(Part of Children of the Shadows)
By Kara (anyalindir@aol.com)
Spoilers: None, Pre-series
Disclaimer: Max belongs to Logan, Dark Angel belongs to Cameron/Eglee, and Ender's Game belongs to Orson Scott Card. All that belongs to me is an '85 Blazer and a really spiffy sword
Summary: On his way back to the barracks one night, Zack finds a book… Part of the Children of the Shadows series.
It was another quiet night. The Colonel wasn't exactly pleased with them-training hadn't been going as well as planned lately. It wasn't like they were rebelling, but Zack could tell that his brothers and sisters were tired. Even Syl got a murderous look in her eyes sometimes, and Syl was the most mild mannered of any of them. She wasn't a fire-eater like he was, or like Jondy, with her fierce dark glares and quick smile.
They were almost ten years old. Zack pretended not to notice that some of their bodies were changing when they took their nightly showers. Tinga shot up over the last year til she towered over all of them, even him. That made her more of a target now, because she lost her ability to fade into the blank-faced squadron. In a few years, they'd be put out into the field, just like the X-3s were. In a few years, they'd be safe from the nomalies that got Jen, and away from the Colonel, who killed Jack. In a few years, they might even be able to escape for the Outside.
Their marching echoed oddly in the silent corridors of Manticore. The Colonel had left them alone after dinner, telling Zack to take the troops back to the barracks for showers and bed. It gave him a weird kind of thrill, that the Colonel trusted him like that. He liked having that small power over his siblings. As long as they listened to him, he knew that he'd be able to keep them safe, and together.
Out of the corner of his eye, Zack caught sight of something sitting on a chair a short ways down one of the bisecting hallways. Signaling for quiet, he waved Max up. He couldn't help being proud of her as she stalked to the front of the line, graceful as that mountain lion they'd seen on patrol two years ago. Though Maxie was a bit too sentimental and clingy for his taste, his baby sister was still a good soldier, and probably the best of them at stealth and recon. She didn't have the dead-on aim that Tinga had, or the grace of Brin when it came to fighting, but Max could blend into shadows like she was made of darkness.
With three curt signals, he motioned for Max to stealth down the hallway and retrieve the book. She nodded once and moved into the shadows.
If Zack were anything but a soldier, he probably could have described how watching her made him feel. There was something that burned in the pit of his stomach as Max crept down the hallway, something stronger than what he usually felt when one of his brothers or sisters accomplished their mission. This was Max--the baby, the youngest. Zack knew she was the Colonel's favorite, if only because he saw how the Colonel watched her sometimes. That was reason enough to want to get Max away from here-to protect her from whatever Lydecker wanted her for. Zack was only nine years old, but he wasn't just a dumb kid. He was a soldier, trained to sense motive and read into the situation. Colonel Lydecker had his own form of love for them, but it wasn't the right kind.
The quiet slap of a book in his hand brought Zack back to reality. He nodded to Max, flashing her a brief smile before she moved back in line behind him. It hurt him, kinda, the way Maxie's face lit up when she saw the smile. It just amplified that 'not right' feeling in the pit of his stomach. Little sisters, especially sisters like Max, shouldn't look starved and empty like that.
They made it back to the barracks quickly, ran through their shower in the time that the Colonel always allotted, and changed into the night scrubs. The night guard came in to count heads, as he always did. There were 24, just as there should be, because Zack had counted after they got out of the showers. He always counted, just to make sure. He didn't really believe that the nomalies could escape, but you never knew…
As soon as the lights went out and the door was shut, Zack took the book out of the hiding place under his mattress. It wasn't much of a hiding place-he'd probably have to move it to the high place before dawn. Before he could look at the paperback, he noticed two pairs of bare feet planted on the edge of his mattress. Max and Jondy. Twins in everything except DNA, his little sisters' dark eyes stared down at him expectantly. Without invitation, they plopped down on the foot of his bed.
"Well?" Max prompted, arms folded across her chest. Jondy gave him a similar look of disdain.
"It's just some book." Zack turned it over in his hands, scanning the back of the faded paperback. "Some book about a game. Ender's Game. By Orson Scott Card." There wasn't even a summary, just a review by some dumb newspaper.
Jondy took it in one small hand, and opened to the first page. "For Geoffrey," she read. "Who makes me remember how young and how old children can be." There was an odd look on her face when her eyes met his again. With a movement so quick that Zack almost didn't catch it, Jondy signaled for a meeting at the high place. Zack gave a curt nod. Gesturing to a few of the others, he nodded towards the window. Something told him that everyone needed to hear this.
One by one, they deftly climbed the drainpipe up to the high place. It was the only part of Manticore that Zack knew for sure wasn't bugged. He even had suspicions about the bathrooms, but he was sure never to share those thoughts with his brothers and sisters. It wasn't long before most of the ones who'd stayed awake made it up to the top. Five stayed in the barracks as usual, on watch in case one of the guards came in. You could never have too many soldiers watching your back. The others looked at him expectantly as they formed a circle around him, Jondy at his side.
"I found a book," Zack said finally. Jondy not so subtly elbowed him in the ribs. "Jondy found a book. She thought we should hear it."
Jondy grabbed the book out of his hands, crossing her legs and gracefully falling to the ground. "It's called Ender's Game, and it's about a boy who fights a war."
"Like us," Tinga said softly. "Children playing soldiers."
"We are soldiers," Zack snapped. "And don't you forget that, Tinga."
"Shut up, Zack. Do you ever get tired of hearing yourself talk? We do." Jondy moved her arm, as if she was going to hit him with the book. For someone so tiny, she didn't look that threatening, but Zack knew better. "It's called Ender's Game. 'I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one. Or at least as close as we're going to get…'"
The night passed quickly. Zack was absorbed into the world of Andrew Wiggin, and his siblings, Peter and Valentine. There was something about the life at the Battle School that was so familiar…
"War games. All the boys are organized into armies. Day after day, in zero gravity, there are mock battles. No one gets hurt, but winning and losing matter…It's a hard life, and you won't have a normal childhood…"
"So a twelve-year-old boy and his kid sister are going to save the world?"
"How old was Alexander? I'm not going to do it overnight. I'm just going to start now. If you'll help me."
"When she'd read it twice, Dr. Lineberry took it from her hands. 'I was instructed to let you read it, and then destroy it.' She took a cigarette lighter from a drawer and set the paper afire. It burned brightly in the ashtray. 'Was it good news or bad news?'
'I sold my brother,' Valentine said, 'and they paid me for it.'
"Instead, he noticed how very tired Bean looked, his whole body bent with weariness, his eyes dark from lack of sleep; and yet his skin was still soft and translucent, the skin of a child, the soft curved cheek of a little boy. He wasn't eight years old yet. It didn't matter he was brilliant and dedicated and good. He was a child. He was young.
No he isn't, thought Ender. Small, yes. But Bean had been through a battle with a while army depending on him and the soldiers he led, and he performed splendidly, and they won. There's no youth in that. No childhood."
Hours into the night, Zack took the book from Jondy's hands and began to read, unaware of the tears that fell down his face.
"He was a soldier, and if anyone had asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he wouldn't have known what they meant." Zack had to swallow hard for a moment to control the spasms in his chest. How could this author know?
"All over. Beat them. Ender didn't understand. 'I beat you.'
Mazer laughed, a loud laugh that filled the room. "Ender, you never played me. You never played a game since I became your enemy.'
Ender didn't get the joke. He had played a great many games, at a terrible cost to himself. He began to get angry…
Real. Not a game. Ender's mind was too tired to cope with it all. They weren't just points of light in the air, they were real ships that he had fought with and real ships he had destroyed…He walked through the crowd, dodging their congratulations, ignoring their hands, their words, their rejoicing…"
"'Of course we tricked you. That's the whole point. It had to be at trick or you couldn't have done it. It's the bind we were in…'
'And it had to be a child, Ender.' Said Mazer. 'You were faster than me. Better than me. I was too old and cautious. Any decent person who knows what warfare is can never go into battle with a whole heart. But you didn't know. We made sure you didn't know. You were reckless and brilliant and young. It's what you were born for…'"
"'So what do we do now?' asked Alai. 'The bugger war is over, and so's the war down there on Earth, and even the war here. What do we do now?'
'We're kids,' said Petra. 'They'll probably make us go to school. It's a law. You have to go to school til you're seventeen.' They all laughed at that. Laughed until tears streamed down their faces."
When Zack finally closed the book, it was close to dawn. Eighteen faces stared at him, as if they'd fallen under a spell or something.
"He was a soldier, and if anyone had asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he wouldn't have known what they meant," Max repeated softly. At some point, she had come to lean against him, Jondy's head pillowed on her other shoulder. Looking down into his baby sister's dark eyes, Zack knew how true those words were. They were born to be soldiers, and they knew nothing else. What kind of destiny did that leave them?
"He was writing about us. Toy soldiers." Ben's normally strong voice wavered and cracked. "He told our story. He knew our story."
"So what do we do? We know what our destiny is. We were made to be soldiers," Jace said flatly. "Our duty is to the objective. Our duty is to Manticore." And her dark eyes turned to Zack, Commanding Officer. "Isn't it?"
Their eyes turned towards him because, as the oldest, he was supposed to have all the answers. He spent so much time looking out for them that he forgot what it was like to think about himself sometimes. He was the protector, the leader, the big brother. Zack wondered if he really knew what it would be like to think of himself.
But looking at the faces around him, he realized he didn't have answers this time. Seventeen faces looked at him, and all he could think about was how young they were. Brin didn't even have all of her teeth yet. And Syl still cried at night when she had nightmares about the nomalies…
"We have to escape." It was Eva's voice who broke the silence. Eva was one of the quiet ones that the Colonel never really noticed. She'd made a habit of blending into the crowd, choosing that as her defense mechanism. Lydecker never sought her out, so she was usually free from the special treatment that he and Maxie got. Sometimes, Zack had to admit that he almost forgot she existed. But now…she had a point.
"Let's not talk about this now." Zack stood, stretching out the kinks in his legs. "It's almost dawn, and we have a training session in about an hour." With a flash of his hand, he signaled for retreat. As one, his brothers and sisters stood automatically, fading back into the shadows of the rising sun and heading for the drainpipe.
As the last one slid down towards their barracks' window, Zack stared out at the sun as it rose against the backdrop of mountains. For a moment, the huge ball seemed to taunt him, as if to say that the world was so much bigger than he was, and even a genetically-engineered soldier couldn't shoulder the burdens of everyone, especially not one that was still a child. Zack had never been a child, and neither had any of his siblings. Maybe it was time to give them that chance…
"Welcome to the human race," he read. "Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given you by good people, by people who love you. I didn't come here because I wanted to be a colonist. I came because I've spent my whole life in the company of the brother that I hated. Now I want a chance to know the brother that I love, before it's too late, before we're not children anymore."
Zack tucked the book into a corner of the Blue Lady's altar. Baby teeth still sat on top of the worn stone. "Watch over us," he whispered, to whoever was out there and might hear him. And with a glare back at the sun, Zack slid over the wall into morning, and into decisions he had to make about changing all their lives.
The End