Orson Card - Shadow of the Giant

Then she saw the tears streaming down his cheeks.

"Petra," said Rackham, "don't you understand that we love you children? All of you? We already had to send Ender away. We're sending them all away, except for you. Because we love you. Because we don't want any harm to you."

"So why are you leaving me here?"

"Because of your babies, Petra. Because even though they don't have the syndrome, they're also Bean's babies. He's the only one who had no hope of a normal life. But thanks to you, he had one. However briefly, he got to be a husband and a father and have a family. Don't you know how much we love you for giving him that? As God is my witness, Petra, we would never harm Bean, not for any cause and certainly not for our convenience. Whatever you think we are, you're wrong. Because you children are the only children we have."

She wasn't going to feel sorry for him. It was her turn right now. So she pushed past him and went down the stairs and took the hand of her husband and followed the nurses that were carrying her children toward a closed van.

There were five new children that she hadn't met yet, waiting for her and Bean. Her life hadn't ended yet, even though it felt like she was dying with every breath she took.

RUMORS OF WAR

From: Graff%pilgrimage@colmin.gov

To: PeterWiggin%private@FreePeopleOfEarth.fp.gov

Re: debriefing

Attached are the data to the division level, including names of commanders. But the gist is simple enough: Russia is gambling everything on the quiescence of eastern Europe. They're all supposed to be terrified of a newly aggressive Russia. This is the move they thought they were going to be able to make when they had Achilles with them and kidnapped all of Ender's Jeesh.

What you can tell them, with authority, is this: Russia IS newly aggressive, they ARE bent on proving they're a world power again. They're dangerous. But:

1. They don't have Vlad. They have his plan, but can't adapt to any changes.

2. We have Vlad's plan, so we can anticipate every move they make while they follow it, and the generals in command are going to follow it with religious devotion. Expect no flexibility, even after they know we have it. Vlad knows the men in command. In the Russian military these days, any leaders with the imagination to improvise don't rise to the level where it will matter.

3. Han Tzu is being provided with their plan, so their main army will meet with disaster in the East.

4. They stripped their western defenses. A fast-moving army, competently led, should take St. Petersburg in a walk and Moscow in a week. That's Vlad's opinion. Bean has been over this information and concurs. He suggests you take Petra out of Armenia and put her in charge of the campaign in Russia.

When Suriyawong got the word from Peter, he was ready. Prime Minister Paribatra and Minister of Defense Ambul had kept their affiliation with the FPE secret for just this occasion. Now, armed with Burmese and Chinese permission to pass through their territory, the Thai army was going to have the chance to face the Indians who had begun all this nonsense with their vicious, unprovoked invasion of Burma and Thailand.

The troops went by train all the way into Chinese territory; Chinese trucks with Chinese drivers ferried them the rest of the way to the spots that Suriyawong had mapped out as soon as Peter suggested it as a contingency. At the time, Peter had said, "It's a remote possibility, because it requires incredible stupidity on the part of some nonstupid people, but be ready."

Ready to defend China. That was the irony.

But Han Tzu's China was not the China that had embraced Achilles's treacherous plan and crushed everyone, carrying away the entire Thai leadership and Suriyawong's parents. Han Tzu promised friendship, and Bean vouched for him. So Suriyawong had been able to persuade his top leadership, and they had persuaded his men, that defending China was nothing more or less than a forward defense of Thailand.

"China has changed," Suriyawong told the officers, "but India has not. Once again, they're pouring over the border of a nation that believes itself to be at peace with them. This goddess they follow, Virlomi—she's just another Battle School graduate, like me. But we have what she doesn't have. We have Julian Delphiki's plan. And we will win."

Bean's plan, however, was simple enough. "The only way to end this once and for all is to make it a disaster. Like Varus's legions in the Teutoburger Wald. No guerrilla action. No chance of retreat. Virlomi alive if possible, but if she insists on dying, oblige her."

That was the plan. But Suriyawong needed no more than that. The mountainous country of southwestern China and northern Burma was ambush country. Virlomi's ill-trained troops were advancing on foot— ridiculously slowly—in three main columns, following three river valleys with three inadequate roads. Suriyawong's own plans called for a simple, classical ambush on all three routes. He hid relatively small but heavily armed contingents at the heads of the valleys, where they would be passed by the Indian troops. Then far, far down the valley, he had far larger contingents with plenty of transport to move up the valley upon command.

Then it was a matter of waiting for two things.

The first thing came on the second day of waiting. The southernmost outpost notified him that their column had entered the valley and was moving briskly. This was no surprise—they had had a much easier trip than the two northern armies.

"They're not careful about probing ahead," said the general in charge of that contingent. "Raw troops, marching blind. As I watched them, I kept thinking, this must be an attempt to deceive us. But no— they keep passing, with large gaps in the line, stragglers, and only a few regiments that put out scouts. None of them came close to finding us. They haven't put a single observer on either ridge. They're lazy"

When, later in the day, the other two hidden contingents reported a similar story, Suriyawong relayed the information back to Ambul. While he waited for the next triggering event, he had his lookouts make a particular point of searching for any sign that Virlomi herself was traveling with any of the three armies.

There was no mystery about it. She was traveling with the northernmost Indian army, riding in an open jeep, and the troops cheered when she passed, moving up and down the line—slowing down her own army's advance in the process, since they had to move off the road for her.

Suriyawong heard this with sadness. She had been so brilliant. Her assessment of how to undo the Chinese occupation had been dead on. Her holding action to keep the Chinese from returning to India or re-supplying when the Persians and Pakistanis invaded had been of Thermopylaean proportions. The difference was that Virlomi was more careful than the Spartans—she had already covered all the back roads. Nothing got past her Indian guerrillas.

She was beautiful and wise and mysterious. Suriyawong had rescued her once, and cooperated in the little drama that made the rescue possible—and played upon her reputation as a goddess.

But in those days, she had known she was just acting.

Or had she? Perhaps it was her intimations of godhood that had caused her to reject Suriyawong's overtures of friendship and more-than-friendship. The blow had been painful, but he wasn't angry with her. She had an aura of greatness about her that he had seen in no other commander, not even Bean.

The troop deployments she was showing here were not what he would have expected from the woman who had been so careful of her men's lives in all her previous actions. Nor from the woman who had wept over the bodies of the victims of Muslim atrocities. Didn't she see that she was leading the soldiers to disaster? Even if there were no ambush in these mountains—though it was absolutely predictable that there would be—an army this ragged could be destroyed at will by a trained and determined enemy.