(You know, Jen, you should be sleeping by now,) I told Jen as the clock struck midnight and we were once again the only two beings in the Carson house still awake.
(But I'm not feeling sleepy just yet,) Jen replied. This statement was from an adult female human, a 24-year-old with a bachelor's degree in human psychology from the University of Notre Dame. Both of us knew that she sounded like a whiny toddler by just saying what she said like that, and both of us didn't really care. (And I must say you're not sounding sleepy yourself either,) she told me. (Man, our circadian rhythms are out of whack!)
(Tell me about it,) I sighed. (Ever since you managed to get yourself into the afternoon shift for the diner, you've never slept before twelve o'clock, and now I can't sleep before twelve o'clock as well.)
(It's the price of being human, Yems,) Jen told me as we sauntered over to the sofa in front of the big flat-screen television mounted on the wall of the Carsons' living room.
(Yeah, not sure if I want to pay it though,) I said darkly.
Jen plopped herself down on the sofa, put her feet up (after removing her slippers, of course), grabbed the remote, and turned the TV on. She pressed the episode guide button on the remote and began "channel surfing", searching television network schedules for a program that she might be interested in watching as she tried to force herself to a state of sleepiness. (Oh, hey, Forged in Fire is on,) she said while perusing the schedule for The History Channel (which nowadays is just called History). (I haven't seen it for a little while. Wonder what weapon they're going to have to forge for the final round.)
Forged in Fire is a human television show in which four blacksmiths (or bladesmiths as the show likes to call them) basically forge bladed weapons, most often ones that have been used by humans in their past, and then these weapons are tested by the three judges on the show, one of which is a blacksmith and another is an edged weapons recreation specialist, and the third one is a martial arts master. When she first saw it, Jen didn't really like the premise of the show, but when she actually watched an entire episode, she found that Forged in Fire was pretty much like the cooking and baking shows that Jen and her mom like to watch and so she began to like the show. Jen didn't really pay any particular attention to the contestants who came on the show for a chance to win ten thousand dollars, but on this particular episode, there was one contestant who caught both Jen's eye and mine. It had nothing to do at all with his appearance and everything to do with what was in his head.
The contestant's name was Rasheed. He was 26 years old, black, and from Oklahoma City. And he was a Controller. Yes, you read that right. There is a Controller Forged in Fire contestant. And Rasheed actually showed his Yeerk, Telsen Eight-Nine-One-Five, floating around in a bottle of water during his introductory talking head moment on the show. Rasheed actually physically demonstrated Telsen going in and out of his ear but said something about the producers cutting out the bits where Telsen goes out of his ear and into his hand. But since the producers didn't cut that bit out, it looks funny when Rasheed said they would cut it. Human humor, huh?
Anyway, according to Rasheed, he had been infested by the Yeerks when he was ten, which would put his infestation at around the time that the trouble between the Yeerks in California and the Animorphs were beginning to heat up. The Yeerks were beginning to take more hosts irrespective of gender or age, and Rasheed happened to be one of the first to be caught up in the Yeerks' dragnet. Telsen wasn't his original Yeerk, and in the early years of his post-war freedom, Rasheed was actually quite anti-Yeerk. His Yeerk had mentally abused him in an effort to break him down and had also forced him to recruit his other friends into the Sharing to be made into full members (that is to say Controllers).
Then Rasheed said that he began losing some body coordination, which he couldn't explain until he found out a study that revealed that a lot of humans who had been infested by Yeerks, whether voluntarily or not, suffered from varying degrees of loss of fine motor control (meaning they couldn't grip onto stuff as securely as they would have liked or that a finger or a hand would suddenly refuse to follow their commands). And then after more studies revealed that people who were infested with Yeerks as part of an experimental physical therapy program recovered control of body parts and fine motor control quicker than those who did their physical therapy without Yeerks, which eventually paved the way for the legalization of Yeerk infestation of humans (in the United States, at least) in early 2009. Rasheed applied for a Yeerk a year after infestation was legalized, and that was how he met Telsen.
I have to admit that Jen and I didn't always focus on the contestants of Forged in Fire, although we did sometimes try to guess who would make it to the next round and who would be eliminated due to problems in their blades that the judges spotted. But because of Rasheed being a Controller (apparently the first one to appear on the show), I must say that I began rooting for him to not only make it through each round but also win the competition itself. But after the first round where the contestants had to make a usable blade within a three-hour period, it seemed as if Rasheed would be eliminated because the judges had found a warp in his blade (meaning that his blade wasn't straight). And then it turned out that the other contestant who looked like he could also be eliminated in the first round actually had a number of cracks in the blade which the judges determined to be unfixable in the confines of the studio. So Rasheed made it through to the next round because one of the other contestants had a worse blade than he did.
(I hope Rasheed can fix his blade up good,) Jen said to me. (I'd hate for people to think that he made it through just because he's got a Yeerk in his head.)
(You know, I was thinking the same thing,) I replied.
Thankfully enough, Rasheed was not only able to fix the warp in his blade but he was also able to turn that blade into an actual fighting knife, one that survived the tests that the judges put it through with flying colors. The judges actually praised Rasheed' finished product, saying that the handle fit perfectly in their hands and that it didn't show any signs of edge damage or chipping after being put through a wood block chopping test and an apple slice sharpness test. The other competitors had their knives suffer a bent edge and a chipped edge, and the contestant with the knife that had a chipped edge after the chop test was eliminated, leaving only Rasheed and a cowboy-looking type (according to Jen) named Colton to move into the final round.
(Now comes the fun part,) Jen said. (Wonder what historical weapon they're gonna make these guys forge.)
"Rasheed, Colton, so far, we've had you two bladesmiths make your signature weapons in our forges," the host, a large and muscular man who had once served in the American military, said. "But now we're sending you back to your home forges to recreate an iconic weapon from history. And that weapon is…" He reached for the cloth covering an object on the judges' table and pulled it off, revealing a triangular blade with what appeared to be four circles at the bottom. "…the Andalite tail blade," the host finished.
"Holy shit," Rasheed said, on camera (although of course the "shit" was bleeped out).
The host then proceeded to explain that the tail blade was a natural weapon of the Andalites that was often used in combat, most recently against the Yeerk Empire. After the Yeerk invasion of Earth, and after Andalites began to visit Earth on a regular basis, human martial artists and self-defense instructors then had the idea of copying the Andalite tail blade and turning it into a weapon that humans could also use. Oh, humans. If they can find anything that they could turn into a weapon against their fellow humans then they will definitely do it.
"Your weapon should be an effective and functional version of the Andalite tail blade, as adapted for use by humans," the host said, explaining the judgment parameters for the next round. "The tail blade must be between three to four inches at the base and three to four inches from the base of the blade to its tip. The tail blade must also have a sickle shape or hook design, four holes at the bottom for use as a grip, and at least a twelve-foot-long lanyard for use in long-range fighting. You will have five days to forge this iconic weapon at your home forges, and after those five days you will return here with your finished tail blades, where the judges will put them through a series of grueling tests, after which one of you will be declared the Forged in Fire champion. Good luck, bladesmiths. We'll see you in five days."
The two remaining contestants then began to forge their versions of the Andalite tail blade in their homes. Rasheed the Controller said that it was very coincidental that as soon as a Controller appeared on Forged in Fire, the historical weapon that they would have to recreate would be none other than the Andalite tail blade. Meanwhile, Colton, the other contestant, admitted that he didn't know anything about either Andalites or even Yeerks until the tail blade had been revealed and its history explained. Personally, I couldn't believe that there was one person in the United States who could possibly not have heard of either an Andalite or a Yeerk as late as the year 2016, but then again there was also no explanation for the amount of stupidity that both Jen and I have seen on Facebook and Twitter.
Throughout the episode, whenever he was working on a forge, Rasheed would cool himself down by pouring water all over his head, and I knew that this was because Telsen was telling him to cool down. Yeerks are very sensitive to heat; personally, there have been times when I demanded Jen to put on a cap or a hat or even sunblock just because a bit of sunlight was shining down on her. I can't even imagine how I managed to get through those times that Jen was playing soccer under the noontime sun or that spring break in Miami; I sincerely felt like I had been boiled alive in her skull in those times. Heck, even just looking at the flames coming out of the forges on the TV was making me uncomfortable.
Finally, the five days were up, and Rasheed and Colton returned to the studio with their respective tail blades. There were three tests that would determine who would be the Forged in Fire champion for that episode: a strength test, where the judge would throw the tail blade at a wooden wall to test the strength (obviously) and integrity of the weapon; a sharpness test, where the judge would then cut through a number of salmon to see if the tail blade had retained its edge following the strength test; and finally the kill test, where the judge would use the tail blade to inflict as much damage as possible on a pair of ballistics dummies. Both Rasheed and Colton's tail blades made it through the strength test without damage, although when the judge mentioned that Colton's tail blade felt heavy in his hand, Jen said (Ooh, that's not good for Colton. If they're neck and neck for the rest of the tests, that heavy blade of his could very well be what gets him eliminated.)
(At least it will be a very good match to the end, if it's going to keep us guessing to the very end,) I replied. And it did indeed turn into a neck-and-neck contest. Both tail blades did very well in the sharpness test, slicing through the four salmon bodies cleanly and in half. And then it was time for the kill test. The judge who regularly does the kill test explained what he was going to do to test the tail blades: first he was going to swing the tail blade with the lanyard at the first dummy, replicating the standard opening slashing attack of Andalite tail blade combat; and then he would throw the blade at the dummy like a throwing knife or a shuriken. Then the judge would slip his fingers into the four rings at the bottom of the tail blade (which basically made the tail blade a sharper and more dangerous brass knuckle) and use it to stab and slash at the second dummy. The results were very much bloody and gory, as these kill tests usually turn out to be. Both blades performed well in the kill test, and the judge praised both blades but he also spent some time praising the lightness and balance of Rasheed's tail blade, and he capped it off with his signature statement: "Your tail blade… will kill."
"Oh, that's really what I wanted to hear from you, Doug," Rasheed said.
The test then went off without a hitch for Colton's tail blade as well, although like the first judge, the third judge also mentioned that there was a weight and balance issue with Colton's weapon although, because it did well in the kill test as well, it will kill. (Yeah, looks like Rasheed's gonna win this one,) Jen said. (When the judges say that your blade is heavy, that usually means you're going to lose.)
And she was right. Rasheed won the Forged in Fire episode and the ten thousand dollars, while Colton's tail blade did not make the cut. In fairness to Colton though, he did really make a great replica of an Andalite tail blade. It just so happened that Rasheed made it better. Even Rasheed himself was surprised that he won the whole thing. Both he and Telsen had only ever seen the tail blade on actual Andalite tails (or at least the brief glances that the vast majority of the American public got to see of these Andalites in their natural morphs and not in morph); they both had no idea that people had actually made their own version of the tail blade, although Rasheed said that he was not really surprised since humans could and would turn just about anything into a weapon. "It's also an honor to be the first ever Controller Forged in Fire champion," he concluded. "I may not have wanted to have a Yeerk in my head all the time but now here I am, and it's still very much a great accomplishment."
That night, I found myself unable to sleep. Jen was already in bed, snoring and curled up around one of her many stuffed animals. I had disengaged myself from her brain as I usually did if she fell asleep before I did but I could still feel the microvolts of electricity flowing throughout Jen's sleeping brain. Watching the third Forged in Fire judge swing around those tail blades and slash and stab those dummies (Jen: His name is Doug Marcaida. Look him up; he's really badass.) had brought up my own memories of seeing the Andalite tail blade in action, and that was probably why I found it very hard to sleep.
It happened when I was still in my Hork-Bajir host, before I had been transferred to the invasion force destined for Earth. In fact, this was before the Empire had even discovered Earth in the first place. Visser Eleven's Blade ship and its associated fleet had been on an expedition for a Class Five species when, while scanning a system on the edges of Hawjabran-controlled space, two Andalite Dome ships popped out of Z-space literally almost alongside the Visser's Blade ship. Visser Eleven ordered his fleet to jump for the nearest Yeerk-controlled planet, but the Dome ships were able to follow Visser Eleven's Blade ship to the Ssstram homeworld. The Yeerk defenses around the planet had managed to disable both Dome ships' communications systems meaning that the Andalites couldn't inform their superiors on their own homeworld that another species had fallen to the Yeerk Empire, but then the Andalites made the decision to attack our forces on the Ssstram homeworld, reasoning that since they were already there, they might as well liberate the Ssstram from our control and oppression.
The Bug fighter wing to which Gershi One-Five-Five (remember him?) and I were assigned had been deployed to the Ssstram homeworld at the time, and we had been on the ground for five Earth weeks when those two Dome ships popped out of Z-space a few miles above the planet's atmosphere. As the shredders on the Dome ships began picking off Kandrona generators on the surface of the planet, Andalite fighters dropped down into the atmosphere to attack our bases and pools. Our own Bug fighters rose up to meet the Andalites in battle even as Andalite ground troops began to attack the Ssstram's settlements, seemingly not caring for the survival of the very species that they were trying to save from us Yeerks.
The Bug fighter that Gershi and I had been piloting had become embroiled in an aerial battle with maybe two or three Andalite fighters (humans would call that a dogfight). I was definitely sure that we were fighting at least two fighters, although that third "Andalite" fighter I only dimly remember might actually be another Bug fighter trying to help us out.
"Take us closer to this dapsen, Gershi!" I shouted. As the Taxxon, Gershi was in charge of flying the Bug fighter with his numerous pincers and claws while I as the Hork-Bajir handled the Bug fighter's weapons, specifically twin Dracon beams on the two spear-like objects mounted to the fighter's sides.
"I'm trying, Yemra, I'm trying!" Gershi screeched through his Taxxon mouth. "This Andalite is flying around erratically since you shot off his tail!" He was talking about how a burst from one of my Dracon beams had destroyed the shredder cannon mounted behind and above the Andalite fighter, much like their own tail blade. There was a rumor going around the Bug fighter squadrons that the Andalites had developed a new type of fighter that was controlled by using their own bodies, including their tail blade shredder. There were also rumors that if a part of the Andalite fighter was to be damaged, the Andalite pilot would at the very least feel some pain on his body as well. Some of the nastier rumors suggested that damaging this new version of the Andalite fighter would also injure the pilot. I've never really believed this particular version of this rumor, but Gershi mentioning the Andalite flying erratically after I had shot off his tail shredder made me think twice about outright rejection the plausibility of this rumor.
"It's hard to get a lock on him!" I said. "He really is all over the place!"
"I'm trying to keep up with him, can't you see?" Gershi shot back. "But as you can see, this Andalite is all over the place!" Gershi then began manipulating the Bug fighter's engine controls using his minor pincers and he also began adding additional trim and stabilizer settings on the control surfaces so that he could control the Bug fighter better under these faster and higher-G maneuvers. The Andalite fighter dodged and twisted and turned, obviously trying to keep itself out of target lock for as long as possible now that it had been rendered defenseless, but eventually the target circle in my display centered itself on the fighter before letting off a low growling tone.
"I have target lock," I called out. I pressed the button to fire, and twin Dracon beams poured out of the spears on the sides of the Bug fighter. Some of the beams struck the body of the Andalite fighter, and the fighter rocked around from the impacts. Nothing really to suggest that the Andalite pilot was feeling the hits as if he was the one being injured, though; more like the hits were really pushing the limits of this particular fighter. And then a pair of Dracon beams struck the Andalite fighter's power source, and the fighter exploded in a bright white and red flash.
I don't remember feeling anything at all when those Dracon beams struck the fighter's power source and made it explode. Of course I knew that it meant that I had just eliminated an enemy of the Empire but I also knew that I had killed an Andalite, a being with his own thoughts and feelings, hopes and dreams, maybe even offspring, and I had just ended that life. And yet I felt nothing. No pity, no remorse, no pleasure or justice. I felt nothing at all. And I knew that if the tables had been turned, if it was the Andalite who had shot down Gershi and I, the Andalite pilot wouldn't feel anything at all. We were at war, after all; it was our duty to kill the enemy before they killed us.
"All right, that's one down," Gershi said. "Now let's find that other fighter and then try to find the rest of our squadron."
Suddenly our Bug fighter was rocked by a series of small impacts. "Looks like he found us first," I said to Gershi.
"Hang on to something, Yemra!" Gershi shouted as he lowered the engines' power settings to the lowest possible setting while still keeping us aloft. The nose of the Bug fighter lifted up and I could feel my host body being forced closer to my command console by the forces of gravity and physics. I had a brief glimpse of the second Andalite fighter passing us by through the cockpit windows, and then Gershi applied max power on our engines and began chasing the second fighter. Gershi did a good job of keeping the fighter in my target circle but he still had the majority of his shields up so my Dracon beams weren't doing a lot of damage to him. Meanwhile, our own shields were barely regenerating as it were and there were already places on our fighter where the shields had failed entirely. And that was what was going to cost us in this dogfight.
We were chasing the Andalite fighter across the low hills around Erstrum, one of the larger Ssstram settlements and the site of our Bug fighter wing's base of operations. We flew over battlefields where Ssstram, Mak, Nahara and Hork-Bajir soldiers fought to keep the Andalites at bay even as Dome ships blasted the area with their shredders, destroying Kandrona generators and boiling Yeerk pools and the Yeerks inside to a crisp. I tried to ignore the ground battles below us, to keep my focus and my target circle on this stubborn Andalite fighter, and while I knew I was landing hits on him, none of it mattered while his shields were up.
Suddenly the Andalite fighter seemed to hover in place and we shot past it almost immediately. "Dapsen!" Gershi exclaimed. "He just used my own trick on us! Now we're going to die!"
"Don't say that, Gershi!" I shouted back at him. "I have an idea! Can you fly this thing backward?"
"What? What are you talking about?" Gershi asked, turning three of his twelve eyes on me.
"I said, can you fly this thing backward?" I repeated. "I have an idea. I think I can shoot this dapsen down, but I need to know if you can fly this thing backward. Because if you can't, then this plan isn't going to work at all."
"You're not seriously thinking of doing what I think you're trying to do, are you?"
"Please, Gershi, I just need to know: can you fly this thing backwards or not?"
Gershi didn't reply to me verbally. Instead, he activated the Bug fighter's rear-facing camera, a device that had been placed there to keep an eye on pursuing enemies, but now he was about to use it for a purpose that its inventors hadn't really intended it to be used. Gershi moved the feed from the rear camera into his cockpit view, and then reduced power to one engine while increasing power to the other. The Bug fighter turned to the left, and then Gershi added power to the directional thrusters to complete our about-face, much to the surprise of our Andalite pursuer. Once we were facing the Andalite fighter, Gershi applied full reverse power to our engines and we began moving, flying backwards, just like I had intended. I settled the target circle on the Andalite fighter and I fired. The fighter's shields lit up under the impact of my Dracon beams, and the shields waved and wavered as the Dracons attempted to scramble the photon lattice protecting the physical body of the fighter from the damage that the Dracons could inflict.
"Congratulations, Yemra," Gershi snarled. "You're now shooting at him where his shields are strongest."
"At least he's shooting at us where our shields are strongest as well," I retorted. "Now stop talking to me and concentrate on flying this thing backwards!"
This is the point where you think the story becomes something about Gershi suddenly becoming an ace pilot, masterfully guiding our backwards-flying Bug fighter through the hills and valleys of Erstrum while I pumped this second Andalite fighter's face full of Dracon beams, like what you would see in a human movie. But this is not a human movie; this is my life. And my life almost came to an end because I had talked Gershi into flying our Bug fighter in a way that it wasn't really designed for. Inevitably, our Bug fighter plowed into the peak of a hill that Gershi either didn't see or couldn't dodge in time, and the resulting crash flipped our fighter head over heels, as the humans say. But something also happened to the Andalite fighter as we plowed into that hill that caused it to tumble towards the ground as well (I think it was one of our fighter's spears piercing the belly of the Andalite fighter and damaging his power source). Gershi managed to regain control of our Bug fighter, but while he was able to control our spin and put us back on a relatively stable path, he was unable to stop us from plowing into the ground. "Brace yourselves!" he shouted, and then the last thing I remembered before the crash was of the weapons console rushing towards my head, and then darkness.
I woke up with a stinging pain on my face (or rather my Hork-Bajir's face). I opened my eyes, and I felt a substantial amount of blood caked all over my face. I tried to open my beak mouth to call out for Gershi but then I felt a sharp pain emanating from my beak, and I stopped trying to open it. Was my beak broken? I don't know. I couldn't tell, although the pain coming from it was surely a sign that hitting the weapons console with my face had done some damage to me.
"Gershi?" I finally managed to cry out. Well, I say cry but it was more like a croaking. I could taste blood in my mouth, and somehow I knew that there was dried blood in my throat as well which was responsible for my croaking. "Gershi! Where are you?"
"I'm here, Yemra," Gershi replied, and I turned around and saw that Gershi and his Taxxon had managed to survive the crash relatively unscathed. That was a good thing, because had Gershi's Taxxon suffered any sort of injury, the Taxxon would already be eating itself alive, overriding any of Gershi's attempts to retain or regain control. But no, Gershi and his Taxxon were intact, whereas I couldn't say the same for myself.
"I recommend keeping yourself away from me at the moment, Yemra," Gershi said to me. "Sapinalon can sense the blood from your injuries, and I am already having difficulty in containing his hunger as it is right now. If you come any closer, I may not be able to stop Sapinalon from chasing and eating you."
"That is not good, Gershi," I said. "Computer, deploy emergency exits," I then called out to the ship's computer. Two large rectangular panels popped away from the hull of the Bug fighter, leaving behind two holes large enough for a Taxxon to slither through with room to spare, and I crawled towards the exit nearest to me while Gershi steered his Taxxon to the exit opposite mine, keeping as much distance between his host and mine so I wouldn't be eaten alive. I finally managed to stand up once I had gotten a short distance away from the crumpled wreckage of the Bug fighter, and ahead of me, I could see white or gray smoke emanating from the hills beyond us. Something in my gut told me that that was the crash site of the second Andalite fighter.
I heard Taxxon crawlers scrambling behind me, and I turned around quickly and held out my arm blades in front of me. If Gershi had lost control of his Taxxon then I wanted to be ready to defend myself, even if it could possibly mean the death of Gershi as well. But when I looked at Gershi's Taxxon, he no longer looked like he had the gleam of bloodlust in his twelve compound eyes. "I have managed to force Sapinalon's taste for your flesh buried underneath his other thoughts," Gershi told me. "But I don't know if I can keep it buried for so long. I hope that rescue and help will come for us soon."
Gershi and I waited for what had felt like an eternity of cycles but was actually something about fifteen to thirty Earth minutes before I finally spotted the first signs of movement on the top of the hills surrounding our crash site. At that point, I could see only two thin stalk-like objects peeking at us over the hill, and I immediately thought that the Andalite had somehow managed the crash of his fighter and was now approaching our crash site, possibly hoping to confirm our deaths. "Halt!" I shouted. "Who goes there?"
"Pallem One-Nine-Four of the Ssstram Planetary Defense," came the reply, and the figure on top of the hill revealed itself to be a Ssstram, not an Andalite. The Ssstram were a race of bipedal creatures with triangular heads and short and dumpy bodies not unlike that of E.T. the Extraterrestrial. The Ssstram's two eyes were mounted on the two points of the triangle on the sides, while the downward facing point comprised its neck. A long snout or proboscis-like structure, akin to an elephant's trunk, was where you would expect the nose to be, and the two stalk-like structures on the top of its head that I had first thought to be Andalite stalk eyes were actually the Ssstram's ears. Like Andalite stalk eyes, these Ssstram's ears could turn almost 360 degrees to follow the source of any sounds or noises, an evolutionary holdover from when the Ssstram's distant ancestors were being pursued by predators on the hills of their homeworld.
A squad of Ssstram-Controllers, fifteen Ssstram in total, walked over the hill and approached our crash site. The Ssstram were a very short species; the tallest among them could barely reach its stalk ears up to the waist of my Hork-Bajir host. And, looking back at that memory, only now did I finally understand the humor that I had felt at that time when I saw those Ssstram carrying those Dracon beams in their arms, weapons that were as long as the Ssstram were tall. But there was no humor at all when those Ssstram approached us. "Identify yourself, Hork-Bajir," the commander of the squad, Pallem was his name, told me.
"I am Yemra Six-Four-Zero of the Zek Danet Pool, assigned to the Erstrum Fighter Wing," I replied. "My pilot is Gershi One-Five-Five of the Hym Horreb Pool. He is in a Taxxon but they both somehow survived the crash."
"I am Gershi One-Five-Five," Gershi said to the Ssstram. "We both indeed somehow managed to survive against the odds. Now please take us back to your base so we can rejoin our squadron as soon as possible."
"Very well, then. Follow me. Our base is (translated from the original Galard: three kilometers) from here. We have a communications post there; you can communicate with your fighter squadron there."
But neither Gershi nor I would be able to follow those Ssstram to their base. Oh, those poor unlucky Ssstram, and the Yeerks in their heads. One minute they were standing there, waiting to take a Hork-Bajir and a Taxxon back to their base, and then without warning an Andalite appeared over the hill and began galloping towards us. I was only about to shout a warning to the Ssstram when the Andalite arrived at the nearest Ssstram. I blinked once, and that Ssstram no longer had his (or her, its, or zhir; I remember that Ssstram have four genders) head. Some of the Ssstram turned around and attempted to shoot at the Andalite with their Dracon beams but this Andalite was just too fast for them. I heard blood spurt and bones crack and crumble as the Andalite warrior made short work of this entire squad of Ssstram. Ssstram bones were also actually surprisingly brittle so an Andalite trying to knock out a Ssstram by hitting them with only the flat of his tail blade could actually kill the Ssstram with the sheer force of their impact as well.
The carnage was over in barely (two minutes). The Andalite was scratched and bruised from surviving his own crash (I knew that he had to be the pilot of the fighter chasing us because he was the only Andalite in this area for miles), but it seemed as if he didn't care about his injuries at all. Yellowish-green Ssstram blood dripped from this Andalite's tail blade, while malice, hatred and fury dripped from all four of his eyes. (You,) he boomed in thoughtspeak. (You are the ones who killed War Prince Faluwalo. You will regret having killed the War Prince now, you filthy Yeerks.) He then closed three of his eyes, keeping one open to watch me and Gershi. (Today my ancestors look down upon me from their places in the stars,) he said. (Today they will know that I, Prince Mindorel-Sagaputh-Altep, have avenged the death of my prince, War Prince Faluwalo-Therabek-Waspoth. Today I claim the lives of the killers of my prince.) He then reopened his eyes and raised his tail blade, poised to strike and ready to lop off my host's head at any moment. I closed my eyes and braced myself for my coming death…
…And then the Andalite warrior suddenly fell to his side, his flanks scarred by Dracon beam burns. I blinked in surprise and then I let out the breath that I didn't know I had been holding, and then I finally turned around to look at my savior. It was a Mak-Controller, or rather a squad of four Mak-Controllers, all armed with Dracon beams. The Mak were another species that the Yeerks had only very recently (at the time of the Andalite attack on the Ssstram) subjugated, and there were still elements of Mak society that were still free on their home planet but the Empire was doing its best to conquer and enslave every single Mak on their homeworld. The Mak were five-foot-tall bipedal felinoids (a species that look like Earth felines) with brown fur and dull violet eyes. One of the Mak looked at me and said in Galard, "It appears that we arrived just in time to save you."
"Yes, it looks like indeed you are," I replied.
I would later find out that my savior's name was Moxach Five-Nine-Four of the Ras Zamant Pool. If that name sounds familiar to you then that's because Jen mentioned him (and his current host, George Islington) in her first book. At least one other Yeerk managed to make it out of that battle into a (somewhat) safer place here on Earth, thankfully, but truth be told neither Moxach nor I have talked a lot of what had happened on the Ssstram homeworld once we had become stuck here on Earth. Mostly it was because we haven't had the opportunity to sit down and talk about it but if we did have the time, I have a feeling neither of us would know how to begin. It's not really your usual topic of conversation with anyone else, is it?
A/N: Sorry if this chapter went on for quite a while. This was a story that I really had to write down like this because I feel that this is the best way to present this chapter to readers. Having said that though, do leave a review if you liked this chapter or even if you didn't. And if you would like to keep up to date with this particular story then leave a follow or a favorite. If you're interested in more works in my style, either follow or favorite me as an author (or maybe even both). I may not update a lot or even on a set schedule but I am an active writer on this site. Cheers! - GR