The Trashpusher of Planet 4 by Brenda Kalt (Analog, March-April 2021)1 has an opening that tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the story that will follow:
In the center of the ship, near the AI, a dozen candidates for methane drainer scurried out of the examination room.
“Watch it, trash!” a young chemical engineer snapped as he bumped another student.
“I’m sorry.” Awi Trashpusher Nonumber had a blind spot behind him. Though an adult, only four of the six eyes on his pale, skinny, cylindrical body had developed. The engineer castes had twelve eyes in two rings around their upper tips.
Awi had taken the exam in his usual state of hunger, and his tip now curled forward. Wrapping one tentacle around a waterpipe, he enfolded the pipe greedily. By the time he was temporarily full of water and upright again, the corridor was almost empty.
“Awi! How’d it go?” Roob Mechanical Engineer 3886, barely old enough to be a candidate, had scandalized his classmates by befriending Awi. Roob’s body was the clear yellow of the engineer castes, with more intense color along his feeding strip. pp. 32-33
I would have probably stopped reading there if I was an editor as, at that point, I would know that (a) the story has an amateurish and juvenile tone, (b) it sounds clichéd and (c) that the tale would show Awi overcoming the disadvantages of his caste after some difficulties.
I wasn’t far wrong. After this encounter Awi goes home and broods about his lot until the ship AI (it materialises that he is on board an alien generation ship) gives him a job cleaning the scout ship Beautiful Light. The AI then tells Awi to take Beautiful Light on a reconnaissance mission. Awi takes the ship out—experiencing zero gee for the first time and learning how to use centripetal force to feed himself from the pipe—before orbiting a nearby planet that looks habitable. Then, when Awi returns, he meets Roob disembarking from another ship and they go to see the AI together. The AI subsequently instructs Awi to lead Roob’s ship, Firm Resolve, to the planet so they can dump nitrogen there to prove that the planet is terraformable.
After their experiment proves successful, the terraforming begins—although not without some pushback from the higher castes—and, during this episode, a new worldformer caste is created. Roob is given a place in it, but Awi is refused.
The story finishes (spoiler) with the AI more or less forcing the aliens to settle on the partially terraformed planet (it wants to go off and explore), and Awi taking his scoutship to investigate the “moonlets” that keep coming from planet 3 (Earth, obviously, so the planet they are terraforming is Mars).
I suppose that this is a competently enough told YA story where, ultimately, Awi doesn’t change the system but does escape it. I have to wonder what it is doing in Analog, though—I wouldn’t say that about all kinds of YA stories, but this type of story seems far too unsophisticated for a modern audience.
** (Average). 5,700 words. Story link.
1. This story was the runner-up in the short story category of the Analytical Laboratory poll for 2021. If this is really the second best short story from Analog that year no wonder so few of its works feature in the Hugo or Nebula Award final ballots (not that they are currently anything to write home about).