Um, no. I was following "Renegades" at the time. Removing all the "Star Trek" references was a legal demand.
If it was they certainly didn’t advertise it. It was stated at the time that the decision was made because of the Axanar suit. Renegades was neither sued nor C&Ded. They’d just started shooting when the Axanar situation blew up and hastily filed the serial numbers off in case they were next.
I also read the two Renegades novels and I liked the attempts at world building, as barebones as it was in them, and would like to see more of Renegades as its own thing. It can keep the Trek DNA, if it must, but spin it in as dark or edgy a direction as it wishes to go.