Fleet School is a science fiction series by Orson Scott Card. It's another P.O.V. Sequel to Card's Ender's Game series, taking place concurrently with the Shadow series. While the Shadow series focuses on the aftermath of the Third Invasion on Earth, the Fleet School series does the same for the rest of the Solar System, primarily focusing on Fleet School, which used to be called Battle School during Ender's time, and which now focuses on training future colony and expedition leaders rather than military commanders.
The first novel, titled Children of the Fleet has been released in 2017.
Dabeet Ochoa is a very intelligent (and arrogant) boy, whose single mother keeps insisting to everyone that Dabeet's father (whom he has never met) is an International Fleet officer. Therefore, Dabeet has a right to attend Fleet School, which is reserved for the so-called "children of the fleet". While he's only 50% sure she's telling the truth, Dabeet applies to Fleet School, attracting the interest of MinCol (Minister of Colonization) Hyrum Graff, unaware that this will kick off a chain of events threatening the very existence of Battle School.
This series contains examples of:
- The Cameo:
- The chapters are interlaced with conversation between Graff and an unnamed man. Later on, though, it's made clear that this man is Mazer Rackham, who was officially stated to have left Earth with Ender but has actually stayed behind. Graff and Mazer have a discussion about fatherhood, with Mazer admitting that, while he's glad that his genes live on in his grandchildren, he doesn't actually know them or love them as much as he did his own children.
- While at Fleet School, Dabeet needs advice, so he arranges to speak to MinCol Graff via the ansible. Instead, he gets Ender Wiggin, who is aboard his colony ship. Graff asks Ender to speak to Dabeet and maybe help him out a bit with a word of advice. Although he prefers "Andrew" now, having grown resentful of his nickname.
- Corrupt Bureaucrat: Dabeet suspects that someone in Fleet School has been paid off by his kidnappers. It turns out to be the school's commandant.
- Disappeared Dad: Dabeet never knew his father. His mother claims he's an IF officer, but he's not sure if she's telling the truth. He's eventually told that his father is indeed in the IF. However, the woman who raised him isn't actually his biological mother. He's also never told that Hyrum Graff is his father, as Graff doesn't want Dabeet to get any ideas about inheriting Graff's position or influence.
- Due to the Dead: Graff and Mazer somberly refer to the men and women, who died during the final battle of the Third Invasion as a result of Ender throwing the entire fleet towards the Formic homeworld and blowing it up.
- Evil Is Petty: The reason Achilles wants to destroy Fleet School is because he was humiliated by Bean there in front of other Battle School kids and then exiled to Earth to be imprisoned. He doesn't care that there's no one aboard, who could've possibly seen or known about it.
- Explosions in Space: Fairly realistic. The blast wave of an explosion in vacuum is only dangerous at close range. The primary danger comes from the debris that flies off at great speed like shrapnel. Obviously, there's no sound in space.
- Explosive Decompression: The key to getting the hijacked Juke, Ltd., ship away from the station before the explosives hidden aboard are detonated. Monkey explains to Dabeet how to open the airlock in emergency mode, which forgoes the "pumping out the air" step. Dabeet also has to make sure to secure himself first, so that he's not thrown out into space at great force. The blast of air ends up pushing the ship away from the station, saving Fleet School.
- Gratuitous Foreign Language: Battle School slang has survived the station being turned into Fleet School. Many words used by students come from various languages. For example, when Dabeet says "I'm such a zhopa", it means "I'm such an asshole" (zhopa is Russian for asshole).
- Happy Ending Override: Sort of. While Ender's victory over the Formics seems to have ended the extraterrestrial threat, Graff isn't so sure the Formics are all gone. For all he knows, there may be hundreds of other Formic colonies with their own Queens, who are pissed off at humanity blowing up their homeworld. It's also possible that a huge armada is at this very moment heading for Earth with its own Queen (or maybe several) aboard, launched before the Final Battle. Graff knows that, as long as humanity only exists on one world, it will always be vulnerable to external aggression. Therefore, as Minister of Colonization, it's his goal to ensure that humanity survives, even if Earth is destroyed. This means sending out colony ships not only to former Formic worlds but also dispatch exploration ships to find new habitable planets to colonize, hopefully ones Formics didn't know about. That's the purpose of Fleet School: without FTL travel, all colonies will be on their own, as well as any scouting expedition. This requires a good colony/expedition leader, and where better to train them than the former Battle School?
- In Space, Everyone Can See Your Face: Averted. When Monkey's spacesuit is breached, Dabeet doesn't waste time trying to peer through her mostly opaque (from the outside) helmet visor, as every second counts.
- Insufferable Genius: Dabeet is very smart and he knows it. Subverted later, when he has to face the grim reality that he's a genius at taking tests and has very little practical knowledge. He's also stumped by Real Life problems, ones he isn't sure even have a solution.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: After learning that his father is indeed an IF officer, Dabeet is annoyed that Graff refuses to reveal his identity. Graff once again refuses to reveal the identity of Dabeet's parents to him at the end of the first novel. Dabeet makes a number of guesses as to his possible identity early on, such as assuming him to be of Indian descent based on Dabeet's own first name. Dabeet is Hyrum Graff's son, but Graff is determined to keep Dabeet in the dark about that and immediately denies it, when Dabeet asks him directly. He's a good enough liar that Dabeet buys the denial.
- The Man Behind the Man: Dabeet has no idea who is behind the plot to attack and destroy Fleet School. Graff does, though - it's Achilles, the Big Bad of the parallel Shadow series. He's determined to destroy the station, a testament to his failure and disgrace.
- MegaCorp: Apparently, Juke, Ltd., is still around and is a major non-IF player in the Solar System. A number of other companies, such as WU-HU, are also mentioned.
- Nanomachines: The outer hull of Fleet School is covered in a layer of Nan-Ooze, which has been in use since the Second Invasion, used to close up breaches and to allow people to crawl (or even walk) across the hull without flying off into space.
- The Not-So-Harmless Punishment: When first arriving to Fleet School and meeting its commandant, Dabeet is sent to his barracks. Then he's told that it's unusual for the commandant not to give some sort of punishment to a student. Dabeet realizes that him not receiving punishment is his punishment - isolation from the other students, who will assume him to be a kiss-ass. He straight up tells them as much, but they doubt such a ridiculous story.
- Photographic Memory: Dabeet never forgets anything. This comes in handy multiple times, when he has to recall something that was listed off to him hastily. The other kids soon learn to take advantage of that and don't bother repeating themselves to Dabeet, knowing there's no need to.
- Sherlock Scan: After being kidnapped, Dabeet is able to infer a lot about his captors at a glance.
- Somebody Set Up Us the Bomb: Dabeet sneaks aboard the shuttle that was used to deliver the strike team to Fleet School and accidentally discovers crates full of explosives wired to a remote trigger. He realizes the strike team was probably not told that theirs was a suicide mission. Whoever is really in charge plans to blow up the shuttle, at the station it's docked to, with the soldiers still inside. Monkey instructs Dabeet on using Explosive Decompression to jettison the shuttle away from the station and jump out, so that Monkey can catch him. Later on, Dabeet is told that the IF had a strike team of their own hidden nearby, prepared to recapture the school. They admit that it's likely the shuttle would've been blown up the moment the IF troops got on board.
- Space Is Cold: Averted. Dabeet is primarily hot in his spacesuit, despite it having a pretty good life support system.
- Space Station: The primary setting of the series is the old Battle School, now known as Fleet School. The station is explored in greater depth. It's located at one of the Lagrange points. The construction actually started prior to IF taking possession of it and turning into Battle School.
- Subspace Ansible: Used to communicate over long distance instantaneously. Dabeet ends up having an unexpected conversation with Ender using the ansible, while Ender is aboard a colony ship traveling at relativistic speeds.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: Dabeet deduces that the man, who hired his kidnappers, is Brazilian, even though all he can hear is a voice on the phone. The man then tell him that he's not in a "by the way" manner. Slightly subverted in that Dabeet takes this to mean "you better not tell anyone that I'm Brazilian".
