Disclaimer: I don't own Robotech or animorphs
Deep space, former site of Space Station Liberty
"Yeerks? And I suppose you and your race are fighting them as well?" Vince asked the blue furred alien on the other side of the video connection.
"Yes, so far we were the only race capable of defeating them militarily. We have been fighting to prevent them from gaining more hosts." Excull rotated an eye stalk to look at one of the arisths and addressed him privately, "Make sure this is recorded and sent to high command."
"Of course my prince," the aristh replied in private thought speak.
"What exactly do you mean by hosts?" Vince said with a grimace on his face. The invid were bad enough, taking slaves to harvest the flower of life, killing all who resisted them. Taking hosts sounded like something out of a grade-B fiction movie from earth during the southern cross years, when movies about fictional monsters made the people forget about the real ones up in space.
"The yeerks are blind slugs in their natural state, unable to leave their pools, unable to do almost anything. Which is why they take hosts, they crawl into the brain of their victims and control their bodies and memories." Excull explained.
"How many races, how many people have they taken?" Vince asked, his grimace quickly turning to anger. The thought of what the alien was describing made his skin crawl.
"Hundreds of thousands if not millions of sentient hosts, and hundreds of ships" Excull replied, the numbers were staggering to an andalite, whose military only numbered a hundred thousand on various dome ships and installations. The only thing there was to defend the millions of citizens on their homeworld. To his surprise, instead of fear the human made a strange sound and looked amused at the thought.
"We've fought worse odds and triumphed, multiple times," Vince thought of the battle above reflex point, a battle he had not been a part of, the truth was, they almost didn't survive, but they had been fighting millions of suicidally aggressive mecha over the main invid hive.
Excull didn't quite believe the human's boast, he believed even less their apparent willingness to help in what was the andalite's war. "Why would you be so willing to get involved in our war?"
"We have a saying on earth, I believe it was said long before the first Robotech war, 'The only thing it takes for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing,' I can't speak for admiral Hunter, but I'm sure he would agree with me. The yeerks aren't just going to ignore us. If we want earth to be safe once more we are going to have to fight. I don't suppose you have the authority to negotiate an alliance between our people?"
"No, but there are two ships currently on the way here the war prince in command would have such an authority." Excull answered truthfully.
"I'm going to contact my superiors, I'm sure they will be able to send a diplomatic team here. Until then I don't suppose you would be adverse to an exchange of information, so we can avoid any social faux pas when the diplomats do get down to business."
The translator didn't quite catch the last few words. "Faux pas? What is that?"
"And here I thought all aliens understood English perfectly," Vince smiled and chuckled to himself.
"Actually we are using a translator, it didn't quite grasp the meaning of the words," Excull looked perplexed, even more so when the human, actually burst out laughing. It was a crude but not entirely unpleasant sound.
Vince took a few moments to control his laughter, "We'll have to teach you a little about sarcasm. I should have paid more attention to rick's stories about their first contacts with the Zentraedi. As far as your question goes, it means an exchange of information about our cultures, so we don't accidentally insult each other and start a meaningless war over some practice one side finds normal, and the other side finds a deadly insult."
"Ah, a sensible precaution I suppose," Excull answered him, "We are just in a small scout ship it might be prudent if we were to land in one of your ships for a face to face meeting."
"I hope you don't mind armed guards upon your arrival, precautions must be taken of course." Vince smiled a little, trying to let the alien see he was friendly.
"Of course, in the same light you would not be surprised if we were armed as well." Excull made the andalite equivalent of the human smile.
Vince turned to one of the bridge crew, "Tell the Einstein to deactivate her shadow device, and have skull leader and her flight escort their ship in.
REF Carrier Einstein, Deep Space
The first thing prince Excull noticed upon approaching the human ship was how different it looked from andalite and yeerk ships, it had huge protrusions with no discernible purpose, and it was actually thinner in the middle than the top and bottom, with an exposed tower rising above the rest of the ship. He didn't see any weapons, but that didn't necessarily mean anything.
The two fighters ahead of him were likewise very different from andalite fighters. A standard tail fighter had room for two andalites to stand and even turn around if necessary. These small fighters looked like they were mostly engines. When they had turned off their stealth systems the scanners got a good read of one human in a much to small compartment near the very front of the fighter. An andalite would never stand for being cooped up in such a small compartment with no grass for very long.
As the three ships came in for a landing the human fighters backed into what looked like service bays, while a human on the ground made motions pointing to a clear area somewhat larger than the scout ship. He set the ship down smoothly on the floor of the hangar then walked over to the hatch, ready to step out and meet a new species. This time it would be one he wasn't at war with, it was a refreshing change of pace.
As he stepped down the ramp he noticed the wide eyed stares from some of the crew as they hurried to repair and refuel the fighters. He also saw the welcoming committee. Three humans in some sort of colored covering for their bodies. To an andalite like Excull it looked ridiculous, but he knew that some other species had similar customs when visiting other planets, to protect them from heat or cold.
As he stepped off the ship, he noticed several large metal objects lining the open hatchway, on second glance he noticed that beneath the tinted visors he could see a pair of eyes looking back at him, they also had arms and were clutching what looked like oversized two handed shredders. His surprise and fear must have carried to his face and his now raised tail blade, because at that moment he heard a powerful voice shout, "Marines! Back three paces!"
The massive metal things stepped back roughly two full body lengths away. Another voice, one Excull recognized as belonging to the ship captain from earlier, called out, "Sorry to give you a scare like that, cyclones can be a bit scary up close the first time."
"Cyclones? I did not realize you had multiple species aboard."
"What? No... cyclones aren't a different species, they are a type of infantry mecha. It's a type of armor that wraps around an infantry soldier, giving them great strength and weaponry along with speed and maneuverability."
Excull didn't really see what the human was talking about, and apparently his look of confusion carried to his face because the human, Vince, or Grant, their names were confusing, gestured to one of the cyclones and the thing walked over. That was when something strange happened. It almost looked like the cyclone began to morph, except it was a quick swirl of motion instead of the slow but fluid change of an andalite morph. And suddenly there was a human in another version of their strange clothing holding what looked like the cyclone's head in one hand, apparently some sort of head covering to go with the body cover. It was standing next to a small wheeled vehicle, like a small version of something from andalite history.
"Very strange, I wonder what would have inspired the need for that?" Excull pondered aloud.
"That would be our past enemies, the Zentraedi the Robotech masters, and all too recently the invid."
One of the other humans cut in, "Not two hours before we left for here, I was still over earth fighting against the invid." This one looked even stranger than the others to Excull, it was smaller and slimmer and had pink hair, he supposed it could have been an example of a female of this race. "This story may take a while, three entire wars encompasses a lot of time.
Moon base ALUCE
Admiral Hunter's return with Space Station Liberty in tow had brought some measure of hope to the battered Robotech fleet in orbit over earth. Heavily damaged hulks were being rebuilt, and damaged vessels were repaired at an astonishing rate. Liberty had been built within and around a Robotech factory satellite. Most of it's technology was still intact and greatly contributed to the speed at which it worked, but it would still be months before the REF was back to fighting trim. Which meant months of waiting for yet another hostile alien race to find them, months until they could truly protect earth.
At least this time they seemed to have allies. Admiral hunter wondered what had happened since Vince had sent a recording of their first conversation with the strange blue furred centaur alien. He had no time for that now, he and general Reinhardt were trying to determine the best way to safeguard earth.
"We need to buy time general, if we go on the offensive even with a few ships we could prevent them from getting to earth before our fleet is built up." Hunter wanted to go on the offensive, just as the REF tried to do during their mission.
"Admiral, there just aren't enough ships and crews to even defend earth, we simply can't all the ships even the SDF-4 are in need of serious repairs."
"What about the Ark Angel?" The ship he had asked about was a colony ship, put on hold until the REF could liberate earth. It had room for a synchro cannon, and with a little time in Liberty it would have a fully functional shadow device. In addition to that it had a pin point barrier system and enough onboard production capabilities to be completely self sufficient.
"A colony ship admiral? Sure it is as big as an SDF class vessel, but it requires a massive crew of pilots and support crew. I don't see it being a feasible ship to man and crew with what we have. For now we might be able to crew it with the displaced crews from ships about to be laid up in dry dock, but we definitely don't have enough fighter pilots." Reinhardt shook his head, "It just won't be combat capable, even if we build a synchro cannon for it."
"Then we recruit resistance fighters from earth, see if anyone wants to continue fighting and protecting earth, or just plain enlist in the Robotech forces. If nothing else we can fill the ark angel's quick reaction bays with shadow drones. So they can have a sucker punch. I saw the initial reports from the attack on space station liberty. These new aliens have some pretty fancy technology, but I can tell they don't really have any experiences with a real war, their fighters are more like under armed shuttle craft. Any of our fighters can maneuver in circles around them, the only reason Liberties defense fleet didn't manage to defeat their attackers was that they simply weren't armed with destabilizer cannons."
"But, Rick!"
"General, I appreciate your concerns, but in this case I have to be right, we must take the fight away from earth once more, only this time we won't leave our planet defenseless."
"Yes sir, admiral, I'll see to it that the Ark Angel gets refitted as fast as possible."
Dome Ship Galaxy Tree, Z-space transit
Elfangor stood in the center of the dome talking to war prince Nerefir, captain of the dome ship Galaxy Tree.
"What do you think of them war prince?" Nerefir asked him.
Elfangor paused to consider the question. The andalites had seen many of the human's broadcasts over the years, up until forty or so of their years ago they had continued to pay attention to the human homeworld's broadcasts. It was used as educational material about primitive cultures in andalite classrooms. Then they started building armed spacecraft, and suddenly ten years later all transmissions seemed to stop as they encountered some sort of threat from another species, intercepted transmissions continued for about a year later until one final broadcast was picked up, some sort of song. Everyone had assumed it was the human's own way of saying goodbye to the universe, but now they had reappeared, mysteriously and with nothing to indicate where they had been for forty revolutions around their sun.
"I don't know, I'd have to meet them to know anything about them for sure. We don't even know if those broadcasts were accurate. No matter what though we need that technology if we want to win this war. The yeerks are gaining ground, their ships are starting to outnumber us, pretty soon our technological edge won't matter much." Elfangor stated simply. "We might need the human's help in fighting our enemy."
"Yes, that is exactly what I'm afraid of." Nerefir walked to the edge of the dome and stared into the emptiness of Z-space. Elfangor followed him, wondering what was on the captain's mind. "What if they follow the path the yeerks have taken, and try to conquer and enslave the galaxy, will we be able to stop them?"
"Hopefully we won't have to, we'll just have to be careful. We deal with the yeerks, but we keep an eye stalk watching the humans." Elfangor answered. Without saying it he hoped that would be enough.
"War Prince Nerefir, we will drop out of z-space in five minutes." came a voice over the ship wide thought speak channel.
"Elfangor, accompany me to the war bridge, I want you to give me your first impression of the humans."
They trotted over to the drop shafts and took the down shaft to the war bridge. In another thirty seconds the ship made the transition to real space followed closely by her sister ship, the Promise.
They were greeted by no less than four yeerk blade ships and two pool ships, a massive force for the yeerks. One human vessel fired furiously at the approaching yeerk vessels. Wreckage surrounded it, a second smaller vessel was trying to flee the scene of the battle, its nose section a mangled ruin Impressive considering a full power dracon cannon from a blade ship could destroy a dome ship in one shot if it got past the shields. Hundreds of the small nimble human fighters dueled with their yeerk counterparts. The human vessel was as big as a dome ship, but it maneuvered like a blade ship, avoiding the fixed weapons of its enemies, the yeerks had more trouble hitting it than they should have but the andalites could see it was only a matter of time.
Unfortunately for them, the yeerks detected the entry of the two dome ships. And five of their six craft changed direction to intercept. The other dome ship, the Promise fired the few shredders they had available with the dome attached even as they detached the huge mobile park. They took down the shields on the trailing pool ship, but the error would cost them, all three of the blade ships not occupied with the human vessel fired upon the dome ship. It exploded in a huge flash of light, all of the warriors and fighters aboard gone in an eye blink.
"NO!" screamed Elfangor.
Blue beams of energy lanced out at the stricken pool ship, they hit the giant spiderlike mother ship with a vengeance explosions wracked the ship, and left it drifting and disabled, the main pool breached and leaking frozen yeerks and pool sludge into the vacuum of space. The humans had made the Promise's sacrifice count.
"Get to your fighter now Elfangor!" ordered captain Nerefir.
He dashed down the hallway into the drop shaft catching a ride to his fighter, his brother, Aximili's fighter had already left the bay. He quickly powered up the fighter and flew it out of the bay. He looked over the battle as he maneuvered away from the dome ship.
Despite the initial surprise, the dome ships had come out in a near perfect position relative to the yeerk fleet. Two salvos and two of the blade ships were shot down. It seemed too late however, as the second pair lined up on the blade ships and prepared to fire.
Elfangor saw a blur of motion on his screen. The human ship was accelerating at insane speeds, small capsules, probably escape pods were streaming from the craft as it moved in at high speed towards the battle. It superimposed itself in front of the dome ship, one short communication was sent out before the dracon beams on the blade ship destroyed the human vessel.
"Make it count."
