Rotterdam, The Netherlands [April 12th in Ender's Universe]

[momslilassassin]

So Bean and Petra were going to have children - even in the midst of all of the confusion, the unsolved problem of Achilles, and the puzzling, continuing absence of Ender in the light of everything Ben and Karla claimed was going on.

They'd found a clinic, though. A place that would get them the children they didn't think they could have otherwise. It'd taken a lot of poking around to get the right doctors to check to make sure none of Petra's children would have the genetic problems that Bean had - the gene that would ensure he'd be dead before he turned twenty.

The morning of her in-vitro fertilization, Petra was still in bed, sleeping off her nerves before they'd head towards the hospital. Bean wasn't. He was restless, his desk a continuous presence in his hands, and eventually he'd slipped into the living area of their two-bedroom suite - and don't ask what kind of strings he'd pulled for that - in order not to bother her.

He ran a quick check of all of his waiting emails.

[OOC: NFI, NFB, preplayed with the talented endsthegame, OOC comments fed pie.]

	Ben wandering out a few minutes later--not that sharing a room with Karla wasn't awkward (which it was), but Ben was an insomniac by nature these days, and worry about Ender had just made it worse. "Ho, Bean," he said. "Interested in coffee?" In Ben's world, coffee was the same as at least an hour of sleep.
	"Sure," Bean said, flicking his eyes up over the edge of his desk - and the steady hum of its holo-display. "It's not like I have to worry about stunting my growth."
	Ben hated that the empathic part of him felt for Bean's situation while the absurdly jealous Skywalker part of him rest of him really just wanted to kick the guy. "True," he replied. "How's Petra feeling?" Ben's brain skittered around the entire concept of calling Petra Bean's wife. Because really. Incurable growth thing or not, Bean was younger than he was. And as grown-up as Ben felt, just...no.
	"She's resting," Bean said, "Pre-pregnancy jitters." His cursor hovered over one of the emails he'd gotten in through one of his anonymous accounts. He clicked; then his back went ramrod straight.
	"What's wrong?" Ben asked immediately, taking a few steps closer.
	Bean tilted the desk so that Ben could read along; it'd been three weeks, and fairly obvious they were going to be stuck with each other. And anyway, this information had to reach Peter, anyway - if it was what he thought it was. To: Stone%CoId@IComeAnon.com From: Third%Party@MysteriousEast.org Re: Definitely not vichyssoise I don’t know who you are, don’t know what this message means, He is in China. I was a tourist there, walking along a public sidewalk. He gave me a folded slip of paper and asked me to post a message to this emailing site, with the subject shown above. So here it is: “He thinks I told him where Caligula would be but I did not." I hope this means something to you and that you get it, because be seemed very intense about this. As for me, you don’t know who am, neither does he, and that’s the way I like it. "Not vichyssoise," he noted. "Not cold soup. Hot soup." He was mostly talking to himself.
	Ben frowned hard as he leaned over to read. It was a good thing, he reflected, that he'd grown up around politicians and Jedi who liked to make things as obtuse as possible. The undercurrents in this world made his conversations with Ender seem open and forthright. "Peter boasted that he'd had Suriyawong intercept Achilles based off of intelligence he'd received," he said slowly. He had a bad feeling about this. "Peter got played from the start, didn't he?"
	"Hot Soup. Han Tzu," Bean said, slowly. "He was one of us - in Ender's Jeesh. No wonder Peter thought his intel was reliable." He shook his head. "Hot Soup would never have dispensed information that would've gotten innocent Chinese soldiers killed," he said, "Peter should have known better."
	Ben snorted. "That would assume that Peter would think past the idea that as Ender's brother, all of Ender's friends belong to him, too. So..." he continued, thinking aloud, "Achilles sent the intel himself, using Han Tzu's name so that Peter wouldn't think past his initial impulse of 'at last Ender's people are finally appreciating the astralness of me'. Now he's in the Hegemon's compound, where Peter is beginning to have power that extends more than three feet from his desk." Ben paused. "Peter's been living on borrowed time for weeks now, huh?"
	"It's Achilles," Bean pointed out, shutting off the message immediately. "We already knew he was living on borrowed time. What we didn't know was that it's possible he already had the contacts set up to get him control over most of the Hegemon's assets, possibly within days of his arrival." He glanced up at Ben. "Which includes IF." Ben could take his own conclusions out of that. He needed to wake Petra, soon, to get a message underway. He was already typing.
	The IF who had spirited Ender off to...somewhere. The IF who certainly had records of where Ender was going to school. Ben's blood ran cold. Peter, in his opinion, deserved whatever his arrogance had wrought, but Ender shouldn't be caught in that crossfire. "Sithspit," he cursed. "How do we fix this?"
	"First of all, we get Peter out of there," Bean replied. He could hear Petra rousing in the other room, but he wasn't paying attention just yet.
	"He'll love to hear that from either of us," Ben commented dryly as he nodded. "What about Achilles?" He was already thinking like an assassin, mentally reviewing the security of Peter's compound and thinking of plans of infiltration and extraction.
	"You can't send it to Peter," Petra's drowsy voice carried. "They'll be monitoring his email." "I'm not," Bean said. "I'm writing to Mr. and Mrs. Wiggin," said Bean. "Two separate messages. Pieces of a puzzle. We get the bigwigs safe, we'll deal with the rest afterwards."
	Ben's lips pursed. "They'll protect that son, huh," he muttered. In a more normal tone, he added, "Anything from Bean or I would probably go directly into Peter's trash anyway. He seems like the type. And then only Achilles gets warned."
	"Peter's an idiot who thinks he knows better than everyone else," Bean said, glancing at him, "But he's not stupid." "We can't do puzzles," Petra said, leaning in the doorway. "It might cost us too much time--" "If he sees an open message it might precipitate action on his part. It might be Peter’s death warrant. And Ender's."
	"Peter's arrogance got him into this mess and he won't thank us for seeing the obvious before he did," Ben countered. "He thought he could tame a rancor. If Ender wasn't involved, I'd leave Peter to his fate." He scrubbed his fingers through his hair. "But he is, so what kind of puzzle do you have in mind?"
	"Okay." Petra took a breath. "Here's what. Suriyawong." "No." Petra eyed him. "He’ll get a coded message instantly. He thinks that way." "But I don’t know if he can be trusted," Bean said, shaking his head. "He's too close to Achilles." "Fine. Peter's parents. But the puzzle can't be too subtle." "Don't underestimate them. Mrs. Wiggin is plenty subtle. We mix messages. One to each, they can fit together."
	"Biblical references?" Ben offered. "Ender said that both of his parents were secretly religious."
	"That might work," Bean agreed, his eyes flicking back to Ben. "Mrs. Wiggin mentioned that to me, too." His fingers flew over the keyboard. "I’ll proofread before you send it," Petra said, sliding into the seat next to him. "We have to be sure. Just because you trust someone’s motives doesn’t mean you can trust them to do it right."
	"They talked to you?" Ben replied, frowning hard. "Ender hasn't heard a word since he went to Battle School."
	"I went to see them, actually," Bean said, his eyes racing over the text he was writing. "After the war. I wanted to see Greensboro." The slightest halt, not that he'd admit it, "See Ender's world, I guess. Petra?" She wordlessly pointed out something that could be switched around.
	"Did it help anything?" Ben demanded, crankier about this than he really had a right to be.
	"Yes." Bean had picked up on the cranky.
	Bean got to see a house that Ender wasn't allowed to go back to. That angered Ben on a level he wasn't sure he knew how to articulate. "How tacky tourist of you."
	"Yes. I even brought my camera and my sunvisor," Bean said, dryly. "Do you think that phrase--?" "Stop measuring your dicks, oomos," Petra muttered.
	Ben peered at the message Bean was finishing. "You spelled that wrong," he said, pointing. Bean hadn't. Ben was just being petty.