Children of the Mind (Ender, Book 4) (Ender Quartet)

Admiral's flagship and continued at just-under-relativistic speed toward Lusitania. It would take nearly an hour for it to arrive at the proximity that would automatically trigger it. If for some reason the proximity detector did not work properly, a timer would set it off just moments before its estimated time of collision.
    Lands accelerated his flagship above the threshold that cut it off from the timeframe of the rest of the universe. Then he pulled the docility patch from Causo's neck and replaced it with the antidote patch. "You may arrest me now, sir, for the mutiny that you witnessed."
    Causo shook his head. "No sir," he said. "You're not going anywhere, and the fleet is yours to command until we get home. Unless you have some stupid plan to try to escape the war crimes trial that awaits you."
    "No, sir," said Lands. "I will bear whatever penalty they impose on me. What I did has saved humankind from destruction, but I am prepared to join the humans and pequeninos of Lusitania as a necessary sacrifice to achieve that end."
    Causo saluted him, then sat back down on his chair and wept.

CHAPTER 15
     
    “WE'RE GIVING YOU A SECOND CHANCE”

    "When I was a little girl, I used to believe
    that if I could please the gods well enough,
    they would go back and do my life over,
    and this time they would not take
    my mother away from me."
    from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao
     
     
    A satellite orbiting Lusitania detected the launch of the M.D. Device and the divergence of its course toward Lusitania, as the starship disappeared from the satellite's instruments. The most dreaded event was happening. There had been no attempt to communicate or negotiate. Clearly the fleet had never intended anything but the obliteration of this world, and with it an entire sentient race. Most people had hoped, and many had expected, that there would be a chance to tell them that the descolada had been completely tamed and no longer posed a threat to anyone; that it was too late to stop anything anyway, since several dozen new colonies of humans, pequeninos, and hive queens had already been started on as many different planets. Instead there was only death hurtling toward them on a course that gave them no more than an hour to survive, and probably less, since the Little Doctor would no doubt be detonated some distance from the planet's surface.
    It was pequeninos manning all the instruments now, since all but a handful of humans had fled to the starships. So it was that a pequenino cried out the news over the ansible to the starship at the descolada planet; and by chance it was Firequencher who was at the ansible terminal to hear his report. He immediately began keening, his high voice liquid with the music of grief.
    When Miro and his sisters understood what had happened, he went at once to Jane. "They launched the Little Doctor," he said, shaking her gently.
    He waited only a few moments. Her eyes came open. "I thought we had beaten them," she whispered. "Peter and Wang-mu, I mean. Congress voted to establish a quarantine and specifically denied the fleet the authority to launch the M.D. Device. And yet still they launched."
    "You look so tired," said Miro.
    "It takes everything I have," she said. "Over and over again. And now I lose them, the mothertrees. They're a part of myself, Miro. Remember how you felt when you lost control of your body, when you were crippled and slow? That's what will happen to me when the mothertrees are gone."
    She wept.
    "Stop it," said Miro. "Stop it right now. Get control of your emotions, Jane, you don't have time for this."
    At once she freed herself from the straps that held her. "You're right," she said. "It's almost too strong to control, sometimes, this body."
    "The Little Doctor has to be close to a planet for it to have any effect on it -- the field dissipates fairly quickly unless it has mass to sustain it. So we have time, Jane. Maybe an hour. Certainly more than half an hour."
    "And in that time, what do you imagine I can do?"
    "Pick the damn thing up," said Miro. "Push it Outside and don't bring it back!"
    "And if it goes off Outside?" asked Jane. "If something that destructive is echoed and repeated out there? Besides, I can't pick things up that I haven't had a chance to examine. There's no one near it, no ansible connected to it, nothing to lead me to find it in the dead of space."
    "I don't know," said Miro. "Ender would know. Damn that he's dead!"
    "Well, technically speaking," said