The Depths of Neptune - Chapter 8

Legion Camp, North of Glevum

He had to hand it to Velius, Ky thought as he stepped out of his tent and looked west, the man could pick locations. Ky looked over the cliffs towards the blue ocean and the sails below. Although he was several hundred feet back with men and tents between him and the edge, the command tents had helpfully been placed on a high point, allowing them to look over the men and equipment to see the ocean beyond.

Having spent most of his life in orbit or on-board space ships, Ky’s experience with the majesty of nature was limited. He’d thought, as a young man a long time ago in the far future, that nothing could beat looking at the shimmering gas clouds in orbit above Jupiter or the way sunlight bounced off the rocks and ice crystals in Saturn’s rings, but he’d been wrong. He was not only appreciating the view, but also the crisp smell of salt in the air and the crashing of waves below. If Ky could have his wish, he and Lucilla would have a home somewhere near here and they would sit out front all day, looking at the waves.

Of course, the sounds of thousands of men getting prepared for another day of training were a stark reminder that there was a lot to do before that could happen. Giving one last glance at the view, Ky headed for the command tent where he, Bomilcar, and Velius had been meeting every morning to discuss that day's goals and continue to work on plans for taking Insula Manavia, which had turned out to be a trickier proposition than Ky had first thought.

The island was packed with soldiers, mostly those who escaped from Ériu or Londinium, which meant even though the Britannians would have the more maneuverable position, for once, they’d still be outnumbered. That in itself wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the fact that it was an island. Tactics at this time were basically to take an oar-driven ship and slam it into the coast, and then have soldiers scramble over the sides and charge forward. The problem was, massed formations of heavy infantry relied on numbers, and you could only get so many men onto each ship capable of landing on a beach, and only so many of those ships on a given stretch of beach.

Because of the way the ships landed, it would take time to push them back out to sea and clear room for more ships to land, which was going to leave whatever troops they could land even more outnumbered for quite some time. The ships on the beach would also be impediments for archers to provide support, not to mention the archers would be at fairly extreme ranges and firing from a moving ship, which would play havoc with their accuracy. Meanwhile, the other side would be able to rain fire down on the soldiers and then use their greater numbers to push them into the sea.

It was a tricky proposition, and one they had to solve before they could begin training their men on how to conduct the landings. Thankfully, they had their own secret weapon. As much as some of the Romans still distrusted him, the more Ky worked with Bomilcar, the more he was astounded by the man’s mind. He had an intuitive sense of battlefield tactics and could see the entire field clearly in his mind, constantly evaluating moves and countermoves. It was similar to what Sophus was designed to do, except Bomilcar added a sense of intuitiveness that an AI, no matter how well designed, could never emulate. Ky had assigned him to figure out their landing problem, which is why he wasn’t surprised to find the general already in the command tent, leaning over the large map with its wooden markers, deep in thought.

“Good morning,” Ky said, setting his sword and helmet down on a nearby table before joining Bomilcar at the map. “Any progress?”

“Some, although I’m still interested in the new training you started. I’d like to see how these new formations change the landscape.”

“I’ve been wondering the same thing,” Velius said from behind Ky.

“It shouldn’t affect it at all,” Ky said. “These new formations are for when we start producing the new weapons. From the progress reports I’ve gotten from Hortensius, I’m hopeful we’ll see the first of the rifles by mid-summer, which will allow us to make our landings by the end of summer or early fall, and have the winter to fortify our positions before the Carthaginians can counter-attack.”

“You still haven’t told us what these new weapons are,” Velius said. “How are we supposed to work on preparing the men for these new tactics when we don’t know what kind of weapon we’ll even be using?”

“That’s fair,” Ky said, and then turned to the guards standing inside the tent. “Wait outside.”

“You don’t trust them?” Bomilcar said, looking to the two men as they left. “One of them is one of your personal guards. As far as I knew, we … I mean the Carthaginians, were having trouble infiltrating any agents at all. The information I was getting, back then, was piecemeal at best.”

“I do trust them, but soldiers talk. We know that there are still supporters of the insurgency out there, and that some of them are getting word back to Caesius, who is then giving it to the Carthaginians. It’s an unwieldy system and from everything Ramirus can find, slow, but we’re operating on long enough timelines that if they heard about something now, they could make changes to counter our strategy by the time we attack the continent. Worse, because most of these spies are disgruntled citizens, it’s very hard to tell them from us. It’s too easy for information to slip out. We’re already playing it very tight to maintain the element of surprise from when Hortensius actually starts producing the weapons to when they’re introduced into the field. This is why keeping secret any word of what the weapon might be is even more important.”

“That makes sense,” Velius said. “It is, however, just the three of us now. Unless you think we’re at risk to talk.”

“No, although I did want you both to be clear on how important it is to keep the information on what we’re doing as secret as possible. Right now, only Lucilla and I know the details. We haven’t even explained the weapon to Hortensius yet.”

“We’re privileged, then, to be among your most trusted advisors,” Bomilcar said, which earned him a sharp glance from Velius.

Velius was a professional and had shown he was able to work with Bomilcar when needed, because those were his orders, but he’d also made it clear he neither liked nor trusted the former Carthaginian general.

“The new weapons are called rifles,” Ky said, continuing on before Velius could make some kind of cutting remark to Bomilcar. “I know you’ve heard me say that before, but I want to be clear that’s what we’re talking about. They are like the cannon, only much smaller, and a little longer than the spears the legions use but much shorter than the spears of the Carthaginians. In actual operations, it works much like an arcuballista, where the soldier puts the butt of the weapon to his shoulder, aims down the length of it, and pulls a trigger to fire it. Instead of an arrow, the projectile is a small piece of lead that is pushed out of the weapon when a small amount of gunpowder is exploded.”

“Is it sharpened?” Velius asked. “How much damage can a small piece of lead do? The cannon I understand, since those cannon balls weigh so much, they’re like a boulder, but an arrow without a head might pierce the skin, but would bounce off shields and armor.”

“True, and if it was traveling at the speed of an arrow, it would, but the size of the bullet, which is what the small piece of lead is called, and the force that is behind it makes it travel incredibly fast. Three or four times faster than an arrow, with a lot of force behind it. I know it’s hard to envision, which is why a lot of this won’t matter until you see it tested, but trust me when I say it can cut through any armor or shields you can imagine, and the person wearing them. If you have two men, one in front of the other, and they are somewhat close to the man firing the rifle, it will go through the first man and into the second. It has all of the power of a scorpion bolt, but is so small you can hold it in the palm of your hand. The only thing the scorpion bolt does better is leave a bigger hole; but the rifle can be operated by a single man, whereas the scorpion requires a crew.”

Both men were stunned for a second by Ky’s description. They were both seasoned warriors and had seen a wide variety of weapons of war. Scorpions were a siege weapon used by both sides, although Ky hadn’t seen any since coming to Britannia. They fired what were essentially huge arrows that, because of their weight and the size of the machine, which used several men to crank back the bow string that fired it, could take a grown man off his feet and go through multiple men if they were lined up one in front of the other.

“I know you’ve pulled out some wonders, and I don’t doubt you, not after seeing the cannon in action, but it is hard to imagine what you’re describing. How something so small could have so much power,” Bomilcar said. “As Velius said, the cannon made sense, what with the size of the metal being thrown, but something that could fit in your hand being able to do the same damage. Unbelievable.”

“How fast do they fire?”

“That is the part that will take time and training. With enough drilling, a trained soldier should be able to fire two to three bullets a minute.”

“That slow?” Velius said. “That’s only a little faster that the arcuballista. If it has the power to penetrate shields, yes, we’ll kill a lot more men, but unless every man hits a different target every time, which if it’s anything like arcuballista seems improbable, their line will be on top of ours before we get more than two shots off, which isn’t going to be enough to stop a full phalanx. If our men only have these rifles, which sound much longer than the arcuballista, they won’t be able to carry swords and shields, and the enemy will roll right over us. Yes, we’ll kill a lot of them, but they have men to lose and we don’t.”

“You’re thinking of the rifles in terms of arcuballista, which is my fault, but it’s the closest thing I have to compare them to. They, however, are not really comparable. For one, their range to hit a target is significantly longer. The rifle is also more accurate, even with minimal training, and the bullet itself can continue traveling, and be lethal, up to a mille passus, although that is without any accuracy. More importantly, unlike the arcuballista, where we lose penetration over longer ranges, the rifle continues to be just as effective. It is also significantly more deadly. The lead bullet, when impacting a person will begin to lose shape, expanding out. It will remove whole sections of bone and can cause terrible wounds. Nearly any wound caused by a bullet will take the wounded man out of the fight.”

“But what about when the enemy gets up close? If they have enough men, it will happen.”

“Less often than you think. You’re used to large formations which tend to approach slowly so they can hold their unit cohesion. If a phalanx charged you, it would break apart by the time it got to you, which keeps it from being effective. In this case, yes, it would be better for the men to charge and close the gap, so that they won’t spend so long under fire, but it’s hard for men to break their training. In addition, while phalanxes do move under arrow fire, it’s usually not sustained for long periods like this and the damage a barrage of arrows causes will be significantly lower than volley fire from rifles, which like the arcuballista, fire in direct lines which means against tight packed ranks every bullet will hit someone. With that many bodies piling up, it will be hard for large formations to move forward.”

“What piles of bodies?” Velius asked. “Sure, the phalanxes move slow, but two or three volleys a minute, their bodies will be spread out pretty far, even if entire lines go down.”

“I said two or three shots a minute per man, which is why we trained on the arcuballista the way we have. I know you questioned the need to fire in ranks when we discussed the tactics for that weapon, but one of the main reasons was to prepare for this and why the men are beginning to train in the new formations. A line will still be four rows deep, with each row firing in volleys, and then kneeling to reload while the row behind them fires. By the time the fourth row has finished, the first row should be ready to stand, aim and fire, and so on. This way, they can maintain a fairly regular pace of fire on the enemy, who will be slowly closing over much longer distances. Over time, they will change their tactics, probably attempting to charge our lines, closing the gap quickly, which we will also have tactics for. The men will train to deal with that as well, but first, we must get the basics down.”

“That’s why you wanted the new formations to spread out, only one cohort deep.”

“Correct. Men in the back are no good to us, since they can’t fire on the enemy. Each cohort fields eight centuries, four rows deep across, with two centuries held in reserve, to be plugged in as needed. Depending on the situation, we might hold an entire cohort behind in reserve, but that will be as the situation allows it. This also allows us to get the cannon into battle directly, placing batteries between each of the cohorts, and that is why we started working on those canister shells Aurelius said wouldn’t be able to hit anything.”

“But then even with all of that, the Carthaginians will still get to our lines,” Bomilcar, who always looked for holes in any plan, said. “From your description, these weapons won’t even make particularly good clubs, let alone be able to defend against swords and spears.”

“You’d be surprised, but we aren’t going to use them as clubs. There will be an additional attachment for the weapon to allow it to be used as a melee weapon as well. While we still have the problem of sheer numbers, this weapon system will allow us to fight significantly above our own numbers.”

“If you get it finished in time,” Velius said. “Everything you’ve described is fantastical, and well beyond anything we have now.”

“Not well beyond. The cannon was a first step, and I think we can all agree that part is at least working out well.”

“We can,” Bomilcar said. “But it also sounds as if it won’t be ready for our assault on Insula Manavia, unless you are willing to move your timetable back.”

“I am not. We need a foothold this year, so we can have the winter to dig in and fortify the position, but before they have time to move the waves of men Ramirus has already reported on to the coast. The window of opportunity here is too narrow to wait.”

“Which means the assault has to happen with the weapons we have on hand, and not your new rifles, correct?” Bomilcar asked.

“Correct.”

“Then why make this change now? It is going to weaken our formations. Our wall will be thinner than it needs to be. Against a larger opponent, it’s better to maintain the lines short and compact and find land contours that keep us from being overwhelmed. With such a thin wall, all a larger force needs to do is punch through one point to break us, which is much easier when it’s only four rows of infantry versus two full cohorts.”

“We ran nearly as thin when facing Bomilcar, and won,” Ky pointed out.

“True, but you attacked from four sides once your trebuchets engaged. You managed to surround us like at Cannae, using siege weapons and civilians in the hills. It was a clever strategy to be sure, but we will not be able to lead these men into the same trap you lead me into. They will be on us at the beach and aren’t going to allow us to back off to the other end of the island and prepare for them.”

“Will the explosive shells be ready in time?” Ky subvocalized to Sophus.

“I believe so, Commander. Lucilla has already begun working with Hortensius on a cannonball with a cavity large enough to store gunpowder in quantities that will rupture the shell and create shrapnel. Sorantius’s progress on nitric acid also makes impact fuses a possibility, although it is too early to tell if sufficient testing can be done before it is required by your timeline.”

“Impact would be better, but we can make this work with timed fuses,” Ky subvocalized before speaking out loud. “True, but things are different now. We have the cannon.”

“How will we get them off the ships? They’re incredibly heavy. Without a gangplank to push them down, we’ll need some sort of pulley system. That will take a lot of time,” Velius said.

“We won't get them off the ships. Valdar’s ships, none of which are capable of making a beach landing, will stand offshore and provide support, which will start before the first boats land. His ships stand higher than the oar-driven boats Bomilcar was discussing yesterday and there is that slight rise here from the tree line to the beach, allowing Valdar’s ships to pound the beaches hard. We should have enough cannons to arm all three ships. Only eight will be able to face the beach at a time, but together that gives us twenty-four cannons, which is more than we had when we crushed the Carthaginian fleet. We’re also working on some potential enhancements to the cannonballs, including ones loaded with gunpowder that will explode after a set amount of time, which will really cause havoc among their lines. We won’t have many of those, but we will save every one not needed for testing for this assault.”

“How long can you maintain fire?” Bomilcar asked.

“Long enough for the landings,” Ky said.

“Commander, you should consider …” Sophus started to say before Ky interrupted it.

“One second,” Ky subvocalized.

“Is that for the landings if we do what we talked about, and spread all of the vessels to land at once, or long enough to allow successive waves of boats to land, unload troops, row back into the sea, and allow following the waves of boats to unload? Because my understanding is your cannons are located on three ships, meaning there is a limit to how much beach they can cover, and you need concentrated fire if you’re going to keep the enemy in place. If the fire slacks enough, wouldn’t they just charge our men? Once engaged, the cannon can’t fire without causing excessive casualties on our side.”

“He is correct, Commander. The optimal landing zone for continuous suppressive cannon fire is just over two hundred meters, which would allow ten ships to land at a time. With an average load of one hundred legionnaires per boat, it would take five landings.”

“You’re right, of course,” Ky said, digesting what Sophus had said. “So that gives us what? The span of ten boat widths for landing, which means we need five waves of ships to land a full legion. How long would it take to get ten boats on and off the beach and then the next wave of boats in?”

He could have asked Sophus this question, but unlike the calculations of coverage range and landing zone size, the time it takes for an oar-driven ship to land, unload, and get back out to sea would vary a lot and wouldn’t be something easily found in a database or extrapolated.

“Thirty minutes, probably. Unloading won’t take long, but even with legionnaires helping to push the boats back into the ocean, the tide is strong and the oarsmen will have to work hard to make it out even at that speed.”

“There’s another problem,” Velius said. “Between the boats we had, civilian boats, and those captured from the Carthaginians, we only have thirty-seven galleys large enough to carry the number of men we need to transport, which means we don’t even have enough to get all of one legion on shore quickly. At best, we can land about thirty-five hundred men before the boats have to turn around and come back here to reload.”

“What if they don’t have to make the trip back here at all?” Bomilcar asked. “Before we left, I was speaking with Lucan, the shipbuilder, and he was telling me about these smaller boats you have called launches, that the caravels would carry, because they can’t make it to shore themselves. He said they could carry about thirty men or so if the soldiers doubled as rowers. If I remember correctly, the caravel can carry seventy-five men in addition to the sailors and cannoneers, correct? That at least makes up the rest of the fourth wave.”

“They’ll be tired from rowing, but yes, we could manage that. It doesn’t cover the fifth wave, however.”

“What about fishing vessels?” Velius said. “If we pack men on fishing vessels and build a small launch to go to each, we could get enough to carry the last wave, correct? They are small enough, if they set out just as the smaller fourth wave went in, they could land shortly behind it, yes? It would be a lot of ships, and more spread out, but we’d have almost four thousand men ashore by then, which is more than enough to begin the assault, so it would be safer for them.”

“That might work,” Ky said. “That would be it, though. We would have commandeered nearly every ship available with this plan, meaning it will be almost a full day before we could get boats reloaded and back. Maybe more considering the number of boats we’re dealing with.”

“But we always knew that we’d only have one legion, which is why we’ve always assumed we’re going to be outnumbered again,” Velius said.

“And pulling back to wait for more men will actually lose the one advantage we have. We’ve sunk any boats they’ve tried to send and they have no way of seeing what’s happening away from the island, which is our big advantage, and why the landings will work so close to their base. We’ll probably get one full wave landed by the time they assemble to attack us. It will keep them off balance. Carthaginian armies have never done well in sieges, since it’s difficult to form a phalanx inside a surrounded fort. They’re forced to fight one-on-one, and those soldiers will mostly be conscripts, not the empire’s elite. As long as their commander thinks he has a chance to engage us in the open field, he will choose that option. If we play it right, it will take him time to realize that his men are being badly ravaged by the cannons, and pull them back. As soon as they do that, we should halt the cannon fire and move whatever troops we have forward quickly. If we hit them at the right moment, they will break. We won’t have much in the way of cavalry to run them down, but their soldiers are only very effective in the phalanx. Once they are broken, we can separate into centuries and sweep up the rest. It might even be over before the final wave can land, depending on when their formation cracks.”

“Charging in against six or seven thousand men with less than a full legion? Are you trying to get my men killed?” Velius asked, anger in his eyes.

“No. I’m trying to give them the best chance possible to defeat the enemy and keep their casualties low. The worst thing we can do is move slowly, which is why I’d like to go in with the first wave. The timing must be exact.”

“Over my dead …” Velius started, before Ky interrupted him.

“Velius, I appreciate your concern for your men, but this is one of the values of having someone like Bomilcar here with us. He knows how the Carthaginians will react far better than any of us. If what he says is true, then he’s right, and we will be able to win quickly and with a minimal number of casualties. I think we should follow his lead.”

Velius looked like he was going to say something else, but got control of himself at the last moment. After taking a deep breath, Velius nodded.

“I think this will work,” Ky said. “We’ll know more once we do some run-throughs. We’ve found a few spots here where we can practice landing and see how it plays out in a mock battle before we do the real thing. Once we see the results we’ll re-evaluate. All right?”

“As you command, Consul,” Velius said, although the look he shot Bomilcar made it clear he was far from sold on the plan.