GblaRCS Chpt 3

==Guided by the light of a (Red) Cameron Star - Chapter 3 -==
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"Proper planning prevents piss-poor performance."Sarah McEvedy, Khan of Clan Wolverine - 2823
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===Part 3 - FLASHBACK===
SLS Michigan – Star System Gamma 12901 (On the Exodus Road) – 2824
Trish Ebon was still trying to get over the shock of being appointed saKhan and promoted to Star Colonel by Franklin Hallis, the man himself only having recently become Khan of the Wolverines with the death of Sarah McEvedy, and now she found herself having to disappoint him already. It was less than an hour since she had departed the Khan's flagship to join her new command, ferried over by a small shuttle craft. "My apologies, Khan Hallis." she began awkwardly, her image projected as a hologram from the bridge of her own ship, the SLS Bismark, onto the bridge of the Michigan. "I must report I am unable to perform the task you set for me at this time."
Hallis raised his eyebrows. "You don't feel you are qualified, query affirmative?" he asked, she had certainly seemed taken aback by the promotion.
"Negative." Trish responded, her holographic image shaking its head. "By which I mean I do believe I am qualified, it's just that your orders, taking my squadron of warships ahead of the main fleet to act as a picket line, relies on my having a ship with a lithium-fusion battery with which we can report back to you if we encounter vessels of the Kerensky loyalists" she explained.
"Trish, I mean saKhan Ebon, you do have such a vessel." Hallis pointed out, looking suitably confused since he was the one that chose the vessels assigned to her command. If equipped with an L-F battery a jumpship could perform two jumps before needing to spend a week recharging from its solar-sail or fusion reactor. This gave it the ability to jump into a system and then jump straight back if it ran into trouble, something the majority of vessels could not do.
"I have the Saratoga… but I have been informed by her captain and chief engineer that her jump-drive is FUBAR." she reported. "It was always… flaky, and needed coaxing to work, but the series of jumps we've undertaken since we left Clan space have put too much strain on it for the jury-rigged repairs made to keep her running."
Hallis groaned. "This is what you get for pulling old ships out of mothballs that haven't spent time in a repair yard since before we left the Inner Sphere." he muttered to himself.
"Her drive isn't slagged, so we can fix it, but if we rush the repairs then Saratoga's next jump could be the last she ever makes." Trish's projection told him.
"How long for repairs that'll get us back to the Inner Sphere?" Hallis asked.
"Well over a month before Saratoga can jump I am told, including recharging the drive once repairs are completed" Trish replied apologetically.
Hallis frowned. "And that is not just her chief engineer exaggerating so he can look good getting her working in half that time, query negative?" he checked.
The new saKhan and freshly minted Star Colonel shook her head. "Negative. Her jump-drive is in dire condition, and if we need her to be able to perform a double-jump with her Lithium-Fusion Battery we certainly do not want to cut corners on the repairs."
"We don't have a month to spare, Trish." Hallis told her seriously.
"I know, but if we leave her behind we have to leave the dropships and aerospace fighters she is carrying behind too." Trish pointed out. "Not to mention the seventy-thousand tons of supplies and equipment in her hold."
"We can transfer some of the contents in her hold to other ships, but you are right about her dropships, every other ship already has their docking collars fully occupied" Khan Hallis replied gloomily.
"There is one other option" Trish told him. "If we can borrow a couple of dozen of the best engineers and jump-drive technicians from the rest of the fleet, and can also obtain any spare parts we might need from other ships, we can get Saratoga running reliably in half the time, maybe even less" she told him. "
Khan Franklin Hallis pursed his lips, that sounded a more reasonable proposition but perhaps he could do better. "What if I sent you a hundred pairs of extra hands?" he suggested instead.
"They would just get in each other's way, it's the law of diminishing returns unfortunately" Trish replied. "If for some reason we find we do need more of the technician caste, I mean more engineers" she corrected her terminology as the caste system had been officially abolished, "we can ask for them at that point."
"I thought it was too much to hope for." Hallis replied sadly. "Well, I couldn't give you a month, but I can give you two weeks, and if we're going to stay here longer than expected we can perform some less vital but nonetheless worthwhile and overdue maintenance on the other ships as well" he reasoned, making his decision. "I know everyone is itchy to get off the ships and taste some fresh air and fresh food, but our layover at Barbados can wait a little longer."
"The Saratoga will be a very useful part of our Touman when we reach the Inner Sphere" Trish opined. "That's why we chose to bring her along in the first place. I'm glad we're going to keep her on that basis alone" she added. As a Riga II class carrier/destroyer the Saratoga was a generalist rather than a specialist warship, with less firepower than some other destroyer classes, but nevertheless more armor than most to keep her in the fight if she did ever have to join the line-of-battle. Her real offensive power came in the form of her internal fighter-bays, large enough to carry a full wing of aerospace fighters, along with a cargo-hold large enough to keep them supplied for an extended period.
That the Riga II was also fitted with a Lithium-Fusion Battery as built, giving her excellent strategic mobility, and, unlike most destroyers, could haul a couple of dropships along with her only added to her utility.
"Send out your requests for personnel, I'll make sure the entire fleet gives you their full cooperation, saKhan Ebon" Hallis instructed her. "I will also notify them that we are staying here a while. Keep me posted on how the repairs to Saratoga are going. Wolverine Actual out."
"Yes, Sir. Bismark out."
"Well, we all thought it was going too well so far did we not, query affirmative?" Hallis asked the bridge crew who had been listening in, his question answered by a chorus of 'Affs' and 'Affirmatives' depending on which style the crewmen concerned favored. Kerensky had been pushing his desired changes to the speech patterns of his clans for some years now, but it was still a process very much in transition. Many older people in particular could not readily re-learn how to speak naturally, avoiding the use of contractions except for certain ritual ones, and it often made for halting, less than fluid conversations. Franklin Hallis himself knew he slipped back and forth between saying 'don't' and the preferred 'do not' more than the younger generation raised on the Clan Homeworlds did, not that it likely mattered anymore anyway.
Hallis turned to the communications officer. "Notify every ship in the fleet of the situation, and that I want them to carry out an urgent inspection of their own jump-drives so we don't have to do this all over again another dozen jumps down the Exodus Road" he ordered.
Despite reinforcing their warship complement from the Norfolk and San Diego boneyards, the mothballed fleets that dated from the First Exodus under Kerensky's father, the large majority of the Wolverine vessels floating out there were civilian transports. Invader, Star Lord, and Monolith class jumpships carrying dropships full of civilians and supplies. The civilians had been cooped up a while now, spending most of their time floating in zero gee on the dropships because the grav decks of the jumpships they were docked to could only handle so many people at once, making it necessary to take turns on them. They were getting cranky, losing muscle tone, and a diet bereft of fresh food was bad for morale even if they weren't starving. As such Hallis could only hope the news that they weren't going to make landfall on a habitable world with edible fruits and vegetables as soon as expected wasn't going to be received too badly.
As the new orders were transmitted out Hallis sighed with resignation. To be honest it really had been going very well despite a few cranky civilians, at least since the unexpected nuclear conflagration that had seen both the Wolverine capital city of Great Hope, and the Snow Raven capital of Dehra Dun, bathed in atomic fire. If he had to guess, Khan Hallis would have pinned the blame for the destruction of Great Hope on that conniving rodent Jason Karrige, Khan of the Widowmakers, but it might have been Kerensky himself. As for Dehra Dunn he knew full well what had happened there, an aerospace fighter carrying a nuclear strike package, one belonging to the Snow Ravens themselves, had been shot down over their own city when it was dispatched to strike a Wolverine target.
The Snow Ravens had thought the Wolverines had destroyed Great Hope, so as to prevent it falling into enemy hands, although if they had been aware Sarah McEvedy was still within the city limits at the time, helping to evacuate civilians to dropships waiting to ferry them to the Switchback fleet, they might have reached a different, and more accurate, conclusion. Sarah McEvedy was arguably obstinate and rebellious, but she wasn't insane or suicidal.
Hallis doubted that the other clans would be told what had actually occurred, even though if they gave it any thought whatsoever, they would realize that if the Wolverines had escalated to WMD they wouldn't have just used a couple of them, not given how outnumbered they were.
Not that Khan Sarah McEvedy had ever entertained the nuclear option anyway. Clan Wolverine just wanted to get away, doing something that would ensure they were hunted down until the end of time was self-evidently not in their best interests.
"We are going to start running out of fresh water at some point." Hallis noted, looking to his aide. "I know we were going to resupply at Bermuda, and we still will, but in case something like this happens again later we should go ahead with putting together that improvised J-U Water Purifier that was suggested to me. That way in future we can be less fussy about where we collect our water from in future, and maybe ramp up hydroponic production on the Invaders too so we don't get scurvy" he continued, not entirely seriously as the ration-packs they were living on were fortified with vitamins to prevent that sort of thing. "Can you look into that as a matter of priority."
"Yes, My Khan." the junior officer replied formally, bowing slightly.
Hallis had barely gotten used to being treated with a certain amount of deference as saKhan, second in the clan's social order, after the death in battle of the previous saKhan Dwight Robertson. With the subsequent death of Khan Sarah McEvedy now he was the one everyone looked to and all he could do was try and pretend he wasn't mostly just following the written instructions Sarah left him.
"Nothing wrong with scurvy, Khan Hallis." Captain Brentjes, commanding officer of the Michigan observed from his own command chair. "There is a fine, long naval tradition to feeling deathly ill and having your teeth fall out before you die painfully from a vitamin deficiency" he joked.
"Other naval traditions include keelhauling and lashing men with the cat o' nine tails and I'd soon as not bring them back either." Hallis replied. "Unless we somehow capture a few Widowmakers, or perhaps Old Nick himself" he added to some laughter from the bridge crew as he decided Sarah would have liked that line too. Referring to ilKhan Nicholas Kerensky as 'Old Nick', a once common epithet for the devil, was really starting to catch on in the fleet of late. That or calling him 'Nicky K' because he would absolute hate being referred to so informally.
It was such a shame Sarah hadn't made it off Circe so she could have seen her plans for Operation Switchback working as intended. Using Nicky K's ego against him she knew that as soon as the Wolverine fleet made good their escape from Clan Space he would gather as many operational warships as he could, leaving barely enough to defend the Clan Homeworlds in case the Wolverines double-backed, and would go charging after them hell-for-leather.
Realizing this Sarah had outwitted her opponent and as part of her plans had issued instructions for the Wolverines not to set out for the Inner Sphere right away, but instead to hide in an uncharted system a handful of jumps out from home and a couple of jumps off to the side of the Exodus Road. After giving the other clans a few weeks lead to get far ahead of them along the known and charted route back to the Inner Sphere, Nicholas surely intent on chasing down his quarry before it could reach safety, the Wolverine fleet simply started following on behind, generally feeling pretty pleased with themselves for bamboozling the schmuck.
Franklin Hallis knew it was working because as they followed on behind they kept finding the refuse Nicky's fleet had dumped as it went, still well ahead of the people they thought they were chasing. Hallis only wished he could be there to see Kerensky's expression when the clans eventually reached the edge of the Inner Sphere, only to find a distinct lack of Wolverines to murder and indeed no sign of them whatsoever.
Ideally by the time Old Nick realized what had happened the Wolverines would have veered way off the Exodus Road, now being close enough to the Inner Sphere to not need to stop for resupply again, and then the Wolverines would vanish off the face of the galaxy.
Until the time came to put things right at least.
"All ships except the transport Dobrev have confirmed receipt of the new orders, Khan Hallis" the communications officer reported. "They may have a problem with their communications."
Hallis nodded. "If you do not get a reply from them soon tell the closest vessel to them to send over a shuttlecraft to investigate, that might be something else that needs fixing as a priority. Additionally, since we are going to be here a while, check with Buccaneer if there is anything they can do to increase production of replacement weaponry and spare parts" he ordered.
The Buccaneer, a Sovetskii Soyuz class Heavy Cruiser, could not only carry five dropships along with her she also had a cavernous internal cargo hold, one large enough to haul an additional two-hundred thousand tons of goods or equipment. For this reason she had been assigned the task of hauling what had been the tooling, plant and machinery of the clan's armaments factories so the Wolverines would not have to start again from scratch when they reached their final destination.
The first enemy clan to overrun the factory complex on Circe where the Wolverines had produced their war-machines was going to be very disappointed to find nothing but the burned-out shells of buildings, utterly bereft of anything useful. Franklin Hallis decided that Kerensky would probably have most of his spies shot for not only having failed to notice the Wolverines stealing multiple Warships and Jumpships out from under their nose, but for somehow even missing entire production lines being dissembled and carted off before hostilities began.
The vaunted 'Watch', Kerensky's newly-formed Intelligence Agency, clearly required laser-eye-surgery or corrective lenses because that went beyond sloppy to being an example of complete ineptitude.
Given the need to repair and refit 'mechs and aerospace fighters damaged during the clans fighting withdrawal the personnel aboard Buccaneer, which included most of the factory workers, had managed to cobble together a couple of basic production lines aboard her for producing various equipment. The production rate was slow, and the meager raw materials at hand wouldn't last forever either, but at least they could get a few more machines ready for battle in case they were needed anytime soon.
The thing that really burned was that given a few more years to ramp up new Battlemech production, and further modernize the older war machines they already had, the Wolverines would have been able to put up so much of a fight the other clans might not have even dared to cross them. On the other hand, that was likely one of the reasons Kerensky made his move when he did, Hallis realized.
In retrospect it was obvious that at some point the ilKhan was going to have to make an example of someone in order to keep a lid on dissent, and Clan Wolverine was the obvious choice. It wasn't just that we kept putting our heads above the parapet by playing fast and loose with Kerensky's rules, Hallis considered, it was the more egregious offense of outperforming the other clans by doing so.
When Nicholas Kerensky had led his disparate band of supporters on a Second Exodus from the war-torn Pentagon Worlds, those his father had settled as the Star-League-in-Exile, to the more distant colony of Strana Mechty, it was always with the intention to return, restore order and bring them back under control. Specifically, his own control and with a very particular definition of 'order'.
The formation of the Clans had essentially been a massive social engineering project intended to achieve that very goal. The competition fostered between the twenty clans aimed at a kind of guided Darwinian selection that would hone the skills of his warriors and spur the scientists, engineers and technicians to create ever-better weapons. The Clans never had the numbers to squander men or machines however, so the rules of the society put strict limits on just how many losses were deemed acceptable before one side or the other in a dispute was supposed to fold. That necessitated a return to the ancient notions of champions fighting to determine the outcome of a war, instead of whole armies being put to the sword.
Kerensky imagined Paris and Menelaus meeting in single combat to decide the outcome of the Trojan War. He probably should have paid more attention to the fact that Menelaus handily winning that fight did not result in the Trojans surrendering, it takes both sides playing by the same rules to make that sort of thing work consistently. Moreover, a dispassionate, more open-minded observer could well conclude that it was stupid to tie one hand behind your back in situations where you had a decisive edge in numbers or technology.
Nobody had ever accused Sarah McEvedy, daughter of Lieutenant-General Richard McEvedy of the 331st Royals and now Khan of Clan Wolverine, of being dogmatic or closed-minded. Politically naïve perhaps, and as regards diplomacy about as subtle as a brick to the back of the head, but she wasn't going to tie her own hands for the sake of social niceties.
Eschewing Kerensky's ideal of 'honorable', one-on-one pseudo-knightly combat for a pragmatic combined arms tactical doctrine, one based largely on the SLDF operational manuals for Regimental Combat Teams, the Wolverines under Sarah had overperformed during Operation Klondike compared with other clans. Then, after the Pentagon Worlds were secured as per Kerensky's vision, the clan had then begun winning a disproportionate number of Trials of Possession as the spoils of war were divided up, strengthening their Touman but unfortunately also raising the ire of their rivals.
It had been Khan McEvedy's solution to a temporary shortfall in food production however which had begun to bring the situation to a head. Nicholas Kerensky's laws were meant to make the caste system inviolable, the only movement possible meant to be downward, from the elite of the Warrior caste to the others. With the possibility of people going hungry McEvedy took a pragmatic approach and freed up the castes, transferring personnel around to help alleviate the problem.
The Wolverines didn't starve, moreover the majority of the population, most of whom had only been under clan rule since the culmination of Klondike in 2822, seemed more than enthusiastic about a relaxation in the caste system because it indicated that they might get more say in their own lives again.
McEvedy took stock of the situation, decided that doing what actually worked was more important than a rigid adherence to rules, some of which had been originally presented as merely temporary war-time expediencies to maintain order anyway, and ran with it.
Resource production increased with a freer, more dynamic economy, people were generally happier to have the yokes arounds their necks loosened, and the science and technician castes in particular flourished likely because they didn't have the boot of the warrior caste planted as firmly on their necks.
Already among the top tier of clans technologically Clan Wolverine started to pull ahead of the others, eventually demonstrating this change in the balance-of-power in a very noticeable way.
Despite having developed improved versions of several types of standard Star League weaponry, these improvements based largely on inheriting a lot of R&D work carried out by the Terran Hegemony on behalf of the SLDF, none of the clans had actually been developing and producing new models of Battlemechs. Instead they had upgraded what machines they had inherited, while the limited number of new-builds were simply copies of SLDF equipment.
Then to great consternation in early 2823, the Wolverines unveiled the Stag, Mercury II, and Pulverizer battlemechs, all brand new designs that they were already putting into mass production. They also demonstrated a new type of Extended-Range Particle Projector Cannon which was powerful enough to take off another battlemech's head at a range only a much larger and heavier gauss rifle could before.
Other clans were working behind the scenes on advances of their own, it was rumored that Clan Coyote was ahead in Pulse Laser development for example, but while they were still at the prototype stage at best the Wolverines already had their own new toys in actual production. This also had several of the other clans deeply concerned about what McEvedy's people might themselves have at the prototype stage and whether they could catch up anytime soon.
One thing quickly led to another, a dispute over the ownership of a large cache of old SLDF supplies, which included a number of nuclear weapons, and which was found on territory now belonging to Clan Wolverine escalated. Already angry about the relaxation of the caste system by the Wolverines, and almost certainly concerned that they were demonstrating that things quite clearly worked better if you set aside some of his diktats, Nicholas publicly told Sarah to toe-the-line and hand the contents of the cache over or else, privately he was even more strident.
Sarah thought about it a long time, and when she had thought about it long enough she declared independence from the Clans.
Finding himself increasingly lost in his own thoughts Khan Franklin Hallis made a conscious effort to put aside the past for now and started to consider how else he might seek some benefit from the extended stay in the Gamma 12901 system that had been foisted upon him.
"Navigator. Find me a star system, off the Exodus Road, rimward and anti-spinward of here between twenty and twenty-five light years distant" he ordered. "It has to be a hot enough star that we can recharge our drives at the safe maximum rate, no damn red dwarfs" he continued. "When you find one plot a jump there and inform all other ships in the fleet to do likewise. If the clans appear on top of us all ships which can immediately make the jump to that system should do so on my order."
"Nice to see a ground-pounder savvy enough not to want a full thirty light-year jump to safety, far too predictable" Captain Brentjes observed. "It would however only be a stop-gap measure if we have to re-join the Exodus Road after a few evasive jumps, Khan Hallis" he warned.
"The plan Khan McEvedy formulated for Switchback included an alternate destination, if only as a temporary haven before continuing on to the Inner Sphere. If I am incapacitated for some reason I also provided saKhan Ebon with the name and location of the system concerned. I can only hope that it is as obscure as McEvedy believed it to be so Nicholas will not immediately guess our new heading. It is certainly not featured on the standard star-charts" he noted having checked to see if he could find the Columbus SLDF facility in the Epsilon Pegasus system listed anywhere. That hardly made it unique, for reasons of security, specifically to compartmentalize information, the SLDF had constructed a multitude of bases and supply dumps all over the place with only the personnel stationed there knowing where it was.
Rumor had it that during the Amaris War, the 12th Fleet of the SLDF actually had a secret base somewhere inside the Rim Worlds Republic that the Rimjobs had no idea about. Warships staging out from there had made life hell for enemy supply lines.
"Colour me intrigued, Khan Hallis" Captain Brentjes responded, smart enough not to ask for any more details.
"What is life without a little mystery?" Hallis asked rhetorically. "If you need me I'll be in my cabin" he announced. "When I'm gone you might want to warn the fleet that if they waste the time we have here relaxing, instead of running battle-drills and fixing whatever they can then, then I might reconsider my policy on keelhauling. Which as you know is some serious shit in a spacecraft."
Captain Brentjes grinned. "Consider the word spread, Khan Hallis" he replied, clearly amused by the tongue-in-cheek threat.
The clans must have eventually figured out what the Wolverines were up to because two weeks later, just as Saratoga had finished charging her jumpdrive, a backtracking task force practically jumped in on top of them, presumably having previously checked the Barbados system for the Wolverines first because of its habitable world.
On the bridge of his flagship, ilKhan Nicholas Kerensky could only begin to imagine why the entire Wolverine Fleet seemed to be patiently waiting for his arrival, Kearny-Fuchida drives charged and jump sails packed away ready to go, as the whole lot of them promptly jumped out before he could issue orders to engage them.
They must be mocking me somehow, Kerensky decided, biting back his rage and outwardly seeming calm and collected as he ordered his fleet to unfurl their jump sails and recharge their drives for the pursuit.
A week later, Kerensky split his warships into four groups, each one capable of outgunning the Wolverine vessels and sent them off searching both rimwards and corewards along the Exodus Road, using his Lithium-Fusion Battery ships to scout ahead.
They found nothing so two weeks after that he widened the search pattern.
That was the problem with space, it was big and if the Wolverines had opted to try their luck away from the charted course of mapped systems along the Exodus Road then tripping over them again would require drastically more luck on the part of the clans.
With Kerensky's fleet so spread out and searching further afield they actually managed to miss the only Wolverine vessel that actually was still travelling down the Exodus Road.
The destroyer SLS Yukon had been left behind in the Clan Homeworlds, the last of the forces deployed to keep the clans busy while Operation Switchback was triggered. Gathering supplies, and rescuing a sibko of children, it had set off after the rest of the Wolverines months later.
None the wiser to what had occurred ahead of them the destroyer flew on alone all the way to the Inner Sphere where they found fleeting fame as the mysterious 'Canada Tribe' that caused the Draconis Combine much concern in 2825.
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"A dread fear rests deep in the heart of Clan Coyote that one day a lawyer will arrive on Tamaron talking about intellectual property rights, the Mercury II and the Coyotl Omnimech and this will herald the end of the Clan as the Not-Named sue their asses into bankruptcy for patent infringement"The True History of the Clans (Dark Caste Press: 3050)''
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*;Notes from the Author : Then saKhan of the Wolverines Franklin Hallis found himself the new Khan with the (apparent) death of Khan Sarah McEvedy during the nuclear destruction of Great Hope in 2823. It was not something he was prepared for having only recently become saKhan after the death of Dwight Robertson. Finding himself in need of a deputy of his own he appointed Trish Ebon as the new saKhan (and promoted her to the rank of Star Colonel).Operation Switchback, also known in Wolverine circles as the third exodus, was a detailed plan McEvedy devised and assigned Hallis to implement. Essentially a secession from the clans loyal to ilKhan Nicholas Kerensky, and then a migration from the Clan Homeworlds back to the Inner Sphere along the Exodus Road it was going very well until the Kerany-Fuchida Jump-drive of the Saratoga failed at the worst possible moment. In canon, the Wolverines reached Barbados and established a temporary settlement there to resupply (and give everyone some much-needed time on the ground). In order to make sure they wouldn't be surprised by the clan warships hunting them down Hallis sent three squadrons of vessels out to act as a picket line, positioned in systems between Barbados and where a backtracking clan fleet would be coming from. If they encountered enemy ships the picket squadrons, one under saKhan Ebon commanding it from the battleship Bismark, would send their ships equipped with a lithium-fusion battery back to Barbados to warn them. Although what class of warship Saratoga actually was isn't noted in the book Betrayal of Ideals that tells the story of the Wolverines, I'm running with the notion she was a Riga II class destroyer/carrier because that class has an L-F Battery (most SLDF warships did not) and she has a name associated with real-life aircraft carriers (USS Saratoga CV3 and USS Saratoga CV60). The clans did refit almost all their warships with LF batteries but not until years later than this story is set. Incidentally Betrayal of Ideals is a good read (and gives us the best insight as to what a tyrannical jerk Nicholas Kerensky really was).Unfortunately, when the squadron under saKhan Ebon did run into the clans they couldn't give that warning because Saratoga promptly broke down. This resulted in most of the Wolverine fleet being destroyed and the vast majority of them being killed.For the want of a working K-F Drive a clan was lost.However, if ItalicSaratoga had broken down before the jump to Bermuda everything would have played out very differently, it's therefore a nice PoD (Point of Departure) for an alternate timeline.As regards the Wolverines leaving the Exodus Road to avoid being caught again there aren't many places to go in the Deep Periphery rimward of the Inner Sphere, at least until you reach the Clan Homeworlds.. That is except for Columbus Station that the SLDF constructed in the Epsilon Pegasus Star System (AKA the middle of nowhere) and was abandoned when the Star League fell.In canon the remnants of the Wolverines reached the Inner Sphere and those survivors entered legend as the Minnesota Tribe which raided worlds under the rule of the Draconis Combine for supplies. Well, there's no Minnesota Tribe in this timeline but the destroyer Yukon which was following on behind the rest of the Wolverine Fleet (and did catch up with the Wolverine remnants after Barbados in canon but not here) still manages to make some waves of it's own.
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