A/N:  Well, here we go.  First Animorphs fic posted.  I've written other stories and poems about everyone's favorite blue centaurs and company, but you probably don't want to see those.  And I've written other assorted stories, most of them about Harry Potter.  I like this Animorphs story, however.  Please tell me if you do too (hint hint, REVIEW).  (Thank you.)

Just a few little notes:

-This is, of course, the tragic story of the Five, the Venber, and the Andalites.  No duh.

-The word limner is actually a creation of K. A.  It's never explained, but Edriss uses it in Visser to describe a creature similar to an Andalite in body form.  The Desbadeens are also a K. A.-created race, also from Visser, and also connected with the limners.  The Skrit-Na are K. A.'s too.  The Five-Andalite-Venber conflict in brief is the property of K. A.'s mind (all hail, all hail), but the way it is presented here is totally mine, and the five species presented here are mine.  ALL mine!  Mwahahaha!  So I guess this whole thing was one big long disclaimer.  Anyway.  On to the story.

Chapter One

It's not easy being a Little, you know?  Littles just are not given the kind of attention that other people are.  Take Swimmers, for example.  They are huge fish, and, as you know, they use a language of eye-blinks to communicate.  Not like the rest of us, who talk with our mouths.  Or take Clappers.  They are always tall and thin—spindly, I'd say, if it weren't for their obvious grace—and they have one, gigantic foot.  Flyers are iridescent insects, beautiful and sky-worthy.  Greats, of course, are Greats.  Strong and reptilian.  Very intimidating.

Littles?  We are mammals, just like the Clappers.  We are bipeds with two arms, just like the Greats.  We are usually short, just like the Flyers.  We have no special abilities, really.  We are overlooked.

Or at least, that's how it felt to me.  Aboard the starship Keyala, I was the only cadet who was a Little.  There were a few others, mostly Greats, and also my best friend Kasseena, who is a Flyer, and a boy named Abosh, who is a Swimmer.  Kasseena was noticed because her father was the ship's science officer, and also because of her startlingly violet and blue coloring (most Flyers are blue and green).  Abosh was noticed because he was the youngest, and therefore the cavisi (a Swimmer term, I'm not exactly sure what it means) of all the male Swimmers on board.  I, Aniera sin Keyla, was the only Little, and still I was not given too much recognition.  Of course, to be sure, I hadn't really done anything great.  But Kasseena and Abosh hadn't exactly done great things either, so there you are.

Cadets work in a variety of environments on a starship.  In case you've never been in the Fleet, you might be surprised the number of kids you see doing jobs that are normally reserved for adults.  I myself worked in the field of maintenance, and as a junior staff member I was actually trusted to repair a lot of the things that broke or malfunctioned aboard ship.  Unfortunately, those things that broke most often were food synthesizers and games in the recreation chambers, so I had not exactly saved the ship from certain doom and won the well-deserved gratitude of all on board yet. 

Ah, well.  There was time.  But some recognition for my hard work would have been appreciated. 

I was thinking about along those lines as I paused just before the doorway to recreation chamber number three, or RC3 in Keyala jargon.  A food synthesizer had just been reported broken, so I was there to fix it.  I pushed open the door to RC3, surveyed the room quickly.  You can usually tell what's happened to the thing you have to fix by seeing who's in the room.  If there are a few Greats present, then the buttons on the machine were probably pushed too hard, or some crewman took his fists to it.  Greats are very strong, and sometimes don't know their own strength.

Sure enough, there were a few Great crewmen standing around the synthesizer and talking, waiting for me to fix it so they could get back to their snacking.  I took off the front aluminum panel of the synthesizer.  Sure enough, one of the buttons had been pushed too hard, and was broken.  The rest of the machine was okay.  I replaced the damaged part and straightened out the wiring that had been tangled, for some reason, as if someone had been pounding on the poor thing in frustration.  It took about ten minutes, and then the crewmates were happily back to recreating, or whatever you call what you do in a recreation chamber.

As I stepped out into the hallway, I was greeted by Kasseena.  Greeted rather suddenly, as she flew up behind my shoulder, buzzing her wings excitedly. 

"Whoa!"

"Oops—sorry.  I forgot you don't like me to sneak up on you," she said, not sounding sorry at all.  In fact, she looked downright distracted.  Out of breath, too, which is sort of hard to tell in Flyers, as they're insects and breathe through their skin. 

"Listen," she told me.  "The Captain says he wants all minor maintenance personnel on call on the bridge, just in case."

"In case of what?"

"Oh, didn't you hear?" she asked, sounding surprised.  "They didn't make an announcement?"

"An announcement for what?"

At that point the intercom blared to life in the wall beside us and answered for Kasseena.  I immediately knew something was up.  It is rare that the intercom system is used on board ship.  All senior officers and vital crew members are given comlinks to take with them wherever they go.  Other, less important people have to rely on messengers to bring them orders or instructions.  I'll let you draw your own conclusions about where I fit in this picture.  Anyway, this was Kasseena's job:  her wings made her a speedy messenger.

Since intercoms are used only once in a double sun, I knew this must be important.  And indeed, it was:

"Attention all personnel, attention all personnel.  Meeting with unknown contact.  All personnel to battle stations.  Repeat, all personnel to battle stations."

"Oh," I said.  Minor maintenance workers like me have no battle stations.  The Captain wanted us on the bridge, so if we were needed somewhere, he could send us there without a lot of bothering with messengers.

"'Oh.'  So come on!"  Grabbing my arm in two of her fragile insect hands, she began pulling me with surprising strength towards the elevator shaft.

"What kind of ship is it?"  I asked as I threaded through the crowd in the hallway behind her.  "Is it a raider?  Are we talking some little Skrit-Na here?"

We had now reached the elevator shaft.  We boarded it and started upwards.  Kasseena now stood on her two bottommost limbs, which are what you'd think of as her legs, even though all of her limbs are technically called 'legs.'

"Well, Aniera," she said, "I'm not really supposed to tell, because the Captain doesn't want the janitors and people to be all in a fit…"

"Oh, come on, Kass.  We're in the elevator.  Who's going to hear?"

"All right," she agreed, face brightening.  I could tell Kasseena really had wanted to tell me all along.  And I really wanted to know, so that worked out well.

"What kind?  A Skrit-Na?  Desbadeen transport?  No, that wouldn't be hostile…"

"It's an Andalite ship," she informed me, a slight smile in her eyes at my reaction.  A smile that didn't really fit.

"Andalite?  The blue limners themselves?"

I could tell she was as anxious as I was.  The Andalites are the only other race in the galaxy who could maybe rival us technology-wise.  And we have reason to believe that they might have already surpassed us.  We have never really established formal contact with them.  We just speak occasionally when our starships meet, usually in someone's territory, ours or theirs.  We have only seen a few Andalites, and they have never seen any of us.  And we're not really friends or enemies.  But meeting an Andalite ship in an unclaimed section of space like we were in now could most surely mean trouble. 

"Bridge," announced a computer voice within the elevator.  The elevator doors opened on the bridge, and I could see that we were the last to arrive.  I felt my cheeks turn crimson instead of their usual red, as they usually do when I'm embarrassed.  Oh, I was well on my way to earning the deserved gratitude of all on board.  Kasseena showed no sign of embarrassment, but then I've found that she is a good actress. 

The Captain had a small group of us standing at the back of the bridge, where we could get to an elevator quickly if need be, and wouldn't be in the way of the crew members working around us.  We could also see the view-screen very well, I noticed, and from the view-screen you could see the Andalite ship very well, a small white pebble against the backdrop of stars and asteroids. 

I held my breath, and could feel Kasseena tensing up beside me.  Would they shoot?  Would they leave?  What would happen?

"Take us closer to them," the Captain ordered.  The helmsman, a tall, fair-complected Clapper woman, obeyed.  Off to my right, I saw Kasseena's father, the science officer, sit up with insectile grace and peer more closely at the screen.  The Captain nodded acknowledgement of the helmsman's work and spun around to pace a small circle. 

The Captain, so far as I can tell, goes by no name other than "the Captain," for I've never heard him called anything else.  He is almost feared by some on board, and I know from hearsay that he can be scary when he wants to be.  He doesn't try very often, though.  He is an exceptionally large Great with green-brown scales, so he doesn't really have to try.  I had only seen him face-to-face two other times, both when I was cleaning up some mechanical mess in RC1, which is where the senior officers hang out.  Or whatever you do in a recreation chamber if you're a senior officer.

I could feel the collective tension of everyone on the bridge—maybe the whole ship—settle into the task of watching the Andalite.  This was the crucial moment.

"Hail him," said the Captain, but scarcely had the communications officer moved his hand than a faint tseew came across the sound-simulation speakers.  The Andalite ship was firing its Shredders!

Tseew!  Tseew! came the faint sounds, which were of course only a computer's estimation of what the sound of Shredders would be in our home planet's atmosphere, since sound waves, despite what the entertainment channels may show, do not travel through space. 

Tseew!  I snapped my thoughts back to the situation at hand, vaguely amused that I could find time in battle to be pondering the laws of physics.  But was it a battle?

"Shields up!" called the Captain, just in time to deflect two laser blasts that came our way, passing close enough to throw the ship a meter or so.  But the Andalite ship continued to fire, almost at random, indiscriminately spraying space with shredder fire.

"What is he doing?" I whispered to Kasseena, who was hovering in the air beside me to avoid being thrown around with the ship.

"No idea."

Tseew!  A far-off object, an asteroid to all appearances, exploded in a cloud of incandescent dust.  I was more worried about the asteroids than the Andalite, who seemed to be ignoring us now.  Shields aren't as good with solid matter as they are with energy beams.  That is one place where the Andalites surely had us technology-wise, because they seemed perfectly at home within the danger zone of asteroids.

Tseew.  A distant asteroid exploded.

Tseew.  Another.

Tseew.  Missed.

Missed?

"Target practice," I said, suddenly understanding.  "It's target practice with asteroids!"

The Captain turned to scowl at me, and I piped down at once. 

"You may be correct," the Captain told me, looking like a mixture between thoughtful and annoyed.  If that's even possible.  "I was thinking along the same lines myself.  But that is for me to decide."

My cheeks must have attained a deep maroon at this point.  I know I looked strange, at any rate, because Kasseena suddenly developed an interest in the wall of the room opposite where I was standing.  I have orange hair and eyes, a typical color for Littles, so I could only imagine how I looked.  Red and orange clash anyway, as my mirror is happy to show me every morning.

Whaam-BOOM!

The entire ship shuddered, and I was thrown off my feet.  Regaining my standing position, I saw that the large asteroid we had been using as a partial shield from the Andalite had exploded.  The Keyala's shields had obviously overloaded and failed, which any cadet with any background in machines could have told you. 

Alarms rang all over the bridge.  I tasted adrenaline in my mouth.

"Sir, communications dish has been destroyed.  We have spare parts, but we would need the shield up before we attempted to send a person outside the ship to install them."

"Well.  Then the shields must be fixed," the Captain said unnecessarily.  "The space inside the shield generator is very tight.  I need a Little for the job."

He turned to us.  My heart began to beat quickly—

--and then slowed down.

There was an older, more experienced Little also in our crowd.  This man left through one of the elevators.  Kasseena, at a glance from the Captain, left with him, just in case messages needed to be sent.  The Captain turned back to the officers on the bridge.

"Take us out of the plane of the asteroid field," he ordered.  As the ship moved (with a great groaning sound that I could imagine made all on board wince), the Andalites apparently had not noticed us yet.  At least, they made no halt in their rhythmic shooting.

"Unthinking brutes," came the "voice" of Bosh, the Captain's second in command.  Bosh is a Swimmer, so he does not, of course, have vocal cords.  Swimmers communicate with a language of eye blinks, and the shipboard computer translates for them.

Swimmers cannot survive in open air.  So inside every starship there is a system of connecting tunnels, full of gently circulating water.  The tunnels are big enough around for two Swimmers to pass each other inside them, and they lead to every area of the ship that a swimmer might need to get to.  Needless to say, Swimmers aren't usually security guards or mechanics.  But they can be integral parts of the crew.  Bosh, as second in command, of course needed to have access to the bridge.  So a special tunnel had been built on the Keyala, which connected to a large water tank at one station on the bridge, so that he could be around if the Captain needed him.  I think that is one of the things that makes the Fleet so special.  No two ships are built exactly alike, but to the needs of the crew.  I've heard that there is one ship somewhere where the crew is almost entirely Swimmer, except for a few Greats.  In that ship, most of the ship is filled with water, while there are tunnels containing air for the great crewmen to live and work in. 

Bosh moved his fins so as to position his large red-scaled body to be facing the view-screen.  As for me, I glanced over to the sensor station, where Kasseena's father was working.  He must have been searching for a safe place for the ship to land.  In fact, looking back, I know for a fact that he was.  Also looking back, I can't decide if it was ultimately a good or bad thing that he found a place. 

At that point, the elevator doors opened behind me and Kasseena flew out, breathless again.

"Captain," she said, "Manieral—the Little you sent to work on the shields—he says that they can't be brought back up without a major repair job.  He said it would take him at least five to six hours alone, maybe three with another person helping him."

"Sir," came the voice of her father.  He looked up from his station, hovering in the air for greater maneuverability.  "There is one planet in the system—a brown dwarf, or a gas giant too small to have become a star," he explained, though the Captain surely knew what a brown dwarf was.  Kasseena once mentioned to me that her father loves to explain things.  He is the science officer, after all.  "It has only two moons that the sensors have picked up, one incredibly volcanically active, the other incredibly cold.  But at least," he added wryly, "the ship would be in no danger of melting on the ice moon."  The Captain accepted the somewhat eccentrically-delivered appraisal with a nod of his head.

"Cadet," he said, addressing Kasseena, "tell Manieral that we are landing on a moon within the hour.  I will have the maintenance and mechanics staff repair damage done to the hull and shields by the exploding asteroid.  We need to power down most of our systems for this repair work to go on.  Then the communications dish will be repaired, and then our shields.  Tell him to report to his emergency station.  Everyone else is already there."

Kasseena flew off again, and I could see her rubbing her hands together, which is what she does when she'd concentrating on something.

The Captain looked at the rest of us.  "Well, get to your emergency stations," he barked.  The others all left.  I was the only one left standing on the bridge.  Cadets do not have emergency stations.

"Umm…sir?" I asked timidly.  "Where—"

"All cadets will go about their regular routines," the Captain informed me.  "Go on back to maintenance headquarters."

"Yes, sir." 

I left, mentally running through the list of cuss words I knew in Great—and Little.  Would I ever be the one to make a difference?

A/N: *grabs tissue* Poor Aniera!  Can she ever make a difference?  Do anything special?

…oh, I think you know the answer to that…*prepares to make Aniera's life hell*  *cackling evilly all the while*