Chapter 9
For six days I lived in that cramped escape pod with a foul, disgusting beast called The One and half a dead rotting human. Luckily, there was a miniature Yeerk Pool behind the seats. It was no bigger than a dinner plate and had enough room for four Yeerks at the most. Before entering the pool, I chained my host body to the seat and handcuffed her hands together so she wouldn't do anything stupid such as try and open the hatch. Still, I knew The One wouldn't allow any such thing to happen, but I tied her all the same. You don't really know what goes on in the mind of what seemed to me as an all-powerful being. He spoke little, just to direct me to our destination. He never slept, never drank, never ate. I, meanwhile, had to eat food capsules that I found under the seat. They resembled human tablets and were hard to swallow but they kept my host alive for six days. To avoid dying of thirst, I resorted to drinking small amounts of the pool every day.
It was six long, arduous days with nothing to do apart from stare out of the window, but finally, we reached the planet. It was quite small, and lush, much unlike the homeworld, which was fairly large and barren. We didn't see the ship containing the Animorphs, but The One assured me they had already landed an hour ago. And I trusted The One's word. He seemed to know everything, after all. The One informed me of the planet. That it was inhabited by a species called the Kelbrid. A species that would one day belong to the Yeerk Empire. I didn't make me feel much better.
Yeerk Empire! That was a laugh. The Yeerk Empire didn't exist anymore.
We landed near a Kelbrid settlement, which, according to The One, had been the home of an Animorph Vs Kelbrid fight. Apparently, the Animorphs had won. Again, it didn't make me feel much better. I'd much rather the Kelbrid, or whatever they were, have won. But then again, I argued with myself, I wouldn't have had the pleasure of killing Jake Berenson myself.
'I am going to have a talk with the Kelbrid leader,' The One said as the small escape pod touched down next to strange, upside down cone-like buildings. 'You stay here and replenish your energy. Spend a hour or so in the Yeerk pool. I'll be beck soon.'
I didn't argue. Why argue with the creature that can totally obliterate you simply by blinking? The One opened the hatch and stepped out. Instantly, the human that The One had taken the image of shimmered and was instantly replaced by the image of the Animorph Andalite. Aximili, if my memory served correct.
He swaggered away on stolen Andalite legs. Andalite legs that I would surely have like to break. One day, maybe, but not yet.
My three days were nearly up. I needed food. I tied my host body to the chair and fastened her hands together. I gagged her as well. No need for her to attract unwanted, alien attention. I lowered my head towards the pool. I looked through human eyes at it. I could see the small, grey ripples on the surface. I could see. For the next hour, I wouldn't be able to see anything. I would be in my natural Yeerk state, blind.
I wriggled through the trenches and crevices of the host's brain. I could feel her eyes widen at the chance of being free for an hour. An hour of freedom where she would try with all her might to escape. Now that she was on a planet, and not in the dead of space and being watched over by The One, she would try harder. But she would not succeed.
Leaving the last few brain neurons behind, I entered the ear canal and 'swam' down it towards the exit. I was now blind, although I knew the human was trying desperately with all her might to escape from her bondage. I was now deaf but I knew she was struggling to scream through her gag. But both things, she could not.
I dropped down into the pool and there, I echo-located. I felt the familiar confines of the tiny Yeerk pool. I was alone there. My palps would not be answered by another Yeerk. It didn't matter. Yeerks don't communicate much in the pool. But then again, it felt extremely strange being on my own. Back on the Blade ship, there had usually been one or two other Yeerks in the pool, with whom I could talk to and see what was going on 'behind the scenes'.
In the pool, I felt utterly defenceless. In words, I was a slug. I could easily be plucked from the pool and squashed underfoot. Before, I hadn't worried. We had been in space, no one was going to get us there, and besides, The One had been around and wouldn't have let anything happen to me. After all, he needed me, didn't he? Didn't he? He wouldn't let me die, would he?
I felt defenceless, yes, but also at home. Not quite as homely as the pool on the homeworld where I had been born by tripartite parents. That was heaven. We would swim in the pool, basking under the Kandrona sun, until Gedd-Controllers would force other Gedds towards the pool. There, my palps would extend and my echolocation would reveal a head being thrust into the water. I was always the one to notice it first and the first to start swimming towards it. After that, it was easy. I'd squirm back into the head, into the small crevices of the small Gedd brain while the host body screamed incoherently. However, the Gedd was hard to subdue. I crushed its mind easily underfoot.
While soaking up fake Kandrona rays from the roof of the escape pod, I remembered the good old days back on the home planet. I had been born at a time when my fellow Yeerks were infesting Gedds by the thousands. Beforehand, only members of the Council of Thirteen and a few select others would inhabit Gedd bodies and roam the surface. The rest would have to make do with small animals that came down to the pool to drink and it would be a race to see if anyone could enter the animal's ear before it loped off. It was hard work. For one, the most common drinker to approach the pool was an unnamed, headless critter, which we could not enter. There were no ear canals and its brain was situated somewhere in its legs or something.
But then, a few months after I was born, an old, wise Yeerk brought an elderly Gedd to the pool. A friend of mine entered and came back a few minutes later, telling me they were mass-collecting Gedds from all over the planet so everyone could have a suitable host. I was one of the first to have a host body. Unlike many of the others, I had a strong, healthy male Gedd. That was my first real host. The Gedds were monkey-like, I guess, barely self-aware with limbs that weren't the same length. How they had evolved with different-sized limbs, I will never know, but it took getting used to. I kept falling over the shorter limb before I got walking perfect.
I inhabited at least fifty Gedd host bodies at the time until the Andalites arrived. Prince Seerow, he was called. He felt sorry for us, and told us stories about other races, the stars...We listened intently and recorded all this information in the memory banks. But Prince Seerow made a mistake. He should have known we could not be contained. He should have known we would rebel and flee into the galaxy. He should have realised we would become the masters of the Universe.
As we proved. We escaped the home world with four Andalite fighters, and two transports, which contained a quarter of a million Yeerks. We blew out of there, escaped in Z-Space and looked for our first victims. First came the Nahara, a strange, backward race. There were only a few of them, but they were oblivious, perfect for infestation. During only half a year, our forces split up. One half stayed near the Nahara planet, slowly infiltrating, the other half flew to another, nearby planet.
We infested every single Nahara on that planet. It was my second host and it turns out Nahara have much better eyesight than the dim eyes of the Gedd, wonderful hearing and actually had a culture. They also had languages, unlike the grunting noises Gedds made. This new host was everything the Gedd wasn't. But my pleasure was short-lived. After only a month of inhabiting the Nahara, they all began to die. Suddenly, without warning. Most of us escaped the Nahara brains before they died, but some weren't as lucky. It turns out a race which had earlier visited the planet had accidentally spread a disease to the Nahara, which was why there were so few when we arrived. They dropped like flies. I think a few survived—those who were immune to the infection, I don't know, because we left the planet without a look back. Few Yeerks talk about that experience. It wasn't a loss as such, but it certainly wasn't a victory.
We had few victories over the next two years as well. The other half of the fleet encountered another planet with more host bodies to infest. This proved more successful and most of the race was captured and infested. A few escaped into the confines of Zero-Space. They were called the Ssstram, or something, but the problem was, like the Nahara, they were few in number so only select Yeerks were able to infest them. I was not among them. The victory over the Ssstram boosted everyone's confidence. We tried to infest some Hawjabran, but it turns out they have some weird bodily systems. The brain was spread around the body in nodes, and not centralised like any sensible creature. We could not infest them, so we flushed them. It's what they deserved. We grabbed a few Ongachic individuals, but the Ongachic were—and still are, i guess—nomads, roaming through space, hardly ever landing on their home planet. We could never hunt them all down.
But then, rising up through the mist of failure, came the Hork-Bajir planet. Probably our biggest victory. We slowly infiltrated, then unleashed everything we had to get the Hork-Bajir. We infested hundreds, then thousands of Hork-Bajir from different valleys around the planet. It was around this time that we started using our own things, not relying on stolen Andalite technology. We modified the Shredders, and created our own Dracon beams. We built our own ships, Bug Fighters, which were mass- produced, and a few Blade ships, made purposely for powerful Vissers. The mother ship and pool ship were made later, as well as modified transports, and other strange varieties. I had a Hork-Bajir host that was lost during a battle. I only just survived. The Andalite fleet came but it made no difference. They could not stop us. We had over forty-thousand Hork-Bajir host bodies with maybe a few in hiding and a small rebellious group led by an Andalite female concentrated in one valley.
The Andalites realised the planet was lost and released a Quantum Virus. Too late. We took every host we had and left the planet. I know a few Hork-Bajir remained on the surface, and even survived the virus, so we came back down a few months later to quickly sweep the table. We had actually won a battle against the 'mighty Andalites'.
After that, we took the Taxxon world. Luckily, almost every Taxxon co- operated and became voluntary-Controllers. Only because we offered them food for their never ending hunger. We crushed the rebellious 'mountain Taxxons' and sent the remnants of their little group scuttling off into space.
Those were the glorious days of the Yeerk Empire, when the Andalites started to fear us. It was a good feeling.
On the Taxxon planet, we saw two creatures, which we later found out were called humans. Some poor, neglected Yeerk spent many years trying to find the planet earth. In those years, we simply strengthened our forces. We slowly started infiltrating the Andalite planet, not to infest them...no, they were still too strong...but to learn secrets about their technology. We invaded the Leeran home world, which we later lost to the foul Andalites, who were working with the Animorphs. Other hosts turned out to be unsuitable or too few in number. But humans...they were suitable, and there were billions of them. If we had added the human race to our collection, we would have been unstoppable throughout the galaxy...
I stopped dreaming. A head had been thrust into the water of the small pool. Actually, the entire head wouldn't fit. It was just the right ear that had been pushed in. I was confused. Had The One returned to help me get back into my host body? Otherwise, there was no way the human would voluntary put her ear in the water so I could re-enter. She had fought me all her life. She wouldn't start liking me now.
Anyway, I wasn't complaining. I swam for the ear. Two protrusions extended around until I targeted the opening. Then I started to slither inside, flattening myself out so I would fit. I shot out a toxin that would deaden the pain as I wriggled through the ear canal, as flat as paper. I stretched, pushing muscle and bone aside with strength a poor pathetic creature like myself should not have. I was absurdly flat and pushing deeper, until I felt the electricity of the brain inching closer.
Ah, there it was!
I felt microvolts firing around as I stretched, paper-thin into the brain. I pressed into a crevice, aiming to gain control of this part of the brain. I moved closer and I felt the brain neurons connecting to me. Making me not just a poor, defenceless slug, but also a much larger being capable of defending herself. I touched the brain's centre of seeing.
Ahhhhhh! To see again. It really was the best thing in the world. You have no idea what it is like being blind all your life and suddenly seeing things. I could see objects that before I could only touch or smell or 'see' on sonar, which is nothing like proper vision. But when you first enter a host and you look out of its eyes, it completely overwhelms you. Nothing can prepare you for it, nothing can describe it. You might have thought that having so many hosts, each with good vision, I might have got used to it. No, no one can get used to being blind and deaf one minute, and being able to see and hear the next.
I wrapped myself around the human's brain. I got control of her every body part. I untied the ropes that held me to the chair and pulled the gag off. The girl was back to screaming at me violently. She swore and tried to resist. She failed. She could not rebel. Not while I was in control.
I sat up, trying to find out who had shoved the human's ear underwater for me to enter. I got a surprise. There, sitting next to me was another human. A male, strong-looking, a few years older than my host body.
'Hello, Essak 143,' the man said.
He smiled. And at precisely that moment, my heart stopped beating. See, I'd seen that smile before. Maybe not on this human-Controller (for that's surely what he was), but on another one. See, sometimes, when a Yeerk changes host body, it sometimes carries over trademarks. And this slow, yet equally sadistic, smile was definitely a smile I'd seen before, and I wasn't happy about this fact.
No way. There was possible explanation to explain it.
'You!' I accused.
For six days I lived in that cramped escape pod with a foul, disgusting beast called The One and half a dead rotting human. Luckily, there was a miniature Yeerk Pool behind the seats. It was no bigger than a dinner plate and had enough room for four Yeerks at the most. Before entering the pool, I chained my host body to the seat and handcuffed her hands together so she wouldn't do anything stupid such as try and open the hatch. Still, I knew The One wouldn't allow any such thing to happen, but I tied her all the same. You don't really know what goes on in the mind of what seemed to me as an all-powerful being. He spoke little, just to direct me to our destination. He never slept, never drank, never ate. I, meanwhile, had to eat food capsules that I found under the seat. They resembled human tablets and were hard to swallow but they kept my host alive for six days. To avoid dying of thirst, I resorted to drinking small amounts of the pool every day.
It was six long, arduous days with nothing to do apart from stare out of the window, but finally, we reached the planet. It was quite small, and lush, much unlike the homeworld, which was fairly large and barren. We didn't see the ship containing the Animorphs, but The One assured me they had already landed an hour ago. And I trusted The One's word. He seemed to know everything, after all. The One informed me of the planet. That it was inhabited by a species called the Kelbrid. A species that would one day belong to the Yeerk Empire. I didn't make me feel much better.
Yeerk Empire! That was a laugh. The Yeerk Empire didn't exist anymore.
We landed near a Kelbrid settlement, which, according to The One, had been the home of an Animorph Vs Kelbrid fight. Apparently, the Animorphs had won. Again, it didn't make me feel much better. I'd much rather the Kelbrid, or whatever they were, have won. But then again, I argued with myself, I wouldn't have had the pleasure of killing Jake Berenson myself.
'I am going to have a talk with the Kelbrid leader,' The One said as the small escape pod touched down next to strange, upside down cone-like buildings. 'You stay here and replenish your energy. Spend a hour or so in the Yeerk pool. I'll be beck soon.'
I didn't argue. Why argue with the creature that can totally obliterate you simply by blinking? The One opened the hatch and stepped out. Instantly, the human that The One had taken the image of shimmered and was instantly replaced by the image of the Animorph Andalite. Aximili, if my memory served correct.
He swaggered away on stolen Andalite legs. Andalite legs that I would surely have like to break. One day, maybe, but not yet.
My three days were nearly up. I needed food. I tied my host body to the chair and fastened her hands together. I gagged her as well. No need for her to attract unwanted, alien attention. I lowered my head towards the pool. I looked through human eyes at it. I could see the small, grey ripples on the surface. I could see. For the next hour, I wouldn't be able to see anything. I would be in my natural Yeerk state, blind.
I wriggled through the trenches and crevices of the host's brain. I could feel her eyes widen at the chance of being free for an hour. An hour of freedom where she would try with all her might to escape. Now that she was on a planet, and not in the dead of space and being watched over by The One, she would try harder. But she would not succeed.
Leaving the last few brain neurons behind, I entered the ear canal and 'swam' down it towards the exit. I was now blind, although I knew the human was trying desperately with all her might to escape from her bondage. I was now deaf but I knew she was struggling to scream through her gag. But both things, she could not.
I dropped down into the pool and there, I echo-located. I felt the familiar confines of the tiny Yeerk pool. I was alone there. My palps would not be answered by another Yeerk. It didn't matter. Yeerks don't communicate much in the pool. But then again, it felt extremely strange being on my own. Back on the Blade ship, there had usually been one or two other Yeerks in the pool, with whom I could talk to and see what was going on 'behind the scenes'.
In the pool, I felt utterly defenceless. In words, I was a slug. I could easily be plucked from the pool and squashed underfoot. Before, I hadn't worried. We had been in space, no one was going to get us there, and besides, The One had been around and wouldn't have let anything happen to me. After all, he needed me, didn't he? Didn't he? He wouldn't let me die, would he?
I felt defenceless, yes, but also at home. Not quite as homely as the pool on the homeworld where I had been born by tripartite parents. That was heaven. We would swim in the pool, basking under the Kandrona sun, until Gedd-Controllers would force other Gedds towards the pool. There, my palps would extend and my echolocation would reveal a head being thrust into the water. I was always the one to notice it first and the first to start swimming towards it. After that, it was easy. I'd squirm back into the head, into the small crevices of the small Gedd brain while the host body screamed incoherently. However, the Gedd was hard to subdue. I crushed its mind easily underfoot.
While soaking up fake Kandrona rays from the roof of the escape pod, I remembered the good old days back on the home planet. I had been born at a time when my fellow Yeerks were infesting Gedds by the thousands. Beforehand, only members of the Council of Thirteen and a few select others would inhabit Gedd bodies and roam the surface. The rest would have to make do with small animals that came down to the pool to drink and it would be a race to see if anyone could enter the animal's ear before it loped off. It was hard work. For one, the most common drinker to approach the pool was an unnamed, headless critter, which we could not enter. There were no ear canals and its brain was situated somewhere in its legs or something.
But then, a few months after I was born, an old, wise Yeerk brought an elderly Gedd to the pool. A friend of mine entered and came back a few minutes later, telling me they were mass-collecting Gedds from all over the planet so everyone could have a suitable host. I was one of the first to have a host body. Unlike many of the others, I had a strong, healthy male Gedd. That was my first real host. The Gedds were monkey-like, I guess, barely self-aware with limbs that weren't the same length. How they had evolved with different-sized limbs, I will never know, but it took getting used to. I kept falling over the shorter limb before I got walking perfect.
I inhabited at least fifty Gedd host bodies at the time until the Andalites arrived. Prince Seerow, he was called. He felt sorry for us, and told us stories about other races, the stars...We listened intently and recorded all this information in the memory banks. But Prince Seerow made a mistake. He should have known we could not be contained. He should have known we would rebel and flee into the galaxy. He should have realised we would become the masters of the Universe.
As we proved. We escaped the home world with four Andalite fighters, and two transports, which contained a quarter of a million Yeerks. We blew out of there, escaped in Z-Space and looked for our first victims. First came the Nahara, a strange, backward race. There were only a few of them, but they were oblivious, perfect for infestation. During only half a year, our forces split up. One half stayed near the Nahara planet, slowly infiltrating, the other half flew to another, nearby planet.
We infested every single Nahara on that planet. It was my second host and it turns out Nahara have much better eyesight than the dim eyes of the Gedd, wonderful hearing and actually had a culture. They also had languages, unlike the grunting noises Gedds made. This new host was everything the Gedd wasn't. But my pleasure was short-lived. After only a month of inhabiting the Nahara, they all began to die. Suddenly, without warning. Most of us escaped the Nahara brains before they died, but some weren't as lucky. It turns out a race which had earlier visited the planet had accidentally spread a disease to the Nahara, which was why there were so few when we arrived. They dropped like flies. I think a few survived—those who were immune to the infection, I don't know, because we left the planet without a look back. Few Yeerks talk about that experience. It wasn't a loss as such, but it certainly wasn't a victory.
We had few victories over the next two years as well. The other half of the fleet encountered another planet with more host bodies to infest. This proved more successful and most of the race was captured and infested. A few escaped into the confines of Zero-Space. They were called the Ssstram, or something, but the problem was, like the Nahara, they were few in number so only select Yeerks were able to infest them. I was not among them. The victory over the Ssstram boosted everyone's confidence. We tried to infest some Hawjabran, but it turns out they have some weird bodily systems. The brain was spread around the body in nodes, and not centralised like any sensible creature. We could not infest them, so we flushed them. It's what they deserved. We grabbed a few Ongachic individuals, but the Ongachic were—and still are, i guess—nomads, roaming through space, hardly ever landing on their home planet. We could never hunt them all down.
But then, rising up through the mist of failure, came the Hork-Bajir planet. Probably our biggest victory. We slowly infiltrated, then unleashed everything we had to get the Hork-Bajir. We infested hundreds, then thousands of Hork-Bajir from different valleys around the planet. It was around this time that we started using our own things, not relying on stolen Andalite technology. We modified the Shredders, and created our own Dracon beams. We built our own ships, Bug Fighters, which were mass- produced, and a few Blade ships, made purposely for powerful Vissers. The mother ship and pool ship were made later, as well as modified transports, and other strange varieties. I had a Hork-Bajir host that was lost during a battle. I only just survived. The Andalite fleet came but it made no difference. They could not stop us. We had over forty-thousand Hork-Bajir host bodies with maybe a few in hiding and a small rebellious group led by an Andalite female concentrated in one valley.
The Andalites realised the planet was lost and released a Quantum Virus. Too late. We took every host we had and left the planet. I know a few Hork-Bajir remained on the surface, and even survived the virus, so we came back down a few months later to quickly sweep the table. We had actually won a battle against the 'mighty Andalites'.
After that, we took the Taxxon world. Luckily, almost every Taxxon co- operated and became voluntary-Controllers. Only because we offered them food for their never ending hunger. We crushed the rebellious 'mountain Taxxons' and sent the remnants of their little group scuttling off into space.
Those were the glorious days of the Yeerk Empire, when the Andalites started to fear us. It was a good feeling.
On the Taxxon planet, we saw two creatures, which we later found out were called humans. Some poor, neglected Yeerk spent many years trying to find the planet earth. In those years, we simply strengthened our forces. We slowly started infiltrating the Andalite planet, not to infest them...no, they were still too strong...but to learn secrets about their technology. We invaded the Leeran home world, which we later lost to the foul Andalites, who were working with the Animorphs. Other hosts turned out to be unsuitable or too few in number. But humans...they were suitable, and there were billions of them. If we had added the human race to our collection, we would have been unstoppable throughout the galaxy...
I stopped dreaming. A head had been thrust into the water of the small pool. Actually, the entire head wouldn't fit. It was just the right ear that had been pushed in. I was confused. Had The One returned to help me get back into my host body? Otherwise, there was no way the human would voluntary put her ear in the water so I could re-enter. She had fought me all her life. She wouldn't start liking me now.
Anyway, I wasn't complaining. I swam for the ear. Two protrusions extended around until I targeted the opening. Then I started to slither inside, flattening myself out so I would fit. I shot out a toxin that would deaden the pain as I wriggled through the ear canal, as flat as paper. I stretched, pushing muscle and bone aside with strength a poor pathetic creature like myself should not have. I was absurdly flat and pushing deeper, until I felt the electricity of the brain inching closer.
Ah, there it was!
I felt microvolts firing around as I stretched, paper-thin into the brain. I pressed into a crevice, aiming to gain control of this part of the brain. I moved closer and I felt the brain neurons connecting to me. Making me not just a poor, defenceless slug, but also a much larger being capable of defending herself. I touched the brain's centre of seeing.
Ahhhhhh! To see again. It really was the best thing in the world. You have no idea what it is like being blind all your life and suddenly seeing things. I could see objects that before I could only touch or smell or 'see' on sonar, which is nothing like proper vision. But when you first enter a host and you look out of its eyes, it completely overwhelms you. Nothing can prepare you for it, nothing can describe it. You might have thought that having so many hosts, each with good vision, I might have got used to it. No, no one can get used to being blind and deaf one minute, and being able to see and hear the next.
I wrapped myself around the human's brain. I got control of her every body part. I untied the ropes that held me to the chair and pulled the gag off. The girl was back to screaming at me violently. She swore and tried to resist. She failed. She could not rebel. Not while I was in control.
I sat up, trying to find out who had shoved the human's ear underwater for me to enter. I got a surprise. There, sitting next to me was another human. A male, strong-looking, a few years older than my host body.
'Hello, Essak 143,' the man said.
He smiled. And at precisely that moment, my heart stopped beating. See, I'd seen that smile before. Maybe not on this human-Controller (for that's surely what he was), but on another one. See, sometimes, when a Yeerk changes host body, it sometimes carries over trademarks. And this slow, yet equally sadistic, smile was definitely a smile I'd seen before, and I wasn't happy about this fact.
No way. There was possible explanation to explain it.
'You!' I accused.
