Chapter 5
The planet was mostly barren, but there were deep valleys, which were obviously filled with rich plant life. However, it looked as though something had hurt the land, for there were scorch marks and fallen trees everywhere. The trees were humongous.
We hurtled downwards at an amazing rate. I held onto Cassie tightly. The Garatron's antics of shooting at us were getting old fast.
The Garatron/Kelbrid have come into Andalite territory, Ax announced. Menderash glared at the rapidly receding Garatron ship behind us.
I looked forward. We had started burning through the thin atmosphere, and details were coming more clearly into focus. At the bottom of the valleys, I saw a poisonous purple mist. Cassie looked at me, her eyes wide. We came even closer, and I could tell that we were going to land in one of the valleys.
Ax, Yahal, and Menderash were feverishly trying to control the ship as it hurtled through the air. We were at treetop level when they finally managed to slow the ship down enough for a controlled landing. We zipped through the thousand-foot-tall trees, and Ax finally brought us to a stop on a somewhat level area of the valley. Below us were nearly-healed over scorch marks. We were concealed by the ridiculously large trees and the strange atmosphere that was so much thicker in the valley than it was on the barren waste of the surface of the planet.
Is my ship damaged badly? Miaker demanded.
I do not know, Ax replied. We will need to look it over.
"Wait a second," I interrupted. "Just hold on for one second. Captain Miaker, how do you know the Garatron?" Both Marco and I were staring daggers at the captain of the remaining Murkra.
I was angry. It seemed to me that the Murkra knew the Garatron, and they disliked them, which was causing the
Garatron to chase us even more, delaying our return to earth. My return to normal life.
Miaker turned to face me. Yes, he said, We do know the Garatron.
At this, all of us became deathly silent, daring him to say more.
Each year out of a century that we came out of our frozen state, we stopped on various planets to see if they would support us very well. None that we found did, but if we liked the creatures we found on that planet, we would take a few onto the ship with us, to live with us when we finally did settle down. The creatures that eventually became the Garatron, as well as some other parasitic species, were brought onto our ship as pets.
First Ax, Yahal, and Menderash started glaring at him, and then the rest of us looked at him in shock.
Where exactly did you find the ancestors of the Garatron? asked Ax menacingly. Yahal's tail was twitching, as though he might jump Captain Miaker at any moment.
You must understand that this was many tens of thousands of years ago, Miaker said desperately. The Garatron's ancestors were not exactly as they are now! They were shaggy, slightly smaller, and had just started using thoughtspeak. They barely thought!
Throughout this, Ax, Yahal, and Menderash were becoming more and more stiff, and Menderash's face was coloring bright red.
"Where did you find the ancestors of the Garatron?" asked Menderash slowly and angrily. His hands were clenching and unclenching, over and over again.
Captain Miaker made a small chittering noise, which I took for a sign of worry. Where are we?
Yahal answered him. We are on a planet in the Milky Way galaxy, in the same arm as earth and the Andalite homeworld. You may look at the star charts.
Miaker put his fingers on a computer console, gave some commands mentally, and a small holograph of the galaxy came up. The Murkra captain looked at it for a moment, and finally pointed at a star near, or at least in galactic terms, the one that was circled, meaning the star we were around.
Ax froze for a moment, and then whipped his tail around and stilled it only millimeters away from what I could only presume was a crucial point in the Murkra's anatomy.
"Wait! Ax! What are you doing?" I yelled, confused, trying to make sense of all of the Andalites' anger. I had suspicions, but I did not know for sure.
His voice quivering in fury, Ax replied, That star is the sun of the Andalite homeworld. These filthy crabs stole Andalites off of their own world and forced them to become the Kelbrid! Ax was nearly screaming.
Evenly, I asked the Murkra one last question. "Captain Miaker, what about the parasitic slugs? Where were they from.?"
He pointed to another star, and Menderash's red face drained of all color. Ax's tail started to twitch, and Captain Miaker froze, trying to stay in one piece.
"Which star is that?"
No one answered.
"Which star?" I was getting frustrated.
Finally, Yahal answered me. That is the sun of the Yeerk homeworld.
"Wait, so you're saying the Murkra were the people who brought the ancient Andalites and the ancient Yeerks over to that other galaxy and created the Garatron and the Iskoort?" Marco asked.
Ax looked at us and nodded, but it was unsettling as always because his stalk eyes stayed in place.
Miaker then said nervously, We did not mean to do harm when we took them, we only meant to have pets.
Ax, Yahal, and Menderash's attentions had gone back to the captain of the Murkra, and they were glaring at him even more, if that was possible.
"You took a thinking, sentient Andalite ancestor for a pet?" Menderash nearly shrieked.
Yes, Miaker said softly, And we are sorry. But when we took the two hundred or so herd animals, we thought it would be good. We made a small environment for them in one area of the ship, but we destroyed it long ago. After a few thousand years, while we were frozen for most of the time but let them live normally, they evolved, and became smarter, faster, and more aggressive. The stories of their homeland became fables as the story was told through the generations, and they eventually came to hate us for taking them away from what they had come to perceive as a paradise. About one thousand, five hundred years ago, when we unfroze ourselves for our one year out of a century, they turned against our forefathers. They slaughtered almost half of us, and forced us to free them on the first planet that supported their life. When they left us, they also freed the other aliens we had taken, namely the parasites, and gave them their own planet. Ever since then, our two races, the Garatron and the Murkra, have been at war. We have barely seen them, but they pass down our descriptions in their stories. That is why they want to destroy us. They think that we removed them from paradise.
Ax, still angry, managed to say, You took ancient Andalites from their homeworld, and forced them to become a new species from what they would have become. You deserved it.
We are sorry, the captain said, and then the voices of the other Murkra joined his in apology. The captain continued. It was not our fault, it was our so-many-greats-grandparents. They were the ones that first took the Garatron's ancestors.
When Seerow gave the power to travel the galaxy to the Yeerks, it was not the rest of the Andalite race's fault, yet we tried to destroy them anyway. It is your responsibility to fix the errors of your ancestors, otherwise nothing is ever accomplished, Yahal stated philosophically.
Defensively, Captain Miaker replied, "They were happy on their new planet. They had a large empire."
And they are now at war with their close cousins the Andalites.
I felt as though I were just watching a scene in a movie, and the Andalites, Menderash, and the Murkra were the only actors in the video. It was a fight in which the humans had no business. Looking at my other human friends, and Toby, I could tell that they felt the same way.
I truly thought that Ax's tail was going to chop Miaker into two pieces. Yahal, Ax, and Menderash were murderous about what the Murkra's ancestors had done to their own ancestors.
"Wait, Ax, stay calm," I cautioned.
Ax was so tense that he jumped and a thin line of purplish-blue blood appeared on Captain Miaker's back. He was trembling.
"Ax! Ax, Yahal, Menderash, look, Captain Miaker can't help what his ancestors did."
Now the Andalites were giving me death-stares.
I think we have visitors, cautioned Tobias.
I looked in the direction he was looking, and saw four horned goblins approaching through the trees. I turned back to the fight. "Ax, Yahal, Menderash, look around you. There are hundreds of other Murkra. The ship has weapons. We do not want them mad at us. And so far, they have not done us any harm. And there are other aliens coming. Please calm down."
To my relief, Ax moved his tail, but still kept it ready. The small dinosaur-looking things swung closer, and we waited. They finally became recognizable, and came onto the ground a few yards away, trying to hide. They were Hork-Bajir.
Toby stood up straight, excited, and then moved toward her fellow Hork-Bajir. At first they cringed, but seeing that she meant no harm, they came forward.
In a mix of English, Hork-Bajir, and Galard, Toby pronounced us friends.
The new Hork-Bajir said something back to her, and she nodded.
"Remember," she said, "When the last of the Arn came to earth to get DNA samples of the free Hork-Bajir in order to create Hork-Bajir to fight the Yeerks?"
We nodded, and Cassie placed her small hand in mine. When the Arn had come, Cassie had carried the ixcila of Aldrea, an Andalite nothlit trapped as a Hork-Bajir that helped fight the Yeerks, inside her own head. All of us, the Animorphs, came with the Arn and Toby to the Hork-Bajir homeworld to find where Aldrea had stashed a spaceship and weapons to help fight.
Toby continued. "Well, this is the Hork-Bajir homeworld. One," she gestured at the oldest alien, "Is the mixture of a few of my people on earth. This other one," she said, gesturing at another, "Was a controller, but was freed by the fighters here. The other two are children of both the Hork-Bajir created from the DNA of my people on earth and freed Hork-Bajir. The Arn was successful. My people are thriving here!"
She turned around, exuberant. All of the humans were smiling back at her. The Murkra looked lost, but did the equivilent of a Murkra smile anyway. Even the Andalites and Menderash managed to loosen up a bit and smile. It was one of those moments where everything was still, everything was perfect. I even managed to forget, just for a moment, everything that had happened in the past three and a half years. It was so calm.
However, then all of us except for Toby saw something that made our blood run cold. Our smiles slowly fell. Toby looked at us, confused. It made perfect sense to her, though, when she turned around and followed our gazes to about a mile away in the valley where you could just see the top of the Garatron ship descending into the trees.
Suddenly, I heard a loud wheezing noise behind us, and I whipped myself around to see what was there, hoping it wasn't a Garatron. Standing behind us, looking uncertain and confused as to our surroundings, was Guide, the Iskoort.
"Guide! What are you doing here?!" I demanded, baffled.
I… I stayed on the ship after the humans, Andalite, and other creature left so I could make sure that it was alright. The Iskoort we bought it from belong to a guild known for deceit. I was trying to make sure it was okay! he exclaimed.
I shook my head, trying to clear it and get rid of the headache starting to come strong. "So then why are you still on it? We bought it almost a day ago."
I was about to leave, but I heard loud noises and thought it was Iskoot from the Warmaker Guild coming to ruin the ship, so I hid. Then I felt the engine start, and so I've been hiding ever since then. I thought they would hurt me! But the engines stopped a bit ago, so I came out and found you. Where are we?
I sighed, consigned to the fact that we were going to have to keep Guide with us, along with me, nine other humans, two Andalites, one hawk, and one Hork-Bajir. Not to mention a few hundred Murkra. "Great. Just great. Alright, Guide? You can stay with us, but you have to listen to us. We're still on the run from those Garatron, and we don't know how we're going to get back home, much less get you home. Okay?"
Guide answered. "Yes, I can do that. And anyway, you still haven't paid me your memories for finding you everything yet. He did a Iskoort grin.
A/N: Merry Christmas and a happy New Year, everybody lucky enough to be reading this! (Also, happy Hanukah, Kwanzaa, and any other holiday you may be celebrating right now!) Well, okay, it's not Christmas, it's three days afterwards, but this is the first time I've worked on this since last Saturday or Sunday. I'm really sorry it's taking so long to get these chapters up, even though they are finished, but we went on vacation to the middle of nowhere for break, meaning *cries* no internet access! *Starts sobbing uncontrollably, rolling on the floor kicking, and screaming, "NOOO!!! I NEED MY FANFICTION.NET!!!!!!!!!! MUST HAVE FANFICTION.NET!!!!!!" (Hehehe, I suffer from withdrawal without my wonderful website… and my wonderful email… and my wonderful instant messenger… Oh well, I'm having fun out here and it's probably good for me… and since we're close to the Mexico-U.S.A. border, I get to practice my Spanish whenever we cross over the Rio Grande. Wouldn't my baka onna no inu of a Spanish teacher be proud!)* Yeah, anyway… ^_^ Well, I'm hoping we are going to stay at a campsite with internet access, and I can catch either Emily, Shawna, or Ami online so I can ask them a quick question and then post chapters three, four, and five! (And maybe chapters six, seven, eight… too, if I can finish them…) Well, this is getting to be a very very very very very very long Author's Note, so I'm going to shut up after I sing this lovely song I'm working on in voice lessons for you because I'm hyper:
El Majo Discreto
Dicen que mi majo es feo. Es posible que si que lo sea. Que amor es deseo que ciega y marea. Ha tiempo que sé que quien á mano vé.
Más si no es mi majo un hombre, que por lindo descuelle ya sombre. En cambio es descreto y guardaun secreto que y pose en él sabiendo que es fiel.
Cuál es el secreto que el majo guardó? Seria indiscreto contarlo yo. No poco trabajo costará saber secretos de un majo con una mujer. Nació en Lavapies. Eh! Eh! Es un majo, un majo es.
~Enrique Granados
Wow… That's really short just written out like that… It's actually about two minutes long when sung, because you have to draw out all the words, and there's the piano interludes as well… It's a really pretty song too. It's really hard… There's a high A in it… And lots of trilling… And it's just kind of hard… But it's really pretty… And I'm repeating myself, and this is an amazingly long Author's Note, so I'm shutting up now. Bye! *Waves, and then turns around and walks off singing another weird song, UFO by Pink Lady, this one in Japanese. (The song was really popular in Japan in the seventies.) Ax looks around, and sees people looking at her, shrugs, and starts doing the even weirder dance that goes to the song that she knows by heart. A flock of loons flies ahead of her, and seeing them, she stops singing and dancing, and instead starts singing "We Are the Champions," but changes the words to "The loons are the champions," and "No time for humans." She bows low, and grins maniacally as the sun sets and the loons begin to glow a radioactive green. She leans forward, then throws herself backwards into a back handspring, which she continues to do until she can no longer be seen, all the while screaming "Watashi-tachi wa kirei chiyagaru desu! Mariko to Flock wa doko desu ka?"*