Xenocide recap

Starways Congress sends a fleet armed with a planet-destroying weapon to wipe out Lusitania, fearing both its rebellion and the deadly Descolada virus that could escape and ravage other worlds. On the distant world of Path, the godspoken prodigy Han Qing-jao is ordered to find whoever crippled the interstellar network; with her clever servant Wang-mu she deduces the existence of Jane, the network intelligence, though her rigid faith turns her against her. On Lusitania, Ela, Novinha, and the others race to understand the Descolada, which they realize is not a natural disease but an engineered, possibly intelligent organism woven into pequenino biology. A militant faction of pequeninos spreads the virus as a weapon and murders the missionary Quim, hardening the crisis, and Grego's rage sparks a mob that kills natives, deepening the bloodshed. Working with the hive queen and Ender's family, the scientists and Jane discover a way to travel faster than light by passing Outside reality and back through sheer pattern and will. In doing so, Ela creates a cure to neutralize the Descolada, Miro's broken body is remade whole, and Ender inadvertently gives physical form to figures from his own mind. But the fleet still approaches, and Congress prepares to shut down the network that keeps Jane alive.

Previously in the Ender series: as a boy, the brilliant Ender Wiggin was tricked by Earth's military into commanding the fleet that destroyed an insectlike alien species, only to discover the last surviving hive queen and vow to find her a new home. Staying young through centuries of near-lightspeed travel, he became the first Speaker for the Dead, a truth-teller at funerals, and wrote the books that taught humanity to mourn the aliens he had killed. In Speaker for the Dead, three thousand years later, Ender came to the colony world of Lusitania, where humans studied the pequeninos, small forest natives who transform their dead into sentient trees, a rite they had mistakenly inflicted on two human scientists. Ender uncovered the colony's buried secrets, married the xenobiologist Novinha, and negotiated peace among humans and pequeninos. He planted the hive queen's cocoon in the forest so her species could be reborn, giving Lusitania three kinds of intelligent life. To protect the world from Starways Congress, the hidden network intelligence Jane, Ender's secret companion, cut off faster-than-light communications, an act of defiance that exposed her existence. Now Congress, terrified of the deadly Descolada virus that saturates Lusitania and of the colony's rebellion, has dispatched a war fleet armed with a planet-killing weapon to destroy Lusitania and everything on it. Jane is hunted for her interference, the pequeninos are divided, and the survival of three species hangs in the balance.

The novel ends in the middle of the larger struggle, with a breakthrough that changes everything and a threat still looming. On Lusitania the scientists confirm that the Descolada is no ordinary plague but a designed, perhaps sentient organism essential to the pequeninos' life cycle, which makes curing it without killing the natives desperately difficult. A fanatical pequenino faction spreads the virus as a weapon and martyrs the missionary Quim, and Grego's fury ignites a mob that slaughters pequeninos before the violence is contained. Meanwhile Han Qing-jao on the world of Path uncovers the truth of Jane and the sabotaged network, but her devotion to the gods, which is really an engineered mental compulsion, leads her to side with Congress against the very intelligence that could save countless lives. Drawing on the hive queen's insight and the physics of the philotic connections binding all things, Ender's family and Jane learn to travel instantly by slipping Outside ordinary reality and returning. On that first voyage Ela brings back an organism to replace and tame the Descolada, Miro steps out in a healed, whole body, and Ender unintentionally gives physical existence to living embodiments of his long-dead brother and sister, drawn from his own mind. The planet-killing fleet is still on its way, and Congress still intends to shut down the network and end Jane, leaving the fate of the three species, and of Jane herself, to be decided in the story to come.