'They can order the moon to turn blue, too, but it doesn't happen. Listen, Ender, commanders have just as much authority as you let them have. The more you obey them, the more power they have over you.'
'What's to stop them from hurting me?' Ender remembered Bonzo's blow.
'I thought that was why you were taking personal attack classes.'
'You've really been watching me, haven't you?'
Dink didn't answer.
'I don't want to get Rose mad at me. I want to be part of the battles now, I'm tired of sitting out till the end.'
'Your standings will go down.'
This time Ender didn't answer.
'Listen, Ender, as long as you're part of my toon, you're part of the battle.'
Ender soon learned why. Dink trained his toon independently from the rest of Rat Army, with discipline and vigor; he never consulted with Rose, and only rarely did the whole army maneuver together. It was as if Rose commanded one army, and Dink commanded a much smaller one that happened to practice in the battleroom at the same time.
Dink started out the first practice by asking Ender to demonstrate his feet-first attack position. The other boys didn't like it. 'How can we attack lying on our backs?' they asked.
To Ender's surprise, Dink didn't correct them, didn't say, 'You aren't attacking on your back, you're dropping downward toward them.' He had seen what Ender was doing, but he had not understood the orientation that it implied. It soon became clear to Ender that even though Dink was very, very good, his persistence in holding onto the corridor gravity orientation instead of thinking of the enemy gate as downward was limiting his thinking.
They practiced attacking an enemy-held star. Before trying Ender's feet-first method, they had always gone in standing up, their whole bodies available as a target. Even now, though, they reached the star and then assaulted the enemy from one direction only; 'Over the top,' cried Dink, and over they went. To his credit, he then repeated the exercise, calling, 'Again, upside down,' but because of their insistence on a gravity that didn't exist, the boys became awkward when the maneuver was under, as if vertigo seized them.
They hated the feet-first attack. Dink insisted that they use it. As a result, they hated Ender. 'Do we have to learn how to fight from a Launchy?' one of them muttered, making sure Ender could hear. 'Yes,' answered Dink. They kept working.
And they learned it. In practice skirmishes, they began to realize how much harder it was to shoot an enemy attacking feet first. As soon as they were convinced of that, they practiced the maneuver more willingly.
That night was the first time Ender had come to a practice session after a whole afternoon of work. He was tired.
'Now you're in a real army,' said Alai. 'You don't have to keep practicing with us.'
'From you I can learn things that nobody knows,' said Ender.
'Dink Meeker is the best. I hear he's your toon leader.'
'Then let's get busy. I'll teach you what I learned from him today.'
He put Alai and two dozen others through the same exercises that had worn him out all afternoon. But he put new touches on the patterns, made the boys try the maneuvers with one leg frozen, with both legs frozen, or using frozen boys for leverage to change directions.
Halfway through the practice, Ender noticed Petra and Dink together, standing in the doorway, watching. Later, when he looked again, they were gone.
So they're watching me, and what we're doing is known. He did not know whether Dink was his friend; he believed that Petra was, but nothing could be sure. They might be angry that he was doing what only commanders and toon leaders were supposed to do—drilling and training soldiers. They might be offended that a soldier would associate so closely with Launchies. It made him uneasy, to have older children watching.
'I thought I told you not to use your desk.' Rose the Nose stood by Ender's bunk.
Ender did not look up. 'I'm completing the trigonometry assignment for tomorrow.'
Rose bumped his knee into Ender's desk. 'I said not to use it.'
Ender set the desk on his bunk and stood up. 'I need trigonometry more than I need you.'
Rose was taller than Ender by at least forty centimeters. But Ender was not particularly worried. It would not come to physical violence, and if it did, Ender thought he could hold his own. Rose was lazy and didn't know personal combat.
'You're going down in the standings, boy,' said Rose.
'I expect to. I was only leading the list because of the stupid way Salamander Army was using me.'
'Stupid? Bonzo's strategy won a couple of key games.'
'Bonzo's strategy wouldn't win a salad fight. I was violating orders every time I fired my gun.'
Rose hadn't known that. It made him angry. 'So everything Bonzo said about you was a lie. You're not only short and incompetent, you're insubordinate, too.'
'But I turned defeat into stalemate, all by myself.'
'We'll see how you do all by yourself next time.' Rose went away.
One of Ender's toonmates shook his head. 'You dumb as a thumb.'
Ender looked at Dink, who was doodling on his desk. Dink looked up, noticed Ender watching him, and gazed steadily back at him. No expression. Nothing. OK, thought Ender, I can take care of myself.
Battle came two day's later. It was Ender's first time fighting as part of a toon; he was nervous. Dink's toon lined up against the right-hand wall of the corridor and Ender was very careful not to lean, not to let his weight slip to either side. Stay balanced.
'Wiggin!' called Rose the Nose.
Ender felt dread come over him from throat to groin, a tingle of fear that made him shudder. Rose saw it.
'Shivering? Trembling? Don't wet your pants, little Launchy.' Rose hooked a finger over the butt of Ender's gun and pulled him to the forcefield that hid the battleroom from view. 'We'll see how well you do
Suicide. Pointless, meaningless self-destruction. But he had to follow orders now, this was battle, not school. For a moment Ender raged silently; then he calmed himself. 'Excellent, sir,' he said. 'The direction I fire my gun is the direction of their main contingent.'
Rose laughed. 'You won't have time to fire anything, pinprick.'
The wall vanished. Ender jumped up, took hold of the ceiling handholds, and threw himself out and down, speeding toward the enemy door.
It was Centipede Army, and they only beginning to emerge from their door when Ender was halfway across the battleroom. Many of them were able to get under cover of stars quickly but Ender had doubled up his legs under him and, holding his pistol at his crotch, he was firing between his legs and freezing many of them as they emerged.
They flashed his legs, but he had three precious seconds before they could hit his body and put him out of action. He froze several more, then flung out his arms in equal and opposite directions. The hand that held his gun ended up pointing toward the main body of Centipede Army. He fired into the mass of the enemy, and then they froze him.
A second later he smashed into the forcefield of the enemy's door and rebounded with a crazy spin. He landed in a group of enemy soldiers behind a star; they shoved him off and spun him even more rapidly. He rebounded out of control through the rest of the battle, though gradually friction with the air slowed him down. He had no way of knowing how many men he had frozen before getting iced himself, but he did get the general idea that Rat Army won again, as usual.
After the battle Rose didn't speak to him. Ender was still first in the standings, since he had frozen three, disabled two, and damaged seven. There was no more talk about insubordination and whether Ender could use his desk. Rose stayed in his part of the barracks, and left Ender alone.
Dink Meeker began to practice instant emergence from the corridor—Ender's attack on the enemy while they were still coming out of the door had been devastating. 'If one man can do that much damage, think what a toon can do.' Dink got Major Anderson to open a door in the middle of a wall, even during practice sessions, instead of
