The Authorized Ender Companion (11 page)

Four weeks after Dragon Army had been created, after Bean had proven his value to the army by not getting frozen in battle and freezing nearly four dozen enemy soldiers, Ender gave Bean command of a toon. It was a special squadron of five soldiers—one from each toon in Dragon Army. Bean was ordered to hold special practices with them and teach them as many unique formations and attacks as he could.

Ender relied on Bean and confided in him that he was near his breaking point. Bean knew the officers could destroy Ender’s spirit, but nonetheless comforted Ender, reassuring him that he would come out on top.

Bean’s special squadron utilized a long ropelike supply used in space construction. It had been difficult for Bean to obtain it, arguing with Graff, Dimak, and another teacher, Dap, that he needed access to the storage closet. With that access eventually granted, Bean trained his special squad in using the rope as a tool in the nullgravity environment. He was disappointed that Nikolai refused to be in the squadron, but found a suitable replacement.

Bean also organized members of Dragon Army to be bodyguards for Ender when his life was threatened by Bonzo Madrid. Despite Bean’s best efforts to protect Ender, Bonzo found him alone, but Ender protected himself, killing Bonzo. Bean was glad Ender lived through the attack, but was angry he could not protect Ender himself. Bean made the decision to kill someone; that someone would have to be Achilles.

He showed such skill as a toon leader that he was assigned command of Rabbit Army. Although he was four years younger than the usual age of a
commander, Bean’s army accepted him. The first soldier to embrace him as a leader was Itú. However, one of his soldiers was a new launchy—Achilles Flandres from Rotterdam.

Bean was certain that Achilles had a renewed desire to kill him. Yet, after his experience following Ender in Dragon Army, he knew how to command respect and utilize authority. He gave Achilles specific orders, refusing to tolerate Achilles’s stories of their time in Rotterdam. Bean assigned Achilles to Ambul’s toon, making clear the level of obedience he expected from his new soldier and renewed enemy.

Determined to make Achilles pay for Poke’s murder, he, with the help of some of his toon leaders, laid a trap for Achilles. They lured Achilles into the duct system, and tied him up with deadline—Bean’s chosen tool in the Battle Room. There Achilles would suffer from the heat in the ductwork and dehydrate to death. Unless he confessed on a recorder that he’d killed Poke and six others. Achilles confessed and was kicked out of Battle School for it. But he swore a new murderous vengeance against Bean.

After a week in command of Rabbit Army, and five losses in the battles, Bean was promoted to go to Tactical School. He was replaced in his army by Nikolai. As he traveled to Tactical School, Bean wrote letters to political analysts Locke and Demosthenes, telling them that Battle School should be shut down. The children at Battle School, he knew, would end up fighting in the world conflict that developed between the Russians, Muslim nations, China, and North America after the Formic War.

He studied at Tactical School for a week when another unexpected and perhaps premature promotion came. Bean was sent to Command School, where he served as one of Ender’s squadron leaders in the simulator/exams, later revealed to be real battles. They communicated by radio.

During his time at Command School, Bean figured out that the simulators were real battles, and that the International Fleet had the ability to communicate ship to ship at light speed. He forced himself to disbelieve this, however, so as to allow himself to emotionally disconnect from the deaths that occurred in the simulators.

Also at Command School, Bean became friends with Petra Arkanian. They distrusted each other at first, but soon built a deep mutual respect between them. Around this same time, during a conversation with Graff (who had been reassigned to Command School), Bean learned his true parentage and true name. He was Julian Delphiki II, son of Julian and Elena Delphiki of Greece. And his brother was Nikolai—the truest friend he’d ever had.

Bean had been told that he was the backup plan if Ender snapped and was
unable to complete his final simulator. He was ready to fulfill that obligation if need be.

When the final Command School simulation was played, Ender had been struggling with severe emotional trauma. It was Bean who eased his nerves by reminding Ender “The enemy’s gate is down,” a command Ender had impressed on Bean and the others in Dragon Army at Battle School. However, Bean realized he didn’t have a strategy if Ender snapped. The point was moot, however, as Ender led the fleet to victory.

Following Ender’s victory, war did break out on Earth. Graff protected Bean from being captured and used by either of Earth’s factions. The conflict did not last long, though, and Bean was one of Ender’s friends who told him that the war had ended thanks to something called the “Locke Proposal.”

Bean returned to Earth and was adopted by his biological parents, the Delphikis. The new family went on a vacation together, but were attacked. Their holiday house was bombed, and it was clear that their lives were in jeopardy.

They were rescued by Greek soldiers, and from them Bean learned that ten of his friends, including Petra, were kidnapped. He thought that Achilles was mounting a war against the world, but couldn’t be sure.

After a few weeks of living with his family in a small apartment under the protective guard of the Greek Army, Bean was ready to move on. He wanted to leave his family for their own protection and search for Petra and the others. When Graff and Sister Carlotta showed up at their hiding place and took the family to another undisclosed locale, it appeared that he might get his chance to do just that.

However, it was not exactly to be. Graff planned to take the rest of the Delphiki family further into hiding, while Bean would travel with Sister Carlotta. He didn’t know what she had in mind, but he went along with the plan, if only to protect his new family. He wanted to find his friends and beat Achilles.

They traveled to Brazil where they kept on top of world matters through the nets and e-mail. They used a series of servers to hide their location and were successful in remaining hidden.

Bean loved to get out of their hiding place and go outside. With his training from Battle School and experience as a streetwise child in Rotterdam, he was safe. He knew that he was protecting Sister Carlotta just as much as she was watching over him.

One day, in looking at their e-mail messages, Bean and Carlotta came
across a picture of a dragon. Bean thought it might be a signal from his captive colleagues. He stayed up all night decoding it and determined that it had been secretly sent by Petra Arkanian, disclosing her location in Russia.

Knowing Peter Wiggin could arrange for military rescue operations for Petra and company, Bean sent the information to him. Peter acted swiftly in his secret identity, Locke, and set in motion a rescue mission. The mission was successful, for the most part, though Petra remained in Achilles’s custody.

Bean realized, in the course of this discovery, that he had deep feelings of affection and friendship for Petra. He promised himself he would do whatever he had to in order to protect and save her. She would not, he swore, become another Poke.

In response to Bean’s aid in freeing the kidnapped soldiers, Peter Wiggin contacted Sister Carlotta and Bean, hoping for a meeting with them. They did not respond via e-mail, but rather together left for Peter’s hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina.

It was Bean’s first visit to America, and he was awestruck by the nation’s apparent wealth and the unnecessary waste and extravagance that he witnessed there. With Carlotta, he went to Peter’s university, and met the young man at a nearby restaurant. There Bean and Peter snipped at each other, verbally sparring to prove their own superiority.

Bean left his “grandmother” Carlotta and Peter and looked around Greensboro. He wanted to see Ender’s family’s house, and there he met Ender’s mother Theresa. She knew who he was, and she took him into her home.

The two spoke frankly with one another, and Bean learned much about Theresa and her husband’s goals for their children. They missed Ender and Valentine, who had gone into space never to return, but also were secretly proud of Peter. They knew that he was Locke, but pretended not to. Though Theresa at times felt that Bean was condescendingly judging or condemning her, she shared some of the most intimate details of her life with him. Particularly, she told him how much she loved her children and longed for Peter to have kids of his own. Bean was struck by that, believing that he himself would never have children, either.

As they concluded their conversation, Sister Carlotta and Peter arrived at the house. Peter introduced Carlotta as a traveler, but Theresa revealed that Bean had exposed his true identity to her already. Nonetheless, Theresa invited Bean and Carlotta to join her family for dinner, and they went to a nearby restaurant.

At dinner, Bean and Sister Carlotta planted a seed in Peter, hoping that he would join them in their travels-in-hiding. As they discussed it more later in
private, Bean helped the trio come up with a plan that would set Peter on his path of political dominance, as well as prevent Achilles from exposing Peter’s identity as Locke.

Bean simply wanted to find and rescue Petra, but knew that to do that he had to align himself with Peter. It was why he visited Theresa—to learn if Peter was trustworthy. In the process, he determined that he knew he had to trust Peter regardless and be his best general as he launched his rise to power in the world.

As Peter revealed his true identity to the world, Bean and Sister Carlotta traveled to Thailand. There they’d been promised a group of soldiers to command, and access to all intelligence related to Achilles and Petra. They got none. Bean spent much of his time posting secret notes to Petra on the computer forums, but she never replied. He was unsure if she was even alive.

He was also growing. It seemed that every day he was another centimeter taller. He outgrew clothing almost faster than he could replace it. Bean was rapidly becoming a giant, and it was a strange sensation. He’d been the smaller-than-average kid at Battle School; now he was growing larger and faster than normal.

After weeks of not getting anything he’d been promised, Bean tried to test the patience of the Thai military leadership. To protect Sister Carlotta, he sent her away. She left for Madrid. But before she left, she and Bean had a little fight. Peter had told Bean that Carlotta had written some memos about Bean before he went to Battle School. She’d never told him about the memos and refused to share their content with him. It was a touchy subject between the two of them.

When Carlotta left, Bean sent a message to the leader of the Thai military speaking about strategic matters. The message was intercepted by the military leader assigned to take care of Bean, a young man named Suriyawong, who was a Battle School graduate and a smart soldier. He met with Bean, and though he didn’t trust him at first, saw that Bean was not a threat to his position in the Thai military.

Suriyawong gave Bean a group of soldiers to train, and maps. He did not share much intelligence, though. This was not a huge problem for Bean, however, as Graff and Sister Carlotta kept him up to speed on world affairs.

After six months of training his troops, Graff told him that the Indian and Pakistani armies had pulled their troops back from their shared border and appeared to be working together.

Graff also told him that Achilles and Petra had orchestrated the withdrawals. Bean refused to believe that Petra had sided with Achilles and
determined that she was giving him solid military advice that Achilles was ignoring.

It was clear to Bean that the troop withdrawals were the preliminary steps to an Achillesled Indian invasion of Asia. He was proven correct days later as India invaded Burma. With this knowledge in hand, Bean approached the leader of the Thai military, the Chakri, and learned that the Thai military would not act until they were directly threatened.

With Suriyawong, Bean returned to his barracks. It suddenly hit him that the Chakri was in cahoots with Achilles, and there was an imminent threat on his life and Suriyawong’s. The two Battle Schoolers escaped from the barracks just as it was bombed.

Bean and Suriyawong called upon the soldiers Bean had been training to protect them. The Chakri had represented that Indian spies had killed Bean and Suriyawong, and their deaths would not go unavenged. Bean got a message to Graff, Peter, and Carlotta that explained what really had happened. The Chakri resigned from his post, caught in his nefarious scheme, and the Thai Prime Minister took Bean into protective custody.

It was time to find Achilles and rescue Petra. And Sister Carlotta was on her way back.

Bean went with Suriyawong first to dinner and then to the airport to greet Sister Carlotta. They learned there that her plane had been shot down over China, and there were no survivors. It had been Achilles who ordered the plane brought down. Bean was crushed to learn that Sister Carlotta was dead. He cried, and returned to the prime minister’s home where he was allowed to grieve in private.

He soon received an e-mail that Sister Carlotta had asked Hyrum Graff and Peter Wiggin to forward to Bean if they’d lost contact somehow. It contained the content of the memos that had been such a touchy issue in their relationship.

The memos and this e-mail told Bean about his genetic manipulation and the turning of Anton’s Key. This manipulation had made Bean brilliant, but also accelerated his physical growth. As a result, Carlotta said, Bean would die young.

Bean took the message as fact, particularly in light of his continual growth. He mourned privately, quietly for his beloved Sister Carlotta. She had been a mother to him, and he already missed her terribly. He would not seek vengeance for Sister Carlotta, as she asked him not to in the e-mail. But he would ensure that Achilles was stopped, no matter the cost.

He learned that the missile that shot down Carlotta’s plane had been fired
from China, and that Achilles was actually working with the Chinese to take over Asia. His actions in India were a cover to subvert that nation and Pakistan, preparing them for Chinese rule. Bean tried to tell the Thai government this, but they doubted him.