Free Battleship Destroyer by L.D. Roberts

crossing the enemy fleets T as the enemy Battleships continued to close. Jack was glad to see that the enemy fleet was getting hit hard by the Republic fleet. He just hopped they would stop firing for the few seconds he was at close quarters during his attack. Another smaller squadron of cruisers and destroyers took out after Jack’s approaching squadron of tank decoys on the other side of the enemy fleet’s triple attack line.
    Keeping an eye on Toms Battlecr uiser he watched the rapidly approaching enemy cruiser fleet preparing to demonstrate the weakness of any Battle cruiser. It would not stand up to a coordinated attack even by Cruisers and Destroyers let alone a Battleship which is why Tom was staying as far away from the enemy Battleships as he could. Evidentially the enemy fleet commander was not stupid and had figured that out when Tom had refused to close.
    The main enemy fleet finally decide that the drop tank attack was bigger than they had at first thought and turned most of their stern ordinance toward the mass of tanks which Jack had expected since those guns could only take pot shots at the main Republic fleet anyway as they maneuvered around their base course. Jack was surprised when it took them several minutes to hit the first tank even though the tanks were not maneuvering. As the enemy squadron of cruisers and destroyers finally reached accurate range of the tanks, Jack winced as he saw pieces of tanks start flying away and started adding up their replacement costs in his head without realizing it.
    Then it was Jacks turn. The 4 torpedo salvoes finally came alive and seconds later were within point defense range and the enemy fleet erupted with its small weapons taking out way more than half of the rapidly approaching torpedoes before they hit. What made Jack smile was the fact that with the point defense weapons concentrating on the torpedoes they ignored the small smart missiles he had launched with them. While the torpedoes hit blowing big chunks out of the ships hulls and mass tanks, few hits were on engines and main gun turrets.  They left the ships mostly undamaged as far as he was concerned. But the missiles targeting the point defense 3 inch quads, rapid fire 5 inch, 6inch, and 8 inch medium gun turrets, took out a good percentage of them with direct hits using their high speed sub caliber penetrating warheads. Concentrated around Jacks primary target ships and the ships nearby, opening corridors for his Destroyer flights to go through.
    Jack smiled as he stepped up to the pilot's station dismissing the pilot. The game said he had to be the Captain now after playing the game for a decade since he was 8 years old and becoming a Captain at 16, (no matter how hard he tried to stay just a pilot), but it could not keep him from piloting his own ship into battle.  He had trained his crew well and did not need to devote that much of his attention to them allowing him to concentrate on piloting the ship while simply giving short commands for the crew and First Officer that was a hot body to respond to when needed. The advantages of conducting set, halfway predictable battles and hours of boring drills.
    Jack lined up his Destroyer on his assigned section of the targeted battleship with his flight of 3 other Destroyers close beside him lined up in a row and on their own targeted sections of the same ship. The other two flights were targeting different battleships to either side of his target. His Destroyer's large number of close in weapons including the 5 inch twin gunned and quad 3 inch turrets were well within range to hit the few remaining medium weapons such as 5 inch turrets and above along with the larger missile launchers that were dangerous to the Destroyer. Not that the 3 inch quads and 30mm Gatling guns could not damage the Destroyer but their hits were more annoyance than damaging with the leading edge of his arrow shaped Destroyers well armored against such hits. Though any crewman by