Reborn In 17th century India with Black Technology Chapter 478: Sulu Sea Confrontation Part :3 (END)

Neither Marc Anthony nor Randolph knew what had happened to their fleet of frigates and galleys, but reality had already sunk in, reminding them that things had gone terribly wrong.

"BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!"

The cannons of the galleon kept firing at the approaching ships like a free-for-all teor shower, causing horrible whirlpools to form on the surface of the calm sea. The galleon had nearly 15 cannons on each side, and combined, both sides could output the firepower of nearly 30 cannon shots in both directions at a ti.

"Ahhh!"

"Allah!"

"Devaa!"

Shouts rang out from the small ships as they could not withstand a second cannonball from the galleon as one shot was all it took to imdiately destroy their ship. Blood began to spill in the Sulu Sea, and fish from the surrounding waters were attracted in droves.

Akhil had already stopped his forward montum and turned the battleship hard left, exposing his twelve 25 kg caliber cannons, a single 30 kg caliber giant cannon, and three high-velocity armor-piercing culverins towards the Spanish Galleons.

"BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!"

The Pune-class battleship was being pushed back inch by inch by the sheer recoil generated from all the firepower being directed toward the Galleons.

"Aim, load, fire!"

"Aim, load, fire!"

The actions of the artilleryn beca robotic at this mont, as they had beco killing machines, shredding the Galleons bit by bit.

"Ahhh!"

"Jesus!"

"Lord, ah, fire!"

"Ahhh, Lord, the mast, the mast is coming down!"

*Swish!*

"Squash!"

"Ahhh, no... *vomit*!"

The ammunition used by the cannons of the bharatiya empire was not a single round shot either, but a varied range of ammunition, including grape shot, canister shot, incendiary shot, shell shot, and other types, which went on to wreak havoc on the Galleons. In one lucky instance, when a bar shot was fired, it managed to hit the foremast, bringing it down on a poor man who was trying to run away.

The mast further went on to damage the deck before it fell into the sea. If the ropes hadn’t been weak enough, the mast would have probably had enough weight to pull the galleon down with it.

Unfortunately, Akhil and his battleship were in a position where, being the only enemy warship large enough to take the full brunt of the Galleons’ wrath, were faring no better than the ganged up on Galleons’ either. The only saving factor was that, due to compartntalization, the ship did not imdiately sink to the bottom of the sea.

However, the damage began to accumulate quickly—quicker than Akhil could handle.

"Ah! Commander, the living quarters seven, eight, and sixteen have all begun to take in water."

"Imdiately close the compartnts; seal them up!"

"Commander, it’s not good; the artillery mounts have been damaged, and there’s fire spreading through the deck."

"Pour sand on it; create an isolation barrier!"

"Commander, the damage has reached the storage room; the water seepage has reached dangerous levels."

"Imdiately seal all the doors and initiate the maximum survivability protocol!"

Akhil received one piece of bad news after another, but being an experienced naval commander, he handled the situation accordingly. However, unlike Sarvesh, who seed to love such circumstances, Akhil was a normal man who began to get nervous. Fortunately, seeing the enemy’s forward montum completely diminish and the ship begin to tilt in one direction, Akhil knew the battle was successful.

Marc Anthony, standing on the badly damaged ship, couldn’t believe what had just happened. Why did things turn out this way? Wasn’t he supposed to win? Wasn’t he supposed to have a glorious victory, just as he had imagined? Why, just when he was about to ram into the enemy ship and experience the satisfying pleasure of crushing the opposition in half, did so many enemy ships surround him?

He had carefully observed In the past few weeks, and he was sure that no large smuggling ships or large rchant ships had arrived in the Philippines, so where did all these ships co from?

Just then, the body of Randolph Fernandez caught his attention. The body had a thick 4-inch hole near the chest. Marc rembered that the enemy had a weapon that could continuously fire, and realized it was this weapon that had taken the life of his executive officer.

Marc Anthony felt great sadness welling up in his chest, but he couldn’t do anything about it.

Right when Marc was feeling helpless, the Bharatiya sailors, using hooked ropes, boarded the sinking Manila Galleon, capturing the people who were still alive.

Eventually, the identity of Marc Anthony was discovered after interrogating so survivors.

Akhil ca personally to arrest Marc Anthony, a high-value hostage and take him away.

Marc was aware of what was happening around him, but he was too lost to do anything. Even when he was arrested by Akhil, he did not react much; however, there was a thought in his heart, a thought that drove him mad, devouring his sanity:

"How did you do it? Where did so many ships co from?"

If it were anyone else, they would not have understood what the man said, but Akhil, who had taken Spanish as his foreign language course, fully understood his words.

He initially didn’t want to answer the man, but looking at the devastated expression on his face, Akhil felt a little pity.

"Just because you have completely isolated the Philippine archipelago doesn’t an that we have completely lost communication with it."

"In these few months, while you were patrolling the seas, we have been silently modifying the local ships within the nation itself."

Akhil unexpectedly had a furious expression on his face. "I have to ask you though: Is your governor and his confidants eating shit for dinner? What do they think? Shouldn’t they imdiately work on defeating the rebels within the country, taking advantage of the isolation?

What were they doing, flattering you people who ca from the mainland with parties and gifts, while waiting for soone else to save them?"

These words felt like a bolt of lightning passing through Marc’s body.

Rembering the oily face of the fat middle aged governor, Marc felt extre bitterness, realizing that he had not had a chance of victory since the beginning of the battle. Even if he had defeated the Pune-class warship in front of him, the final result of the battle would still be the defeat of his Galleons.

However, Akhil’s next words continued to destroyed what little sanity he had left.

"Leaving the failures of the Governer aside, how stupid can you be? Why did you give away your absolute advantage during the battle and split apart your troops?"

"Are you an idiot? If you had used all of your troops from the beginning of the battle, I would have been forced to use all my cards from early on, giving you a chance to at least retreat. But no, you pushed forward like an idiot, willingly jumping into a fire pit."

Looking at the finger that had been pointed at him, Marc seed to see a flashback of his actions before the battle. They appeared before him like a broken cara, repeating again and again.

"No!" Marc imdiately broke down in tears as the guilt of leading his crew and his executive officer to their deaths crushed his fragile heart with the weight of a Mountain.

Akhil could no longer hold onto the weight of an adult man, so he had no choice but to let go. Anthony dropped to the ground, powerless.

Akhil, looking at Marc’s expression, knew that the man was already dead inside. "Sigh!" He felt sorry for the man once more.

Akhil wouldn’t feel this way if the man below him were an enemy commander, but the man was actually an explorer exploring the unknown ocean. He had no business participating in this battle and was a talent that should be treated highly by the country. However, due to misjudgnts and mistakes made by so politicians, he t such an end.

"Commander, the Dutch are coming."

Akhil imdiately beca alert. ’These bastards act fast enough.’

Akhil looked at his warship that was barely sailing on the sea. If he were not in the Bharatiya Ocean, he would have decisively ordered the destruction of a ship that was this damaged, but his next objective was to capture Manila Bay and station warships there.

Hence, there was still a chance to save his Pune-class warship.

"Retreat to Manila."

His people imdiately acted. The battleship that had left the fleet an hour ago ca back with more ard ships and joined the main fleet headed by Akhil.

The governor located in Manila imdiately realized that the navy had fallen. Being the coward he was, he admitted defeat without putting up any resistance.

There was no slaughter at Manila Port; only the officials were arrested and put into custody.

Fortunately, although there was a Dutch Reinforcent, the ship that arrived was only a single battleship, and there were no other reinforcents. For that reason, the heavily damaged ship survived and returned to Manila at a speed of three knots.

Akhil naturally knew why the Dutch did not respond to the destruction of the Spanish fleet.

There were a few reasons: number one, the attack on the Philippines ca too suddenly, and the Dutch had no ti to react; number two, the warship traveled around the Indonesian archipelago from one island to another, avoiding the direct gaze of Dutch vessels; and number three, and most importantly, back in the Indian Ocean, Commander Gautam and Commander Prasanna Nayar had started relentlessly assaulting Dutch vessels, which led the Dutch to bring out all their naval power into the Malacca Strait to defend against a possible full-on attack from the Bharatiya Empire.

All these reasons combined gave the Bharatiya Empire enough leeway to fully defeat the weakened Spanish in the Philippines.

Once the Dutch realized that the attack on them was only a feint and that the Bharatiya Empire’s real target was the Philippines, it was already too late. The Bharatiya Empire had already occupied the strategically advantageous position of Manila Bay.

If the Dutch had taken the risk and imdiately launched a full-force attack on Manila Bay, there was a very high chance that the Bharatiya Empire and the rebels would not be able to hold their ground.

However, the Dutch did not do so, knowing that as soon as they took this action, the Bharatiya Navy stationed in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands would imdiately pour into the Malacca Strait and destroy both their important ports of Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur.

The Dutch and the Spanish have lost.

Tambola, the resistance leader of Luzon, and Sultan Harun al-Rashid, the patriarch of the Sulu Dynasty who has now married the princess of the Mindanao Dynasty, suddenly did not feel too happy.

Tambola imdiately realized that with the exit of the Spanish, the entry of the Bharatiya Empire beca a given. He realized that the Bharatiya Empire was not as noble as Niranjan had claid, particularly after the Bharatiya Empire occupied Manila Bay.

He knew that the Bharatiya Empire could have retreated back to their own lands after defeating the Spanish, but seeing how they actually occupied Manila Bay, he imdiately realized that the Philippines had gotten rid of a tiger and invited a wolf.

Realizing this, he imdiately wanted to retaliate, but to his dismay, he realized that most of his contacts were made through the Bharatiya Empire’s intelligence channels. Everyone around him seed to be resistant to his plan of attacking the Bharatiyas.

It wasn’t until he heard the words of his trusted aide, Baluka, that he began to open his eyes to the unbeleavable truth:

"Chief, I beg you not to take any drastic actions. Among the resistance forces we have recruited, nearly 30% seem to have appeared out of nowhere. I suspect these people are agents sent by the Bharatiya Empire. With the addition of the new Bharatiya sailors that arrived due to the battle, our numbers are even further reduced."

"Even if we are determined to fight back, the intelligence channels we currently use are completely controlled by the Bharatiya Empire. Even if we make an effort to start a new intelligence network, our old mbers cannot be used, as many of the top leaders of our freedom group might have been bribed by the Bharatiya Empire."

"Even if we start from scratch, Chief, you must understand that we have already gathered all the forces in Luzon and the Visayas. No matter how hard we work, we won’t be able to match the current power of the Bharatiya Empire within the Philippines."

In the end, Baluka’s expression grew bitter. "Chief, I think staying under the Bharatiya Empire isn’t too bad. At least theoretically, we have similar cultures, and I’ve heard that the emperor treats his people well. Given your significant contributions to the freedom movent, you might actually receive a high rank in the new order of the Philippines."

Tamblot imdiately felt like he had aged a decade; his 46-year-old body now resembled that of a 60-year-old man. Looking at the chief, who had always appeared heroic and majestic in his eyes but now seed to have lost all his majesty and vigor, Baluka couldn’t help but let out a few sobs.

Fortunately, Tamblot was not a man who couldn’t accept reality. "So be it. As long as my people are treated well, I am willing to listen to the commands of the Bharatiya Empire."

Unlike Tamblot who recognized reality, Sultan Harun al-Rashid did not take the intervention of the Bharatiya Empire kindly. He used his so-called army which he so called brought up by his own to fight against the Bharatiyas who challenged his authority in Mindanao.

Unfortunately, he seed to have forgotten that his chief commander of the army had been recruited with the help of intelligence agent Niranjan.

The Sulu King, Sultan Harun al-Rashid, died at the hands of his own guard. The matter was kept secret as a Spanish scapegoat was found to take the bla. The wife of the dead king, Princess Layla, was a smart woman. She imdiately understood her situation, accepted the commands of the Bharatiya Empire, and took over the island of Mindanao as its queen, establishing the Kingdom of Mindanao.

The regions of Luzon and Visayas were naturally unified under Tamblot. Given that he was willing to obey orders, he was appointed as the president of the United States of the Philippines.

In na, both countries are independent, but in practice, their economies are entirely controlled by the Bharatiya Empire; it is economic colonization.

The Navy of the Bharatiya Empire is stationed both in Manila Bay of the United States of the Philippines and in Davao in the Kingdom of Mindanao, deterring both foreign enemies and the newly established Nations.

All this happened months after the battle with the Spanish.

Currently, the intelligence director Jalandhar Keshav responsible for Southeast Asia is working full-ti to enhance the advantages and control of the Bharatiya Empire in the Philippines.

This includes monitoring influential rebellion leaders and assessing the risks posed by individuals who might undermine the goals of the Bharatiya Empire, as well as devising thods to deal with them accordingly in the future.