Animorphs: Galactic War
6: Cyber Terror
In the ventilation shafts
The Animorphs met up with each other in the ventilation shafts. Actually they almost ran headlong into each other since they were in such a hurry.
They quickly swapped stories.
"Man! We guessed there were other humans here but we never thought they'd be used for…oh man!" Marco couldn't seem to find the words.
"Any idea what the Chelraks are planning to do with them?" Cassie asked in concern.
"Not much. They said something about making a new army out of them, whatever that means," Jake said. "Are you sure they're not looking for us now?"
"I don't think so," Rachel said. "Those guards thought I was one of their missing prisoners. It's them they're looking for."
"Whatever we're going to do we'd better do it fast before the Chelraks start wondering how an escaped girl laid out two of their armed guards," Tom said.
"What do we do now, Fearless Leader?" Marco asked.
"We're going to need help from the Andalites," Jake said. "I don't think we can take this base out alone."
"We'll need to take down their defence net then," Ryan said. "Galuit won't bring the ship in otherwise."
We should disable their communications too, Ax said. If they summon any more ships here, we're finished.
"Then we'll go for whatever power system they've got and knock out the whole lot, how's that?" Jake suggested.
"What about the prisoners here? Shouldn't we free them first?" Cassie asked.
Rachel shook her head. "The power first, Cassie. Once that's down it'll be easier to sneak around and we'll get help from the Andalites."
I'll go and tell Alloran what we're doing, Tobias said. He'll call the ship once the power's down.
"Ok. Good luck, Tobias," Jake said.
You more than me, Tobias replied. See you later.
Alloran's ship
Having no opposition Tobias managed to escape from the base easily through the ventilation shafts and then met up with Alloran and Estro and filled them in.
It's a good plan, Alloran said. I'll send a quick transmission and have Galuit move the Tailstrike here. Hopefully he'll bring a few other ships with him.
Any idea what they're planning to do with those people they've got? Tobias asked.
"They must have a way of enhancing them and controlling them at the same time if they're planning on using them as soldiers," Estro said. "At least that's my theory anyway."
Tobias had a bad feeling about this. Whatever it is, I just hope Jake and the others can stop it in time…
Chelrak base: lower levels
Jake and the others were now in the shafts of the lowest levels of the base. Ax said that the power core and the most vital areas were probably down there. Unfortunately this also meant the security was even higher and there were far more guards here than anywhere else.
"Look for a storeroom or something like that," Jake ordered. "The main corridors are too risky right now."
"There's a room just down there," Justin said. "But we still have to go through the corridor first."
"I'll check it first." Cassie quickly morphed to housefly and slipped into the corridor. It's all clear!
Everyone quickly climbed out of the shaft. Marco quickly gave Jake one of his disruptor rifles.
"Where'd you get these?" Jake asked in amazement.
"Took them off those guards earlier," Marco grinned. "Can you get these doors open, Ax?"
Ax had demorphed into his normal form and was working on the door mechanism. Ten seconds later the door opened.
Marco snorted in disgust. "It's just another storeroom. Nothing else."
The power room has to be on this level somewhere, Ax said.
"Fine. Let's find it!" Ryan said impatiently.
"Let's try down there," Marco said, pointing to another door at the end of the corridor. He was just about to start walking when he noticed Jake's eyes widen.
"Marco! Get down!"
Marco instantly dropped to the floor as Jake fired a green bolt from his rifle over his head back into the storeroom. There was a scream from behind as whoever it was crashed to the ground.
"Who the hell was that?" Marco exclaimed.
"I don't know, I just saw him coming out of the shadows," Jake replied.
Justin didn't look happy. He had managed to find the light switch in the storeroom. "Uh, guys, I think we just screwed up big-time!"
Everyone looked inside.
"Oh SHIT!" Jake said. It wasn't a Chelrak. He had just shot a teenage girl! She was just around his age and had dark hair.
Cassie quickly demorphed to human and hurried over to her. Jake's shot had only caught her on the arm but she was severely burned as the rifle had been on a high setting.
Jake was admonishing himself and cursing. "How could I have been so stupid? I should have…"
"Let it go, Jake," Rachel said. "How were you to know?"
"She's right, man," Marco said. "She could have been a lizard for all you knew."
"She must be one of the escaped prisoners," Cassie said.
"You're right. She's wearing the same sort of clothing as the ones in the tanks," Ryan said.
The girl was wearing a tight fitting grey bodysuit just as all the others had.
"I need something to bandage this with," Cassie said.
"Like what?" Tom asked. "We didn't bring any first aid stuff. I didn't think we needed it since we always heal when we morph."
Jake sighed. "Fine, use this." With that he tore up his T-shirt and tossed it to Cassie.
"Whoa! Cassie, you're getting a good show here!" Marco leered.
Jake snorted. "If you don't shut up, Marco, I'll shoot you next!"
We should hurry, Ax broke in. Guards may turn up at any moment.
"We can't just leave her here," Cassie said.
"I'll take her to a safe place," Tom said.
"How?" Ryan asked. "You'd have to go through the shafts again."
"Like this," Tom grinned and morphed into his Predator form. I'll take her back through the shafts and wait for you on the upper levels. We'll free the rest together once you're done down here.
"Ok Tom, see you in a few," Jake said as Tom picked up the girl and vanished into the ventilators.
Once he was gone, the others started checking the rest of the corridor.
Main lab
Saavek was feeling pleased with himself as he re-entered the main lab with two guards. The first test run had been a resounding success. However, he would still need to do some more tests before he could consider his work perfect. He was trying to decide which subject to take next when he received a call through his communicator from the base commander.
"Two of the escapees have been dealt with. Unfortunately we had to shoot them."
Saavek sighed. "It's not too great a loss. What about the third?"
"She's still at large. You should take some precautions. Somehow she managed to disable two of my men and take their weapons!"
"Fine! Shoot her on sight! Just don't let anything else ruin my work here!"
With that, Saavek abruptly cut the connection. "I'll take this one next." He pointed to the tank that contained a ten-year-old boy. He needed to see if this could work with subjects of different ages.
Power room
Jake and his team had taken the power room. With most of the Chelrak troops out looking for the girl Jake had just 'disabled', it had been an easy task. There had only been four Chelrak technicians and now they were in no state to offer any resistance.
"That was fun," Rachel said as she demorphed from her bear form.
Ax had moved to the computer and was trying to access it. What do you want me to do, Prince Jake? I can disable their power systems but I can do a little more than that.
"What do you mean by 'a little more', Ax?" Marco quickly asked.
I believe I can set the reactor to overload and destroy the entire base.
"Great! Let's do it!" Rachel said immediately.
"Hold on," Jake said. "We've got to think about this. We've still got the other prisoners upstairs. Can you set a timer on this, Ax?"
I can set a two-hour delay at most, Prince Jake. If I allow any more time the Chelraks could find a way through the encryption codes I'll be using and reverse it.
"Can you shut off all the power for that time as well?"
Yes, Prince Jake.
"Fine, do it, and stop calling me prince!"
Yes, Prince Jake.
Jake rolled his eyes. "I give up! I'll go check the corridor again before we go out."
While Jake and the others checked for guards Ax started hacking into the computer system. He was hoping to get a little more than a destroyed base out of this…
Upper level ventilation shafts
Tom had managed to drag the girl through the air ducts to the upper levels of the base when she started to come round. Tom quickly demorphed to human, he didn't want to give her any more nightmares than she'd already had.
"Take it easy," Tom said. "We're safe for now."
"Wh-who are you?" the girl asked warily.
"I'm Tom. Me and my friends were going to blow up this base. We didn't bargain on finding you here. What's your name? How'd you get out here?"
"I'm Hannah Stevens. I'm…not sure how I got here."
"How much do you remember?" Tom asked gently.
"I was walking home from school. All of a sudden I hear a funny noise from behind me and everything went black. Next thing I know I'm waking up in a big goldfish bowl, soaked to the skin, my clothes are gone and I'm wearing this!" Hannah gushed.
"What did you do then?"
"What do you think? Once I found a way out of that bowl I just ran for my life, especially since I had some big lizards with guns chasing after me!" Hannah sobbed. "What is happening? What did I ever do to deserve this?!"
"Take it easy," Tom said as he started to move down the shaft. "Come on, we've got to get out of here."
Hannah's eyes widened as she remembered a crucial fact. "Wait! We've got to go back for Chad!"
"Chad?" Tom asked in confusion.
"He's my kid brother. He's only ten! I saw him floating in another one of those goldfish bowls along with some other people! We've got to go back!"
"Ok, ok, let's wait for the others to get here and then we'll go rescue them," Tom suggested.
"You can stay here if you want but I'm not waiting! I'm going to find him now!" With that, Hannah started clawing her way down the shaft.
"Hannah, wait!" Tom pleaded.
Hannah just kept going.
"Shit, I knew I was going to regret this!" Tom muttered and started to follow.
Main lab
Saavek had just returned to the lab when the lights suddenly went out. Thirty seconds later the emergency lights kicked in and his communicator sounded.
"Science Leader, are you all right? The base's power has failed!"
"I can see that, fool!" Saavek snapped. "Why don't you try looking for the cause of this? It's a wild guess but you might try looking in the power room!"
Saavek cut the connection muttering in anger. He couldn't proceed with his experiments on emergency power only. Whoever had done this was going to pay dearly…
Power room
Base Commander Kraal was having a very bad day. It had all started when three of the test subjects had escaped from the lab and had somehow managed to knock out two of his guards. Things had started to look up when he had found and killed two of the escapees but then his day was ruined completely by the fact that in less than an hour he wouldn't have a base to command!
"You can't reverse the overload?" he asked the technicians frantically.
They all shook their heads no. Cursing violently, Kraal reached for his communicator. "Lieutenant Ralgha!"
"Ralgha here."
"The power core has been sabotaged! Have everyone evacuate the base at once. Bring all the portable power units and equipment you can find, we'll need to rig up a long-range communicator so we can call one of our ships here. By the way, if you see any intruders, KILL THEM ON SIGHT!"
"Understood."
Kraal then called Saavek. He knew the Science Leader would not like this.
Main lab
Saavek answered Kraal's call quickly. "About time! When will the power be restored?"
"It can't be restored!" Kraal nervously replied. "We've been sabotaged. The base will cease to exist in less than an hour!"
"WHAT!" Saavek couldn't believe it. "You can't be serious!"
"I'm very serious, Science Leader. You must take what you have and prepare to evacuate. I'll send some guards up to escort you out as the saboteurs are probably still here."
Saavek cursed under his breath. Then an evil grin spread across his face. "Don't bother! I won't need guards if my work holds up. I'll meet you at the evacuation zone."
Saavek quickly ran out of the lab to rejoin his fellow scientists. At least he had managed to achieve some results. With luck, those same results would help him get revenge on these saboteurs…
Ventilation shafts
Meanwhile Tom had finally managed to catch up with Hannah.
"Hannah! Wait up! The power's just gone down so the others will be joining us soon. We'll go together! If we keep going like this all we'll do is get lost in this maze!"
Hannah sighed. "I suppose you're right. I just hope they're not going to be long."
"Tom? Is that you?"
"Jake? Good timing!"
Jake and the others quickly caught up to them.
"You were quicker than I thought," Tom said.
"The Chelraks were coming to check the power room out so we had to bail out quickly," Rachel said. "Ax had to accelerate the timer. We've only got one hour now!"
"Not yet we can't," Tom said. He quickly brought them up to speed.
"I think I remember the kid you're talking about," Justin said. "He should still be in that tank in the lab."
The lab should be this way if I remember right, Ax said. He had morphed to bird.
Hannah's eyes went wide. "A talking bird?"
Marco grinned. "We'll explain later. Come on!"
Main lab
They reached the main lab with just over half an hour to spare. Hannah almost fainted when Ax demorphed to his normal form.
"Trust me," Rachel told her. "You don't want to pass out now. You'll miss all the excitement."
"In that case you definitely want to pass out," Marco said. "I've seen what Xena calls excitement and it's never good!"
"I'll tell you what isn't good," Ryan butted in. "There's only eight tanks here! Two are missing!"
Hannah was instantly alarmed. "Chad! He's not here!"
"Damn it!" Jake said. "We haven't the time to go looking for him and the other guy who's missing. This place is going to blow soon!"
The others will be revived in one minute, Prince Jake. Ax had accessed the tanks' control systems. They will almost certainly be disorientated after so long in stasis.
"We've got to get them to the roof quickly anyway," Jake said. "We haven't time to do anything else."
Ax had soon 'defrosted' the rest. As he had expected, they could barely stand and they had to be helped into the ventilator shafts.
"We have to go now!" Rachel said. "Wherever the others are, we haven't the time to look for them!"
"Then allow me to save you the trouble!" They all whirled round to see Saavek standing in the doorway. "I thought you might come here to free the rest of them. I'm glad to see I wasn't wrong. I was expecting Andalites, not humans."
"Want me to make an overnight bag out of this guy?" Justin snarled as he prepared to morph.
Saavek sneered. "You're welcome to try. But you'll have to fight your way past my new allies first!"
A ten-year-old boy and a man came up behind Saavek. Or, at least, that was what they had once been. The left sides of their faces were now covered with cybernetic implants and they wore heavy metal body armour. Both carried disruptor rifles.
Hannah knew the kid all too well. "Chad?!"
Chad showed no sign of recognising Hannah, or any emotion at all for that matter. The other man was just as cold.
"Don't bother trying to reason with them," Saavek smiled. "They're now the perfect exterminators and you've earned the honour of being their first targets! Annihilate them!"
Chad and his other cyborg friend didn't hesitate as they raised their guns and opened fire. Justin just managed to knock Hannah out of the way of a disruptor bolt as Chad tried to shoot her in the head. Somehow everyone found cover behind the empty specimen tanks.
Prince Jake! Shoot the door lock! Ax advised.
Jake quickly aimed his gun and blasted the door mechanism and the doors closed up. Saavek and Chad were trapped outside but the other cyborg managed to squeeze through.
"Damn it! What's plan B then, Fearless Leader?" Ryan asked.
Plan B is me! Rachel said. She had morphed to bear and was starting to shove the tanks across the floor at the cyborg. One caught him head on and he was knocked flat on his back.
"He's down. Run for the shaft now!" Jake ordered. "We've only got ten minutes left!"
Jake and Marco fired their guns at full power, forcing the cyborg to dive for cover and giving Rachel time to demorph. They kept firing until their power packs were completely drained, fortunately this was enough time for them to reach the shaft entrance.
Saavek and Chad forced the doors open in time to see Rachel demorph and then escape along with the others.
"Did I actually see that?" Saavek couldn't believe his eyes. Humans with morphing capability? The Emperor had to be informed of this at once! He fled from the lab followed quickly by his cyborg creations.
Alloran's shuttle
Once the power had gone down, the Tailstrike entered orbit and Alloran had been able to park the shuttle on the base's roof and picked everyone up the minute they emerged from the shafts. Two minutes after they had lifted off the base became a huge fireball.
Despite their success, Alloran couldn't help noticing that everyone wasn't in the best of spirits.
What's wrong, Prince Jake? Your mission was a success, wasn't it?
Jake looked back to see Cassie trying to console a distraught Hannah.
"Yeah. It was good, but it wasn't good enough…"
The Tailstrike
Galuit listened to Jake's report with growing dread. He was pleased at the destruction of the research base but the news of the cyborgs wasn't so good.
It is as I feared. The Chelraks have now adopted Yeerk tactics: using other races as troops. Are there any flaws in these cyborg soldiers?
None that we could see, War-Prince, Ax replied grimly.
"They were perfect killers. Cold as ice," Rachel said. "No feeling, nothing."
Cassie nodded. "One nearly killed his elder sister and he didn't even show any sign of knowing it."
Galuit grimaced. So their control over them is total. One form of controller for another!
"First slug controllers now cyber controllers," Marco sighed. "We're way overdue for some good luck!"
"Can't we reverse what the Chelraks have done?" Cassie asked hopefully.
No. Not without detailed plans of their conversion process, Galuit said.
I might be able to help with that, Ax said as he produced a small disc.
"Where did you get that?" Ryan asked.
I hacked into their computers when I was sabotaging the power core. I just downloaded whatever I could access so I have no idea what's on it. It might be of some help.
Whatever it is, I'm sure Intel will appreciate it, Galuit said.
"At least they've only got two working cyborgs right now," Tom said. "Hannah and the others were captured only recently."
"Any idea as to how she got out of the tanks?" Jake asked. "I thought someone in stasis had to be revived."
Correct, Prince Jake. No one can revive themselves from stasis, Ax said.
"Then who let her out?" Justin asked in confusion. "It certainly wasn't us. Doesn't she know?"
Tom shook his head. "She couldn't see who revived her. Whoever it was had gone by the time she got out."
Jake shrugged his shoulders. "Let's forget it for now. We've got more important things to think about."
Galuit then placed a call to the bridge. Set course for Earth immediately.
"We're going back home?" Marco asked.
We have to drop our 'guests' off before we can do anything else, Galuit said. Besides it's possible that the Chelraks may attack your world in force now that they know their process works!
"Oh great!" Jake muttered.
Alloran tried to reassure him. Don't worry, Prince Jake. We'll assemble a large force of ships there in no time.
"Which, knowing the Chelraks, is exactly how much time we have," Marco said grimly.
Chelrak Command Ship
Kraal and Saavek were not feeling too happy either as they gave their report to Slaar. Not surprisingly, he wasn't taking it well.
"I fail to understand how two commanders of your calibre failed to eliminate this problem. With the resources you had at your disposal it's hard to give credit to the reports that a few human hatchlings and one Andalite managed to destroy one of our best research bases. However, given the current condition of that base, I must concede that it is indeed true. I'm finding it increasingly difficult to justify to my inner circle the resources I have given you, Saavek! Would you care to enlighten me as to why I should not discontinue my support for you?"
"Despite the loss of the base, my research was still a success," Saavek replied. "My cyber-conversion process has produced two perfect killers! Despite the physical weakness of the subjects they are now excellent soldiers. We need to press ahead and get stronger subjects for conversion now that morph-capable humans are working against us!"
"Morph-capable?" Slaar couldn't believe it. "Those humans had Andalite morphing technology?"
"I saw it myself, Emperor. I'm certain of it. The Andalites must have made an alliance with the humans."
Slaar paused for a moment. "All right, Science Leader. I will consider this. Continue your work but don't fail me again!" He turned to Kraal. "As for you, your security was pathetic! We knew about the Andalites' morphing abilities so you should have anticipated a move like this. You entered this room a commander. You leave it a lieutenant. Now get out of my sight!"
Kraal and Saavek quickly left before the Emperor could vent any more of his wrath.
Commander Izlyr entered as soon as they had left. "Is there something you want me to do, Emperor?"
"Yes. Alert the 5th Fleet. Prepare them for offensive operations against the Earth system! I had intended to leave the humans alone. Saavek said they weren't physically strong when he complained about the subjects we captured. Due to that I thought they were no threat but since they have actively attacked us alongside the Andalites I can see I was wrong. It's time the humans realised the risks they are taking by allying themselves with our enemies!"
"Won't the Andalites anticipate such a move now that they have discovered Saavek's work?"
"Quite possibly. There will be reinforcements available if you need them."
"What condition do you want the planet in, Emperor?"
"That's up to you. You can capture it or burn it to ash! Either way I want it eliminated by the end of the week!"
TO BE CONTINUED…