Battleship Destroyer (6 page)

Jack had
decided to try yet a different route than Tom and all the others after studying the weaknesses of the standard battleships and cruisers. Jack had developed a ship that would use those weaknesses to his advantage. Though it took him a while and more than a few failed attempts to do it.

Jack had spent the largest part of his bounties since h
e made (forced by The Game) Captain 4 years before, building ships and testing them in battle to find out their weaknesses and then trying again. It took an incredible amount of credits developing the systems and doing tests in battles to find what would work and then develop the best of them. But now that he had the ship he wanted, there was one big drawback he could not get around. That drawback was that he required a lot of the fast little destroyers to be effective. To make up for their small size. The problem was that he could not afford to buy as many of them as he needed fast enough after spending most of his money on developing them and the infrastructure. He wanted a force of at least 24 which history has said is about the maximum that could be easily controlled in a battle by a single commander though he figured 50 or 60 would do a better job over the long haul, allowing for reserves. 

That is if he could learn how to effectively deploy and fight them.
He wanted a squadron or small fleet that did not need the distractions of a separate battleship fleet like he was preparing to us at the moment. He needed enough Destroyers so he could attack from two directions at the same time. Using one to decoy and split the enemy while the other attacked and then the squadrons would change rolls. Allowing his squadrons in the enemy's confusion to get up close enough for his 8 inch heavy cruiser guns, to do enough damage to take out enemy battle ships without the help of a fleet of expensive battleships. Not that Jack was greedy about sharing the bounties. He just realized that with his Destroyer design, he could eventually afford enough of them to not have to rely on a varying fleet of independent ships he could not control well enough to coordinate planned complicated well timed attacks where and when he needed to attack. Being able to take the Battle to the Enemy. Hopefully eventually even taking other systems like the fleet that was now attacking was trying to do.

F
act is he had been taking delivery of a new Heavy Destroyer or Battleship Destroyer as he liked to call them, every week now for months after spending the cost of a new battleship to upgrade the production line of the fleet base’s ship yard to drastically cut the cost of their production. A waste if you only wanted one or two ships. Though the rest of the fleet from the Turner Joy was taking full advantage of the cost reductions as was Tom though that meant having to wait for delivery on upgrades to his hug ship until they bumped into each other. A wait more and more Captains were using as the word got around the Star Systems and the Tramp Transports about the advantages the Turner Joy's shipyards enjoyed in The Game.

To Jack's surprise he was starting to have quite an income
in The Game from the ship repair and production docks and had used the first six months lump sum income (he had not known about until he tripped over accidentally) from the dockyard to buy his last flight of four destroyers. The Destroyer was now cheap enough to produce that Jack's biggest problem, other than funding (which he was out of), was finding good crews for them other than A.I.'s (called Cold Captains or Cold Crews or simply Cold Ships). Looking around he studied the rest of his approaching squadron and smiled. "Well at least a squadron of 12 Destroyers was a start." He told himself including the one that just joined that week even if it was only a Cold ship. At least it gave him a full 3 flights of 4 ships. "A damn good start." But without a good showing today with at least a couple battleships taken out clean and without help, he was finished purchasing more ships for a while after inevitable combat repairs, stock replenishments, in game improvements and crew pay for character upgrades, weapons and eventually buying their own ships. Especially after starting production of a boat bay for Tom’s monster Battleship since Tom refused to spend the money and order one. Jack’s little birthday present for Tom. Jack would have it installed the next time Tom put in to the Turner Joy’s yard for repairs.

The
good thing now was that after seeing the size of the enemy fleet, he decided this battle was not going to be that boring after all. It turned out the enemy fleet was a lot larger than he had ever seen let alone taken on before. Giving him plenty of chances to take out a Battleship or two on his own. Something he had yet to do with his Destroyers, though he had helped the battleship fleet take down many over the last few months as the majority bounty recipient on many of the destroyed ships. It still amounted to only a fraction of the bounty for his little squadron after all the other ships that had managed to get a few good shots into the hull before it was declared a hulk got their share.

Jack
brought his little section of ships to a halt to allow the rest of his squadron to catch up to him. Then watched the enemy fleet start firing back even though it was still far out of range and a waste of time even if they were deliberately shooting at the cruisers and destroyers. Jack continued to smile since the enemy's own gun fire would reduce their detection range to a fraction for anything as small as his Destroyers. Letting him get even closer before being detected and fired upon. Let alone tracked as he positioned his ships for that attack.

After the last of his destroyers finally
joined him, he hit his comm. "Squadron, drop 3 full tank sets and mark them for retrieval." Jack did as he had ordered. Dropping the full tanks lightening his ships up considerably by almost half. Increasing their acceleration and therefor their speed for their attack run. The next ship he wanted to get was a tanker that could haul the drop tanks for the Destroyers to refueling points on both sides of the enemy fleet so they could quickly grab reaction mass between battle attack runs, allowing him to lighten his ships up even more and increase their acceleration and therefor their attack speed and survivability. Taking a deep breath, it was time to attack. "OK. Charge it guys. Pedal to the metal. Lock and load and follow me." Jack's Destroyer turned toward the enemy fleet at full acceleration. 

Some 30
minutes later (game time, 5 minutes actual) the Comm officer reported. "Captain, drop tank A is empty on all ships sir." The A set of tanks on Jack’s ship and the ships that had deployed early with him had been empty for a while already.

"Very well comm. Order fleet to drop Tank
A in 5, decoy pattern Bravo 3 and a full set of torpedoes and missiles on attack mod Charley 7. Then course chance 20 degrees port."

On the count of zero
, two dozen external disposable Reaction Mass Tanks a hundred feet long and 16 feet in diameter dropped from the squadron along with a mass of decoys, missiles and torpedo's. All staying dead silent for the moment as they drifted on an intercept course with the enemy fleet. Then turning, the Destroyers continued to accelerate away from the mass of tanks and torpedoes, around toward a different flank of the enemy fleet.  Toward a point almost 90 degrees around from the intercept point of the tanks and decoys he had just dropped.

The enemy closed with J
ack's allies as Tom's Battlecruiser turned to angle away to maintain his distance just out of effective range of the enemy guns. The rest of the allied fleet now approaching within their Battleships gun range, turned to present their broadsides crossing the enemy fleet's T and their head on charge. A big tactical advantage for Jack’s side. Giving Jacks allies, the Republic fleet, who were severely outnumbered in ships to begin with, more guns on the rapidly approaching enemy fleet that had only their bow guns pointing at and able to shoot.

The enemy fleet was
trying to close the distance to point blank range where their greater numbers of ships and guns would have an overwhelming advantage once they were able to present their own broadsides. A tactic Jack thought he probably would have used if he had been the Commander of the enemy fleet. Though he would have added a few wrinkles to make it easier for his fleet to cover the distance without getting their assess (or Bows to be exact), shot off. His favorite was splitting his fleet to L out around the end of the enemy fleet to cross their bow forcing half their ships to point bow on to at least one of his battle lines. Allowing his broadside salvo beams to do the most damage possible down the length of the enemy ships instead of simply through and out the back side and hope they hit something vital. Though his gunners had to be well trained to hit the smaller aspect targets.

Tom's Battlecruiser continued scoring hits on enemy ships
from long range but except for a couple of unlucky destroyers and a light cruiser accidentally hit knocking them out of the fight, he was having a hard time with the wildly maneuvering fleet, scoring enough hits on the same battleship to knock out one of the big boys even with his big guns doing considerable damage when a beam made a solid hit on one. Though even with his big guns, he still needed several solid hits to knock out a Battleship even from dead ahead. Even one scout would have allowed him to accurately concentrate his fire on one Battleship though a small squadron spaced around the enemy fleet would have more than doubled his hit rate. Jack just shook his head. Wishing he had spent the money for a flight bay for Tom long enough ago to have it ready for Tom to have put in before deploying for this battle. Surly he could have come up with some cheap old scout to use before he deployed. Though he had offered him a discount at his shipyard a year ago, plenty of time to have produced, installed it and even built new scouts by now.

Jack even
thought about using his destroyers as Targeting Scouts for him this once just to show Tom how good the idea was.  But realized putting his Destroyers close enough to act as Targeting Scouts and making them sit there while taking the necessary scans would insure the loss of far too many of them. They simply were too big for the job even if they were a lot smaller than a battleship.

Jack watched several of the close
ly spaced beams from Tom's Supper Battlecruiser's guns finally hit a wildly maneuvering heavy cruiser, blasting the ship almost in half from stem to stern and sending it tumbling end for end. "All right Tom. Looks like a kill to me. Finally getting their range old buddy." Though he knew it was just luck. Jack checked his own range and position and smiled as he turned to his comm officer. "Squadron Helm, come Port 45 degrees. Fleet Weapons, fire torpedo spread attack Tango 6 in 10 seconds."  Jack frowned as several of the squadron's ships were slow coming around to the new course including his newest arrival. "Damn cold ships." Hitting the squadron Comm. "Squadron, Weapons hold."  The squadron finally settled down on the new course. "Squadron Weapons, Shoot."

Six torpedoes
with 24 missiles left each of the 12 ships in Jack's fleet of Destroyers and raced away to the Starboard side on an intercept course with the enemy fleet at low thrust, making it harder for the enemy to detect them this far out. Jack waited another few seconds to make sure the torpedo's were clear and running true and then. "Fleet Helm, return to original course."

Six torpedoes from each ship against a fleet as big as they were facing, just suddenly seemed pitiful. But then he had tried before to add more torpedo tubes but the destroyer simply did not have any room left inside the hull for more
tubes and the magazines that went with them. Unless he did not want a crew. Watching the drop tanks rapidly receding into the distance. But maybe he could add tubes to the drop tanks. Only thing was he did not need to fire torpedoes every time he had to drop a set of tanks. Which meant careful planning on which tanks to put them on, not to mention the extra costs. 

But then how much could it cost just to scab some disposable
torpedo tubes in the front of a tank? Then come to think of it, if the enemy changed their base course during the attack. All he had to do was retrieve the tanks later and not worry about losing the torpedoes like he would for the ones he just launched. That alone could pay for the whole program. Maybe. Especially if he included missiles and decoys on the tanks as well. It would lighten up his ships as well for more speed, or allow him to fire more torpedoes from close range during an attack. And then if he added small engines to the tanks they could change course if the enemy changed its base course. Acting more like the real ships they were supposed to be.

"Damn." Jack said to himself. No
w the tanks were starting to look complex and expensive. Defeating the whole concept of Cheap enough to lose. Not to mention the development costs.

Jack had to chuckle at that thought. He had found out the hard way that costs had a
way of ballooning when a simple, seeming easy project became increasingly complex or difficult and costly when unforeseen problems cropped up. Then he had done what was only natural. Not wanting to waste already spent credits, he had pressed on and on and on. Dumping more and more money into what too often turned into a black hole. Sometimes the end product did not seem worth the development costs and all the work he had to put in by the time he had finished. But then sometimes the product was worth its weight in gold. But he could never tell for sure which ones were going to be what, until he had used them in combat. Sometimes the ones he thought were a waste of credits when they were finished, turned out to be pure gold.

This
Destroyer was turning out to be one of the Gold's even though a lot of worthless hulks had been left behind and sold for scrap to get it right. Another great but expensive improvement was increasing the Destroyer's big 8 inch gun's rate of fire. Their old 10 rounds a minute was ridiculous when you only had seconds to fire at a close range target while strafing. Which was why Jack had originally installed 8 of them, having to design the ship around the guns to get what he needed. But eventually he did learn when to cut projects that did not look promising or started racking time and up bills. Though he found out later no research was ever completely wasted. Parts and pieces of any research, even failed research, could be used many ways and places if you used your head. Sometime with amazing results.