Children of the Fleet

by Orson Scott Card

  There’s nobody there. Nobody there.

  And then the cart brought the rendezvous point into view, the floor coming into view first. There were feet. More than two pairs of feet. Six pairs. And soon they had faces. Zhang He and Monkey, yes, and the rest of that original team: Ignazio Cabeza, Teburoro Timeon, Ragnar Olafson. And, unbelievably, Bartolomeo Ja, the commander of their army.

  Dabeet wanted to weep in relief. He wanted to kneel down and thank every one of them for coming at his call.

  Instead, his first words were, “There’s nobody guarding the raiders’ ship. It’s loaded with explosives, enough to destroy the whole station and kill everybody. I think detonation is under the control of somebody on Earth or Luna, and the raiders don’t even know this is a suicide mission.”

  They stared at him. In disbelief, he assumed at first, but how could he convince them if they didn’t simply take his word?

  Then he realized that their long, long pause had been only a microsecond as they processed everything he said.

  “So what’s the plan?” asked Bartolomeo.

  “I kind of hoped that you guys who grew up in space would have an idea.”

  “Can we pull all the detonators from the explosives?” asked Ignazio.

  “I didn’t try,” said Dabeet, “in case pulling one might set off all the rest. And there are…” Dabeet performed the calculation. “I estimate there are 26,928 individual parcels of explosive, each with its own detonator.”

  Nobody questioned his arithmetic.

  Zhang He said, “I wasn’t raised in space. Luna.”

  Ignazio nodded. “Earth for me, till the war ended and Mom brought us up to join her with the Fleet.”

  Timeon grinned. “Playing videogames all through a wasted childhood on the Ilha do Fogo.”

  Dabeet was genuinely surprised. “You’ve got as much dirt under your nails as I do.”

  “It’s Ragnar and me,” said Monkey, “and I think we need to see the setup.”

  “Right,” said Ragnar.

  “Nobody guarding it?” asked Bartolomeo. “I grew up in Macau, by the way. Dirty feet, too.”

  “None of us is even close to grown up,” Zhang He reminded them.

  As they swiftly made their way along corridors and down the elevator shaft, Dabeet asked the questions that were on his mind. “I thought you’d be in the thick of things,” he said to Zhang He.

  Ja laughed.

  Zhang answered, “After we designed all the defensive walls for all four battlerooms and trained everybody in how to build them, they suddenly noticed how young and short we were.”

  “It’s all about the alpha males, binoon,” said Timeon. “Once they get the stash of fruit we found, it’s bye bye bunducks.”

  “What are the raiders doing?” asked Dabeet.

  “Don’t know,” said Ja. “We came to meet you.”

  “Over the top of the pass-through?” asked Dabeet.

  “Well, indoors, but yes,” said Ignazio.

  “And you just sauntered up to their ship and found it was open?” asked Zhang He.

  “No,” said Dabeet.

  “You came in from outside,” said Monkey.

  “I left my suit on the ship,” said Dabeet.

  “Can we possibly talk any louder?” asked Ragnar.

  More quietly, Monkey persisted. “So you walked the station hull onto the ship?”

  “Never walked,” said Dabeet. “Crawled like a silverfish. Had to let the nanooze hold me. And then I jumped the last ten meters.”

  Monkey’s lips tightened and she walked ahead a little faster.

  They were at the open airlock.

  Monkey immediately began putting on one of the suits arrayed there. A major airlock like this, even on the construction side, was going to be equipped.

  “What are you doing?” asked Ja. “I didn’t know we had a plan.”

  “There’s no plan that doesn’t include me needing a suit,” said Monkey. “Kintama Boy made one incredibly lucky first jump—”

  Dabeet tried to correct the record. “A carefully planned and flawlessly executed—”

  “But if anybody’s doing anything that requires space-walking…”

  Ragnar had opened a panel low in the wall of the station airlock. “Two kilometers of cable,” he said. “Firmly attached, load limit five hundred kilos.”

  “We don’t want to attach the ship to the school,” said Ja.

  “Blow it off the airlock?” Monkey asked Ragnar.

  “Get some serious distance, fast,” Ragnar answered.

  “Gotta be the ship’s airlock that blows,” said Monkey. “Manual override, evacuating all the atmo in the ship. All propulsion, blowing the ship away from us.”

  Everybody seemed to agree that nothing else would work.

  “All right then,” said Monkey. “You all stay inside the airlock here, doors closed, suits on. After I blow the ship off the station, I’ll jump back.”

  “Using your mighty legs of steel, O Wonder Woman,” said Timeon. “What’s the velocity of the ship at that point?”

  “Maybe I just ride it out,” said Monkey with a grin.

  “No suicide missions,” said Ja, with real heat.

  “What, I can’t fall on a grenade cause I’m a girl?” asked Monkey.

  Ragnar put a hand on her shoulder. “We know you’re the best at this kind of thing, Monkey. But here’s the problem. Anybody can open the ship’s airlock on a manual override, and anybody can jump toward the station. But there’s only one person with a decent chance of going out and catching them.”

  “You’re search-and-rescue, Monkey,” said Ja.

  “You’re not actually the commander on this operation, Ja,” said Monkey.

  “No, I am,” said Dabeet.

  They all looked at him as if they had forgotten he existed. “I have a suit on board the ship. Fully charged by now. I go in, put it on, you seal your airlock. I do a manual override on the ship’s airlock, which blasts all the atmo out of the ship and it rockets away. Then I go through that open airlock door and jump for home. When I do, Monkey comes out to catch me, is that the plan?”

  “It’s about a third of the plan,” said Monkey. “The big movements. What’s missing is all the little stuff that keeps you from dying.”

  “Tell it to me quick because we don’t know how long we have.” To Dabeet’s terror and chagrin, nobody argued with him about his being the one on board the ship to blow out the airlock. It was his job now.

  “First,” said Monkey, “the manual override is designed for one weakened and dying person to be able to trigger it. So easy that they have to protect it inside a door track so that it doesn’t get triggered by accident. You already have to be inside the airlock with only the outer door closed, and then, where the inner door runs up, there’s a button embedded inside the door’s track. Always on the aft side. Toward the back of the ship. When you push it, whoosh.”

  “Got it.”

  “You’ve got nothing yet,” said Monkey. “Because the system is designed so that you push the button and you get blown out along with everything else that isn’t riveted in place. Only that won’t work this time because we’d never find you and if you haven’t noticed, we don’t have a search-and-rescue ship to go looking for you. So you have to stay inside. And here’s how you do it. The inside bar of the airlock is right here around the corner.…” She demonstrated the position. “And there’s another handhold about a meter farther along the wall.”

  Dabeet remembered seeing both of them on the way out.

  “It’s not enough to hold on to the first bar, because even though your suit has a strong lock-on grip, it’s not strong enough, especially with one hand.”

  “Why only—” Dabeet began, and then realized, and shut up.

  “You’re pushing the button with your other hand,” Ragnar said helpfully.

  “You have to lock one leg through the second bar. An adult can do it, but they always break the leg. You’re small
er, you twist your boot and get it through, and then you try to get the other boot through but don’t try for long because maybe you can’t, the bars are different lengths. Main thing here is to get your knee under the bar and your leg exactly straight, not twisted. Then you bend your knee so that your lower leg is a big hook holding you on.”

  It was starting to sound very hard and complicated to Dabeet.

  “If it isn’t straight before you bend it, you’ll break that leg,” said Monkey.

  “Probably break it anyway,” said Ragnar helpfully.

  “But it’ll keep you in the ship,” said Monkey, glaring at Ragnar. “But the second, and I mean the very second, after the atmo is completely blown, pull that leg free no matter how much it hurts, and I mean even if you’ve got six knees and three elbows in that leg, forget the pain and pull it out. Now you’ll be in freefall because the gravitics cut out when atmo goes. You still hang on to the first handrail with one hand, swing around and grab the handrail just inside the outer door.” Then she paused, thinking.

  “Losing count of the handrails,” said Zhang He.

  “Dabeet isn’t,” said Monkey. “He’s been working with airlocks for weeks now, and besides, he never loses count.” She turned back to Dabeet. “The airlock is too big for you to reach that outer handrail without a little jump, so you have to disobey Rule One.”

  Dabeet nodded.

  “But don’t let that little jump carry you out the door, because you have no idea which way the ship will be facing by then. The launch won’t be stable, the ship will probably be in three kinds of spin, so you have to wait in the door until just the right moment to jump toward the station.”

  “Toward this airlock,” said Dabeet.

  “Don’t waste time looking for this airlock,” said Monkey. “Jump toward the station. Period. And as soon as you do, look on the heads-up display for the SIG command, call up the menu, and light yourself up like a Christmas tree. Then it’s my job to come out and get you.”

  “Got it,” said Dabeet.

  “No you don’t,” said Monkey. “Don’t wait to jump. The first time you can see the station, you jump. That’s it. Even if you don’t have your legs under you, even if you can’t get much power into the jump, even if you only push off with your hands, you go the first time. Because every second on that ship, you’re getting farther from us here and I only have a two-kilometer line.”

  “Jump immediately, wait for nothing,” said Dabeet.

  “Last thing. Listen closely. What did I teach you about grasping?”

  “Hug, don’t hold.”

  “I’m going to get way more specific than that, Dirt Boy,” said Monkey. “Do not reach for me. Do not touch me. Even if I come this close to you, no physical contact between you and me because the friction of any contact will send us both spinning out of control.”

  Dabeet was confused. She saw it in his face.

  “Yes, I’m coming out to get you. I’ll use my directionals to get as close to you as I can. But I will not grab you, and you will not grab me. You will hug the line. You’ll wrap your arms around it and hold on. I’ll send a signal that it’s time to start reeling in, but not until you’re holding that line. Then as it draws me in, you and I will collide, and when we do, you have to be holding so tightly I won’t knock you loose. Then as the line draws me in, it draws you in. Got it?”

  “Line will be invisible,” said Ragnar.

  “That’s possible,” said Monkey. “You may have to simply trust that the line is straight as an arrow between me and the station. But if you have all your lights on, then there’ll be a very tight beam straight forward from your helmet. Look toward where you know the line is supposed to be, and you’ll catch a sparkle. You won’t see a line, just sparkles, and you won’t be able to tell if they’re in a row or not, but nothing out there will be sparkling except the line, so you’ll know that’s it, it’s reflecting your light. Spread your arms wide and when you’re near it, grab. Hug. Nothing breaks that hug. Né?”

  “É,” said Dabeet.

  “That was a three-month course in line rescues,” said Monkey. “Now go earn us both an A on the test.”

  Dabeet saluted, and even though it began as a playful gesture, he wasn’t playing. He knew that some part of this ridiculously elaborate plan was going to fail, and even if he got the ship away, he would probably die. But Monkey was willing to risk her life to come get him, and so he meant that salute with all his heart.

  She saluted him back. Dabeet turned and jogged up to the outer airlock of the ship, pressed the OPEN button, went inside, and closed the outer door behind him.

  18

  —We bent all our efforts to finding another Mazer Rackham, someone whose genius—

  —Genius?

  —Would bring a desperate war to a quick, successful conclusion.

  —Luck.

  —Luck that we had you in the Second Formic War, and that you were in a place, at a time, with a weapon, when your brilliant insight could be put into action. Dumb luck. I agree.

  —And you knew that if you didn’t have a commander of genius in the Third War …

  —If we waited for them to come at us again, their many worlds against our single world would be our doom. A war of attrition that we couldn’t win, no matter how spunky we were.

  —Not sure “spunky” is the—

  —It’s true that we invented some powerful new technologies under pressure. They didn’t have our nanobots, or our gravitics, which led to the molecular-disruption device, but that would no more have won the war, if the endgame had taken place here in our solar system, than the V-1 and V-2 saved the Nazis.

  —If we’re talking about World War II, don’t forget the atomic bomb.

  —It came at the end of a crushing war of attrition. If the Japanese hadn’t already lost the war, by every measure, the A-bomb would have been no more effective than the fire-bombing of Dresden. You know what I’m saying. We should have lost all three Formic Wars. We did lose them, except for a single, miraculous, decisive battle, the rarest form of victory.

  —Hannibal had Cannae but Carthage lost the Punic Wars, the English had Agincourt and Crécy and they still lost the Hundred Years’ War. I know.

  —With multiple planets and the ability to reconfigure their fleet on the fly, their endless supply of soldiers, their—

  —You learned the right lesson from the wars, my friend. The human race was doomed if we remained on only one world.

  —We can’t count on our gene pool squeezing out military geniuses whenever we need them. Good commanders are hard to find, but even the best commanders can’t win lopsided wars of attrition, and a species confined to one planet is a single roach waiting to be stepped on.

  —Not a roach. Roaches can scurry.

  —So we’re a fly caught in a web of our own weaving.

  —Better.

  —The sheer luck of having you in the Second Formic War, the miracle of Ender Wiggin and, let’s be fair, the unsung Julian Delphiki—

  —And, even fairer, you.

  —Ain’t we grand.

  —But we did have Ender Wiggin.

  —Won’t happen again. We’ll revert to the normal pattern of war. For all we know, there are six Formic fleets heading toward us right now, seriously pissed off and ready to exact vengeance against us. Carthage. That’s what we are. A single city on the edge of the desert of space, waiting to be obliterated and have salt sown in our fields.

  —So, having won the last war, you’re winning the next one by dispersing the human species.

  —Like a dandelion, blown out by a little child to take root wherever the breeze carries the tiny seeds.

  —And you’re the little boy with the puff of air.

  —Which is why I’m not preparing my son to be the genius who will save the human race in a grand, spectacular battle.

  —You’re preparing him to be one of those little windblown seeds.

  —Not even a seed. A part of the wisp of filam
ent that serves as the kite to carry the seed along till it finds broken, fertile ground.

  —It’s called the “pappus.” The achene, the beak, the stalk. I paid attention when we did dandelions in botany class.

  —You took botany.

  —The best preparation for a soldier. So that when the war is over, I can return, like Cincinnatus, to the farm, and make war against dandelion, thistle, nettle, and vetch.

  —Andrew Wiggin is going to try to live the life of Cincinnatus, without any kind of preparation to suit him for the task. Dabeet, by his inborn character, was doomed to a life of arrogant isolation, useless to any community, more damaged from the start than Ender was. I had no way of knowing how he would respond to a crisis that showed him the futility of isolation.

  —I think he’s done rather well.

  —If he lives, it will have been worth it.

  —And if he dies?

  —Then I am a Darwinian dead end, the brazen fiery Molech, Saturn devouring his son.

  —Having adopted the human race, my old friend, you have billions of children, your dandelions in the lawn of the galaxy.

  —I love the little bastard. I want my boy to live.

  —Which will require him and his team to score an unlikely tactical victory against the most talented monster in centuries.

  —That’s what our geniuses are born for. Not to fight off aliens, not to prevent astronomical or ecological catastrophes, but to stop our own homegrown monsters from eating us alive from the inside out.

  Dabeet found his suit where he had left it, now fully charged. Oh good, he thought. When Monkey fails to catch me—or, more likely, I fail to catch her—I’ll have plenty of time to regret my many flaws and failures as I drift into the fires of reentry or the bitter cold of space.

  He moved carefully, making sure that every piece of the suit fit. The suit reported itself to be intact and functional. Dabeet walked up the passage between the cartons of Vacoplaz, touching nothing. Then along the aisle between the passenger seats, which had so recently held the raiders who came here, wittingly or not, to kill a school full of children, along with themselves.