Ender's Game (Ender's Saga, #1) - Orson Scott Card Page 0,85

battleroom. His army was waiting in the corridor, the door still not opened. They watched him in silence as he walked to the front to stand by the blank grey forcefield. Of course they all knew about his fight in the bathroom today; that and their own weariness from the battle that morning kept them quiet, while the knowledge that they would be facing two armies filled them with dread.

Everything they can do to beat me, thought Ender. Everything they can think of, change all the rules, they don’t care, just so they beat me. Well, I’m sick of the game. No game is worth Bonzo’s blood pinking the water on the bathroom floor. Ice me, send me home, I don’t want to play anymore.

The door disappeared. Only three meters out there were four stars together, completely blocking the view from the door.

Two armies weren’t enough. They had to make Ender deploy his forces blind.

“Bean,” said Ender. “Take your boys and tell me what’s on the other side of this star.”

Bean pulled the coil of twine from his waist, tied one end around him, handed the other end to a boy in his squad, and stepped gently through the door. His squad quickly followed. They had practiced this several times, and it took only a moment before they were braced on the star, holding the end of the twine. Bean pushed off at great speed, in a line almost parallel to the door; when he reached the corner of the room, he pushed off again and rocketed straight out toward the enemy. The spots of light on the wall showed that the enemy was shooting at him. As the rope was stopped by each edge of the star in turn, his arc became tighter, his direction changed, and he became an impossible target to hit. His squad caught him neatly as he came around the star from the other side. He moved all his arms and legs so those waiting inside the door would know that the enemy hadn’t flashed him anywhere.

Ender dropped through the gate.

“It’s really dim,” said Bean, “but light enough you can’t follow people easily by the lights on their suits. Worst possible for seeing. It’s all open space from this star to the enemy side of the room. They’ve got eight stars making a square around their door. I didn’t see anybody except the ones peeking around the boxes. They’re just sitting there waiting for us.”

As if to corroborate Bean’s statement, the enemy began to call out to them. “Hey! We be hungry, come and feed us! Your ass is draggin’! Your ass is Dragon!”

Ender’s mind felt dead. This was stupid. He didn’t have a chance, outnumbered two to one and forced to attack a protected enemy. “In a real war, any commander with brains at all would retreat and save this army.”

“What the hell,” said Bean. “It’s only a game.”

“It stopped being a game when they threw away the rules.”

“So, you throw ’em away, too.”

Ender grinned. “OK. Why not. Let’s see how they react to a formation.”

Bean was appalled. “A formation! We’ve never done a formation in the whole time we’ve been an army!”

“We’ve still got a month to go before our training period is normally supposed to end. About time we started doing formations. Always have to know formations.” He formed an A with his fingers, showed it to the blank door, and beckoned. A toon quickly emerged and Ender began arranging them behind the star. Three meters wasn’t enough room to work in, the boys were frightened and confused, and it took nearly five minutes just to get them to understand what they were doing.

Tiger and Griffin soldiers were reduced to chanting catcalls, while their commanders argued about whether to try to use their overwhelming force to attack Dragon Army while they were still behind the star. Momoe was all for attacking—”We outnumber him two to one”—while Bee said, “Sit tight and we can’t lose, move out and he can figure out a way to beat us.”

So they sat tight, until finally in the dusky light they saw a large mass slip out from behind Ender’s star. It held its shape, even when it abruptly stopped moving sideways and launched itself toward the dead center of the eight stars where eighty-two soldiers waited.

“Doobie doo,” said a Griffin. “They’re doing a formation.”

“They must have been putting that together for all five minutes,” said Momoe. “If we’d attacked while they were doing it, we could’ve