Galactic Patrol by E.E. Smith

The enemy strongholds so insultingly close to Prime Base having been obliterated, the solarian fleet sailed on into space. For a few weeks game was plentiful enough. Hundreds of raiding vessels were overtaken and held by the patrol cruisers, then blasted to vapor by the maulers.

Many Boskonian bases were also reduced. The locations of most of these had long been known to the intelligence service; others were detected or discovered by the fast-flying cruisers themselves. Marauding vessels revealed the sites of others by succeeding in reaching them before being overtaken by the cruisers. Others were found by the tracers and loops of the signal corps.