Énouement

Chapter Sixty

The next day at the end of practice, Ender told us that things were changing.

"So far we've been playing against the computer or against each other. But starting now, every few days Mazer himself and a team of experienced pilots will control the opposing fleet. Anything goes."
"Oh joy, more games." I muttered under my breath.

Tests, with Mazer Rackham himself as the opponent? Yeah, that wasn't a test, it was a set up for the real battles we'd be fighting. And it didn't sound as casual as Ender was making it seem. Because to me, it sounded like we were running out of time.
I had no doubts of Mazer's ability, but fighting humans who thought only like humans wasn't going to get us very far.

I waited for Bean outside of his sim room, and he looked just as troubled by everything as I felt.
"I would ask if we could go somewhere to talk, but there's really no place to go here, is there?" Bean shrugged, before motioning me to follow him. I fell into step with him and we walked aimlessly through the corridors.

"Do you buy any of this?" Bean shook him head, but still offered me no answers.

Then came the first of these "tests" —and it was embarrassing how juvenile the strategy was. A big globe formation, surrounding a single ship. In this battle it became clear that Ender knew things that he wasn't telling us.

For one thing, he told us all to ignore the ship in the center of the globe. It was a decoy. But how could Ender know that? Because he knew that the Buggers would *show* a single ship like that, and it was a lie. Which means that the Buggers expect us to go for that one ship.

Except, of course, that this was not really the Buggers, this was Mazer Rackham. So why would Rackham expect the Buggers to expect humans to strike for a single ship?

God this was already hurting my head.

The second thing that Ender knew and we didn't was the use of a weapon that hadn't been in any of their simulations till this first test.

"What is it then?" Vlad asked softly.
"Dr. Device," was all Ender would say about it —until he ordered Alai to use it where the enemy fleet was most concentrated.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It  set off a chain reaction that leapt from ship to ship, until all but the most outlying Formic ships were destroyed. And it was an easy matter to mop up those stragglers (which I wasn't trusted to do of course). The playing field was clear when we were all finished. Game over.

"Why was their strategy so stupid?" asked Bean.
"That's what I was wondering," Ender answered. "But we didn't lose a ship, so that's OK."

Later, Ender told them what Mazer said —they were simulating a whole invasion sequence, and so he was taking the simulated enemy through a learning curve.
"Next time they'll have learned. It won't be so easy."
"An invasion sequence? Is there more than one Bugger world?" I asked alarmed. Ender was quiet. I heard him take a breath, maybe to answer me or reprimand me, but Bean beat him to it.

"I suppose that's logical. I mean, they didn't carve up Earth just for fun, right?"
"They meant to colonize Earth." Hot Soup surmised. I wanted to ask if he'd seen the area in China that the Formics had attacked.
"If we're going World to world, that could be never ending." We'll never go home, went unsaid. Did we even have a home to go to? Not if we failed. This didn't feel like a game any more.

"You know your jobs. The next battle will start in a few days." Ended abruptly cut off his contact and left the rest of us. I practically growled over my mic at his obvious dismissal of us all.

"Meet in the common room in 20." I yanked off my head set and threw it at on of the tech hands nearby. I needed to fix this, I needed to fix all of us. We weren't going to last like this. I turned towards the adults who always supervised me.

"Take me to Colonel Graff, now."

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"Sophronia." I stared across the desk at Graff. I knew his office must've been bugged, but I didn't really care at this point.

"We won't last like this." Graff raised an eyebrow, but didn't show that he knew what I was talking about. I scowled at him.
"I know we're on a time limit here, but we won't make it if this is how they're gonna do it. You're all hiding things from us. And you know if you wanna treat us like children but have us still kill your monsters, then fine. But you need us to survive long enough the do it." You need Ender to survive, I wanted to say.

Graff looked sad. I hadn't ever seen him as anything but angry, neutral, or smug. So that was it. We didn't have enough time for this to screw us all up, and so the adults didn't care if we were damaged beyond repair.
"You don't have any power here, do you?" Once again Graff said nothing. I guess he didn't want anything to be recorded on the record.

"Fine. I'll do it myself." He only nodded at me, as if giving me permission.

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"Why did you need us all here princess?" Petra asked, only lightly teasing for once in her life. I rolled my eyes but ushered them all over to the couches they had.
"You guys see what they've done to Ender. Well, you've heard it." I remarked. They all nodded. "Well I can't really do anything about that, and I don't think he'd accept help from me anyways. But I'm not gonna let the rest of us go crazy too. The adults don't care, but we need to survive this war. So we can live after it." Bean looked thoughtful, like he knew a secrets. But he always knew a secret.

"How do you propose we do that eh? We're stuck on this stupid rock!" Fly snorted at Dink's description of Eros.

"It's an asteroid Snot." The other laughed along at him.
"Hey! This is important okay! I don't wanna be like these dogging adults, and they don't particularly care what happens to us so long as we do their dirty work. So we need to come together now. Right now. We won't let each other go crazy here. Not like Bonzo, and not like Ender. Okay?"

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The battles started the next day.

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