[Enders Game] >
Lara Flinn never thought she'd make it to Battle School, much less alongside Ender Wiggin. But powers beyond them have sealed their fates and there's no turning back.
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The International Fleet will do whatever it takes to pre...
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Status: Edited
"You can't be serious about this battle schedule."
"Does it look like I'm joking, Anderson?"
"We want to teach him, not give him a nervous break down! He hasn't even been with his army for three weeks!"
"You know just as well as I do that we need to speed things up. He has to learn to deal with these things if we're sending him to Command School."
"He'll burn out before he can even graduate!"
"That's a risk we're going to have to take."
. . .
Long before the lights came on, I was awake in bed, staring at the bunk above me as my mind wandered.
The army was doing well. So well, in fact, that Ender had made five toons instead of the standard four. I was made leader of toon B while four other soldiers were assigned the rest.
In our very first week together, Ender already had us playing mock battles to prepare us for the real thing. He taught the toon leaders how to use their toons individually and made it clear that he wanted each leader to give their own orders during battle. We learned quickly that Ender wasn't one for creating any set plan. He explained this to us on one of our first days together as an army, making it clear that every battle is different and will require a new strategy and tactic to win. The only consistency throughout his teachings was that the enemy's gate is down.
If it hadn't been clear in the beginning, by then we were all aware of how great of a commander Ender was.
At exactly 0602 hours, two minutes after the lights turned on, Ender appeared in the doorway of the barrack fully dressed in his flash suit. "We have our first battle against Rabbit at 0700 hours," he called as we scrambled out of bed. "I want you in the gym warming up in three minutes."
One of the boys nearer to the front spoke up groggily. "Can we take a piss first?" A few boys snickered.
Ender's reply was witty and sarcastic, surprising everyone awake with the amount of excitement that filtered through. "No more than a deciliter."
Laughter filled the space and I smiled lightly at his playful mood. With everyone fully awake now, we hurried to change.
As many of us reached our lockers however, Ender's voice grabbed our attention once more. "Strip down and bring your flash suits with you. We're jogging to the gym to warm up," he said.
So instead of putting on our flash suits, we pulled off our pajamas. I was left in my sports bra and spandex while the boys were left in their boxers. Filing into two lines by the door, I took my place at the front with the rest of the toon leaders.
