The Peacekeepers. Books 7 - 9 (The Peacekeepers Boxset Book 3)

by Ricky Sides

  “Thank you, Admiral,” Pol said, looking slightly sick to his stomach. “I remind you that it suffers the same limitations as that of the Constitution. You have three shots, then the system will have to recharge.”

  “Sergeant!”

  “Cease fire with the shotgun weapon!” the sergeant bellowed.

  “Aye, Sergeant,” responded a gunner who sounded relieved that he wouldn’t immediately have to kill so many men again.

  “The rest of you, fire at will. What are you waiting for?” demanded the sergeant.

  “Sorry, Sarge,” one of the gunners replied. “I was about to fire when he fired that weapon and it blanked out my targeting system, but it just came back online.”

  “Mine too,” another gunner said, and then he fired his weapon.

  “Pol?”

  “I’ll check the power flow logs, Admiral,” Pol responded.

  “It’s not that, Pol. It’s the camera filters. They overloaded from the intense light source in close proximity to them. I saw the warning on my interface and rebooted the system. I added a darker filter for the moment, but we’ll need to fix the problem properly or you wouldn’t be able to see targets in the dark if they were blacked out,” Patricia explained.

  Jim wasn’t paying attention. He was watching as the remaining twenty-nine guns opened fire on the pirates.

  If Bill’s mad minute had been impressive, that of the Damroyal was astonishing. The weapon’s fire slammed into the trapped pirate fleet in a brutal wave of punishment.

  In the Peacekeeper, Tim stared in shocked awe, first as the shotgun weapon sank a large ship with one shot, and then as the other guns opened fire on another twenty ships. The pirates fought back furiously. It seemed to Tim that every ship in their flotilla was now ignoring the other peacekeeper air assets and concentrating their fire on what they considered the biggest threat.

  He watched as the Damroyal flew near the most densely populated section of the enemy fleet and again the shotgun weapon discharged. When the weapon stopped firing, two more ships were slipping beneath the surface of the sea. However, this time the other guns had maintained their steady barrage. Tim knew that inside the heavily armored ship it must sound as if they had encountered the mother of all hailstorms as the enemy projectiles struck the hull in an insanely rapid beat.

  “Here they come, Captain,” Tim’s gunner said.

  “Everyone buckle into your seats!” Tim shouted. “This is going to be one wild ride,” he warned as he watched the eleven ships slide past the field of fire being projected by the Damroyal.

  ***

  In the Arizona, Namid watched another ship succumb to the withering firepower that gunner David Rockwell concentrated against it. It was sinking fast when she turned her attention to the sea in their immediate area. Blinking in disbelief, she saw that the peacekeepers had decimated this section of the enemy flotilla. It seemed that only moments before, the Arizona had been taking fire from numerous ships.

  Then she glanced up and saw the reason for the change in the battle. The air space around the Arizona was crowded with both drones and fighters. They had converged on the area to finish off the particularly heavy pocket of resistance that the Arizona had been battling alone.

  “Would you look at that?!” the gunner exclaimed as he stared at the discharge of the Damroyal’s shotgun weapon. “Oh, I want one of those.” he said in awe.

  “We’d never be able to power it up,” Jack stated. “It takes more power than the Arizona can collect in a day just to launch the first phase of the attack with that gun. The pulses would take another day. No other ship in the fleet could power it. Not even the Constitution.”

  “Helm, take us in closer to the action. Let’s look for some pirates attempting to break containment.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Namid stated automatically as her eyes sought out a clear path through the drones and fighters. She needn’t have worried. Even as she looked for a way to advance without hitting their own support aircraft, they began to dart away at amazing speed to seek out more targets themselves.

  Namid pulled the Arizona alongside the Constitution. The gunner added their firepower to the intense concentration of weapons fire directed at the dwindling numbers of surface vessels operated by the pirates.

  As the last enemy ship between the Arizona and the Damroyal began to sink, Lieutenant Winters said, “Captain, the Admiral has ordered us to fly around them and help the Peacekeeper. Numerous enemy vessels got past them, and the Peacekeeper may need backup.”

  “Helm, set the course and take us out at best speed possible. Lieutenant, signal the Damroyal that we are complying with our orders.”

  Namid flew past the Damroyal, accompanied by numerous drones and fighters. In the open Gulf ahead, she saw an APC hovering just above the surface of the sea. Men were standing in the doorway pulling on a rope. In the water below the APC, she saw a downed pilot who’d attached himself to the rescue rope. Even as she flew toward the drama unfolding at the site of the crash, she saw the telltale spouts of water near the downed fighter that indicated someone was firing at the peacekeepers. “Gunny,” she said.

  “I see em,” he replied. A moment later, the gunner fired a sustained burst with his forward laser at the small but fast vessel that had managed to shoot down a fighter, and then foolishly turned around to try to finish off the pilot. “Got em!” he stated enthusiastically.

  Namid saw one of the men in the APC wave to them as they flew past, but then she had to concentrate on the epic battle that was taking place a mile west in the Gulf of Mexico.

  In shock, Namid saw that several fighters had been blown out of the sky. Other fighters hovered nearby, dangling ropes in an attempt to rescue the downed fliers. She barely had time to wonder what had happened here to take out so many fighters when she saw the answer to her unspoken question revealed before her very eyes.

  On the deck of a mid-sized freighter, numerous puffs of white smoke indicated simultaneous missile launches. A seasoned combat pilot, Namid watched the contrails so she could determine whether she needed to take evasive action. Beside her, the gunner tried to shoot them down with the conventional minigun, but they were still out of effective range.

  To her horror, Namid saw two more fighters explode in midair. However, as the smoke cleared it looked to her as though the pilots might have survived, or they could if they were able to get out of the cockpit and avoid drowning.

  She increased the airspeed of the Arizona as other fighters began to pull away on a vector for the menacing ship. But another volley of rockets launched, forcing the attacking fighters to take evasive action. One pilot was too slow to execute his maneuver. His fighter took a rocket head on and fell from the sky. Namid shook her head sadly because she knew that pilot had to be dead.

  “Sir, the Peacekeeper is warning us that they are coming in hot,” Lieutenant Winters advised the captain.

  “Helm, maneuver to give them airspace. Gunner, fire at will, but concentrate on the other ships trying to break containment.”

  “Aye, sir,” the two officers said in unison.

  Namid saw a pair of drones drop down toward two of the ships frantically running to the south. Several fighters also raced past the Arizona, hammering away at the two ships with a conventional minigun. Namid was surprised that they hadn’t already expended their ammunition for the guns, but even as that thought occurred to her the guns stopped firing. The fact that they still had plenty of attack run left, told her they had run out of ammunition. She watched as they continued their attack run. The fighters flew on to deliver their bombs on the decks of the ships near their wheelhouses. “Well done guys,” she muttered to herself.

  “What the hell?!” Namid heard Jack exclaim behind her. “Bring us about, helm. The Peacekeeper may be in trouble.”

  “Communications, make sure we’re filming this,” the captain ordered as Namid brought the Arizona about and dumped airspeed. “All stop!” the captain commanded when he saw the Peacekeeper, wh
ich was flying toward the three ships directly in front of the Arizona.

  Namid brought the Arizona to a halt. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Constitution stop alongside them off the port side. Neither of the ships fired for fear of hitting the Peacekeeper.

  Namid couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The Peacekeeper dropped like a rock, from two hundred to thirty feet, in altitude. As it was dropping altitude, it was also spinning on its axis, executing a ninety-degree turn, and sliding sideways through the air. The maneuver brought the flagship of the peacekeepers between two of the ships with her guns in the favored broadside position, and screened her from the fire of the third. The guns opened up both fore and aft.

  Namid involuntarily gasped as she watched the lasers firing broadside at the decks of the two ships. The forward gunner shredded the deck of the starboard ship. The aft guns similarly attacked the port vessel. However, the damage being inflicted on the enemy wasn’t what had caused Namid to gasp. It was the fact that the Peacekeeper had less than ten feet of clearance both fore and aft. It was like threading a needle sideways with the huge ship, and Tim had made it look easy.

  The Peacekeeper shot back up into the air, spinning on its axis once more as it performed that maneuver. The ship applied forward thrust, cleared the starboard vessel it had just attacked, and then it dropped down to a position mere feet above the water.

  Accelerating at a rapid speed, the Peacekeeper opened fire at the third ship with all her forward guns. The enemy ship was desperately trying to get away. It was sailing at top speed to the southwest. The main forward laser burned through her hull at the waterline while the rest of her forward weapons raked the deck.

  As she watched the engagement unfolding before her, Namid saw several more puffs of smoke and knew that the ship had just launched several missiles at the Peacekeeper. Because of its altitude, she knew that the flagship was in trouble. A peacekeeper aircraft can drop altitude considerably faster than it can climb, and she was too low to drop under the oncoming missiles without plunging into the sea.

  Nevertheless, Tim didn’t even try to avoid the missiles. Instead, he put the ship into another spin. The missiles exploded harmlessly against the heavily armored side of the ship and her forward momentum carried her alongside the mid-sized freighter, the momentum of the ship permitting her to perform the mother of all slip maneuvers. The forward gunner fired everything he had on the deck of the vessel as the Peacekeeper’s forward section slipped past its port side. Then, the Peacekeeper shot up in the air and executed a bounce-maneuver on the bow of the now crippled ship. Incredibly, Namid saw the vessel’s screw come out of the water as her bow dipped beneath the surface. Then there were several explosions amidships and she realized that the Peacekeeper must have dropped some bombs while executing the bounce-maneuver. That damage proved to be too much for the ship. Her spine broke and the aft section slammed back down into the water hard.

  Namid watched as the water rushed into the broken ship, which had not quite broken into two sections.

  Gunny turned to Namid and said, “I didn’t think a ship that size could maneuver like that. But I guess the computers could handle those maneuvers after all.”

  Namid shook her head and responded, “I don’t think the computers handled the flight. I think that was all Tim, and I believe that he just executed a once in a lifetime set of maneuvers. Pilots in training will be studying the tapes of that battle for years to come. I know for damned sure I will!”

  In the control room of the Peacekeeper, Tim looked through the windshield, but try as he might, he couldn’t find another enemy vessel. He had communications radio the Damroyal, and was informed that their tactical display indicated that the battle was over. There were no more enemy vessels left afloat. Then the messages started to come in from various sources. Everyone wanted to congratulate Tim on the execution of the difficult maneuvers he had utilized in the final moments of the battle.

  Part 2

  Chapter 10

  In the southern California city of El Cajon, California, fires raged through large sections of the city. A masked man entered the medical office of Doctor Michael Langtree. He demanded that the doctor turn over all of his patients. When Doc Mike, who was now sick, refused to turn over the patients, the man nodded his understanding and said, “I’m sorry about this, Doc, but we have to purge the city. If we don’t do something, no one in the town will live through this.”

  “It won’t do you any good, George,” the doctor said.

  “You know who I am? What won’t work?”

  “I know you. I should. We played cards together every other Friday night for two years,” the doctor responded, and then covered his mouth as he experienced a coughing fit.

  “What won’t work?” the man asked again when the doctor stopped coughing for a moment.

  “That homemade mask is useless against this disease. It’s airborne. Your best chance of avoiding it is to stay away from anyone who has the disease. By going after the sick, you are just guaranteeing that you’ll take it home to Peggy and Marci.”

  “We buried Marci yesterday, Doc. I expect Peggy’ll last till morning, but what do I know. She could be dead already.”

  “Then why in God’s name are you doing this?” the doctor asked in confusion.

  “Jeff and his wife. She’s expecting.”

  “Your son,” the doctor stated and nodded his understanding. “I know she’s pregnant. I did the test for her.”

  “It’s time to decide, Doc. I mean to take these people out of here. I have to do it for the good of the people who might make it if I do what needs doing.”

  ‘”We’re all dead anyway. Leave us in peace, George. None of us are in shape to leave this office.”

  “Can’t do that, Doc,” George said as he leveled the hunting rifle and pointed it at the man.

  “May God have mercy on your soul for what you’re about to do, George.”

  “Don’t want his mercy. He didn’t give it to my wife and daughter,” the man replied in a deadpan voice. He squeezed the trigger and watched emotionlessly as the bullet struck the doctor in the forehead, killing him instantly.

  George heard screams of fear coming from examination rooms down the hall. He stepped over his dead friend. His right foot landed in the spreading pool of blood. Moving quietly across the room, he paused as the screams began to subside, and then George entered the hallway. One by one, he entered the rooms and killed the terrified patients.

  When he exited the doctor’s office, two other men with cans of flammable liquid entered. Like George, they wore masks. Unlike George, they were also wearing badges. The deputies saturated the bodies with the fuel and then they set fire to the place.

  One of the deputies stopped in front of George. “What about Peggy, George?”

  “If she survives the night, I’ll tend to her in the morning. Then I’ll tend to myself. There’s fuel in the shed for the lawnmower out back. Peggy always wanted to be cremated. That was against my religion back then. I have no religion now, so just torch my place at 8:00 a.m. I may as well be cremated with her.”

  Looking around slowly, George said, “There’s still work to be done boys, but I want to get home to Peggy.”

  “Go home, man. You’ve done more than your share already.”

  “I can count on you taking care of the cremation for us?”

  “You know I will, Dad,” said Jeff. “If Mom’s still...tell her I love her.”

  ***

  In the southern part of Los Angeles, there were bodies on the street because the local population was afraid to touch them. The rats experienced no such fear. At night, they came out to feast on the dead, as did some feral dogs and cats. The fleas on the animals infected others.

  In other portions of the city, the population had no qualms about handling the dead. They put on protective gear and went house to house, dragging the dead and dying into the streets. These people were loaded into the back of garbage trucks and taken to remote
areas where they were dumped and burned. More than one plague victim was still alive when they felt the flames of their funeral pyre.

  The big gangs organized. Seeing what was coming and anticipating the need to seek shelters, they first had to gather supplies. They did this by breaking into homes and taking what they wanted. If people resisted their pillaging, they were killed. Often they were murdered, despite their lack of resistance.

  A team of California peacekeepers landed their APC inside the twenty-foot tall high security fence of a vaccine manufacturing facility. A team of men stood ready to load the APC with the experimental vaccine. The APC was on the ground for fifteen minutes, during which time a team of heavily armed peacekeepers maintained an uneasy vigil. Just six blocks west of the facility, the team had flown over a large group of rioters who were going door to door looting and committing unspeakable acts of violence. The peacekeepers warned the facility guards that the rioters were near, but the guards were not concerned. As one guard put it, “Mister, there’s enough electricity flowing through that fence to kill a rampaging elephant. Now if we lose power, then I’ll begin to worry. But the power source is an underground cable, so it’s pretty secure.”

  Once the APC was loaded, the peacekeepers boarded and they took off for their rendezvous with the California. Captain Barnes was tasked with flying samples of the vaccine to the Damroyal, which was en route to the citadel. The rest would be distributed to the California peacekeepers, but they were to hold off on administering it for a few days, if possible.

  Maggie planned to test that vaccine herself. The manufacturing facility had already tested it to their satisfaction, but Maggie had done that research that led to its development and felt a moral obligation to test it herself.

  ***