personal 2

During the last few years the Taurian Defense Forces had quietly created several Taurian Guard regiments, each expanding an existing battalion. They had not only received reinforcements in Aerospace Fighters, an area where the Concordat had traditionally been weak, but they had also received Assault 'Mechs. The entire production of MAD-4A Marauder II had gone to the Guards, as had the Royal 'Mechs battalion obtained in Artru and the remaining models had received most of the upgrade kits (DHS, extended range weapons), produced by Concordat companies like VMI, TTI and TMM.

With most of Maskirovka attention traditionally focused on the Federated Suns and the Free Worlds League and as soon as Romano took power, with the successive purges it had suffered and the war against the Magistracy and Andurien, it was understandable that the Capellan Confederation Armed Forces had little or no knowledge of the size and quality of the Taurian Defense Forces.

For these reasons, its counter-attack against the invasion by Concordat failed miserably, having not only failed to expel the invaders, but suffering severe losses during the operations.

The defeat suffered by House Liao had also substantially reduced available reserves for new operations against the other offensives going on. It did not help that Hanse chose this time to conduct (limited) exercises near the border with House Liao, forcing the units in that area to be unable to move and even making them call for reinforcements.

This reduced offensive capacity gave the Magistracy Armed Forces enough time to consolidate their forces, receive reinforcements and prepare for the expected counter-attacks. In August 3033, these attacks began to focus against the Andurien forces, using the Warrior Houses and McCarron's Armored Cavalry (MAC) on the front line. This situation continued until the end of 3033, with the remaining fronts virtually at peace with only small raids made against the planets occupied by the Canopians.

In early December 3033, the 2nd Taurian Guards raided Victoria, destroying the forces that protected the planet, the Home Guard and a battalion of Mechs from Ishara's Grenadiers, which was undergoing a rest and refit period, after some hard battles against the Andurien forces. After defeating the defenders, the Taurian Guards had 'visited' the various factories on the planet, more specifically Trellis Electronics (removing all components ready for delivery), Shengli Arms (taking care of the data cores with blueprints of advanced designs) and Earthworks Incorporated (components and parts) leaving shortly after with a considerable and valuable loot.

From Mars to December, the Revenants have been busy, raiding several Capellan worlds among them Cavalor, Renown and Pojos, never using more than one of combined arms battalions for that, as we always kept a strong force on Ward.

On December 18th​, in Ward, I barely escaped an assassination attempt, as infiltrators penetrated our security and attacked the HQ. Several officers were killed among them Vasseur and I escaped with burns on my left arm and two broken ribs. A good thing I wore ballistic armor even on an supposedly pacified planet.

None of the enemies escaped and further analysis of the bodies revealed they were Thuggees, their tattoos making them easy to identify. 

The Taurians hadn't attacked any more planets after the raid on Victoria. Either I was very wrong, or Thomas had achieved his goals and after having helped the Magistracy, had limited himself to defend the conquered area…

For our part, if we could maintain Ward for the Reach, it was a good thing as so far the losses had been few and Ward was a reasonably industrialized with a considerable number of industrially trained population for Periphery levels, making it a good system to get. After the second battle in February things had calmed down, the population staying calm and apparently not caring about the change in ownership. 

The Concordat intervention in the war and the excellent performance of the its armed forces had caused some attention from the intelligence services of several nations on the Concordat, which until now was like most of the Periphery nations rather unworthy of any attention. While almost all agencies send more operatives to the Concordat, the increase in numbers was not big due to the fact that ROM, LIC and MIIO were involved in an intense and bloody, shadow war, that absorbed a large part of their resources. SAFE as usual had its best operators occupied in internal guerrillas and was more focused on Andurien because of the secession, and ISF and O5P were very distant and had few operatives in the area.

Due to the good relations between the Concordat and the Federated Suns, the Sunny Boys had provided the Concordat with all the information they had about the Capellan Confederation, giving access to everything but their agents on the ground. They had also participated in the disinformation campaign about the Concordat capabilities.

The maneuvers that Hanse Davion had performed at a strategic time were also part of that collaboration, something unthinkable a few years earlier.

In return, a copy of the Victoria data cores from the Shengli Arms factory was handed over to Davion, as well as access to a detailed study of the Cataphract CTF-0X wreckage captured by the Revenants.