Free Battleship Destroyer by L.D. Roberts Page B

armor piercing yellowish white beams that had been pumped into it from close range. Jack smiled remembering the little torpedo ships he had tried the year before. The cost of the torpedo's to do that much damage would have been more than the cost of the Battleship.
    Jack pulled up over the tumbling hulk of what once had been a battleship as his flight again released a storm of missiles headed for the ships around them. As he lifted up on the trigger just long enough to point his Destroyer at another battleship, Jack glimpsed the mass of his own 5inch twin, 3inch quad and 30mm Gatling gun turrets firing streams out from his destroyer at the point defenses of the ships around them. Including the few smaller destroyers and cruisers not off chasing Tom's Battle Cruiser or his ghost tank decoys.
    Jack's flight approached the second targeted Battleship most of his resent torpedoes and missiles had been aimed at while C flight's 4 ships in two paired waves, strafed it from the stern dumping more torpedoes and missiles into it as well. The 8unleashed a good 10 to 15 seconds of mass destruction into the Battleship. The 8 destroyers pouring a good Eight hundred rounds into and taking it out of the fight for the day as well before sliding over it as the ships split up and started darting from side to side, up and down to avoid retaliatory fire from the other ships of the enemy fleet hitting them as they made their escape. Jack flicking a button on the control stick, strafed a Destroyer placing a good 3 second burst of some 48 of his low powered 8 inch rounds along with streams of 5 and 3 inch shells into it, leaving it a dead tumbling hulk in space so he did not have to worry about it firing at him as he passed. The 5s and 3s released from his control started helping turn a couple of cruisers they were passing between at medium range into junk as one of his flight's other Destroyers took each of them on. His forth Destroyer strafing another enemy Destroyer for several seconds before it blew up in front of it.
    As they finally ran out of range and the point defense guns stopped firing back at the enemy fleet, Jack turned the helm over to the pilot and moved back into the Command chair.
    The Pilot smiled at Jack. "Good shooting Sir. Too bad we don't have boarding parties.  It wouldn't take much to take most of the ships we hit once they fall behind the fleet. Be quite a haul." Sitting down in the pilot's chair and buckling in.
    Jack though t for a second and smiled. "Never gave that a thought Lieutenant but it sounds like a great idea. Why don't you see about designing an assault drop tank we could use to dump Platoons of marines onto the hulks like you said after the battle? Could be very profitable." Chuckling. "Wouldn't mind assaulting a battleship myself. Come to think of it, I met some marines back at the base who were interested in going along on raids on enemy transports and running after pirates. Maybe they would be interested in taking on a battleship or two. I, we, ah why don't you check into it when we get back to base." Jack suddenly recalled sighting a couple of fleet tankers trailing the enemy fleet. Could they take one of those and salve his drop tank problem without costing him credits.
    "Than ks sir. I won't let you down." The Pilot went back to checking his board and his maneuvering systems for damage and preparing the ship for the next attack run.
    Hitting his comm Jack smiled. "Hey buddy. We just bagged 3 Battleships, 2 Battlecruisers, a couple of cruisers and a couple of destroyers with heavy damage to several other ships. How you doing?" Looking down at the Tactical screen as he zoomed a screen in on Tom's Battle Cruiser, his smile dropped into a frown. Tom's huge Battlecruiser was spewing reaction mass out of several places along its long hull but then that was why Jack had talked Tom into building it over 3,000 feet long, so the ship would have a lot of reaction mass tanks for the enemy to hit. Then instead of