective means to counter those scenarios. One such scenario called for a group of the enemy holding several women hostage against a full out assault by the Cuban-American forces. They were taught the most effective means to deal with that threat. Another scenario called for the enemy to outnumber them drastically. They learned what they should do to neutralize those superior numbers. Yet another scenario called for portions of the Cuban-Americans’ plans to go wrong and what they should do to counter the changes in their plans.
By the end of that week, they stood a fighting chance of being able to formulate a good attack plan against most of the possible scenarios within the known mission parameters. This did not mean that they would be ready for every eventuality, but it did mean that they knew the basics of dealing with many possible scenarios most likely to occur during the course of the specified mission.
Late in their training, the trainees were roused from their beds at 2:00 A.M. The men stood at attention in their underwear while their drill instructors informed them that they were about to embark on their most realistic training mission to date. They were to dress, get their weapons and their field gear, and then report to the airfield in twenty minutes. Any man late would be dropped from the training course and left behind. The moment that they were dismissed the barracks became a beehive of activity as men scrambled to dress and assemble their gear.