Free Battleship Destroyer by L.D. Roberts Page A

chance, hit by the small penetrator rounds if they managed to hit the ship from the side would argue the point when they came back in from being fixed up at the ship's Infirmary. Jack kept the rest of the armor to a minimum, putting some armor around the engines and Command compartments. But not much. Everything else had backups or could be replaced cheaply later without risk of losing the ship.
    As soon as he was lined up on his assigned target section of the Enemy Battleship he gave the order. "Fleet Go hot and fire." Jack pulled the trigger on his control stick. His rapid firing, 8 inch guns shooting yellow hot armor piercing beams able to penetrate at close range what a Battleship's 16 inch gun could from long range, started firing. The 8 heavy guns fixed in the leading edge of his wedged shaped Destroyer firing a beam pulse (called shells) once a second from each. He had replaced the ships big internal Reaction Mass tanks that took up a good portion of the ship, with huge Generators to power the guns. The reason for the drop tanks. The 32 rounds a second from the flight of 4 Destroyers tore into the sides of the battleship knocking out turrets and engines. In some cases coming out the other side of the ship. Though most expended their energy destroying large armored sections of the ship as the shells melted everything in their path unless they hit something hard enough to turn into a huge explosion.
    Jack suddenly noticed in the little window on the corner of his targeting screen that B flight's shells were going through their target like paper. He had been fooled into thinking it was a Battleship when it was a damn Battle cruiser. Hitting his Squadron Comm with his thumb. "B; Split and go low." Jack said giving a pre-arranged order. “B; Split and go low.” He repeated.
    The Battle Cruiser under B flight's guns suddenly started being torn apart as the 8 inch shells hitting it were changed into lower powered deep yellow tinged red beams, while doubling their rate of fire. Then 2 Destroyers of B flight’s 4, veered off (after they dumped a few extra rounds into the original target), to head for what looked like its sister Battle cruiser not far away. Taking it directly up the stern using the yellow hot shells of its armor piercing rounds to make sure they penetrated up the full length of the lightly armored Battlecruiser's hull. The smaller 5s and 3inch gun turrets tearing up the thin armor of their originally targeted Battlecruiser while it was still at close range before turning to hammer the new targeted Battlecruiser’s vitals.
    With the normal 8 inch Capacitors too fat to fit into the narrow wedged shaped Destroyer's hull Jack had designed, he had installed two slightly narrower Capacitors side by side to power each gun. Then took advantage of that to let him fire each capacitor individually putting less power out the gun barrel tube but doubling the rate of fire for the less well protected targets such as Destroyers, Cruisers and even Battlecruisers.
    Then Jack noticed, though only briefly (just to make sure it was happening), missiles and torpedoes leaving the sides of the Destroyers again headed for the surrounding cruisers and battleships taking out even more point defense weapons with the torpedoes targeting the engines and main gun turrets at close range. After 15 seconds of continues firing, the enemy Battleship was starting to wobble and drift as its engines lost power and explosions ripped the hull open from deck to deck. Resisting his urge to shift targets he knew the ship still had several of its big guns left operational and the ship could in time make repairs and re-enter the battle reducing his bounty or worse yet, be finished off by some other ship with a couple of shots later to claim the majority of the bounty even though Jack's squadron had done most of the work.
    After 25 seconds with the 8 inch guns temperatures sliding into the red, the Battleship was a wreck from some Eight hundred 8 inch