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equivalence in losses, but the unfortunate fact is that the enemy have more ships, and I fear we can’t sustain a war of attrition.”
    There was a long moment of silence, broken by the chiming voice of one of Martinez’s Daimong captains. “Do you have any suggestion for tactics that can take advantage of this analysis?”
    “I’m afraid not, my lord. Other than ordering a starburst much earlier in the battle, of course.”
    Kamarullah gave a contemptuous huff into his microphone that sounded like a gunshot in Martinez’s earphones. “A lot of good that’ll do,” he said. “With our ships scattered all over space, the enemy could stay in formation and pick us off one by one.”
    Frustration crawled with jointed fingers up Martinez’s spine. That was not what he meant to imply, and he couldn’t help but feel that if he could only speak to the captains in person, he could bring his points across.
    “I don’t mean that our ships should wander at random about the galaxy, lord captain,” he said.
    “And if both sides use these tactics, what then?” Kamarullah continued. “Without any formation the battle will just turn into a melee, ships fighting each other singly or in ones and twos, and that’s precisely the sort of situation where the enemy superiority in numbers will be decisive. The enemy should beg us to starburst early.” A sly expression crossed his face. “Of course,” he said, “if we aren’t expected to keep formation or maneuver simultaneously, it will certainly be easier on the ships that are having trouble doing exactly these things.”
    You’ll pay for that, Martinez glowered, and he saw his thought mirrored on the faces of two other underperforming captains. He could feel his hands, in a world he couldn’t at present see, clenching in his gloves.
    “Our ancestors understood these things better than we,” one of the Daimong said. “We should strive to perfect the tactics they’ve passed on to us. With these tactics our ancestors built an empire.”
    During which time they fought only one real war, Martinez thought.
    Squadron Commander Do-faq fixed Martinez with his golden eyes. “Do you have a remedy for this problem, lord elcap?”
    Martinez chose his words carefully. “I think that we need to expand the concept of formation. Ideally we would need ships traveling in a much looser arrangement, far enough apart that a single volley of missiles wouldn’t destroy all of them, but still able to coordinate their actions against the enemy.”
    Kamarullah breathed another gunshot-huff into his microphone, and Do-faq gave an annoyed start and a flare of his crest hairs. Do-faq’s flag captain, Cho-hal, then asked, “But how do you solve the problem of communication?”
    Ships normally communicated via laser, which had the punch to get a message through a ship’s raging plasma tail, and which also had the advantage of privacy—no enemy could listen in on a directed beam. The alternative was to use a radio signal, which might not get through the radio interference of a ship’s exhaust, and which in any case could be overheard by the enemy. In a civil war, where both sides had started with the same codes as well as the same coding and decoding computers, that was a serious hazard.
    “I have some ideas, lord captain,” Martinez said. “But they’re rather…unformed. We can use secure-coded radio transmissions; or perhaps an arrangement whereby, even after starburst, each ship takes a preassigned path so that orders can reach it by laser…”
    He saw his defeat in the faces of the others, even the aliens whose expressions were difficult to decipher. His idea managed to be both horribly unformed and far too complex—in itself quite an accomplishment, he supposed.
    “Lord squadcom,” he said to Do-faq, “I beg permission to send you a more thorough analysis when my ideas have had time to…to cohere.” The disdainful twist on Kamarullah’s mouth turned into a smirk at the sound of