Thirty one souls

Wave Equation III is a good little boat. Breathed upon by her designer she is fast, agile, long ranged, and capable. She is also desperately small for a rescue mission. Designed as a cargo lighter or intermediate courier, the KHI Matagi also made a decent live aboard for two, maybe three, people. But even in shuttle configuration, they didn't carry a lot of people.

When the call went up from Blackburne that the Reavers were attacking in force, I feared the worst. They had been acting aggressive - even by Reaver standards. The idea of a mass attack on a colony as well defended as Blackburne would have been unthinkable even a month ago, but there was the call over the Cortex, desperate for reinforcements against the largest Reaver attack anyone had ever seen.

I burned over to Blackburne at full boost, relying on good EW and better maneuverability to slip by the Reaver boats to set down in a barely large enough clearing near the Bar. I ran into a few folk I knew in the bar, but no one seemed to know exactly what was happening. A massive Reaver attack. A lot of shooting. Town militia trying to coordinate defenses. Talk of a quick evacuation of as many people as could be gotten out.

With as little as I knew, and could surmise from a quick look outside, it seemed an evacuation was good idea. The Blackburne Militia was one of the best citizen fighting forces in the Rim sectors, but there were a lot of non-combatants on Blackburne too. They were the ones who would need help most.

They were the ones I could help.

Thirty one souls.

As many people as I could find and get into Wave Equation's too small cargo bay before clearing off and clawing sky. Dodgning Reaver landing craft on the way out, slipping past the larger transports in orbit. There had to be dozens of them. More than we'd chased out of the Baily weeks ago. Two or three times the numbers ever seen before. Hundreds of Reavers.

By the time I was able to drop off the folks I'd managed to load into Wave Eq and get back to Blackburne, it was over. Osprey II was breaking orbit as I was decelerating back into an aborted final: the last ship out. Nack and his own burning a hole in the Black to get away from what had been their home.

It hurt to think about, but from what I could gather it could have been a lot worse. I'd been one of the first boats out, out of dozens. Most of the Downport's colonists, three or four times as many people as lived on Hale's, had already scattered to other nearby worlds. Including a number en-route, or already landed, on Hale's Moon.

I did one fast pass, letting Wave Equation's sensors get what information they could on the disposition of the Downport and the number of Reavers, before setting course for home. There'd be a lot of logistics to deal with given folk coming our way. But, more important, those were my friends who'd had to evacuate their homes. There was a lot of hurt that'd need healing. Not my forte, but it was what friends did.

You saved who you could. You mourned who you lost. You helped the survivors get on.