Jake stood on the hard metal
deck of the bridge, his skin itchy against the
material of his Captain's uniform. His
feet were clad in hard, black boots, his
hands in leather gloves. He looked
stately, he looked regal.
He hated it.
The white blankness of z-space
was before him. He gazed through the force
field protecting the window. There
was nothing to see, but the nothingness of
Z-space was fascinating to him.
It was only 10 years before
that he had been a boy, a kid, fighting the
Yeerks with minimal knowledge and a tiger
morph. It had taken only ten years
for the human scientists who had been
infested to discover how Yeerk technology
worked and how to use it against them,
creating powerful laezr weapons and the
giant human Cruisers and quick Fury fighters.
The tide of the Yeerk war was
quickly turned as the humans joined.
Yeerk forces retreated from their
starbases, left worlds, went into space
controlled by them and only them.
In ten years.
Ax wouldn't have been surprised.
He said that humans do things quickly,
adapt to situations faster than any other
encountered species in the universe.
Where is Ax now? Jake wondered.
He knew Ax had been promoted to a War
Prince immediatly after the battle had
been won. His brother, Elfangor, was the
first Hero in Andalite history to have
broken the most important law in
Andalite culture.
Do not let other creatures
know about anything about us, the Yeerks, or our
technology.
Jake guessed that the Andalites
have never freed an entire race until the
humans, or they would have realized that
if you are taken by a Yeerk and freed,
you already know most of the things that
they don't want you to. That's how it
had been with humans anyhow.
And now, because of the Yeerks,
Jake had to wear this scratchy, stuffy
uniform with its laezr holster and tight
boots. On the other hand, Jake did
command the entire Starfleet. And
the most powerful ship, his Tiger.
The Tiger was en route to
a Starbase 187, on the fringe of Yeerk space, to
boost defenses and supply badly needed
weapons. SB187 was one of the first
human starbases, and quite old.
No one really knew how it had survived so
long. Except Jake.
He looked forward to meeting
Rachel again.
Tobias zipped above the heads
of the crew members, his wings spread wide.
People in uniforms were walking chests
out, as if they had nothing else to do
but strut in uniforms, but Tobias could
read their faces. The Starbase was in
trouble, deep trouble.
< Hey, Hentman, what's
up? > he asked as he spread his wings wider and swooped
onto the green-clad shoulder of a fighter
pilot.
Leiutenant Hentman's eyes
widened in surprise for a second, before he
remembered that there WAS a talking bird-boy
on the station.
"You mean you don't know?
We're under attack from a Yeerk Blade ship!"
Hentman looked puzzled.
Tobias replied.
"Sorry sir, are you in the
same bay as me?" said Hentman.
Tobias zipped off, leaving
a bewildered Hentman staring into empty space
before he jogged off.
The fighter bay that contained
Talon Squadron was spacious, shining, and
cold.
projected Tobias to
everyone in the bay,
The flight attendent brought
forward a green jumpsuit similar to the one
that Hentman was wearing, exept that it
had a red Wing Commander's stripe
running down each sleeve.
Tobias quickly morphed into
human. That was the problem with flight suits,
they didn't fit red-tails. His tight
black morphsuit appeared as the feathers
became etchings on the fabric. Marco
finally got his wish, the Animorphs were
color coordinated! The morphsuit
was tight and warm and fit well into his
green-and-red flight suit.
Tobias finished zipping the
flight suit and he climbed the ladder into his
S-13 Fury fighter. The fighter had
a long, thin, square body that was tapered
at the end. Wings came over the
top in a gradual arch that spread them about
five meters away from the body and on
the same level as the bottom of the
ship. Two massive laezr guns were
attached to the ends of the wings and four
Dracon-seeking Sidewinder II torpedoes
were attached to the underside of the
wings, two per wing. Sidewinder
IIs homed in on the radiation expulsion from a
Dracon firing. That made Sidewinder
IIs virtually fail-safe. Luckily, the
Yeerks hadn't figured out what the Sidewinders
were homing on. At the tapered
front of the Fury the muzzle of a Liquifier
Cannon showed its ugly face. The
Liquifier was designed for capital ship
attacks, and ammo was so expensive,
that it was used only for capital kills
by expert marksmen. The laezrs had
nearly limitless shots though, and the
Sidewinders were almost as effective on
capital ships. The Liquifier worked
on the principal that if you shove tiny
amounts of energy in between molecules,
eventually you get a liquid, or even a
gas. It was incredibly difficult
to get just the right amount of power into
each energy cell, which explained the
high price. Tobias had fired his
Liquifier a few times, and it was VERY
satisfactory when suddenly, a Blade
ship's Dracon turned into primordal sludge.
The plasteel cockpit window
slid over Tobias' head and he slipped on the
helmet provided on the control panel of
the Fury. He plugged it into the
control and slipped down the battle visor.
SEARCHING FOR TARGETS, said the
green message at the top of Tobias' vision.
A crosshair was in the center of
his view and other messages at the bottom
were almost too small to read.
Tobias flipped a switch and
activated the liftoff sequence. The docking bay
doors opened in front of him with a whoosh
as the air was let out. Tobias
snapped his safety belt around his shoulders
and to his chest. The doors
finished their sequence and Tobias set
his Fury's engines on a high Burn. He
was forced back into his seat by the sudden
burst of speed.
His visor now said PRIMARY
TARGET and there was a large diamond around the
shape of a Blade ship in the distance.
Good, a Yeerk Visser to kill, Tobias
thought.
Tobias put his newly morphed
human mouth to good use. "Talons 1, 2, 3, 4,
cover me. I'm going to Liquidate
the shield generator on that Blade ship. You
guys follow up with Sidewinders.
The rest of you, switch to laezrs and try to
take out as many of those Bugs coming
out from under the ship."
Tobias' visor showed small
circles around Bug fighters as they exited the
Blade ship. Eight S-13s closed in
on them, laezrs firing. If they were lucky,
there would be no Talon casualties.
He hit a switch and the visor
showed all possible targets on the Blade
ship. He moved his crosshair over
them. Dracon 1, bridge, Dracon 2, launch
bay, shield. Tobias centered his crosshair
over the shield generator and hit
the button on top of his flightstick.
The small diamond around the shield
generator turned red as the Fury locked
onto it. He pressed the red button
that seemed out of place among all the
switches on his control panel.
LIQUIDATOR ACTIVATED, said
the message at the edge of his view. The visor
switched away from the wide view and showed
a three-dimensional shield
generator and a crosshair. Tobias
found the power conduit and pressed the top
button on his flightstick again.
The targeting computer zoomed in on the
conduit. Tobias centered his crosshair,
and fired.
The targeting computer switched
off and he watched a blue bolt travel from
the nose of his S-13 toward the Blade
ship. It flashed as it penetrated the
Blade ship's shields and continued its
journey toward the...
TXXXXXZZZZZZZAT! The
bolt of blue hit the power conduit dead on and
liquified it and some of the surrounding
generator. Tobias switched to capital-
attack view and saw the possible targets
on the Blade ship as well as a message.
SHIELD DOWN, said the writing
as it flashed above the Blade ship. Tobias
allowed himself a small smile and then
switched to fighter-attack view and
selected a Bug fighter. As he turned
hard away, he saw Sidewinder II's slam
into the hull of the Blade ship, causing
chain explosions, and then a group of
S-13s swoop over. The Blade ship
tumbled through space, firing it's Dracons
uselessly, sparks leaping from it's ax-shaped
wings and the diamond bridge as
the ship died.
The Blade ship exploded in
a flash of light as it went out of Tobias' view
because of his turn. Tobias turned
his attention to the Bug fighter. He
flipped the switch on his flighstick and
armed his Sidewinders.
"Nice shot Talon Lead!" called
one of his squadron over the battlecomm.
"Cut the chatter, but thanks
anyway," Tobias replied.
"Right, Leader," came back
the comm voice
Tobias found his Bug fighter
target again and acquired a Sidewinder Dracon
lock. The crosshair in the center
of his vision beeped yellow as it read the
Dracon signature of the Bug fighter.
Tobias slowly tracked the Bug as it
swooped through it's dodging movements.
Nothing could dodge a hawk.
Tobias was still a hawk,
and would always be. That's probably why he turned
down all those promotions to become a
Wing Commander. Talon Squadron was one
branch of the three squadron wing.
The other two squadrons, Razor and Strike,
were on the Grand Admiral's flagship.
The Grand Admiral was supposed to arrive
here by now, but apparently he was running
late.
BEEEEEEP! Screeched the target
acquisition sensor as the crosshair centered
on the Bug fighter turned red. Tobias
flicked the launch trigger almost
carelessly, and sent a Hork-Bajir and
Taxxon to their deaths.
That should about do it,
Tobias thought as he acquired another Bug fighter
and tracked it with his laezrs.
The ruby bolts of energy sliced through space
toward the Bug, and then hit it,slamming
into the shielding and cutting through
the hull.
Two down, many more to go.
It was a good thing that the Yeerks had only
sent a Blade ship. Those Pool ships
could easily wipe out a station defended
only by fighters. A flash of laezrs
from the station reminded him that a
station like this, modified, might just
hold off a Blade ship, but nothing like
a Pool ship.
A white cone of lines appeared
not that far from the station. Z-space white
lines.
"Speak of the Devil," said
Tobias.
The Pool ship began launching
Bug fighters.
Rachel saw the lines too.
She saw the Pool ship appear. She saw death was
upon her. But Rachel, being Rachel,
wasn't giving up.
"Concentrate all fire on
the Pool ship," Rachel called to her weapons
officer. "TacComm, contact the S-13s,
we need those Bug fighters eliminated, NOW."
It was tough being the commander
of a space station, an old station at
that. But Rachel liked tough.
She had turned down promotions too. She really
didn't want to end up as Jake's right
hand woman. Tobias just wanted to fly,
Rachel just wanted to fight.
Crimson flashes. Dracons.
Laezrs. Ships exploded on her viewscreen. The
battle was raging, and the humans were
losing. The Pool ship's Bug fighters
came in such large amounts they overwhelmed
the Furies. There were a few
losses already, but the crack pilots in
the S-13s were members of an elite
squadron, Tobias'
The Pool ship drew closer
to the starbase
This station would be lost.
Jake was sitting now, but
the Captain's chair was just as uncomfortable as
standing. Oh well.
"Approaching Starbase One-Eight-Seven
at Impulse Mark 8," called the pilot
from his seat in front of Jake. Impulse
was different than the "Burn" that the
Andalite's used. As you approached
Maximum Impulse, the ship plunged deeper
into Zero-Space, keeping you at the same
relative speed to the rest of the
universe, so it was just like if you were
on a planet. Burn caused you to age
slower than the rest of the universe, so
at Maximum Burn, you would reach a
planet in minutes to you, but there it
would be days.
To quote Elfangor-Sirenal-Shamtul,
"That's relativity for you".
"Impulse Mark Five...Four...Three...Two...One...
Exiting Zero-Space,"
called back the pilot.
The space around SB187
was chaos. Jake could see most of a squadron of
S-13s, the remains of Bug fighters that
never quite exploded and one "wing"
from a Blade ship.
A Pool ship attacked
from a distance.
Jake wasted no time
but immediatly did what humans did best.
He adapted.
"TacComm! How
many squadrons do we have?"
"Two sir. Razor
and Strike Squadrons from Hawk Wing. It seems Talon
Squadron is already here."
"Launch them.
Helm, bring us closer to that Pool ship. I want clean
shots. Target the weapons systems
first, let's disable the ship before we
finish it."
"Yes sir. Sir,
Strike Squadron reports launch of... all twelve S-13
Furies! Razor has launched six."
"Very good. Are
we within Liquifier range?"
"Not yet sir, Matter/Anti-matter
torpedoes are armed and within firing
distance. Proton torps require...
200 meters more."
Jake cursed to himself.
"Launch the M/As. Arm all proton torps and fire
at will once you are in range. Our
best tactic now is surprise and brute
force."
The M/A torpedoes streaked
forward, trailing energy like green comets.
M/As were not as powerful as proton torpedoes,
but had a much longer range.
The Cruiser "Tiger" was Jake's flagship
and therefore the flagship of the
Terran Starfleet. That meant it
had some special modifications. Most Cruisers
only held one Fury squadron and maybe
some S-10 Wolf fighters, the Tiger held
two S-13 squadrons. The Tiger carried
twice the number of torpedoes as other
Cruisers and three times as many laezrs.
The battle raged in
front of the modified flagship of the Terran
Starfleet. Jake saw laezrs flash
their ruby color and Dracons their blood-
red. Suddenly, red flashes appeared
on the viewscreen. Proton torpedoes had
finally been launched. The Pool
ship didn't have a chance.
The M/A torpedoes reached
their target and exploded against the Pool ship's
shields. The shields flashed and
shimmered as the eruptions of flame sapped
the energy. The proton torpedoes
shot in next. Slamming against the hull of
the Pool ship, they ripped it apart.
The sheer power of the proton torps tore
away the armor on the Pool ship and explosions
rocked the ship. Fire shot from
the Pool ship on the opposite side from
where the torpedoes hit. The proton
torpedoes were that powerful.
A Bug fighter zipped
toward the bridge of the Cruiser, firing it's Dracons
into the shield at full power. It
was a usless gesture, and no one on the
bridge flinched as the laezrs on either
side of the bridge slammed the Bug
between them like a fly. Debris
smacked against the shielding guarding the
bridge. Jake blinked.
The Starbase was safe.
_______________________________________________________________________
Marco sat at his computer,
clicking keys and using his neural panel to
communicate telepathically with the computer.
The big boss walked by, hands
behind his back, glaring at everyone for
no good reason.
The boss passed and Marco
quickly brought his PaddleWar game back up.
The ball bounced across the
screen with cheap EGA graphics. DOINK, DOINK,
DOINK,
This went on for a while,
the sounds being communicated through the nerural
panel.
DOINK, DOINK, DOINK
Marco was a wiz at this game.
The work was so unchallenging for him that he
spent most of his time on antique games,
from Quake to Pac-Man. Whoopie.
He could have easily gotten
a promotion, all the way up to chief scientist
of the Terran Star Navy. Heh, heh.
Then he could work for Jake. More whoopie.
DOINK, DOINK...BZZZZZZZZZZZZZ,
went the computer game.
Oooh, I get to go to
level fifty-hundred-and-twenty, Marco thought. That's
a new record.
A hand came down on the keyboard,
shutting PaddleWar off.
"What do you think you're
doing?" said the angry voice of the boss.
"Ummm, working?" Marco
felt like he was in 7th grade again, talking to the
teacher who caught him listning to his
Walkman. At least he wasn't singing
along this time.
"Then show me your..."
CRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAACCKKKKKKKKKK!
The building shuddered. Marco heard the
sound of...
TSSSSEEEEEWWWWWW! TSSSSEEEEEWWWWWW!
Dracons?
Marco immediatly knew what
he had to do. His scientist's jumpsuit ripped to
shreds as his big, black, hairy muscles
pushed their way through. His face
flattened and his nostrils enlarged.
This was one of Marco's favorite morphs,
gorilla.
< heh heh heh >
The boss fainted.
< I've gotta do this more
often > Marco said to no one in paticular. He
lumbered over to the boss' desk and smashed
one meaty hand into it. The locked
drawer in the middle tore open to revealed
a large, pistol shaped laezr gun.
< Perfect >
Marco gripped the gun in
his left hand and lumbered out the door, well it
was more like THROUGH the door.
< I'm hoping they won't
make me pay the repair bills. Heh heh heh. > he
thought.
The outside was a mess.
There were Bug fighters swarming around buildings
and S-10 Wolves and S-13 Furies melting
them to slag. This was a total unfair
fight.
One of the oval shaped S-10s
flew overhead. The Wolf's design was much
different than the S-13s, the round Wolves
had two pudgy wings coming out of
the sides with a single Sidewinder II
on each. A high-power laezr was poking
out of the nose of the ship. With
a very low spread of fire and missle
payload, the Wolf would be very outdated.
Except for the incredible
manuverability offered by the quadruple
engines. Even the brand new Furies
could not match that. Hey, well,
at least they weren't using the old S-3
Wasps, he thought.
Let's see...where would those
landing parties be...ahh, Marco thought as he
spotted the ships dropping. Why
don't I give those commandoes a hand.
Marco lumbered over to the
landing ship. The repulsorlifts blew dust
everywhere. The door slid up like
one of those cheap sci-fi movies on HBO 7
now. But this time, there was a
gorilla to meet the hostile aliens.
CRACK! Marco/gorilla's
fist slammed into the jaw of the lead Hork-Bajir,
sending it's head flying backwards.
The next salad-shooter got the same
treatment, but it was slightly prepared
and almost dodged Marco's fist.
Almost.
THUNK! The Hork stumbled
backwards, allowing Marco to sqeeze the trigger on
his almost-forgotten laezer.
The wide beam sliced away
at the remaining Hork-Bajir and the slug-like
Taxxon pilot.
< Heh heh heh >
With a practiced hand, Marco
had vaped every single Yeerk on the Lander.
And had not damaged anything else.
< Well then. Let's
see what this baby can do! >
As he lumbered/walked towards
the control panel Marco demorphed into his
skintight, warm, and stylish morphsuit.
"Ahhhh," he said with a half
finished mouth. He took a seat at the controls
and touched his hand to a neural pad.
Launch, he thought.
The computer on the Lander
processed his request, opened command modules,
locked into a data stream, and began the
launch sequence.
"And up we go," Marco said
to himself.
Marco really had no idea
what he was doing as he rose through the sea of
chaos, broadcasting to every TSN fighter
that came near him to back away from
the incredibly cute guy in a Yeerk ship.
He got closer to the Yeerk
Pool ships in orbit. Hmm, maybe that would not
be a great idea since he could not speak
Hork-Bajirese or whatever. That Pool
ship would recognize a human pretty quickly.
So that means...
"Waitaminute!" Marco said
to himself, "Where did all our Cruisers go?"
That was when the wreckage
passed in front of him.
Terran Star Navy Cruiser
wreckage.
They were everywhere.
Empty hulls with no life aboard. Dead ships. Fury
fighters and S-10 Wolves flitted around,
causing little damage to the hundreds
of Pool ships there.
"Oh my..."
Jake was determined.
Earth or bust you might say. Rachel stood to his
right, Tobias was on her shoulder.
Everyone was silent. Jake had told them
about the message.
The Yeerks were invading
Earth.
It was the President's dying
breath that would get Earth's savior to his
planet.
How? Jake was thinking violently.
HOW? How did they breach our defenses,
that would take...two hundred Pool ships!
The Yeerks didn't have that many
ships.
On the other hand, The TSN
lost contact with all of it's inner operatives on
the Yeerk homeworld. One by one
over a year.
The helmsman called back,
"Impulse mark
five...four...three...two...one...exiting
Zero-space."
The whiteness of Z-space
dimmed and separated into single streaks and lines.
That's when Jake saw the
battle.
"No," he said in astonishment.
At least four hundred Pool
ships were waiting for him.
Marco saw the Cruiser appear.
He saw it immediatly fire all its laezr
weapons at a single Pool ship, shattering
it's shields and frying it's
innerds. At the exact moment, it
let loose it's entire hold of torpedoes at
various Pool ships, cutting down shielding
and causing massive chain
explosions. At least ten Pool ships
were decimated in that single
confrontation. Very good.
But not good enough to take
out four hundred Pool ships.
The other Pool ships closed
in on the Cruiser. It was helpless with its
entire hold of torpedoes drained.
Laezrs flashed, taking down shielding of
Pool ships, precise targeting destroyed
bridges and engines. The Pool ships
were taken aback by the ferocity and fantastic
accuracy of this Cruiser, but
still, they approached. The last
few Cruisers who had been here from the
beginning fired weak laezrs, trying to
draw the ships away. The Pool ships
didn't care, but the temporary weakness
of shields was used to it's full
advantage by this new ship, who used it's
laezrs to slice away at the
weaknesses at angles that took out key
areas.
There were at least thirty
more ships destroyed and fifty would no longer
fly.
The fighters swarmed the
Pool ships in great numbers, Wing Commanders
turning particular areas into slime with
their Liquidators and Sidewinder II's
slamming into hulls with massive power.
There were at least a hundred S-13s
and fifty S-10s. The fighters slipped
under shielding using a classic maneuver
involving weakening the shields with rapid
laezr blasts. The fighters strafed
the Pool ships with Sidewinders, laezrs,
and the occasional Liquidator.
Flashes filled the dark sky as the sudden
change of attitude in the TSN troops
caused adrenalin to flow and Pool ships
to die. There were only half the
original number now.
But it would be too much.
Jake worried as he sat in
the uncomfortable Captain's chair. The fighters
and Cruisers were fighting their best.
Pool ships flamed and died much faster
than a Cruiser or fighter. Bug fighters
tried to fight, but were destroyed by
the pinpoint accuracy of the TSN fighters.
There were two hundred Pool ships
left. At least.
There was no hope...unless...
"Taccomm! Give me the relative
position of the moon!"
"Yessir. It will be
in view...now."
"Contact Moonbase," Jake
said.
"Of course sir!" replied
the officer.
ZZZZZZZT! The screen
gave snow and then...
"Moonbase here. You
want some help...Grand Admiral?!?"
"Engage those ships, now!"
"Of course...sir"
The flashes of light and
torpedoes streaked toward the approaching Pool
ships. The other two hundred were
destroyed or dead soon enough.
"Very good Moonbase," Jake
said and then waved his hand at the Taccomm
officer to shut of the comm.
Jake turned to Rachel and
Tobias who stood stunned. "Wow, huh."
"Wow"
<wow> they replied
in unison.
Epilouge
The Tiger picked up Marco
soon enough. Jake ran to greet his friend.
"Hey Marco! How did
you get up here?"
Marco cracked his knuckles
as he stood in his morphsuit. "Well, it took my
good friend gorilla morph and a stolen
laezr, but I got here!"
"Yeah, good to see you too,"
Jake said with a smile.
"Oh Jake, I think I know
how the Yeerks got enough material to build so many
ships, but I need to go to the Yeerk homeworld
to check. As far as I can tell,
it's the only explanation," said Marco.
"What's that?"
"A planet-killing weapon"
"No"
The Admirals had finally decided
on what to do. And that was why a group of
five morph-capable humans were going to
the Yeerk home world in a small Yeerk
lander captured by Marco.
"Okay Jake, we are coming
out of Z-space now," Tobias called from the
navigator's chair. Tobias was in
his human morph and had been for the last
hour and a half. "Jake?" Tobias
said, "I'm gonna have to go back to hawk soon"
"Go ahead Tobias," Jake replied
"We will soon be landing and then you will
have to be in hawk to scope out the area."
Tobias took his hands off
the controls and looked at the white lines on the
viewscreen which were slowly dissipating.
He concentrated on returning to his
normal form. His morphsuit was soon
etched with feather lines like tattoos and
his body became smaller. His mouth
pushed outward and a hard beak appeared.
In a few minutes, he was a red-tailed
hawk. Sitting in a chair.
< See ya! I'm off
to the hold in the back, > Tobias thought-spoke as he
flapped once and took off, zipping behind
everyone and through the open door to
the back holding area of the lander.
Jake turned toward the front
of the lander as a loud buzz cut through the
air and the viewscreen flickered to life.
"Down!" Jake snapped as he
flung himself out of his chair and onto the
floor. Behind him, a holoprojector
flickered to life. Around him, his friends
lay facedown, out of view of the image
that appeared on the screen.
A bright light filled
the cabin as a hologram of Hork-Bajir and Taxxons
showed up around them.
"This is Yeerk Lander
4326 returning from an unsuccesful attack on Earth,"
said the Hork-Bajir hologram standing
in the center of the cabin, "We were
fought off b..."
A sharp voice came
from the viewscreen above them, full of cold menace,
"The Commander will hear about this."
Jake could hear the capital "C" on
Commander. So this must be the new
leader they were talking about, he thought.
The program running
the holograms suddenly narrowed its beam, projecting
snow and fuzz onto the viewscreen as a
voice said, "Experiencing communications
difficulties!" and cut off.
Jake brought himself
up on one knee and then stood. The holoprogram had
not been designed for interactivity, and
it had been necessary to end a
conversation before it started.
The group strode quickly
to the back hold where Tobias was. The lander was
set on autoland, giving the Animorphs
time to prepare.
"We're going to need
morphs that will sense the danger before it appears.
Cassie?" Jake asked.
"Wolves. Their
sense of smell will be very helpful," Cassie replied
quickly.
"Good. Who wants
to go wolf?" Jake looked at the group.
"I will Jake," Cassie
replied before Rachel could open her mouth.
"Fine," Jake said,
"Marco, go gorilla,"
"Got the modified laezr?"
Marco asked.
"Yeah."
Marco's morphsuit bulged
and fur raised up from the already black
material. His complexion became
darker and his nose flattened into his face,
becoming almost a wrinkle. When
the morph was done, Jake handed him the extra-
large laezr, especially modified for gorilla
hands.
< Let's kick some
Yeerk butt, > Marco said.
The group stepped toward
the back door. Cassie and Marco came out first,
Cassie could lead the way with wolf senses,
and Marco's gorilla with laezr
would be very effective against front-line
Yeerks. Jake and Rachel followed
with laezrs drawn. Tobias perched
on Rachel's shoulder, ready to take off.
The doors opened, and
in front of the Animorphs stood three Hork-Bajir.
Who were immediatly vaporized by three
quick, crimson lines of energy. Death
was better than being a Controller.
The group jogged forward,
Cassie's nose pointing out Controller groups so
that they could be avoided.
The desolate landscape
of the Yeerk homeworld was almost depressing.
Cracked, barren soil around small brown
weeds or Yeerk pools. Nobody had any
qualms about discharging a laezr into
the pools. The pools weren't guarded,
apparently the Yeerks didn't think anyone
would ever reach their world alive.
The logs of the lander's crew gave plenty
of clues as to where the homeworld
was though.
The group reached a
small launch pad. On it was a single Bug fighter
guarded by a single Hork-Bajir
With his back to them.
The Hork-Bajir whirled
around, blades scything the air, searching for the
source of the sound, smell, that brought
him to alert.
Jake wasted no time,
but brought the laezr up to eye level, sighted down
the barrel, and squeezed the trigger.
The flash of light
erupted from the laezr, offering no kickback. The beam
streaked forward, hitting the Hork-Bajir
in the chest and knocking him
backwards for a millisecond before vaporizing
him. The Animorphs moved
silently into the Bug fighter, which they
all knew would offer better cover
than a lander.
Not to mention weapons.
The repulsorlifts on
the Bug fired and the craft was swiftly lifted high
into the sky. Inside the fighter,
Tobias took a natural place at the
navcontrols after a quick morph to human.
The rest of the group nervously made
small talk.
"So Marco," Cassie
said, "How did you end up as a lowly technician?"
"It was easy!
First, I hacked into the computers..."
Rachel punched Marco
in the arm, shutting him up.
"No," Cassie continued,
"Maybe I should rephrase the question. WHY did you
end up as a lowly technician."
"Havn't you noticed?"
Marco joked, "All the greatest achievments in
scientific history have been made by people
lower on the scale of scientific
acheivement. Take Wayne Szalinsky
and the shrink-ray, for example..."
"I don't think you'll
be getting anything out of him Cassie," Jake said
from his post in the corner.
"Whoa," Tobias verbalized
from the pilot seat.
"Whoa what...?" Rachel
said.
Then they saw it.
"Whoa indeed," said
Marco.
It was huge.
About the size of a small moon and shaped like a cylinder,
with to very flat ends, it took up the
entirety of the small viewscreen. It
was black, and only visible because it
blotted out hundreds of stars.
"I think that's it,"
Marco said.
"See that big half-sphere
on the one end? I think that's where the weapon
is," Tobias commented.
"So we need to destroy
that?" Rachel asked nobody, "This will be fun"
Tobias turned his attention
back to the controls and piloted the Bug
fighter toward the behemoth. The
sensors scanned for a hangar, and quickly
found one. Unfortunatly, the hanger
also had a small comm tower next to it.
Which was hailing them.
"Turn it on audio only,"
Jake called. Tobias streched out his human hand
and flicked a large switch.
"Identify yourself!"
the Hork-Bajir voice said in its native language.
Jake wet his lips and
said in Hork-Bajir, "We bring a message," his voice
hushed slightly, "for the Commander"
Hurried whispering
and some mumbling occured over the comm, and then, "Dock
immediatly, I will contact the Commander"
The comm buzzed as
it shut off. "Whew!" Jake said, "I'm glad that's over.
Talking Hork-Bajir makes my throat sore"
He rubbed his neck for emphasis.
He pulled a small flashbomb
from his jumpsuit's pocket and set it to a
blinding flash. The bomb would explode
into light particles only, and blind
anything that was looking in its general
direction. As Tobias pulled the ship
into the dock he poised his thumb over
the trigger. There was a loud clank as
they hit the metal floor of the docking
bay. Jake nodded to Marco, who had
remorphed the gorilla and was carrying
the laezr. Marco pounded his fist on
the door controls and the door whooshed
outward. A twitch of Jake's thumb and
a flick of his wrist and the flashbomb
flew outside, impacting the floor with a
dull thud. The Animorphs all closed
their eyes as the blinding light sent the
waiting troops scuttling away, blind as
bats. They quickly dashed out,
shooting lights all around and bringing
the bay to utter darkness. They kept
running until they were far away from
the bay.
"Hork!"
Marco moved his trigger
finger and vaped it.
"Do you guys have any
idea how we can destroy this thing?" Jake asked.
< No clue, > Tobias
said as he swooped forward, fully hawk again, slicing a
Taxxon who had been coming out of an adjacent
corridor. The Taxxon's putrid
guts spilled all around.
"Tobias, don't do that
again," Marco cracked as he held one hand tight
against his nose, "those things smell!"
The group rounded a
corridor and entered a small room.
Which was filled with
Hork-Bajir.
Marco, Jake, Rachel,
and Cassie all squeezed their laezr triggers
immediatly, disitigrating several.
The first Hork lept
forward and was met with Marco's humongous fist. The
second was met with Tobias' talons in
it's eyes.
"HRRRRRRUUUUUUUUUGHHHHHHHH!"
it screamed.
The Animorphs had been
in so many battles, they immediatly knew what to do
when facing a dozen Hork-Bajir.
They retreated.
The blood-red Dracons
flashed near them, slicing at arms, narrowly missing
heads. Vaporizing sections of wall.
The laezrs found their mark occasionally,
but it was not a great battle.
Jake poked his laezr
around the corner and was rewarded with a Dracon
flash. He squeezed his trigger rapidly
and sprayed the corridor with laezr
fire.
"L-a-e-z-r," he spelled.
< What? > Marco
questioned.
"Doesn't laezr stand
for something?" Jake called over the gunfire.
< Yeah! > Marco
yelled, < Light Amplification by Exposure to Zero-space
Radiation >
"So what would happen
if a gun malfuctioned and, say, ripped a giant hole
into Z-space?"
< I see your meaning,
> Marco said, < I won't be sure how long it would take
or how big the hole would be, but it would
probably freeze a ship into Z-
space. Very good Jake, I see you
pay attention to lessons sometimes >
"Shut up and do it
Marco," Jake said, annoyed.
Marco's bulging muscled
diminished and his face resumed its natural tan
coloring. He also lost most of the
hair.
As his hands turned
human, he took the now oversized laezr gun into his
palms and fiddled with the casing.
It popped off and he quickly cross-wired
various wires and cut conduits.
He held up his contraption in about two
minutes with a miniature knife near one
wire. He had probably gotten the knife
from Rachel.
"I give us seven minutes
to run," he said.
He sliced the wire
and the whole gun buzzed and shook. He dropped it and
ran as fast as he could away from the
firefight. Jake set his weapon on
automatic and tossed it into the middle
of the corridor, then he ran too.
"MORPH!" he yelled.
His own body was changing into the tiger form
already. His teeth lenghtened and
he fell onto all fours, still stumbling
forward. His vision in the dark
increased. He felt his bones rearrange
themselves. And of course, he grew
fur.
The tiger was fast,
very fast. Jake had soon gotten farther than he ever
would have in five minutes. He saw
Marco trying to morph a wolf very quickly,
but he was tired. Cassie was in
wolf already and Rachel was almost there.
Tobias zipped above their heads, keeping
up well.
The menagerie finally
skidded to a halt at a docking bay door. They lept
forward, into a Bug fighter, not stopping.
Tobias initiated liftoff with one
talon and then hopped over and vaporized
the docking bay doors with the
shipboard Dracons. They blasted
forward at launch speed, which was very fast
for a Bug. Behind them, the exhausted
Animorphs could see the massive weapon
explode in a brilliant flash of white.
_______________________________________________________________________
The construction facility
was shining clean. Sparks leaped from the hull
of the Gunboat being built as techs shot
blue flame from their hand torches.
Farther away, the new S-20 Wraith fighters
stood on their landing feet, black
as space. It was in front of these
that the Animorphs stood.
The fighters were shaped
like a Fury, but with an extra arched wing
underneath that curved upward to meet
the top wing at the tips. This formed an
almost diamond shape if looked at head
on. At the tips of each wing huge,
unidentifiable guns poked out. Four
laezrs were attached, one to each wing,
forming a square firing pattern.
Four Sidewinder II torpedoes were attached to
the top two wings, two larger missiles
were on the bottom wing, near the
cockpit itself. The cockpit was
a long oval that came to a point, where there
was a Liquifier.
"The black hulls camoflage
the fighters while in space," said Marco, "The
material also refracts all scanning frequencies
except one, which the fighters
will use while in battle to protect them
from themselves.
"The two guns on each
wingtip are nonrechargable and hold about as much
firepower as three laezrs, each.
We call them Strikers.
"The four laezrs are
still rechargable, and the Sidewinders will be very
useful in dogfights.
"The two huge missiles
on the bottom are radioactivly altered antimatter
missles, or RAAMs for short. They
have as much power as a proton torpedo, with
a longer range and better homing.
"There are two Mark
5 engines in the back for power and two Hornet class
dogfight engines for excellent maneuverability.
Both classes of engine are
brand-new.
"So," Marco concluded,
"This fighter could bring the Yeerk Empire to it's
knees, if we could build more."
"How many do you have
now?" Tobias asked, fixating his hawk stare on the
dark fighter.
"Umm," Marco said "four."
"Four," Jake repeated.
"Yeah, but those four
have about as much firepower as an entire Cruiser,
with more maneuverability and all the
fighter specialties," Marco said.
"So, we're supposed
to destroy the Yeerks with four fighters?" Cassie said
quietly.
"No," Marco grinned,
"that's just the prelude. I know you guys will love
this. Non-violent. Sort of."
Cassie became visually
interested, "Non-violence?"
Marco walked to a locker,
inserted an ID card and submitted himself for a
retina scan. The red laserlight
flickered over his eyes, confirming that he
was who the ID card said he was.
Marco stepped back, and the locker popped
open. He removed the new weapon.
It was pistol shaped,
but not large and bulky like a laezr pistol. It was
thin and was like a bent pipe, with a
barrel about a centimeter in diameter and
a foot long.
"That is a nice looking
weapon. If that could be said about a gun," Jake
commented.
"So what's so different
about it?" asked Rachel.
"The bolt triggers
the sleep center of the brain in it's target. Since all
animals share a similar brain and similar
sleep center, it could be used on
anything. What's special is...well,
you know how plants convert sunlight into
food?"
"Yeah," said Rachel
impatiently.
"Yeerks do that too.
The blast also releases a chemical that prevents
that. Even if the Yeerk could absorb
Kandrona, it wouldn't be able to use it.
The Yeerk starves while the host sleeps.
We call them 'Yeerkillers'"
The Tiger was in zero-space
again, en route to a building factory of Yeerk
Pool ships. They had timed the attack
so that there would be only a single
Yeerk Pool ship there.
A Pool ship to capture.
The Tiger could have
easily destroyed it. All Cruisers were ten times as
big as a Pool ship and had five times
as much weaponry. The Tiger had at least
seven times as much. Cruisers were not
designed for subtlety.
The whiteness of Z-space
surrounded them. The viewscreen provided enough
light see by, and all other lights were
off.
"Destination reached
sir," called back the navigator, "Impulse mark nine,
eight, seven, six, five, four, three,
two, one. Exiting Zero-space."
TacComm turned his
head backwards and said, "Report: Construction facility
guarded by one Pool class Yeerk ship.
It is launching...ten Bug fighters."
Jake pressed a button
on his captain's chair, "Tobias, you are clear to
launch," he pressed the button off, "Taccomm,
switch to scanning frequency
'Wraith'"
As the officer turned
back and pressed a button on his console, the
viewscreen, already registering two enemy
targets with red squares, drew green
squares around four areas of empty space.
It was only when one of the squares
passed over a star and blotted it out
that you could tell they were the black-
as-night Wraiths.
"Good luck Tobias,"
Jake said to himself.
"Wraiths, fall into
flanking positions," Tobias said over the comm, "See
those Bugs leaving the bay of the Pool
ship? Lock Liquifiers right above the
bay. The gravity well of the Pool
ship should pull down the liquified metal,
sealing the bay. Set Liquifiers
to full power."
"Roger that, Wraith
Leader," said three voices.
Tobias pressed a button
on his flightstick and locked onto the Pool ship.
The possible target square around it became
a diamond, then switched into
possible capital target mode. Dracons
and engines were bordered with target
squares. Tobias moved his crosshair
onto the hanger and pressed the button
again. The targeting computer locked
the hanger. He moved his crosshair up.
Centered, held steady, and fired.
The targeting computer
switched off. Tobias watched the blue bolts streak
forward in a line, pass through the shields
then slam into the top of the
hanger doors. Blue sparks scattered
across the area, liquifying anything they
touched. The metal slid downward.
A large metallic drop hit a Bug fighter as
it left, sending it crashing into the
floor, spitting fire and grease. Bugs
slammed into the new wall, crushing themselves,
their fronts becoming wrinkled
and smashed, their back shooting out fire.
Tobias let himself
have a private smile, something he didn't get to do
often as a bird.
"Wraith Leader, this
is Wraith Three. Four of ten Bug fighters made it
out."
"Wraith Flight, pick
a Bug and swat it," Tobias said.
Tobias set his main
weapon to Strikers and pulled back on his flightstick,
bringing a Bug into view. The Bug
had no idea where they were. It would be
shooting blindly unless it switched to
that certain scanning frequency.
Tobias squeezed the
main weapon trigger on his flightstick. The yellow
Striker bolts lit up his Wraith for a
moment, but it was to late for the Bug
fighter. The bolts were at the end
of a long laser-like line in the sky. They
flew through the shield and disintigrated
the Bug.
Entirely.
"Yikes!" said one of
the Wraiths, "I'd hate to be on the receiving end of
one of those!"
"I know. Did
we get all the Bugs?" asked Tobias, "I don't see any."
"All clear," replied
Wraith Two.
Tobias switched his
comm, "Jake, we have an all clear."
"Jake, we have an all
clear," came Tobias' voice.
"All right, that's
our signal," called Jake, "Animorphs, to your boarding
pod!"
The four humans sat
in the less-but-roomy boarding pod. Four members of
the Animorphs.
"Is it my imagination,
or have the Animorphs been getting closer and closer
lately?" Marco cracked.
"Shut up, Marco," came
the immediate reply from Rachel.
"Just drop it," Jake
said, tossing them Yeerkillers, "Let's try these
babies out. But keep your laezrs
close by"
The boarding pod clamped
onto the damaged Pool ship, out of reach of it's
Dracons. The pod was made of the
same material as the Wraith fighters, and
probably hadn't been spotted.
A buzz filled the cabin
as smaller versions of Striker laser technology
sliced into the hull of the Pool ship.
There was a loud slam
as the hull piece fell off. A few moments later,
Dracon fire could be heard, hitting the
door of the pod. Jake's fingers
hovered over the door open control.
He aimed his Yeerkiller at the closed
door. The he pressed the control.
WHUM! The door
opened with a cross between a bang and a whoosh. Jake
squeezed the trigger on his Yeerkiller.
Once, twice. The Yeerkiller shot out
a diamond shaped bolt with a scarlet trail
following it like a comet. Two Hork-
Bajir fell, one to his shots, one to someone
else's. A Taxxon appeared and was
immediatly felled.
"It's clear," said
Rachel, "Let's do it."
"Ah, that's a classic,"
commented Marco, "That and 'I'm in'"
"Shut up, Marco"
"Oooh, another classic."
Just then, two Hork-Bajir
strutted around the corner. All four fired their
Yeerkillers and the two Hork-Bajir fell,
expressions of surprise frozen on
their faces. Only with their eyes
closed.
"C'mon," Cassie said,
"We need to secure the bridge."
Jake tossed a holoemitter
down the corridor, near their entrance place. As
it struck the floor, the emitter turned
on, showing four human commandoes
tending to wounded. The Yeerks
wouldn't think twice about shooting that
scene, and it might buy them some time.
The group strode forward,
going at a quick pace. The occasional Hork-Bajir
or Taxxon was delt with accordingly.
They entered the bridge.
Hork-Bajir whipped their snakelike heads around
and drew their Dracons, too late.
The four commando Animorphs
brought down Hork-Bajir with sharpshooting
blasts.
Taxxons wiggled as
they were hit by Yeerkiller bolts, and then fell asleep.
The battle was over
in seconds. Hork-Bajir and Taxxons lay asleep on the
floor, Animorphs victorious.
Jake looked at the data
padd. It was suggestions for how to use the newly
captured Pool ship, now christened the
Liberation.
Jake mulled over the
suggestions. Hit and run. Nope, they'd be on to us in
a flash. Spy. No, not unless
we got some free Hork-Bajir to run it. But then
what would we do about Taxxons?
"Turn the ship over
to me or she dies," came a gravelly old voice from
behind Jake. He grabbed a gun from
the arm of his chair and spun around.
It was Chapman.
The only voluntary human host left. And he was holding
Cassie prisoner with a Dracon to her back.
There was only one
thing for Jake to do.
He sighted down the
gun.
At Chapman.
At Cassie.
And then he slowly
pulled the trigger.
_______________________________________________________________________
Cassie sat in the comfortable
leather chair in her office. The window
opened to a view of the grounds, the smell
of freshly cut grass wafted through
the open space. Cassie had a sudden
urge to kick off her shoes, put her feet
up, and forget all about this stupid war.
That's exactly how
Cassie felt about war. It was stupid. Why should we
kill things to prove a point that had
nothing to do with terminating life?
On the other hand,
if the Yeerks were not iniolated, they would spread to
the rest of the universe, destroying freedom,
literally.
With a Yeerk in your
head, you had no freedom, not even the freedom to move
yourself, or talk by yourself. You
were Controlled.
Cassie remembered her
talk with a Yeerk. She had discovered that some
Yeerks were not happy with being parasites.
In their sluglike bodies, they
couldn't see. The only reason many
Yeerks took over bodies was to recieve the
one sense they could never experience
without being a Controller.
The Comm on her computer
released a shrill beep, interrupting Cassie's
train of thought. She swivelled
her chair away from the window and turned to
the computer. Tapping a key, she
brought up a picture of...
A Hork-Bajir.
"Do not move," said
the Hork-Bajir, "We wish to defect"
Cassie's hand moved
away from the round silent alarm button hidden under
her desk. But not too far away.
Hork-Bajir. A
race of vegetarians. Who also made perfect weapons. The
blades they used for trimming the bark
of the trees to eat were very lethal in
the hands of a Yeerk. Cassie should
know, she'd felt them before.
All Hork-Bajir were
slaves of the Yeerks. All except the few that had been
freed of their hosts on the Pool ship
attack a few days before. And the
descendents of the Hork-Bajir that had
been freed in the days of the
Animorphs. This Hork-Bajir was definately
not one of those descendents.
Cassie had grown to know the Hork-Bajir
when she saw them, like she might
recognize a human face.
The Hork on her screen
continued, "I represent the League of Symbiotes,
human Cassie. My designation is
Sub-Visser 43"
A Sub-Visser was a
fairly high rank for a Yeerk. The Yeerks were given
numbers after birth from the joining of
three other Yeerks. The first one was
number one and so on through to the hundreds.
After birth, a Yeerk could bring
it's number lower, and higher in the heirarchy,
through the deeds that it did.
After becoming number one, the Yeerk could
become a Sub-Visser. After that
came Visser, and finally, entrance into
the Council of Thirteen, who were led
by a secret Emperor.
"The League wishes
a secret alliance with the Terran Star Navy. We have
contacted you because our founder remembers
you. You sacrificed your sight for
her and became a nothlit, trapped as a
caterpillar."
"Karen? I mean,
Aftran?"
Cassie strode toward
her private Yacht-class vessel. Yachts were the most
common ship of civilians, but could also
be easily upgraded and could support
most weapons and devices with out a lot
of trouble. Cassie's Yacht had a trio
of wings, each swept back in an arch.
Two of the wings were on the sides of
her ship, the third was on the top.
The Yacht was a dull gold color, but not
quite bronze. Cassie had had only
a single weapon put on - a high powered ion
cannon strapped to the bottom of the ship.
She knew Yachts were not meant for
battle and so had the most practical add-ons
made. Ion cannons caused
mechanical parts to fuse together.
Cassie's particular model also had several
barrels and power chambers that rotated
to allow rapid-fire, which would not
have been possible with only a single
barrel or power pack, due to the slow
recharge of ions. She had also had
the engines upgraded to the point that she
could clear out of a place and into Z-Space
in less than three seconds. The
shields had also been boosted, but not
to the level of the engines. Basically,
Cassie could target an enemy ship with
the ions, let loose a hail of crippling
energy, and get the heck out of there.
Cassie did not plan
to use that ship in battle.
An alliance with Yeerks?
She thought, but continued her walk to the ship.
It sounded crazy.
Sub-Visser 43 had told
her to come to a neutral moon. Unescorted. Cassie
would have never gone if she suspected
something was dangerous. But the
mention of her...dare she call it a friend?...that
she had saved the life of
told her something that the Sub-Visser
could have never proved otherwise. A
Yeerk that seemed content without the
fighting and killing and conquering.
Were there really more Yeerks that wanted
only to see? Or just be able to move
around, or speak, or anything they couldn't
do without infestation?
What had the Sub-Visser
called their group? The League of Symbiotes? Was
it possible that a Yeerk could enter your
head and work with your body, your
mind, you yourself, to actually have symbiosis?
The only example of symbiosis
she had ever seen was that horror of a
Yeerk that lived in Joe Bob Fenestre's
body. The Yeerk that ate it's fellow
Yeerks and killed their human hosts.
What was she getting
into?
"Wraiths, follow me,"
Commander Tobias said into his battlecomm, "Razor and
Strike Squadrons, flank Wraith Flight.
Talon Squadron, go into formation
delta, come up behind the Wraiths and
cover above and below."
The fighters moved
into their formations, Wraith Flight, having only four
ships, in the center. The Fury squadrons
formed into their four craft flights,
each flight in a diamond shape.
The three diamonds moved into a triangle, with
the One Flight of each squadron taking
the lead. Behind the wraiths, Talon
Squadron went perpindicular to the formation,
bringing their ships above and
below the rest.
Behind the fighter
group, three Mk. II Cruisers closed their bay doors,
having launched the first wave of fighters.
Mk. II Cruisers were
based upon the Tiger, flagship of the Terran Star
Navy. Each Cruiser's surface was
scattered with three hundred high-powered
laezr guns, enough to fend off most attacks.
For extra protection, 50 torpedo
tubes, at various launching directions,
from forward facing to rear firing to
broadsiders, put small circular portholes
along the ship. The ship held 150
M/A torpedoes, all ready to fire, as well
as one hundred proton torps.
Mk. II's made very
worthy opponents.
"Group Lead, this is
Wraith One. I have Bug fighters on an intercept at
one and eleven o'clock. I read,
twenty-five Bugs in each group."
"Razor and Strike Squadrons,
break formation, intercept and destroy those
Bugs. Talon Squadron, move to flanking
position around Wraith Flight," Tobias
said.
Ahead of him, Tobias
could see the primary objective of this mission. As
some Furies peeled off to attack the incoming
Bugs and other Furies came in
around Tobias and his small flight of
four Wraiths, he could see the mining
facility.
It was mining a planet.
The greatest source
of minerals had already built hundreds of Pool ships
for an assault on Earth. Luckily
for the humans, a quick appearance by Grand
Admiral Jake had held the battle just
long enough for the powerful orbiting
Moonbase to release a salvo of torpedo
death.
The armageddon machine
that had reduced this planet to shards had been
destroyed in a daring commado mission
by the Animorphs, and it's power no
longer threatened the galaxy.
But now, the destroyed
planet still held enough minerals and raw materials
to rebuild the entire Terran fleet.
Which made it a primary
target.
Tobias saw the five
Pool ships that were guarding the base outlined with
red squares as his HUD initiated.
Smaller red squares identified Blade ships
and Bug fighters. He saw laezrs
flash around him as the flanking S-13 Furies
sent lances of crimson light into the
shielding of the approaching Bugs. The
spheres of protection around the Bugs
shimmered as they fell. More red fires
cut through the blackness of space, igniting
the Bugs and sending them spinning
away from the battle, before erupting
into balls of flame.
Tobias' tactical display
showed the two Fury squadrons that had broken off
engage the Bug fighters. Fighters
swooped throgh the starfield, firing twin
blasts at each other. Occasionally,
a Sidewinder II would be launched,
tracking the Dracon emissions of it's
Bug, before slamming into the belly of
the craft, shattering it's shields and
delivering a glancing blow to the hull
that either knocked it out of the battle
or allowed other ships to take it out
with a single laezr shot.
Tobias tracked one
of the square-outlined Bug fighters with his eyes before
it moved onto his crosshair. Hitting
one of the multiple triggers on his
flightstick, he sent twin pikes of yellow
stabbing into the Bug, slipping
neatly through the shielding and vaporizing
the fighter.
The Cruisers behind
the fighters suddenly released two more Fury squadrons,
expending their supply.
"Renegade Squadron,
reporting in," called Renegade Leader into the battlecomm.
"Exterminator Squadron,
reporting in," reported X-lead. The abbreviation
of such a long name was common among fighter
pilots.
Tobias flipped his
comm to "All craft" and said: "Roger that. Renegades,
assist Razor and Strike Squadrons.
X-Squadron, go into random scramble and go
hit and run. Talon Squadron, draw
closer to Wraith flight. Do not diverge
more than 3 degrees. Wraith, arm
RAAM missles and prepare to switch to
Liquidators."
He hit the switch that
set his missle trigger to RAAMs, Radioactivly
Altered Antimatter Missles. The
dark shape of the Hulk loomed before him. A
Yeerk Hulk.
One of the most recent
additions the the Yeerk armada were gigantic space
platforms commonly known as Hulks.
They carried hundreds of Dracons and at
least one hundred torpedo tubes.
Hulks were a powrful addition to the Yeerk
war machine and could fight of a small
group of various fighters and capital
ships.
This wasn't a small
group.
"Ready RAAMs, Wraith
Flight," Tobias said, tension filling his voice,
"Fire!"
Large, oblong missles
shot away from the group, toward the metal behemoth.
Eight flames streaked through the dark
starscape, smashing into the powerful
shielding of the Hulk, shattering the
protection, continuing their journey of
death until slamming into the hull of
the space station. The flames and
explosions ripped into the metal of the
Hulk, tearing deck from deck, and
igniting the whole thing in flames.
Engines fired uselessly.
Dracons spun their beams of deadly light into the
starfield, missing anything and everything.
Torpedoes fired and then where
engulfed in the flames, detonating and
adding to the chaos of fire.
Then, as suddenly as
it had started, the flames burned the last of the
oxygen that had been stored in the ship
and died. A dark, twisted and torn,
steel and iron Hulk spun through space,
flying backwards into the Pool ships
that were backing it up. The huge
hunk of bent and ripped metal smashed the
dozens of spider-legged ships against
its still hot hull. One ship, on the
edge of the group, powered it's engines
and shot upward, being caught by the
tumbling Hulk on it's three "legs" and
spinning downward, smashing it's bridge
against the melted hull of the Hulk.
The mining facility
was relativly unprotected now.
"Marco was right,"
Tobias thought, "These weapons will win the war!"
The Yacht pulled itself
out of Zero-space, white lines bouncing off its
nose. The strings slowly dissipated,
revealing the sleek, streamlined, dull
gold colored ship, it's triple wings thrust
backward.
Cassie sat in the cockpit,
hands resting lightly on the controls. She was
there. The moon known as M'tera
Five showed up on her viewscreen, dull gray,
pitted with craters from asteroid impacts.
Somewhere on that moon, a group of
rebellious Yeerks crouched in wait.
Cassie powered her
engines and flew downward.
The newly elected President
of Earth walked in front of Jake, hands behind
his back, an air of importance surrounding
him like a wet blanket. Elected on
the spur of the moment, this leader was
a politician in the truest sense. Jake
really disliked people like him.
But Jake was really
in charge of this operation now, being the Grand
Admiral of all the Fleet.
"Here is part of the
project using the mined remains of the destroyed
planet," Marco said as he led the group
of Animorphs again, this time adding
the President and subtracting Cassie,
who could not be found.
It was black, much
like the Wraith fighters, but a lighter black than their
nearly-invisible cousins. It was
shaped like a disc, with two upward-pointing
stabalizer wings and visible airbrakes.
Whatever it was, it was certainly
designed for both outer space maneuverability
and atmospheric stability.
"We call it a 'Warden'.
It's of a new class of starship, especially
designed for a strike on a planet"
"What's the new class?"
Rachel asked.
"Its a B-2 Warden class
bomber"
"I suppose the B-1
was a failed prototype then," Jake commented.
"No, actually, this
is just a prelude to a prelude," Marco said with the
slight grin of a scientist proud of his
work, "I present, the B-1 Nova!"
With a over dramatic
sweep of his arm, Marco gestured to another ship,
which looked like a bloated version of
the Warden. The Nova was five times a
large, making it a hundred feet across.
Jake could see three Wardens in small
pods on the bottom of the ship.
They could probably be boarded from inside the
larger ship.
"It holds twice as
many proton and concussion grenades and bombs, plus a
thirty or so flashbombs of various sizes,
around fifty plasmic detonators, and
ten NOD bombs. NODs are a new bomb,
recently designed. NOD stands for Non-
Organic Disintigrators. The bomb
leaves a freaking-big hole, but wont vape
anything that has reproducing cells.
So as long as you keep growing, you just
fall a long way down. Very efficient.
You can take out an enemy base and
leave the occupants running for cover."
The group walked
around the still-in-contruction bomber, heads turned
sideways to examine the dark plated hull.
Tobias
said from Rachel's shoulder,
"Waitaminit Marco,"
Rachel said with a look on her face that said 'I know
something you don't', "You said that this
was a prelude too. So...what's next?"
"Ahh," Marco
said, "This is the final thing. This is what will take back
the universe," he opened a huge door by
pressing his palm against a panel. The
metal door slid upward, hitting the top
with a resounding clang.
He turned, patented
Marco smirk on his face. He turned to the openmouthed
stares of the others.
"This, we call...a
Battleship."
The skies above
the Yeerk homeworld were clear. Through the thin, red-
tinted atmosphere a few bright stars could
be seen.
Aftran stood
in her Hork-Bajir body, Tyrannosaurus feet planted firmly on
the hard soil, bladed hands hung at her
sides, her snakelike neck was bent
backward, twin horn-blades pointed toward
the sky.
It was beautiful.
The crimson skyscape, torn with yellow bolts of
electricity. Flashing light.
Red above. Many races did not find the Yeerk
world a beautiful place, but they had
not lived there for centuries.
Beyond the beauty
was the stars. Flickering behind the red sky like a
lightbulb behind tissue paper. The
light cast from the flickers was reddened,
making them look like a multitude of red
giant type suns. The stars that the
Yeerks sought to conquer.
Aftran sought
to befriend.
Symbiotes.
That's what she and her small group of rebels had become.
They had entered a sybiotic relationship
with thier hosts, instead of using
them, they had helped them. They
had become fast friends.
And with that
symbiotic relationship came something else. Something so
great. Something that none of the
conquering Yeerks could ever use, caught up
in the cycle of control. Something
that would make the Yeerks all-powerful
except for the fact that to recieve the
gift you must give up control.
The control that
plauged them all.
Uyc Ipraf, another
symbiote who had chosen to go by a Hork-Bajir name came
up behind Aftran as silently as a seven-foot
reptile could.
"It is time,
Great Aftran"
Aftran pulled
back her Hork-Bajir lips in the best way a Hork-Bajir
could. She pulled back her lips
in a smile.
"Yes, Uyc, it
is time"
Far above Aftran,
a spot of white, a point of nothingness, appeared. The
point grew, spreading tentacles of white
around the ship that pulled itself out
of zero-space. The tentacles grew,
spreading down the entire length of the
starship. Twenty Earth miles.
The massive warship
grew past the tentacles of white. It pulled itself
into reality, squeezing through the borders
of true space. When it finally
hung there, over the Yeerk homeworld,
flanked by two hundred Cruiser class
vessels, It's commander gave a single
order.
"Fire!"
The strike force
pulled itself out of Z-space. Jake watched the
viewscreen as the lines of white stripped
themselves away from the new ship.
The Battleship.
It was twenty
miles long stem to stern, made from the mined remains of an
unknown planet. Thousands of laezrs,
hundreds of torpedo tubes, Liquifiers,
Strikers, all the weapons of the fleet.
The Battleship had a long, stretched
out triangular top, with a long keel that
came all the way down to the end of
the ship, forming the back into an equalateral
triangle. It was like a pyramid
that had been sliced down the middle.
It was flanked
by the pencil-like Cruisers, boxy Gunships, literally
hundreds of thousands of fighters, maybe
even a million.
In front of them
was thousands of Pool ships, hundreds of Blade ships,
hundreds of thousands of fighters.
It was the massed
fleets of both sides.
It was the final
confrontation.
And so Jake gave
an order.
"Fire!"
Rachel, leading
the Cruisers, sat in Jake's pet Tiger. It was a beauty of
a ship, and Jake would have been a much
better commander for it. However,
being a Grand Admiral, Jake was required
to lead the flagship. Oh well.
The massive fleet
of ships was before her. Pool ships, their triple
spider-legs hanging below them approached
the Terran Star Navy ships
cautiosly. The targeting squares
around them flashed, indicating that they
were in range.
"Any time now,
Jake," Rachel said under her breath.
And then over
the comm came a single order in a sure, strong voice.
"Fire!"
"You heard the
Admiral, men! Fire at will!"
The sounds echoed
down the line of ships. "Fire at will, repeat fire at
will!"
And so the battle
began.
Tobias was hunched
in his human body, wishing he had the eyes of a hawk.
But he had to settle with enhanced computer
imagery of the approaching Bugs.
His Wraith's engine hummed softly behind
his chair.
When the order
came, Tobias' predator instincts had him already squeezing
the triggers on his Strikers.
"Fire!" came
Jake's voice.
"Fire at will,
repeat fire at will!" came the voice of the Wraith Flight
coordinator. As that order came,
responsibility shifted to Tobias' temporarily
human shoulders.
"All fighters,
this is your Assault Commander. We have fire at will!
Enter dogfight mode. Zero laezrs
at one hundred meters. Arm your torpedoes
and scramble. Take a Bug and vape
it. Good luck"
Tobias hit the
top button on his flightstick, locking onto an approaching
Bug. He finished squeezing his Striker
triggers and sliced into the Bug's
shields, through it's armored hull and
disintigrated it. Around him, laezr
flashes connected with Bug shielding,
sending empty shells tumbling through the
vaccuum of space. Dracons hit Fury
shielding, flashes transformed the dark
starscape into a kaliedioscope of color.
Tobias armed
a Sidewinder II and sent it up the tailpipe of a Bug. Pieces
scattered through the battle, flaming,
before burning themselves out and
becoming like so much more space debris.
As more and more
TSN fighters blipped off his tactical screen and more and
more Bugs launched from the planet, Tobias
realized that this might not be a
winning battle.
Jake saw
the dots of zero-space white appear and expand, thinning their
tentacles of white until they revealed...
"Hello,
Prince Jake," said the Andalite on the viewscreen.
"Ax!?"
"Yes it
is I, Price Jake. The Andalite StarFleet has come with me to put
an end to this Yeerk plague."
Jake's
tactical screen showed hundreds of brand-new Andalite Dome ships
and fighters as they entered the fray,
shredders slicing into Yeerk Pool ships
like a hot knife through butter.
The Yeerk force was temporarily driven back
as they regrouped.
Tobias watched
as the Andalite fighters joined into the battle. Humans
and Andalites had their differences, but
both fought for freedom. Tobias
didn't bother to demand command over the
Andalites, instead, he said, "Welcome
Andalites. I'm the Assault Commander
of this attack. We appreciate the help."
His comm
crackled as it switched to thought speak mode,
The Andalite
fighters, fresh and not battle-tired, drove back the Bugs
with ferocity. The TSN Furies, inspired
by the new recruits, gave new life to
their scarred ships and zipped in to attack,
laezrs flashing.
And it
seemed that the tide of the battle would be turned.
Until Tobias
saw the flashes of the ground-based guns that should have
been taken out by the bombers finally
heave their high explosives through the
thin upper atmosphere of the Yeerk homeworld.
As the
explosives traveled higher, their armor skin inpenetrable by
laezrs or shredders and well resistent
to torps, Tobias sent a message to Jake,
"Where did those shots come from?
There was nothing there before!"
"I don't
know Tobias, I don't know"
The explosives
went higher and higher. Aftran turned to her comrades,
"It is done. Prepare yourselves
to fight intruders. Show no mercy."
Cassie
watched the explosives continue their journey of death toward the
Andalites and humans. And she didn't
stop them.
Above the
planet, Rachel watched the unstoppable rockets enter space. It
was all over now.
Until...
Without
warning, the rockets veered of their courses to the TSN and
Andalite ships and head toward the Yeerks'.
The heavy explosives, each the
size of a house, smashed into the Yeerk
fleet, explosions seeming to rip
through the fabric of space-time itself.
Fire lept from all ships in the
fleet, scorching any and all Bug fighters
near them and even some Furies that
had been slow in turning for futile attempts
at pounding the rockets with
torps. The entire Yeerk fleet burned
with a fire that was unearthly.
Fireballs spun away from the ships, metal
melted and disconnected from their
ships like ooze. Pool and Blade
ships tumbled through space.
And so
the battle was won.
Jake stood
in front of the small, portable Yeerk pool. The gray sludge
writhed with Yeerks.
But Jake
did not take his laezr to them.
Instead,
he dunked his head into the squirming mass, accepted a Yeerk
into his head to be a companion, not a
Controller.
For life.
You see,
the gift that we Ellimists were allowed to give the Yeerks in
our Great Game was that, if they ever
decided to enter symbiosis, they would
never be dependent on Kandrona again.
Just like
the Dark Ones we play with made the Andalites too proud to mix
with other species. But they failed.
And so
the Game goes on. We have won against the Yeerk attackers, but
soon a new evil will threaten the galaxy,
to be confronted by the new,
powerful, Humeerk race.
It's time
for the second move...