The delicate sound of gunfire

I knew the quiet couldn't last. Just couldn't. Not that quiet here was actually all that quiet. For me it usually just meant no one was shooting at me and that, especially around here, was just an unnatural state of affairs.

With 'Brina off doing some work on Blackburne, Td off working on Full Burn, Immi taking care of some business coreward on Persephone, Belize getting her MedEvac boat sorted out, and Genni taking care of most of the Mayoral business, I had a bit of time on my hands.

Probably good that none of the family was around when I suited up, strapped on the Fifties, and headed out into the desert to recon the drones. Folk had been reporting encounters with the gorram things for days, but no one was exactly sure where they were launching from. While I wasn't going with the full Thermoptic rig, conventional sneak in damped armor should let me get in where I needed to without setting off every one of the drones within a kilometer radius.

I didn't really like the desert. Dust. Dirt. Dry. And a few other words that started with D pretty much summed up my feelings on it. Kind of funny then that I was the Mayor of a mining colony on a desert world, but that was beside the point. I was hunting for drones and it didn't take me a godawful lot of time to track down their launch sites.

Found three, with a possible fourth. Two of them were coming up through secondary air shafts that were barely big enough for a man, but those flying combat drones folded up pretty small. Third one was down one of the tertiary access shafts they used to lower down one of the mining sledges about ten years ago. All of them, more or less forgotten but subsequently found by Mother Bot and her younguns.

Hope 'Brina doesn't ask too much about where I got the three new wrecks.

I was still wearing the armor a few hours later when Navtrak caught the distinct profile of a Reaver boat incoming to the colony. It'd been weeks since we'd seen Reavers out this way, but that didn't make them welcome.

They came in two waves in a couple of boats, but the townsfolk and some of our regular visitors were ready for them. Got to the point I got out there myself and tangled with a couple using the Fifties before I could get a charge onto their lander's stabilizer, then make my way up onto the tower with my long gun.

The fight went longer than usual. The Reavers didn't attack all at once. Just ones or twos at a time, getting cagey and ducking in and out of buildings looking for people to hurt. Made it a bear to get a bead on any of them with the long gun, but it didn't take much of a bead. Shot to the head with a .308's more than enough to drop one at 300 meters.

Odd thing was being in position to see one of the Replicants wade into the fray with an axe. Only it wasn't going for the Reavers, it was going for the colonists. Got a few rounds into it before Alison dropped it up close.

Wasn't the sort of thing I expected from one of the Replicants, and Krenshar didn't have an answer for it when things calmed down later. What was even odder was the other one, another stripped down chassis like the first, that came in and gave us a gorram critique of the fight after the fact.

Nearest I could get out of Kren was that he had no explanation. Unfortunately, with the rumors and the hunches, I had a gut feeling this wasn't going to be the first replicant we saw go batso and start hurting folk.

One of those times I really, really, hoped I was wrong.

Just wish Sabrina was home.