Children of the Fleet (Fleet School #1)(117)

Except Dabeet, who slid aside his food tray and lowered his head onto his arms.

“Quiet, quiet,” said Robota Smirnova. “Quiet, please. Because there’s one more piece of information that I must deliver, and instead of waiting for a private meeting, let me say it now, so there’s no delay. Dabeet Ochoa, I am happy to inform you that Maria Rafaella Ochoa was rescued from hostile custody in a police action by Cuban authorities, who located her in an embassy in Havana. I don’t know which embassy or what the international repercussions will be, but she had been taken there when the terrorist ship was launched, and only the swift cooperation of several nations and the International Fleet allowed her to be located and rescued so quickly. Let me be clear, Dabeet Ochoa. Your mother is safe.”

Again, some cheers, lots of applause. But Dabeet wept into his hands, great body-racking sobs that he could not control. He felt the hands of his friends touching him, patting him, gripping him. He felt Monkey’s arms around his body. Yet in the midst of all this emotion, he was able to think: The threat against Mother was real, but I did not fail her. The threat against Fleet School was real, but I did not fail my friends. I did not fail.

Was this how Ender Wiggin felt, when he stopped a war, won the war? Not the triumph of victory, but the deep relief of knowing that with everything at stake, he did not fail?

Maybe Ender Wiggin didn’t expect to fail.

No. The only person that arrogant was the Dabeet Ochoa who arrived at Fleet School about a year ago, planning to betray everyone here in order to save his mother. That boy expected to succeed at everything because nobody was as clever as he was.

What a fool, thought Dabeet. And how hard it was to break that arrogance and find something useful to put in its place.

It was these friends, with their hands on my shoulders, on my head, arms around my chest. It was this community of generous children who saw value in what I was doing, and eventually found—no, made—something valuable in me.

He wept all the harder, and was even more grateful for the touch of their hands.

*

A few days later, everything was back to normal in the station. It took half a day to unbuild all the walls and pillars in the battlerooms and return the frames to their proper locations in the walls. And then a general tournament of all the teams, just to exhaust the pent-up energy in the children.

But all of that came to an end, and there were the teachers in their classrooms, making assignments and reviewing material that the students had not learned well in the past weeks, as they waited and prepared for the coming of the raiders. A lot of ground to cover.

Not for Dabeet, though. His memory still functioned as always, so that he had not actually lost any classroom time. So the review made him impatient, in part because he had no recourse: If he tried to get out of class, or even to do extra assignments, it would look to everyone, including Dabeet himself, like the old Dabeet, the one who had to show he was smarter than everybody.

So it came as a relief when a message banner appeared on his desk, and the teacher’s voice came at the same time: “Dabeet, please report to the commandant’s office immediately.”

Dabeet got up, blanked his desk, and carried it with him out of the room. Maybe he’d come back to this classroom, maybe not. But if he had to sit and wait somewhere, it was better to have the tools to accomplish something than to twiddle his thumbs. The one thing he didn’t want to do was sit and think, because inevitably his thoughts would run back to his nearly-disastrous expedition into the enemy ship. What if he’d tried to keep his suit on once he breached the ship? What if he hadn’t thought to open a box so he didn’t know about the Vacoplaz? What if the other kids hadn’t shown up to the rendezvous he called? What if those two older girls had failed to deliver the message?

What if he had tried to jump the first time he saw the station, and gotten completely off course? As it was, he now knew that when Monkey reached him, she only had about a hundred meters of tether left. If his trajectory had made it so she couldn’t reach him with that length of cable, he would have died. And perhaps she as well, because the explosion would have caught her even closer to the ship, and there would have been no one to cover and plug any tears in her spacesuit.

What if, what if. He knew that this was idiotic, to imagine all that could have gone wrong. Especially because it hadn’t gone wrong. But whenever he didn’t keep his mind busy with something, that was where it went.

Robota Smirnova sat behind the commandant’s desk, where not that long ago Dabeet had sat eating snacks and drinking carbonated beverages with his friends. But after only a glance at her, Dabeet’s attention was drawn to the other person in the room.

Dabeet walked to the Minister of Colonization and extended his hand. “I know I have you to thank for rescuing my mother, sir,” said Dabeet.

Graff took his hand, but shook his head with a wry smile. “I did help prepare the ground a little, but it was all the officials in the IF and the various governments, not to mention the Cuban police, who did everything that mattered. I’m glad she’s safe, though. And you, too, Dabeet.”

Dabeet glanced over at Robota.

“I asked Robota to remain here for a short time,” said Graff. “She has been given a one-year appointment as interim commandant of Fleet School, and she wanted me to help train her in school administration, which is why I’m here.”

Dabeet immediately thought: You came here to see me, and training Robota is only an excuse. But then he quashed that conclusion, because it was borderline narcissistic.