The Assignment
Star Trek – Animorphs
This is Tobias.
Not to be too dramatic, but I'm falling out of the sky.
«AAAAAAAAAAAHHH! WHOA - whoo!»
I hollered at the depths of my own mind, legs trailing behind as the wind rushed through chinks in my carapace. Wild colours and shapes blazed past fragmented vision in the dive from the freaky alien left standing behind me.
Freaky for reasons other than being an alien. I'm kind of used to that sort of thing by now.
Dirt grabbed under my feet and I hunched, close to the ground, instinctively shrinking the profile of a jagged exoskeleton. Of the flea. My mouthparts moved despite the stillness, the strange ability of an insect to be either moving at the relative speed of a bullet train or doing a great impression of a bloodsucking statue.
But I couldn't stay there. Gathering the fibres of my flea's hind legs, I launched into the air again.
This distance didn't quite match freefall but excitement, memory, kept me going. Over bare earth. Through the open fields marked by stalks of grass. The stems were thick and round as oak trees to my little body.
A series of shorter hops, hoping the cool touch of air on antennae marked the edge of the clearing, took a little time. Not too long. Keeping an eye on the limit is something I'll never forget, ever again.
Once sure I was out of sight, definitely out of touch if the past ten minutes actually happened, the transformation back to hawk dragged on the last shreds of my patience.
And to be honest, it gave me too much time to think.
My exoskeleton rapidly melted into new, greyish-pink skin. It sprouted russet feathers, beakless mouth gasping air into tiny proto-lungs as I lay there, waiting for legs. Waiting for working muscles and the bones to stand up and stagger beneath waxy leaves. Tiny twigs scratched down my back and worked the feathers like my own beak. It felt kind of nice.
I shuddered.
Tested wings. Everything in working order, a cautious flap and launch into the air. Over bushes. Over the river, alone, curves of the land hiding the other people I'd heard in Spock's little band.
And wheeled back. Not the way I'd come, but up and over. It took some energy to climb and the burn reminded me that I'd need to hunt soon.
Hunt alien mice. Well. I'd eaten worse. Hopefully this jungle had something small and furry I could catch.
Thick foliage. Almost impossible to find open air, though a strong wind seemed to carry me along beneath the canopy. The trick was to avoid branches, trunks and vines at high and growing speed. Cupping the air, cursing, I made a hard thrust of wings against the rapidly destabilising air flow.
Tree! Angle to the right, trim my feathers to swoop around it in the split second of tobogganing through a field of cut glass.
Tree! Tree!
Branch! Black string, hanging! A noose!
Sharp pain! It caught me zooming on the incredible winds, a broad wing edge straight through. Not enough to break it. Just enough to wind it tight, to yank me straight out of the air.
«Aargh! I yelped, thrashing.»
Lit softly, wrapped tight and tighter until my down feathers puffed under the wire-thin vine. It cut through my larger flight feathers. Wrapped to the bone. Caught. Trapped!
Dangling!
Flapping despite knowing it made things worse, heart pitter-patter, a raw screech of pain went nowhere at all. The hawk wanted out. It wriggled. Screamed.
The end of my right wing, numb. Dead.
This was bad.
But, no. Willing the beat to slow, the boy coming into sharp focus, I concentrated.
Small. Big might end up with something amputated. Small. Flea again? Not my first choice, but I didn't have to go all the way to helpless bug.
I couldn't die here.
Better than this. Flea. Concentrating dulled the pain, at least.
Head shrinking, first this time, beak split down the middle. Pop! Pop! Two antennae appeared from my now quarter-sized skull. The nubs waved at a stiff breeze.
"Cheeerrrp! Cheeeeeeeeeeerrrp!"
I froze. What was that?
Listening didn't catch any rustles. My hearing could catch a rat at fifty yards, on a good day. But as I swung like a particularly ugly piece of fruit, I saw them.
Shadows. In the brighter air, higher up, rare flecks of actual sunlight this close to the canopy. A jab of pain as the branch I dangled from bounced. Up and down, feeling sick and glaring for any sign of hungry scavengers, they came in a greyish green horde.
My first thought? Grasshoppers.
Leathery grasshoppers.
It's the legs, I think. Arched behind them like a big Mickey D's, the creatures moved in a truly bizarre lunge-step-swing through the tangle of stems.
Their bodies were somewhat conical, heads protruding from where any sensible creature's nether regions should be. As I watched, eyes half-shut against cold agony, the squadron of little beasts moved swiftly on their extensive grasping legs.
But closer up and inching towards me. Sniffing.
Beaks. They had beaks. Clicking, the one closest crept within breathing space. Touched the vine.
My wing didn't hurt. It should probably be hurting. I needed to morph.
It touched me.
I thrashed.
"TSEEEEEEEEEER!"
"Chipip!"
The bouncing nearly made me pass out.
Chittering. Swooning.
Blackness behind my eyelids churned white, blue. Opening them took a moment. Stupid. Stupid vine, stupid flight through trees, stupid alien world. Stupid!
Stupid!
Should've morphed something, not risked my neck trying to fly in this nest of a jungle. No normal bird was meant to battle the breezes down here. Even a sparrow might've caught a crushed breastbone.
I'm supposed to be the expert flyer, here. Total amateur move.
"Chee... Cheeeerpchip?"
Blurred. Sharp focus came almost instantly. I thanked my hawk eyes for their loyal service and blinked.
It sat right in front of me. Cheeping. Its legs dragged together, an unearthly twinge of stiff hairs making a truly hair-raising screech.
It sniffed me. Then it hunched over.
The grasshopper-bird began to eat.
I had seconds. Before the vine snapped between the razor-sharp halves of those peculiar button-round beaks, I lunged. My foot closed on a fragile neck.
The points of my talons dug under surprisingly tender skin. Its cries and the wriggle of its spine tightened my scaly toes.
I hung on. Focused. On the grasshopper-bird. On it not wanting to eat me.
Yeah, pretty grateful for that.
Better to be grateful for slipping free of the strangling vine.
My new circular beak tore it to shreds, mind still spinning as the final changes made way for a fairly quiet set of alien instincts. The original body didn't move from its branch.
Letting go of it, making a note to remember the location - hey, bird's gotta eat - made me one happy hawk.
Sometimes it scares me how I could stare down at an animal I was about to become, in the truest sense, an animal I'd killed, and not feel a thing. Sometimes it makes me glad.
Compassion doesn't keep me alive. Not out there, on my own. Better it than me.
The 'Cheeper', newest and one of the strangest morphs in my arsenal, stretched brand-new limbs to easily clamber through the trees. Something actually suited to this planet, something that wouldn't be totally out-of-place.
The other critters backed away as I practised swinging, gripping branches with three clawed feet to swing like an orangutan to the next tree. Their cheeping fell silent.
Okay, I said to myself, now to find that Spock guy and see how good his word is.
I'd wasted enough time. The beaked Cheeper gained speed as I swung erratically over ground barely visible from canopy heights. Swinging closer to the ground, I found the river. And I found something else.
«Oh no. That's not good.»
I have a gift for understatement. Hidden behind leaves the length of a wing, there was no reason to fear for my own safety.
Lying facedown in black water, liquid so dark it looked wrong, toxic, Spock was helpless. Unconscious. Dragged away.
Swift as a one-legged monkey, I followed.
You can guess the rest. I didn't.
And that's on me.
Turns out, we didn't show up on this world alone. Turns out the Yeerks hadn't infested the crew of that ship just yet. In fact, I could have trusted the guy. But it's too late now. Too late to save him.
I can admit to getting out of there at top speed. I'm usually the one to stick around, watch and learn, report back to Jake so he can tell us how to win.
But I couldn't stay.
New body, new tricks, unsettled enough to let the Cheeper take control and go wherever it wanted. Into the trees. Up high.
Could have trusted him. Now Spock had a slug on the brain, and here I was, stranded. Alone. Cassie up there, surrounded by the apparently innocent, doing the thing she does where clear thinking comes after being a good person. At risk, and without backup. Not acceptable.
I had to get back up there. Or find a way to bring her back down. Hey, finding a way home sounded just as miraculous and possible. I'd settle for a ticket back to Earth.
Right now, survival comes first, and I'm damn good at living on my own terms. Always have been, even before the hawk. Being a strange mix of ultimate mouse slayer and human kid left mostly to himself made it simple. Return to the dead Cheeper.
Demorph. Eat my fill and transform back.
I travelled on the high road until the trees thinned out and a glorious sky stretched past a very familiar mountain range. The very sight of clouds, honest, perfect clouds, melted the puny micro-feathers into real hawk plumage.
Much like the night this all started with, I took to that open air without thinking.
The most natural thing in the world, spreading feathers to feel the moist air fizzle into dry blasts coming from somewhere over the trees. A faint ripple in the air marked the goal for any weary bird of prey.
Thermal updrafts have nothing comparable. Every time, no matter the situation, no matter the struggle for humanity or need to keep myself from going complete hermit-in-the-woods, this amazingly warm pillar of air lifted me up like a thousand soft looks from my incredibly awesome female friend.
Circling, tail cut to the angle of wings, I scanned the ground below.
A deep, black-bottom gulch. Cassie's ravine. Clumps of brackish trees and bushes, not so similar to the looping trunks of the rainforest. The air felt much warmer than it had that blasting, freezing night.
Cutting away from the dusty rocks, watching the few undisturbed spots of sand to note pawprints and smooth boot marks, led me back over a set of plants. Again, too spiny and rough to belong in the damp home of Cheepers or the flabby-faced people set up with the Yeerks.
Back over a clearing I hadn't seen in the first awful moments of opening my eyes to actual lightning bolts, close enough to smell the burnt ozone.
Wind rushed over me as I pinned my wings back and dove, a controlled, swift duck to catch the air again and soar just over the trees. So good to stretch out, to do what my hawk was born to do.
A pinch to the left banked me over the clearing. Coming in to land on the sparse sticks growing from the side of a tree that looked awfully close to the pine variety, I saw it too late to adjust my trajectory.
TSEEEEEEEEEEEEEW!
Flash! Pzshshshshshshsht!
Bark stripped under flashing talons, my aimed perch totally wrong. It took an embarrassing struggle to bite and claw my way up to stand on the skinny branch, wings half-spread to keep balance.
Dracon beams! Distinctive, yellow, the bite of it odourless and slicing through a chunk of white metal like a hot knife through butter.
The second, I'd recognize anywhere. Green and somehow worse.
A very faint trail of white smoke curled flat in the constant sideways winds. A blocky white vehicle sat on the dirt, smoking from charred black cuts in zigzags across its sides and front. Behind it hunched someone, short black hair showing just over the new angle cut through his cover.
A red-tailed hawk can see the hairs on your nose without even trying. Black trousers dusted at the knee, drawn weapon an identical handheld box to the laser guns of spacefaring humans apparently running wild wherever I went, his forehead glistened golden-brown in the direct sunlight.
TSSEEEEEEEEEEW!
The crease in his face and wild yell turned into a gaping scream. His cooking flesh seared the inside of my beak with the acrid yellow beam.
"AAAARGHH!"
Movement just under my tree, quick, three lunging steps towards the downed craft. Held in a pale, slippery hand, the familiar shape of a dracon jerked as the weird ripple-domed head surged left and right. It stumbled, twice.
New guy. And it had it in for Mr. Red-shirt. An ally of the Yeerks if Chromedome owned a dracon beam, meaning the man slumped behind burnt white panelling hadn't been infested yet.
I could see his fingers. Curled and twitching. Dracon beams are no joke.
Designed to kill in the slowest, worst way possible. Destroying at a cellular level, deliberately inefficient. He must be in agony.
My razor-sharp gaze turned to the translucent white head. The Controller stalked, steadied by one spread hand, the other pointed at the ship.
I opened my wings, dropped to high speeds and raked my talons forward.
Probably going to regret this later. For now I let out a triumphant scream, far too late to hide away like a scared little birdie.
Very soft. Almost thick. My talons hit and sliced straight through, a chunk of blubber on my hind left toe.
"AAAAAARGHHHH!"
Enraged, the hot sizzle of energy warmed my back as I flew in the wake of a powerful wind. It blasted me over the panels. Almost into the man's face, flinched back, staring at me like I was a ghost.
Gravel skidded under me as I fought to tuck in my wings. Even here, the air current tugged at my feathers, demanding another rollercoaster ride straight into a cliff face where demorphing probably wouldn't save my life.
Hawks can't smile, but then, I'm not really a hawk at all.
Projecting every safe and urgent feeling I could, I said, «I'm here to help. Yes, the bird, sitting right in front of you. Don't freak out.»
"You got him pretty good," he said absently, checking over what I saw now was a cover for four large engine nacelles. Huh. This didn't feel like a very safe place to hide.
And did he just totally ignore the fact of one very stupid bird being capable of human speech?
«…Yeah. But it won't-»
TSEEEEEEEEEEEW!
My world went white. And then black.
Fire. Worse than the vines. Worse than being eaten. In my bones! Agony! Fire!
«AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!
White. Yellow.
Too colourful, couldn't look away. Couldn't feel anything. Hurt. Had to… had to stop the pain. Stagger up. Yes, on one foot, spread wide to carry dead weight of one whole wing. It felt too light. Lopsided.
Didn't make sense. What happened?
The red-shirt guy's back to me, flashes of green as he fired, fired again. Hope he got him. Hope it hurt. Ah, my wing! It hurt –
It wasn't there. My left wing.
It wasn't there. A stump. Trailing feathers, dirt mixed in barbequed blood. Just burnt away.
A bird without wings. No flying. Stuck to the ground like some useless dead weight. No.
No!
«Morph! MORPH!» I screamed at myself.
Anything. A dog. A human. Yes, human. Tobias. My hands, fingers, whole nails and longish brown hair. On my head, obviously. I didn't have hair on my hands.
Losing it. Losing it. Focus. Please. Please, let me morph…
Mr. Red-Shirt. He took one look at me and actually yanked on the midsection of a half-human clavicle, pulling me back. Behind him. In the shadow of the craft, his own ship, firing like a madman. I could've kissed him, could have if my lips came out before the typical cringing human mindset did.
I grovelled in the dirt and tried not to whimper. Soon, not soon enough, my arm. It grew from the black stump.
New flesh, new cells, all the dead stuff gone until the last sign of dracon burn left was a little pile of charred dirt and a couple lost feathers.
Not soon enough.
"AAAAAA-"
Mr. Red-Shirt's scream cut out. His head hit the metal with a loud crack as he fell, ear and cheek smoking, blackened.
Shot. Dead. No.
No, I couldn't move. Couldn't check. Please don't be dead. I wasn't done, wasn't fully human. This weak, soft-toothed body. I couldn't put up a fight like this!
The light scuff of dirt was my last warning.
Rising like a malevolent moon, Chromedome's ugly, nose-less face appeared between the gap of protective engine cover panels. A light grew in those dead eyes, the flabby lips puckering in an awful sham of a smile. No, a smirk.
Complete with villainous laughter. Shoot me.
And it saw me. He saw me. Human.
Oh, Cassie. We're in big trouble.
