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Mazer left the room

Ender spoke into the microphone "Are you there?"

"All of us," said Bean "Kind of late for practice this , aren't you?"

So they hadn't told the squadron leaders Ender toyed with the idea of telling them how important this battle was to him, but decided it would not help them to have an extraneous concern on their minds "Sorry," he said "I overslept"

They laughed They didn't believe him

He led the up for the battle ahead It took hier than usual to clear his h he was up to speed, responding quickly, thinking well Or at least, he told hi well

The siame to appear What will happen if I pass the test today? Is there another school? Another year or two of grueling training, another year of isolation, another year of people pushing me this way and that way, another year without any control over my own life? He tried to reo did he turn eleven? How many days? It must have happened here at the Command School, but he couldn't remember the day Maybe he didn't even notice it at the time Nobody noticed it, except perhaps Valentine

And as he waited for the game to appear, he wished he could simply lose it, lose the battle badly and co, like Bonzo, and let hiena He wanted to see travel orders that said Greensboro Success o home

No, that isn't true, he told hiht not be any home to return to

But he did not believe it In his conscious mind he kneas true, but in other places, deeper places, he doubted that they needed hiency was just another trick Just another way to make me do what they wantnothing, for a long, long time

Then the enemy formation appeared, and Ender's weariness turned to despair

The enereen with the positions, changing shapes, h the sih them--a space that seemed open would close suddenly, and another appear, and a fore and be forbidding The planet was at the far edge of the field, and for all Ender knew there were just as e

As for his own fleet, it consisted of twenty starships, each with only four fighters He knew the four-fighter starships--they were old-fashioned, sluggish, and the range of their Little Doctors was half that of the newer ones Eighty fighters, against at least five thousand, perhaps ten thousand enemy ships

He heard his squadron leaders breathing heavily; he could also hear, from the observers behind him, a quiet curse It was nice to know that one of the adults noticed that it wasn't a fair test Not that it aive hih, and they never meant to let me pass at all

He saw in hishihting him alone That would hardly work here And he could not surprise the enemy with his ability as he had done with the older boys in the battleroom Mazer knew Ender's abilities inside and out