The Peacekeepers. Books 1 - 3.

by Ricky Sides

  The peacekeepers in the convoy cheered madly. Many of them knew about the project, but the peacekeepers outside Base 1 had never seen the drones in action. It was incredibly good for moral.

  They stopped that night just east of Dallas and slept until morning. After a hasty meal, they resumed their westward journey.

  ***

  In Eastland, the group of sixty-eight slaves forced to work in the munitions factory that the convicts had set up in a warehouse building were just leaving the factory for the day. They were tired and they were hungry, but they knew from experience that it would be another several hours before the slavers fed them. There were twenty slaver guards armed with pistols. These guards marched the slaves several blocks down the streets of Eastland. With their pistols aimed at the slaves, the guards forced them to enter the filthy makeshift barracks where they were kept when they weren’t working. The doors closed and some of the people near the door heard a chain rattling as the guards secured the old school gymnasium doors with a heavy chain and padlock. A moment later they heard the sound of gunfire erupting. The gunfire began slowly at first, but soon climbed to a massive crescendo. Finally the firing outside the door stopped. A few minutes later, a single shot rang out. Following that shot were a few more, spaced several moments apart, and finally silence reigned outside the door.

  The people inside huddled together in fear and confusion having no idea what had just transpired. Some wept in fear and confusion. Others sought to find some form of weapon with which they could defend themselves and their fellow slaves should the need arise. Outside they heard a male voice demanding, “Someone get this damned door open!” Seconds later a single shot rang out and they heard someone pulling the chain through the metal door handles. The people inside the gymnasium took hesitant steps back away from the door. Some of them tripped over the filthy bedding, which the slaves had been forced to sleep on. They fell to the floor crying out in pain as their emaciated bodies struck the floor.

  Both doors flung open and the late afternoon sun streamed inside the gymnasium blinding the slaves who in their fear cowered and huddled together. A soft voice spoke from the doorway saying, “Damn these slavers. Damn them to hell for what they’ve done to these people!”

  Standing in the doorway a peacekeeper sergeant stared into the room unable to believe the evidence before his own eyes. The people before him were so thin he didn’t see how they could be alive. Their clothing was little more than rags and many bore the scars of the slavers beatings. All of them were filthy. The gymnasium was deplorable. It was filthy and reeked of sweat, urine, and feces. Looking at the people, he saw stark fear in the eyes of most and he swallowed a lump in his throat. Speaking kindly, and with a soft voice, he said, “You don’t have to be afraid anymore. We’re the peacekeepers, and we’re here to help you.”

  A young woman, whose age the sergeant couldn’t determine because of her filthy condition, tentatively approached the sergeant. She reached hesitantly for the sergeant’s arm and then paused as if she were afraid to touch the man. With a quavering voice she asked, “Will you protect me from the overseer who rapes me at night?” There was a pleading and almost hopeless tone to her voice as if she had long ago given up all hope of ever escaping the man’s cruelty.

  “If he was outside then he is dead Ma’am, and he won’t be bothering you anymore,” the sergeant explained.

  “He’s not outside. There he is,” the woman said and turned to point to a man who stood apart from the others. The man apparently ate considerably better than the other slaves did and he appeared to be the only healthy man present.

  The sergeant motioned to two of the men beside him and they approached the man who tried to flee but tripped and fell over a sleeping pallet. “Is what this woman says the truth?” the sergeant asked the people in the gymnasium as his two men grabbed the man in question and dragged him to his feet.

  “He rapes me too,” another woman said.

  “He broke open poor Jack’s head for trying to protect the girl one night. Poor Jack was her brother. He … He died,” said one emaciated man shaking his head in sorrow.

  “Take that man out and shoot him,” the sergeant ordered. The man screamed his innocence as he was dragged out of the gymnasium but many other people spoke up regarding his cruelties. A minute after he was taken out of the building a single gunshot sounded. “He will never hurt you people again,” the peacekeeper sergeant promised.

  Peacekeeper medics began to arrive. Entering the gymnasium with their equipment, they stopped and stared at the sight that greeted them. “We can’t treat these people in here. It isn’t sanitary. Let’s get them outside in the fresh air,” one of the medics said, and then he added, “Someone get these people some food. Make it something easy to digest and not too much at once!” the man said with a heavy Cajun accent.

  ***

  On the other side of town, forty slavers had just pushed the last of the hundred or so slaves into an old warehouse where they forced them to sleep. Chaining the doors, they started walking away laughing and talking about their plans for the future. A moment later, they walked into the killing zone that the peacekeepers had set up. Most never had the opportunity to fire a shot as the peacekeepers riddled them with bullets.

  When the door to the warehouse opened, the peacekeepers found conditions similar to the ones the other team was just finding in the gymnasium. They also found two overseers who were so universally hated that when the slaves found out they were being liberated they turned on the men beating them. Peacekeepers stopped the fighting because the healthier overseers were hurting some of the gaunt slaves. The sergeant in charge of the rescue investigated the matter and learned that the two overseers had murdered several slaves and raped most of the women. Some victims had been raped multiple times. The peacekeeper sergeant had the two overseers executed as a result of the investigation. The peacekeepers moved the liberated people out of the filthy warehouse where the medics could treat their numerous injuries. A bland meal was served to the victims. Some of the peacekeepers serving them wept in misery when the people begged for more, but they had to refuse. They were under strict orders just how much they could feed the people at one time or they could literally kill them with their kindness.

  ***

  The Peacekeeper flew directly to the building where most of the slavers in this city could be found during the day. They stopped a block from the building where they landed briefly and the strike force team was deployed. Now they hovered facing the building. Jim pointed to the two buildings the ship faced and said, “Remember the smaller building on the right is the place they keep the sex slaves, so we can’t hit that at all.”

  “Right. I haven’t forgotten. The Louisiana team is sure they don’t take women into the large bar next door?” Pete asked. He was still worried that the attack might kill some of the women who’d been taken into the bar.

  “They observed the place all day and into the night. Men routinely go into and leave the smaller structure but no women were taken inside the bar. The only time they were permitted outside the house was to walk up and down the road for a few minutes exercise in the morning. We can’t be certain of course but the intelligence indicates it unlikely that the women would be present in the bar. However I imagine a few men may be in the slave house,” Jim said.

  “Right, Bill, you watch the slave house. If you see a man come out, you drill him with your drone,” Pete ordered.

  “With pleasure,” Bill said grimly.

  They hovered at two hundred feet and waited the few minutes until word came over the radio that they had liberated the factory slaves. Jim gave Patricia the order to have strike force one move into their objective. A few moments later, the strike team entered the house from both the front and rear doors. Gunshots rang out almost immediately, as someone inside the slave house opened fire.

  Pete concentrated on the huge double door entrance to the bar. Within moments, the two doors swung inward and out charged several men.
Pol and Bill both fired the lasers of their drones in rapid succession drilling small holes through the chests of five of the six men. The sixth man looked up and for the first time he noted the Peacekeeper mother ship and its two drones hovering there. He stood there gap mouthed in astonishment for a moment. Bill shot him in the head.

  More shots were fired in the slave house as another larger group of men ran out the doors of the bar. Pete added his forward laser fire to that of the drones and within a few moments, most of that group was dead as well. Three men had managed to dart back inside the bar. They must have informed the men in the bar that they were being attacked from the air because windows all over the front of the bar exploded outwards and a heavy volume of gunfire poured into the front of the Peacekeeper and her two drones. Pete opened fire with the minigun, which he’d brought online the moment the battle commenced. Working the bottom floor from left to right he shredded the front of the building, bursting several neon signs attached to the front of the bar in the process, until only one section of the lower floor exhibited evidence of return fire and that was the far right side near the wall.

  “I can’t target them for fear of punching through the bar and into the slave house,” Pete explained.

  “Bill, watch your drone, I’m dropping down and right,” Tim said in a rush.

  “All right,” Bill responded and maneuvered his drone out of the way.

  “Stop here!” Pete ordered as Tim brought the ship into a perfect position from which to fire. He opened fire with a brief burst of the minigun, which he swiveled left and right once and then he ceased fire.

  “Back off with the drones guys and give me some air space to maneuver,” Tim instructed, and a moment later, he raised the ship until it was level with the second story windows. He was in the difficult corner for Pete to hit and he held the ship steady despite a barrage of gunfire he could hear ricocheting off the skin of the ship. Tim slipped the ship to the left and Pete annihilated everything living on the second floor. Checking his ammunition status, he noted that he had barely a quarter of his supply remaining. Reaching for the controls that fired the forward laser he sent bolt after bolt of laser fire into the building.

  Some of the slavers had made it out onto the roof of the bar. They opened fire on the ship. Tim responded by flying up and over the men. Pete activated the belly gun and a few seconds later, they felt secondary explosions buffet the ship slightly as something that the Marauders had with them cooked off from the terrible heat of the belly gun.

  Backing the ship off, Tim stared at the ruined bar. The roof was now madly burning and inside he could hear men screaming in fear. He backed the ship off a bit more, waiting to see what would happen next.

  Jim saw three half-naked women run from the front of the building and wondered for a moment if the slavers had indeed had women in the bar with them. Lieutenant Wilcox and his men emerged from the slave house leading the women they had liberated around to the side furthest away from the bar. Some of the newly liberated former slaves spotted the half-naked women drawing abreast of their position and ran toward them. Tackling them, the former slaves proceeded to beat the women from the bar.

  Lieutenant Wilcox’s men pulled the women off the other three and pointed toward the burning bar in an effort to make them understand that it was not safe to linger in such close proximity to the bar and they nodded their understanding. The angry women dragged the three half-naked females to their feet by the hair of their heads and pushed them ahead of them as they followed the strike force team to a safer location.

  The fire spread through the bar in minutes. The flammable liquids inside must have contributed to the spread of the fire because within six minutes the building was fully engulfed in flames. No one else tried to escape. Those who’d been screaming earlier must have been either trapped or wounded.

  Jim had Tim fly the ship to the planned rendezvous. He landed beside the strike force team and the women whom they had liberated. Jim exited the ship with Lacey, Maggie, and Pete. Jim noted the two drones circling overhead as guards on the lookout for other slavers.

  He approached the strike force team and congratulated them on the success of their mission. Then Jim approached the women who had taken the three women from the bar prisoner. “What’s going on here?” he asked.

  One of the women holding onto one of the prisoners said, “These three women were working with the slavers. They tricked us into coming to work for them. They offered us protection, free room and board, plus enough food to feed our families. When we came to see about the jobs at the bar we thought we were getting jobs as serving girls who’d at worst have to wear skimpy costumes. We were enslaved instead and raped repeatedly day and night for months.”

  “It’s worse than that,” one of the other women said. “In order to stay alive we had to pretend we enjoyed it and show the slavers a good time. If you look behind the house, you’ll find four graves. Those girls were tricked here, same as us. They couldn’t adapt. They died because of what these three women did,” the woman said this last and spit in the face of the captive nearest her. “Little Angela was just fourteen. Did you know that when you recruited her? Did you care? Does it bother you that the slavers slit that girl’s throat because she couldn’t adapt and pretend to like it when they came for her?”

  The three captive women began to cry and plead for mercy, but Jim saw no mercy in the eyes of the women who’d been forced into the life of the sex slave. His face grew troubled at the prospect of having to execute three women. One of the former slaves stepped forward. She said, “My name is Jolene. Angela was my kid sister. These women saw her when they stopped by my town. They were recruiting workers for this place. Once they had me, they went back for my sister. I tried to help her but I couldn’t. Now I can see the thought of killing these three women bothers you men. That’s because unlike the slavers you are decent men. But I’ll tell you something. If you let these women go, they will do this again somewhere else. They revel in reducing women to sexual slave status. Now if you men would rather not kill them, then loan me a gun and show me how to do it. Show me how to do it correctly so they don’t have to suffer. I just don’t want them to destroy any more women or cause the death of another young woman. I don’t want what happened to my sister to happen to anyone else.”

  “You’ve been through enough, Ma’am. I’ll not stand by and see you have to do this,” Lieutenant Wilcox said and looked to Jim and Pete for authorization.

  Pete nodded reluctantly and so did Jim. One of the three women screamed in fear and struggled to break away from the women holding her but they held her fast. The lieutenant stepped over and took possession of one of the female prisoners. He shoved her out and away from the others and told her to kneel and he’d make this painless. Turning to look him in the eyes the woman said, “Please don’t do this to me mister.”

  Hearing her words Jolene spoke up calmly and said, “You know, that’s exactly what Angela said to the slaver who cut her throat.” Then looking at the lieutenant with compassion Jolene said, “If it’s too hard for you, I will do it. After what I’ve done to stay alive I have no self esteem left to wound.”

  “I said kneel down,” the lieutenant reiterated, but his hand was shaking.

  “Hold it,” Pete ordered. Striding forward he took possession of the prisoner and told the lieutenant to stand down. “Jolene, since you are dead set on doing this, come here,” Pete said.

  Pete forced the prisoner to kneel in front of him. “You put it an inch from her head. Aim right here,” Pete said taking Jolene’s hand and placing her index finger on the back of the woman’s head. The woman flinched at the touch. “Mind you hold your breath because the muzzle blast will singe most of her hair in that area and it smells terrible. Don’t blink or you may foul the shot and just wound her and have to shoot her again. Don’t look away for the same reason. And remember her face because I guarantee you that you will see it in your sleep in the weeks and months to come,” Pete said. He drew h
is pistol, flicked off the safety, and put it in Jolene’s hand. “Pull the hammer back and hold the pistol where I told you to hold it. Your hand is shaking. Stop that or you will have to shoot her several times to do the job and that’s messy. Really messy. They get blood and brain matter all over you as they thrash around on the ground,” he said to the woman who was now noticeably nervous.

  Taking a deep breath Jolene fought for control and steadied her hand. “That’s it, don’t think about the fear you saw in her eyes. You’re doing better. Never mind that she pleaded for mercy, you can do this. Your sister didn’t get any mercy from the slavers. You can be as tough as they can. Pull the trigger,” Pete ordered.

  Jolene tried. She wanted to kill this woman responsible in part for the death of her sister but she just couldn’t pull the trigger.

  “I said pull the trigger, there she is helpless on the ground in front of you. Pull the damned trigger,” Pete said.

  “I can’t. Damn you! I can’t!” Jolene said and handed Pete back his pistol.

  Turning to the other women Pete asked, “Any of you want to do this?” No one volunteered.

  Turning back to Jolene he asked, “Do you know why you can’t, Jolene?”

  “No,” she said, but then she added, “Yes. I can’t because I’m weak?”

  “No, Jolene. You can’t because you’re a good person. Don’t let what happened here change who you are. You did what you had to do to survive but you don’t have to kill these women to survive. So far, everything you’ve done was justified. You hesitate at this because you’re not certain it’s the right thing to do. You’re not sure it is justified. The Lieutenant hesitated for the same reason. However, unlike you, the Lieutenant would have pulled the trigger. But he would have hated himself for it later, and that I won’t permit.”