"There's one problem. The battle room is a zero-g, three-dimensional infantry simulation. Ender will be conducting naval combat."

"So? What's your point?"

"My point is that naval combat - especially in space - is different from ground combat. It is by nature more tactical. Battles are decided in a matter of minutes, not hours. A simple strategic approach won't do well here. Especially with the kids who will be fighting under him. They need to be very sharp at the tactical level."

"They are sharp at the tactical level."

"My good Colonel Graff, not nearly as sharp as they should be. Although the principles of war do tend to extend uniformly from grand strategy to small-unit tactics, tactical combat is by nature less logistics-oriented. Your battle room may be just that, a tactical engagement, but I know what these kids read and study. Manstein. Clausewitz. Caesar. Napoleon's campaigns. Since you emphasize land warfare, I'll name you the great land tacticians. Rommel. O'Connor. Patton. Liddel-Hart. They knew tanks, manuever warfare. Which is what the navy is. That is what will beat the buggers."

"I'll see to it that they get their required reading, Admiral."

"If you may do me one more small favor, Colonel. Recently one of our ships patrolling deep space found a space probe adrift. They brought it in to Eros and when we examined it, we found a recording. It's dramatic proof that it's not just us and the buggers out here - two other races, in the Andromeda Galaxy, going at it with weapons that would make the bugger ships look like toy boats. I want them all to watch it."

Ender Wiggin sat down before the holographic projector along with the rest of Dragon Army and a healthy contingent of soldiers from other armies. They were the best in Battle School - Dink Meeker, Petra Arkanian, Han Tzu - the list went on. Colonel Graff was in the center of the auditorium fiddling with the projector.

"Enjoy this, ladies and gentlemen," he said. "It might be a little - change of pace from your other studies." Ender watched as the projector came to life and displayed a truly massive ship shilouetted against a starfield, on the fringes of a galaxy.

From the makers of Dispatch From the Front

Ender watched as Colonel Graff came over and gave him a remote control. "Ender, the projector is yours," he said. "You can pause the recording, go backwards or forwards, and move the camera around. It's quite a recording."

"Anything I should know before I play it?"

"I've cleared temporary, limited access on the nets for you - this International Fleet site and this International Fleet site only: here. It has all the background information you need." Graff touched a computer display screen to load the site, turned to the auditorium door, and walked out.

"All right," Ender said, "Let's get down to business." Everyone looked at the computer displays on their desks, already connected to the same site, and digested the necessary information, scanning pages of information and committing the lists of ships to memory.

to strengthen yourself and to deprive the enemy. There looks like one or two patches by the starting points at twelve, three, six, and nine o'clock, and one in between each. Those two in the middle of the map are very large and will be hotly contested."

Ender unpaused the recording and began to watch intently along with sixty other pairs of eyes. There were four fleets starting at twelve, three, six, and nine o'clock, all with similar makeup. Rebel_Alliance started at twelve with a Kushan mothership and a mean disposition, ShadowElf started at three with the only Taiidan contingent on the battlefield, tempus_007 jumped in with a Kushan mothership at six, and paraNoid|SF chose to fight with Kushan at nine. All sides began to commence harvesting, building, and researching their way towards confrontation, each with a slightly different strategy: tempus_007 and paraNoid|SF each began to mass scouts by their motherships, combining this unit pumping with aggressive harvester production and average focus on research. Rebel_Alliance pursued a similar strategy, but added light corvettes in after researching corvette drive and sent small groups of fighters and corvettes out on patrol instead of massing them. ShadowElf , with the most radically different strategy, concentrated purely on tech and for along time did not build a single new combat unit. It was risky, but it might work. But Petra Arkanian, commander of Phoenix Army, had a different opinion as she watched his tech tree grow on the screen of her desk.

"He's going for minelayer corvettes," she said disdainfully. "He'll be run over. Those are auxiliary units, not meant to fight. Minefields are usually static and can be cleared, if you give someone enough time."

"Then maybe he's just buying time," said Crazy Tom, a toon leader in Dragon Army.

"Can it. a large number of fighters can go right through a minefield and take minimal losses. Capital ships get hurt, but the minefields only have enough firepower to wear them down before a battle. After they get past, Elf won't have nearly enough strength to put up a fight.

"Are you kidding?" Crazy Tom was raising his voice now. "He's laying low until the other three are exhausted. Then he'll be ready. You'll see."

Petra raised herself from her chair. "He's going down and you know it."

"Shut up, both of you," Bean suddenly said. "Looks like a fight's brewing."

tempus_007, having exhausted the resource fields near his mothership, had moved his harvesters along with a sizeable fighter/corvette escort to the 4:00 mineral patch between him and ShadowElf, with a new wing of attack bombers enroute to search out and destroy any nearby targets of opportunity (i.e. resourcers) near the operation, as well as to provide a means of protection against any of the frigates that were now beginning to up the threat level of the four fleets considerably. The bombers went roving toward what appeared to be one of ShadowElf's collectors, but was in reality a squadron of 15 of Rebel_Alliance 's scouts loitering around one of their probes after destroying one of Elf's probes nearby. The vulnerable bombers realized their mistake and the wing leader ordered an immediate withdrawl to the safety of the resource patch. Unfortunately, they had been spotted. The scouts gave chase while tempus ordered his powerful fighter escort to intercept.

Rebel_Alliance's scout squadron closed and opened fire on the bombers, but before any serious losses could be inflicted, tempus_007's fast-moving scouts arced up and around the attackers' rear and opened fire. As the entire train of fighters screamed "down" towards the resourcers, the attack bombers took serious losses, but Rebel's scouts were all but annihilated. Just when the battle appeared to be over, however, nine light corvettes intended to reinforce Rebel's scouts appeared upon the scene, followed by a pair of support frigates.

"Now he's screwed," said Han Tzu, known to the others as Hot Soup. "Corvettes beat fighters beat capital ships beat corvettes - it's the circle of death." On the projector, tempus' corvettes were now in the fray, targeting the new arrivals but outnumbered and outgunned. As soon as Rebel's corvettes started to take fire, the support frigates bathed them in the green light of a repair field. There was no way tempus' forces could make any headway, and he began to withdraw his fighters which were already suffering brutally at the hands of the corvettes.

"Wait," Ender said. Over the audio speakers floated a disembodied woman's voice saying "Hyperspace signature detected". tempus looked to be escalating things as two assault frigates appeared out of shimmering blue rectangles and began to attack the support frigates. Rebel, however, was fast. In a matter of seconds he had jumped in 2 ion cannon frigates, an assault frigate, and a gravwell generator in preparation to seal off the battle space by preventing anyone from jumping in or out. Not to be outdone, tempus jumped in 2 ion frigates and a support frigate, approaching the limit of his strength. But Rebel would not have anyone win but himself. As tempus' frigates closed to do battle with the existing force, whether by accident or design Rebel jumped an ion frigate and two support frigates off to the left of the frigates.

Now it was plain that tempus truly was in trouble. Rebel now had him outflanked, outnumbered, and outgunned, along with four support frigates to tempus' one. In a desperate move, tempus sent his fighters back into the fray, launching an attack on the ion frigates to the right while tempus' own frigates concentrated on the lone frigate to their left, hoping to isolate it from the group and destroy it. The two assault frigates began to sideslip left, using their advantage of having a greater fire arc to turn while they fought, hoping to flank the frigate and help bring it down. Meanwhile, the main group began concentrating on the pair, ignoring the ion frigates completely while tempus' fighters began their attack runs despite the still-present threat of the light corvettes constantly picking them off one by one. One of Rebel's support frigates went down, then an ion frigate, but fighter losses were mounting and finally one of tempus' assault frigates blew up, the other heavily damaged. The final death knell rang when Rebel jumped in four more frigates - one ion, three assault - to tip the balance of force overwhelmingly in his favor. tempus hoped to stay around long enough to finish off the ion frigate he had isolated, but Rebel would have none of it - the frigate jumped away and out of tempus' clutches. Taking the cue, tempus jumped three of his four remaining frigates several kilometers away to safety, and ordered them to move to a place in deep space where they would rendzevous with reinforcements and the fleeing harvesters, which managed to escape with the loss of only one resource controller. Rebel turned to attacking some of ShadowElf's harvesters, then finally packed up and headed at flank speed for home.

Hot Soup let out a low whistle as things got quiet again. Rebel_Alliance's frigates were heading for home. tempus_007 had been forced to withdraw his harvesters while the ragged remains of his fighters were finished off by Rebel's force. While he was scanning for something interesting, Ender asked his fellow soldiers, "What's going to happen now? Did Rebel win a pyyrhic victory?"

Petra spoke up. "tempus fought well for someone at a disadvantage, but He was tactically outmanuevered. The support frigates were the decisive factor. If he had one or two more he might have won. But I think that I have to hand Rebel the strategic as well as the tactical victory here. In terms of material damage, it's close, but it all comes down to the harvesters. They take a long time to gather and deliver big loads and so any interruption translates into a major loss of resources."

They continued to watch as tempus regrouped, Rebel started looking for another fight, paraNoid|SF began to expand his mining to the center resource clusters, and ShadowElf continued to lie low. As the minutes ticked by, tempus amassed a far stronger force along with heavy corvette escort and returned to the still resource-rich 4:00 patch. Four minelayer corvettes that would be used to seal off the resources so the harvest operation could go on unmolested found themselves in the middle of a tangle with six of Rebel's light corvettes, dramatically showing the light corvettes are all but useless against anything bigger than a fighter: a half-finished minefield tookthemout in seconds.

Meanwhile, a second battle was beginning to heat up, this time between Rebel and paraNoid|SF. By the center of the map, one of Rebel's destroyers had come across a destroyer and missile destroyer of paraNoid and immediately the big capital ships began going at it hammer and tongs. A support frigate was backing up paraNoid's ships, however, and though Rebel managed to take it out his destroyer went down. However, a new, ominous threat was bearing down from the asteroid fields in the center: Rebel's powerful frigate force. Five Ion frigates engaged the destroyer from the flank, a critical point as destroyers are slow to turn and so the frigates managed to get about a shot in apiece before the destroyer's main armament, its twin ion cannons, could be brought to bear. paraNoid had brought up a second missile destroyer and Rebel's assault frigates moved around the back of the ion frigates in order to draw attention away from them. paraNoid brought up a last destroyer and resolved to make his stand. Rebel, however, couldn't seem to finish off a target. They left paraNoid's first destroyer even though it was ablaze and not too hard to kill off, with every ounce of firepower it had when it had been launched. However, paraNoid seemed content to leave the ship behind to lick its wounds as attention shifted to the destroyer and two missile destroyers determined to stop the advanding frigates even as Rebel brought up two fresh destroyers and a powered-up gravwell generator to crack paraNoid's fleet. paraNoid's fresh destroyer quickly becamen the epicenter of the battle. As ion cannons lanced out to skewer ships with their ruby flares, plasma bombs exploded, missiles and railguns found their mark, paraNoid's destroyers began to slowly wear away until several newcomers dropped in from above: three ion cannon frigates under the command of paraNoid, backed up by two support frigates. They opened fire upon the ion frigates of Rebel and immediately one vaporized. As another exploded, paraNoid's destroyer finally was destroyed in a glowing ball of expanding plasma. Things looked grim for paraNoid's remaining forces, surrounded at last by the closing hook of the assault frigates. paraNoid sounded the retreat, but as Rebel's ships turned to pursue, the gravwell generator ran out of power and exploded and they were hit with a threat that they were unprepared to counter. A large wing of attack bombers and interceptors from paraNoid's mothership began a high-speed attack which immediately threw Rebel's fleet into a panic.

The holo projector suddenly went blank. "Wha-" Ender started to ask, but he was stopped by Colonel Graff, who switched off the projector. "That's all of the recording, Ender," he said. "Remember, we pulled this off a damaged space probe and the records were incomplete."

"Do you at least know who won?"

"We know from other data logs that Rebel_Alliance went on to destroy paraNoid|SF's mothership and tempus_007's, and we're sure that ShadowElf was not far behind. I'm sure that you all will soon be debating whyRebel won. Lunch hour in ten minutes." Graff turned on a heel and strode out.

All the army commanders who had been in the auditorium had agreed to sit in the soldiers' mess today so that all the school's best wouldn't miss out. Why, Ender thought, did Rebel win? There was, of course, the obvious answer that he had held the initiative throughout, but that was over-simplified. If tempus of paraNoid had fought just a little differently, the outcome would probably have ben very different. The answer, Ender was sure, was that Rebel never directly attacked his enemy; he also shifted from target to target and did things that seemed outright stupid, but they worked. He attacked the enemy indirectly and never wholy committed himself at the start of a battle. To that, Ender reflected, was to lay your entire hand on the table while someone else had something you couldn't be quite sure of. The only way to fight that possibility was to threaten them with the same thing.

"Ho, Ender". It was Dink Meeker, who had once told Ender that the bugger wars were a hoax and they were really being trained to take part in Earthbound wars. Ender didn't know what to believe, but it didn't matter. Dink was a good friend.

"Ho, Dink."

"Listen, Ender," Dink said. "Either they've got an even more elaborate plot than I thought or tha buggers are real. Why would we be fighting in space when Russia takes on the Hegemony?" Ender nodded thoughtfully. The day had been very intersting.

"Well done, Colonel. You've come a long way in making up their deficiency."

"Thank you, sir."

"You stil get to go planetside on occasion, Colonel Graff. Tell me, is the planet still worth saving?"

"It depends on how you look at it, Admiral. I like to think so."

This has been a tempus007 production