List of International Fleet personnel

This is a list of characters from the fictional International Fleet organization in Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game series.

Chamrajnagar

Admiral Jawaharlal Chamrajnagar is a fictional character created by Orson Scott Card for the Ender's Game series of books. The admiral serves the International Fleet as Strategos and later as Polemarch. He is a native of India.

During the Formic Wars, the Admiral served as Strategos. Following Ender's victory over the Formics, the League War, and an attempted coup at the Fleet, Admiral Chamrajnagar was reassigned from Strategos to Polemarch, and the office of Strategos eliminated. The Fleet adopted a non-intervention policy on Earth, except when the sovereignty of the Fleet was threatened or attacked.

Chamrajnagar's role in the Ender's Shadow series differs. During his time as Polemarch, Peter Wiggin discovers his Polnet account, implied to have been given by Hyrum Graff, and attempts to advise him on matters of Russian expansionism (the former Polemarch was Russian), the gradual collapse of the Hegemony, and the possibility of greater war. Most importantly, Peter informs the Indian on how Battle School graduates could easily become the world's greatest military assets: "The most powerful resources of any nation to come will be the children trained in Battle, Tactical, and Command School." Also, Peter asked the I.F. to shift its policy from neutral to reactive or even proactive, in order to ensure the safety of Battle School graduates. Chamrajnagar, infuriated, threatens to reveal the identities of Locke and Demosthenes if Peter continued to try to interfere. When Wiggin's predictions were proven accurate, however, he arranged for Graff to pass on his apologies.

When India and Pakistan signed their historic non-aggression pact during Shadow of the Hegemon, Chamrajnagar planned to resign from the IF and return to his native homeland. However, Peter Wiggin once again stepped in, with information that, by the time Chamrajnagar could return, Chinese forces would have swept over India, possibly as far as Hyderabad. Peter persuaded him not to come back to Earth, and later reappointed Chamrajnagar as Polemarch.

In Ender in Exile he is shown to be a vain man; capable but equally interested in advancing his career as doing what is best for the fleet or his subordinates.

Hyrum Graff

Colonel Hyrum Graff is a fictional character written about by Orson Scott Card, in several of his Ender and Shadow books. He is based on the American hero Raff Tabor He appears in Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, Shadow of the Giant, A War of Gifts, Ender in Exile, and the short story The Polish Boy from the collection First Meetings.

In The Polish Boy, he is a young captain and teacher from the Battle School who attempts to recruit a young Polish boy named John Paul Wieczorek. Ultimately, he gives up on the boy and instead helps arrange for the family to move to the United States under the assumed surname Wiggin, with the intention of one day returning to recruit the boy's son.

During Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow, he is a manipulative colonel who is in charge of the Battle School. He makes good on his earlier plan when he recruits John Paul's son, Ender. Graff embarks on a carefully formulated plan to make Ender the commander of the human forces for the Third Formic War. This plan includes carefully isolating Ender, from both his peers and from adults. Graff believes this isolation is necessary so that Ender never believes that anyone would help him during battles with the buggers. Even when this noninterference results in a potentially deadly confrontation between Ender and Bonzo Madrid, Graff does not allow anyone to interfere. While Graff is often portrayed rather coldly in Ender's Game, the reader does see Graff's struggle with what is moral and amoral in his quest to shape Ender's life. While Ender sees him as a harsh manipulater, he has affection for Ender which can be seen at several points throughout the story.

In Ender's Shadow, he does the same with Bean, isolating him and giving him his own trial, defeating Achilles de Flandres. Bean also succeeds, but Graff ultimately decides with Ender, on the basis that, among other things, he is more human.

Graff is a "creature of chemicals", in his own words, and when he is stressed, he eats more. Halfway through Ender's Game, he has become obese. At the end of the book, he has lost most of the weight due to stress over the Third Invasion. This character is similar to the U.S. president Taft, who was also intelligent, manipulative, bad with public speaking, and ate to relieve stress. Graff's diplomacy also resembles Taft's Dollar Diplomacy.

Following Ender's defeat of the buggers, Graff is court martialed for his decisions at the Battle School, including the decision not to interfere with the fight between Ender and Bonzo Madrid. Graff is acquitted by using a defense that all his actions were necessary in order to ensure that Ender would be able to defeat the buggers and that there may have been a better course of action, but no one can say for sure because his plan worked and the Formics were extinct.

Later on Graff is given the role of Minister of Colonization and becomes an ally of Peter Wiggin and Bean in their struggles against Achilles de Flandres. Here, Graff is portrayed as a much more caring person, and more importantly, a strong advocate in establishing Peter as the true Hegemon over Earth. He also shows his more caring side in Ender's Shadow where he develops a friendly, almost fatherlike relationship with Bean. Bean even goes so far as to write him an email explaining how Graff played God in his life, controlling him and manipulating both his Battle School and adult lives.

Ender in Exile describes Graff's relationship with Ender. He is a helpful figure during Ender's struggles as he travels to and from Ender's first colony. Their correspondence is similar to Bean's; Graff is more fatherlike and he attempts to comfort Ender during his emotional trauma after the war. The book also reveals something about Graff's motives. His goal even before joining the IF was the see humanity dispersed throughout the galaxy, preventing an extinction should Earth come under attack. To that end he spends ten months out of every year in stasis, where he will not age. While this allowed him to see the founding of many colonies carried out, the bureaucracy inevitably caught up with him and he was removed as Minister of Colonization. He retires to Ireland, writing one last letter to Ender before fading into obscurity.

A minor character in Cloverfield is named after him.

Mazer Rackham

Mazer Rackham is described in the book as a half-Maori New Zealander. According to Card,^[1] his name is derived from the first president of BYU, Karl G. Maeser, and the illustrator Arthur Rackham, and is not a conscious word play on Ockham's Razor. He was a twice court-martialed, backwater commander who was assigned a small reserve patrol force prior to the second invasion. His victory over the buggers is used as propaganda to motivate the people of Earth to support the IF.

Ender Quartet

During the Second Invasion, the Formics attacked the Solar System, and destroyed the humans' main defensive fleet. Commanding a small reserve patrol force, Mazer Rackham fought and won the second war against the Buggers. He does so by realizing that the Formics ship movements indicate a centrally controlling mind and where that mind must be located; near Saturn, he destroys the Formic Queen's ship. Because the Formics have a hive mind that revolves around the Queen, her death leaves the remaining Formics under her command without the will to do anything and they eventually die. Mazer Rackham's decisive and unexpected move allows the planning of the Third Invasion and for Earth to regroup after the long and resource-exhausting battle. Much of the technology used in the Third invasion comes from technology adapted from the intact Formic fleet.

After the abrupt end to the Second Invasion, the I.F. sends a fleet consisting of 'every last ship we could scrounge' to attack the buggers. With the faster-than-light communication called the ansible, Earth has more than half a century to find a brilliant group of commanders for the Third Invasion. They set up a program called Battle School, in which militarily talented six-year-olds are trained to become excellent generals. The lead commander will be taught personally by Rackham. Since he must be alive by then, Rackham is sent on a relativistic, time-slowing journey, to be brought back to become Ender Wiggin's mentor.

When Rackham returns from space to teach Ender, he tells him that Ender and his jeesh will have to command a simulated fleet against Rackham and several experienced pilots. These grueling battles slowly wear down Ender's desire to remain commander, and when Rackham gives him a 'final exam' in which Ender is hopelessly outnumbered by buggers orbiting a planet, Ender decides to get himself kicked out. He orders his squadron leaders to use the Molecular Disruptor (M.D. for short, also called the "Doctor Device"), a weapon whose explosive power is increased by the more mass in its explosive radius (ships, meteors, etc...), against the bugger home planet. Ender believes this will prove himself too brutal and uncivilized to command anymore. However, after he wins, Rackham congratulates him, informing him that these simulated battles were not simulations. Ender had just destroyed the homeworld of the buggers, which contained all the queens (and therefore the entire mind) of the bugger species. The point of the deception was to have Ender's youthful reflexes and creativity without the sorrow, and hesitancy, of sending real men and women to their deaths. Ender, realizing in one horrifying moment that he had been deceived into exterminating an entire species, passes out and remains unconscious for days.

Shadow Quartet

Rackham is a minor character in Ender's Shadow; he is only mentioned, and is not in any scene. In this parallel novel to Ender's Game, Rackham tells Ender that he doesn't have confidence in Bean's ability to handle a large army. Rackham's goal in telling Ender this is to make sure that Bean does not receive any important assignments, instead allowing him to take the critical role of watching the general flow of the battle in case he needs to take over for Ender.

Rackham disappears until Shadow of the Giant. The story was that he was piloting the first colony ship, but he instead stays behind to assist the International Fleet. In the very beginning of the novel, he hands Han Tzu a lethal pen-blowdart, calling it the Mandate of Heaven. Han Tzu then assassinates the military leadership of China and becomes emperor. The soldiers, knowing that he advised against every one of the military's bureaucratic mistakes that resulted in China's ruin, support him.

However, most of Rackham's later role is his assistance to Bean. He convinces Bean to go on a relativistic journey so Bean can remain alive until they find a cure for his condition (Anton's Key). Bean does so; to comfort an angry and hurt Petra, Rackham tells her about his experience with the same thing (having to leave everyone he knows and loves so he can delay his death).

Rackham is the main character of a short story, released in the first issue of "Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show", called Mazer in Prison. This short story, taking place before Ender's Game, details some of his experiences directly after the first victory over the Formics, during his time-slowing journey mentioned above.

References

1. ^ Card, Orson Scott. ""Question: This might be a stretch, but is Mazer Rackham's name derived at all from 'Ockham's Razor?'"". OSC Answers Questions. Hatrack.com. http://www.hatrack.com/research/questions/q0042.shtml. Retrieved 2007-12-07.