The answer, p.9
The Answer, page 9
The blast doors slid open on the main engineering station, a semicircle not so different from the bridge itself. But the room was on a vastly larger scale, as much as ten stories tall, dominated by three huge pillars of something that looked like glowing red clay.
The instant the doors opened the three close-packed ranks of Hork-Bajir and humans began firing. They poured energy into that room. There were cries from Hork-Bajir, humans, and Taxxons within, quickly silenced.
I flew away from the scene, propelled by a tail wind of hot air coming from the oven that was engineering.
Down a corridor, left down a side hall.
I zoomed through and the door slid shut behind me. I demorphed and stood facing Ax, Marco, Cassie, and Tobias.
“Well, Jake,” Marco said cheerily. “Imagine meeting you here.”
“Yeah, you don’t want to be in engineering right now,” I said. I fought a desire to sit down. No time to rest. No time to show them how I felt. “Erek stayed in engineering?”
“What happened on the ground?” Cassie asked.
“I don’t know if Tom went after the Taxxons or not,” I said evasively.
“No, I mean the men on the ground. The soldiers. James’s people,” Cassie clarified, knowing perfectly well that I’d deliberately misunderstood her question.
“I think we were fast enough to save most of the soldiers,” I said. “James’s people … I don’t think many of them made it.”
Cassie grabbed my arm. “Jake, was Rachel down there with them?”
“No.”
“Then where is she? Why isn’t she with us? Why won’t you tell me?”
I sighed. No way to avoid it any longer. “She’s with Tom.” I wanted to keep my eyes on the floor. Cassie was Rachel’s best friend. Tobias, her boyfriend, if that term could apply to a hawk. I couldn’t look at either of them.
“Oh, Jake …” Cassie cried.
“I can’t let him get away,” I said dully. “Tom’s Yeerk … A Blade ship, probably the morphing cube? You were right, Cassie, I can’t let that happen.”
“Had to be,” Marco said quietly. My friend Marco had seen the same necessity I had seen. He didn’t like it any more than I did, but he saw the need, the inevitability.
“There has to be some other way,” Cassie whispered.
“Which we can’t take because we can’t access weapons controls. Our blackmail only goes so far,” Marco agreed. “Erek’s down to core programming, no discretion: He cannot enable a major weapons system. Flat cannot. We’ll be sitting ducks if Tom turns the Blade ship against us, and we all know that’s his plan.”
I exploded. “It’s not Tom! It’s not Tom, don’t call him that. It’s the Yeerk in his head. It’s the Yeerk, not my brother!”
No one even looked shocked at my reaction. No one was in his right mind at that moment. Tobias hated me, hated me, I could feel it, and I hated myself.
Had to be another way. I couldn’t kill Rachel. Not my cousin Rachel, not after all the times she had saved my life.
“One chance and one chance only,” I said. “You said it, Ax: one or two quick shots, if we had access to weapons. One or two shots, maybe we could disable the Blade ship.”
“We don’t have access to weapons,” Marco pointed out.
I nodded. “Yeah. But Visser One does.”
“Use Visser One to disable the Blade ship?” Marco frowned.
I took a couple of deep breaths. Tried to focus. There was a clock in my brain going tick tock, tick tock, time’s up. Had to stick to the plan.
“It’s time,” I said. “I have to call Toby.”
I began to morph tiger. I needed the morph and more importantly, I needed the thought-speak.
Once I was ready I called to Toby.
“Anyone who can morph can escape that room,” Cassie pointed out. “And Visser One can morph. He can get past Toby’s people and take them from behind.”
I nodded.
“He doesn’t even know we’re here,” she said.
We blew out of that room and tore down the corridor, heading directly away from engineering.
Heading, in fact, for the pool itself.
After all the pent-up watching and waiting it was good to have claws and teeth and enemies to face.
From time to time as we went, lone Hork-Bajir-or human-Controllers spotted us. Most ran and survived. Others did not run. A small patrol of what had to be some sort of Yeerk military police stood and did battle with us. They slowed us for only a few seconds.
We were moving almost too easily, encountering almost too little resistance. Visser One had to learn of our presence. He had to rush from the battle in engineering to confront a greater threat.
There were guards at the entrance to the pool itself, a pair of Hork-Bajir talking nervously about the distant firefight in engineering.
I was on the first one before he could yell. I carried him down with the momentum of my leap and slapped him with the kind of blow that only a tiger can deliver.
Ax took out the other guard and, all at once, we were in the holy of holys, the pool itself. It was perfectly round, dimly lit, under a low ceiling. It was a gray steel swimming pool lined with cages where uncooperative host bodies were kept while their Yeerks soaked up nutrients. The cages held maybe twenty or twenty-five humans and Hork-Bajir, all temporarily Yeerk-free.
I hadn’t considered the possibility of freeing hosts.
A Hork-Bajir voice cried, “Andalite!”
A gaggle of unprepared human-Controllers began to charge at us, drawing Dracon weapons but afraid of firing here in the sanctuary.
We blew through them before they could make up their minds. A pair of Taxxons, evidently not members of Arbron’s group, came slithering out to do battle. Cassie and Tobias tore one up badly enough that his brother would finish him off.
More Hork-Bajir. A slashing, close-in battle, and we were away again.
Now the word would reach Visser One. I hoped. Hoped. He had to come to the bridge. If he stayed in engineering he would turn the tide of battle against Toby’s people.
Ax said,
A bonus. Another new element. Was that a good thing or a bad thing?
Good. Good. Maybe. I knew the way the plan played out, knew what would happen. Rachel. Tom. Inevitable.
Maybe new elements, maybe the freed prisoners, maybe this new opening, maybe the inevitable need not occur.
Maybe we could save her.
The booth Ax had spotted looked absurdly like a toll-collector’s booth on the highway. It was clear plastic and perched just above the pool, jutting slightly out. There was a single Hork-Bajir inside. There were eight Hork-Bajir outside, unarmed but ready for trouble, ready to stand and fight.
No time to think, attack!
Ax and I raced straight at them. I slashed and opened my nearest foe from belly to neck. Ax’s tail whipped. Cassie came bounding up behind us and launched herself into the battle.
But the area was too narrow, we were hemmed in. Like being shoved down inside a blender set on puree. The Hork-Bajir were all around us, beating us down, slashing, cutting, pounding, tearing at us with their clawed feet.
No way to get free! I couldn’t strike without hitting Ax who was shoved hard against me.
And then, on my back, snarling but helpless, I saw a Hork-Bajir leap high over my head and land like a mosh-pit surfer on my tormentors.
The prisoners! One of the Hork-Bajir prisoners Marco had released.
Marco was there now, too, but most of all, it was the freed prisoners. They turned the tide, attacking their tormentors with awesome rage.
Ax was on his hooves again, bloody, hurt, but well enough to swing his tail and cut the lock to the control booth.
A gorilla yanked the door open and said,
Then Marco held the door open like a hotel doorman and grinned a rubbery gorilla grin.
Ax pushed past me, began punching at active screens and arrays of controls.
He turned his stalk eyes to me even as his main eyes guided swift, nimble fingers.
That rocked me.
Visser One had to know we were here, on the loose. He had to run for the bridge and not stay to win the fight in engineering.
Seventeen thousand. Living creatures. Thinking creatures. How could I give this order? Even for victory. Even to save Rachel. How could I give this kind of order?
They could have stayed home, I thought. No one had asked them to come to Earth. Not my fault. Not my fault, theirs.
No more than they deserved.
Aliens. Parasites. Subhuman.
The Pool ship’s main pool went through its standard cleaning cycle, draining the gray, sludgy water out into the vacuum of space.
The water, and the parasite creatures within it, froze instantly. The pool became an ice cloud falling away from the slow-moving Pool ship.
How many had Ax said? Seventeen thousand and … how many? How many Yeerks had felt the sudden stab of terror as they realized what was happening?
Frozen now. Crystals. An orbiting graveyard.
We ran from that place, ran from thoughts of what we’d done. Ran for the bridge. His fault, it was Visser One’s fault, all of it. Who had started this war? Not us. We hadn’t asked for it.
It was him. Him and his filthy, subhuman, parasitic race.
His fault. Not mine. Not mine.
He was on the bridge when we got there, our old enemy. Visser One and a handful of Controllers, human and Hork-Bajir. But he seemed almost alone.
The main view screen showed a cloud of sparkling ice shards.
Visser One watched it, almost oblivious to us, though he surely knew we were there. Finally, he turned, and looked at me with all four of his Andalite eyes.
He nodded slightly. He motioned toward the view screen as the picture changed.
Marco laughed then stopped himself.
No answer of course.
Visser One sighed.
“Targeting the Blade ship’s starboard engine. We are ready to fire,” one of the humans reported.
Visser One waved a lazy hand.
On the screen I saw the beam reach out through space. Once. Twice. Both missed.
The Blade ship reacted swiftly to avoid the slow retargeting of the Pool ship’s big Dracon cannon.
The Blade ship fired. The explosion reverberated through the ship.
“Engine number one is destroyed, Visser.”
The Blade ship fired again. Again.
Two more explosions.
“We are without propulsion, Visser.”
“We are being hailed.”
It was Tom’s face that appeared on the screen. And Tom’s voice that spoke. But the smug, hard, derisive tone was that of a Yeerk.
“You seem to be experiencing some engine trouble, Visser,” Tom gloated.
“Oh, I doubt it. I think the Empire will have its hands full,” Tom’s Yeerk said cheerfully. “The Andalite fleet is rather close by. It’s possible that I misled you on that point.”
Then he caught sight of me.
His face paled. His eyes went wide. All at once, he knew.
“You’re not dead!”
Visser One said dryly.
Tom snapped an order to his crew. “Bring us around to target the Pool ship’s bridge. Do it! Now! Now! Bring us around!”
My name is Rachel.
I knew what was coming. I knew.
I’d seen it in Jake’s eyes.
And you know what? I was scared.
I never thought I would be. Cassie thinks I’m fearless. Marco thinks I’m reckless. Tobias … well, Tobias loves me.
I guess they all do, in different ways. Jake, too. But Jake had to do the right thing.
I felt sorry for him, you know? He’s carried the weight so long. He’s made hard decisions. None as hard as this maybe. I didn’t blame him, not even for a minute.
But I was scared.
I guess no one wants to die. I guess everyone is scared when the time comes.
We were so close. We were right there, right at the finish line, I’d already survived so many times when I shouldn’t have. It seemed unfair. To come this far, get this close …
Jake gave me the job because he knew that only I could do it. Would do it. Ax might have, sure, but he was needed for his skills. Me, I’m not the computer genius. I’m the one you send when you need someone to be crazy, to do the hard thing.
I don’t know whether I’m proud of that or not.
I was Jake’s insurance policy. He thought maybe he wouldn’t have to use me. He hoped, anyway. But down deep he knew, and I knew, and we both hid the truth from the others because Cassie couldn’t let Jake make that decision, and Tobias couldn’t let me, and those two, by loving us, would have screwed everything up.
It was a war, after all. A war we had to win.
We hadn’t asked the Yeerks to come to Earth. They made that call on their own. They’re a parasitic species, not very big or impressive to look at, just these snail-like things that can enter your head through your ear. They have a capacity to anesthetize the inner ear enough to allow them to burrow through the soft tissue. It still hurts but not as much as it should.
They dig their way straight to your brain and then flatten themselves out, spread themselves down into the crevices, tie directly into your synapses. They take control. Absolute control.
They read your thoughts, they sense your emotions. What your eyes see, they see. What your tongue tastes, they taste. If your hand moves, it’s because they moved it. If you speak, it is the Yeerk who has spoken through you, made you into a ventriloquist’s dummy.
Over the course of years they spread like a virus. Invisible. Undetectable.
