The Peacekeepers. Books 4 - 6.

by Ricky Sides

  The End

  The Peacekeepers.

  The Citadel.

  Book 6.

  Copyright © 2009

  By Ricky Sides

  Cover art by Todd Aune

  Edited by Frankie Sutton

  Prologue

  Book 1

  Years had passed since the night of the quakes. In the weeks leading up to that horrible night, the world had been devastated by a series of natural disasters of unprecedented scope and fury. Earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, gargantuan hurricanes of unbelievable strength, swarms of killer tornadoes, and thunderstorms on a magnitude never before seen by man, overwhelmed the people of the world. All over the world, untold millions died as a result of these natural disasters. Nations struggled to cope with the sheer magnitude of the problems. Some governments collapsed when they simply could not cope with one disaster after another besetting their nations.

  At the height of these calamities, the American intelligence agencies reported to the government that a rogue nation with nuclear capability was planning an attack on the United States to take advantage of the weakened condition of the nation. Soon the nuclear nations of the world picked sides. They moved their troops into hardened sites to protect them as the nuclear clock wound down.

  A few civilians knew about the impending attack. They took measures to survive the nuclear confrontation, but as the moment for the war approached, the earthquakes began before a single nuclear missile could be launched. There was no precedent in existence for the earthquakes that occurred in that moment. They occurred on a global scale and as best the survivors could determine they seemed to be especially bad in the locations of all military bases. The loss of life that night was horrendous.

  In the aftermath of those earthquakes, the beleaguered United States government collapsed. Rumors had it that all senior government officials had entered hardened bunkers to ride out the nuclear war and never emerged. It was believed that the unprecedented earthquakes that had affected every square foot of the planet to one degree or another had destroyed these bunkers. While some sections of the country seemed to be destroyed, others seemed relatively untouched. Things were especially bad in the biggest cities where the people had little knowledge of how to survive without their infrastructure. In rural areas, where people were accustomed to working vegetable gardens and otherwise leaned toward self-reliance, the people faired better.

  In the weeks that followed the night of the quakes, three men and one woman played key roles in the birth of the peacekeepers. Tim Wilison met Patricia Huxley who was one of the developers working on a secret government project. Traveling together, they found the secret prototype vehicle that was later named the Peacekeeper.

  The vehicle was an ultra modern form of transportation designed to carry Special Forces troops into battle. The ship was ten feet tall, twenty-five feet wide and fifty-five feet long. The vessel utilized electro magnetic propulsion and flew through the air. It was armed with the latest in laser weapons technology, and powered by solar energy. The hull of the ship was made of a special alloy, which Patricia’s father had invented. That grayish-white alloy worked as a super efficient solar collector and stored the power in the large battery of the ship that was five times more efficient than anything previously on the commercial market was. The alloy was also bullet proof up to fifty caliber.

  When Tim and Patricia took the ship from storage in Missouri, they decided to travel to Alabama seeking Tim’s brother Jim. Along the way they had encounters with men they termed marauders. Those people were willing to kill anyone and take what they wanted from the survivors. After several such encounters, Patricia overheard a radio conversation in which the ship was referred to as the Peacekeeper. The name struck the couple as appropriate, so they adopted its use.

  In Chicago, Illinois, an army veteran named Pete Damroyal had organized a few hundred survivalists. Things were so bad in Chicago that Pete decided to return to Alabama, where he had lived a few years. It was during that period of his life that Pete had met Jim Wilison and trained him in the art of survival. He had his people loaded on a hodgepodge of transports, and they headed for north Alabama in the hopes of finding a better environment. But they were pursued by a large band of outlaws, led by a traitor who had turned on the survivalists.

  Jim Wilison had tried to find his brother Tim in the aftermath of the quakes. The martial arts and survival expert was gone for weeks, but he finally returned to Athens, Alabama, a few days after Pete arrived. He located Pete, but during their reunion, the outlaws who had pursued the survivalists caught up with them and launched an all out attack. The Illinois survivalists fought off the attack, and while the outlaws were regrouping, the survivalists made a run for Jim’s farm. Nevertheless, the outlaws followed them to the farm and a battle soon followed.

  In the Peacekeeper, Patricia intercepted communications being made by the marauders. In a desperate flight to reach the farm before the outlaws could slaughter his brother, Tim poured on the speed on the harrowing journey across northeast Alabama to the city of Athens.

  At the height of the battle, Tim and Patricia arrived in the Peacekeeper and defeated the enemy tanks with the firepower of their ship. That night around a campfire, the key people who would form the peacekeepers spoke of using the ship to defend other Americans being targeted by the outlaw segments of society. Jim was nominated and elected to become the captain of the ship. Tim would be the pilot. Patricia, a former child prodigy who specialized in computer programs and communications, would serve as their communications and computer specialist. Pete would serve as their weapons expert and gunner. Bill Young, Pete’s right hand man among the survivalists, joined as well. So did Lacey Carteen, the woman Jim was planning to marry. This could be said to be the real birth of the peacekeepers, for now the organization had a structure and the ship had a crew.

  Book 2

  A couple of days after the formation of the peacekeepers, the entire group of survivalists who’d followed Pete from Chicago to Athens, voted to become peacekeepers as well. A talented Sergeant Jack Wilcox, volunteered to come aboard with a hand picked team to become the first strike force of the peacekeepers. These men would provide security for the ship and take on missions where ground forces were needed. They were in effect the equivalent of Special Forces, and had been specially trained to handle a myriad of mission types from urban warfare to deep woods combat.

  Maggie Peterson was the final addition to the crew that night. Maggie was an attractive woman in her mid-thirties with short black hair worn in a short shag. Maggie had been a trauma care specialist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. She was known for her volatile temper and her occasionally unorthodox approach to saving lives. She had been brought up on charges upon three separate occasions for deviating from protocol. In each case, her unorthodox approach saved the lives of her patients whereas following the protocols would have failed to do so, therefore, the Chief of Staff ordered the incorporation of her new techniques into standard treatment protocols. Maggie would be the crew’s doctor. Maggie and the medics assigned to the strike force team saved the lives of various crewmembers upon several occasions during the first four years of the peacekeeper’s history.

  The peacekeeper base was established on Jim’s one hundred acre farm that he had bought the same day he’d found Pete in Athens. He’d bought the place from Bob and Sarah Baker. That base would become known simply as Base 1 to the peacekeepers. The people of the base were housed in below ground family oriented dwellings constructed from modules of prefabricated storm shelters of varying sizes. These units were custom designed for each family and if not luxurious, they were comfortable. The centerpiece of the base was a very large concrete bunker built below ground level. That bunker contained offices, communications equipment, and beds sufficient to accommodate all of the Base 1 personnel should the need arise. After its construction, the bunker was covered with dirt and grass seed was sown, as was the case with all of the family dwellings.
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br />   The city of Athens provided power and water to the base in exchange for the protection and stability that the organization provided.

  Shortly after the base was constructed, Pol Bleakman turned up at Base 1. He was one of the original developers on the project that had created the Peacekeeper. He’d brought with him the components necessary to give the ship an upgrade that would greatly enhance its capabilities. He’d asked to be made a member of the Peacekeeper crew and was accepted. Pol’s addition proved a blessing to the peacekeepers. The brilliant scientist revealed where they might obtain body armor, and working with Patricia, he discovered the secrets of Malcolm Tidwell, who was the weapons development man for the project. They discovered the minigun that had been secretly installed without the permission of the head of the development team and how to access the unit.

  Book 3

  Pol created the first two peacekeeper drones by utilizing the two scale models of the ship they found at the Hannibal, Missouri, development center where the team had first built and tested the ship. He armed the drones with miniaturized lasers, cameras and audio systems, so that the drones could relay messages to people on the ground. He also manufactured lasers for the base defense system. Pol supervised the reopening of the California factory, where the alloy hull of the Peacekeeper had been fabricated. Presses located in that facility had formed the alloy. Pol discovered that additional drones could be manufactured and he worked to help the peacekeepers build the additional drones.

  The crew also discovered that the government had stolen some of the development team’s work and launched a black project, code named Phoenix Rising. This doomsday project was to build a secret fighter group that could operate after a nuclear war, and would not be dependent upon normal fuel supplies. Although they were inferior to the top of the line fighters in the American arsenal the fighters would offer a viable alternative should nuclear war be waged. They were relatively cheap to build with a price tag of just four million per unit, as opposed to over one hundred million for the F22-Raptor. Working together, utilizing the supply of alloy and chemicals found at the factory, the two brilliant development scientists, Pol and Patricia helped to form the peacekeeper air force.

  By that point in time, the peacekeepers stretched from California to Georgia.

  Utilizing almost all of the remaining supply of alloy, Pol oversaw the construction of a battleship drone. That drone was the size of a basketball court, but was tear-shaped with a rounded aft section and a narrower nose, as were the twenty-one foot long fighters.

  The new peacekeeper air force was utilized extensively in the campaign against Tom Whitmore, who had declared himself King of Kansas.

  Book 4

  When the crew of the Peacekeeper located the Saginaw, Michigan, based factory that manufactured the alloy invented by Patricia’s father, a trade arrangement was made. The peacekeepers would receive two very large shipments of the alloy and a percentage of the future alloy production of the factory. In exchange, Pol traded the factory owner the plans for building flying cars that would use the same propulsion system that he had invented for the Peacekeeper, and Patricia helped develop some of the computer software that would make it possible to link to the global positioning system. Reager Industries also got the information on how to construct the revolutionary battery system for utilization in the cars. Pol explained to the company president and board of directors that the auto applications were just the tip of the iceberg. He mentioned roofing and siding, which could be tied to a battery system and thus power homes.

  Utilizing the material acquired through the trade deal, the patrol class vessel was developed, and additional fighters were created. The patrol class ship closely mimicked the design of the original prototype the Peacekeeper. The two main differences were in the overall size and the quality of the support systems onboard the ships. Pol wanted the cargo bay area to be larger to accommodate the need for troop transports, so they were designed twice the size of the cargo bay of the Peacekeeper. This increased the overall length of the ship, but the other dimensions matched those of the Peacekeeper. Since the appliances aboard the prototype had all been prototypes in their own rights, it was impossible to install similar units in the patrol ships. Standard units had to be employed. The patrol ships were named after the states where they would be based. The California was the first patrol ship, and her captain Cliff Barnes was the second captain in the peacekeeper organization. Other states were represented: Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, California, and Nevada, all had patrol class ships.

  Pol also conceived a new design and with Patricia’s input, the two scientists came up with a plan to build an additional section onto the battleship drone. This enabled the Peacekeeper to dock and detach at will with the larger, more heavily armed battleship drone. This additional space cured the chronic bunk shortage for the crew. It also gave them larger facilities, such as a proper infirmary, and a larger mess hall so that most of the crew could eat together when the situation was deemed sufficiently safe. It also provided an additional several layers of the alloy between the crew and potential enemies, unless they were in the control room of the Peacekeeper. The front fifteen feet of the ship sat outside the docking alcove and so it was exposed, with the exception of the bottom of the ship, which rested on the battleship drone superstructure. When separated, that battleship module was still utilized as a drone. There were also times when all non-essential personnel were evacuated to the drone module and the two ships separated for hazardous missions such as dealing with biohazards.

  One year after the reopening of the Saginaw facility that manufactured the Huxley alloy, which was the backbone of the peacekeeper’s technology, a ship of the dead and the dying washed ashore in Louisiana. One of the men from the boat made his way through several small cities on his way east to New Orleans. That man carried with him a dread disease that infected a large segment of the population. The smaller communities were decimated. There were no survivors. Almost three quarters of the population of New Orleans succumbed to the disease but it was contained. The peacekeepers cleaned up the smaller cities while the citizens of New Orleans dealt with the crisis there.

  Later, a lone man was spotted off the coast of Florida and rescued by flight leader Jeff Brown of the Alabama based fighters. That man revealed the source of the plague. He also warned that the South American drug cartel responsible for the attack was aware that the plague had been contained. In addition, he warned that the cartel was planning to send more boats laden with plague infected Cubans. The cartel had easily conquered the Cubans by unleashing the plague in Cuba prior to the invasion.

  The construction of patrol ships for the remaining states was interrupted by the need to build the most ambitious ship to date, which was a full sized battleship. In actuality, the battleship was a hybrid vessel. It would be able to carry a crew of forty, each of whom had a private cabin. Inside those cabins, five beds were mounted to the walls on frames constructed of the special alloy and permanently attached. When the personnel were needed, the ship would be able to transport two hundred additional peacekeepers into battle. Those peacekeepers would sleep in the wall-mounted bunks, so in effect the ship was also a troop transport. In her massive cargo bay, needed to deploy large groups of peacekeepers, the ship housed the four fighters that would accompany the Constitution on her missions. Therefore, the battleship that doubled as a troop transport was also an aircraft carrier. Ten drones were assigned to the ship. Those drones were situated in two channels that ran the length of the top of the ship along her outer edges.

  Bill Young was selected as captain of the battleship, and the crew of the Peacekeeper trained Bill’s crew aboard the Peacekeeper. The day that this battleship left on her maiden voyage, Bill named her the Constitution.

  During the battle with the cartel, the Constitution was struck by numerous shoulder-fired missiles and it took massive damage. Her outer hull was also riddled with fifty-caliber fire, as the Constitution fought to eli
minate as many of those deadly weapons as possible. Though the special alloy was bullet resistant, there was a limit to that protection. Fifty-caliber ammunition was sufficiently strong to penetrate the hull. During the hours long sea battle, the outer hull of the Constitution was damaged to such an extent as to render it beyond the ability of the ship construction crew to repair. The outer hull would have to be removed and completely replaced. However, the peacekeepers had used all their remaining alloy in the construction of the vessel. Her repair would have to wait until the peacekeepers could save enough of their monthly shipments of alloy from the Saginaw factory to complete the repairs.

  However, at the request of Bob Reager, Patricia had sent a video feed of the sea battle to his factory in Saginaw, Michigan. The employees, who’d worked overtime to deliver the alloy the construction team needed to complete the ship, had requested information regarding the damage she took in the battle. Those employees watched the live video feed of the battle in rapt attention, and when they saw the condition of the Constitution in the wake of the battle, they became overwhelmed with the desire to assist the crippled ship. They volunteered their time if the factory would supply the material to repair the vessel. Bob Reager and the board of directors had agreed and delivered the materials needed to get that ship back in the air. They were patriotic Americans. They respected what the peacekeepers had done; the dangers that they had braved to stop the invasion.

  The battle with the South American drug cartel had been the biggest challenge that the peacekeepers had met to date. Never, since their formation in post-disaster America, had the peacekeepers faced a situation in which their failure could lead to the loss of millions of their fellow Americans.