by Ricky Sides
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.
Book 5
In the wake of the sea battle, a team of peacekeepers was attacked on the outskirts of Birmingham, Alabama. The crew of the Peacekeeper and several fighters flew to the emergency beacon, and discovered that the massacre had been perpetrated by a vampire cult, intent upon forming a new nation of people who embrace vampirism.
One by one, the five nests of the cult were located and destroyed by the men and women of the Peacekeeper, the Alabama, and the Constitution. When the crew of the Peacekeeper tries to take on the two remaining cult leaders and twenty of their best fighters, they find themselves battling people who refuse to stay down despite mortal wounds.
In the basement of the mansion, where the final conflict of that brief war was fought, Captain Jim Wilison faced two of the deadliest people he’d ever fought in hand to hand combat. For the first time since he had set them aside as too dangerous to utilize, Jim picked up his ultimate martial arts weapons. He carried his Sais into that final conflict, because the foe he had to battle was one capable of destroying his very soul.
Book 6
In the Guadalupe Mountains of Texas, the peacekeepers discovered the base for Phoenix Rising, which was a secret government project that planned to utilize the work of the development team who had designed the Peacekeeper. The project plans called for storing one hundred fighters in the subterranean base. Those fighters would provide air cover for America in the event of a nuclear conflict. The fighters had not been delivered prior to the night of the quakes.
Inside that base, which the peacekeepers had code named the citadel, they discovered an aircraft unlike any other they had ever seen. Though the aircraft utilized peacekeeper technology, it was unarmed. In the wake of the retrofitting of the ship, Pol asked the question, “What upcoming event or challenge will make the resources of this ship and the citadel necessary?”
The peacekeepers learned the answer to that question just hours later.
A rogue element of former United Nations troops, led by Geraldo Fernandez, was poised to invade the United States. Their goal was to take and hold San Francisco for a month. If they could do so, then a massive army being assembled in Mexico by militant La Raza factions would reinforce them. Fernandez planned to nuke LA, and then threaten to hit other American cities with nuclear weapons, if anyone interfered with his plans to claim America for Spain.
Calling on all of their resources, the peacekeepers race to prevent a nuclear strike on American soil.
Dealing with the recent death of his wife at the hands of a band of marauders, Admiral Jim Wilison struggled to adjust to her loss, as he worked to formulate a plan that would stop the missile from striking Los Angeles.
The peacekeeper council opted for a series of defensive lines made up of the majority of the peacekeeper air fleet. However, one by one, the cruise missile survived the gauntlet of peacekeeper drones, fighters, patrol ships, and armored personnel carriers.
Aboard the new ship, which Jim had named the Valiant, the pilot made one last desperate course adjustment and the Admiral ordered the launch of the two drones. Working with the drones, the ship executed a turn and slip maneuver. The three peacekeeper aircraft, which were the last line of defense between the missile and LA, targeted and destroyed the cruise missile.
While the rest of the fleet tried to stop the cruise missile, the Constitution, the Peacekeeper, and a squadron of fighters attacked the former UN troops at their base.
During the brief but intense conflict, Lieutenant Wilcox was critically wounded as he attempted to take the commander prisoner in an effort to stop the launch of the nuclear missile.
When he recovered from his wounds, the lieutenant was offered and he accepted the captaincy of the Arizona. That ship hadn’t been built yet, but would be the newest design that Pol had developed.
Chapter 1
The woman driving the old Ford truck glanced nervously in her rear view mirror and frowned. The people pursuing her were still in sight, and they were gaining on her. Tearing her attention away from the scene in her mirror, the woman concentrated on driving at a greater speed. Dozens of potholes in the surface of the highway hampered her efforts to escape her pursuers. It had now been a bit over six years since the night of the quakes, and many of the roadways of America were beginning to break down. The woman twisted the steering wheel hard to the left in an effort to miss a particularly large pothole, and heard a shout of alarm come from the bed of her truck. “Hold on tight, Dad!” she shouted.
In the bed of the truck, the woman’s father struggled to maintain his balance as he knelt and tried to aim his bolt-action rifle at the lead motorcycle, which was gaining on them by the moment. They were in a desperate position and he knew it. He had already seen the motorcycle gang attack the vehicle that had been following behind his truck. They had forced the car to stop and then slaughtered the occupants of that vehicle. In his mind, he could still see members of the gang as they swarmed onto and inside the car as they sought anything of value. A former Arizona state trooper, he had been outraged by the attack and wanted to do something about it, but he had his daughter and grandson to think about. He had ordered his daughter to drive as fast as possible, and instructed his grandson to put out a call for help on the radio.
Meanwhile, he had mentally prepared himself for what he feared was inevitable. He knew it was unlikely that anyone who could help them, would hear the radio plea for assistance, but his former training as a law enforcement officer had conditioned him to respond to such situations in that manner. Now, as he watched the motorcycles closing in on their truck, he prepared to defend his family to the best of his ability. Hampered by the shortage of ammunition, he knew he would have to make every shot count. As he prepared to take on the gang, he wondered at the senselessness of the attack. He knew the bikers had probably targeted the car, because they had seen the personal possessions tied to the luggage rack of the antique station wagon, but there was no way that they could even transport the goods.
Sighing, the man concentrated on making his shot count. He knew there was no sense worrying about why the gang was attacking. He had to concentrate on ensuring that his daughter and grandson survived the encounter.
As the lead motorcycle closed to within a few hundred feet, the man in the bed of the truck saw the passenger seated behind the driver raise a pistol and fire at him and he returned fire. His bullet struck the driver dead center in the chest. Involuntarily, the biker jerked the wheel hard to the right. This caused the bike to go down hard on the surface of the asphalt. It slid behind the truck for a good sixty feet before coming to a stop.
The former state trooper worked the bolt, extracting the spent cartridge and chambering another round. He then laid the rifle down in the bed of the truck beside him and drew his pistol. The main body of the gang was now within range of that weapon, and the nine-millimeter Beretta would serve him better. He knew the odds of his family surviving this encounter were bad. Soon, he would run out of ammunition, and when he did, the gang would swarm the truck. As he saw it, their only hope was that he could kill enough of the gang members to cause the rest to break off the chase, but he had only the ammunition that was loaded in the pistol and three more rounds in the rifle. That gave him fifteen rounds that he could use to defend his family.
Above the roar of the wind, the man heard the sound of gunfire and knew that some of the bikers were shooting at them. He calmly took aim at the lead rider and fired the Beretta. He had the satisfaction of seeing that bike go down hard on the asphalt. The marauder behind the downed biker tried to swerve around the fallen motorcyclist, but his front tire clipped the rear wheel, and he too went down hard. Then, the former trooper felt a hard punch to his upper chest area and knew he had been sh
ot. His Second Chance vest saved his life, just as it had once during his career as a state trooper, but the impact of the bullet knocked the man backwards, causing him to drop his pistol in the bed of the truck.
In the cab of the truck, the man’s fifteen-year-old grandson continued to call for assistance. Just as his grandfather had taught him, the young man was transmitting their general location and direction of travel. Finally, the broadcasts for help were answered as a calm male voice said, “We heard your distress call and are en route. Stay on the road. We’ll be there in two minutes. Now, please confirm that you are on highway Arizona 89A, fifteen miles out from Jerome in a pickup truck, being pursued by a motorcycle gang.”
“That’s right!” responded the young man in excitement. Then he said, “Please hurry. They are almost on us!”
“Just hang in there, Son. Don’t stop when you see us. We need you to get clear of the field of fire,” the calm voice stated.
“Tell the man that we understand, Son,” the harried woman said grimly. “And ask him what he’ll be driving, so we’ll know it’s him when we see him,” she added.
“A peacekeeper troop transport,” the man said, responding to the boy’s question.
“Hang on tight, Dad!” the woman yelled a warning as she took a particularly sharp curve at a dangerous rate of speed, praying that the old truck wouldn’t roll over. She heard her father firing at the gang as she somehow managed to keep the truck on the road. Then she was once more on a straight stretch of the highway. Ahead of her, she saw the troop transport hovering twenty feet above the surface of the road. It seemed to be hurtling toward her. Flooring the gas pedal, the woman soon passed beneath the ship. Glancing in her rear view mirror, she saw the ship descend to hover just above the surface of the road.
In the troop transport, the pilot had timed the maneuver perfectly. He dropped toward the surface of the road, interposing the body of the transport between the fleeing civilians and the motorcycle gang. Two of the bikers slammed into the body of the transport as it raced toward them. The gunner fired his laser repeatedly into the packed main body of the bikers, who were doing their best to turn tail and run, but the peacekeepers did not intend to let the men get away. They had been after this band of rogue bikers for months, but hadn’t been able to locate them. The bikers had been preying on travelers in that section of Arizona. The atrocities committed by the gang had been so numerous and horrific that their base commander had issued orders to terminate the marauders on sight.
The gunner saw a man throw a grenade toward the APC. He shouted a warning to the pilot as he tried desperately to hit the explosive device with his laser. A moment later, the explosion of the grenade buffeted the small ship. A crack in the windshield raced from the bottom left corner to a point near the center of the windshield, and then traveled back down to the right bottom corner. The pilot cursed as he moved to take evasive action, but then he just frowned and accelerated. The APC slammed into another group of bikers who were desperately attempting to turn tail and run.
As the gunner fired at the few remaining members of the biker gang, the pilot radioed the truck advising the occupants that if they needed medical treatment, they should proceed to the base. The boy who had been talking to the pilot responded, saying, “We’re on our way there now. My grandfather was recruited by a peacekeeper patrol last Tuesday, so we are moving to the base.”
The peacekeeper acknowledged the young man’s message and warned him that they should stop at the checkpoint near the base. He radioed the base that the pickup truck would soon arrive, and that the occupants were not a threat.
***
“No, no, no! The power relays must be tied in through both of those systems. Otherwise, if the ship takes a hit to a critical area, it could lose power to all systems!” exclaimed Pol to the technicians working on the power relays of the Arizona.
Climbing the scaffolding beside the ship with an agility that surprised some of the technicians, Pol soon joined them beside the relay junction where they were working.
“How did he spot that from here?” asked Captain Jack Wilcox.
“The same way you could spot one of your strike force members making a mistake fifty yards away in the dead of night,” Jim said with a smile.
Lina smiled at Captain Wilcox, and then she said, “Jim’s just as bad. One night, back when we first met, he was teaching me some escape and evasion techniques. From twenty feet away in the pitch black night, he saw me about to step into a deep depression in the ground and warned me to be careful.”
“He’s warned me by radio a few times when one of my men was getting sloppy as well,” Jack added.
“She’s a beauty, isn’t she?” asked Namid who was standing beside her husband. She was referring to the Arizona, which was in the final days of construction. Pol had learned a lot from the aerodynamic design of the Valiant. He had applied that knowledge to the design of the Arizona. Both ships had the graceful curved outer edges of the fuselage that mimicked the SR-71 Blackbird. This would enable the Arizona to utilize slip maneuvers during battle. The reduced wind drag also accounted for much of the increased flight speed.
The Arizona was also the first true multi-deck peacekeeper vessel. Prior to its construction, only the Peacekeeper battleship module had more than one deck. When the battleship drone had been converted to serve as a battleship module for the Peacekeeper, much of the original deck had been preserved to act as a cargo hold, but the deck was not utilized for anything else. The Arizona’s lower deck would be fully utilized by the crew.
The Arizona control room was in the center top forward. Crew quarters were aft of the control room. The lower floor contained the latrines. There was also a galley, mess hall, an infirmary, and a cargo bay. The ship would be able to fly at one thousand feet, and reach speeds approaching the speed of sound. Pol’s best estimates were that it would be able to fly at around seven hundred twenty miles per hour. The Arizona was eighty feet long, thirty feet wide, and twenty feet tall.
A full ten feet of the width was utilized by the curvature of the superstructure, and was not devoted to working space for the crew. The Arizona was also unique in that it actually had two full sized battery compartments. One battery was installed beneath each deck. The dual battery system would provide the Arizona with such a large energy reserve that the ship would be able to stay in a battle long past the time when other peacekeeper ships would have had to break off and retreat in order to permit their batteries to recharge.
“Pol!” shouted Jim, as he watched the scientist talking with the technicians.
Pol leaned precariously out while holding on to the scaffolding, and responded, “Yes, Admiral?”
“We really want to go inside and see the ship. Should we go on ahead? You can join us when you are finished here,” Jim explained.
“That won’t be necessary, Admiral. These fine technicians now understand the proper way to make the connection,” Pol said grinning. “I’ll be right down,” he added.
Pol scrambled back down the scaffolding with the same agility he had displayed as he ascended it only moments earlier. “I’m sorry, Jim,” Pol said quietly when he reached the ground. “You came a long way to see the ship, and I’ve kept you waiting.”
“No apologies are necessary, my friend,” Jim said reassuringly. “But yes, I would like to go now. I need to get back to the citadel this afternoon,” Jim added with a wan smile.
“Yes, of course you do, my friend,” responded Pol. He was aware that today was the anniversary of Lacey’s death, and that Jim would need to be with Evan tonight.
Pol led the way around the ship to the entry door. As he walked, he said, “As you know, the Arizona is heavily armored. We estimate that her hull could survive the impact of a stinger missile with some indentation to the outer layer, but no breech of the hull. But you may not know how we achieved the improved armor capability.”
Seeing Jim’s frown, Pol smiled and said, “Don’t worry, my friend. I am not going
to bore you with the math.”
With an obvious expression of relief on his face, Jim said, “Thank you, Pol. You know I really have trouble following the engineering lingo you use when you’re explaining how these things work.”
Nodding his head in understanding, Pol responded, “I promise to keep it simple. That’s why I have a display table set up in the cargo bay. I’ll be able to use those visual aids to explain the process in layman’s terms.”
The scientist then led Jim, Jack, Namid, and Lina on a tour of the lower deck of the ship. The galley, mess hall, and infirmary appeared to be of standard patrol ship design, although they were considerably larger, as were the latrines.
The similarities to other ships were not evident in the cargo bay, which Pol had redesigned. The one dramatic change to the room was the fireman’s pole that was set up to permit the strike force members who might be on the upper deck to rapidly join the others in the cargo bay in the event of an emergency. That pole was situated near the weapons and armor storage compartments. This would enable the new arrivals to access their gear within moments of reaching the deck. The pole was sealed to the cargo bay deck. It rose from the deck and disappeared through the circular hole in the ceiling. The other end was attached to the ceiling of the second level of the ship. The fireman’s pole, weapons lockers, and armor storage compartments were located on the starboard side of the cargo bay.
Along the port wall of the cargo bay were a dozen small bunk beds. Their frames were made of the Huxley alloy, and they were permanently attached to the wall. These had been added to accommodate the need for extra bunk space that all too frequently occurred aboard peacekeeper ships. They could be utilized when the ship had visitors or extra personnel aboard.
The cargo bay door had been completely reconfigured for the Arizona. It was a design change that Pol wanted to make on all future peacekeeper patrol class vessels. A small door at the back of the cargo bay led into a smaller room that would function as a sort of airlock. Before the outer bay door could be opened, the inner door had to be closed and locked from the inside. This would prevent the possibility of an intruder accessing the interior of the ship if they managed to slip inside as the door was opening or closing. It wasn’t practical to retrofit the rest of the fleet, but it was a precautionary measure that the peacekeeper council felt should be worked into all future ship class vessels. The APCs would be exempt from the adaptation. They were considered too small for the measure to be practical.