Chapter Five

We did talk a lot more morality, of course. With a mission like this, it was impossible not to stray far from the subject. The eleven of us were staring into space for a few seconds, each of us lost in our own thoughts. My mind was working overtime. It was racing with questions, thoughts, 'whys', 'buts' and 'what ifs'.

--I shall do whatever Prince Jake does,-- Ax said at last. --I cannot make a decision like this; I am not a part of your race.--

--Ax, you're as much of the team as any of us,-- Tobias sighed. --If you have an opinion, we want to hear it.--

--I do not understand the motives of these human terrorists, for a start,-- he said. --No other race that I know of would take such extreme measures to strike terror upon his own race.--

"Ax, we don't agree with it either, that's why this is such a heated topic," Marco sighed. "So just tell us what you think about the choices."

Ax folded his arms, a gesture he'd picked up from humans, and one which portrayed his feelings of insecurity and an unwillingness to let his thoughts known to the rest of the group.

--Letting this bomb detonate, however primitive it may be, would surely cause significant damage to the Yeerks. As a trained aristh, I have been taught to look at the situation from a purely black-and-white perspective. That is, assess the maximum possible damage to the enemy and carry out the appropriate duty.--

"But surely you were taught to consider ethics and morals in your decisions too?" asked Cassie. "Surely these factors are universal, and you'd have to cover them even if you were dealing with different species?"

--Emotion should never be allowed to interfere with one's assessment, Cassie," Ax said quietly.

"I'm not talking about emotion, I'm talking about morality!" Cassie replied, her voice rising. This was unusual for her, Cassie is generally the calmest of the group. "You can't make decisions without looking at the effects your actions will do to innocent people. If you do, I'd say you shouldn't be a solider."

At this point, Philip sat back down, placing his head in his hands. I saw Ferdie watch him apprehensively. Several months ago, as a young officer in the British Army, Philip had made a moral error which resulted in the deaths of the majority of his soldiers. Whilst he had since learnt to accept his mistake and forgive himself for it, it was still a subject that rubbed raw next to his heart.

"There may be another option," he said eventually.

"What?" asked Erek. He had taken virtually no part in the discussion until now. I suppose that, after dumping this decision on us, he didn't want to interfere anymore by becoming too involved.

"If we do this, we'd have to act quickly. As in in the next few minutes. But I believe there may be a third possibility. One which will cause significant damage to the Yeerk empire, but would not result in the loss of any lives. Yeerk or otherwise."

"How?" asked Cassie, looking sceptical.

"Well," Philip said, raising his eyebrows. "It's actually quite simple. I'm surprised no one thought of it earlier. What if we allow the bomb to go off, but make sure that everyone in the building and immediate area are evacuated first?"

Jake nodded. "I guess that has the benefits of both sides, right?"

"Quite," Philip continued. "If we let the bomb go off, but got everyone out, no'one would be killed, but we would still make sure that the Yeerk technology being developed there was destroyed."

--And what about the information held by our government?-- asked Tobias. --That would be destroyed too.--

"Well hopefully that information will have been backed up," I said. "Ok, so the Yeerks' information might have been too, but if they have physical hardware being stored, not just stuff stored electronically, we could damage that."

"The only problem would be timing the evacuation. We have to allow enough time for the innocent people to have time to escape from the area, but not so much for the Yeerks to be able to salvage their technology. Plus, if we did let this bomb go off, we'd have to make sure that the FBI don't get wind of it too early and neutralise it"

"I take it the Yeerks don't know about this bomb?" I asked Erek. "And that terrorists are targeting the government, and have no idea about the Yeerks?"

"As far as we can be sure, that is correct," Erek said. "The Yeerks are as much in the dark about this threat as your government. It's only the Chee and you guys who know the full story."

"So this whole thing really does fall into our hands," Marco said. "Fun."

"I think we've established that, Marco," said Rachel.

"Right, well, what does everyone think about Philip's idea?" I asked, glancing around at the group. "Agree, disagree, don't know, can't be arsed?"

"I think it's a promising compromise," said Jake. "Damage to the Yeerks, minimal human casualties."

"I still don't like it," said Cassie. "Letting a building explode - there's no way we could be sure that all people are safe and out of danger. I don't think we should engage in something so extreme. There are other ways to get back at the Yeerks."

"Cassie, don't forget that we aren't the ones planting that bomb," Jake said, looking at her in the eye. "It was terrorists who are responsible for it. They were the ones who planted the bomb - they're the ones who put us in this position. We've just got to work out where we stand take the most appropriate action in accordance to the situation."

Cassie sighed and looked down at her feet. "I still feel it's wrong to exploit these criminals' actions for our own causes."

Maggie glanced at Jake. "Aye," she agreed. "Not only do I feel it's wrong, but I also feel like we're cowards."

"How do you mean?" Jake asked, looking a little confused.

"It's like everyone here thinks that we should have thought about taking extreme action like this right from the start, but that we've always been scared, or pretended we haven't been able to. Like we know how much damage a bomb could do and how the plan could go so wrong. It's only now that we've got an excuse to do this without being directly responsible for how we get hold of that opportunity that we embrace this new method. Almost like we're viewing this terrorist threat as a good thing, something that we've been waiting for, because we don't have the guts to go out and bomb the Yeerks ourselves. We need criminals to motivate us to do it."

There was yet another pause as we considered this new angle. After a moment, Ferdie, who was fidgeting and had clearly understood none of this, announced his views. "I think we should just let the bomb go off as it is. If we start calling into the FBI or whatever, it might blow our cover. Plus, you said that the bomb is going to go off in twelve hours, right? Well, that makes it about 3 in the morning. How many people are going to be working then? As far as I see it, the only people wandering about the place in the middle of the night are bound to be Controllers."

"Flawless, you can't just assume something like that," said Philip heavily.

"True," said Marco. "Government agencies like this don't adopt the normal nine-to-five work schedule that most people do. They work around the clock, including through the night. It's likely that they'll be as many non-Controllers as Controllers there. Anyone left in the building if that bomb goes off are dead meat."

"Good point," said Jake as Ferdie huffed and crossed his arms. "We have to go along with Cassies' assumption that letting this bomb go off without calling an evacuation will result in the deaths of every in the vicinity. Whether they're Controllers or not is neither here not there."

"Well, I think we should do this evacuation thing then," said Rachel. "It would be nice if we could kill some Controllers while we're at it, but I guess just doing some damage to their equipment is good enough too."

"Jeez, Rach, would you listen to yourself?" said Marco disbelievingly. "'It would be nice if we could kill some Controllers while we're at it'? You sound like you're talking about a sale at the shopping mall. 'Oh, it would be nice if we could get the jacket, but I guess just getting the shoes is god enough too.' Or maybe you just want to cause a great big bang, and the more Yeerk blood spilled, the better."

Rachel stole a glare at Marco, but said nothing.

--I still don't like this whole situation, but I think we should go for Philips' suggestion too,-- said Tobias. --It's the only way out of this that would have any sort of positive impact whatsoever.--

"Ok, so that's the majority for the compromise," said Jake. "Ax? Sam? Marco?"

"I vote option three," I said.

"Yeah, me too," said Marco, "but for different reasons than Xena."

--I will go with this option too, Prince Jake,-- said Ax.

"You sure?" asked Jake. "Only you said before that you wanted the bomb to go off in order to take as many Yeerk lives as possible."

--I have now taken Philip's third suggestion into account, and after considerable internal debate, have come to the conclusion that this is the only acceptable way of going about it.--

"Could just have said 'yes'," said Ferdie, who was sulking at having been put right by Marco.

"Ok then," said Jake. "So I guess it's a go for option three."

"Which means that we'd better get off our backsides and start getting into gear," said Philip, standing up. "And what a better way to get this whole thing into perspective than getting to the state capital, and this building itself?"

Jake paused, knowing this was an inescapable part of the plan.

"A hundred miles in a few hours?" he asked. "What morphs have we got that can do that?"

Cassie opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted by Philip.

"We don't need to morph to get there," he said, smiling slightly. "As well versed in travelling long distances as the four of us our, we have all learned that there is one type of transportation which does the job better than any animal."

"What's that?" I asked, knowing where this was going."

"The car."