Battleship Destroyer 2 (Battleship Destoryer)

by Larry Roberts

  “Ok, how the hell did you do that? They were already packed with no extra room for more than the 4 of the 24 inch guns I had on them.”

  “I will show you when you decide to get off your lazy ass and into the Cockpit but I borrowed from another of your original DD designs Jack and added a cranked leading edge to your arrow to make room for more guns. Simply put, I added a copy of your original gun room’s outboard of the gun rooms you had. Easy since you lined the generators and capacitors and everything else needed behind each gun in a long armored tube on the new design. While I have just release this larger DD version with the 24 inch guns to the public days ago, there are thousands in The Game already. Winslow’s brother was one of the very first and was responsible for wringing out some of the bugs that cropped up in the design.”

  “Well then I just may have to meet Winslow’s brother.” Jack climbed up into the front of the bomb bay of the TB and marveled at the number of conventional torpedoes the Chief had managed to pack into its bomb bay. Then went through the hatch into the Cockpit finding a WSO sitting behind the console. Smiling at the crewman. “Winslow is headed this way to replace you. Get your butt down and give her a hand with getting any gear she grabbed aboard now. I need to get my Butt off this ship so move it Chewy.” The Gronk crewman started unstrapping and unplugging himself with Jacks help then scrambled down out of the TB leaving the console hot.

  Jack then climbed up past the console with room to spare (after he reduced the size of the seat), and into the pilot’s chair. Checking out the tactical first, Jack started running down the TB’s flight check list. A minute later the two WSO’s and a technician started shoving Winslow’s satchels from a cart into the little ship. Jack was too busy to more than notice. With the momentary pressure to his ears Jack new the cockpit compartment had been sealed and with the Crew Chief’s, “Boat cleared.” And wave off from beside the TB, Jack started the Bombers Cores and engines. Hanger Control gave Jack clearance to taxi to the short launch strip in front of the hatch with the Salvage Shuttles starting to land through the hatch on the other side of the ship behind him. Jack suddenly feeling frustrated that they had not had time to salvage the transports or properly check for survivors. Then with one finial check, Jack shoved the throttles forward and the TB accelerated through the Aircurtain and out the hatch.

  Jack arched around the Red Pepper as he got the feel for the new bomber and was happy with the way it felt. Not at all like the slow clumsy transport he was expecting as he circled around the Red Pepper. Dodging around several of the transports on final approach. Dragging his gaze away from the bright deep red of the Red Peppers hull and the God Guns with difficulty, his eyes fell on one of the distant tumbling DD’s that had been knocked out. Changing course he flew around the DD with the number 4894 on its bow and was surprised to see little damage beyond two 16 inch holes through the top of the hull at an angle. None of the holes seemed to be near any critical equipment but all the life boats were gone.

  Shaking his head. “What a waste.” Then hitting his comm. “Flight control I want a shuttle with marines and the salvage crews to grab each of the DD’s we knocked out and get them headed for that Battleship hulk we are sending to New Home. Stuff the DD’s inside the corridor for safe keeping. It shouldn’t be that hard for the salvage crews to repair the DD’s enough to get them to New Home if we are lucky. If not we can pick them up later but I am not about to waste a couple dozen perfectly good DD hulls.” Though he knew at least a couple of them had to have major damage done to them. He was sure nothing that couldn’t be repaired in time.”

  Jack watched the first of the Salvage Shuttles that had been waiting to head for the transport hulks, streak away from the Red Pepper as he climbed up toward the cloud above the Red Pepper. The first of the Salvage Shuttles approached the DD he had scanned as Jack pushed the throttles forward using his thumb to engage the Ram Scoop. The TB shot up into the cloud and within a minute was a hundred miles above the Maze as Jack turned his head to look out across toward the far end. By the time the TB reached ten thousand miles above, Jack had a good idea of where the enemy battleships where. Bringing the TB to a stop Jack started tapping on his tactical screen of the Maze where he could see the exhaust trails of Battleships. Recording what he could see. Though because of his two dimensional vision he had to guess at the locations of many of the ships as to which exact Maze corridor they were in and finally settled for simply recording their sighting grid degree angles. After getting a rough map down he started moving the TB back along the maze hoping to get a better more exact placement of the ships as he added more sightings. Though it soon became clear that the Fleet Commander was sending ships around other paths of the 3 dimensional Maze that had mazes inside of mazes. In fact the Master Maze covering millions of cubic miles had 23 different mazes. Each with its own number of corridors and passageways that did not intercept any of the other mazes. Though some did to make things even more complicated and easy to get lost. And it looked like there were battleships headed down each of the other mazes to attack the Head of the Maze at the same time. Jack smiled as he continued to record sighting lines. If his crude estimates were correct, they had 6 hours before the majority of some hundred Battleships could reach the head of the maze for a coordinated attack by all the approaching Battleships. He just wished he knew how many where sitting silent at the foot of the maze and the Staging Station there as reserves.

  “Red Actual this is Red home. We have just gotten the first message torpedo from the bottom of the maze and there are 96 Battleships lined up ready to enter the maze and hundreds of auxiliaries around the Staging Basestation. No way to tell how many are between that end and the ones we see on this end.”

  Jack shook his head sadly. He had a good idea of how many and now he knew how many were just sitting around the Staging Station with their engines cold and it was way over the 137 that had been their when he counted them the week before. “Red Home, I count roughly 100 bad guys moving inside the maze beyond what is getting ready to enter. Though they seem to be divided into two groups. The ones about to attack our side, the head and the ones just entering from the Staging Station. How long before the Scout Bombers or SB’s get the comm torpedo’s recall message?”

  “Another 5 minutes Red Actual. Receiving your rough map now. It does not look good. The fighters have hit the sterns of 24 Battleships in the corridors leading to the head with light damage. But many Point defense turrets were knocked out. We should have the fighters trapped and back out in an hour.”

  “Very well Red Home, I hope the SB’s get the attack orders before all of them get into the maze.” Now Jack was wishing he had sent a full weapons load of Torpedo’s under their wings with them instead of leaving them bare for maximum stealth. With them buried in the cloud using their stealth recon torpedoes at long range. Stealth was not really an issue with the SB’s this time and the 4 additional City killing torpedoes they could have carried under their wings added to the 2 conventional torpedoes in their weapons bay with the rest of the bay packed with sensor torpedoes, could have made a big difference in the outcome of the campaign. But then he had not seen the need to attack a fleet that was not supposed to leave port for another 3 days. Well, 12 Battleships damaged was better than nothing but even Jack new they would be lucky to damage half that number even if they got lucky. The final count was more likely to be 2 or 3 Battleships damaged to some degree even in a surprise attack. Maybe they would have time to get the TB’s around back for a second wave of attacks before they all disappeared. Looking at the tactical Red Home (the Red Peppers call sign) had sent up and the hundred Transports still waiting at the Station to go to The Rock an idea started to form.

  “Red Actual, I have a couple of Transports coming down the freeway headed for the maze. They are a half hour out.”

  “Red Home, Actual. Warn the transports away from the Maze.”

  “Already warned them Actual. They are ignoring my orders and will enter the Maze in about a half
hour going down separate corridors according to their orders. We have backed up into the cloud out of sight and detection. The salvage crews are on board the DD’s and going silent. They report minor damage on most of the DD’s and should be able to make headway under their own power shortly and will head for New Home shepherding the Battleship hulk.”

  “Very well Red Home. Patch me through to both transports.”

  The main screen in front of him split with the two Transport Captains appearing. “I am Admiral Turner, Gama 13 Basestation’s Commander, speaking for Admiral Spencer of Task Force 58. I want your two Transports to carry a message to The Rock. The messaged is as follows. To Supreme Admiral Eisenhower, Republic Fleet headquarters The Rock. From Admiral Spencer Task Force 58 and acting Admiral Turner Commander Gama Basestation. Our crews are starving to death from lack of supply’s and support. We have followed The Rocks orders not to leave the Delta 7 or Gama 13 entry Staging Stations and yet our please for even the basic food shipments have been met with only attacks on our stations and ships and the death of loyal Republic Crewmen. We are asking one last time for Supreme Admiral Eisenhower to stop attacking our ships and killing our crews and supply us with the basics every Republic crewman deserves while we wait for The Rock to come to its senses. Peaceful ships will be welcomed while any further attacks upon our forces will be met with over whelming violence and the total destruction of those forces and the innocent Crewmen being forced to participate in the unjustified Belligerence of a minority of Congressional Admirals against Faithfull Republic ships, officers and their crews. We have already answered the latest unprovoked attack with the destruction of the squadron that fired over a hundred shots at our ships before we responded. Have your Battleship fleet of over 200 Battleships return to The Rock’s Staging Station and send out supply transports of food and we will return to the Delta 7 and Gama 13 stations to await orders. Turner, Congressional Medal of Honor winner for Duty above and beyond, and Admiral Commanding the Gama 13 Basestation, out.”

  “What? You need food? My ship is a grain transport under orders to The Rock. If you take my ship and my cargo it will be considered piracy Admiral.”

  “We are not taking your ship Captain. But if you do not inter the cloud broadcasting your full IFF codes and screaming your head off to any and every one that listens, that you are an innocent scheduled transport, the battleship squadrons stopped just inside the maze will probably blow your ass out of Space. I would get to doing just that before you go any farther. All I want you to do is deliver that message to The Rock. Simple. No more and no less. Admiral Turner out.”

  “Red Home. Broadcast my message including the entire proceedings on the Colony Cloud, the Republic net to the other star systems and Earth net. Include a close eye on the transports just in case something stupid happens.” Taking a deep breath. “But I have a bad feeling about this. I don’t think they are going to want any messages officially getting through. Anything on the net they can disavow as fake. Have Comm open a Long range channel to both Halsey and Spencer. They will want to see this.”

  Twenty minutes later the transports each turned the first bend in their corridors. Within a few seconds of turning the corners with each making enough noise to wake the dead and within seconds of each other; both transports were hit by hundreds of 24 inch guns at point blank range as hundreds of others missed. The transports just fell apart spilling what was left of their cargos across the two corridors.

  Jack sighed. “Make sure that goes out over the net with every view you have of it. Especially the ones showing what ships fired at them.”

  Jack turned toward the back of the Maze as bright little pin points started streaking across the Staging area at the far end of the maze. The pinpoints rapidly gaining velocity until they stopped a little ways from any of the ships that were under acceleration toward one of the Maze Corridors and abruptly large flashes started coming from the heads of the Battleship engine streams. The clusters of pin point streaks coming from each of the Battleships seamed to grow thinner as engines were knocked out. Not having a photographic memory he still sat back and closed his eyes going over what he had thought he had just seen. Though he was not sure but he thought two Battleship engine streams had stopped after half a dozen explosions had emanated at the heads of the streams. Jack quickly realized that several groups of bombers had targeted their stealth torpedos onto the same ships. Jack suddenly wondering why the rest of the squadron had not done the same on other ships. It even looked like several of the bombers had sent their 2 torpedo’s after deferent Battleships even. Opening his eyes he was not sure but it looked like a half dozen Battleships had thinner engine streams streaking back from them but he was sure that they had turned around to head back toward a spot in the middle of the Bay where he suspected the Maze Station was. Probably for repairs. Then pairs of almost too small to see pin point lights started leaving the area through the clouds. Twelve of them from his count.

  “Admiral.” Jacks WSO said from behind him. “It looks like one of the Battleships is going to stick its head out around the bend to take a look into the Maze Head. And a second one is headed up a second corridor probably to do the same. The rest of the squadrons are clustering while holding in place.”

  “Well it is about time. Been expecting that for the last half hour.” Jack started to hit his Comm when he looked at his tactical screen and noticed that the Red Pepper was moving over in front of the Corridor the first Battleship was headed for the bend in. He watched the 4 DD’s slide up beside the big ship. It looked like they were moving deeper into the cloud so he let them go. His First Officer was handling the situation so far without him having to tell him. Jack would just let him handle it and see what happened. See if he had paid any attention at all to all the hours he had been forcing him to spend in The Game over the last week.

  The Battleship turned over before it slid out around the bend to allow it to use its engines to stop itself in the middle of the Corridor with the engines ready to push it back behind the corner if anything happened.

  Jack found himself holding his breath. Wondering if the Red Pepper was to fare inside the cloud to take advantage of the situation or if his First Officer was waiting for a call from Jack to give him permission to fire. Only thing was the longer he waited to call for permission the more likely the damn Battleship would escape back behind the corner inviting a major attack. Also the more intelligence the damn ship would collect. Jack started to get pissed when the Battleship fired its full broad side toward a decoy sitting out in the open far from the cloud. The Red Pepper finally started firing its 16/8inch guns and the DD’s their 24/16’s as well as the DD’s 8/6 incher’s. The mass of direct fire immediately took out every main gun turret on the Battleship facing the Red Pepper. Then the 8, 24inch guns and 32, 8/6 inch guns of the original DD’s joined by some 60, 8 inch guns from the salvaged DD’s proceeded to blow huge chunks out of the ship before the stern simply blew up when the core breached after full power thrust started streaming from the back of the ship. The Battleship had waited too long to try to run though the battle had only taken seconds before the large fireball consumed the stern of the Battleship leaving only the new armored decks at the bow tumbling back down the corridor from which it had come.

  The Red Pepper and the DD’s (the salvaged DDs a bit slower) immediately turned and raced to the other corridor. Turning to face the target just in time for the Battleship repeating the exact same maneuver as the other battleship, slid out backwards from around the bend into the open. This time the Red Pepper and the DDs did not wait as the Battleship was already taking fire before even half the ship could be seen. The battleship never even slowed down as it continued across the corridor and into the cloud without even firing a shot back at the Red Pepper. Rescue pods started flashing away from the ship as it disappeared into the cloud. The battle this time lasted 3 minutes as the battleship drifted across the corridor and could have lasted only 30 seconds before the hulk’s guns stopped firing after the
Battleship started to spin to bring its guns to bear from the back side forcing the Red Pepper and the Growing number of DD’s to keep firing longer than they needed to just to make sure the slowly spinning ship did not fire a gun they had missed taking out or was repaired.

  Jack hit the Comm. “Red Home, Actual. Place a rescue beacon far enough away from the possible battles ahead for the survivor pods to safely assemble with a medical shuttle and marines with inflatable shelters for aid. Good Job to all the crews.” Jack could see the TB’s starting to assemble in the cloud behind the Red Pepper. “I want the TB’s to attack the back side of the Maze using the recon torpedoes left behind by the SB’s for targeting. They need to target as many of the remaining Battleships as possible in one huge launch and then return and do it again. Secondary targets once the Battleships are targeted or out of commission are to be transports and the Staging Station after a warning to abandon their ships and the station is broadcast. Actual out.” Hopefully that would bring the rest of the fleet back to defend the damn transports and Station.