And then the Reavers came back . . .

It has been a long time since we've seen an actual Reaver attack on Hale's Moon. There were the occasional single loners that would come out from under some rock, scare the hell out of someone, then be put down in a hail of small arms fire. But even those had been few and far between since shortly after Krenshar had taken his Replicants with him to Caliban. The timing was almost certainly coincidental, but when he'd gone the Reaver activity had diminished quickly.

Even after Caliban's dome had been breached and Kren had evacuated his people to an enclave on the far side of the Blue Sun compound, the Destiny Reservation, the Reaver attacks had stayed at a very low level. With the intel access I had, it seemed that the Reavers had become much less active over the last six months or so across the entire Rim.

It made sense, of course. Entropy was a cruel Mistress. There had never been a lot of them to start with, and the Reaver population had been on the decline almost since the start. Even with dubious claims of further experimentation and the occasional deep space crewman losing his mind, there weren't enough "new" Reavers to replace the ones lost to attrition.

That being said, it was a bit of a surprise when a small boat came in hot and disgorged a band of those loonies in the middle of our little slice of Heaven.

The timing was awkward for us. Most of the resident miners, which made up much of the Militia, were dealing with a large order of high grade ore when the Reavers landed. Most of the folk around town were either non-combatants who relied on their neighbors firepower when the Reavers struck, or visitors off board one or another of the transports that were on the pads.

I could hear the gunfire and the terrified yells of the transients who'd never seen a Reaver before, let alone been under attack by them. The locals knew what to do. Hole up in their shelters, or Town Hall, or Fooks, or behind someone with a very large gun, while others tried to set up a defense.

Where I'd normally be coordinating the defenses, when I wasn't perched on the tower with my long gun, Genni'd gotten on the local net and started assembling the Militia while I sealed up Wave Equation to protect our passenger. To get to Anna, the Reavers would have to get through the boat's electrified hull and then get past me.

Not gonna happen.

The attack lasted longer than I'd expected. In the end, we counted at least half a dozen dead Reavers with several folk getting chewed up pretty bad. Backtracking their approach, the Reavers had come in from a new direction. Whether that meant anything or not was a bit too early to tell, but it did mean we'd have to stay on our toes. It'd been a while since we'd been attacked by anything, and this was a wake up call. One we'd have to heed, lest the next time be even worse.