Chapter 3

            I sat there, in those bucket seats that had seemed so big when I was younger.  My dad, when he was home, used to walk up here with me.  He'd push me and I'd yell "higher", "higher" until my feet appeared to touch the clouds.  My dad said I had the makings of a fantastic pilot.  I'd once asked him why he'd joined the Air Force in the first place, since it kept him away from his family so much.  He told me that, despite everything (the hard work, the time away) there was no experience more amazing than flying…Oh My God!

            I ripped open the bag and yanked out the newspaper clipping.  There, perched on my mother's shoulder, was a large hawk.  My father?!?!  I knew Tobias's story…everyone did.  He'd been trapped in a hawk morph a, a nothlit.  But somehow, and this was never clear, he's recovered his ability to morph.  Even then, he'd chosen to remain a hawk so that he could continue to fight.  After the war he must have…for my mother…wow, this was all too much.

            "So dad, you traded in your real wings for a pair of steel ones, eh?" I muttered to no one, tracing the outline of the picture with my fingers.  I out back the picture, pulled out my phone, and called the receptionist at the base.

            "Yes, how may I direct your call?"
            "I'd um, like to speak to Colonel Terrance please."

            "Hold on a moment…I'm sorry, he's not here, can I direct you to his voicemail?"

            "No.  This is his daughter, can you tell me where he went?"

            "I'm not actually sure.  He just said he had some urgent business to take care of."
            "Thank you," I muttered sadly.  So, they had my father too.  I felt anger welling up inside of me.  It was the Yeerks, had to be, back for a rematch.  Had to be.  Well I'd be damned if I was going to sit back and let them take everyone I cared about away from me. 

            "Better watch out Yeerks, 'cause you messed with the wrong chick!"

            I crawled out of the bushes and gently tapped on the window, praying nobody had seen me come here.  The shades parted above me and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

            "Bobby," I hissed, "let me in!"  Bobby and his twin sister Bridget are my best friends.  Bobby is one of those technological whiz kid, idiot savant thingies.  No seriously, he can disassemble a computer and put it together in about 6 hours flat.  I've seen him do it.  He's the kind of guy who, if you hand 2 pipe cleaners and a rubber band to, can rig up an intergalactic satellite or something.  Basically, he is brilliant, and I had a feeling that I'd be thanking my lucky stars that I knew him.

            "Should I ask why you're hanging out in my bushes at 8 o'clock at night?" he questioned as he grabbed my forearms and hauled my inside.

            "No, not really."

            "Okay, than can I ask why you're here?"  He returned to his computer as I flopped down on his floor.  I  hadn't realized how utterly exhausted I was until that very moment.  Right then, all I really wanted to do was pull the pillow off his bed and sleep for, like 2 weeks.  I decided to give him the abridged version of what had happened instead.

            "My parents are former Animorphs and they were kidnapped by the Yeerks who are out for revenge and they're after me too, only I've decided to try and save them and I need your help to figure out where they are and how to get them out," I said in one breath, going very fast.

            "Well, pretty shity day then, huh?" he questioned.  I chuckled grimly.

            "Yeah, pretty shity day."

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I'd asked Bobby to hack into the pentagon database to try and see if there had been any unauthorized space activity of late.  While he handled that, I filled him in with all the little details.

            "Yeah, mom never showed up at work, and then dad went missing," I informed him

            "So, Rachel and Tobias, huh?  Why do you think they went to all the trouble of changing names and locations.  I mean, they're famous.  Why leave that all behind?" he wondered.

            "I don't know," I said absently.  I was sitting on his bed, paging through my mom's journals, looking for something helpful.  "My mom's form was dated just after I was conceived.  And she's always been overprotective of me.  I think they were afraid of Yeerk retaliation; afraid I'd get hurt.  Afraid of what just happened."  My voice dropped.

            "Hey, were gonna find them.  I'll tear apart cyberspace until I do," Bobby assured me gently.  Then he jumped back on topic.  "But they ravaged the Yeerk empire.  According to this," he gestured to the screen, "they're only at 15% of their former strength.  How could they expect to succeed?" 

            "My mom wrote in the last journal, that the last battle, before the destruction of the pool ship, was against a controller named Tom and a band of his followers.  After the Visser's death earlier that day, they hijacked his Blade ship.  There was a massive dogfight between them and an Andalite cruiser, along with the Animorphs on the pool ship.  The Blade ship was damaged and escaped into Z-space.  It sounded like this was kind of a personal battle.  Like everyone had a beef with this 'Tom' person.  Anyway, I get the feeling that maybe this his him and his little crew, back solely for revenge."  I shrugged, "at least, that's my only motive right now.  Find anything yet?" I demanded.

            "No.  I'm going over to the Air Force CPU.  They'd be more likely to handle something as minor as a space breech…"  I kinda stopped listening then.  His mention of the Air Force just reminded me of my dad and made me depressed all over again.

            "I might never see them again…" I muttered dejectedly.  Bobby spun around in his chair, facing me.

            "Don't talk like that.  If you're your parents' child, and I know you are, you'll find a way to get them back.  And I'll be there to help every step of the way."  I was about to thank him, but that's when Bridget stormed in.

            "What the-," she'd started to demand loudly, but I clamped my hand over her mouth and yanked her in before she could get anything else out.

            "Shhhhhhhh!  Keep it down," I ordered her.  "No one can know I'm here."

            "Why are you here?" she questioned, but quieter than before.  I opened my mouth to explain, but Bobby jumped right in.

            "She's using me to hack into national computers so that I can find her parents, whose names are actually Rachel and Tobias, who have been captured by a small Yeerk task force bent on revenge so that she can charge in and save them."  Well, Bridget looked first at her brother, then at me, and remained silent for a good two minutes.  She looked at the gun or dracon beam or whatever, that I'd put on the bed, picked up and flipped through all three journals, and then looked back at me, her brows arched in contempt.

            "So, let me see if I have this straight.  You can't morph,"

            "Yup."

            "you can't shoot,"

            "Uh-huh."

            "and you have no idea where you're going,"

            "yes."

            "yet you plan on taking down an entire alien force and saving your parents, is that it?"

            "yep…pretty much."

            "Wicked!!" Bobby called to us, not even bothering to look up from his work.