Énouement

Chapter Sixty Seven

I logged in after everyone else, Graff's heart-to-heart making me almost late.

"Are you there?" Ender asked over the headsets.

"All of us now," said Bean. "Kind of late for practice this morning, aren't you?"

"Sorry," Ender tried to joke. "I overslept." They all laughed, except for Bean. Except for me. This battle didn't feel right.

Ender took us through some maneuvers, got us all warmed up, and then it was time. The display cleared. I could feel my heart beating harshly against my chest.

The enemy appeared in the display. They were deployed around a planet that loomed in the corner of the display. There had been battles near planets before, but the enemy had alway tried to lure us away from the planet.

This time there were swarms of enemy ships, more than imaginable, buzzing around every corner of the display. They never grouped around each other, made it impossible for chain reactions. They constantly moved and zipped, like a hive of bees or insects in a cloud of death around the planet.

"Is this... the simulation of a home planet? Thats our final exam?" I asked the others, but no one could even speak. They seemed to be just as shocked into silence as the adults observing my simulation room.

We all waited for Ender's instructions.

But what could he even do in this situation? We didn't have enough in our forces to even make a dent in the defenses around the planet. This was a suicide mission, and we would've surely died had it been real. How could they expect us to graduate like this?

More time passed. Seconds, then minutes, and still Ender hadn't said a thing. He had usually deployed us by now, but he was just silent.

A light started blinking on my console, and I knew it was the signal that I, and Bean, could take control of the battle. They thought Ender was choking. That he was frozen. But that wasn't it.

Ender wasn't frozen with the fear of inadequacy or failure of this test. He saw exactly what I saw and knew. There was no winning, there was no way out, and there certainly wasn't going to be a passing happening today. He saw the unfairness of the test and was simply refusing to take it. Just like in Battle School.

I lowered my head, so only one would hear through the headset.

"Bean?" I wasn't panicked, but I didn't see a way out of this either.

"I don't have a plan either. If I did I'd take over but..." I could hear the murmuring and shifting of the men behind me. I shifted my head up, so Ender and all could hear.

"Ender," the feedback hissed in my ear. "You're being awfully rude to the adults who've gone out of their way to cheat here." I could hear snorting from the others and Ender's sharp inhale.

"remember," Bean said ironically, "the enemy's gate is down."

Fly Solo, Vlad, Hot Soup, Crazy Tom- lal grimly laughed. They had been in Dragon, had seen the last battle and remembered how those words had been used before.

But Ender didn't laugh.

His voice came over the headset, giving our orders. He pulled us all into tight formations, cylinders within cylinders. He set us all in motion, dogging and zipping through enemy forces. The enemy could take our concentrated forces out quickly if they grouped together, but they seemed to stay as far away from each other as we made our way to the planets surface. They had to be afraid of the device Ender had used already. The closer we got to the planet, the more the forces behind us blocked us in. There was no retreat now.

Before this, Ender had always given us a line of retreat, but the Buggers seemed to have observed that as well. What the computer didn't understand, but that Ender knew this was a Hail Mary, that we'd die or we'd fail. There would be no surviving this simulation.

The blinking light on my console suddenly turned green, I had been given control. I heard Bean's voice coming through my headset, addressing all the ships but not the other commanders. Not Ender.

O my son Absalom," Bean said softly, "My son, my son absalom. Would God I could die for thee, O Absalom, my son. My Sons!"

"What- Bean What're you-" The light cut off, my words along with it, as Ender spoke again.

"Alright, everyone except Petra's squadron, straight down as fast as you can. Launch Dr. Device agains the planet. Wait till the last possible second. Petra, cover as you can."

I echoed the command to my fleet, and then watched. We couldn't do anything else at this point.

The enemy understood now, and rushed to destroy our ships. Fighter after fighter was picked off from the enemy warm, and in the end only a few made it into the atmosphere. Those that launched too early watch their device burn up in to atmosphere, before it went off. A few others seemed to burn up before managing to launch their device at all.

Two ships were left, one of mine and one of Bean's. I saw the light go on again before Bean's voice filtered through my ears.

"Don't launch it. Set it off inside your ship. God be with you." He was talking to the last two ships, ours, as if people were there to listen. But the computer wouldn't honor a request like that-

I watched as both ships disappeared from the display without launching. And then the surface of the planet started to bubble. A vast eruption over took the last of our fighter ships, Petra's, before consuming the display screen. The exploding planet took out all of the enemy ships, engulfed them in the chain reaction. But long before the chain reached them, the enemy ships stopped dead. As if a switch had been flipped.

I could hear the men behind me clapping, congratulating one another. I continued to stare at the screen as the flames ravaged the ships, enemy and friend alike. How could the computer have listened to Bean's command? It was a computer that responded, that listened and acted to commands like disperse, go right, halt. It wouldn't be able to wait to offset the device inside of itself like that. Why was Bean praying for them when-

oh god.

I could feel my heart slamming in my throat again.

The men were cheering. Bean was praying. Bean's commands. The time lag. The home planet. This wasn't a test. This was a real battle, we had really defeated the Buggers. It wasn't a simulation, we had fought them for real.

I tore the headset off and braced myself against my console.

The ships were real. Someone had been commanding them. People. Real human being had been commanding them and we had just sent them all to their deaths.

I could feel the bile creeping up my throat, but I couldn't do more than turn my head as it came out. The men behind me all went silent, I could feel their stares on my back as I staggered out into the hallway. Everyone else was already there, but Alai rushed towards me as he saw me stagger.

"Torie? hey, you're okay whats wrong." He caught my arms and I could feel the wetness on my face. I was crying.

"we won," I said softly. He nodded confused.

"Yeah, the display was amazing," A sharp intake of breath entered my lungs as I registered his words.

"It was real, it all happened." I could feel my body start to shake, and I felt nausea consume me again.

"What do you mean, it was real?" Hot Soup crept up to me slowly. Bean spoke.

"She means it all happened, just now. That was the home world of the Buggers. We just blew it up. They're all dead." Shouts came from every area of the tunnel, objections, curse words. They didn't believe him.

"Those ships were responding to us because someone was driving them, we just sent thousands of people to their death! We just killed an entire race!" I knew I was hysterical again, but only Bean seemed to believe it and I was so tired of playing these games.

"Its called an ansible." Graff voiced drifted over us from the mouth of the tunnel.