The Slones were on the bridge along with Captain Lorenzo. The Romani ships opted for a fortified bridge and did not waste internal space on a CIC. This had advantages and disadvantages. The greatest disadvantage lies in the fact that a hit getting through the bridge armor and point defenses could decapitate the command structure. The Romani do not think of this as a disadvantage, and Slone was not sure, but they were about to find out.
The Romani dreadnoughts were aligned in the same order as the cohorts on the ground. Ships with cohorts six, five, four, and three, were in front of the Longinus carrying cohort one. Behind were the ships with cohorts two, seven, eight, nine, and ten. The dreadnoughts and the invisible destroyers will be taking on the enemy dreadnoughts. The cruisers will fire on the dreadnoughts as they pass them and then head for the circle of enemy cruisers. No one was assigned to the destroyers and they would be handled, as they became a problem. The rule of thumb was, take out the big ships first and then deal with the little ones. The Romani were ready and the Petrovians were ready. Contact was in one hour and counting.
Captain Lorenzo ordered the communications tech to open a channel to the fleet. The command structure of the Romani was also geared to him being both captain and admiral. The only difference to that situation with the Petrov fleet lay in the fact that Romani captains were also given the freedom to make battlefield decisions without requesting the admiral’s permission. Therefore, Captain Lorenzo was only admiral when it came to planning and modifying the plan, but the actions of each ship within the plan was autonomous. This system had never been tested in a large-scale fleet operation. Time will tell if it was a wise decision.
Captain Lorenzo spoke into the channel and his voice was heard throughout all the ships of the fleet, even the invisible ones. “Romani, this is Captain Juan Lorenzo, second Consul of the Republic.”
Slone could hear the crew of the Longinus snap to attention and could picture the same happening on all the ships of the fleet. Lorenzo continued, “We are about to engage in the first, full scale fleet combat ever fought by the Romani. We have practiced for this and we have planned for it, but we cannot fully plan for the unknown. Remember, no one living on the Petrov ships has ever fought in a fleet battle either. No one in this system knows what to expect. In the end, it will come down to discipline and will. We Romani have both. I and the Senate and People of Nova Romae will expect the utmost from all of you and then some. You carry the honor of the Republic on your shoulders and all are holding their breaths waiting to hear the outcome. Remember your training and remember your honor. The Republic expects your best. Battle stations. Raise the battle sails. Begin the cadence.”
The drumbeat started at a slow, steady pace, Slone could hear the masts rise from the spine of the ship, and the sails climb up them. He was not sure what to make of the cadence the first time he heard it, but it brought out something in him and made his blood boil in a battle rage. It was now thirty minutes to first contact. The invisible destroyers reported they were now on the enemy’s left and matching their speed. As Slone looked out at space, he was beginning to see the enemy fleet resolve from small dots, reflecting starlight, to small ships. They were coming straight on and if the Romani fleet kept its course, each Romani vessel would be surrounded by the Petrovian fleet as a cork is surrounded by the glass of the bottle. Surely, they didn’t think this would happen nor did they still think the Romani were nothing but ill-trained pirates. If the latter is the case, then the Petrov admiral must be massively arrogant. Lorenzo and Slone both expected the Petrov fleet to move right or left, up or down and they would respond accordingly, but they just kept coming on. It was now time for the Romani to act. Lorenzo had the battle channel open. “Attack speed, line to port.”
Immediately the cadence doubled in speed and the sails on each vessel turned to catch the star wind. Starting with the lead cruiser the line turned left to pass the Petrovians on the enemy right. Once the line passes the front line of enemy ships, the Petrovian fleet will be sandwiched between the capital ships and the invisible destroyers. The enemy responded to this move by keeping their dreadnoughts in the elongated cube formation but the halo of cruisers began to break formation and move over to the enemy’s right flank to meet the threat from what they thought was the entire Romani fleet. Aboard the Petrov flagship, Admiral Dubov was pointing out to civilian Perminov, how well his ships responded to the threat of the Romani flanking maneuver. Perminov looked at the threat board and saw the Romani had increased their speed and where using their sails. He pointed out how well they used them in his encounter and Dubov dismissed him as being an old woman. “Sails do not defeat an enemy, cannons do.”
“I tell you, their use of sails is genius. Their destroyers could turn on a dime. Where are their destroyers?”
“To hell with their destroyers, they obviously sent them away. We have no indication of any other ships in system and no ship can burn fuel fast enough to get here before the battle is over.”
“Listen to me, Dubov, we have usually not agreed with things, but I tell you there is something here we are not seeing.”
“If you want to remain on my bridge, civilian, you will keep your mouth shut. Dubov now turned to his communications tech, “Order all the destroyers to engage the enemy cruisers and order our cruisers to attack the line. Have the dreadnoughts stand by to maneuver.”
“Yes Admiral.” With that, the battle to defend New Wales began.
The Petrovian destroyers left their position to the front and rear of the formation. At the same time, the cruisers all moved to the right of the enemy line, leaving the left flank of the dreadnoughts exposed. The 12 destroyers in front of the enemy formation came in range of the five leading cruisers and fired their missiles and cannons at the Romani. The Romani cruisers fired a broadside sending 30 cannon shot into the destroyer formations, which had lost some cohesion during the turn to starboard. As soon as the broadsides were fired, the cruisers began to pivot in the direction of the oncoming Petrovian cruiser force. The Romani pivot caused some of the cannon shot to glance off their hulls but several did hit with minimal damage. The missiles were a different matter. Their guidance systems could track the change in course and adjusted accordingly. A horde of missiles came into the cruiser formation. However, they did not come in with the timed precision of the previous Romani missile attack. As they came in waves, some were thrown off enough to miss entirely and some were taken down by the point defenses. Those that got through did their damage. There were impacts on some of the ship’s crew quarters and a few guns were dismounted. The damage crews went right to work on remounting them. The worst hit was on the NR Cohors Secunda, the cruiser escort of the dreadnought carrying the second cohort. A missile slammed into the starboard engine as the ship was pivoting and caused a fire in the engine that carried into the engine room. The cruiser slowed but continued in the fight. As the cruisers were dealing with the missile attack, their broadsides slammed into the destroyers. There were no point defenses for the shot, it either missed or hit, and the Romani guns were accurate. Two of the destroyers simply vanished. Most of the rest suffered severe damage and were taken out of the action. Of the original twelve, only five remained operational with little or no damage. They reloaded their missiles and prepared to fire again.
The cruisers now pivoted again and returned to their previous course. The fires aboard the NR Cohors Secunda were coming under control and the ship was still able to fight. She also pivoted but was slower than the rest and the remaining five enemy destroyers from the forward group decided to concentrate on the wounded ship. To keep with the battle plan, the Romani had to leave the cruiser to her fate, knowing she would acquit herself with honor. On the Romani flagship, Lorenzo was watching the action on the threat board as the dreadnoughts came closer. So far, no ships were attacking them, so it was time for the next part of the trap, confuse the enemy. He looked at his communications tech and nodded. The tech opened the fleet wide communication. “Cruisers begin rotation
and pull up, dreadnoughts cross the ‘T’.”
The order to the cruises was for the rear five to join the front five to fight the enemy cruisers and remaining destroyers. This aspect of the battle was important to pull the lesser vessels away from protecting the dreadnoughts and to allow the dreadnoughts to maneuver unmolested. Of course, this required the dreadnoughts to conclude their part of the fight before the smaller vessel combats were finished. Crossing the ‘T’ was an old earth navy battleship term that required the line of ships to cross in front of the enemy and hit them with broadsides. This brought the full broadsides of the line of ships against the limited forward fire of the opposing force. As the line of dreadnoughts followed each other in a 90-degree turn to starboard, the rear five cruisers went to flank speed to close with the five under attack. The battle was now fully joined except for the Romani destroyers. As the cannons of the first Romani dreadnought came to bear, she fired a full broadside of 24 guns at the Petrovian dreadnought forming the right upper point of the cube formation. After firing her port guns, the dreadnought had started a slow rotation around its long axis. This would slowly bring the starboard cannons to bear as the port cannons were reloaded. This same procedure was repeated along the line and the Petrovian ships saw the danger and turned to port. This had two effects; it would eventually bring the starboard broadsides to bear on the Romani and it increased the separation of the Petrovian dreadnoughts from their support ships. This was the action the Romani were waiting for and had hoped to achieve with their strategy.
Captain Lorenzo again went onto the fleet wide channel. “Destroyers engage,” was all he said.
It was the normal policy of the Romani to decloak before firing weapons, the theory being, once you open the gun ports, you were no longer invisible. With the destroyer attack, they would try something new. The captains theorized that, since the missile tubes are much smaller and can be opened and closed rapidly, it may be possible to open the tube, fire the missile and then close the tube without giving the position away. If this worked, it would be psychologically devastating, since the missiles would appear to come out of nowhere. The destroyers were within range of the Petrovian dreadnoughts, which were at that moment turning in their direction. At a countdown from the lead destroyer, again captained by Oskar Rand, all 19 of the Romani destroyers opened their starboard missile tubes, fired their missiles, quickly closed the tubes, and started to rotate to bring their port tubes over to repeat the attack.
Aboard the Petrov flagship, opening salvos were being analyzed by Grand Admiral Dubov. The destroyer attack on the enemy cruisers was a bit disappointing. True, it looked like one of the cruisers was hit and may have internal fires; the other four lead cruisers had only minimal damage. In return, he lost seven of twelve destroyers. He was intently watching his cruisers and rear destroyers pushing hard to join the battle. He was itching to get into action himself. Suddenly, he saw a change in the enemy line. Their rear cruisers were pulling past the line of dreadnoughts, which, itself, was turning in a line to cross the front of his formation. The lead Romani dreadnought fired at long range on the right of the Petrov formation.
“They are trying to cross the ‘T’,” he said, to no one in particular. “Order all dreadnoughts to turn 45 degrees to port.”
“Yes, Admiral, helm responds 45 degrees to port.”
Dubov now turned to his unwilling companion. “You see, Perminov, they are doing as I predicted and trying to cross the ‘T’. We will hit their line at a 45 degree angle and weave through them.”
Perminov looked at the threat board as the ships symbols were moving in opposite directions. “Dubov, they are pulling your dreadnoughts away from the screening ships. This smells like a trap to me.”
“Again you are defeated before you do battle. There is no trap here, only pirates armed by some corporation with big ships but little training. They are doing textbook attacks.”
Suddenly alarms started sounding on the bridge. There was a lot of activity around the sensor board. The lead Romani dreadnought had just fired at long range onto the upper left flank ship in the formation and scored a few hits, but nothing serious. Surely, this could not relate to that, Dubov thought. “Sensors, what’s happening?”
Before they could answer, Dubov felt Perminov grab his arm and point to the threat board projected on the front canopy of the bridge. There, for all to see was a cloud of missiles heading right for their formation. The missiles were coming from the left of the formation, away from any of the combat action.
“Where are those missiles coming from?”
The sensor tech looked at the admiral with visible sweat running down his forehead, “They are coming from nowhere. There are no ships out there.”
“The missing destroyers,” Perminov said, more to himself than the admiral.
Dubov looked at his tech, “Find out who fired them or I’ll have you shot for incompetence.”
“Yes, admiral,” the tech replied.
Dubov’s threat only increased the sweating as the missiles began to score hits on the left flank vessels. There was some significant damage being reported and the captains sounded quite stressed. There was no target at which to return fire. Suddenly the sensor tech reported the detection of a telemetry trace in the direction of the missile fire, but this was immediately followed by a second missile launch and the trace was gone. The appearance of the second swarm of 114 missiles caused panic in the formation and it began to break up.
“They’re invisible,” Perminov suddenly concluded.
“Invisible? Nonsense they are somehow jamming us. Send all dreadnoughts the coordinates of that telemetry blip and have them fire cannons and missiles in that direction.”
“Yes, sir,” and the communications tech passed on the order and all dreadnoughts fired their cannons and missiles in the direction of the telemetry blips.
Just as they were firing their broadsides, the second group of missiles began to hit their targets and the combat channel was filled with pandemonium. The blind shots mostly went wide but two did connect with unlucky Romani destroyers. One hit and caused a breach that could no longer be hidden. The second hit another destroyer and penetrated to the vital insides where the fuel bunkers were. When it detonated, it broke the ship in half and bodies started pouring out. Those who were still in sealed areas of the ship took to the boarding sleds and abandoned ship.
“They are invisible,” Dubov said in disbelief. “How can they do that?”
Perminov responded while the rest of the bridge crew looked dumbfounded. “I don’t know, but that means there are still a large number of invisible destroyers out there who could come into our fleet anytime.”
Perminov wished he had a camera. The expression on Dubov’s face was priceless. There was no time to think about that anymore. One Petrovian dreadnought was damaged severely enough to be out of the fight and was dead in space. Two more were heavily damaged, all on the left of the fleet. Dubov also began to notice his mistake. When the first Romani dreadnought fired on his lead ships, he ordered the fleet to come 45 degrees to port. This was moving him at an angle to the enemy line, but it was also moving him away from all of his screening vessels. The dreadnought count was still slightly in his favor, but the damage those damn invisible destroyers did made the combat capabilities almost equal. They were drawing nearer the line of Romani dreadnoughts. Except for the shots that caused him to veer away, they have remained silent. The tactics used by the Romani were different from any that the corporations use. He had to capture one to learn the secret of invisibility. With that, his corporation could conquer the galaxy. Before that could happen, he had to get his fleet back in order and win this battle. He turned to his communications tech and ordered, “Contact the fleet and order all dreadnoughts to form on the flagship. Order them to form a battle line.”
Perminov realized that the Grand Admiral was a victim of his own misconceptions. He knew this because he had been there himself. These were anything but pirates. First,
they defeated him with destroyers only. Then they recaptured the planet from a large ground force. Now they were using invisible destroyers to take out the grand fleet of the Petrov Corporation. This invasion had been a disaster from the start. The entire plague cover story was a lie and all the top commanders knew it. They had released a plague on Balin space and claimed the Balin Corp had released it on them. The lower level commanders and the infantry generals were told the plague was genocidal and sterilized their women who produced eggs for the incubation facilities. All of this was designed to demonize the Balin Corp. No one ever expected them to pull a well-equipped pirate fleet out of their hat and now here they were, fighting for their lives. He looked at the threat board and realized the Petrov fleet was still disorganized but pulling into line. Too late though, the Romani line was in range.
Lorenzo was pleased with the way things were going. His ploy to move to the right flank of the enemy pulled the screening vessels away from the dreadnoughts. Having the first ship fire at long range caused the dreadnoughts to divert towards their left and pulled them away from their screens. This was possible only because they had no idea there were ships stationed on the enemy left. Firing the missiles in massed groups while still invisible worked like a charm. He did admire the enemy admiral taking out two destroyers by firing blindly, but he would make sure that it would not happen again. “Open the battle channel,” he ordered the communications tech. “Captain Rand, cut your destroyers loose on the fleet and remain invisible.”
Nova Romae (The Adventures of Christopher Slone Book 2) Page 23