"Renegat", also known as Fleet School: Renegat is a short story written by Orson Scott Card. It tells the story of when Andrew and Valentine Wiggin visited the colony of Catalunya to investigate the death of Kenneth Argon and the sentience of the Llop.
Originally posted to Orson Scott Card's Uncle Orson On the Fly subscribers' area on February 2, 2017[2], it was not officially published until the release of the anthology Infinite Stars on October 17, 2017.[1]
Story Details[]
After the Exploratory Service noted the eccentricities of Kenneth Argon, the head of the Catalunya colony under the E.S., they sent the proconsul Dabeet Ochoa to investigate. After arriving, Argon insisted that Dabeet interact with the Llop species native to the planet. While Ken was working with the parasite that gave the Llop speech, it killed him. This caused disorder among the citizens of Catalunya, and so Dabeet called for a Speaker for the Dead to calm the agitated colonists down.
Andrew and Valentine Wiggin were already in-route to Catalunya after Valentine heard about Kenneth Argon and sought to write a biography about him. Andrew, a Speaker for the Dead, decided to investigate Argon's death with help from Dabeet.
Eventually, they brought a Llop named Great Mother into an Exploratory Service lab. Here, the last remaining parasite that gave the Llop speech was, though close to death. Great Mother joined with it and briefly got back her ability to speak. She relayed information about her people to Andrew, Valentine, and Dabeet, and requested something record her sing the song of her people. Valentine left a recorder in the lab and exited with Dabeet and Andrew.
With the discovery that the Llop were pseudo-sentient, Andrew and Dabeet realized that it was likely that Starways Congress and the Exploratory Service would not allow continued human settlement of Catalunya, and that the colony would be evacuated. Dabeet was unperturbed, as he had been to many colonies that were not granted continuing status and he knew he would just be sent to another planet afterward.
Trivia[]
- "Renegat" is the German word for renegade.[3]