Seriously. How long can they maintain enough of a population to remain a coherent group, let alone a measurable threat?
There were never more than about thirty thousand Reavers to begin with. While there weren't extensive surveys done, it was estimated that one tenth of one percent of those exposed to the Paxilon Hydrachlorate expressed the Aggressor response. With Miranda's population of around thirty million, there would have been about thirty thousand Reavers. That's it. Even if we double, or trebble the count, we're talking well under a hundred thousand of them.
To put it in perspective, that's between one and three Corps worth of Alliance military forces.
Sounds like a lot, until you realize the Army Group deployed in the Kalidaza system alone has more support personnel then there were Reavers in total. And that was roughly twenty years ago now. The days of Reavers raiding and pillaging have been on the wane for a long time.
Attrition's a bitch.
It doesn't help them that, contrary to some of the more insidious conspiracies, there is no evidence, at all, that the Reavers were an intentional result of the Pax. Everything anyone can find on the Pax indicates that the coverup of the incident was quite real, but the actuality of the aggressor reaction was an unexpected and tragic accident. In clinical trials, Paxilon Hydrochlorate was a mood stabilizer and mild sedative. What led Prescott Pharmaceuticals to suggest a massive scale airborne deployment on Miranda is still buried deeper than I've looked, but it wasn't an intention to create a small army of Berserkers to terrorize the Rim.
Even with the occasional "convert" and Mindo's crazy experiments, their numbers have fallen. They've had to. They die in combat. They fly ships that have marginal containment, which leads to more of them dieing. They don't breed. At least not that anyone's ever been able to document. The only children of Reaver rape-survivors I can find reference to were born normal. They didn't inherit the Reaver madness. It's Entropy at its finest.
The Reavers are dieing out, and have been since their were spawned.
So where the Gorram hell do they keep coming from?
With the recent attacks on Dragon's Egg, we can only assume their is either a Nest nearby or a mothership somewhere. Unfortunately, with the KHI Orbital redeployed elsewhere, we don't have anywhere near the array capability we once did. We'll find it, of course, eventually. But in the meantime, I've got to hope the colony can deal with the threat.
Dragon's Egg isn't Hale's Moon. We've got some skilled soldiers, but we don't have the well drilled militia we had on Hale's. Though, fortunately, the scale of the attacks seem to be smaller. Also, they seem to be steering clear of the Farmhouse. Maybe it's a few well placed shots from my long gun, or maybe they identify the place as mine and give it a wide margin. Either way, I haven't had to deal with them directly.
Though that may change.
Lily'd taken K2 with her days ago, but he was with her here on Dragon's Egg when the Reavers attacked. And, now, he's missing. Whether they have him or not, we don't know. Acting on their own, they'd have eaten him already. Acting on AuroraBlue's order? Different story. Does this tribe treat her as their Queen? If so, would she really send them here to get him?
Not sure I want to know.
But I will.
It's what I do now.
Little child of sand
Have the Reavers come for you?
Or unrelated?
No comments:
Post a Comment