Date: May 19, 3027
Location: Benet III
Title: Wolves on the Border
Author: Robert N. Charrette
Type: Novel
Synopsis: One week into a raid on the Federated Suns world of Benet III, the Black Widow Company is having a rough time. Natasha's Warhammer and the rest of her Command Lance come under fire from rifle-toting AFFS infantry as they move through a pass in Gakken County. Colin MacLaren scatters the AFFS troops with a burst from his Marauder's autocannon. Natasha tries to reach the rest of the Black Widows, but Recon is unresponsive, and Ikeda's Fire Lance reports that AFFS scouts have probed the landing site for the unit's DropShip.
MacLaren reports AFFS 'Mechs entering the valley. Natasha joins the rest of her Command Lance - Hayes' Griffin, MacLaren's Marauder, and Sheridan's Crusader - behind a boulder, where they prepare to ambush the AFFS lance. Massed fire shreds the lead Enforcer, forcing the pilot to eject from the smoking hulk. The rest of the lance retreats.
Ikeda reports no sign of the DCMS forces that were supposed to be supporting the Dragoons on the Benet III raid. Epsilon Regiment is being hard pressed, and Colonel Arbuthnot is preparing to withdraw offworld. Natahsa orders Ikeda to prepare to leave as well, and to call Recon home if they can make contact.
Descending the mountain by a firefighting trail, the Widows smash a Valkyrie and a VTOL 'Mech-hunter at a firewatch station, and shoot down a VTOL scout that finds them in the dark.
Just as Natasha thinks they'll get away clean, a boom upslope signals that the AFFS has detonated charges and triggered an avalanche. Natasha's Warhammer is swept off the mountain trail in a torrent of shattered granite. Sheridan, MacLaren and Hayes can find no trace of their commander.
Finally, Natasha responds, reporting that she had to rig up a spare antenna for her communications array. She reports that her 'Mech, Black Lady is heavily damaged, and can't ascend the rockfall slope. She asks them to link up with the Widow's Web and get a tacmap to find out where the canyon she's in exits. MacLaren directs her to a point 20 km to the northeast, and they plan to rendezvous there.
Before Natasha has gone 500 meters, she notes blips on her magnetic anomaly detector. Initially dismissing them as granite chunks on the canyon floor, she is surprised by a bright green Marauder painted with silver credit symbols - the distinctive markings of her arch enemy, the Bounty Hunter. His associates, an Orion, Quickdraw, and Shadow Hawk, emerge behind her. Rather than attacking, though, he asks to talk.
She recalls their last meeting - battling on Le Blanc over renegade technicians, losing two Black Widow Company members in the process, but leaving with the Techs. The Hunter suggests they call it even, but Natasha tells him he's cost her too much for them ever to be even. He points out that if he'd wanted her dead, she would be.
The Hunter explains that he has a specific contract on Natasha and she's surrounded. He knows that the DCMS support forces left the Dragoons to die, and that there's no way for the Dragoon DropShips to get offworld without heavy casualties unless the heavily guarded tracking station at Beaux Pawl is destroyed. However, the Hunter allows that his team has also been double crossed by its employers, and lost its ride offworld. He says he has an associate who can sabotage the tracking station, and will cancel the contract, in exchange for a ride offworld.
Natasha says she doesn't work with cold-blooded killers. The Hunter says that he's heard different - with a source placing her at a massacre on New Mendham eight months earlier. She responds that she was elsewhere, and he says he believes her, but she can't prove it. Natasha mentally acknowledges that she can't prove it without compromising Dragoon security.
The Hunter confides that there are contracts out on other Dragoon commanders, and he thinks they're being set up. He notes that his employer wore a badly disguised Waco Ranger uniform, but dismisses it as an obvious cover. He promises more info once he's safely out of the system. Natasha accepts, reluctantly.
Notes: Natasha muses that no one would get her to stand up to a BattleMech with nothing more than a rifle - ironic, given that such a match-up is exactly how most Clan warriors end their careers - in solahma infantry units.
The bit about not compromising Dragoon security implies that Natasha was on a secret mission (possibly related to the Clans) at the time. However...the official date given for "Fragile is the House of Cards" (Sorenson's Sabres scenario) definitively places Natasha Kerensky and the Dragoons on Kawabe four days before the massacre on New Mendham. Since the fighting on Kawabe was just starting, either Natasha was on Kawabe killing anti-Drac rebel civilians, or that was her body double (the one from Misha's interview) and she was on another secret mission. Girl gets around! The thing is, though, even if she was on a hush-hush glory to the ilClan mission, she has a definitive record of someone who can pass for her having a heart-to-heart with Sorenson's Sabres on Kawabe and being in action there at that same time, on an official Combine contract. The DCMS high command even uses the massacre there as a reason to hate the Dragoons when relations go south, so they must have battlefield records. All Natasha has to do is point out that "she was on Kawabe, killing Drac civilians," and she won't be blamed for...being on New Mendham, killing Drac civlians...okay, bad example. ;)
Natasha's claim that she doesn't work with cold-blooded killers is a bit of a joke, considering that at least one of her Widows was assigned to her unit because he was up on charges for murder. There's also a reference to the instructor in "Final Exam" being the only person to survive two encounters with the Black Widow - implying that the Widows go out of their way to kill their enemies.
The VTOL 'Mech-hunter isn't named or statted, but none of the VTOLs from TRO:3026 seem to fit that description. The Ferret certainly isn't a 'Mech hunter, and the Warrior H-7's AC/2 wouldn't seem to give it the oomph to go after 'Mechs (though it is a dangerous machine in open territory). I wonder if this is the mentioned, but not statted, Wild Weasel? Certainly, LosTech is required to make real VTOL 'Mech hunters, like the Yellowjacket or Hawk Moth.
It's never specified who triggered the avalanche. Since it was narrowly enough targeted to just get Natasha's Warhammer, I would suspect that the Bounty Hunter had somehow been tracking the Widows and planted explosives upslope along her projected line of march, intending to bring her into his trap and weaken her bargaining posture enough for him to get what he wanted. Yet, if swarms of AFFS troops couldn't find her (and the one VTOL that did quickly died), how was the Hunter tracking her? Did he put a satellite in orbit and use that to track her remotely? Was another associate running a drone carrier and shadowing her with PathTracks or NapFinds?
It's weird, though, that the Bounty Hunter was betrayed to a sufficient degree that it would be dangerous for him to remain on an AFFS world. If it was just that his transport departed, couldn't he mosey over to Beaux Pawl and contract a commercial transport back to Solaris VII? It appears that, for whatever reason, he's not supposed to be on Benet III as far as the AFFS is concerned, meaning that he has to avoid the local garrison, too. Since his name wasn't mud as far as the Feddies were concerned when he was under contract to Michael Hasek-Davion, one wonders exactly what changed.
The Bounty Hunter chapters were the most maddening for me when reading the book, because it made extensive oblique references to events with which I was utterly unfamiliar. Like watching a soap opera for the first time and having no clue that Julio is actually Teresa's surgically altered ex-husband pretending to be her dead son, and thereby being unable to make heads or tails of the big reveal - and for the backstory only available in a special issue of TV Guide. It was released March 1, 1989. The Wolf's Dragoons sourcebook also came out in 1989 to further flesh out this flagship mercenary unit. Many of the characters and backstories referenced in Wolves on the Border are incomprehensible unless you have the sourcebook open next to you as you read (which, of course, spoils the ending). Cross promotion is one thing, but the "story already in progress" bit was done to the extent that (prior to getting the Dragoon sourcebook) I felt like I'd somehow missed an earlier novel in the series. When I saw Charrette's "Heir to the Dragon" I thought - aha - this must be the book that explains what the heck happened between Natasha and the Hunter earlier. No joy (though still a spectacular roller coaster ride through the 4th Succession War and War of 3039).
I wonder why Natasha is so upset about there being a contract out to kill her. She's been circling the Inner Sphere slaughtering her foes by the bucketload for decades. Surely Wayne Waco isn't the only person with a grudge and some cash. I guess it's her Clan ethos showing - since killing in the course of fights is considered a normal part of daily life for the Warrior Caste, and doesn't bear thoughts of retaliation by the loser's sibkin, except to encourage them to fight harder and gain more glory if they can beat the killer in the next Trial. Civilian caste deaths are inconsequential - they should be grateful for being able to participate even peripherally in Warrior Caste activities.
The discussion of the tactical significance of the tracking station at Beaux Pawl implies that the AFFS forces on Benet III enjoy substantial Aerospace superiority. One wonders why it wasn't mustered to blunt the Dragoon insertion on arrival. Overall, the Dragoons do seem substantially understrength in terms of AeroSpace assets, with a ratio of support well below the 2 fighters per 12 'Mechs that was advertised as "standard" at the time. (It gets better if you factor in the LAMs, but still doesn't reach parity).
The other question is why the Dragoons didn't have better coordination with the DCMS forces they were supposed to conduct the operation with. Why didn't they stage together and launch only when all assets were in place? Why would the Dragoons have gone in against (apparently) substantial AeroSpace defenses without the full invasion force - an elite unit wouldn't send its forces into heavy defenses piecemeal. Given their concerns about the DCMS leaving them in the lurch several times before, why would Jaime agree to a plan where the Dragoons go in first and then get supported "later" by DCMS forces? It seems like the Dragoons should have been more wary about betrayal by this point, especially after what they went through with Anton Marik.
