The commanders up in Battle School have figured out who Demosthenes and Locke are; and they are very surprised to see Valentine and Peter. They mull it over for a while and decide not to reveal their true identities to the public

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Valentine is enjoying being Demosthenes, but she has had times when she was sad. She felt ashamed that her father read Demosthenes everyday, discussing what he(she) had wrote. However, she was almost caught. She had written a school paper just like Demosthenes accidentally, and it was almost published on the same NewsNet that Demosthenes was on. After school, Valentine found Graff waiting for her. He needed her to talk to Ender and convince him to return to Command School, after his short landside leave. Valentine does talk him into it, but she really didn’t want to. Graff and Ender are heading to IF Command, the last step out of Battle School. They blast off, and take a military tug towards Eros, three months away. On the trip, they talk and Ender finds out that the Buggers might have originated on Earth. Ender is also taught about Ansibles, devices that allow ships to communicate across galaxies.

 

*A NewsNet is an online news paper for the people in this century. It also functions as magazines, and Demosthenes is a popular writer for the particular one discussed in this chapter.

 

Colonel Graff is chatting with Admiral Chamrajnagar, who runs IF Command. Their plan is to isolate Ender there too, so they can keep his talents up.

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Ender doesn’t like Eros when he first arrives. It wasn’t sloped like the wheel of Battle school, the ceilings and doors were too low, there were too many people, and there was less gravity. Ender also didn’t have time to make friends, as he was constantly kept busy with work, and his classes kept getting switched around. At command school, Ender had the simulator for fun. The simulator is a game where Ender had a ship that goes seeking out the enemy and destroying it. As Ender grew better with the simulator, the game grew tougher. He begins to command squadrons, and he eventually masters the game. Ender and Graff talk more, and the two become friends.

Ender meets an old man in his room when he wakes up in the morning. Ender tries to talk to him, but he doesn’t make a sound. After a fashion, the two have a fight and the old man wins. When he wins, he says his name is Mazer Rackham, the great war hero who destroyed the Buggers. Mazer explains important things like the first and second invasion. Mazer is also making simulations for Ender to solve. Ender progresses more, and Mazer him a new simulation. He puts on the headset and finds himself talking to his old friends from Battle School! The group practices together, solving many problems with the enemy, and then comes a big battle. After these battles, the group finds that their ‘practices’ were real battles out in space, and the major battle was the battle where the human forces wiped out the Buggers’. Back on Earth, the Warsaw pact is breaking apart, and Locke’s Proposal is taking effect.