BattleTech Fiction Focus: Outfoxed by Bryan Young

Greetings, MechWarriors! We here at Goonhammer may have something of a reputation for focusing on competitive play in the realm of BattleTech, but we also hold a deep love for the world which provides the backdrop for our tabletop conflicts. Today I'm happy to bring you along on our first dive into BattleTech fiction with a review of Bryan Young’s recently released novel Outfoxed, the first full-length outing for his signature mercenary unit, the Fox Patrol!

We'd like to thank Bryan for providing us an advanced copy of Outfoxed for our review.

Credit: Catalyst Game Labs

Who Are The Fox Patrol?

Introduced through short stories in BattleTech’s quarterly magazine Shrapnel, the Fox Patrol are a small mercenary outfit who have grown from just a girl, a mech, and a dream on the backwater planet of Jerangle to encompass a reinforced lance, a dropship, and the close-knit found family who keep them running. The initial run of Fox Patrol stories was collected, along with a bonus story, in the anthology Fox Tales; the follow-up serial novella Lone Wolf and Fox has also been released in collected form, with its own bonus story included. They’ve also appeared in a couple of the Catalyst Game Labs store site’s monthly free short stories, including a bleak mirror-universe Gothic outing in October’s tale.

The Fox Patrol stories follow the very common heroic trajectory of starting on a small scale with a young person in an humble setting who suddenly becomes invested with power, like Luke on Tatooine, and gradually introducing them to a broader setting (by Lone Wolf and Fox, the Fox Patrol has begun operating in the Hinterlands, a major conflict area in the currently-developing ilClan Era of BattleTech). The Fox Patrol are also visibly part of the recent efforts to improve minority representation in BattleTech. These aspects have made them a great jumping-on point for readers new to the universe, and especially for parents looking to share BattleTech with their kids, and the series has really gained traction - Fox Patrol merchandise has sold through its limited releases at conventions, a Force Pack of Fox Patrol minis is said to be in the pipeline, etc.

I would say that Outfoxed is fully capable of standing on its own. The prior context of the lead-in stories helps build investment in the characters, but Young does a good job of hitting all the background beats you need here if you either haven’t read other Fox Patrol material or if your memory of it has grown fuzzy.

What’s the Deal With Outfoxed?

As a quick note, while this review will not contain any significant spoilers, I will be discussing the premise and themes of Outfoxed in greater detail than the official synopsis. If you’re already planning to read the book and would prefer not to see that… go read the book! It’s good! But if you’re on the fence or you’d like to see me unpack my reactions, read on.

Outfoxed sees the Fox Patrol step away from the Lone Wolves mercenary co-op they worked with in Lone Wolf and Fox and away from the bigger battlefields of the Hinterlands, but they find no shortage of drama on the hiring hub world of Almotacen itself. After inadvertently drawing the ire of Leon Hansen, the hot-tempered estranged son of Hansen’s Roughriders’ current leader, they become the target of his escalating revenge schemes, which grow into an existential threat for the perpetually-scraping-by Foxes.

I’m impressed with how much action and tension Young wrings out of a conflict barely larger-scale than lance vs lance, all confined to a single planet, with a spine of escort missions making up most of the Foxes’ jobs. This book is (intentionally, per Young) great inspiration for GMs looking to flesh out more personal stories around a Hot Spots: Hinterlands campaign’s merc vs merc conflicts, or for a traditional RP campaign in that setting. It’s easy to get cynical when tabletop tie-in fiction displays brand synergy, but this isn’t a toy commercial so much as a sincere look into the hows and whys of how small-scale battles like those we typically play in Classic BattleTech can flare up, build lasting consequences, and escalate in intensity without much escalation in size, and it’s a damn good story besides.

While I’ve enjoyed all of Young’s BattleTech fiction that I’ve read, I’ll admit that I’ve enjoyed his novels much more than his shorter and serialized work. His Sudeten Jade Falcon novels, A Question of Survival and Without Question, are modern classics which grapple with some pretty heavy themes, and it’s been easy for his Fox Patrol stories to feel lightweight in comparison, even when the stakes have previously ramped up. Captain Katie Ferraro is intentionally a fount of optimism and exuberance, and I love that, but sometimes it has felt like the world around her might be just a touch more sunshine and rainbows than one would expect when her little family are, to be blunt, trading their capacity for violence in exchange for money.

That changes here, as Young finally has the space to really sit with these characters and unpack their traumas - doing so very literally, in some chapters, as the Fox Patrol have brought on new character Dr. Sydney McPeak as a unit therapist. I’m really impressed with how McPeak is used here. He’s not only a vehicle to dig deeper into members of the unit, coaxing out emotions they might not otherwise surface intelligibly, even in inner monologue (with unit founder Katie and the scarred veteran Dexter Nicks getting the lion’s share of the attention here), he also serves admirably well in normalizing the experience of therapy, and the notes he hits are very authentic. Genuinely, I’d like to see more fictional characters in (well-administered) therapy; that’s not a “lol characters be crazy” joke, I think it can be a powerful example to see your heroes seeking help with healthy emotional processing.

While there’s no capital-D Diagnosis delivered here aside from post-traumatic stress, the neurodiversity coding in Katie’s characterization has never been clearer, and I love how the perspective swaps in the novel (to Dex and Leon’s viewpoints) emphasize how her habit of perceiving her world in terms of ‘Mech metaphors is a personal trait resonant with her special interest, not just BattleTech’s theming leaking into the prose. Her discovery of a good fidget here is very #relatable for me, as is some of her discomfort in social interaction. Dex, meanwhile, highlights struggles around aging and the lingering trauma of military indoctrination. It’s great character work, both in and out of the therapy sessions.

Leon Hansen is a good foil to Katie, a bundle of bruised ego and aggrieved entitlement who can leverage resources she lacks (capital, military schooling) while failing to understand any of what makes her leadership work (deep affection for her subordinates, openness to hearing and honoring their contributions in planning, etc.). Sometimes his characterization hovers on the border of caricature, particularly in an amusing sequence where he gets briefed on the Fox Patrol and echoes complaints about them from some of the BattleTech community’s more, ah, vociferous (anti-)fans, but there’s always malice beneath his buffoonery, and I think all of us are perfectly aware these days of how much damage can be done by fools when they have plenty of cash to throw around. The threat he represents is no joke.

Some of the regular Fox Patrol cast, particularly “the boys,” married couple Evan Huxley and Arkee Colorado (who, to be fair, were highlighted in Lone Wolf and Fox), are fairly out of focus in Outfoxed, but it seems clear that the Foxes’ story is far from its end, and I look forward to seeing where they journey next!

You might say I'm a fan. Credit: Lynn C.

Final Thoughts

While it would be very easy to claim that Outfoxed succeeds as a narrative because it abandons Katie’s youthful optimism to embrace the darker aspects of humanity and of the mercenary life, that would be a fundamentally misleading claim. While I applaud the depth and maturity of this book, and I do think it’s a step up in emotional authenticity from previous Fox Patrol works, I need to make it clear that at the end of the day, here as always, the Fox Patrol is made strong by the deep love its members have for each other. This is an organic thematic evolution, not a refutation of what's come before. For the Fox Patrol, there are still seeds of hope and wonder rooted within even the darkest hour.

I can give a full-throated recommendation of this book. If you’re the sort of skeptic who hates the very concept of a found-family merc unit led by a twenty-something woman, nothing here is likely to win you over, but if you’re the sort of skeptic who always liked the concept but felt some of the previous Fox Patrol stories might have been a little weak, like I was, there is a metric ton to love here. Great character work, tense action sequences, serious stakes, and all of it calibrated to be easy inspiration for the tabletop gaming we enjoy.

Thank you for checking out a new flavor of BattleTech article here, and let us know what else you might like us to cover in the future!

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Tags: Battletech | Fox Patrol | Bryan Young | Outfoxed