The Assignment
Star Trek – Animorphs
It's in those moments before horrible, painful death that everything comes into focus. Something in fear, gut-shaking and inevitable, that cuts down your worries to bleached bones.
Breath fast on the heels of adrenalin, sensitive human lips damp with dew. Chest crushed, heavy. Time slowed as I waited. Despaired.
Hoped.
It all felt so real.
Is this it?
Three seconds. Chromedome's hand, blobby and disgustingly pale as a waterlogged carcass. It let go of the too-thin ship plates.
Glided up slow as molasses and gripped the holster with two hands.
Gave me those seconds to think. To let it all flash through my head. In that short time, to wonder.
I hoped. I worried. Even dreamed. Funny how all that can happen without wasting time.
Because thinking of home, of my family - my real family - seemed like the perfect thing to end it all on.
Not my choice of endings. How had it come to this?
A blasted black storm, driving the two of us into the arms of space-bananas in space-pajamas. Flying back to our entry point. Thinking there might be something there to bring us back home.
Not only getting involved in a fight that could've been avoided, but landing right in the middle of it.
Was I insane? Was that it?
Gunned down in cold blood by some two-bit Yeerk slave?
Infinitesimal changes in the thick blubber around the Controller's eye socket and a waiting, hollow barrel of his dracon dropped my butt to the dirt. I took in a breath.
Waited.
My last mistake. Elfangor chose the wrong kid. Let it be quick.
I'm ready.
"Vroma," Chromedome seethed. His scalp glistened beneath trails of seeping blood. Red. "I will be promoted for this."
I stared.
Is gloating genetic, or did they all take 'Villains 101' in the Galactic Domination Academy?
But the opportunity to punish him for tempting fate passed with my thin, reedy chest gasping for a few extra seconds of living. Curled and useless, prey waiting for the bite. Suddenly conscious of my breathing, I swallowed the last short wheeze and fought to hold it.
It'd be just perfect to faint from hyperventilation. Hold it. Don't show panic. Don't dare show weakness.
The Controller laughed in a peculiar gulping fashion. Puffy fish lips pursed in an 'u', long throat pulsating like water through a rubber hose.
"You will die for me, human."
Get on with it. Please, I'm suffering.
He raised the beam weapon to my head.
I forced myself to watch. I'm not going to die like a coward.
That's what probably saved my life.
Disbelief didn't stop a swan-dive for the dirt. Mr. Red-shirt came with me, heavy and non-compliant in unconsciousness. We crashed together in blood and dust.
His too-warm face bounced once on my shoulder.
A long scream past the engine protectors undulated past the point of hearing.
Hands to my ears, I flinched. A trickle of hot blood. Not important, not a point of interest in the midst of heart-pounding terror.
Shaky, palm bright red, we needed an exit. Had to get away, get room. Howls and disgusting wet impacts just around the corner raised the hairs on my arms. Back. The other side of the ship.
I dragged us both. Panting. Mind blank.
Another scream. Shouts. Not English.
No time.
Mr. Red-shirt's head lolled, neck boneless, as I yanked him under the opposite engine guard. Somehow it wasn't hard to lift his upper body in my thin arms.
The smooth face almost slipped as I propped him between the ship and a football-sized rock.
It didn't look good. Passing a glance over him told inexperienced me that much.
The burn toasted skin entirely black, missing his eye by some miracle, destroying the skin around it. Even if the eyeball was fine, it'd be agonising to move his face enough to open it.
Half-blind. I hoped that's the worst of it. Dracon beams are meant to kill. It could've gone much deeper than the skin.
I'm no doctor, but I know not to mess with head injuries.
A pause, because I had to know.
Fingers under the jut of his chin, I felt for the beat that I've only had to look for in tactical discussions with Marco.
Funny thing about us Animorphs - when it comes to a pulse, it only matters if the victim can think clearly enough to demorph.
None of that for my friend here. And checking added another level of complication to our survival.
Reddie's heart worked.
Of course I had to check. But now, the Controller distracted, I had a clear shot at getting away. I could run. I could demorph and fly.
But Reddie only had me.
Marco would be disappointed with me.
Get over it, Marco.
I hunched down and remembered how it felt to fly.
Lines of feathers came in seconds. Like a 2D print on my skin, perfect tattoos starting faint but growing stronger.
The fluffy edges rose from my hands first. Downy fingers wriggled as I willed the changes to come faster.
I'm not a quitter. But it wasn't just my life on the line.
If I died, Cassie had nothing. The Yeerks had a foothold on a new planet, on a space-faring human vessel with technology the slugs had never cannibalized before. Teleportation was horrifying enough.
Shrinking. Faster. Faster, down, down!
My legs snapped. Pop! Pop!
Reformed. Hips shrivelled inward. My chest billowed out, expanding, as if I'd taken a huge breath and swelled up like a balloon.
In the strange ways of the morphing technology, no transformation used any sort of logical process.
Flat, human teeth protruded through my lips like passing through spiderwebs. They merged into one. A rim of bone, truly creepy, thinned and yellowed. Sprouted out of my face. Curved into a deadly point.
A beak.
If I'd really seen what I thought I saw, running might be smart. Might save my life.
But not the man at my feet.
And let's not forget that the fishy alien saw me. He saw the human Tobias.
That particular tale could not be allowed to spread.
Bones hollowed, the extra stuff inside sucked out into z-space. A bizarre super-dimension the Andalites used like an old sock drawer. Any body matter I didn't need right now could be stored there, almost indefinitely.
Including marrow. Birds don't need heavy, unbreakable bones. Self-powered flight means losing any unnecessary baggage.
About the time my shoulderblades crept beneath the skin into their familiar places, it started.
"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!" I screamed. Half-human vocal chords, loose skin on my gizzard stretched tight to accomodate the inhuman sound. "AAAAAAAAARRGGHHHEEEEEEEER!"
My arm! My - my wing!
Horrified, eyes wide on the burn, the morph stopped. A stump. A black stump that shouldn't exist. Shouldn't still be there.
Stinking of barbeqcue and death. The dracon beam wound came back, as if I'd never morphed.
Not fair. That's not how it works! Morphing is supposed to fix everything, every wound! That's how the rules work! And we've never broken them, with one feathered exception.
But it's never failed me before. The DNA's undamaged, so I shouldn't be. I couldn't be. This had to be a trick.
Knowing that didn't make me feel any better.
Had I been shot, again? The new wing burned off like the last one?
A quick glance, scanning on a wrinkled vulture-like neck, showed nothing. Still alone.
Not shot. Missing a wing. Agony stabbing white lights across a hazy mountainside. Not a lie. Didn't make sense.
Didn't matter.
Even if the hawk was somehow permanently damaged - a shuddered clutch of talons in the dirt - there's no reason my other morphs would be.
Human Tobias was fine. Both arms.
I had other morphs. But what? Something with teeth? Something fast?
Dangerous. Naturally deadly. Got it.
Demorphing took far too long. I grit through it.
Off-sided, balance messed up, my last wing drooped to keep me standing.
Three horns thrust out of my skull in a grinding, beak-itching crunch.
I shot up, seven feet in all. Two legs not dissimilar to the red-tailed hawk. Not usually the type for praying, but crouching to keep from making a perfect target over the top of the shuttle, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Proto-arm and melting wing stretched over Mr. Red-shirt's body, my fierce eyes peered up at the sky.
Please. It's not time for us to go. Help me to win.
That sort of thing.
Not exactly poetry, but it did calm the panting down. At least, until my second heart kicked in and demanded some heavy mouth breathing.
Swiftly enough, bladed to prune a hedgemaze by simply walking straight through it, the last change came over my eyes.
Dimmed, but serviceable.
A quick check to be sure my new friend still breathed, and I did what Hork-Bajir do best.
Powerful thigh muscles clenched and I sprang, up, over!
Over the shuttle. Forgoing a slow, easily visible lumbering around it. clawed feet outstretched!
My full weight came down hard on a white head.
It crunched satisfyingly under the heavy landing.
One quick flash of bluish grey. So close to white, my new eyes had trouble picking it up.
I slashed blindly.
The blades cut through air in a harmless downward whistle.
Shrill squeaks startled me into a step back, thick tail catching on messy Controller paté. Unbalanced, I readied myself for a lunge.
Paused. Thoughts raced across my mind, jumbled, still wrought from the earlier havoc.
A pair of orb-like black eyes blinked at me. Unchanged.
Not attacking.
Afraid? Waiting, maybe. Another one of those pale two-legged things. Potentially infested.
Could I take that risk? A potential?
Pale and flubbery, lines of dark blue and pink in waving ripples across a bald scalp. The movement caught the eye, almost mesmerising. Like a lava-lamp.
The alien backed away, arms up in a useless attempt to protect itself.
Unarmed. The dracon beam. Where was it?
It was easy to take one monstrous step and get right in its face. A fierce snatch caught the interlocked arms in one huge hand. Not currently bothering to be careful, I squeezed hard and shook. Its whole body moved up off the ground in my grip.
"WHO YOU?"
Snarled through a jagged beak, the barbed tongue turned normal speech into a syllable slurry. In this case, it made no difference. The alien didn't respond. Uncomprehending.
Cool puffs of air on my muscular forearms dried blood in crusty lines. The black eyes stared somewhere to my right, under my armpit. Avoiding looking up at what I knew to be a terrifying sight.
I've gone claw-to-blade with more than enough Hork-Bajir myself.
But intimidation didn't seem to be helping me now.
"WHO. ARE. YOU."
It let out a stream of sounds. Clicking from somewhere in its chest, the lavender pufferfish mouth said everything but intelligible words.
Ah. Not English. I should have expected that.
Switching to my in-built universal translator, I sent the deadly intent of an Animorph out of options through direct thought-speech.
«Who are you? What are you? Why did you -»
Slipped. A limb slid out of my grip.
Fumbling, doing my best not to actually dismember the slimy alien, it closed a thick-fingered hand on my wrist and locked our gazes together. A clear layer of natural gel or oil moved the arm disconcertingly beneath my palm.
Serpentine neck bent to keep contact, rancid breath on its face did nothing to frighten it back. Faint strength, nothing compared to the Hork-Bajir, pressed through leathery green skin. Two out of four fingers splayed just around the base of a wrist-blade.
Click. Click.
Softer, louder and deliberate. Repeated twice. The skin of its throat rose and fell in an obvious gulp.
It didn't fight my control, and actually gently patted me with its free hand. I could see my reflection in those clear eyes.
Gentle. Non-threatening.
Inconclusive.
"Aaauuuughhhh..." someone quietly moaned.
We flinched.
My talons dug pinpricks in the skin of its arm. It cast its eyes back and forth, looking far back as it could with one arm trapped. The light cuts didn't seem to concern it.
Then my own mind spun into gear, and I peered across the slopes too. My flexible neck allowed for looking all the way behind and around without having to move an inch. Not one person in sight, friendly or hostile.
What else could... oh. Mr. Red-shirt.
Of course he had to wake up right now. I felt immediately bad for thinking that way.
He needed medical attention I wasn't certified to give. Standard-issue morphing didn't make manifestations of band-aids or, even more useful, high-end pain relievers possible. My Hork-Bajir didn't have a stitch of clothing, let alone an emergency medkit.
Thinking about how Reddie must feel, crispy from dracon fire, banked immediately into something more useful.
If I could give him a hand, somehow, that might smooth things over for Cassie and I. The advanced humans might be just as capable of gratitude as the ones from back home.
At least until the Yeerks had full control over the spaceship and we were plumb out of luck.
But never say I'm a pessimist.
And right here? I had a living key. Uninfested or not, it was more useful to me breathing than dead.
It might not understand English, but thought-speech broke down universal barriers. And I had an armful of reasons to keep it from betraying me.
Keep your cool, Tobias.
