For Honor We Stand Read Online Free PDF

were safed for the jump, whereas all the Krag had to do was to arm their weapons and start shooting.  We were a little bit better off than if they had been expecting us at that moment, but not enough for us to be able to get away unscathed.”  He paused, shaking his head, remembering the shock of being hit by enemy weapons fire less than a minute after coming out of jump, before he was even aware the enemy ships were present.
    “You said ‘first.’  Is there a ‘second’?”
    “Oh, yes.  Remember Midshipman Goldman?  The Lieutenant I demoted temporarily for verbally abusing an enlisted man?”
    “I remember him well.”  He dropped his voice to just above a whisper.  “You may recall that I treated him for a stims addiction.”
    “Right.  Well, it turns out he knows the ins and outs of Krag sensors better than anyone imagined.  Apparently, when he was serving on the Themistocles , he made the mistake of smarting off to Captain Tobias.  You know, ‘Temper Tantrum’ Tobias?  Well, Captain Tobias decided to teach Goldman a lesson and assigned him to spend five months doing nothing but disassembling, reassembling, and testing to destruction hundreds of Krag sensor multiplex relay assemblies he had just taken off a captured Krag tender.  After that experience, Goldman knew just how to configure our active sensors to emit a pulse precisely tailored to fry the multiplexers.  The trick is no good as a standard battle tactic because the emitter isn’t built to transmit a tight coherent beam, so unless you’re within ten thousand meters or so the beam spreads out too much and you aren’t hitting the multiplexer with enough power to do the job.  But, since all our weapons were off line, the rat-faced bastards had closed to about eighty-five hundred meters to finish us off.  We hit both ships with it, effectively blinding them, and ran like scalded dogs from right under their noses.  We’re not in their sights any more, but in a few hours they’ll catch up with us again and have significant advantages in numbers, firepower, and tactical position.”
    “So, what do we do?”
    “Have you ever read Sun Tzu?”
    “Sun Tzu?”  He shook his head.  “I thought that was a particularly ridiculous breed of dog.  The ones that look like tiny, animated dust mops.”
    “No, that’s Shih Tzu.  Very lovable pets, I hear.  Sun Tzu was a Chinese general and philosopher of war.  Sixth century BCE.  Brilliant.  Commodore Middleton made me practically memorize his book, The Art of War.  Old Sun Tzu is the one who said ‘all warfare is based on deception.’”
    “A principle by which you live scrupulously.”
    “Of course.  My most cherished military maxim.  But he said something else that is particularly relevant here.  This is a paraphrase, of course, but he said basically that when you engage your enemy it should appear to him that you are doing exactly what he expects you to do.”
    “What conceivable good does that do?”
    “A great deal, actually.  Knowing what he expects, you appear to do exactly that.  Give him one or two clues that point to what he has been thinking you’re going to do and that’s what he’s going to see, even if the clues could point to a hundred other things as well.  After all, we all love being right, don’t we?  But, the rub is that you are not doing what he expects; rather, you are doing something completely different. 
    “You do something that looks like you are doing A.  He jumps to the conclusion that you are doing A and launches his planned response for A, but you are doing B.  And not only are you doing B, which he didn’t expect, when you made your plans for B you took into account your exact knowledge of what he would do when he thinks you are doing A.  So, he is not ready for you, but you are ready for him.”
    “Very clever, indeed.  Use his preconceptions against him.  I understand.  That goes along with modern cognitive theory that says