Engaging the Enemy

by Elizabeth Moon

  They needed an organization. They needed strategy and tactics and operational doctrine and logistics and all those military things that had seemed simple and clear-cut at the Academy, laid out in the texts with neat diagrams and clear explanations. She called in everyone in the crew who had served in a military unit of any kind.

  “Tell me everything you can about your organization,” she said. “Not the secret stuff, of course, but the plain vanilla of it: how was it organized? Who made what decisions? Who could countermand that decision? We’re trying to combine people who have different organizations. Yet functionally, they do much the same thing—fight ships in space from ships in space. So if I can figure out how it overlaps, make it easier for people from other organizations to combine and work together—”

  The first startled resistance melted away as she explained, showing them the skeleton table of organization she had drawn up, based on Slotter Key’s Spaceforce. “You mean we call the officer who buys supplies the procurement officer and you call him the supply officer?” asked Jon Gannett.

  “Exactly,” Ky said.

  Hugh leaned over to look. “Well, if you take away the labels in the boxes, it looks pretty much like ours.”

  Jon Gannett nodded. “Like ours, too.”

  “So creating a combined table of organization won’t be as bad as I thought,” Ky said. She glanced around the table; they were all looking at the diagram, and after a moment looked up to meet her gaze. “Next,” she said, “we have to come up with tactics that work.”

  “We could just do something stupid again, wait for them to pounce, and then surprise them by suddenly becoming brilliant,” Martin said. That got a chuckle.

  “I’d rather we were brilliant from the start,” Ky said. “And we have a few weeks to get that way before we get to Ciudad.”

  “You’re not giving up.” Jon Gannett made it a statement, not a question.

  “I don’t give up,” Ky said. There was a moment’s startled silence, then she went on. “And since going at it the wrong way nearly got us all killed—”

  “Not your fault,” Martin said.

  “Joining up with Andreson when she made it clear she would insist on command was my decision,” Ky said. “But I can’t undo it; what I can do is not make that mistake again. So—let’s use the time we have to figure out how our three surviving ships can convince potential allies that they should join us. I think having a good organizational plan in place and some tactical analysis should help with that.”

  “Yes, ma’am, that should help a lot.” Hera Gannett, normally quieter than Jon, beat him to it this time. The others nodded.

  “And then,” Ky said, “when we have the allies and the plan, we will hunt those scumsuckers down and blow them all away.” She grinned at them, one after another, and, one after another, they grinned back.

  By Elizabeth Moon

  THE DEED OF PAKSENARRION

  Sheepfarmer’s Daughter

  Divided Allegiance

  Oath of Gold

  THE LEGACY OF GIRD

  Surrender None

  Liar’s Oath

  PLANET PIRATES (with Anne McCaffrey)

  Sassinak

  Generation Warriors

  Remnant Population*

  THE SERRANO LEGACY

  Hunting Party

  Sporting Chance

  Winning Colors

  Once a Hero

  Rules of Engagement

  Change of Command

  Against the Odds

  The Speed of Dark*

  VATTA’S WAR

  Trading in Danger*

  Marque and Reprisal*

  Engaging the Enemy*

  SHORT-FICTION COLLECTIONS

  Lunar Activity

  Phases

  *Published by Ballantine Books

  Engaging the Enemy is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2006 by Elizabeth Moon

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Del Rey Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  DEL REY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  www.delreybooks.com

  eISBN: 978-0-345-49100-8

  v3.0