NOVEL SIMPLE [Vol.4] Ch.47 The Battle for Kembora Part 3
Our artillery fire off another pair of shots at the flagship, landing one decent hit, and missing the second completely. The flagship fires another blast back at our beach. The shrapnel from the explosion pierces one of our pre-boiled steam cannons causing it to also rupture, sending even more shrapnel flying. Thankfully, the rupture propels the majority of that boiler upward and outward towards the ocean and avoids causing any extra damage.
Our artillery fired off a salvo at the flagship again, poking two more holes through the hull below the waterline. This flagship has now eaten 12 of our eighty shells that were to be used in the defense of this beach, not only that, but it's bought the rest of the fleet more time to get in landing range.
Just as I'm starting to run new emergency plans through my head to try to adapt our defense in light of potentially needing to retreat, we get a lucky break. Our artillery fire another salvo, and I see the flagship lurch sideways and begin to turn away from both me and the beach. I can't tell exactly what happened, but my guess is that part of it's hull broke enough that the ship is going to sink, it's possible that a munitions cache exploded.
Seeing that we are likely freed from the oppressive fire of their flagship's forward cannon, I order our troops to repair as much of the damage as they can in the next ten minutes, and return to defensive positions. It'll still be at least fifteen minutes before those ships get close enough that we would need to potentially worry about any landings and cannon fire.
As I watch our defenses start to regroup, I see the flagship is sinking deeper into the water. Looking through my telescope, I see individuals bailing ship. It's a bit less than a mile to land from where they are, so they could theoretically make it to shore by swimming, although they'll be exhausted. I'd much prefer if they drowned personally, but I'll settle for them being exhausted as part of this fight. Plus they'll be without equipment, since they'll actually need to swim to shore. Of course, with magic being an option, I'd expect some will be able to fight back, and that some might even have some swimming or water related magic or traits.
Our artillery are a little out of sync with each other now as they fire, but given the closer distance they have to their targets now, they're actually quite accurate in their shots. They're accurately shooting, and sinking, the smallest ships that have pulled ahead on the landing invasion. Ultimately, we need to stop the smallest ships so they can't ground themselves close enough to fight us easily.
Compared to the flagship, their smallest ships sink in a single, well placed hit. As our artillery continues to fire, the water gets flooded with more soldiers attempting to swim to shore, and their fleet has to navigate the still sinking wrecks that have started to block their path to the beach.
They do seem to have realized what we're attempting to do though. They've started to reorganize their fleet now that they know where we're firing from. They've started maneuvering their smaller ships towards the center of the fleet, protecting them with the hulls of the larger ships as they attempt to make it closer to land.
Their ships are now only about three-quarters of a mile out from landfall. Including the flagship, we've sunk eleven vessels. Much further, and their own cannons will be able to easily rain cannonballs on us if they so choose. We're positioned back on the beach by nearly a half-mile. I suspect that the larger of the ships will probably turn to broadside us soon. I doubt that those shots will be explosive shells though.
We have built our defenses with earthen mounds to make general cannonball fire ineffective, the problem with the flagship's cannon was it's exceptionally large explosive blast. It meant that we were getting hit from behind by shrapnel. All of our defenses are designed to allow us to fall back easily, which also means we're generally less defended from that direction, which is why that cannon was so important to take out. We can hide behind our earthen defensive mounds with embedded steam cannons and ballista when it comes to smaller cannon fire without much concern.
Almost on cue, some of the largest of the ships have begun turning broadside while at sea, and started to fire towards our defenses, including our bunkers with the artillery. By this point, our artillery is probably through about a third of their ammo. It'd be a tragedy if the bunkers fail, but they've been carefully designed to make them as resilient as possible to impact damage, so I suspect they'll at least survive until they've fired all their shells. Speaking of, they've sunk twenty vessels in total now.
Make that twenty-one. They've started to have to fire upon the medium sized vessels that are attempting to protect the smallest vessels on their way to the shore, and that most recent shot must have hit a munitions arsenal on that ship because a large amount of it just blew apart. Those are the kinds of hits we're hoping for. Most of those sailors and soldiers are as good as dead.
Unfortunately, we don't have a good way for one crew to inform the other of this discovered weak point, but they have each been trained to pay attention and attempt to hit the ships in those locations if they spot them. It can be hard to properly hit a ship with that degree of accuracy, but at least narrowing down where you know you can land a critical hit should make it a little easier to actually do so as they get closer.
On the beach however, we're dealing with cannonball rain. Given some of the traps we've set on the beach, carpeting the area with cannonballs might actually be safer terrain for their landing parties. I've already seen a few of the hidden spiked pitfalls collapse due to a cannonball hitting the false ground covering them.
The cannonballs are actually doing a better job of destroying the defenses we put down that were meant to be more of an annoyance than a kill trap. Sharpened wooden caltrops that had been laid out are occasionally getting obliterated by cannonballs, making the beach a little bit more maneuverable for the inevitable landing parties.
The landing fleet has made it to a half-mile from shore now, putting them a little over a mile away from myself. Some of the medium ships have now also turned broadside to fire their cannons at us. It's really annoying, but we haven't sustained any losses from the cannon fire so far. Every cannon shot they use now means they'll have less available to potentially use during a siege of our city if they decide to haul the cannons ashore for that in the future.
The artillery has sunk about two-thirds of their small ships now, and they're getting closer to running out of ammo. I would guess they have between ten and fifteen shots left in each bunker. Luck seems to be on our side though, as the tide change started about two hours ago, so the water level is receding. The enemy probably planned it this way, such that they could get their ships close to landing, then let the tide go out to ground them enough to unload. What they probably don't expect is that we've buried hardened spikes of wood within the beach all the way out to the low tide mark.
What they probably expected was that they'd fight a difficult fight, then take the beach and be able to use their smallest ships to make the landing easier. I honestly half-expected them to retreat by now given the amount of vessels we've been sinking. Though I suppose with so many soldiers being forced to swim to shore, they might be thinking in terms of sunk cost. If they continue and take the beach, many of those men might live. If they retreat, they're as good as dead. Given that one of said ships appeared to be a flagship, there was probably more than one important person on that ship, although I suspect they've probably already been helped aboard a different vessel by now.
Unluckily, or perhaps luckily, for the soldiers trapped in the water they're swimming slower than the ships around them, so they'll arrive ashore after the worst of the battle is fought. If we manage to stop them here, that means at best they'll be political prisoners, and at worst, dead. I don't think I'll take that many prisoners this time. Given the sheer numbers of individuals and the relative size of armies and the power of individuals with magic, I figure it's impossible to keep a large number of prisoners effectively, so we'll have to kill them...
After a few more shells are fired from our artillery, they stop firing. We've sunk what we can with what we had. All but four of the small ships are derelict at sea too far from shore to be useful. Overall, 33 of the original 72 ships have been sunk. As I expected, the smallest ships are still headed straight for land. They're close enough that I can see them starting to get all their weapons and armor on in preparation for attempting their landing.
Once it starts to become clear to the other ships that our artillery has stopped firing, more of their remaining ships start to maneuver back towards land. I can see that they do, in fact, have some rowboats on their decks, which will probably be used shortly. My hope is that we've disrupted their initial landing enough that it'll give us an advantage with the proper battle that's about to begin.