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On January 4, 3057, Thomas Calderon, who had been in an asylum for the mentally ills for several years, died.

Note: He had been hospitalized since 3052, see chapter 76.

In February '57, Sun-Tzu began a charm campaign, trying to create an alliance with the Taurian Concordat and the Magistracy of Canopus.

The best that could be said is that it was not successful. The Capellan Confederation had nothing interesting to offer, was viewed with great suspicion by both nations, and even if relations with the Federated Commonwealth were not always good but they were good and important enough not to be sacrificed for a gain that was dubious to say the least. The Taurian Concordat also had excellent relations with the St. Ives Compact, which would also suffer from such an agreement.

In March, mercenaries who had hitherto defended Furud and Shiro, suddenly changed alliances and revolted against the few forces Andurien had present. Obviously, this was part of a plan, as in the same week, Warrior Houses Fujitsu and Hiritsu with major support from ASFs and Pocket WarShips, appeared in both systems for 'peace-keeping' and managed to take control of both systems for the Capellan Confederation, without any opposition from the 'revolted' mercenaries.

Despite the protests of Dalma Humphreys, the Duchess of Andurien, the reality was that Andurien could do nothing about it, not having sufficient forces to oppose them, with what little remained of the Defenders of Andurien, after the hard fighting of the still ongoing Civil War, stretched to the limit defending the various borders.

As was to be expected, the return of the Capellan Confederation to offensive operations / invasions of neighboring nations, at a time when everyone (minus what was left of the Free Worlds League) was busy with the Clans, was viewed with considerable concern.

On March 5, while analyzing the belongings of the deceased victim of a traffic accident , confidential data from Concordat Aerospace Limited, the company that controlled / managed the shipyards in the Taurus system was found . The ensuing investigation could not identify the victim, nor who she worked for / spied for. Also, even the most exhaustive spy-hunt, didn't give any hint about how she could get in possession of said confidential information.

During February and March 3057, the number of Clan WarShips in the Inner Sphere / invasion corridors increased substantially, much more and faster than the most pessimistic predictions had foreseen.

The reason for this was identified when the Taurian Orcas began operating along the Exodus Road, which was much less protected than what had been feared. This caused an unusual number of losses for the various Clans, at no cost to the Taurian raiders. On two occasions they even captured a considerable amount of equipment. The Orcas operated from a base in Gravenhage, on the Northern border of the Draconis Combine, very close to the corridor used by the Smoke Jaguars, which didn't manage to discover it.

During this period of time, the number of SpecOps units inserted in the worlds captured by the Clans increased constantly, creating a never-ending number of problems to occupation forces that were not trained or equipped to deal with this type of problems.

In late March, 3057, our people working in the military shipyard of the Magistracy witnessed the arrival of two JumpShip, quickly followed by a badly damaged, barely operational Mckenna class WarShip. That the Canopians didn't even try to hide its arrival from our people supported the theory that they knew that they couldn't repair it alone, and that in the near future were going to ask for our help.

It was later known that after exhaustive analysis of the Wolverine records,MIM had found the location of the SLS Zughoffer Weir, that the Wolverines had been forced to abandon, because they couldn't repair it. Knowing the exact level of the damages it had suffered, the Magistracy sent an expedition with enough technicians and spares (and fuel, food, etc) to bring it back.

Note.: Concordat technicians are helping the Magistracy expanding the shipyard, to be capable to build warships. Right now is capable of building JumpShips and servicing WarShips up to 1Mtons.

OTL the WoB needed 3 to 5 years to repair it on the Titan Yards (found it 3061, entered in service in 3065), but the MoC is going to need more time.

In Mechdur, the Concordat started to built the Block II of the Pinto Corvette, replacing all the conventional weapons (5LL, 10ML, 48SL, 80MG, 10 AC/5 and 4 AC/20) with 16 LPL, 16 MPL, 16 AMS and 4 Arrow IV SAM tubes, and replacing the 800 SHS with 500 DHS. Plans for upgrading the armor to Improved Ferro-Aluminum were delayed to the following Block III, because of the involved costs. After all, the Pinto class was supposed to be a (relatively) cheap WarShip.