Together

Chapter 13 ★ Amy

After lunch we head to the bunkroom to change, only to find notes on our desks. They all say exactly the same thing.

"Dragon Army's schedule has changed by request of your commander. Afternoon Battle room training and classes have been switched for an unknown amount of time." Okay. Bean looks at Wolf, who looks at me.

"I guess this is really going to push our limits." My toon smiles and nods. They all grab their desks and circle up on the floor. I see an empty space and look at Wolf, who is facing me, quizzically. She nods at the empty space. Oh. I head over and sit in the empty space. I guess they took my advice to hold study sessions literally.

I pull up my learning program and start with trigonometry. I try to put a fresh mind to trig because I'm terrible at it. Today's lesson isn't too bad though. I quickly finish the lesson and the homework. I move on to rocket science. Simple. Solving a three page equation for aerodynamics in space. Homework was solving for work, power, and thrust in space. Took me ten minutes tops. I check the time and finish the homework in my other classes as well. Still ten minutes before gym. I design a space ship that will be three times more maneuverable in space than the ones the IF uses, but also uses less fuel. I know this because I checked the blueprints. I publish it anonymously in the Battle School library. Check time. Six minutes to gym.

Aiden gets up and sits down by me.

"Amy, can you help me with rocket science?"

"Yeah." I lean over and look at his desk. He has a basic problem. He must slingshot his forces into an attack position on the blind side of the moon using the gravitational pull from the planet nearby. He shows me the equation he was told to use. It's an overly complex equation for the given problem.

"This equation is way to complicated for what you have to do." I explain. He looks confused. "I'll give you a simpler one." I type it up. The equation eliminates several steps from the one he was given. I hand back his desk and he looks at the equation.

"Oh, wow, that makes much more sense. Thanks Amy!"

"That was the point of the whole little circular study group, wasn't it?"

"Yeah." He says. "See you in gym." Oh, right. Time check. A minute and a half. I change as quickly as I can and sprint down to the gym. When arrive I have two seconds to spare. Five people arrive late, none in my toon. I look around, but Ender's not here.

He walks in twelve seconds later along with Dink, Fly and Tom.

★★★

Gym was terrible. I can't imagine having to do that every day. Fifty laps running on the track, accompanied by fifty push ups and fifty sit ups. Done twice. Twenty-five pull ups and then rock wall climbing. Twenty-five times up and down the rope with two running laps between each climb. Then, yoga stretching to cool down. I'm probably going to cough up my lungs, and my arms are like limp noodles. My guess is that Dink and the others came up with that during free time.

I head back to the bunkroom with Wolf. We change and head to dinner. I get my 'food' (that's what the lunch servers call the semi liquid stuff they put on our plates) and turn to go sit with my toon. Dink and Fly are waving me over to their table urgently. I look apologetically at my toon and go sit with them.

"What's up? Is something wrong?" I ask as soon as I sit down.

"Nothing's wrong, we just need to talk about battle strategy in our toons."

"Couldn't this wait until closer to when we get called into battle? We get about a month to train, yeah?"

"Yeah, but Ender wants us to be prepared for all possibilities." Says Tom.

"Okay, but I can't tell you much about my toon other than they all get along really well together." Dink looks back at my toon, who are laughing hard about something David said. He says something else and they all laugh harder.

"Okay." Fly pulls out his desk and pulls up fifteen different charts for training regimen.

"What's all that for?" Fly, Tom and Dink look at me like I've grown an extra head.

"We need to have plans." Dink says in a duh voice that could rival any bratty three-year-olds.

"How are we supposed to make plans if we don't know how our soldiers fight? What their tendencies are? What they excel at and what they struggle with? Who they get along with? Yes, we need to have strategies, but we need to know how our soldiers fight in order to make accurate plans." They all nod in understanding and agreement.

"Two days," says Tom. "That's when Ender expects plans for training regimen. We have two days to get to know our toons and then Ender will implement them."

"Wait, this doesn't seem like Ender. Did he request that we come up with training regimen?"

"No," Dink says, blushing.

"We're trying to take some stress off of Ender. He can't run the whole army by himself, can he?"

"Even if he can't, that's what Graff wants him to do. So, he'll do it. We should let him know."

"Okay." They all nod grudgingly.

"But still, I say we come up with plans anyways. We should do what Amy did today and eat breakfast and lunch with our toons and then dinner together." This from Tom. We all nod. I notice that the others have been eating their food this whole time. Their trays are empty. I look at my full one and decide I'm not hungry. I check the time. Ten minutes until Battleroom practice. I get up, put my tray in the depository and head off to change into my flash suit.