----- 11 Days Later -----
Date: July 7, 2824
Location: Barbados – Deep Periphery (Gamma 1551 AV)
Title: Betrayal of Ideals – Asunder
Author: Blaine Lee Pardoe
Type: Serialized Novel (BattleCorps)
Synopsis: The space battle is over and Nicholas’ Grand Fleet has landed its ground troops on Barbados to engage the Wolverine touman there. The McKenna-class Zughoffer Weir and two other Wolverine ships managed to escape (with the Steel Vipers in pursuit), while the rest were either destroyed or captured. The Khans of the Widowmakers, Wolves, Ghost Bears, and Jade Falcons begin to bid for the right to face the remaining Wolverines. Karrige bids only three Clusters, challenging Wolf Khan Jerome Winson’s honor and pushing him to bid just seven trinaries, well below the level required to safely engage the remaining Wolverine ground forces.
Wolverine Khan Hallis leads his remaining troops in a hopeless battle against the Wolves, hoping to damage Nicholas’ troops and delay them on Barbados long enough for Trish Ebon, the other two scout flotillas, and the Zughoffer Weir’s squadron to escape. He knows there’s no chance of living as a bondsman, and the Wolverines have resolved to go out fighting. They give a good accounting of themselves, but the Wolves are fresher and fight with great skill. Star Colonel Ferris Ward, whom Franklin had earlier defeated in a Trial of Possession in Clan space, challenges Hallis to a rematch. Hallis ignores Ward and leads his command group towards his true target – ilKhan Nicholas Kerensky.
Meanwhile, the Wolverine 444th Cluster engages the Wolves in rough terrain, hoping to give their lower castes time to scatter and hide in the thick jungles of Barbados. However, the Wolves outmaneuver the Wolverine Cluster and lure them into a trap, dooming the Wolverine civilians.
Coming upon the ilKhan’s position, he finds him surrounded by the ‘Mechs of the other Khans, including Nicholas’ custom Highlander. He debates trying to kill Nicholas, but hesitates, feeling that such an attempt would be contradictory to McEvedy’s wishes. Nicholas refuses to recognize Hallis as a true Khan, and Hallis responds that he is the leader of the last vestige of the Star League Defense Force. Nicholas denies Hallis’ demands for vengeance, but then offers him a chance for “justice” instead.
Kerensky tells the assembled Khans that he has learned of another betrayal. After talking with McEvedy, he had the nuclear blast’s radiation signature at Great Hope tested, and then reviewed Tiki Cache security monitor footage, tying the Widowmaker Khan to the destruction of the Wolverine capital. Nicholas places exclusive blame for the Wolverine genocide on the Widowmaker Khan (since he’d only planned for it to be an Absorption, prior to the nuclear attacks). The assembled Khans turn their backs on Karrige, and Hallis reduces him to a smoking stain with his particle cannon. Moments later, Ferris Ward destroys Hallis’ ‘Mech and kills the Wolverine Khan, and Franklin’s last thoughts are that honor had been served.
Nicholas then addresses the remaining Khans and orders a cover up. As far as anyone not present will ever know, Karrige died with honor, facing the Wolverines in battle. However, his bloodline will be terminated (effectively Reaved). The Khans assent, though Snow Raven Khan Joyce Merrell wonders exactly where Nicholas got his advice about Karrige’s scheme.
Notes: This appears to be the true origin of the story that the bidding to Annihilate the Wolverines came down to the Wolves and Widowmakers, and that the Widowmakers deliberately abused the bidding process in order to endanger the Wolves.
This section is just about the only source of information on Clan Wolverine battle formations, most of which appear to have taken their numbering conventions from their parent SLDF regiments:
444th Cluster – noted as having “a long and illustrious history.”
1068th Cluster
205th Assault Cluster – Ancestry unclear. Per the Star League sourcebook, the 205th BattleMech Division and the 205th Dragoon Regiment were destroyed, the 205th Heavy Assault Regiment joined the LCAF, and the 205th Light Horse Regiment was disbanded.
2nd League Lancers Cluster – Given the use of “League,” I would guess that this is an ad-hoc, post Third-Exodus formation comprised of survivors of Wolverine units too degraded to maintain cohesive formations on their own. Once they fled Clan space, Hallis announced that they were returning to calling themselves the Star League-in-Exile.
I was surprised to see a Jenner being deployed by the Wolves in this battle, since the Jenner IIC entry in TRO:3055 states that the Jenner was a post-Exodus design and ponders how the Clans got the information about the design and decided to use it as the basis for a IIC upgrade. “A minor mystery to Inner Sphere analysts since its first appearance in the mid-3050s, the existence and development of the Clans’ Jenner IIC has spawned numerous theories as to just how much contact the children of Kerensky had with the Inner Sphere between their disappearance in 2784 and their 3050 return.” I initially assumed its presence in “Betrayal of Ideals” was just an anachronism that slipped through fact-checking, but looking more closely, I realized that it is a canon possibility – albeit one that requires the assumption of an unorthodox operation by the Exodus logistics division.
General speculation up to this point has been that Wolf’s Dragoons’ intel reports contained the technical specs, or that Watch operatives were skulking around the Inner Sphere during the Golden Century. However, having a Jenner in the field on Barbados makes it apparent that the Clans actually had the design all along. How? It turns out that the Jenner isn’t (contrary to TRO:3055’s claim) a post-Exodus design. Looking at the chronology, the first Jenners came off the assembly lines in September 2784, while the Exodus Fleet didn’t leave until November 5, 2784. That leaves 6-8 week-long window during which Kerensky’s logistics corps could have bought/seized a consignment of Jenners from the Diplan Mechyards facility on Ozawa and loaded them aboard the Exodus transports. The TRO:3025 entry says that they were constructed under contract to House Kurita, but I’m guessing that Kerensky was unconcerned about having to answer for such a seizure in Combine courts. (As we’ll see, administrative matters on Ozawa appear to have been somewhat confused at the time, and nobody seems to have been looking at Diplan’s books very closely.)
Ozawa had been a Terran Hegemony world, but it was annexed by the Federated Suns in 2783. This leads to the astounding circumstance of House Kurita successfully contracting Diplan MechYards to build Jenners on a world controlled by the Federated Suns in 2784, then having the departing SLDF steal some on their way out. Ozawa was one of the worlds taken by the Combine in the First Succession War, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the DCMS simply brought MechWarriors to the Diplan Mechyards and launched the invasion from there, with the DCMS troops riding Jenners straight off the factory floor. Somebody at the AFFS high command was definitely asleep at the switch. Granted, the preceeding centuries of peace resulted in a rather rusty “planet conquering” skillset, but one might have assumed that taking control of major military manufacturers onworld and reviewing existing contracts would have been a high priority for the new planetary governor.
The Wolf Clan Jenner on Barbados launches SRMs at the Wolverine forces, so it must have been retrofitted at some point post-Exodus. The original production run of Jenners had a Large Laser and two Medium Lasers on a centrally mounted turret. This proved inferior due to the vulnerability of the exposed turret assembly, and was later refitted to have four Medium Lasers and an SRM-4. In a case of parallel evolution, the Clans (or the SLDF-in-Exile) must have made the same design choices as the DCMS engineers back in the Inner Sphere.
On an additional note regarding unusual rides, Nicholas is shown piloting a customized Highlander. Yet, in the upcoming Widowmaker/Wolf Trial of Absorption, Nicholas commands an Atlas II, while the Widowmaker Khan is in a custom Highlander. I guess not being limited to any particular ride is a perk of being the ilKhan. (It is good to be the ilKhan, quiaff?)