Page 773 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

"Maybe we should try to put the fire out," said Grego. But already the whole forest was ablaze.
"Go home," Miro said again. "Stay inside the fence."
There was still some anger left. "Who are you to tell us what to do?"
"Stay inside the fence," said Miro. "Someone else is coming to protect the pequeninos now."
"Who? The police?" Several people laughed bitterly, since so many of them were police, or had seen policemen among the crowd.
"Here they are," said Miro.
A low hum could be heard, soft at first, barely audible in the roaring of the fire, but then louder and louder, until five fliers came into view, skimming the tops of the grass as they circled the mob, sometimes black in silhouette against the burning forest, sometimes shining with reflected fire when they were on the opposite side. At last they came to rest, all five of them sinking down onto the tall grass. Only then were the people able to distinguish one black shape from another, as six riders arose from each flying platform. What they had taken for shining machinery on the fliers was not machinery at all, but living creatures, not as large as men but not as small as pequeninos, either, with large heads and multi-faceted eyes. They made no threatening gesture, just formed lines before each flier; but no gestures were needed. The sight of them was enough, stirring memories of ancient nightmares and horror stories.
"Deus nos perdoe!" cried several. God forgive us. They were expecting to die. "Go home," said Miro. "Stay inside the fence."
"What are they?" Nimbo's childish voice spoke for them all.
The answers came as whispers. "Devils." "Destroying angels." "Death."
And then the truth, from Grego's lips, for he knew what they had to be, though it was unthinkable. "Buggers," he said. "Buggers, here on Lusitania."
They did not run from the place. They walked, watching carefully, shying away from the strange new creatures whose existence none of them had guessed at, whose powers they could only imagine, or remember from ancient videos they had studied once in school. The buggers, who had once come close to destroying all of humanity, until they were destroyed in turn by Ender the Xenocide. The book called the Hive Queen had said they were really beautiful and did not need to die. But now, seeing them, black shining exoskeletons, a thousand lenses in their shimmering green eyes, it was not beauty but terror that they felt. And when they went home, it would be in the knowledge that these, and not just the dwarfish, backward piggies, waited for them just outside the fence. Had they been in prison before? Surely now they were trapped in one of the circles of hell.