Wiktionary
n. 1 (context military English) A type of warship equal in size or larger than a battleship, and of greater speed, but with less armour and fewer guns. Introduced ca. 1908 and forming the leading squadrons of WWI battle fleets but obsolescent by WWII, having been replaced by the "fast battleship" type. 2 In fiction, a warship of intermediate capability between cruisers and battleships
Usage examples of "battle-cruiser".
Nothing smaller than a battle-cruiser mounted a cyber synth, and even a cyber synth AI would have been out of its league against an alpha synth.
That will place my carriers and battle-cruisers twenty hours from the nearest friendly warp point.
The rear admiral led the faster screening force well in advance of the main body: battle-cruisers and heavy cruisers, sweeping ahead of the light carriers and their escorts.
Bolan was tracking in the Warwagon, a twenty-six-foot GMC motorhome which served him admirably as base camp, scout ship, battle-cruiser, home.
On the view screens, the drifting mountain that had concealed her slid to one side, revealing the starry firmament, and reflected starlight gleamed dimly as other ships formed up on the battle-cruiser while the last fighter warheads flashed like new, brief stars amid the Theban fleet.
Why were those battle-cruisers and heavy cruisers detaching from the withdrawing enemy and moving toward his forts at flank speed?
The enemy heavy cruisers and escorts had paid dearly, but most of the battle-cruisers had escaped, though many trailed atmosphere as they vanished into the warp point, leaving a victorious but shaken Federation fleet in undisputed possession.
The result had been the destruction of eight Theban battle-cruisers, four heavy cruisers, and six light cruisers in return for Dunkerque, Atago, three destroyers, and heavy damage to Kirov and two of the forts.
The Sword of Terra's final mobile units—destroyers and light cruisers, supported by a pitiful handful of superdreadnoughts and battle-cruisers, a scattering of captured infidel carriers, and the converted freighter "barges" the Ministry of Production had cobbled up—hovered behind them, beyond the projected range of the infidels' new weapons, but it was the fortresses which mattered.
His task force was now up to seventeen battleships and battle-cruisers, ten light carriers, and eighteen cruisers and destroyers.
Capital missiles from her battle-cruisers blanketed the lead battleship, pounding down her shields and savaging her armor, but it wasn't going to be enough.
Lantu could still have them in the end—his ships had to score a crippling drive hit eventually—but meanwhile the infidel battle-cruisers were pounding their pursuers with those damnable long-ranged missiles.
But sufficient light units remained to maintain a scanner watch over the advancing infidel fleet while Tharana's surviving battle-cruisers fell back on the main body at maximum.
His units have been pushed back to extreme scanner range, but he estimates the enemy's strength at approximately six superdreadnoughts, twelve battleships, nine battle-cruisers, and twelve to fourteen light and heavy cruisers.
Admiral Berenson is cutting the angle and closing, but he still hasn't been able to bring his battle-cruisers into capital missile range.