The Assignment

Star Trek – Animorphs

In the shouts and eventual silence, my thoughts turned inward. I was trapped.

Tobias. Jake... Everyone. I couldn't save my friend. Whatever the green energy did, if it was a weapon, they must have done it to Tobias. He must have fallen. The small bones of a red-tailed hawk, even on the lush greenery of the jungle...

Wolves can't cry. They didn't even have tear ducts. If I was human, it might have been a different story. But not in this chapter. I couldn't show my fear.

The control in wolf morph was never trouble for me, not since the first time. But for once the restlessness and purposeful instinct for survival didn't distract me. It didn't force me to clamp down. Like an old friend, or maybe an old enemy. I didn't know. It was just an animal.

The wolf knew how to mourn despite never having learned it. My morph knew how to feel sorrow. It cowered, and I crouched with it, but the fear came with a knowing.

I'd always wondered if animals had souls. I still think that they do.

Intruders. Ears perked, muscles solid and ready to pounce, a growl pushed past to warn and guard my hurts. Keep out, it said. Fight and win, or fight and die. The wolf wouldn't give up. It knew how to survive this, if my enemies were just other wolves. A sob choked through my mind. If Tobias was awake, he'd have heard it.

A flash of white and the wolf stood. "Yiipe!" The sound made me flinch.

Oh. On three legs.

My forepaw felt like broken wire. A point of bone poked through the flesh of the other. No running like this, unless I really, really had to. Had to go two steps before collapsing, that is. Not far. Oh, it hurt. The movement caught my attention and the snarl came only from me. I think.

Better than normal human night vision, the grey wolf hunted in the night and twilight hours. For all it didn't help me, I saw the sheer v-shaped sides of the trap Tobias had warned me about.

Not just stupid. Criminal. Fool. This was it. I was going to die, hopefully before I could betray my friends.

It took an enemy approaching to snap me out of those useless thoughts.

Despite the excellent hearing and better sense of smell, I saw him first. The pale skin. The long arms and legs. The clearly human body. I knew what he was before my growl stopped the man's advance. No ordinary person had access to tech like that, like dracon beams or, I don't know, teleporting technology. A sour twist in my gut had me lick my chops.

Teleporting. The Yeerks could teleport.

The others had to know about this. I couldn't die here, knowing something that vital. If we could find out where they got it, if the Yeerks had found a people more advanced than even the Andalites...

An image of an elite squad of hork-bajir appearing in the midst of a battle, bolstering what should have been an easy fight, crossed my mind.

A voice that, to the wolf, represented mere sound reverberated around me. The numbness, the pain, the sick feeling of regret. It made falling to those baser instincts so easy. The better choice. I sank in. It felt like giving up the reigns. It felt like someone else could fight and die. Misery, unfortunately, centred me again.

This time, I heard it clearly.

"Life-form," the stranger said. "We do not wish harm on you. Nor on your companion."

I stared. Human. But he didn't smell right. I hadn't noticed it before, not without spilt blood involved, but ordinary people had an earthy, metallic scent. And taste. The pale man, his black hair and severe features, he smelled wrong. I could only describe it like tasting charcoal compared to tasting pennies.

Not that I'd ever put pennies in my mouth before. Promise.

And did I mention that he, because the voice and scent and countless other signs pointed directly to male, spoke English? That realization honestly startled me. And I'm not sure why. It was the most common language spoken on Earth, after all...

Mr. Pennies straightened. The pose seemed unnaturally stiff. A scrape of rock behind him brought my eye to catch the second human to arrive down in the pit with me. The wolf recognized him right away.

Strongest male. The reason for my headache, and a mean right elbow.

The human mind remembered that the new arrival was actually crazy. He'd attacked a fully-grown wolf barehanded and won. It didn't matter to me that the wolf he'd beaten was me. It took some serious guts to face a growling, living predator and try to wrestle it like Tarzan. The focus felt right to shift onto him. I almost forgot about the pale, lanky shadow beside the beefier newcomer.

The newcomer, a smile on his face, greeted the first one with a slap on the shoulder. "Mr. Spock, I'll have to take you with me the next time I go free-climbing," he said. The jovial tone didn't work for me.

But my lack of reaction didn't hide me. The shadowed figures turned to look. I fought the urge to sink down, into the dirt.

So dead. They were just toying with me. I lifted my chin.

I've faced down plenty of insane plots, power-hungry aliens and sheer terror before. A growl woke the cunning mind hiding behind my own.

The second man raised his hands in a universal 'down, girl' gesture.

"Whoa, whoa," he said. "I'm not your enemy. We're not here to hurt you."

English. I could understand it. The thought tugged at my mind but I refused to let it distract me. I wasn't totally helpless, so long as I kept my cool. If Beefcake stepped too close, I could do some damage. Maybe. If he didn't reach around and snap my neck with one hand.

"Captain," said Mr. Pennies. It sounded ridiculous but I didn't have time to come up with better nicknames. Did the other one call him something? Mr. Something?

Well. I was half right.

"Yes?"

The finer details were lost in the absence of even moonlight. I could see their shapes, even read where their legs and arms would go a moment before they got there, but I couldn't see their faces. Only when they turned their heads could I see a nose, a forehead, the hair. But though I couldn't see it, a shiver ruffled the fur all the way down my sides. The wolf knew.

Eyes on me. An intelligence. My hackles went all the way up.

The two said something, conferring maybe. The lanky one deferred to the smaller, more compact man. The scent from Beefy matched his namesake; human, and very, very male. The difference was marked with the two of them together. Something was up with that spider-like man.

I hopped back when the inhuman scent approached. It paused. A movement in the air between us had my nose quivering to catch his intent.

You'd be surprised to know how much goes into a smell. What I caught from him was a big, fat coppery nothing. No fear. No anger. Not even happiness, which I didn't get the chance to smell often but always gave some deep part of my wolf morph the warm fuzzies.

Mr. Pennies didn't move. What did move was his hand. It spread mid-air as if grasping for something invisible. I eyed it.

And just as a faint hum of words crossed between us, just as I listened for that moment of triumph, of joy over capturing a helpless Andalite bandit, I began to scream.

Flashes of greenish light. White-hot pain. My ear. Like something biting. Something drilling, pushing through, a fat, disgusting wad of burrowing slug. Helpless to stop it. The touch. The touch of palps on the most secret parts of my mind.

Of my...

Brain...!

«AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!» I screamed.

Quick movement. More. I thrashed. The pain didn't register.

Only the memory. The agony.

The despair.

«AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!»

A siren. An alarm, howling, jaw-breakingly loud. It shook the bones and I collapsed to my chest, suddenly aware of how very helpless I was. But I could scream. I could scream.

I couldn't back then. When I was infested.

When Jake was...

I heaved. Couldn't breathe. Aching for air, I gasped, and the sound stopped. The siren. It stopped.

Oh.

I stared into the dirt. The siren wasn't a siren. Of course. I was in wolf morph. I must have been howling. Like a deranged idiot. The Yeerks would be pleased, to break a bandit so quickly.

But it wasn't shame that stroked my fur. Like a dog. Like I wouldn't bite the hand curling into the soft skin behind my ears.

I was so shocked, I didn't think. The wolf did.

Teeth clacked on empty air.

"Whoa!"

A pressure around my jaws, and I suppressed a flare of panic by clamping down on those jaw muscles. It caught me by surprise. The cold awareness, numb and distant compared to some morphs, retreated a few steps behind the freaking-out Cassie mind. A squelch perked my ears and I realized, tail tucked between my legs, that I couldn't open my mouth anymore.

Cool fingers wrapped around the base of my muzzle. An arm around my neck held everything above my shoulders still. The weird one, he had me.

The grip actually leeched the heat from my body. His flat-out strength didn't budge, even when I wriggled and panted through clenched teeth.

"Spock!" An exclamation a few feet away. "It almost got me!"

"My apologies, Captain. It will not attack again."

The grip barely tightened, but I got the message. He wouldn't let it happen again.

Neither would I. Not such an unintentional attack, anyway. I wouldn't have tried to bite a hand. The jugular was a lot more effective. I winced. That thought sounded a lot more like Rachel than like me. I think. ...I hope.

"Now..." Mr. Pennies murmured. A touch on the fine hair of my nose. The spot below my eye. A finger by my ear. I shivered.

He concentrated. A crease in mind, a fracture of the world just behind my eyes leading from the hand on my face. It was... Confusing. But then it happened again.

Green. Flashes. Infiltration -

«NO!» My screams echoed inside my own head.

Light. Separation. Everything went black and I despaired in the millisecond of knowing. Was this my last second? My last -

Emptiness.

The hairy body finally slumped in the arms of a placid vulcan. Spock lifted his eyes to Kirk's, an unspoken question in the dark pits of his shadowed face.

Kirk didn't bother to shrug. "My apologies, Spock. Did I hit you?"

"Mild secondary energy transfer, Captain. I am well." As if to confirm the captain's query, Spock offered his arms and tucked them away again despite neither having the ocular sense to actually see any injuries. Unperturbed, the long-limbed first officer stood to arrange himself a short distance from the stunned animal. A whirring sounded as Spock began scanning it with his tricorder.

Kirk turned, reaching for his communicator, to let out an audible 'oof'.

The impact barely moved him. Krymmen. The native crouched where he'd fallen, a wild look in his eye. As he watched, blinking, Kirk thought he saw a shift in Krymmen's face. The phaser blast had ruined any night vision he'd gained down in the semi-convenient gully. He wasn't sure of it. Surely that wasn't a look of absolute, putrid hatred?

A Starfleet officer trained to not see the differences between natives of different planets, different species. A form of blindness to combat inherent biases against equal peoples.

But he wasn't blind. And the Eirine people, while humanoid and stunningly similar to the homo sapien, blurred the line between base man and something more pliable. A flatter nose, larger lips, shrunken ears and distinct ripples of flesh from chin to the back of the scalp served to soften native eirine features. It helped form an impression of softness. Of kindness.

So the dossier on the planet said. Spock and an uncommonly unified partner in the form of his chief medical officer had remarked on it. Warned him, in their own way, of unintentionally not taking the Federation liaison seriously.

But even so. A chill raised the hairs of his arms, prickling against sleeves in a most uncomfortable way.

The darkness must be playing tricks. That wasn't a snarled lip. Not a sharp, angler-fish-like tooth biting down on pulpy lips. No. Krymmen looked at him, then, and the next change truly startled him.

His expression opened into the dormant smile and left the shadows behind. Visibly. He looked more closely. Yes, Krymmen's face could be seen now. In this light? A natural night-light, a way to see a face in the midst of darkness?

"Fascinating."

He disregarded the familiar term for a moment.

"My Lord Captain," Krymmen stated. His hands performed the fluttering-about-the-face sigil from before. "You have delivered it. Now, end its misery!"

A touch of heat raised Kirk's voice. "I said I wasn't going to kill it, Mr. Krymmen. And that is that." A glance over his shoulder revealed Spock's lack of interest in the conversation. The angular head bowed over his instruments. "Mr. Spock."

"Captain, I believe we have a mystery on our hands."

Another chill caused the shirt on his back to itch. He rubbed his hands together and stepped up to the being's side, careful not to touch it with his boots. "Specify."

Spock continued to study the tricorder, speaking as if separate from his actions and totally present to answer any questions.

"This being shows no biological sign of intelligence. No increased cranial capacity - however, the brainwave patterns at their most basic level do indicate increased activity." The level voice did not raise concerns about this obvious fallacy with the data. "I will require the ship's computers to complete our data. However, I believe," and something more urgent entered the first officer's voice, his gaze shifted to meet the captain's in clear request, "that it is essential we bring it aboard for immediate medical attention."

A tug on his face did not raise an eyebrow, but Kirk did file his surprise under 'questions to be asked in relative privacy'. Krymmen did not allow for discussion on the creature's positive health. Obviously.

But he couldn't leave the eirine here. Kirk had a job to do. He met the gaze of his officer and nodded, hoping he'd found the eyes and wasn't staring into a pair of nostrils.

"Very good, Mr. Spock; please beam up with our," he paused for lack of a better word for use, "friend and see to it. I will continue with Mr. Krymmen to his village and find out why we've been called out for help."

"And the other creature, Captain?"

Ah. Yes. A smile quirked his lips. "I'm sure you'll find another 'fascinating' specimen in it, Mr. Spock. Just try not to get too excited about studying it until you find out if it's really an intelligent being or not. We don't want to go dissecting our new friends, do we?"

Spock's silence spoke for him. Kirk brushed the skin of his lip, quickly patched up by an irascible crewman of the Enterprise and his trusty dermal regenerator.

He nodded to his friend. Turned to the oily man, not overly surprised to see him standing upright and ready to move. "Shall we?"

Krymmen's head waggle came almost too late for the first-rate Federation man to catch before Kirk had already started up the cliff wall. Like a lizard clinging to a log, the eirine caught up with him and climbed out faster than a simple terran could match.

Golden light flickered and faded into the void behind them.