Énouement

Chapter Sixty Two

Mazer woke him before morning; the clock said 0340, and Ender felt groggy as he padded along the corridor behind Mazer.

"Early to bed and early to rise," Mazer intoned, "makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes."

He had been dreaming that buggers were vivisecting him. Only instead of cutting open his body, they were cutting up his memories and displaying them like holographs and trying to make sense of them. Memories of Torie and Valentine and even Peter.

It was a very odd dream, and Ender couldn't easily shake loose of it, even as he walked through the tunnels to the simulator room. The buggers tormented him in his sleep, and Mazer wouldn't leave him alone when he was awake. Between the two of them he had no rest. Instead Ender forced himself awake, where he tortured himself with his thoughts of Torie.

Apparently Mazer meant it when he said he meant to break Ender down —and forcing him to play when tired and sleepy was just the sort of cheap and easy trick Ender should have expected. Well, today it wouldn't work. He got to the simulator and found his squadron leaders already on the wire, waiting for him.

There was no enemy yet, so he divided them into two armies and began a mock battle, commanding both sides so he could control the test that each of his leaders was going through. They began slowly, but soon were vigorous and alert. Then the simulator field went blank, the ships disappeared, and everything changed at once.

At the near edge of the simulator field they could see the shapes, drawn in holographic light, of three starships from the human fleet. Each would have twelve fighters. The enemy, obviously aware of the human presence, had formed a globe with a single ship at the center. Ender was not fooled —it would not be a queen ship. The buggers outnumbered Ender's fighter force by two to one, but they were also grouped much closer together than they should have been —Dr. Device would be able to do much more damage than the enemy expected. Ender selected one starship, made it blink in the simulator field, and spoke into the microphone.

"Alai, this is yours; assign Petra and Vlad to the fighters as you wish." He assigned the other two starships with their fighter forces, except for one fighter from each starship that he reserved for Bean. Mazer has warned him against Bean and Torie, but at least Bean was meant to be here. Ended still refused to give Torie more responsibility then needed. Nothing that would make the adults rely on her.

"Slip the wall and get below them, Bean, unless they start chasing you —then run back to the reserves for safety. Otherwise, get in a place where I can call on you for quick results. Alai, form your force into a compact assault at one point in their globe. Don't fire until I tell you. This is maneuver only."

"This one's easy, Ender," Alai said.

"It's easy, so why not be careful? I'd like to do this without the loss of a single ship." It was cold, but Ender expected complete obedience, and they gave it to him. Ender grouped his reserves in two forces that shadowed Aiai at a safe distance; Bean was already off the simulator, though Ender occasionally flipped to Bean's point of view to keep track of where he was.

It was Alai, however, who played the delicate game with the enemy. He was in a bullet-shaped formation, and probed the enemy globe. Wherever he came near, the bugger ships pulled back, as if to draw him in toward the ship in the center, Alai skimmed to the side; the bugger ships kept up with him, withdrawing wherever he was close, returning to the sphere pattern when he had passed.

Feint, withdraw, skim the globe to another point, withdraw again, feint again; and then Ender said "Go on in, Alai."

His bullet started in, while he said to Ender, "You know they'll just let me through and surround me and eat me alive."