by Ricky Sides
***
The peacekeepers knew that they had been incredibly lucky. They had taken on a powerful, heavily armed armada and defeated the enemy. Yet not one peacekeeper had died in the process. Just as Namid’s rescue of Jeff in the manner that she had utilized was impossible, so was defeating the armada without loss of life. Yet in both cases, these things had been accomplished. Some said it was divine intervention. Others believed that it was just an incredible streak of luck. Those who believed that it was luck tended to believe that one day that good fortune would reverse and when that happened they would face a disaster every bit as huge as had been their good fortune.
The council and their closest associates discussed the matter but could come to no real conclusions.
Pete attributed the almost miraculous victory to near perfect planning and good execution. He also pointed out that technologically they had enjoyed a significant advantage in that they had at their disposal drones with which to wage the opening minutes of the conflict.
Tim was inclined to agree with Pete to a degree. He knew that had pilots been forced to take on the full assets of the armada without the benefit of the attrition of those assets by the drones, then deaths would have been a certainty.
Pol was perhaps the most pragmatic when he said, “I think it really doesn’t matter why we suffered no losses. What matters is that we did not, and I thank God for this good fortune.”
“Namid, what do you think?” Pol asked.
“Well, Pol, I’m from Texas. In Texas we have a saying that really covers this well,” Namid said.
“Oh?” Pol asked, and then he waited to hear that quote.
“Never look a gift horse in the mouth,” Namid said grinning.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand what that means,” Pol said.
“In the old west days, when people relied on horses you judged the quality of the animal by opening its mouth to examine its teeth. But when someone gave you a horse it was considered rude and ungrateful to do so,” Jim explained.
“Ah I see,” Pol said. “That seems applicable in this situation,” he said grinning.
***
A seagull hovered lazily over the beach on the late September afternoon breeze. It had been feasting on the many stranded fish that the storm surge from the small hurricane had deposited on the beach in small depressions. Out beyond the breakers, the seagull’s keen eyesight detected something of interest and it flew out to examine the object. The bird stared quizzically at the silver metal briefcase and landed on its surface. The briefcase floated in the sea toward the breakers and the slight surf near the beach. The seagull didn’t like the smooth slick surface. The bird leapt back into the air and flew away.
The End
About the author
Ricky Sides was born in Florence, Alabama in May of 1958. He has a wife named Sue that he married at age 18. He has one adult son named Larry Dale.
The author studied martial arts from 1981 to the mid 1990s. He has been an avid camper and student of survival. The techniques described in his fight sequences are often from his personal experience and training. He has taught women's rape prevention seminars in the 1980's.
The author's writing experience includes:
The Birth of the Peacekeepers, and the other books in the Peacekeepers series.
The Brimstone and the Companions of Althea series which is a nine novel set based on the on line game t4c (the fourth coming) and was written by Ricky Sides under the pen name Raistlin and edited and collaborated on by a wonderful lady from Louisiana under the pen name Kittie Justice.
The author also wrote a book on women's self-defense named The Ultimate in Women's Self-Defense.
The latest book by the author is titled Adventures in Reading. The book is a collection of short stories and the novella The North Room.
Excerpt from book one, The Birth of the Peacekeepers:
He’d just begun to walk away from the area of the crash when the earthquake that rocked that region that night began to rumble through the ground. By the light of the quarter moon, he watched in shocked awe as the surface of the earth undulated and rippled like the surface of the sea. He saw trees crashing to the ground not far from him, and twice he was thrown to the ground.
When the earth stopped shaking, Tim got back on his feet and stared about him at the damage. Like many soldiers who trained extensively for night operations, Tim had superb night vision. As he stood surveying the carnage wrought by the earthquake, he wished for the first time in his life that he didn’t have such excellent night vision.
Having grown up in the Tennessee Valley, Tim was accustomed to surveying storm damage from the many violent thunderstorms and tornadoes that plague that region of the United States. But the damage he surveyed that night dwarfed everything in his experience. Shaking his head in awe, he began the task of walking to the nearest city where he would, hopefully, find food, water, and transportation.
As he walked, he was expecting the bombs to fall at any minute. In fact, he wasn’t sure that it hadn’t been a bomb that had caused the earth to shake so violently during the earthquake. However, he didn’t much believe that it had been a bomb for two reasons. There had been no flash of light in the night sky and there had been no shockwave. He felt reasonably sure that if he could feel the shockwave through the earth he would have experienced the atmospheric shockwave as well. “Unless the bombs detonated below the surface,” he told himself.
Walking all night long, he never saw a soul. Dawn found him on the outskirts of a small community that had been evacuated due to some of the natural disasters that had occurred two weeks prior to his arrival. He acquired some food and water there. More importantly, he acquired a motorcycle. He also found another few boxes of nine-millimeter ammunition, which he gratefully added to his meager supply.
Excerpt from book 2 of the peacekeeper series:
Lisa walked over to sit beside Sergeant Wilcox who always welcomed her to their conversations. The sergeant looked at her with sad eyes. She knew he was thinking about the captain’s orders and she said, “Sergeant, I overheard the orders. I know you don’t want to leave anyone behind, and you might wait too long,” then she turned to his men and added, “Or some of you may wait too long.”
She sighed then and said, “There are things you don’t know about me that I think I should tell you.” Lisa was unaware that this team had rescued her. She had been unconscious then and woke up in the infirmary never certain how she had gotten there because no one in the crew would speak of it. Sighing again she said, “I was taken captive by a bad man. He did things to me. Bad things. He hurt me so bad,” she said, her young voice breaking. “He did things to another girl too but she died.”
Some of the soldiers had to look away so she wouldn’t see the pain in their eyes.
“If you don’t listen to the Captain and do as he says, then some of you will be taken captive by the bad men. And they will do bad things to you like what was done to me. Please, oh please don’t let that happen,” she begged and then she began to cry not for herself but in fear for them.
“We won’t Lisa, I promise,” Sergeant Wilcox said.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and thanked him. He gently patted her on the back and felt her body stiffen briefly. He cursed himself for forgetting. He’d never touched her before, but then she relaxed and wiped her eyes. She kissed him on the cheek and then walked around the circle of men, kissing each on the cheek. A broken part of that little girl’s soul mended as each of the men patted her on the back in appreciation. When she left the cargo bay, the sergeant looked each man in the eyes and saw the emotions that he was experiencing reflected in their eyes. “Well there you have it boys. We have our orders from the Captain and we have the request from Lisa. Each of us promised that little girl we’d do our jobs and not get captured in the process. Which of you will let her down and go back on his word? It sure as hell won’t be me.”
Excerpt from book 3 of the peacekeeper serie
s:
Tom got up and crouched breathing heavily. “You’ll pay for that insult. No one slaps me and lives,” Tom threatened.
“That was for Lina,” Jim said smiling and stalked in closer to the man. He feigned a kick to Tom’s knee and then slapped him again so hard that the sound penetrated the skin of the ship without the need of the external feed. Tom launched a furious set of punches, palm strikes, and kicks in retaliation. Using circular footwork Jim blocked his opponent’s attacks but stayed near him. After that set of blocked strikes, Jim retaliated with a palm strike to the solar plexus, followed quickly by three more slaps. Tom staggered backwards away from his opponent. For the first time, there was fear in Tom’s eyes. “That was for Robert,” Jim said simply.
The peacekeeper captain closed with Tom again and this time he executed a series of better than a dozen punches, pummeling Tom’s face, chest, and midriff. The strikes were designed to disrupt the breathing of the opponent. His strikes were landing so fast that the men and women observing missed many of the hits. Tom was only able to block a fraction of those strikes. But the tyrant countered with a series of low kicks designed to take the legs out from under his enemy. If he could just get Jim off his feet, he thought that he could win this fight. Jim easily blocked the lower body attacks and with each blocked kick, he would move in and slap or punch Tom in the face. “That was for our dead pilots,” Jim said.
Backing off, the captain decided to let Tom try a move or two and he grinned as he taunted, “What’s the matter, Tommy boy? You have trouble when it comes to fighting men? Come on, Tommy boy. It’s just you and me now. Show me what you’ve got.”
Enraged, Tom charged Jim who had continued to back up a few paces. Jim caught a flailing fist and stepped around going with the flow of Tom’s motion. He threw Tom high over his shoulder toward the Peacekeeper. At the apex of the throw Tom’s upside down body slammed hard into the front end of the ship. The impact of his body with the hull of the ship caused it to reverberate. Tom’s feet and legs were visible in the windshield for a moment and then he fell to the ground at the front of the ship.
“Damn,” said one of the strike force members. “Remind me not to make the Captain mad!” General laughter greeted that statement as Jim continued to punish Tom.
Excerpt from book 7 of the peacekeeper series:
Far across the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Spain, a great fleet was being assembled. The convoy was a mismatched assortment of vessels, which spanned the technology of the past century and a quarter. Sailing yachts sat at sea alongside the battleships and destroyers that would lead the armada. Behind them were fuel tankers, supply ships, troop transports, freighters, several oil tankers, and every conceivable civilian vessel rated for the open sea imaginable, including several cruise ships. These ships all carried pirates who’d seized most of the vessels in the years following the breakdown of world governments.
The pirate fleet was a multinational assembly, ruled by a captain’s council that was composed of the captains of the largest ships. To qualify for membership on the council, the captain had to have a crew of at least forty men, and the ship had to be seaworthy. Disagreements in the council were often settled by votes, but occasionally, fights between the opposing captains settled disputes. Those fights, more often than not, resulted in the death of the loser.
For the past several years, these pirate vessels had systematically looted the coastlines of the western European nations. The token efforts of those countries to deal with the pirates made little difference in their ability to raid and plunder at will. Only one nation had managed to stand strong against the pirates, and had thus far beaten them during every confrontation.
With the collapse of Parliament, the people of Britain turned to their monarchy, expecting the royals to reestablish order, and with the support of the British people, the monarchy rose to that challenge.
The United Kingdom had managed to keep sufficient portions of their naval forces intact and seaworthy to prevent the pirate fleets from pillaging their isles. Now they were running low on resources. The worst shortage was that of petroleum products, without which they couldn’t produce fuel to maintain their fleet vigilance, but there were other critical shortages as well.
Forced by these shortages to pull back their defensive forces (to their own coastal waters,) the United Kingdom was effectively isolated. The pirates saw this as a victory. The once great kingdom was weakening, and would soon be theirs to plunder. But they too were suffering critical shortages. Like the United Kingdom, they were low on petroleum products, ammunition for their captured warships, and food.
Now the pirates were turning their sights on the United States, where they expected to obtain crude oil, fuel for their ships, food in abundance, and a myriad of other items in high demand throughout devastated Europe. With those resources at their disposal, they felt confident that they would be able to crush the fleets of Britain, and then establish an era of pirate rule over the seas of the world.
The Peacekeepers. Book 8. The New Apocalypse.
It started in Mexico when a man found a silver metal briefcase on a beach. Thinking he’d found drugs being smuggled into the country, the man who found the vial of fluid inside the insulated attaché case threw it down and broke it in disgust. He didn’t notice the droplets of fluid that landed on his sandaled feet.
That man carried the cartel’s plague back to his village where the latest strain of the flu was running rampant. The plague mutated, joining with the flu, thus becoming airborne. It had now become the deadliest plague the world had ever faced.
Soon, a flood of refugees headed north to escape the onslaught of the plague. They carried it with them into the Border States of America.
The peacekeepers face their greatest challenge to date as they race to save the human race from what is nothing short of The New Apocalypse.
Bonus Material
On Visualizing a Peacekeeper Drive
By Bob Lee (a fan)
I first met Ricky Sides online when he asked for advice on realistically portraying a solution to a military problem in one of his novels. I was impressed by his desire to thoroughly research issues instead of just making things up. And I was intrigued by the peacekeepers themselves. The novels reminded me of Dale Brown’s “Flight of the Old Dog” where normal people use their wits to employ futuristic as well as mundane technology in a realistic way to defeat the “bad guys”.
I also wanted to read about the Peacekeeper itself. Who wouldn’t want to fly through the air like the Jetsons, or perhaps like John Carter of Mars, plying the thin air of a dying planet in a flyer kept aloft by the discovery of Martian scientists of the 8th ray of propulsion?
But I had a real problem with the whole idea of the Peacekeeper being something we could invent today. I have a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from an Ivy League school, and while there I took some advanced Physics courses. Two major issues with the Peacekeeper drive kept nagging at me.
First, all electromagnetism follows the “inverse square law” where the strength of the field drops off as the square of the distance. So, if you look at a light bulb from 2 feet, it is 2x2 or 4 times fainter than at 1 foot. From 10 feet, the bulb is 10x10 or 100 times fainter. In book 1, where the Peacekeeper flies at 30 feet, the engines would need to generate enough power to lift its own weight by a factor of 30x30 or 900 times. In book 2, when the Peacekeeper drive is improved by Pol, it is able to fly at 200 feet. This meant that the drive would have to put out the power of 40,000 times its own weight! This was too much to be believed as doable with our currently technology.
Now that issue just addressed lift. The second issue I worried over was how the Peacekeeper drive could provide the thrust to go forward. You could imagine that they pointed the drive straight down to hover, and pointed the drive at an angle backwards to go forward. However, now the waves from the drive, traveling at an angle, would have to travel much further to reach the ground, dissipating the power
available by the inverse square law. The further they pointed it back in order to go faster, the less thrust it generated! Also, when pushing at an angle, some of the power would go into lift, and some into forward thrust. So to go faster, they would have to point the drive further and further towards the rear, leaving less and less power for lift. Yet all of the books tell us that the Peacekeeper can achieve maximum height AND maximum speed at the same time. How could it realistically do this? I was stymied.
Well, there was one other problem that I did not worry about and that I took on faith. Somehow the electromagnetic drive could repulse the electrons on the ground to provide propulsion and thrust. But I felt that that should have been the only thing I had to take on faith in a realistic novel.
I wracked my brain thinking of how I could come to accept the Peacekeeper drive, and kept worrying at it like a dog chewing on a bone. Then, Eureka -- I found it! Pol and the inventors needed two breakthrough inventions.
The first breakthrough would be to create a drive that mimicked how lasers worked. Lasers, remarkably, do NOT drop off as the inverse square law; they slowly spread out due to what is called diffraction. Rather than using some complicated diffraction formula, what if we just used a similar concept and assumed that the drive spread out at an angle of only one degree? A quick calculation using high school geometry showed me that at 200 feet, the Peacekeeper would only need to generate enough lift to overcome three times its own weight. Now that was within the realm of possibility! Also, when Pol improved the drive in book 2 to go from 30 feet height maximum to 200 feet, he improved the focus of the drive from spreading out by an inefficient 7 degrees to spreading out by only 1 degree. He didn’t have to improve the power of the drives at all; he only needed to improve the focusing of the beam!