Disclaimer: Animorphs belongs to K A Applegate and/or Scholastic. All others belong to 20th Century Fox Film Corporation. I am not making money out of this and I'm not looking to etc. etc, etc.
Animorphs: Hunting Game
1: The New Enemy
Visser 3's Blade Ship: High Earth Orbit
Visser 3 stood alone in his private chamber overlooking the Earth. He was in a foul mood, which was nothing new. Today, however, his mood was even worse than usual as he was trying to review progress in the invasion he was leading.
Or perhaps the lack of progress would be a better description, Visser 3 thought bitterly. Given the forces at his command, the fact that no free humans knew of their presence (or so he thought!) and that he had decimated the Andalite fleet here he knew he should have had control of half the planet by now. Unfortunately, he also knew that would probably take much longer than he thought. Due to the efforts of a few Andalite survivors from the fleet he destroyed, one no more than a child, the invasion was bogging down. His best efforts to destroy them had been thwarted by incompetent subordinates, treachery or simple bad luck. His losses had also been staggering. First the loss of the supply ship over the mountain lake. Then the destruction of the Earth-based Kandrona generator, which had caused lingering deaths for hundreds of Yeerks and held his invasion up for weeks. The Pemalite crystal. His morph-detecting Veleek. The Leera shark force.
Abruptly he slammed his tail-blade into the wall in a fit of rage. Idiots! Fools! Destroying the Andalites was the only way to end the Earth War in victory. He could see that, even if his useless subordinates and fellow Vissers could not. What infuriated him more was that he had captured all of them once and they had eluded him, thanks to Visser 1. He had no proof that she had helped them escape but he knew that she had. The half- human filth would pay for that someday.
However, he had no idea how to destroy them now. All his previous efforts had come to nothing and he was running out of options and time. The Council of Thirteen were rapidly losing patience with his lack of results. Since his destruction of Elfangor's forces the Yeerk Fleet had not won a single major engagement. The loss of Leera was ample proof of that.
Cloaked in his own despair and suffering from a major headache, Visser 3 never noticed the large ship that was fast approaching Earth from his window. What was more curious was that the bridge crew and the Blade Ship's sensors didn't notice it either. The ship raced over the Earth's atmosphere and dropped a single pod, which flared briefly in the upper atmosphere and then vanished as it headed toward the surface. The ship then turned and headed back toward deep space. Visser 3 didn't realise it yet, but his problems were about to get a whole lot worse.
Earth
Marco wiped the sweat off his forehead for the fifth time that day as he opened his locker at school.
"Man, this heat is killing me," he complained, throwing his books inside the locker and slamming it shut.
Recently the weather had gone crazy as an unexpected heat wave had hit the area. Temperatures were beyond 40° C and showed no signs of cooling anytime soon.
"Will you quit complaining, Marco!" Jake snapped. "It's the same for all of us."
"Still feeling guilty about David, huh? Let it go, man. He did it to himself."
"I know. Doesn't make me feel any better though. But that's not what's killing me right now."
"What's wrong then?" Marco asked. He didn't want their 'fearless leader' to start cracking up now.
"Tom and my parents are dragging me to a Sharing meeting tonight. They're insisting on doing a family thing. Why the hell did it have to be with the Sharing? My life is really going into the crapper right now."
Marco was instantly alarmed.
"Damn. You don't want any part of that, Jake. You know what this could mean?"
"Yeah, I know. But I've got no choice have I?"
"We'd better come along and back you up just in case they try and, well you know," Marco looked around cautiously as he said that.
"Thanks. If you can't stop them in time though, make sure that I don't, well…" Jake's voice trailed off ominously. He still had nightmares from his last experience as a controller.
"It won't come to that, man. We'll make sure of that," Marco said, sounding a lot more confident than he felt. "We'll FLY along with you, if you get my drift."
"Yeah. I get it". Jake felt better knowing his friends would be backing him up in housefly morph.
HQ of the Sharing, 1 hour later
Principal Chapman, or rather Iniss 226 of the Sulp Niar pool, was finishing the preparations for Visser 3's latest plan. A contingent of ten Hork-Bajir had just arrived in secret from the Blade ship and so had Chapman's lieutenants.
"What are they here for?" one of them, a police officer, asked pointing at the Hork-Bajir as he did so.
"The Visser wants more troops and hosts to replace what we've lost. He needs some results that he can take to the Council. That's why I've asked you to bring as many people to the next few meetings as possible. We need to infest as many as we can."
"That's going to be more risky," another man warned. "I mean, if anything goes wrong or if anyone escapes and talks…" He shook his head. "The effects could be catastrophic".
"I KNOW!" Chapman roared. "I've told that to the Visser myself. He didn't want to know. He almost ordered my execution on the spot when I tried to dissuade him. All he wants is results. If this gives you a problem, go and tell him that yourself!"
Everyone else snickered at that. No-one TOLD Visser 3 anything, not unless you wanted Kandrona starvation or worse. He had been more ruthless than usual of late, killing subordinates for the most minor of faults or protests. Rumour had it that if anyone spoke a word out of line at the moment, they were liable to lose their head to the Visser's tail-blade or be tossed out of an airlock.
"We'll have more regular meetings from now on and infest only a few at a time, if it makes you feel better", Chapman went on. "Let's just hope it'll produce enough results to satisfy him. I'm going back to the school now, I have a few things to take care of there before the meeting." He gestured to the police officer. "You come with me. The rest of you, I expect everything to be ready when I get back in fifteen minutes. This had better go well or you'll answer to the Visser for it."
With that Chapman and the officer left for the school. Half of the Hork-Bajir also left via a secret entrance to the Yeerk pool. The remaining Hork-Bajir set about preparing an ambush for the infestation victims whilst the human controllers checked over the building to try and prevent unwanted intrusions. One human controller was checking the windows and other ways in. Unfortunately for him, he didn't notice the three points of red light that were fixed on his chest in a triangular pattern.
Suddenly a blue bolt of energy blew straight through the window and then on through the controller himself. The others spun round in shock as he crashed to the ground with a gaping hole in his chest. Suspecting an Andalite raid, the four remaining human controllers quickly pulled out machine guns from concealed panels in the wall and began firing bullets in the direction the bolt had come from. The Hork-Bajir stood back; they didn't want to risk being seen by anyone outside. They gathered behind the humans in a straight line, with their Dracon beams ready. One of them suddenly noticed movement in a corner of the room, or rather he noticed that there the light in that area was 'rippling' in a man-sized shape. He quickly realised what it was and tried to warn the others but he was far too slow. A large metal disc flew from the corner at the Hork-Bajir line. It ripped through all five in their midsections, splitting them all neatly in half. They all died instantly in a fountain of blood. The human controllers turned around and began firing again but since they couldn't see what they were shooting at they had no chance. A net seemingly shot out of nowhere and pinned another controller to the wall. Two more died as a spear cut through one and the other was lifted screaming into the air, two blades protruding from his chest. The remaining controller started firing in all directions. He seemed to hit everything in the room. Walls, windows, doors, the bodies of his fallen comrades (including the one caught by the net who had still been alive up to that point). He kept firing and firing until his clip was empty. He was in the middle of reloading when he noticed a shimmer of light in front of him. An eight-foot figure suddenly appeared where the shimmer had been, a spear in one hand and a two-blade knife on the other. The controller barely had time to scream before his head was torn from his shoulders.
Outside Sharing HQ, 5 minutes later
The Animorphs, minus Jake, were arriving at the Sharing building in fly morph.
The meeting's in ten minutes. We'd best get in there quickly and check things out, Marco said grimly.
Ax, how much time do we have? asked Rachel, eager for battle again.
One hour and forty minutes remain, Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill, or Ax for short, replied. The Yeerk filth will not be infesting my Prince again, I have sworn it!
We'll all make sure of that, Ax, Tobias put in. Unlike the others, he was in his usual hawk morph, as he hated the limited vision of the fly and there was still enough light for his hawk eyes to be effective. Wait! Something's wrong, one of the windows is smashed!
So? Someone decided to do some improvements to the Yeerks' building. Pity I can't meet the guy so I could thank him! Marco sneered. Uh? What's that smell?
The stench that was coming from the inside of the building was sending the fly's senses and Tobias's hawk instincts into overdrive. Instantly they dived into the room it was coming from.
DEMORPH! screamed Cassie as she and the others desperately fought the fly's instinct to feed on the blood that covered the room. With a great deal of effort, they managed to demorph into their human (and Andalite) forms and surveyed the gory scene around them. Marco and Cassie instantly ran outside and threw up. Tobias went very pale; he was used to blood in his hunting but never anything on this scale. Even Rachel blanched at the sight. The whole room was covered in blood and body parts. Five human bodies were suspended from the ceiling. One was missing a head, two others had had their spinal columns ripped out and all had been skinned alive. Spread across the floor were assorted Hork-Bajir remains. Unable to tolerate the hideous scene for very long, they fled outside, Ax just managing to morph to human form first.
"My god, what the hell did that?" Marco managed to splutter. He and Cassie had only just finished throwing up.
"I think I might know," Ax replied. He was visibly shaking with horror and fear.
"It wasn't Andalites was it, Ax?" Cassie asked "No-one deserved that, not even the Yeerks!"
"No, Cassie. It wasn't Yeerks. I don't kn-kn-know for cer cer cer. Tain. what it was". Ax's speech problem was becoming worse, everyone could see he was more afraid than usual. "But if it is the species I think it is, we are all in more dan-danger than we have ever been."
On the roof of Sharing HQ, same time
Unknown to the Animorphs, the killer was still there and was watching over them and listening to their every word. In his unique vision, the Animorphs were five orange-yellow blobs on a blue background. Also, although they were several floors down, he could hear every word they were saying as if he were right next to them. Andalites as well as humans and Yeerks were on this planet? Excellent, he thought. Even more of a challenge. By the time he left, he would have more prime trophies than his entire family line. This hunt would be the best of his life…
TO BE CONTINUED