CHAPTER 1

Samantha Fried was not supposed to be on our ship. Every single other person there fit in with Jane's plan. We were going to a world full of sentient beings. They looked and acted almost exactly like humans. In fact, as far as I could tell, they were human. The only significant difference was that unlike them, we couldn't shoot fire out of our hands or move mountains by stomping our feet.

The problem with Sam was that since she had been the commander of half of both my army and Dan's during our final battle in the old school she assumed that those kids were still under her authority. However, they had only been with her for about a week and before that they had grown to love and respect their old commanders.

There were a couple of kids, Greg and Tommy in particular, who seemed to consider her their leader but the great majority had, now that they had the freedom to choose, gone back to the old groups they had made before.

The world's beings seemed to refer to it as Avatere. It was in almost the exact opposite direction from where the buggers had lived. Because of this, it was very far away from any from any of the human settlements.

"So they aren't human?" I asked Jane, for the millionth time

I DON'T THINK SO. THEY AREN'T CONNECTED TO THE ANSIBLE, THEY AREN'T TRADING WITH ANY HUMAN WORLDS, THEY DON'T EVEN HAVE CELL PHONES.

"How much longer is this flight?" Despite there being 203 people in what used to be the pride and joy of a billion dollar project flight was still extremely boring, and despite what I tried to show, I was still a kid.

ONLY ANOTHER DAY AND THEN YOU'LL FINALLY BE THERE.

"Perfect." During the flight we had made a sort of mini battle school, mostly just so we didn't all go crazy with boredom. My 'army' which only consisted of 9 boys was going to fight Julie's which was made up only of girls.

These battles usually only went for about 10 or so minutes. We had gotten rid of the rule where if you go through the gate you win. This was for two reasons. First, in a game where it is only 10 on ten, it is very hard to kill all of the opposite team players and still have five kids left. The second reason was because there was only one gate. When we had broken off from the rest of the school the door had shut. If it was opened now it would be out into space.

KEEP IN MIND DAN, YOU'RE 100 YEARS LATE. THE FIRELORD HAS ALREADY DESTROYED AN ENTIRE RACE OF THEIR PEOPLE.

"The airbenders right?" I asked, knowing the answer. From the little I knew about the different nations, I got the feeling that

YES. THEY WERE NEVER A TRULY STRONG NATION BUT THEY WERE PEACEFUL AND LOVING.

"All of this because he was afraid of one boy. This Avatar guy must be really good." I noted.

CORRECT, HOWEVER, HE IS UNFORTUNATLY DEAD NOW.

"They succeeded?" I asked "So it's all over? They won?"

WELL ACTUALLY, NO. THEIR PLANET IS MUCH SMALLER THAN EARTH. SINCE YOU ARE ALL USED TO EARTH'S GRAVITATIONAL PULL YOU WILL BE ABLE TO JUMP MUCH HIGHER AND MUCH FARTHER THAN ANY OF THE LOCALS.

"So we can act like Air Nomads?" I asked

ESSENTIALLY. THE ONLY PROBLEM IS THAT AVATAR THING. THERE IS SOME TECHNOLOGY THAT THE BUGGERS HAVE LEFT BEHIND AND IT SHOWS HOW TO REVERSE GRAVITY, SO WATER BENDING WON'T BE TOO HARD. HOWEVER, EARTH AND FIRE ARE BEYOND ME.

"Why don't we pose as Airbenders then?" Denis had been half listening through the entire conversation but now he was really giving it his full attention.

BECAUSE THERE ARE ALL DEAD.

"Oh. Right." He nodded.

"But what if we make it look like they aren't. We could make a secret new 'airbending' village that the firelord didn't find." I pointed out

THE FIRELORD TORTURED TOO MANY PEOPLE FOR INFORMATION. IT WOULD LOOK SUSPICIOUS.

"So what should we do with 200 kids?" Denis asked

IT'S VERY HARD TO GET ANY INFORMATION ON THEIR BACKGROUND. LEGEND HAS IT THAT THERE IS A LIBRARY

"So lets me get this straight, you want me and Denis to take our armies and invade a library?" My doubt wasn't hidden.

I'D PREFER IF YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO KILL ANYONE BUT I SUPPOSE SO YES.

I nodded and went to the battle room. Julie's mini army was strong. I had been spending much more time with Denis, Spike and Carl working for Jane and not nearly enough time with my army to expect to win.

Nikolai had been the one to design the battle room set up. Since there was no longer any 'rules' like there was in the real battle school he hadn't been limited in what kinds of things he could use. He had used stars yes, but also bed sheets that blocked people's view but were able to be shot through. And ten seconds before the game began he threw 30 gallons of water into the Null-G (Jane had told him that she could collect it all again and reuse it.) He had also made an effort to start teaching us about airbending so he told us that after 5 minutes he was going to make one tenth of the gravity on the moon. Down was going to be directly opposite from the one and only gate.

Both Julie and my mini armies left the barracks. The viewing room was already crowded with kids, around 50 of them. Some other kids were talking to Jane and others still were playing in the game room or on their desks.

Nikolai threw the water out into the Null-G and signaled that the game had begun. My scout darted out and came back quickly. "There's about a hundred stars, it looks symmetrical. It looks like there's fog in the middle of the room because all I could see on their side was a hazy something or other."

I nodded and told each individual kid where to go. Since the battle was at such a small scale there was no use for toons.

Obviously I used Ender's knee strategy with our attack. It probably didn't look all that impressive to our oversized audience given how few we were in number but I didn't really care.

When I got near Julie I fired silently. I wanted to be able to take her out quickly and retreat equally quickly. Unfortunately, one of her girls saw me and before I knew what had happened I was shot.

However, despite my death, my boys were safely behind stars in the middle of the fog we picked off a great number of the other team while only losing five of our own.

Meanwhile, the other toons had been circling on the side lines at that point it became a bit of a shoot out. However, then the gravity hit. It was hardly anything really, just a subtle sort of pull that oriented us 'down.' However, being frozen I fell to the wall or floor I guess and watched the armies battle.

However, we were then interrupted. EVERYONE PLEASE PREPARE FOR LANDING.

I couldn't see at first but then we turned for our final descent and saw the planet for the first time. It was tiny. I don't mean Earth tiny, I mean tiny. I doubted it was any larger than our moon.

WE ARE GOING TO LAND IN THE SOUTH POLE

I felt myself get unfrozen, all attention having left the game at hand and moved to our new home.

Then all of a sudden Jane lost control of the ship. We crashed down into the water, although since the gravitational pull was so small it was hardly a serious issue. The real problem was that Jane somehow didn't work.

Everyone started to scream. We were under water, with giant pieces of ice bobbing dangerously close to the air trapped inside our shuttle.

"YO!" I got everyone's attention. "I don't know what's going on but we need to stay calm. Jane will have everything under control very soon I'm sure. In the meantime, each mini army should investigate the planet."

Under my direction everyone started to calm down. For any other group of 8 and nine year olds it would have been nearly impossible to do this but we were not any other group. We were Jane's Army.