Chapter 104: Egyptian Convoy

Fleet Admiral Felix stood on the command bridge of his flagship, the *Dominus*, peering into the fog.

His armada of twenty ironclads and sixty cruisers had been holding formation off the coast of Massilia for three hours.

Lucius had split his naval forces.

While Felix commanded the main intercept fleet waiting in the open water, a secondary task force of twenty shallow-draft cruisers was hiding within the coastal inlets near Massilia.

This reserve fleet was commanded by a captain named Carbo, and was loaded with a detachment of four thousand Iron Marines under the command of Valerius’s lieutenants.

Their objective was not to fight ships; their objective was to execute an amphibious flanking maneuver if the Egyptian supply fleet attempted to land troops further east.

But Felix had the primary objective...

His orders were simple: intercept and annihilate the Egyptian supply convoy before they could deliver grain to Legate Rufinus’s mercenaries in the north.

The lookout in the crow’s nest of the *Dominus* rang a brass bell twice.

Felix grabbed his spyglass.

Emerging from the fog bank to the south were the masts of the Egyptian fleet.

Over a hundred Roman triremes and grain freighters were cutting through the water in a convoy.

Their oars rose and fell, the mass of the armada creating a wave that swept ahead of them.

They were relying on the muscle of galley slaves and the southern winds filling their sails.

Standing beside Felix on the bridge was Tribune Marcellus, a *Custodes* officer tasked with coordinating the boarding actions.

Marcellus lowered his spyglass, his face pale.

"Admiral," Marcellus said. "They outnumber us three to one. Their triremes are armored with bronze rams. If they manage to close the distance and lock onto our hulls with grappling hooks, their numbers in infantry will overwhelm our decks."

Felix leaned over the speaking tube connected to the boiler rooms in the belly of the ironclad.

"We are not going to let them close the distance." He shouted into the speaking tube. "Full pressure! All ahead flank! Engage the central batteries!"

Below decks, the response was instantaneous...

The stokers threw open the furnace doors, shoveling coal into the fires.

The steam pressure gauges spiked, and the paddlewheels on the sides of the ironclads began to churn the water into a froth.

The twenty *Isolda*-class ironclads surged forward, breaking formation and charging at the center of the Egyptian convoy.

The Roman commanders on the triremes, seeing the smoke-belching leviathans accelerating toward them without a single oar or sail, were paralyzed by confusion.

They had never seen ships move with such velocity against the wind... But Roman discipline prevailed.

The Egyptian flagship raised a signal flag. The triremes began to fan out, attempting to form a crescent-shaped net to encircle the Syndicate fleet and ram them from the flanks.

"They are trying to box us in," Marcellus warned, gripping the railing as the *Dominus* picked up speed.

Felix laughed. "Gunners! Load explosive shot! Range, five hundred paces!"

Mounted on the bow and stern of every ironclad were swivel-mounted Decimus Engines, scaled up to fire iron-tipped bolts packed with chemical clay.

As the distance closed to five hundred paces, far outside the range of the Roman ballistas or archers, Felix raised his hand and slashed it downward.

"Fire!"

The bolts screamed across the water, tearing through the fog and slamming into the formation of the Egyptian triremes.

The chemical clay, engineered by Kallias, detonated upon impact...

The hulls of the Roman warships ceased to exist.

Fireballs erupted across the Egyptian line. Masts were shattered, collapsing onto the rowing decks and crushing hundreds of galley slaves.

Sections of hull were blown apart, sending armored Roman marines plunging into the Mediterranean.

Panic consumed the imperial armada. The crescent formation shattered as the surviving triremes tried to turn away from the slaughter, crashing into their own supply freighters in the chaos.

"Reload! Maintain fire!" Felix roared.

The ironclads did not slow down. They drove straight into the heart of the Egyptian fleet, their steel rams shattering the hulls of the freighters.

While Felix was turning the Mediterranean into a graveyard, the secondary task force commanded by Captain Carbo had reached their designated objective.

Ten miles east of Massilia, near the rocky inlet of the Calanques, the twenty shallow-draft cruisers had dropped anchor just outside the surf zone.

The water here was treacherous for the ironclads, but perfect for an amphibious assault.

Carbo, an officer, stood on the deck of his cruiser, watching the shoreline.

His objective was not to fight ships. Isolda’s intelligence network had confirmed that Legate Rufinus had established a supply depot hidden in the coastal caves of the Calanques, intended to act as a staging ground for the Egyptian grain shipments if the main port was blockaded.

Carbo was going to burn the depot to ash before a single grain of wheat could be unloaded.

"Deploy the landing craft," Carbo ordered.

The crews unlashed dozens of flat-bottomed wooden barges from the sides of the cruisers.

These were not traditional landing boats; they were shallow-draft pontoons designed to transport armored infantry through the surf.

The Iron Marines of the *Classis Ferrea*, four thousand men strong, began to climb down the netting into the barges.

Once the barges were fully loaded, the Marines grabbed oars.

They drove the flat-bottomed craft through the surf, beaching them onto the shoreline.

Operating in ten-man squads, the Marines leaped out of the barges, grabbed the handles bolted to the sides of the wooden craft, and hoisted the pontoons out of the water.

Carbo leaned over the railing of his cruiser, staring in disbelief.

"What in the name of Mars are they doing?" Carbo muttered, his eyes wide as he watched the infantrymen carry the boats up the rocky incline toward the hidden caves.

His executive officer, standing beside him, was dumbfounded.

"Captain... they are using the barges as mobile siege mantlets."

It was a tactical innovation.

By carrying the reinforced wooden pontoons sideways, the Marines were creating a moving wall of timber that shielded their approach from the Roman archers hidden in the cliffside caves.

As the Marines marched up the slope, the Roman defenders unleashed a volley of arrows.

The projectiles thudded into the wood of the raised barges. The Marines did not break stride.

When they reached the mouth of the supply depot, the squads hurled the barges to the ground, drawing their boarding axes.

The *Classis Ferrea* charged into the caves, ready to butcher the imperial garrison.

Legate Rufinus was now cut off, starving, and marching blindly into the explosive jaws of Arausio...