Children of the Fleet (Fleet School #1)(116)

—I am forgetting that. I have reason to.

—You love your grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

—I don’t know them.

—You still care about them. Whether they live or die. Whether they’re happy.

—But I don’t love them as much as I love Ender Wiggin. Because I didn’t raise them, I didn’t teach them. But Ender—him I taught, and knew, and trained, and hurt, and tried to heal.

—You guided him to victory.

—For that I’m not sure he’ll be grateful for very long. Because I lied to him every bit as much as you’ve lied to Dabeet.

—Keeping a secret is not telling a lie.

—You tell yourself that, Hyrum. Chant it every night and every morning. I wonder if you’ll come to believe it.

The kitchen staff had not stopped working through the entire raid. The invaders paid no attention to them, and the cooks recognized that no matter who won, people would be hungry.

So after the IF relief ships had taken complete authority, and loaded the prisoners and the corpses into vessels and taken them wherever such people would be taken, the students and faculty of Fleet School were summoned to their various mess halls and fed an unusually flavorful supper. As if the cooks wanted to prove that they, too, had been worth saving.

Dabeet sat at a table with Monkey, Zhang He, Ragnar, Timeon, and Ignazio, the original wall-building team. Bartolomeo joined them for part of the meal, but there were enough people crowding around to say whatever they had to say that Bartolomeo moved to another table to make room for them.

It was hard to eat while making polite responses to all the kids with comments or questions. Dabeet still had half his food left when the others were done. Monkey leaned over and spoke into Dabeet’s ear. “You’re allowed to eat. You don’t have to answer everybody.”

“Yes I do,” said Dabeet mildly. He had such a name for arrogance already that he couldn’t leave anybody to walk away saying, “I just wanted to congratulate him but he was too important to listen to me.”

It was Zhang who took action. “People, come on, let the boy eat. He’s as hungry as anybody and he’s hardly eaten anything yet.”

A few people backed away then, and Bartolomeo and some of the other team leaders came over and dispersed the crowd. Finally, Dabeet was able to eat his mostly-cold food and pass those five minutes without having to say anything to anybody. He finally looked around at his team and said, “You got enough to eat?”

“Plenty,” said Monkey. “I don’t know how, but the harder the cooks try, the worse the food gets.”

“She’s not used to spicy,” said Ignazio. “Poor child.”

“This all began,” said Dabeet, “because you came over to help me build pillars and walls in the battleroom.”

“That was the flame,” said Timeon. “We were the moths.”

“You were willing to take me seriously when nobody else was. That’s how you ended up saving my life, and Monkey’s life.”

“And everybody’s life on the whole station,” said Ignazio.

“I’m just saying,” said Dabeet. “Thanks for giving me a chance.”

“Biggest mistake of my life,” said Monkey. “Almost killed me.”

“é, I know,” said Dabeet. “I’m a dangerous friend.”

His words fell into a gathering silence in the mess hall. Had everyone left?

Quite the opposite. All the students and faculty seemed to be there, which meant that they had been summoned. Supper had just turned into a meeting, and standing on a table near the main door was Robota Smirnova.

“You all know,” said Robota, “how the bold action of the students of Fleet School forestalled the raid and prevented the bloodbath that someone intended. We don’t yet know who instigated this act of terrorism, but we do know it began on Earth. We also know that there were collaborators here on the Fleet School station, and we are happy to report that, upon receipt of our messages, the crew of the packet ship that carried off the commandant and training officers shortly before the attack arrested Urska Kaluza with charges of smuggling, conspiracy, and treason against the Fleet. We expect that all the training officers will be exonerated, and the packet ship is turning around and bringing them all back here.”

There was applause and some cheering from the kids—they knew and liked their training officers more than anyone on the faculty. And the idea of Urska Kaluza being arrested pleased many.

“As head of station security, I am assigned as acting commandant until the Fleet makes a temporary or permanent appointment. For those who are wondering why I was not here when the raid occurred, I was ordered to withdraw to an observing position on a nearby vessel several months ago. We were preparing a boarding operation against the terrorist vessel when several students took matters into their own hands, blew the airlock, ejected the ship, and then escaped from it before it blew up. We have every reason to believe that our boarding operation would have been observed from Earth and would have triggered a devastating explosion, probably killing every soul on this station. So the actions of the students involved were the only plan that could possibly have succeeded, and even then it depended on flawless execution, which was achieved.”

To this, the assembled students and faculty erupted in deafening cheers and applause and arm-waving and a bit of food-tray-tossing. Only those at Dabeet’s table remained silent, grinning at the enthusiasm of their fellow students.