Editing First Battle of Kopt Dara (section)

==The battle==
[[File:Destoona1.jpg|thumb|250px|left|Simplified view of the Destoona system]]

The arrival of Hektor Cincinnatus' naval force at Destoona's jump points is timed to 073/811.M30.  If the presence of the ''Black Joke'' had not aroused suspicion, the Osroene reacted promptly to the arrival of a group of seemingly hostile warships.  The Southern Fleet made haste for the outer planets of the Destoona System, taking up station at the gas giant Kopt Dara.  From this position, the Osroene believed themselves well-sited to plot intercept courses against the invaders.  Meanwhile, within the operations center of his flagship, ''Monarch of the Void'', Hektor Cincinnatus held a holo-call with the Legion's senior void commander, Navarch Basileus Orion Mucius.  The commanders anticipated that their enemies would draw up in a line formation, using the gas giant to guard their flank while presenting a broadside to approaching vessels.  To counter this strategy, they agreed on an aggressive approach.  Hektor and ''Monarch of the Void'' would lead a large column of Imperial ships to break up the Xenos line roughly in its center.  Mucius, aboard the ''Olympiad'' would take a smaller column into the enemy's rear.  By this tactic, the Third Expedition Fleet's commanders hoped to divide their opponents' forces and defeat them in detail.

The battle initially developed as Hektor and Mucius expected.  Although the Xenos were not entirely naive to the Imperial tactics and had deployed a reserve line of escorts in a lower orbit, the speed of advance caught them off-guard and gaps opened up as their ships hastily tried to tighten their formation.  Despite their confusion the Osroene mustered a ragged broadside at the oncoming Imperial vessels.  The ''Monarch of the Void'' was the first ship to come under fire at 094/811.M30, but she withstood several salvos before breaking the Xenos line just ahead of the battleship identified as SFBB-2.  ''Olympiad'' also took some damage in her approach, but she stayed in control and passed between the Osroene cruisers SFCA-6 and SFCA-7.  As the Imperial columns poured into the breach and came about into fighting positions, two semi-connected melees ensued.

At the rear of the Osroene line, Orion Mucius' five cruisers and three escorts faced three Xenos capital ships.  Initially, the battle swung heavily in favour of the Imperials.  ''Olympiad'''s heavy guns ripped open the magazine on SFCA-6 and the resulting explosion not only disabled the cruiser's drive but sent her out of orbit to be torn apart by Kopt Dara's gravity.  ''Ankoresh'' and ''Pilum'' pounded SFCA-7 into scrap, with ''Pilum'' taking minor damage in return.  However, as ''Solstice'' moved to cross SFBB-3's bow, a freak shot damaged her heat sinks and left the Luna-class Cruiser drifting hot for seven desperate Terran minutes while her tech priests battled to seal the gap.  ''Scion of Mercury'' and the three agile Havoc-class Frigates at the tail of the column darted behind SFBB-3 and raked her stern, doing serious damage but not crippling the Xenos warship.  SFBB-3 was able to come about and exchange a broadside with ''Scion of Mercury'', temporarily disabling the cruiser's weapon batteries, before falling prey to a close-range torpedo spread from ''Olympiad''.

The second, larger part of the battle took place at more even odds.  ''Monarch of the Void'' raked SFBB-2's bow and her sister-ship ''Monarch of Luna'' crippled the Xenos battleship with a broadside to the stern.  However, unlike at the rear, the Osroene escorts were in position to counterattack the Imperial line breakers.  Hektor's Grand Cruisers, together with the Crusade-class cruisers ''Zetal Heights'', ''Mount Ararat'' and ''Blessing of Thunder'' came about sharply to face the Osroene vanguard and were exposed to a rear attack by the enemy escorts.  ''Mount Ararat'' and ''Blessing of Thunder'' received concentrated fire that left both ships crippled and adrift in the void.  Syntagma Ophelos Potitius was forced to order an evacuation of the ''Mount Ararat'' when her secondary hull began to fail, while repair crews aboard the ''Blessing of Thunder'' worked desperately to avoid a catastrophic failure of the stricken voidship's plasma drive.  Meanwhile, ''Hoplon'', ''Eclipse'', ''Scion of Venus'', and ''Scion of Mercury'' fell upon SFCA-4 and SFCA-5 and began to hammer the isolated cruisers.  From the end of Hektor's column, ''Brother Demokritos '', ''Brother Eusebios'', and ''Brother Nikanor'' sharply accelerated to intercept the Osroene escorts and put an end to their flank attack.  This timely intervention still left ''Monarch of the Void'', ''Monarch of Luna'' and ''Zetal Heights'' facing a trio of Xenos cruisers while SFBB-1 slowly turned ahead of them.  But the ships ahead of Hektor had little stomach for the fight after seeing the destruction already wrought.  SFBB-1 aborted its maneuver and left orbit, while the cruisers remained for a brief exchange of fire before they fled.  The battle of the escorts had gone poorly for First Legion, with ''Brother Nikanor'' destroyed and ''Brother Eusebios'' badly damaged, but the remaining Osroene light ships broke off and followed the vanguard.  Only SFCA-4 and SFCA-5, sandwiched between Imperial cruisers, were left behind and these ships promptly surrendered in the face of a hopeless situation.