Battleship Destroyer by L.D. Roberts Page B

smaller enemy fleet exchanged shots with the now much bigger allied fleet even though they had lost a few ships as well.
    Jack studied the enemy fleet trying to figure out if it was going to run or not since it was now out numbered. Though just barely. It would make a big difference in how he made his next attack. A fleeing enemy spread out over half of space would be easy to pick off.  But that would require picking up the drop tanks left behind first if they headed in the wrong direction. It also meant he would be able to concentrate on finishing off the damaged ships without having to make high-speed runs on them through massed formations, allowing him to conserve reaction mass and extending his time in the battle. Greatly increasing his ship count and bounty. But it did not look like they were getting ready to run. Not yet.
    " Damn it. Ok, let's head in for another attack. We now have two sets of drop tanks to dump. Only this time we will follow these in, now that they know they are just drop tanks. Just remember where the drop tanks we stashed on the other side of the enemy are or you will be walking home and miss out on the next round of attacks."
    Jack smiled. He was debating whether to split up his squadron into pairs of ships to plant good solid shots up the asses of the remaining enemy Battleships. Hopefully getting easy kills as damaged as most of the enemy ships were already from hits by his allied Battleship fleet, making short work of them before the advertised Steak and Lobster dinner that evening. But if the enemy battleships were not that damaged yet, all his two ship attacks would be doing was target practicing if they could not finish killing off the damn ships. No he decided he would make one more pass with his 4 ship sections taking out several more battleships cleanly. Then do one pass with two ship flights concentrating on hitting engines to cull out the more damaged ships. Once the damaged enemy ships got strung out behind their main fleet, he could slow his ships down and take his time destroying the isolated stragglers with his remaining reaction mass. He could have enough bounty for another Destroyer or two in his fleet's account when it was all over.
    The problem was that if the enemy fleet was game controlled, it would have to be virtually decimated before the A.I. would run. It was going to be a shame when he had to break off contact probably just when the enemy fleet finely decided to run for home with him out of reaction mass for his ships. Damn shame. Oh well, maybe he would let his friend drag him to the space port's mall and the titty bar after all to make up for the lost opportunity. But then, Tom would have plenty of time to sit back out of range and pound the stragglers to hulks one after another. Jack smiled, Tom's Battlecruiser was good for something after all. Jack started mulling pulling his little squadron back after this next attack until the enemy fleet turned to run. The idea was looking better by the second. He would just have to wait and see how damaged the enemy was.
    Then an idea popped into his mind as he stared at the destroyer in formation next to him. He wondered how hard it could be to redesign one of his destroyers into a drop tank hauler. Simply lengthening its hull by adding a long central boom with racks to stack full drop tanks too, couldn’t be that hard. After all it would only be adding a little mettle. With racks ready for the Destroyers to easily grab the tanks from. The possibility started to take over his thinking as a good design was proceeded to coalesce in his mind complete with auto latches and guidance systems for rapid docking for him to fall in love with. The details of the design starting to overwhelm his desire to go anywhere with his best buddy Tom. Even to a Titty bar.  Suddenly shaking his head to clear his mind as he smiled.  But for now, he had to force his mind back onto the job at hand. He had Battleships to destroy so he could afford to