Chapter 3 (Jake)
"Ram the Blade Ship."
Tobias shot a fierce glare at me, but said nothing. He didn't need to. I got his meaning loud and clear. He didn't need to say that he didn't approve of my playing God with all of our lives.
But I didn't care what he thought. I was the one who took responsibility for making these decisions. Not him.
My name is Jake. You've heard of me. Jake the Yeerk-killer. Fearless Jake. Jake the thirteen-year-old general.
Of course, I'm twenty now. Things have changed so much since back when this war first started. I don't have to tell anyone who I am anymore, for one thing. I'm Jake, leader of the Animorphs. The rest is history, as the old cliche goes.
But a few things haven't changed. I'm still the one making the big decisions when someone needs to. Still putting my life and my friends' lives on the line, in the hope that the gamble will pay off in the end.
Menderash looked sideways at me. Waited for some confirmation that I was actually asking him to ram the Blade Ship, that I wasn't joking. That I wasn't insane.
I nodded, giving him my okay. No, I wasn't joking.
And I hoped I wasn't insane, either.
The Rachel hurtled forward. There was no feeling of acceleration, but it was tough to shake the feeling that there should have been one, as we hurtled at impossible speeds.
The One was still on our viewscreen. It looked distracted, like it was talking to somebody else. When it did see us speeding toward it, it only grinned. It wasn't afraid of us.
The distance between us and the Blade Ship closed at a startling speed. Then, at the last possible second, the Blade Ship swerved suddenly to the side. The Rachel blew past. A miss. But our ship could turn faster than the Blade Ship could. The Rachel turned, and fired on the Blade Ship from behind.
TSEEEEW.
The blast bounced harmlessly off of the Blade Ship's force fields.
"Menderash! Quick, try ramming it again! Before it turns!" I snapped.
We hurtled forward again, but the Blade Ship was turning around to face us. Closer, closer, we raced.
Again, the Blade Ship rolled to the side. This time, I heard a scraping sound as the Rachel's wingtip brushed against the Blade Ship's force field.
TSEEEEW.
As we blew past, the Blade Ship shot at us. A miss. We were moving too fast for them to get a lock on us.
"New plan. Fire continuously at them. We'll weaken their force field. But keep us moving, avoid their fire. Once their field is gone, we ram them again."
It was a desperate gamble. The Rachel was a wasp pitted against a hawk. We had the manuverability, but the only weapon we had was a stinger. If the hawk so much as touched us, we were dead.
Menderash's piloting skills were admirable, even by Andalite standards. He dived and dodged, feinted and turned, a whirling dervish that the Blade Ship couldn't hit. All the while, Dracon crossfire shot back and forth.
"I think I'm gonna be sick," Marco said.
We kept it up for a while. And we landed a few good hits on the Blade Ship, all the while managing to avoid its shots.
"You are quite an annoyance, humans, but I grow tired of this game," the One said through the viewscreen. "Let's make things a little more interesting, shall we?"
As I watched, the entire Blade Ship began to glow with the One's light. The entire ship shifted from the darkest black to the brightest white. A brilliant star in the shape of a battle-ax.
A gigantic plume of white-hot energy suddenly shot out from the Blade Ship's bridge, like a liquid stream of blinding white light.
We swerved to the left, but it was as if the energy had anticipated our move. It turned even before we did, moving to cut us off.
"Reverse!" I yelled, but it was too late. Our forward momentum plowed us right into the blindingly white wall.
The walls of the Rachel began to glow from the contact. "Get us out of here!" I ordered Menderash. The Rachel shot backwards, out of the One's reach.
"It was draining our power," Menderash reported. "We have enough power left for either one more surge of the engines, or maybe two Dracon shots."
The radiant white Blade Ship turned to face us. It picked up speed, hurtling towards us. Knowing we were almost helpless.
"This ends now," the One said.
"Indeed it does," I answered. "Menderash. He wants a head-on collision, give him one."
Menderash turned the Rachel to face the Blade Ship. We hurtled forward.
The Blade Ship hurtled forward.
"I can't watch," Marco whimpered, covering his eyes.
The two ships sped closer, closer.
"Dracon beam! Now!" I yelled, right before we hit. "Divert any power this ship has left to the weapons!"
TSEEEEEW.
BOOOOM.
There was an earth-shattering crash that shuddered through both ships and knocked me off my feet. Metal smashed into metal. Steel twisted and deformed under the force of the collision. The two ships locked, meshed together by twisted steel.
The One's white light now nearly surrounded us. And that light was growing, stretching. It was trying to envelop the Rachel!
"Dracon this thing until it fries!" I ordered, getting to my feet.
"How? We have no power," Menderash said simply.
I looked around, thinking frantically. I needed a plan, fast.
The One's light grew brighter and brighter around us.
"That thing's made out of energy!" I cried suddenly, having a revelation. "Can you siphon off some of it for our Dracon?"
Menderash said nothing, but worked feverishly at the controls. The light was almost all around us, now. I could barely open my eyes against the glare.
TSEEEEEEEEEEWWW.
The Dracon beam pierced deep into the One's glaring white light. And kept going.
"Don't let up!" I shouted over the continuous noise of the laser.
At first, there appeared to be no effect. The Dracon's red light shone steadily, pumping its destructive energy right into the core of the One.
I could somehow see the One's face in the midst of all the glare. Shifting from one visage to another, faster and faster. Like a slide show on overdrive. The last face I saw was Ax's.
Then, there was a shattering wave that rippled across the blinding mass of light, breaking it up into millions of tiny pinpoints. The One's blinding sea of white broke apart into a beautiful nebula of tiny stars, which fell away from the Blade Ship and the Rachel like beads of water.
"Insolent humans! You have won, this time, but you have achieved nothing beyond keeping your own lives. You have not defeated me."
The points of light flickered and dimmed.
I don't know if it was my imagination, but, among the thousands of glittering pinpoints of white, I could have sworn I saw one that was blue.