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"Don't start apologizing for the hus We do have a right to defend ourselves as best we can, and the only e found that works is killing the buggers before they kill us Think of it this way In all the bugger wars so far, they've killed thousands and thousands of living, thinking beings And in all those wars, we've killed only one"

"If you hadn't killed the queen, Mazer, would we have lost the war?"

"I'd say the odds would have been three to two against us I still think I could have trashed their fleet pretty badly before they burned us out They have great response ties, too Every single one of our ships contains an intelligent hu on his own Every one of us is capable of co up with a brilliant solution to a problem They can only coers think fast, but they aren't smart all over But on our side, even when some incredibly timid and stupid commanders lost the major battles of the Second Invasion, soe to the bugger fleet"

"What about when our invasion reaches theain?"

"The buggers didn't learn interstellar travel by being duy that could work only once I suspect that we'll never get near a queen unless we actually make it to their home planet After all, the queen doesn't have to be with them to direct a battle The queen only has to be present to have little baby buggers The Second Invasion was a colony--the queen was co to populate the Earth But this time--no, that won't work We'll have to beat them fleet by fleet And because they have the resources of dozens of star systeuess is they'll outnumber us by a lot, in every battle"

Ender reht they were cheating When the real war begins, it'll be like that every tio for

"We've only got two things going for us, Ender We don't have to aireat spread"

"Then we are aren't using the nuclear missiles from the First and Second Invasions?"

"Dr Device is much h to be used on Earth at one time The Little Doctor could never be used on a planet Still, I wish I'd had one during the Second Invasion"

"How does it work?"

"I don't know, not well enough to build one At the focal point of two beaether anymore Electrons can't be shared How much physics do you know, at that level?"

"We spend et the idea"

"The field spreads out in a sphere, but it gets weaker the farther it spreads Except that where it actually runs into a lot of er the ship, the stronger the new field"

"So each time the field hits a ship, it sends out a new sphere--"

"And if their ships are too close together, it can set up a chain that wipes them all out Then the field dies down, the ether, and where you had a ship, you now have a lump of dirt with a lot of iron molecules in it No radioactivity, no ether on the first battle, but they learn fast They'll keep their distance from each other"