Xenocide (Ender Wiggins Saga)

know," said Valentine. They were skirting a building that was at least three hundred meters high; in the near distance they could see more than a dozen others.
    For the first time on this excursion, Plikt spoke up. "Rockets," she said.
    Valentine caught a glimpse of Ender smiling a bit and nodding slightly. So Plikt had confirmed his own suspicions.
    "What for?" asked Miro.
    Valentine almost said, To get into space, of course! But that wasn't fair-- Miro had never lived on a world that was struggling to get into space for the first time. To him, going offplanet meant taking the shuttle to the orbiting station. But the single shuttle used by the humans of Lusitania would hardly do for transporting material outward for any kind of major deepspace construction program. And even if it could do the job, the Hive Queen was unlikely to ask for human help.
    "What's she building, a space station?" asked Valentine.
    "I think so," said Ender. "But so many rockets, and such large ones-- I think she's planning to build it all at once. Probably cannibalizing the rockets themselves. What do you think the throw might be?"
    Valentine almost answered with exasperation-- how should I know? Then she realized that he wasn't asking her. Because almost at once he supplied the answer himself. Which meant that he must have been asking the computer in his ear. No, not a "computer." Jane. He was asking Jane. It was still hard for Valentine to get used to the idea that even though there were only four people in the car, there was a fifth person present, looking and listening through the jewels Ender and Miro both wore.
    "She could do it all at once," said Ender. "In fact, given what's known about the chemical emissions here, the Hive Queen has smelted enough metal to construct not only a space station but also two small long-range starships of the sort that the first bugger expedition brought. Their version of a colony ship."
    "Before the fleet arrives," said Valentine. She understood at once. The Hive Queen was preparing to emigrate. She had no intention of letting her species be trapped on a single planet when the Little Doctor came again.
    "You see the problem," said Ender. "She won't tell us what she's doing, and so we have to rely on what Jane observes and what we can guess. And what I'm guessing isn't a very pretty picture."
    "What's wrong with the buggers getting offplanet?" asked Valentine.
    "Not just the buggers," said Miro.
    Valentine made the second connection. That's why the pequeninos had given permission for the Hive Queen to pollute so badly. That's why there were two ships planned, right from the first. "A ship for the Hive Queen and a ship for the pequeninos."
    "That's what they intend," said Ender. "But the way I see it is-- two ships for the descolada."
    " Nossa Senhora ," whispered Miro.
    Valentine felt a chill go through her. It was one thing for the Hive Queen to seek the salvation of her species. But it was quite another thing for her to carry the deadly self-adapting virus to other worlds.
    "You see my quandary," said Ender. "You see why she won't tell me directly what she's doing."
    "But you couldn't stop her anyway, could you?" asked Valentine.
    "He could warn the Congress fleet," said Miro.
    That's right. Dozens of heavily armed starships, converging on Lusitania from every direction-- if they were warned about two starships leaving Lusitania, if they were given their original trajectories, they could intercept them. Destroy them.
    "You can't," said Valentine.
    "I can't stop them and I can't let them go," said Ender. "To stop them would be to risk destroying the buggers and the piggies alike. To let them go would be to risk destroying all of humanity."
    "You have to talk to them. You have to reach some kind of agreement."
    "What would an agreement with us be worth?" asked Ender. "We don't speak for humanity in general. And if we make threats, the Hive Queen will simply destroy all our satellites and probably our ansible as well. She may do that anyway, just to be safe."
    "Then we'd really be cut off," said Miro.
    "From everything ," said Ender.
    It took Valentine a moment to realize that they were thinking of Jane. Without an ansible, they couldn't speak to her anymore. And without the satellites that orbited Lusitania, Jane's eyes in space would be blinded.
    "Ender, I don't understand," said Valentine. "Is the Hive Queen our enemy ?"
    "That's the question, isn't it?" asked Ender. "That's the trouble with restoring