----- Three Days Later -----
Date: June 21, 3023
Location: Quentin IV
Title: Wolves on the Border
Author: Robert N. Charrette
Type: Novel
Synopsis: Spending downtime at the Alpha Regiment Mobile HQ, Minobu reviews the campaign’s progress. As predicted, the AFFS commander stripped Fasolht and Carson of their mobile forces and attempted to flank the Dragoons, running into a Delta ambush on the Plains of Glass, where many ‘Mechs were lost to heat problems. Dragoon aerospace forces prevented AFFS DropShips from bringing reinforcements from the southern capital of Barnaby or the Aja Minor (Morandi?) continent. With the mobile forces engaged, Alpha faced little resistance against its push on the Independence Weaponry facilities in Fasolht until bogging down against stiffening resistance from the Fasolht Defense Team on the 20th.
Yukinov tells her officers that Colonel Wolf has ordered Gamma to leave their standby position in orbit and drop to support Alpha. The Alpha officers grumble that this means the loss of their capture bonus. Yukinov commiserates, but tells her people that Delta can’t assist, and is facing a new threat – elements of the White Witches mercenary ‘Mech regiment have broken through the Dragoon cordon around Port Gailfry and are trying to reinforce the AFFS forces on the Plains of Glass.
Sho-sa Hawken, serving as liaison from the Sword of Light elements escorting the Coordinator, accuses the Dragoons of lacking a warrior’s heart, and boasts that his Sworders could smash through the Fasolht Defense Team’s lines and dine in their commissary that evening. Major Yukinov invites Minobu to accompany him in the borrowed Vindicator.
At Fasolht, an understrength lance of the Snake Stompers takes part in the Independence Weaponry defenses. The only two remaining Stomper MechWarriors, Jenkins and “Gramps,” discuss their prospects. Morale is low with the Stompers, who signed up for duty in the Draconis March for the chance to fight Kurita regulars, not get slapped around by Wolf’s Dragoons. The rest of the Stompers departed with the AFFS mobile forces to engage the Dragoons on the Plains of Glass, along with the Hard Riders – the other mercenary ‘Mech regiment defending the city. The best Jenkins hopes for is honors of war if they put up a good fight.
An alert goes up as enemy BattleMechs approach the Stomper bivouac. Rather than the Dragoons’ badlands camouflage, Jenkins sees the crimson field colors of the Sword of Light. Gramps mounts his Commando and charges, firing before he clears the wall. He accomplishes little, damaging a Jenner before taking a PPC bolt to the cockpit from a Sworder Panther. Jenkins’ Phoenix Hawk tries to cover the Fasolht Defense Team’s retreat. Captain Edison, commander of the survivors of the Batan Defense Team, leads her forces to support the defense, but Jenkins, having seen Dragoon forces moving to encircle their position, waves her off and tells her to keep the fight going.
Getting back into the hopeless fight, Jenkins destroys a Sworder ‘Mech with a back-shot from his large laser, then embraces a Kuritan Charger in a bear hug and shuts down his heat exchangers, leatting the heat destroy the magnetic containment on the Phoenix Hawk’s fusion reactor.
In the aftermath, Sho-sa Hawken gloats about his victory to Minobu, calling it a glorious fight. Minobu criticizes the wastefulness of the frontal assault, and notes that the Sworders lost a quarter of their ‘Mechs and a third of their men, and are in no shape to hold the factories against a counterattack.
Major Yukinov summons Minobu to join him at the Independence Weaponry facilities to review the plunder. When Minobu arrives, he finds Senior Tech Bynfield directing the scavenger teams to both haul away parts and equipment, and crack computer codes to obtain encrypted data. Sho-sa Hawken arrives just behind Minobu, and declares all the equipment to be the property of the Draconis Combine. Yukinov cites the terms of their contract, but Hawken insists that all the Independence Weaponry salvage represents military information and supplies, rather than salvage.
Minobu, called upon to intercede (as befits a military liaison) says that the contract does specify a well defined split of salvage rights, but also says that any materials designated as “military priority” by the Combine belong to the DCMS. The Dragoons continue their salvage work, but without their prior enthusiasm. When Colonel Wolf and Coordinator Kurita arrive, Jaime asks Takashi for a ruling on whether the Independence Weaponry salvage is classified as military data. Takashi responds in the affirmative, then announces he must depart for Luthien. He tells Minobu to continue to serve as a dutiful samurai, and implies that such service will be rewarded.
After the Kuritans depart, Senior Tech Bynfield approaches Jaime to complain, showing him a data tape that wasn’t handed over to the Combine. She protests that it contains theoretical technical data, not military information. Wolf is furious, confining her to quarters for having violated his personal agreement with Takashi Kurita and broken the Dragoon contract. He warns that if House Kurita loses respect for the Dragoons, they’ll end up sitting out five years on a garrison posting.
Someone in the crowd suggests “we could pack up and head for home,” but Wolf dismisses the suggestion, noting that it’s “not an option right now.” Wolf orders Bynfield to bury the data tape for the remainder of their five year contract. Only then does he notice, with surprise, that Minobu is standing there. Minobu bows to Wolf and determines that the mercenary’s actions are in elegant accord with Combine customs, and show honor.
Notes: After Kai Allard-Liao’s famous self destruction of his Hatchetman, detonating your own ‘Mech to take out a nearby enemy was dubbed “the Stackpole Rule.” However, Wolves on the Border predated the publication of the Blood of Kerensky trilogy, so that maneuver should really be termed “the Charrette Rule,” in my opinion.
The Fasolht Defense Team appears to have been equipped with Harasser Hover Tanks, APCs, and Scorpion Light Tanks. Per Objective Raids, the Harasser is only manufactured on Irian and Andurien, in the FWL. Quikscell makes Scorpion tanks on Layover, in the Crucis March, so the source for those is obvious, but given the distance between Irian and Quentin, Scorpions would have greatly outnumbered the Harassers in the militia detachment. From the recent Kell Hound scenarios ("Dragon of a Different Color" and "The Fox, the Hound, and the Dragon") on Quentin, we know that the PGU has Vedettes, Goblins, Demolishers, and Von Luckners.
“The Fox, the Hound, and the Dragon” established the 143rd Davion Combined Arms Regiment as the core of the planetary guard unit. Wolves on the Border establishes that the 143rd was bolstered by the White Witches, the Snake Stompers, and the Hard Riders. It’s unclear whether the Fasolht Defense Team, Port Gailfry Defense Team, and Batan Defense Team were part of the 143rd, or if the 143rd represented “mobile” defense forces, while the Defense Teams were “stationary” defense forces. The Defense Teams appear to have been combined arms forces, with ‘Mechs, armor, infantry, and conventional fighters. (In fact, given the fact that Independence Weaponry makes Atlas, Victor, and Marauder-class BattleMechs, one would suppose that the corporate security teams probably did more of the damage to the Sworders than the hopelessly outgunned Snake Stompers, since those Heavy and Assault designs would be more suited to fixed defense than the light Stomper machines, which were optimized for the Stompers’ “hit and fade” field tactics.)
One might infer from Wolves on the Border and “The Fox, the Hound, and the Dragon” that AFFS planetary defense doctrine would be to assign each major city a combined arms “Defense Team,” supporting them with scattered elements of a combined arms mobile planetary guard unit and BattleMech-equipped mercenary units. In the event of a raid, the PGU forces could bolster the Defense Teams at threatened cities, while mobile elements stationed in cities not under threat move to support those cities that are threatened, or unify and try to engage the raiders in the field. The PGU appears to get heavy and medium armor, while the Defense Teams have just light armor (Scorpions and APCs) and hovercraft.
The Combine certainly exercised the “military priority” clause in mercenary contracts on a regular basis once it started hiring mercs again after 3054, since ClanTech salvage would be worth more than its weight in germanium.
The interchange about “going home” and that being “not an option right now” was highly cryptic in 1987, prior to the revelation that the Dragoons were part of the Clans, and that “home” was the Kerensky Cluster. In retrospect, one wonders exactly why it was “not an option.”
At the 3018 resupply meeting, the Dragoons received new orders that ended their recon mission of the Inner Sphere. They were no longer obliged to analyze the Inner Sphere’s military capacity to aid Operation REVIVAL. Instead, they were charged with making the Inner Sphere ready to defend itself against the coming Clan invasion. Certainly, the terms of the new mission would preclude returning to the Kerensky Cluster in 3028, as scheduled – particularly not without doing what they could to prepare the Combine to defend itself.
In addition, the Dragoons may not have had the navigational data to go back ahead of schedule. As previously noted, they would have needed a command circuit of ships to make it to a Deep Periphery rendezvous and back in the timeframe given, so perhaps the Clans arranged for such command circuits to be formed at pre-determined intervals – 3008, 3018, and 3028.