Chapter 10

It wasn't going to win any beauty contests. That was for sure. It shuddered and shook whenever it went above sixty, and there was a funny smell that nobody could quite place. Nobody thought it could take us all the way from Santa Barbara to Kansas City, but we were defiant enough to try.

They found the Winnebago in some shady second-hand lot, and it sure showed. Menderash and Tobias explained that it was for subtlety reasons. I got what they were saying, but maybe they were being paranoid.

Santorelli was the poor soul who was skilled enough to drive it. He had driven large vehicles before, so we gave him the keys and a map and full use of the old cassette player. The rest of us loaded up what we needed for the journey and set up camp in the admittedly spacious interior.

The seats had been removed. That's what made it spacious. Nevertheless, we used our innovation and took some fold-out chairs from Marco's storage.

It wasn't the most comfortable journey for anybody. With almost two-thousand miles to travel, as well, it was a long haul. Having settled on a day to carry out the mission, we were also a little rushed.

At least we had a pack of cards to keep us amused.

We had just had our last stop before reaching our destination. A bag of McDonald's each was a reward for nobody losing their temper over the final leg. It was almost as if we'd resigned ourselves to being unbearably uncomfortable over the next few days - assuming we would be able to escape the prison. We also bought some extra food for later with the wad of money that Marco had brought along. We would need high energy levels at the start of the mission.

We would park a few miles from the prison and stay inside the RV overnight. In the morning, we would morph bird and fly the rest of the distance to the prison. We didn't want our vehicle associated with any incidents that might occur.

The mission would start shortly before 7 AM when guards were due to enter the Visser's cell. Any later than that, and we would be hanging around till Midday. Nobody wanted that.

We hadn't done anything like this for so long. Years. The risks we were about to take were big enough that nerves were beginning to kick in. In morph, we could be shot by any of the armed guards or – in mine and Jeanne's case – crushed as we tried to enter the Visser's block. Marco had perhaps the most demanding job of them all: He had to get into the security block's control room and witness everything happening without being spotted. To do that, he would take advantage of a wide-shaft ventilation system, part of which traveled over the control room.

Our layout plans showed us that it stood almost directly above the control panel used for the Visser's block. Marco would be in the ventilation system, listening, watching, and hoping not to be spotted. He was integral to our mission.

And despite the years playing up to cameras and running crappy game shows, I still felt that he had it in him to carry out his role.

Not that my role wasn't going to be demanding. Having the plans in front of me made me even more anxious, but for different reasons.

Jeanne and I were side by side at the coffee-stained Winnebago fold-out table. Menderash – or Eddy Jameson, as the outside world now knew him - was opposite us, frowning with piercing eyes at a large sheet of paper that nestled between us. He had been silent for a while as he studied it.

There was a reason that we were leaving the studying to him. On the paper was an annotated diagram of a very peculiar type of box. It was an Andalite construction, as no Human had the technology or the knowledge to build such a contraption. It had been made with a very specific, very alien purpose in mind.

It was Esplin's new home. Not new anymore, I guess. He'd been living in boxes like it since the end of the Yeerk war. It was small, no larger than one of those boxes that you take your cat to the vet in, but a whole lot more complicated. The Yeerk would be in a small container of Yeerkish water, the sort that would have been found in your typical Yeerk pool when those things were still around.

Aside from that, the box had a control panel. That was what Menderash was looking to exploit.

"It's just as I thought…" he mumbled, still focused on the images before him. "Okay. I know what you need to do."

"Let's hear it," I replied, shifting forward to rest on the rickety table.

He reached to his right, finally taking his eyes off the picture, and grabbed the pen and blank paper that had been waiting patiently at the side. He was going to write down the instructions he was giving to Jeanne and me.

He illustrated with finger-pointing in between writing. "This button here will activate the control panel. That will give you full access to all the settings." He waved his hand over a set of 5 small buttons running horizontally over the lowest edge of the control panel. "These will take you into various interfaces. The leftmost one contains communication controls."

"That's what we want…" I hummed.

Menderash continued to point out bits of the control panel for specific instructions. "This one activates his side of communications. It uses Andalite technology that allows his thoughts to be processed into speech, which will come out of this speaker. This button will activate the panel microphone. So both these buttons activated will allow two-way communication. Pressing those buttons again will turn it off, or you could just press the main power button, alternatively…"

"We need more than that," Jeanne said. "The Visser isn't going to give us answers for nothing."

I closed my eyes, knowing what was coming.

"Of course," Menderash agreed. He pointed to different buttons. "This one here brings up the box's environment interface. It controls the conditions of the Kandrona water. If the Visser refuses to give answers, we can try to force them out of him."

"Menderash…" I sighed, looking him directly in the eyes. I could see that he held little remorse; such was his hatred of the Visser. "We will do whatever we can to get our answers without resorting to that."

His expression was unchanging. "I understand that this kind of interrogation is a last resort, Prince Jake. But it is a resort nonetheless, and I think it's best that every option is open."

I nodded, still staring. "Okay. I hope it doesn't come to it."

He continued. "Yeerks are very temperature-sensitive. If we can threaten to raise the box's temperature, it may get answers out of him. However, the box will be set with default temperature limits to avoid accidental overheating. Pressing this button, then these two simultaneously will remove that limit. You can adjust the temperature freely up to four-hundred-and-eighty degrees."

Jeanne's eyebrows raised, and she pursed her lips. She was not comfortable, but her lack of words made her thoughts elusive.

But she would do little more than ask questions and provide me with back-up. I would make sure that I was in control of the box. It was the job that I gave myself.

Suddenly, I began to doubt everything. We could do this mission, but did I really want to?

For Ax, I told myself, over and over. For Ax.