Ender's Game (Ender's Saga, #1) - Orson Scott Card Page 0,61

give him Phoenix Army—no one ever succeeded to command of the same army he was in when he was promoted.

Anderson took him first to his new quarters. That sealed it—only commanders had private rooms. Then he had him fitted for new uniforms and a new flash suit. He looked on the forms to discover the name of his army.

Dragon, said the form. There was no Dragon Army.

“I’ve never heard of Dragon Army,” Ender said.

“That’s because there hasn’t been a Dragon Army in four years. We discontinued the name because there was a superstition about it. No Dragon Army in the history of the Battle School ever won even a third of its games. It got to be a joke.”

“Well, why are you reviving it now?”

“We had a lot of extra uniforms to use up.”

Graff sat at his desk, looking fatter and wearier than the last time Ender had seen him. He handed Ender his hook, the small box that allowed commanders to go where they wanted in the battleroom during practices. Some said they worked magnetically, some said it was gravity. Many times during his evening practice sessions Ender had wished that he had a hook, instead of having to rebound off walls to get where he wanted to go. Now that he’d got quite deft at maneuvering without one, here it was. “It only works,” Anderson pointed out, “during your regularly scheduled practice sessions.” Since Ender already planned to have extra practices, it meant the hook would only be useful some of the time. It also explained why so many commanders never held extra practices. They depended on the hook, and it wouldn’t do anything for them during the extra times. If they felt that the hook was their authority, their power over the other boys, then they were even less likely to work without it. That’s an advantage I’ll have over some of my enemies, Ender thought.

Graff’s official welcome speech sounded bored and over-rehearsed. Only at the end did he begin to sound interested in his own words. “We’re doing something unusual with Dragon Army. I hope you don’t mind. We’ve assembled a new army by advancing the equivalent of an entire launch course early and delaying the graduation of quite a few advanced students. I think you’ll be pleased with the quality of your soldiers. I hope you are, because we’re forbidding you to transfer any of them.”

“No trades?” asked Ender. It was how commanders always shored up their weak points, by trading around.

“None. You see, you’ve been conducting your extra practice sessions for three years now. You have a following. Many good soldiers would put unfair pressure on their commanders to trade them into your army. We’ve given you an army that can, in time, be competitive. We have no intention of letting you dominate unfairly.”

“What if I’ve got a soldier I just can’t get along with?”

“Get along with him.” Graff closed his eyes, Anderson stood up and the interview was over.

Dragon was assigned the colors grey, orange, grey; Ender changed into his flash suit, then followed the ribbons of light until he came to the barracks that contained his army. They were there already, milling around near the entrance. Ender took charge at once. “Bunking will be arranged by seniority. Veterans to the back of the room, newest soldiers to the front.”

It was the reverse of the usual pattern, and Ender knew it. He also knew that he didn’t intend to be like many commanders, who never even saw the younger boys because they were always in the back.

As they sorted themselves out according to their arrival dates, Ender walked up and down the aisle. Almost thirty of his soldiers were new, straight out of their launch group, completely inexperienced in battle. Some were even underage—the ones nearest the door were pathetically small. Ender reminded himself that that’s how he must have looked to Bonzo Madrid when he first arrived. Still, Bonzo had had only one underage soldier to cope with.

Not one of the veterans belonged to Ender’s elite practice group. None had ever been a toon leader. None, in fact, was older than Ender himself, which meant that even his veterans didn’t have more than eighteen months’ experience. Some he didn’t even recognize, they had made so little impression.

They recognized Ender, of course, since he was the most celebrated soldier in the school. And some, Ender could see, resented him. At least they did me one favor—none of my soldiers is older than me.

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