The D1 Effect Chapter 18

As told by the Captain of the Nirvana, John Mark Leeroy

Guerrilla Ranks: Veteran Swamp-Warrior at Joiren

"This is a direct order, Condor! Don't go down there!" Jake yelled at me. Screw him. In the official miltary, I could have him executed any time I wanted. In fact, I only agreed to let him be in command for as long as I saw the logic in what he was ordering me to do. I didn't see it this time.

The Tc3 horde had been slightly deadend by an assault of a super-cloaker. From my time, there had only been 4 in existence, the X-65a, the B-204, the X-65b and the T/f 1 Phantom, but only the X-65a and the B-204 existed at the time in which we were currently residing. The B-204 was, and still is, an incredibly expensive air craft that could not possibly reside inside the hanger bay at Fairwinds. This is mainly because of the cost and the size of the "flying fortress", which leads me to believe that an X-65a had struck. I know that at one point in the Col's history that they had an X-65a, so I was pretty sure that the X-65a was it.

Ignoring the distinct yells from Jake, I cocked my chaingun and started walking down the brown-tinted ridge. I really didn't know what I was going to do, other than attempt to stop everything and/or destroy some of the Tc3's with my hidden chaingun. Really stupid. Really ambitious. But my intentions were sound because of the ever lurking evil.

Evil was my enemy, and no one person was a perfect example of evil. Although many beings had more evil then good, none could have purely evil hearts. That is, most beings. Yeerks are not included. Scythes are not included. Evil dwelled and still dwells in them, and I would have to kill them before it spread to others.

Not all yeerks are evil, I told myself, but they are still a part of the larger picture. They are still yeerks and the word yeerk is translated in the mind of me as evil. Evil must be destroyed. Mercilessly. I won't be purely evil in doing so, because I won't be doing crime against the innocents that the yeerks inhabit. I will be relieveing them from pain. From the eternal cell inside their head. From the fate that is worse than death itself.

The Tc3 army wasn't supid enough to leave me, the lone stranger, walking down the hill unattended for long. Several larger and guard-modified Tc3 robots immeditalyrolled over slowly to my position, raising their Electron Flux Energy Adaptor Projectile Launchers (EFEAPL). They wouldn't do any damage to me physically, but since I wasn't wearing any body armor, it would completely scramble my DNA code and my brain neurons. Not good.

"Identify yourself," One of them barked at me. He leveled the EFEAPL near my chest. I drew in a slow breath.

"My name is Captain John "Condor" Leeroy of the destroyer Nirvana," I said, hoping that he would buy it for now.

"Destroyer Nirvana found, name does not match."

"I'm from a differant sector, me and my crew are from Europa."

"Why is the Nirvana in the sector's databases, then?"

"It is an Earth-built ship and my crew and I routinly patrol the outer perimiter of the sector."

"The records don't show the captain's name."

"A simple data flaw, it should come back up within the next few hours." I didn't know if he would buy it, but after several excrutiating moments of staring eye-to-eye with the guard, he started speaking again.

"What is your buisiness?"

I quickly thought up a reason. "A guerrilla group back along the northern ridge sponsered by a warlord faction had held me captive. I escaped during the battle between the mutations and your troops, and I have been attempting to find you ever since. The mutations were a spawn of the guerrillas, by the way," I said. It actually wasn't much of a lie, after all, the dromaesaurs were spawns of the gentical makeup of the DNA inside the Animorphs. And me.

"Proof of the captivity?"

What the heck?! Umm, okay... "None at the moment, but you have to trust me. I give my word as a former Elite SS." Crossing my fingers, of course.

"Former Elite SS? Impressive. Okay, you can come in. Our forward base is over that hill and in a system of caves. You will be escorted and protected by a dispatchment of guards. Dismissed, Captain," the lumberng guard Tc3 said.

"Thank you for your hospitality, guard- wait, who should I adress you as?"

"Call me Derek. I don't like to use the official name issued to us."

"Yes, thank you Derek. Good day," I said, walking up to the 2 guard dispatchment that was supposed to take me to the base and wait for a breif breifing on the situation and what I was supposed to do. It was a suprisingly long walk, mainly due to the constant prods the large Tc3's "accidently" stabbed me with. Fourtunatly, they weren't electric, and I remained standing the entire time.

We traveled behind the large hill and started descending into the vast system of caverns that Derek had told me where their base was. The caves started to remind me of the caves back at Lapios, where the fear of hiding seemed to fill the air. However, the main soldiers were robots, and even the most efficient programmers could not figure out how to create the emotion of fear in a human-like manner. Bad thing for us, otherwise they would have a slightly bigger disadvantage. Oh well.

"This is your quaters, Captain. Please wait for your debreifing in 7.203451845 standered minutes. Thank you," One of the guards said monotonley as his partner and himself showed me my room. It was actually rather cozy, with a large couch and a decent bunk with a slightly outdated holo-projector near the center. It would do perfectly for my crazy demolition plan.

"Thank you, guard," I said, not bothering to ask what his name was.

They both rolled out as I quickly got to work in disassembling the holoprojector. Part of being a SS was learning how to make weapons of virtually everything, and in training for the elite status, we made high-powered explosives from holo-projectors.

And that's exactly what I intended to do.

***********************

As told by the F/y 49 pilot, James "Bloodhound" Kirk

Beta Squadron Lead

"So, you are saying to me that you are kids? Only 10?" The idea still seemed very ridiculous to me, but I had seen stranger things before. Not by much, though.

"Um, yes sir," one of the voices said.

"And why might you kids be flying an X-65a super-cloaker?"

"Only aircraft in the fighter bay," the other one said.

"Hmmm, I see, I see. What are your names?"

"John Leeroy and Fred Reinhound, sir."

"Aircraft trainees?"

"No, SS trainees." Whoa, that took me by surprise. The only military figures that were supposed to be trained in the ability to fly fighter and/or bomber craft were the Air trainees. I wouldn't have guessed in a million years that they were future SS's. But, every knew that Fairwinds was a rather odd place, so they probably had differant policy for training the students in military.

The one who identified himself as Fred then spoke, "Could you please tell us why the goverment is attacking our Col?"

"You should know. The teachers at Fairwinds teach about an irregular guerrilla group that could raise rebellion and overrun the goverment."

"What, you mean the Animorphs? Their 400 years dead! Well, sort of, anyway."

"What do you mean, sort of? Are they dead or not?"

"Well, it's kind of hard to explain, sir. We've had contact with them, and they have literally traveled forward in time through useage of a stage 2 quantum degeneration, or that's at least what they told me."

Hmmm, very, very interesting. Quantum degeneration stage 2 shouldn't have been possible, yet, it seemed that it was. "I'm just curious, but why are the Animorphs, as you call them, renound for their useage of this irregular guerrilla warfare? What is the type of irregular guerrilla warfare?"

"Well, um, it's kind of shocking, sir."

"Don't worry," I assured him, "I have seen some amazing feats in my short lifetime."

"Um, well, did you see those reptilian beasts that retreated from the Valley of Tears tha were pummeling the Tc3's? Those all had the cerebral cortex and crebral neurons of humans and an andalite."

"Huh? They have implanted their brains inside the bodies of bio-mutations? That's been done before, and it isn't THAT shocking in my opinion." Actually it was, mainly because most of the andilites were dead from some sort of a plague, and the mutation-implants rarely worked.

"No, not quite. We have studied them in Col, and they have their human or andilite DNA inside of them. Using an exploitation of an energy-bond between reality and Z-space, their original DNA will multipy and their reptilian DNA will reduce. Soon, they will be fully human or andilite. Using the same technology, they can manually aquire the DNA from any being they touch, and they morph into that being. It makes them nearly impossible to kill off, due to the vast array of creatures they can turn into and escape unnoticed.

"They were the ones who drove out the first invasion of Earth and left our civilization standing. The invasion was made by a race named the 'yeerks', which are parasitic worms that enter the body through the ear canal. From there, they connect themselves to the brain's neurons and take control of the body. But, the person inside is still conscious, making it a living hell."

"Reminds me kind of operation bio-switch, but that was discarded because of the pain experienced during the change. How do they survive the pain?"

"It's an old andilite technology, sir. One of the few that we never got around to duplicating."

"I see. Well, I can see why the goverment wants to abolish all traces of them, but they would be benificiary to history and science. I'm afraid I'm going to convince the air squadrons to call of their assaults," I said sarcasticly.

"Thank you sir!"

I then switched my comm over to the other Betas and told them the news. It somewhat shocked them, but they agreed to let me convince the stern Alpha lead, Bruce "Iron Claw" McKinley, to call off the bombing raids.

Switching my comm back to Alpha Lead, I began speaking with him. "Alpha Lead, this is Beta Lead, come in Alpha Lead," I spoke.

His reply came in fast and angry, "What is it?!"

"Sir, you'll have to trust me on this one. Turn off the assault and go back to back immediatly."

"Why would I listen to you?"

"Mainly because I'm second-in-command and that I have a good reason. The irregular warfare group that the goverment told us to erase all traces of a shape-shifting band of humans that drove off the first invasion of Earth by the yeerks. The yeerks were a parasitic species type 3.0; the body controllers, essentially. Except for the fact that the body's mind is still conscious, making it a fate worst than death. If we were to erase all records of the first invasion thwart force ever, then that would be tragedy."

"Nice speech, Bloodhound. Not good enough for me."

"Do you accept bribes?"

"Negative."

"Do you accept threats? Because I can tell the exact location of our base to a secluded super-cloaker in which only I have the coordinates for. And it's piloted by several of the students of the school."

"You wouldn't dare. Traitor!"

"I am not yet. Call of the forces and tell them to return to base to recuperate. From there we can talk to mission command and call of the Tc3's and send diplomats."

Iron Claw reluctantly then turned on the comm for all squadrons. "All squadrons retreat. Beta Lead will explain as to why when you are debreifed. NOW!" He barked.

I soon saw the blips on the enhanced radar turning away from the large shape that was Fairwinds.

** Another battle won. I am well on my way to Fleet Commander. Rot in hell, Iron Claw. ** I slowly turned back my F/y and headed back to base.

***************************

As told by the Captain of the Nirvana, John "Condor" Leeroy of Mars

Guerrilla Ranks: Veteran Swamp Warrior at Joiren

Come on! Trigium alloy, where the heck is it? I swear these hol-projectors had them somewhere in them. Where they were was the question to be answered.......

Aha! Perfect. Now, just to string it with the trigger and I would be set with a sub-nuclear weapon that could easily destroy half of the base and completly knock out the robot's control panel, forcing the invasion off on the ground. Don't know about air, though, but ground would be good enough.

And just in time. Within about 5 seconds, the two escorting guards came back and started to bring me to the breifing room. I slipped my chaingun into my boot and the explosive in the other before following them obidiently.

"Here is the debreifing room, Captain. The Commanding officer will see you soon," one of the robots said.

"No he won't," I replied.

"What do you mean, no he won't?"

"Because nobody will." That moment I slipped the chaingun out of my boot and churned several, silent rounds into both of the escorts. Their usless hulks exploded as I just barely dived to avoid it. Knowing that more guards would come, I quickly set up the sub-nuclear detonator near the command panel and set it for 40 seconds. I ran.

Up the stair, around the bend, across the cave bridge and through the tunnels. I knew I would be save once I reached the fighter bay, but there was no guarentee about that.

Running, running, running. Faster, faster, faster. Time running out. I knew i wouldn't make it. And soon my worst fears were confirmed.

BBBBOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!! The explosion was the last thing I heard before everything went completly dark.

I was dying, dying, dying, de-







A/N: Okay, a better cliffhanger, and IMHO, a better story. You decide by being a responsble reader and reviewing it, pretty please? Thanks!