Chapter 13
"Well, we have to go back for her!" cried Ferdie, trying not to panic. "We can't leave her down there! How long does she have left in morph?" He looked around wildly, as if searching for a clock. His eyes, red and glistening with the first signs of tears I'd seen in him in a long time, found the door to below-deck, and he looked away sharply.
"About thirty seconds," I muttered.
"So it's either spend the rest of her life as wasp - which, I can assure you, won't be very long when Lort-bleeding-Strelitz gets his hands on her - or demorph and become infested! Geez, Philip, what the heck's happening to her? I can't stay here and think about it - I have to get back, I'm going down-"
"Guys! Please! Calm down!" cried Maggie. "We can't sit around here arguing and worrying. We need a plan." She looked me in the eye. "Philip?"
"What?" I snapped. I'd been pretty much in my own world since we discovered Sam had been missing a couple of minutes ago. Thinking about how this had all been my fault. I'd been the one who'd wanted to go down and spy on the sub-visser, me who'd wanted to find out about their plan. Sam, of course, had wanted nothing to do with it. She'd been talking sense ever since she'd found out that the ship was riddled with Controllers, and she'd made sense when she'd wanted everyone off the deck as soon as possible. Unfortunately, I had to go and insist on doing what I'd thought was right. It had been me who'd led us down there. And me, who'd now gone and got Sam trapped.
"We need to make up a plan," repeated Maggie. "Philip? You've been in the army - you must have had to deal with situations like this? What do you think we should do?"
I could see Ferdie staring at her. Obviously, he knew about my past in regards to the army. Maggie, it seemed, had the idea that I was a some hero-come-intelligence officer, veteran of a dozen wars. How wrong could she be?
"I'm not making any more plans, Maggie," I told her. "It's my fault Sam is trapped down there. I can't make plans. I just end up screwing everything up."
"Philip - it wasn't your fault!" she said. "We all agreed to go down there - remember? Even if Sam had tried to stop you getting your own way, I backed you up, didn't I? I went along with you, supporting you, trying change Sam's mind? So did Flawless. It's no one's fault. And if it was, it would be just as much mine and Ferdie's as it would be yours."
She glared at me with her big green eyes. Her cheeks were flushed, her red hair dishevelled, but she'd never looked more in control. Here was a girl who knew what to say. How could I have ever thought her a weak link?
I closed my eyes for a second, then looked at her. "Maggie, thank god we have someone like you who can act in a crisis. Maybe you should be the one in charge here, after all."
"Philip - stop trying to deal out roles and come up with a plan!" she barked.
"Whoa. Go girl," said Ferdie, gaining his composure. "Come on, then Philip. Just because you've screwed up once doesn't mean you have to do it again."
He was, of course, referring to my mistake as an officer, but I was grateful for the way he worded it so as Maggie would assume if he was talking about Sam.
"That's right," she said. "You're the one who can put this right. You can do this, Philip."
"Ok," I said. "I'll do this."
And for the first time in over a year, in a situation I vowed never to put myself in again, I took command.
"Ok, guys," I said, just as if I were talking to my platoon. "Step one. We need to work out our priorities, so-"
"Philip, stop doing everything by the book! We haven't got time for you to get your knickers in a twist trying to spit out your plans in some pointless, systematic order!"
"Er, you're right," I said, only half listening. "Ok. Plan. Right. The situation is, Sam is trapped below deck in the proximity of the enemy."
Maggie and Ferdie nodded.
"The mission is, to get Sam back without allowing her to become infested, or killed. The method is…" I took a deep breath, clearing my mind, trying to come up with something on the spot. My time in the army, disastrous or not, had no doubt prepared me for having to make last second plans - and usually under fire. "The Yeerks already know we're on board. There's no point in trying to keep hidden again. We morph insects, and they'll probably try to flush us out with bug-spray. We stay on board as humans, and we'll get captured. We go in, hard and fast. Forget stealth. Find Sam. Get her out. Take down anyone, and anything that gets in our way."
"So we go battle morphs?" asked Maggie.
"Battle morphs indeed," I said. "We need our animal senses to find Sam, and agility and speed to escape from the Controllers. Bare in mind that, if we're lucky, they might not try to shoot at us. Party because we're on board a ship, and there's only a certain amount of damage one can do with a Dracon before one damages important equipment. Secondly, they're probably on the phone to Visser Five this second - and we all know that, apart from the getting the morphing cube, there's nothing he wants more than a couple of good, morph capable host bodies like his boss. Unharmed, of course."
Ferdie nodded.
"Good. Battle morphs, now, then."
"And try not to let this one go pear-shaped, Philip," muttered Ferdie. "You know how I feel about Sam."
"This isn't just for you, Flawless," I said. "Or even the four of us. This is for humankind."