Ender's Game (Ender Wiggins Saga)

said. Loudly, for all to hear. "No good soldier ever disobeys.”
      Even as he cried from the pain, Ender could not help but take vengeful pleasure in the murmurs he heard rising through the barracks. You fool, Bonzo. You aren't enforcing discipline, you're destroying it. They know I turned defeat into a draw. And now they see how you repay me. You made yourself look stupid in front of everyone. What is your discipline worth now?
      The next day, Ender told Petra that for her sake the shooting practice in the morning would have to end. Bonzo didn't need anything that looked like a challenge now, and so she'd better stay clear of Ender for a while. She understood perfectly. "Besides," she said, "you're as close to being a good shot as you'll ever be.”
      He left his desk and flash suit in the locker. He would wear his Salamander uniform until he could get to the commissary and change it for the brown and black of Rat. He had brought no possessions with him; he would take none away. There were none to have-- everything of value was in the school computer or his own head and hands.
      He used one of the public desks in the game room to register for an earth-gravity personal combat course during the hour immediately after breakfast. He didn't plan to get vengeance on Bonzo for hitting him. But he did intend that no one would he able to do that to him again.

8
 
Rat
     
     
      "Colonel Graff, the games have always been run fairly before. Either random distribution of stars, or symmetrical.”
      "Fairness is a wonderful attribute, Major Anderson. It has nothing to do with war.”
      "The game will be compromised. The comparative standings will become meaningless.”
      "Alas.”
      "It will take months. Years, to develop the new battlerooms and run the simulations.”
      "That's why I'm asking you now. To begin. Be creative. Think of every stacked, impossible, unfair star arrangement you can. Think of other ways to bend the rules. Late notification. Unequal forces. Then run the simulations and see which ones are hardest, which easiest. We want an intelligent progression here. We want to bring him along.”
      "When do you plan to make him a commander? When he's eight?”
      "Of course not. I haven't even assembled his army yet.”
      "Oh, so you're stacking it that way, too?”
      "You're getting too close to the game, Anderson. You're forgetting that it is merely a training exercise.
      "It's also status, identity, purpose, name; all that makes these children who they are comes out of this game. When it becomes known that the game can be manipulated, weighted, cheated , it will undo this whole school. I'm not exaggerating.”
      "I know.”
      "So I hope Ender Wiggin truly is the one, because you'll have defeated the effectiveness of our training method for a long time to come.”
      "If Ender isn't the one, if his peak of military brilliance does not coincide with the arrival of our fleets at the bugger homeworlds, then it doesn't really matter what our training method is or isn't.”
      "I hope you will forgive me, Colonel Graff, but I feel that I must report your orders and my opinion of their consequences to the Strategos and the Hegemon.”
      "Why not our dear Polemarch?”
      "Everybody knows you have him in your pocket.”
      "Such hostility Major Anderson. And I thought we were friends.”
      "We are. And I think you may be right about Ender. I just don't believe you, and you alone, should decide the fate of the world.”
      "I don't even think it's right for me to decide the fate of Ender Wiggin.”
      "So you won't mind if I notify them?”
      "Of course I mind, you meddlesome ass. This is something to be decided by people who know what they're doing, not these frightened politicians who got their office because they happen to be politically potent in the country they came from.”
      "But you understand why I'm doing it.”
      "Because you're such a short-sighted little bureaucratic bastard that you think you need to cover yourself in case things go wrong. Well, if things go wrong we'll all be bugger meat. So trust me now, Anderson, and don't bring the whole damn Hegemony down on review. What I'm doing is hard enough without them.”
      "Oh, is it unfair? Are things stacked against you? You can do it to Ender, but you can't take it, is that it?”
      "Ender Wiggin is ten times smarter and stronger than I am. What I'm doing to him will bring out his genius. If I had to go