Wolves on the Border

by Robert N. Charrette

  By the time they reached it, a small Davion contingent had occupied the station. In a short, sharp firefight, the Widow's knocked out a Valkyrie and a VTOL 'Mech-hunter and drove off the rest of the Feds. Hayes's Griffin took a hit in its already-balky jump jets, forcing him to shut them down till they could be repaired. The rest of the Widows took only minor damage, and moved on.

  Twice they spotted VTOLs searching for them. The first must have lacked IR gear, for the heated BattleMechs would have stood out even through the cover they grabbed at the forested edge of the trail. That Fed passed them by. The second was better-equipped, or else the pilot was more observant. His attention was his death warrant, however. A spread of missiles from Sheridan's Crusader turned the Davion scout into a fireball.

  Cursing Sheridan's impetuosity, Kerensky urged her lance forward. She knew the crash would bring Federated Suns troops as surely as a radio report from an observer. With luck, they would be able to cover enough ground to force the Feds to run a wider search pattern and spread their forces out to cover all possible routes that the black 'Mechs might have taken. That would give the Widows a much better chance to slip away.

  The path they followed narrowed steadily until it was barely wide enough for a single 'Mech to pass. Kerensky sent Hayes on ahead. His Griffin was the lightest and most maneuverable of the machines in the lance, and so he could best react if they ran into trouble. Despite his protests, Kerensky sent MacLaren next. The Sergeant wanted to stay near Kerensky to protect her. She convinced him that if Hayes ran into trouble, the awesome firepower of the Marauder might be enough to blast through and keep the Widows, and thereby Kerensky, from being bottlenecked. Sheridan went next because Kerensky reserved rear guard for herself. If the Feds caught up to them on the narrow track, she wasn't going to have one of her people sacrificing himself or herself to allow the Widow to escape.

  For twenty nerve-wracking minutes, the Widows picked their way down the mountainside. At almost every step, the ponderous fighting machines sent showers of pebbles and loose gravel plummeting over the edge to rattle away down the steep slope. MacLaren had the most trouble. The non-humanoid shape of his Marauder made some of the required balancing acts doubly dangerous. Whenever she checked in with MacLaren, Kerensky could hear his 'Mech's gyros whining in the background.

  Davion pursuit failed to materialize. Kerensky was just beginning to think they were going to make a clean getaway when a deep boom came through her external mikes. A growing rumble accompanied the pressure wave that buffeted the Warhammer, nearly toppling the 'Mech. Struggling to keep the Hammer upright Kerensky backed up the machine. When one foot caught the edge of the pathway, seventy tons of BattleMech was too much for the weathered granite. It crumbled.

  Kerensky shifted the machine's balance to the right. Though she risked a fall on the path, that was preferable to pitching down the side of the mountain. Her maneuver succeeded, but was ultimately futile.

  The rumble had continued throughout her gyrations. Its source hurtled down upon the Warhammer as hundreds of tons of rock came free in an avalanche. The 'Mech was swept from the track.

  Lynn Sheridan let out a scream of impotent rage. While she sat helpless in her Crusader, Natasha Kerensky's black Warhammer vanished in a billowing cloud of gray rock dust.

  Sheridan's cry halted the rest of the Command Lance. Heedless of the danger, MacLaren whirled his 'Mech in an about-face and stormed back up the trail. He reached Sheridan's position to find the Crusader bent over the edge, directing its sensors downward. The path beyond it was choked with debris.

  “I can't read her 'Mech, Sarge,” Sheridan reported. “Keep scanning,” MacLaren ordered. He began to call for the Captain over and over on the taccomm, but there was no response.

  32

  Gakken County, Benet III

  Draconis March, Federated Suns

  19 May 3027

  Long after the roar of the rockfall had turned to silence, Colin MacLaren was calling. Hayes and Sheridan tried to convince him that the Widow was gone, lost to a freak of nature. Believing that Natasha Kerensky could not be taken from him this way, he refused to stop calling for his Captain. His lancemates began to discuss how they might force him to head for the DropShip.

  When a faint crackling became audible on the lance circuit, all three Widows stopped what they were doing and boosted power in the comm circuits. A faint voice came through.

  “Calm down, old man. You haven't lost me yet.”

  Sheridan and Hayes whooped for joy. For all his earlier concern, MacLaren stayed calm, but he couldn't keep the emotion from his voice. “Is the Captain all right?”

  “I'm alive, which is more than I have any right to be. Black Lady has seen better days. Lost my aerial in the slide. Took me a while to rig the spare. Sorry about worrying all of you.”

  “The Captain needn't apologize,” MacLaren returned. “If the Captain will give us her coordinates, we'll be down to join her.”

  “I wish it were that easy, Colin. I'm in some kind of chasm. The walls are too steep to climb, and trying to come down would be suicide without jump jets. The talus slope from the rockfall is very unstable and would probably slide again if a 'Mech were to try to walk on it.

  “See if you can link with the Web to use the ship's comp to give us a tacmap. This thing must come out somewhere.”

  MacLaren did as he was ordered. When the Widow's Web computer fed him the map for the area, he located the chasm and saw that it finally leveled out twenty klicks to the northeast. He relayed the information to Kerensky.

  “That's it, then,” she said. “We'll rendezvous at grid seventy-two, reference three-seventeen. Get a move on. You've been exposed up there too long.”

  “But the Captain will be alone.”

  “No 'buts,' Colin. We haven't any choice. You can't slide down after me. Get going.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Kerensky could picture the Marauder moving like a sulky child denied its wish, and the thought lightened her mood considerably. Her people would give their lives for her, but it was no less than she would do for them. The Black Widow Company was the best, though once they had been the dregs of Wolf's Dragoons. She had turned that band of gamblers, criminals, and discipline problems into damn good soldiers, and then into the most formidable company in the most formidable mercenary unit in the Inner Sphere. It was an achievement that even one of her ancestry could view with pride.

  Now she must deal with the present, however. She faced a twenty-kilometer march in a battered 'Mech. Her cockpit was already hot because several heat sinks had been damaged in the fall. The dysfunction lights indicating the failures in the heat exchangers were almost lost in the crowd of yellow and red lights on her systems board. One of the Donal PPCs was completely out, but all other weapons registered as functional. Assuming that the telltales were themselves reliable, Natasha reminded herself. She hoped she wouldn't have to fight.

  The chasm was floored with blocks of granite and mounds of glacial till, much of it taller than her 'Mech and probably weighing five or more times as much. The massive rocks blocked most of her sensors and all of her comm frequencies. Visual range was reduced to handfuls of meters. Yes, she definitely hoped she wouldn't have to fight.

  Before she had gone half a klick, the first blip showed on her Mass Anomaly Detector. Opting for avoidance, she altered her course. Twice more, she evaded what read as 'Mech-size masses moving among the rocks. When the fourth appeared directly in her only available path, Kerensky advanced cautiously. When she reached a visual observation point, however, there was nothing to be seen.

  She ran a check on her MAD sensor systems, which came up green. Either the check system was faulty or she was chasing ghosts. Investigating three more blips gave the same results. It had to be the sensor system. There were no such things as ghosts, she told herself. Here amid the gloom and giant stone reminders of an ancient time, her rationality seemed subordinate to those old Human fears of the dark and the unknown. The
Warhammer moved on, its cautious motions reflecting its pilot's growing nervousness.

  “Bang! You're dead,” came a distorted voice over the taccomm.

  Kerensky whirled the Warhammer around, searching for the mark that had appeared on her MAD sensor. A voice meant a foe she could face, not some nameless shadow. She found the target, snugged into a cleft in the rockface, the collapsed folds of a camouflage screen draped over its clawed feet. It was a bright green Marauder with silver credit symbols glittering on its carapace.

  The protective hatches on the Warhammer's SRM launcher opened and her functional PPC came up as Natasha recognized the 'Mech. It was the Bounty Hunter. She didn't know his name, and she didn't want to.

  The dorsal hatch of his BattleMech was open, and the pilot stood there, arms spread wide. Kerensky stopped herself from triggering any weapons, unable to burn down someone who had put himself at her mercy. Even this scum. It appeared that the Bounty Hunter wanted to talk. Maybe he would give her a reason to change her mind.

  “Don't shoot, Widow Lady. At least, not till you check your rear.”

  Three more 'Mechs had moved out of concealment, an Orion, a Quickdraw, and a Shadow Hawk. That was a hundred and ninety tons of trouble added to the seventy-five in front of her. Even if her Hammer hadn't been battered by the last week's fighting and her recent slide down the mountain, Kerensky knew she probably wouldn't have been able to get away from this ambush.

  “Can't you at least say hello, Natasha? I know we didn't part on the best of terms back on Le Blanc, but it cost me quite a bit for your comm frequency.”

  Kerensky disdained to reply. The last time she had met with this man-with-no-name, they had fought. Michael Hasek-Davion had informed the Dragoons that he was holding a family of renegade Techs, and Wolf had sent her to make sure the Techs were not runaways from the regiments. When Kerensky arrived on Le Blanc, the Duke offered her employment and a share in the services of Techs. She still wondered why he thought that would tempt her. When he refused to let her see the Techs and her Widows moved to take them away, the Duke sprang the Hunter and his dogs on the Dragoons. The Hunter had bagged two more Dragoons that day. The Widows had grabbed the Techs and gotten away, but so had the Hunter.

  Her Warhammer stood motionless now. The Hunter and his bullyboys had the drop on her, and so she'd let him make the next move. If it was hostile, he would be cinders before the Black Lady went down.

  “Come on, Widow Lady. Anything in the past between us was just business. You burned old Michael H-D when you scampered with his Techs. Let's call it even between us on that one.”

  “We'll never be even, scum. You've cost me too much!”

  “Ah, those dulcet tones. Never say never, my dear Widow,” he chided, relieved that he had gotten her talking. It would be downhill from here. First, she needed to be reminded of exactly where she stood because it would make the negotiations easier. “If I'd wanted your butt today, you'd be hanging on the wall. But, I'm in a good mood,” he said expansively. “I've got a deal for you.”

  “Shove it up your exhaust ports.” How could he expect her to trust him? She had “dealt” with him before.

  “Now, is that any way to talk to someone who's trying to do you a favor?”

  “The only favor you can do me is to drop dead.”

  “You're trying my patience,” he said, the harshness in his voice due to more than the electronic distortion. “Let me make it clear. I've got a contract on you and you're under the guns of my boys. You don't walk out of here unless I go with you. Which is exactly what I want to do.”

  “Never.”

  “Now what did I tell you about that word? Listen, we've both got problems. Your pet Snakes ain't showed. They've left you Wolves on the rack to dry. You're stuck on this rock until you take the tracking station at Beaux Pawl, unless you want to lose half your DropShips on the way to orbit. You ain't taking that station till you get through twice your number in defenders.

  “As for me, my boys and I have offended our friends somehow, and they've decided they don't like us anymore. We been double-crossed and our ride out of here has been chased off. So we're stuck, too.

  “We've got a lot to offer each other. You've got Jump-Ships insystem. I've got a friend in Beaux Pawl who's very good with explosives. Not only that, I'll cancel the contract I have on you. All it takes is a ride out of this system on your JumpShip. A DropShip hitchhiker is a small price to pay to keep that silky skin intact.”

  “I don't travel with cold-blooded killers.”

  “That's not what some people are saying.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I had a call from a friend of mine. He placed you on New Mendham eight months ago. Same time that a bunch of black 'Mechs trashed a town held by Kurita. Very messy. Those Jocks tried to blame it on Davion as well.”

  “My company was elsewhere.”

  “I believe you, sweetheart. You wouldn't lie to me. But you can't prove it, can you?

  Kerensky thought hard. No, she couldn't prove it without compromising Dragoon security. That would mean big trouble with Wolf, something she was unwilling to risk. The Hunter took her silence as his answer.

  “Thought so. My friend says there're pictures to back up the story.” Inside his helmet, the Bounty Hunter smiled at Kerensky's curse. “You know, Widow Lady, I think you and your buddies are being set up. Somebody's got a real mad on for you. You're not the only Wolvie brass I was offered a pass at.”

  “Who would do such a thing?” she asked, letting her indignation leak into her voice. The Hunter might want to gloat and thereby let something slip.

  “That ain't for me to say,” he replied. Sorry, Natasha, he said silently. I'm not that easy to catch. Aloud, he continued. “Client privilege, you know. I'll tell you that my employer wore a badly disguised Waco Ranger's get-up, because that doesn't really tell you anything. Everybody in the business knows about old Whacko's Death Oath. It's an obvious cover for anyone who wants to target Wolvies.

  “Of course, once we're out of this system, I might recall some significant details. I might also name a few names and dates that might be worthy of further pursuit.”

  “Do so now!” Kerensky ordered, abandoning both subtlety and any hope of worming information out of the Hunter.

  “Uh-uh, Widow Lady. Not while we're in this system.” Not, he said to himself, ever, but if I tell you that, I'm stuck here.

  Kerensky fumed. The Hunter was too slick for her to catch him out while she was still shaken from her slide down the mountain. She was too rattled to play at word games. Her earlier outburst revealed her strong desire to get the cowards who stooped to setting bounty hunters after her and ruined her negotiating position.

  “Very well,” she said. “I accept your offer. We get you out of the system and you give me the names. I want the villain behind this!”

  “I'm sure you do, little lady.” Kerensky realized that he had been speaking over a circuit open to his men when he said, “Let's go boys. We've got our ticket off this rock.”

  33

  Davion HQ, Kitchuken Barrens, VMM

  Draconis March, Federated Suns

  22 June 3027

  As Captain Frank Woomack gazed out over the barren landscape, motion off to the left caught his eye. He watched as one of the local gyru lizards slithered from its sunny perch into the shadow of a rock outcropping as a hovercraft bearing the sun-and-sword roared by. The vehicle's engines were audible even through the plastiglass. The machine cut across Woomack's line-of-sight and accelerated toward the perimeter of the complex. A second, then a third, followed the first.

  “The Feds are stirring out there,” the Dragoon announced to his companions.

  “Think the Colonel has sent somebody after us, Captain?” Corporal Kathy Keegan's voice was full of hope. The internment at the Davion base had hit her the hardest of the three. Even though their captors had allowed them a fairly free run, she chafed at the confinement within the climate-controlled buil
dings of the Federated Suns outpost.

  “If he has, Kathy, we'll be heading for orbit before nightfall,” said Steve Geiger confidently. The loss of his Stinger and his own wounds had done little to damp the private's ebullient spirits.

  “Don't get her hopes up, Geiger,” Woomack warned. “We don't know what's going on. It could just be maneuvers.”

  “But, Captain, we've been held here for over a month. If the Feds were going to ransom us, we would be gone by now. They must have refused,” Geiger concluded. “The Colonel won't leave us here to rot.”

  “You're right on that, Steve. The Dragoons don't abandon anybody,” Woomack said, directing his reply to Keegan. “The Feds must be dragging the negotiations out for some political reason. If so, we sit and wait. It could be worse. They're treating us more like guests than prisoners.”

  “I guess you're right, Captain,” Keegan conceded, hugging herself. “It's so hard sometimes. The walls. Not being able to go outside. It's really starting to get to me.”

  Keegan had started to shiver as she spoke. Woomack moved to her and put an arm around her shoulders. “You've got to keep it together, Kathy. We'll be out of here soon.” Keegan stifled a sob. Woomack bit his lip. Sending people into battle had always come easy for him. Morale problems always disappeared in battle. Here, there was no battle for distraction. Feeling out of his element, he tried again. “Would it help if I could get them to authorize a trip outside?”

  “It might,” Keegan answered in a small voice.

  “Then that's what I'll do.” Woomack gave her a pat on the back and turned to Geiger. “Kid, see if you can get ahold of one of those Feddie officers.”