First to Fight: Book One of Starfist
Excerpt: Chapter 23
It's a military truism that no intelligence system, no matter how good or how thorough, ever provides enough information to the people who need it the most--the fighting men. Marine, navy, and Confederation intelligence on Elneal failed to provide a couple of vital bits of information to Ensign Baccacio. Of course, if the intelligence establishment had had those two bits of information, all of the Marines on Elneal would have been operating in a different manner to begin with.
One missing bit of intelligence was Shebeli's Raptors. They were a well-kept secret, though many people had been involved in that deal and there had been plenty of time to ferret out the information. But no one ever considered that such weapon systems might have been imported for the use of people as primitive as the Siad. The other thing the Marines didn't know was that Shebeli had adopted the method of movement developed by the thirteenth century Mongol horsemen.
The way Ensign Baccacio saw it, Captain Conorado was "micromanaging" when he'd ordered him to put out security during the daily all-hands. Today, with the company commander off &qu ...
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