Disclaimer: I don't own Animorphs. That honor belongs to K.A. Applegate. And let me tell you, I've been planning this part since I read the last Animorphs book… (I must have been working on ch4 or 5 then) It's what made me press on with this story even when I was sick of it and didn't feel like writing. Not for this particular chapter, but the events coming in the following ones. That's right you faithful readers, this is the beginning of the end for Heir of the Ice-Jin. But don't worry yet, there is a plan in the works for a sequel. We'll just have to see how this goes first… (BTW, still don't own DBZ, Tenchi Muyo, Farscape, Pokemon, or Star Wars. I just don't want anyone getting ideas) Oh, I almost forgot, if you haven't read the Animorphs series you might get kinda lost. For anyone who hasn't read it, I'll try to put in as much backstory as possible. For anyone who has read some of it, this contains spoilers from book 54.

The wormhole dropped them in deep space, light years from the nearest star system. Cryos concentrated on sensing his parents' energy signatures out in the depths of space.

THERE! He felt them very far away, but couldn't place where. The feeling was blurred somehow. There somewhere here, He thought, and I'm not gonna give up until I find them. No matter what it takes.

"Cryos?" Kentra asked. "What is it?"

"They're here." He muttered. "They're actually here. My parents are here…"

"Houston," Draco bellowed, "we have a problem…"

"Draco," Cryos warned him, "I'm not in the mood for your antics right now."

"No really! There's a problem here!"

"What is it!?" maybe if Draco got some attention he'd shut up.

"THERE'S A SHIP ON A COLLISION COURSE WITH US!!" Draco shouted.

"What!? Get out of the WAY!!" But even as Cryos said the words, he saw the ship coming right at them and knew they'd never get out of the way in time.

He had one option. Grabbing Kentra, he raced to Draco's cargo hold. Even as he ran, he felt the collision and rush of escaping air. He slammed the door shut behind him. It would stay pressurized long enough for Kentra to get her spacesuit on.

Even then, she was quite dizzy by the time she managed to put her helmet on. But once she got it locked down she was all right.

Going back out into the bridge, they saw the gaping wound in Draco's hull. Draco was unconscious and quiet. But he'd probably be plenty annoying later to make up for any downtime now.

The ship that had hit them was no better off. The hull wasn't breached, but they were venting air from cracks. As the other ship slowly spun in space, Cryos saw the engines. They were trashed, ruined, completely unfixable.

It was too bad really, because it was a very nice ship. It was built on a shape like a stretched boomerang, with the engines at the curved part and some kind of laser weapons at the outstretched tips.

"We'll have to help them," Said Kentra, "it's our fault they crashed."

Cryos glanced up at Draco's hull breech. It had healed, but there wasn't enough air for sound to carry yet.

Suddenly, Draco's voice screamed. Apparently the air pumps had restored the pressure. "THEY HIT ME!! THEY HIT MEEEE!!! I'LL KILL THEM!!"

"Personally Draco," Cryos told him, "I'd like to leave them out here too, but that'd be no better than murder in a situation like this. Could you get close enough to grab them? I'm gonna board."

"And kill them?" Draco asked hopefully.

"I doubt it." Cryos muttered. "Kentra, Zon? I want you to watch Draco while I'm gone so he doesn't do anything stupid."

"That will most likely be a difficult task…" Zon told him.

But Cryos just ignored him as Draco got in close, opened his mouth and grabbed hold of one of the other ship's forward sweeping parts. When he had an airtight grip, Cryos dropped down into his mouth and ripped into the other ship's hull.

He was greeted with a wall of smoke. Apparently the other ship had some pretty bad internal damage as well.

Cryos felt his way through the smoke filled hallway towards what he hoped was the bridge. Then, off in the distance, he heard human voices yelling! He couldn't make out what they were saying yet, but he ran as fast as he dared to the source of the sounds.

The hallway opened up into a larger room filled with smoke. There were at least five people in the smoke, Cryos couldn't see to be sure, and something else was there too. Something with flapping wings.

Suddenly the flapping thing flew right into Cryos's face! It was a hawk! A common, everyday, Earth hawk!

JAKE! WE'VE BEEN BOARDED! It took Cryos a moment to realize that the voice came from the hawk! Apparently it wasn't a normal bird.

A voice in the smoke yelled, "Everyone! Battle morphs now!"

Cryos had no idea what was going on until a huge gorilla came lunging at him through the smoke! Cryos easily jumped over the slow moving animal, but before he had time to figure out why a very alien looking spacecraft was filled with Earth animals, a tiger stepped up out of the smoke.

Speak Yeerk. And do it quickly before I decide to rip your throat out. Cryos looked down at the tiger. It wasn't really talking, he just heard the voice in his head. It was similar to Professor Xavier's telepathy.

"I don't know what you are," Cryos told the tiger, "or why you think I'm a Yeerk, but I'm here to help you."

A Human man came running out of the smoke next carrying something that could only be a weapon judging from how he was pointing it at Cryos's face. "What are you talking about?!" He demanded.

Cryos glared at him. "I don't like people who point guns at me…"

Well tough! It was the gorilla again. He raised his arms for a massive, two-handed punch.

With a light-footed backflip, Cryos jumped behind the big ape and landed a blow to the back of his neck that knocked him out cold.

The Human with the gun fired. Cryos felt a slight tingle of energy where the beam hit his side.

He whipped his tail over his shoulder and snatched the weapon out of the mans hands. With a curl of his tail, he reduced it to tiny useless pieces.

Cryos was ready just about ready to leave these people to die in space, but Kentra came up behind him. "How's it going?" She asked.

"Oh the usual, really. We're working out a deal right now."

"Are we doing to help them?"

"Well right now it seems they're trying to convince me to kill them."

"Oh, Cryos!" Kentra hit him lightly on his back. "I'll take care of this." She stepped up to the thinning smoke and announced, "We're here to help you! You're ship's damaged badly! We can help!"

What makes you think we need any of your help, Yeerk? Yet another psychic voice called as a small bear came charging at her. Kentra reacted too fast for the bear though. She spun once on her heel and kicked the beast in the head. It stumbled, but didn't pass out.

Cryos saw the Human rising up with another gun. This time he pointed it at Kentra.

Just before he fired, Cryos glanced at the small weapon. His eyes flashed as he overloaded it's power supply and it exploded in the surprised man's hand, badly burning him. He wouldn't be holding any more guns for awhile.

EVERYBODY STOP! Kentra looked around, trying to find the source of the voice, but Cryos recognized it as the tiger. I don't think they're Yeerks. What do you think Menderash?

The human, who was apparently named Menderash, answered, "They aren't any species I've ever seen, but who knows what kind of host bodies the Yeerks may have found in Kelbrid space."

I say kill them! The bear reared up on it's hind legs and lunged at Kentra again. She punched it in the jaw and it was out cold.

EVERYBODY STOP FIGHTING UNTIL I FIGURE OUT WHAT'S GOING ON! The tiger yelled again. You! He looked at Cryos. What are you!?

"My name is Cryos." Cryos told the tiger. "This is Kentra, and there are two others, Draco and Zon. We are travelers, and approaching the end of our journey too, until you crashed into us! Being good people, we decide to help. So you attack us! I'm tempted to leave you stranded out here!"

Hmm… The tiger started to pace in the confides of the small room as he thought it over. You said our ship was badly damaged?

"Yeah, the engines are trashed. What kind of engines are those anyway? Hyperspace drive?"

"No," Menderash announced proudly, "Zero-Space engines."

"You go around on Zero-Space engines?!" Cryos shouted in disbelief. "I thought they were Warp Drive or Subspace at least! I'd rather fly under my own power than use Zero-Space!"

"What's wrong with Zero-Space?" Menderash demanded.

"Other than how unpredictable it is? It can take months to get anywhere! Even a Subspace gets you anywhere in the galaxy in a couple of weeks! And a Hyperdrive can do it in a few days tops! I could Starburst anywhere in the Universe almost instantly! And of course Zero Space will never take you exactly where you want to go."

"Yes, well-" Menderash started to argue before the tiger cut him off.

Listen, this isn't the time to argue! We need to figure out what we're gonna do.

The gorilla struggled to his feet. I suggest taking an aspirin, I'm open to a new suggestion after that.

I say we demorph.

"But Prince Jake," Menderash pointed out, "if you demorph, you'll be defenseless in your Human bodies should these creatures turn out to be hostile."

Cryos was completely lost by now. It's a chance I'm willing to take. Jake the tiger told him. Everyone who's morphed, demorph now.

Jake started to change right before Cryos's eyes. In less than a minute, he changed from a fully-grown tiger to a teenage boy who couldn't have been older than eighteen. Kentra stuck closely to Cryos through the whole process.

The gorilla was changing as well. It became another boy about the same age, but a little bit shorter.

The bear wasn't changing because it hadn't woken up yet.

Right about then the smoke started to clear. Some little air vents had just turned on and they cleared the room in just a few seconds. A Human man crawled out from under a workstation holding a tool of some kind. "Ok, I think that outta do it for the air-filtration systems." He froze when he saw Cryos and Kentra standing in the room. "Um, did I miss something?"

"You could say that." Jake told him. "Apparently we didn't crash with the blade ship like we planned, we hit these guys." Jake tapped a few buttons on the control panel and brought up a radar screen. "It looks like the Yeerks are gone now. Our one chance to find The One and we blew it."

"Could someone please explain what's going on here?" Cryos demanded.

"I'll do it." Said the young man who, just minutes before had been the gorilla. "You've probably heard about the Animorphs, right?"

"Err… No." Cryos admitted. "We aren't from around here."

"Ok, well a few years back, these aliens called Yeerks tried to conquer the Earth. A group of Humans using Andalite morphing technology, that's the power to acquire the DNA of an animal and then morph into it, defeated them. That group of Humans was us, well, some of us. Menderash there is an Andalite trapped in morph, and Sargent Santorelli "He pointed at the Human man who had been under the control panel earlier, "And Jeanne there" He pointed at the still-unconscious bear on the floor, "are new recruits."

"And the bird?" Kentra asked.

"That's Tobias. He was trapped in morph as a hawk, but got his powers back. It's a long story though, so I won't go into it now. Anyway, we had an Andalite on the Animorphs too. His name was Ax, and a few weeks ago, he was out in deep space looking for a Yeerk ship that got away when we defeated them back on Earth. But someone captured him. And we're out here looking for him. We found the Blade Ship, the one Ax was looking for when he was caught, but thanks to you it got away."

"We still have the message The One sent right before we crashed." Santorelli said. "I recorded it, Cryos, maybe you can figure it out."

He tapped a few buttons and the front viewpanel came to life. It showed some kind of alien creature that Cryos had never seen before. Some kind of machine-like face. But the picture kept shifting, like the alien couldn't decide what to look like. As Cryos watched, the half-metal creature changed to a feminine face, then to a blue thing with no mouth and stalk-eyes growing out of it's head. The creature's mouthless face split open into a strange reptilian thing then began to speak.

But Cryos didn't hear a word it said. He wasn't even breathing. He was frozen is shock in the same exact position as he's been in when the thing on the screen shifted the first time. He knew the face that that creature had worn for a moment. It was a face that only one person had the right to wear. It was the face of Articia. Cryos's mother!