Suddenly another thought-speak "voice" ripped through all our consciousness {Hey, you dropped this!} A golden shape hurtled through the air, crashing down on top of the still-forming bull. I thought it was the lion pouncing, but when the bull-thing collapsed under its weight, I saw it was a badly mauled and bloody lioness.
The lion I had fought let out a screeching howl, sounding like a startled woman, and flailed her feet on the slick floor as she tried to turn back into the bridge from the now-crowded hallway where I lay helpless. The polar bear reared up and tried to turn, managing the job a little better, but was knocked off his feet by a brown whirlwind.
I desperately rolled to the side as the two bears crashed down into the hallway. The polar bear tried to fight back, but the new bear had the upper hand and was not giving up. One paw smashed into the bloody burned limb of the polar bear, pinning it to the floor and drawing a bellow of pain, and the other dark paw ripped into the pale throat, with the brown jaws closing on the lower jaw of the morphed Yeerk. The Controller's one good paw batted ineffectually at its savage foe. There was a sickening crack and the newcomer pulled back as the polar bear's jaw hung loose at an unnatural angle, distorted out of shape, and ruined.
The grizzly bear rolled its weight forward, putting more of their combined weight on the Yeerk's ruined limb, and leaving it to fight off two sets of long, cruel claws and a roaring mouth full of fangs with a single paw. The Controller's neck and throat were soon torn wide open. {You fight well too, Yeerk} The bear sneered sarcastically, throwing the words like a weapon. {You just get distracted too easily.} The polar was frantically trying to demorph, when the new bear struck out and ripped open its misshapen skull with one blow.
The first lioness had recovered her balance and now hit the grizzly on the flank. The massive bear just spun with the blow, left paw swinging around to tear open the lion's spine from hips to neck and continuing the momentum of its leap to drive the savaged cat into the bulkhead. The lion slid limply down to the deck and lay in a boneless.
The bull had completed its morph, desperately heaving the other dead lioness off its back and neck, and finally getting its feet under the massive body, and lurching upright, hooves clattering ineffectively on the hard surface of the deck.
I gulped air into my lungs and cried – or more likely, croaked – out desperately "Look out…" but I didn't need to bother. The bear, seeing the lioness collapse had casually turned back to face the last foe, and as the beast threw up its head in a gesture of aggression, the bear's right paw swooped down and up in an uppercut. The bull lowering its head to charge, put the claws coming up, and then the bear was heaving the still-unsteady brute off its feet by the chin. The bear then pounced, savaging the Yeerk with tooth, claw and bulk. The animal – I suddenly recognized it as a cape buffalo, with one of those weird thoughts that pop into your head at odd or inappropriate moments – struggled desperately, and maybe with an even footing, it could have fought the bear to a draw or even won. But the bear had the advantage of surprise and had fought in a way no animal did. It simply tore into the wounded buffalo, slashing and savaging its body until it could take no more, and slumped down in defeat. The bear pulled back and then putting its full weight behind a single downward blow, crushed the buffalo's neck with an audible crack.
The gruesome task ended, the bear stepped off the carcass, and swung the huge, shaggy brown head to peer at me. It gave a kind of snuffling grunt, and leaned close to smell me. It did not seem to recognize me, so l lifted a trembling hand up to pat its snout gently. I was certain this was an Animorph, and I was even pretty sure which one. So I put my hand down and used it to push off the deck. I was covered in blood, and when I had morphed the hawk back in the valley, I had lost most of my clothes. I stood there in a pair of tights I wore under my pants against the chilly mountain nights, and a snug tank top, and faced down a specimen of one of the most dangerous animals on our planet, that had just killed at least four or five equally dangerous creatures, singlehandedly. I felt incredibly vulnerable, but at the same time I was confident, and a little desperate. If this was an Animorph, where were her teammates?
"Is that you, Rachel?" I asked, my voice surprising me with its steadiness.
She blinked a bit then I heard her thought-speak voice {Loren? What are you doing here?}
"I was looking for the rest of you. Where's Tobias?" I decided to hold off on the complicated explanations until I was certain that my son and his friends were not corpses on the bridge.
{Huh? Oh, they're on the Pool ship. I saw them all on the screen. They did it, I guess.} The massive head swung from side to side, seeming almost bewildered. Then the head began to shrink, and the brown fur sink beneath the surface of the skin. The bear reared up, but rapidly dwindled in size as it did so, giving the momentary impression of sinking backwards into the floor. Relatively soon, the transformation was complete, and in the place of the bear was a tall, pretty blonde teenager, who was still glancing around as if in confusion. "Wow, hey. It is you."
She turned to look back onto the bridge, and seemed to notice the shattered screen. "Oh, they're gone. Tobias was up there. He morphed human. I saw him. I told him…I … I got to…I …I was dead. I did it. I got him, Jake. Tobias told me where and I got him. It's all over, but I didn't want to go." She turned back and grabbed my upper arms. She was tall enough to look me in the eye. "I don't want to go, I'm not ready. I thought I was. I didn't think I'd be afraid…" She trailed off, blinking in embarrassment.
I eased her hands off my arms, and clasped one of them in one of mine, and started tugging her back up the corridor. "Rachel we have to go. It's alright, there's nothing to be afraid of. You got him and we can go. You got them all. We can go now."
She lurched forward a step and then jerked to a halt. "Go?"
"Yes, Rachel. We have to go home. We have to go back to the valley. Do you want to see your mom and your sisters? We can go back and see them and you can wait for your friend, Cassie, and your cousin, Jake, to come back."
"Mom? Oh, god." She stared into space for a second, and when I gave her hand another tug, she seemed to wake up. "Right, of course, you meant home…I thought…" She trailed off again, but was already walking down the corridor as fast as I could. She hurried after me. We darted past a couple of human Controllers heading for the bridge, and they turned as if to stop us, but without breaking stride, I called back "Hurry, they need your help, it's a mess up there! I have to get her to…" We turned a corner out of their site and I shut up. From there we hustled in the general direction of the docking bay, occasionally passing Controllers, but I didn't want to stop for a fight. I thought we had both come too close back on the bridge and I had a feeling that if we stopped, we'd get overwhelmed. I was sure I couldn't morph enough to do anything useful in a fight anyway.
We took a wrong turn, but I eventually found the place we had left the Bug fighter. Remembering at the last moment to check if I still had the morphing cube (I did), I climbed about the small ship, still tugging Rachel along with me. To my indescribable relief, Arbron was already aboard.
{What's this, Loren?} he asked. I made the introductions, but Rachel only nodded vaguely, still staring off at something a long way beyond the close confines of the small ship.
{Well, tend to her as best you can. The secondary command crew have taken control of the Blade ship and are preparing for z-space flight. The Andalite fleet may be arriving soon if it's not already here, and I would not like to travel any farther with this crew. Especially if one or both of you are responsible for the lack of a response from bridge.} He turned his attention back to the controls and the small fighter lifted off the deck and shot out into space.