Cafferty was nursing a massive hangover when Miloslaw knocked at the doorframe and stepped into the back office. He looked at the ex-Pathfinder briefly, then looked again. Miloslaw was in uniform, Fleet Regular, Class 2 grays. Cafferty glared. "That's not a suit you want to be wearing around here just now," he said, shifting cautiously in his broken chair. The loud squeak from the chair cut through his head like a hammer and didn't help to improve his humor any. They were burying Zip today, and he right now he was about as fond of Alliance regulars as the locals. Miloslaw didn't respond to the shot, instead pulling a piece of paper from his pocket. "Corpsman Kevin Joseph Cafferty, you are hereby returned to active duty status, blah blah blah, lawful orders blah blah, best of your ability blah blah, articles and codes so on and so forth for the duration of the present emergency," he finished, looking at Cafferty with a stone-cold expression. "What..." Cafferty said, rubbing his head. "Welcome back to the life," Miloslaw said. "We've got a problem. Reavers." Cafferty's blood ran cold. Shaking off the cobwebs, he stood up. "Coming here?" "This is the best target on the planet. Enough material laying around to be worthy of hitting, not defended like the capital," Miloslaw said. "We've got maybe six, seven hours to get this town ready to defend itself, with what help the administrative post down the road can give us. They can field about a platoon of effectives, and sundry and assorted desk-jockeys who haven't fired a shot since they qualified in training." Cafferty was staring at Miloslaw's insignia and decorations. It was ostentation by understatement. The only decorations Miloslaw wore was his combat infantry badge, an orbital drop qualification badge, and a gold/red wound medal that indicated he'd been wounded three times in the line of duty. His eyes went once again to the rank tabs on the man's shoulders. "Sergeant major? You're a sergeant major?" he said, impressed despite himself. "They thought I was old enough to handle some responsibility," Miloslaw said, passing off the question. "Got your old uniform?" "Class 2 gray, just like yours. Didn't get to keep my field rig," he admitted. "Thought you'd be sneakier than that." Miloslaw said, a note of disappointment in his voice. "You're just too much of a straight shooter some days, Cafferty."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Citizens of Lisskin," the local Alliance captain started. That drew some murmurs all by itself. Technically on the map the city was named Lisskin for one of the founding colonists, but all the locals just called it the town. They were gathered in the town hall, two hundred people from the town and surrounding area. Farmers, ranchers, drifters living in the communal and assorted riffraff. "Citzens of Lisskin," he repeated, talking loudly to get his voice heard. "Three hours ago, orbitals detected an inboud Reaver ship." Now the noise really exploded, fear and alarm spreading through the crowd. "DAMP IT!" bellowed one of the ranchers near the edge of the crowd. "Listen to what the man's got to say, or gorramit I'll be taking some of you loudmouths outside!" The threat went a long way toward quieting the hall down, though a few tenacious grumblers had to be silenced with some judicious kicks and elbows. Miloslaw said the captain wasn't a bad sort, necessarily. Saddled with a huge job and too few resources, and an academy that was producing lieutenants that just get stupider by the year, he was doing the best he could to fairly administrate the area. Cafferty didn't have such a high estimation of the man, but he put that down to Miloslaw being one regular covering for another. Right now, he didn't want to think any good thoughts about the regular military. "We don't have the capability to defend our assets on planet and protect your township, which has been identified as the most likely target." "Yeah, cover your own asses and leave us hangin'!" yelled one of the members of the crowd. Those who agreed with him quieted down in a hurry when the burly rancher slid through the crowd and dropped the man with a single punch. He looked at the captain and cut to the chase. "So we're gonna have to put it together ourselves, is what you're sayin'." "Yes," the captain said simply. "I'll turn this over to Sergeant Major Miloslaw, who will be organizing your local defense." Miloslaw stepped up onto the stage and waited. The captain walked out, not meeting any of the hostile gazes he was receiving. Once he was out the door, Miloslaw offered them a quick, tight smile. "You folks here know me. I'm here to give you and your families the best chance to survive past this evening. First off, any of you fought the Reavers before?" A couple of hands came up, tentatively. "Good. Congratulations. You two just made sergeant in the Lisskin Citizen's Militia. Now, we're going to need every damn gun this town can turn out. That means that anything that you've got left over from the war buried behind your barns, people, and I won't be asking any questions about where it came from or where it'll go when we're done," He nodded at Cafferty, clad in his old, now-unfamiliar uniform, standing next to Jian-Ku and Kellerman who will still in their civvies. "We've got people here who've done this sort of thing before, on both sides of the bad old days. We know what we're doing, and we're going to make those gorram bastards sorry they ever thought about landing around here."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The townfolk mobilized in a hurry, producing an impressive array of forbidden weaponry and organizing themselves hastily into an impromptu militia. A quick election produced the leaders for the town to coordinate setting up the defense. "We don't know what angle they'll be taking into town," Miloslaw said, going over the hastily drawn maps as he spoke to the newly selected commanders. "So we'll have to keep things flexible and have people ready to move." "Best way into town would be across this wash. Gives 'em room and flat space to run their buggies," pointed out Hal Matthews. Like the other locals he was circumspect about what he'd done during the war, but he'd been elected in a heartbeat as the officer to represent the citizen defenders. "Let's hope they're that stupid. We'll have a group on Benson's Hill that gets a beautiful enfilade on them," said Miloslaw. "But those buggies of theirs are excellent in most any terrain, and that's about the most predictable approach. Reavers are insane, but they're not stupid. Tactically they can be very cunning." "That's the gorram truth." said Paul Chavez, one of the two 'sergeants' that had fought the Reavers before. "We stay light on our feet, and extend them out. Work our way back as they push, and when the time is right, the Alliance regulars hit them hard and clean house," The regulars were staying to defend the post, and would only be released when it was clear the Reavers weren't coming for them. As if anybody around town needed any more reason to hate them. "Worst comes to worst, we make our stand around the bank," Miloslaw concluded. The bank was the final redoubt, where the women and children would be hiding in the basement, defended by the the the older citizens and boys barely carrying rifles taller than they were. "You said they got Alliance spec weapons, some of 'em," said another one of the local 'officers.' "Now just where the hell did they get aholt of 'em?" Miloslaw looked at him, features cold and expressionless. "Same place you got a lot of your gear during the war. They got them off dead Alliance troops."

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"I swear, more shit has happened around this town in the past two-three weeks than happened here in the last couple of years," Kellerman told Cafferty as they walked along, checking hasty defensive redoubts erected by the locals. He stopped and climbed down to one of the sandbagged positions, slapping a boy of barely sixteen years on the shoulder. "Hey, lemme see that rifle real quick, wouldja?" he asked, holding out his hand. The boy handed it over to him and Kellerman knelt down next to the firing slit. "Don't rest it on the bag with the barrel sticking out, kid. Reavers see a barrel stickin' out of a pile of sandbags, what do you think they're gonna do about it?" "Shoot at it, sir?" the kid said, so nervous he was practically green. "I ain't sir, kid. I work for a livin'. Now when it comes down, you sit back from the hole, don't get lazy, keep your damn barrel in so they don't figure out where you are right off." He handed the rifle back and gave the kid an affectionate pat on the head. "Figure on seein' you fine and all in one piece when this is done, son," The kid grinned at him, the expression flickering tentatively on his face. After they left, Cafferty chuckled softly. "You're a natural. They should've given you a squad." "Go rut yourself, Caff. I was a happy private. Let somebody else do the thinking. Hey Caff, I gotta say... man, I ain't happy about this." "None of us are looking forward to it, exactly." Cafferty replied. "No, I mean... Jian-Ku and all," Kellerman said, shuffling his feet. Jian-Ku and Cafferty were going to be freelancing, her moving around and picking off targets of opportunity with Kellerman spotting for her and covering her back. "I mean, back in the war she was just one of us, y'know. But, hell, she's my wife now. I mean, we're looking forward to having kids. I don't want the mother of my incoming children scooting around these here hills trying to get herself killed," Kellerman continued. "You try suggesting that she stay back and defend the bank?" Cafferty suggested. Tactically, having her around was going to be a big help in trying to hold back the Reavers. Personally, he could see where Kellerman was coming from. His buddy snorted. "You know how that'd go. She'd give me that 'Do you realize how stupid that is, or do I need to get the crayons out and draw it for you?' look, you know what I mean?" "No, she's never given me that look." Cafferty said, trying to joke about it. "She always did have an overestimated opinion of your intelligence," Kellerman glanced over at one of the sandbagged fortifications in town. "Can you believe that old coot had a ruttin' mortar stashed away? What in the hell do you think he was planning on doing with that?" Cafferty shrugged. "I know what I'd do with it, if I was him." he said darkly. Kellerman looked at him, as if remembering that Zip's body was still sitting in the clinic awaiting burial. He glanced south, in the general direction of the Alliance post. "Yeah," he said, then simply again "Yeah." As they made their way down the hill, Jacob Davens came trotting up. He was encumbered with a pack-powered beamer, illegal as all hell and one of the nastiest weapons the Browncoats had during the war. The Alliance had the best tech money could buy, but the Independents had produced some superior quality equipment. They just couldn't produce enough of it to make enough of a difference. "You've got that girl of mine running around here like she's some sort of medic!" he bellowed, glaring at Cafferty. Kellerman tensed, but Cafferty gently backhanded his shoulder to tell him to keep cool. "She's the one who volunteered to do it, Mr. Davens," he said evenly, trying unsuccessfully to defuse the man's anger. "She ain't got no place out here. She's been working at your office for a week and a half now!" the man continued, stabbing his finger out at Cafferty accusingly. "She can bandage and she can tie off," Cafferty said simply. "We need every hand we can get," He looked over at Kellerman "And she ain't the only woman we've got in the trenches or out in the field." "She's the only daughter I got, gorramit!" "And she's out here of her own doing." Cafferty replied. There wasn't any good answer. Davens stepped up and gave him a long, hard look. "She gets hurt out here, and we're gonna have a problem, Cafferty." Suddenly Kellerman grabbed Davens shirt collar and pulled him up on his toes. "Listen, you dipshit! My wife is gonna be out there too! You think any of us are happy about this, you dumb hick bastard? We're all doing what we've got to do, and if you got a problem with Caff, you got two problems 'cause I'll be looking for you all the same damn time!" "Let him go." Cafferty said. "Let go!" he shouted when Kellerman didn't immediately comply. The pair stood back, glaring at each other and practically panting with anger. "We don't have time for this. You got places to be," he said as he pointed at Davens "And we've got work to do. When it's done, we can settle this." "Count on it." Davens said, his eyes shifting angrily between the two of them.

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"Got a confirm. Reaver ship inbound on our location," Miloslaw said. Cafferty picked up his helmet and strapped it on. He'd held off 'till the last minute before putting it on. Besides all the unpleasant associations he had with wearing one, it was damn heavy and in this climate would get damn hot in short order. Got up this morning with a friend to bury, and by the evening he was back in the gorram military. As the sonic boom washed over the town, Miloslaw looked over at Cafferty and offered him a small, frightening smile. "Showtime."

TO BE CONTINUED...