Chapter 28

Jake

I was in the war room, talking some troop placement strategy with the prince from the Matteo Tribe when the word came. Toby'd said they weren't far behind her, but I'd been holding on to the hope that the Trunsk would get stalled somehow. The young errand boy, still a child in any species' standard, skipped into the room. His eyes lit up at the sight of all the Taruff heroes he'd heard stories about gathered around the holographic displays, not to mention the reckless human prince. "Uh lama itaka mashinde coe," he said quietly to Prince Krish, Matteo's leader. His eyes glowed briefly.

"The Trunsk battle fleet is within range of our outermost sensors," he told me. I nodded and waved him over to the sensor grid in the center of the room. I liked Krish because instead of being ridiculously overconfident as most of the other princes and generals were, he had a grasp on the fact that lots of Taruffs would be dead soon. He didn't shy from his duties, he just accepted them more heavily than the rest of the assembled leaders. His strategies tended to lean towards the preservation of lives, and I gave his suggestions more weight than anyone else's.

"Wide orbit, synchronomous with the palace. It looks like you were correct, Prince Jake," Krish said as he pointed to the plethora of red dots that were on the outer edge of the planetary map. "They seem to be intent on a direct assault here at Amni'bel's palace."

I nodded. "Somebody wake up Amni'bel. Instruct Toby to disperse her kertians as she sees fit," I yelled out, letting my voice rise above the quiet muttering and grumbling that filled the war room. I looked pointedly at the communications officer on station. "Get me a separate comm-link to all the wing commanders. Have them call in their forces and placements, and have them standing by for orders." The comm officer got busy, and I turned back to the sensor board.

"I will stay to help until they begin their assault," Krish told me quietly. "I have a duty to my people. I will be in the first flight up to give the kertians their time to get into position."

I looked at him as if he'd grown a horn from his forehead. "You've got to be kidding me! I need you here – you're the only person who listens to reason and practices common sense."

He made a low, grating noise in the back of his throat that I'd learn to interpret as laughter. "All I am doing is telling you that you're making good decisions. You are strong and decisive. You do not need me to hold your hand," he told me.

A month ago I'd have blushed furiously and told him that's right, I didn't. Get lost. So long and good night. Now, I realized he was baiting me to say exactly that. I wasn't too proud to ask for help when I needed it. Not anymore.

"As commander-in-chief here, I'm giving you a direct order to stay. I'm begging you. I'll get on my knees if it'll help. You'll be a hundred times more valuable to me here than out in a fighter committing suicide."

He grunted. "I cannot disobey a direct order," he said slowly. "Have the communications officer inform my aide, Seku, that he will be in charge of my fighter wing. Only for you, Jake," he told me, and stalked off to look at a different display.

The comm officer relayed the message without me telling him twice, and I got back to studying the enemy placement. I wasn't worried about Krish – he'd be pissed for a while. Hell, he might never get over it. I didn't care if he hated me, though. His presense here would save a lot of lives, whether he acknowledged that or not.

Amni'bel entered the room and glided up to my side, as silent as a ghost. Without taking her eyes off of the display, she commanded the officer in charge of it to run her plus-eight grid. He typed in the program we'd worked up a couple of days earlier, and it overlapped the enemy positions we were seeing now. I whistled softly.

They'd messed up. We had almost eighty full fighter wings assembled on Amni'bel's continent, which the Trunsk were apparently intent on assaulting. Half of those fighters were spaceworthy, thanks to the tireless techs and engineers who'd worked their hands to the bone for the past week or so. That gave us almost 3000 fighters to throw at them before they even hit atmosphere. The plus-eight program predicted where the Trunsk forces would be eight hours after their assault, and how much of it was likely to survive.

Their cruisers, the most deadly part of the enemy force, were strictly space vessels. They had no sign of the anti-gravity devices necessary to enter atmosphere. The sheer amount of fighters that swarmed around the ships made me certain that they'd deployed every fighter they could field. They outnumbered our starfighters almost two-to-one, but we had an equal number of atmospheric fighters. It was a dead heat. Even if our fighters and theirs totally annihilated each other, all they'd have left to throw at us would be troops, and I was confident as hell that the over two million assembled kertians would cut down anything the Trunsk brought with ease. I flashed a confident smile at Krish, who gave a grave nod in return. I was confused – he'd seen the graph…why wasn't he excited?

He saw my smile falter, and called out to me. "Prince Jake, a moment of your time?" I nodded and fell into step with him as he exited the war room. He waited until we were out of earshot of the committee to speak. "I will take charge of the war room operations," he told me quietly. "You must take Amni'bel into hiding. That Teneel creature could be anyone or anywhere. You're the only person I know I can trust with this. Everyone else has been too caught up with the impending battle to realize what I have – this war means nothing. Even if we win by a large margin, if the Andalite assassin kills the princess, we've still lost."

I almost slapped myself. "You're absolutely right. Krish, what you've just done is going to make you into the biggest hero Xylen's ever seen. I'll make sure of that," I promised him.

He shook his head as we started back for the war room. "I don't care about that. I'm just doing my duty," he told me, and I felt a little fuzzy. Even if he was from a totally different species, he restored my faith that there were good people out in this crazy galaxy.

I entered the hectic war room, thinking of a good way to slip Amni'bel out unnoticed, and more importantly, unfollowed. I looked around the sensor board and couldn't see her. I started into the room, rudely shouldering generals and princes out of my way, looking for the princess. I saw Krish doing the same on the other end of the room. I resisted the urge to panic, to run, to arouse any more suspicion than I already had. I speed-walked to Krish, who met me in the middle of the room. He said the words I feared most. "Prince Jake, the princess is missing!"