The one wherein the Reavers send lots of hungry kinfolk

I don't like Reavers.

Not that anyone I know of really does like Reavers, but they have a special place in my dislike queue: Just ahead of Alliance Loyalists and just behind people who mistreat animals. I know they're ultimately victims themselves, which is probably why they sit where they are and aren't in the same league as the politicians who approved the project that accidentally created them in the first place. I don't hate the Reavers. I just don't like them.

With the the recent Reaver attacks, I'd set my mind to figuring out just where they were coming from. We'd gotten navtrak signatures and a fair number of captains had willingly forked over their logs when they spotted something, but we hadn't been able to focus the search down enough to know for sure just where they were nesting. Or hiding. Or whatever the hell it was Reavers did when they weren't trying to eat people.

When the navtrak warning went off, indicating something fairly big with the classic Reaver drive signature, I saddled up and boosted out to see if I couldn't track them back to their source. 'Brina would probably be a little annoyed, now that she was back from her latest off-world job, but even with their heated up drives a Reaver boat would have a hard time staying with me if I turned to run. Better, in my favor, their EW was pretty low grade so chances were they'd never even know I was there.

I managed to get my boat onto their exhaust trail where I could bring the sensors up to try and backtrack their flight path. Half an hour later, I had a good lead on what seemed to be a flight of at least half a dozen Reaver boats sitting out near a cluster of rocks known as "Beetle's Baily." They were on the charts as a navigational hazard and the local rock miners had written them off as "Accessible: No Value" thirty years ago. Perfect place for someone to park a small bunch of ships where they wouldn't be easily spotted. Just surprised the Reavers would use a tactic that required that much coherent thought.

The chatter from Hale's cut short my scans before I could get a solid ident on the Reaver boats. The initial navtrak reading had shown one incoming, with a smudge that might have been a second boat - if they were crazy enough to ride in the hot exhaust trail of another Reaver boat. Never actually expected even a Reaver to do something thing that crazy.

Silly me.

I burned back to Hale's as fast as I could and managed to set down safely without drawing the attention of the Reavers already on the ground. They had two boats, both a good deal bigger than the usual shuttle or small transport they usually sent our way. Best guess from visuals and the sensors were that there were over thirty of them on the ground, splitting up to hit us from several different directions. Again, not the usual Reaver 'come in screaming and try to eat anyone that moves" tactics.

There were a fair number of folk scattered through town trying to deal with the Reavers, including a group holed up in Fook's where Belize was tending the wounded and Imrhien was dealing with any Reaver suicidal enough to try and storm the bar. There were so many people fighting, with Reavers coming from so many directions, there weren't a lot of options for me. When in doubt, I did what I've been doing since I came out here to the rim: grabbed the long gun and went for the tower.

I'd never seen this many Reavers on Hale's before. Even the short run to the locked access ladder on the back of the tower wasn't clear, though the three Reavers who attacked me en-route didn't really have time to be surprised that I wasn't afraid before they died.

The Reaver's most fearsome weapon was fear. They were Berserkers. Vicious. Fearless. Feeling no pain. Terrifying in visage and aggression. But they weren't soldiers. A Reaver was just a madman with an axe, or a knife, screaming, bleeding, scaring the hell out of people and relying on that fear to paralyze their opponents. Against a trained martial artist, a Reaver was a practice dummy. An icky, mutilated, unclean practice dummy, to be sure. But a practice dummy just the same.

Three down, who knew how many left to go.

From the tower I had a good view of town and an excellent view of the flats heading out of town and over towards the mines, but there were a lot of areas in town I couldn't get a line of sight into. Between the buildings and the platform, any Reaver that made it into town would have a lot of cover.

With the long gun, I was able to take down several more. Even caught some sporadic return fire from the few Reavers carrying firearms. But most of the action was happening on the ground with the folks who were down low tangling with them directly.

Could hear from the chatter that the medical supplies in Fook's were running low and tried to provide covering fire for Immi when she got it into her fool head that she'd be a good diversion. Bad idea. But at least Bel managed to get to the Infirmary and tend the wounded, who by then was pretty much everyone who'd been fighting.

I was listening to the local chatter and looking for a target when we heard this loud gravely voice yelling out that they had our not cat, and would eat her unless people came out to play. It took a couple moments of scanning around before I spotted the big, especially ragged, Reaver holding the struggling, bloodied, barely conscious Lily.

From the tower, the shot would be difficult, but no one else was in place to do anything about it to set her free. Taking a couple of deep calming breaths I shifted position to line up the shot, letting them out slowly, relaxing, heart rate slowing and focus increasing until the beats sounded like a metronome.

I watched the Reaver throw back his head and scream incoherently and, as he started to bring it forward again, lunging towards Lily's neck, I gently squeezed the long gun's trigger. Half a second later, an 8mm hole appeared in the Reaver's forehead and the back of it's skull erupted in a spatter of blood and brain.

Run, little sister.

From the tower, I saw Lily quickly recover her wits and bolt for cover as I squeezed off a couple more rounds to cover her escape, and from there, providing covering fire where needed. That was, until the drive section on one of the Reaver boats erupted in a ball of flame. Looking through the scope I could see a few of the miners running for cover and the surviving Reavers running, or staggering, towards their remaining boat.

Within a few more minutes, it was over. The Reavers were clawing sky and we were left to pick up the piecves and count the dead. Considering the sheer number of attackers, our loses were better than could have been expected. Nine dead. Fifteen wounded, including Lily, Imrhien, Shalimar, Xerox and Duncan. Probably more that I missed while trying to get a handle on everything that had gone on. The Reavers had lost one transport, at least twenty dead, and an unknown number wounded and escaping.

Altogether not our best showing. Not our worst either.

Just wish I'd been able to do more.