(See end of chapter for Author's Notes.)


The Assignment

Star Trek – Animorphs

Cruuuunch.

His great barrel chest caught the edge of a blunt metal tray. It crumpled. So did the pair of hands holding it.

Fingers clawed into palms, her face drew tight in terror.

"Neeeeeeeiiighhhhegghhhhh!"

He screamed.

Ears flat, the stallion appeared more skull than placid herd beast. Both pride and chaotic, blinding fear bleated into the fallen crewman's face.

She needed little encouragement to roll back her eyes and go to sleep.

Hooves pounding, each leg mashed carpet in the patented prance of Minneapolis Max.

Flicked tail, a burst of electric energy fired all 1,100 pounds of pure kinetic madness down the hallway.

The caverns pressed close to bristle the short hairs on his sides, his curved ears. It smelled all the same, and to focus the dark eyesight on a wall showed the sameness of the close space he'd woken up in. He didn't mind.

Max just wanted to run. Where he ended up? It might matter when he got there.

Boom boom boom boom. Thundering, a storm cloud over shaking ground.

Dim shapes lunged from the walls. They cried out. It urged the racehorse to greater speed. They always ducked back, leaving him free of distracting, noisy fenceposts.

Max knew this. The chase. Horse against man, against horse, against anything so foolish as to challenge him.

Running. He knew running.

Lightly panting, the golden, fine stallion slowed. Another sliding stone moved, cracks sealing shut. The dark shapes hid behind it. It made loud sounds.

He kicked it. Sure of his glory, the stallion pranced, neck arched.

"Miss Crawford!"

Max started.

Room enough to turn, a hock bouncing from the walls, the stallion flared his nostrils.

A shade. The hazy outline stood directly in his way.

The itch. The indescribable urge. A beating heart thumping fire and clean room to run. Excited as a popinjay in summer, Max whickered. The thrill demanded he not stay still. It killed him to stand still.

An effort shifted the walls out of sight and onto the dim figure. He saw it. The small head and two legs, an instrument balanced in flexible paws that moved in circles.

Max's head twitched. He decided. He'd make a way.

No little, soft figure stopped the unstoppable force of Minneapolis Max. The only stallion in these parts. None answered screamed challenges, lay their own scent markers for him to dominate.

Perhaps a little further and he'd find the open spaces. The place to run without moving walls. Where his magnificent chest could flash and pump muscle without bruises.

Power overwhelming. A trot jolted the mane to fall over his eyes.

The shade made as if to move.

"No, Cindy! Stop!"

His skull almost cracked against the low ceiling. A heaviness on the side of his neck, the loose skin pinched hard, caught him flat-footed. Max stopped.

Soft. Rough. Familiar.

And bold.

Max didn't like bold. But… Max didn't really want to bite.

A paw stretched wide, into fingers over the fine hairs of his nose. Scents followed the stroke, nares wide to taste each one. A sharp tang. Broad, thick coatings chased by an image of shining puddles, the colour of rain. No. Pictures after rain. A rain…bow.

Mind numb, the stallion gazed ahead, chomping the air. Thinking. His nose bumped into a waiting palm.

"'Ats it… atta girl…"

Familiar. A slight quiver knocked the smallest finger aside. It brushed his cheek to greet an old friend.

But the vague shadow rubbing his forehead didn't have the shape nor scent of his herd. It didn't have the right.

His ears pinned back.

Max thrust the lean muscle of his neck out. Skin slipped out of the shade's grip. He shoved past.

Had to move. The crush closed in on his hips, the hock sore from rebounding in an earlier near-collision, a trap he sensed clear as a rope round his neck.

The hunt of these strange animals better suited to the tunnels. They fit in perfectly.

Minneapolis Max didn't like feeling afraid. He took it personally.

The paw shoved back. His nose bent.

"Cindy Crawford," grunted a voice too close, a man, his breath a stench of burning, foul death, "I ain't about to let you go. So for both our sakes, stop! Right now!"

It gripped his nose. Soft muzzle collapsed into a malleable handhold, his great head moved slightly to the left.

It nearly maddened Max. Now he really wanted to bite.

Thunder struck with nowhere to go. The clack shied the stallion to the side, fingered paw keeping grip as his teeth clamped shut. He tried to toss his head. A muffled squeal of protest didn't shift the shade.

It held on. Pinched skin at his neck and Max rolled his eyes to show the whites. It had two hands and enough strength to stand against his nervous shuffling.

What thing was this? Not a horse. It didn't flee. No biting, no clawing or straddling. It merely held on.

Movement! Too close, his head yanked down, fast!

"No, don't-!"

"Shut it! Hold still!" Adder-sharp slowed into coos, words in his ear, Max startled to listen. "Now there, hold on, missy madness… there you go… that's it, short up, I mean shut up, ahahh, what would a flipping horse know…"

Ear twisted to rapidly moving lips. Focused to pierce the darkness, Max looked from one shadow to the next. To find that strangely powerful small thing on his nose. And the one tugging, speaking, holding his head to make awful, intimate eye contact.

Too close. Too angry, fearful, she smelled it and he hated, needed, wanted to fight. Unchallenged! No challenger could beat Minneapolis Max!

Stallion of the low tunnels!

"Now now… it's just your old friends, here's Mr. Scott, see… he's nice. Hey, loosen up a bit. Yeah, good. We're just here to help. Why're you running about all crazy, hey…? Hey now…"

But the stroke down his face didn't strike Max as bad. Misguided, maybe. Foolish.

Legs bunched to clear the floor, front hooves brushing air, Max came down to listen. The hand on his ear didn't twist it now but held in a firm paw.

The walls stood close. He could lean that way and crush bone. Break the puny shadows.

He didn't do it.

Max didn't know why.

It could be the comforting weight on his shoulder. Could have been the way the whispers made sense. May be how deliberate, how unyielding the three-pronged trap of nose, ear and neck muddled through a mix of complicated smells to still his fighting spirit.

But Max calmed down.

The muscle of his barrel chest stopped twitching. His hooves came down, if a little hard, to stay planted.

And the grip on his nose relaxed. Simple strokes, scratching a little higher. The delicate cone of an ear released, the voice standing on tiptoe to whisper peace.

Max liked it. Ears perked forward, he leaned into the second touch on his cheek as it rubbed in slow circles. Rising and falling like the breath in his own chest, the beat of a heart. A step closer pushed his great head into arms. The shade accepted him without a flinch.

Despite hating it, knowing his lordship over the caves, a flush of pleasure blew soft whickers from the warm embrace.

"There, there…" A specially good scratch. Max closed his eyes. He breathed the sharp, oily scent from the stroking hand. "Good girl. That's it. Come on, now, running about the ship… what set you off, huh?"

"Real good, Mr. Scott," said the whisperer. A stretch to its voice sounded happy.

"Ah, just like handling our engines after a spot of trouble… just a bit of tender lovin' care, hey?"

But the hugger felt hot around Max's nose.

Another 'knowing'. He didn't know what it meant. Someone else did.

Familiar. Yes.

Click. A click in his head.

He knew this. But where…?

Remember. Thinking. His head thrust up. The bridge of his muzzle caught a pointed chin.

The shade swore.

Max stared over their heads. Over the two men's heads. People. A Mr. Scott's bent, charcoal-brown standard hairdo. He was… and she…

Cassie. She was Cassie. I'm…

«Sorry. I'm sorry!»

Nuzzling seemed inadequate, somehow. And kind of inappropriate. But it's all I had.

Images. My mind swam with colours. Memories, of course. Blinding in the rapidity, the sense of being there, experiencing it second-hand.

"So she does speak," marvelled the guy who knew the ear-twisting technique. I stilled, careful not to tread on any toes.

Unshed tears caught on thick eyelashes made me feel a lot worse than worrying about turning into a horse, of all things. Mr. Scott stood very still, barely breathing, to a nudged exploration of the bump rising where I'd smashed him. Hurt him. A friend. Or not an enemy, as far as I knew.

A surge of tired affection had my thick tongue out to lick his chin.

…Ew.

A vibration me pause. Through invisible stubble prickling my nose, must have just woken up, the crewman chuckled. He pushed me back. "There you are!"

I must have appeared properly cowed. The man touching my ear stepped away, nodding politely. Mr. Scott, apparently true to his name, kept his ground and settled hands on his hips to look me over.

"Fit as a fiddle, though I'm no horseman. Oz?" beamed the man in uniform red.

My ear-twister knew his business. A check for soundness, palpating the sore muscles on my barrel and running along the airways for clear breathing while keeping us in propriety brushed by smoothly enough. Even Max seemed happy. 'Oz' signalled a thumbs-up.

"Suppose that means you're fighting-fit," Mr Scott shrugged. "And just what," consternation caught in ruddy cheeks with all the subtle influence of a fried fuse box, "was that? Eh?" A head shorter than his friend, the thick brogue matched his chest-to-barrel approach. "You've only gone an' injured five of the crew, some enough to have the poor doctor spittin' fire at his staff!"

"Reconstructive surgery."

«What?»

My shoulder twitched to the husky whisper. 'Oz' looked down at the floor, hands behind his back. Mr. Scott clicked his fingers to draw my head front-and-center.

«Oh man,» I said, clambering over useless stallion hormones. «I hurt people?»

Need-to-kick. Need-to-run.

Need to get my head on my shoulders. Getting overrun by a horse? Mr. Prancer of Dumbsville?

Gone and did it without even meaning to. A new record, Cassie. Well done, officially ruining your good first impression with alternate-reality super-advanced humans.

Yes. I did remember crushing someone's hands.

Max tucked his head between his forelegs. The bones trembled against my muzzle, vision worse than usual. Ready to let loose again and flee like a frightened deer.

Not from gentle-handed Mr. Scott, a nasal huff brought my big eye to land on a semi-reclined Mr. Oz. He refused to look up.

The concept of actually losing my mind doesn't break news for me.

It's funny. I've said how far from normal my life has become, right? That I'm not 'nice'. I'm not the innocent person who wouldn't hurt someone to save her life, the lives of her friends.

It would be easy to blame all of that on my powers. On the morphing ability. On the Andalites, for creating it, or the Yeerks for giving me no other morally acceptable choice but fighting.

I sacrifice my mind for the right to defend my world, the animals I've been given the privilege to become.

At times those animals can take up more space in my head than me. The first moments of a new morph almost always take that element of conscious, think-therefore-I-am choice and thrust it into a thickshake of panic-angry-instinct that can be hard to overcome.

It's one reason why we try not to morph into a new body alone. Without someone to shake us back to reality, to I-am-Cassie… well. Let's say Jake's lucky he wasn't eaten by one of us in his lizard morph.

But not being capable of remembering how? When? Why?

I didn't raise my head. Max, surrendered to my control, felt a similar dread.

«What's happening to me?»

So softly the wind changed.

Meat. Nostrils flared to catch it. Raw meat.

Close. Very close.

The big eye stayed on Mr. Oz, so close to my shoulder, relaxed against a shallow alcove in the wall. A niche for his smaller body. Lithe. Muscular, I noted, tremble transitioned into a weird hum of intensity in knowing how very close he stood. Close enough to sling an arm over my withers. To twist my ear. Wake me up.

He smelled good.

Max startled. Both men jumped.

Relief and a bizarre disappointment cut my ears flat to let them catch on. To what? Catch on to what?

Hooves skittered. Oz came closer but I didn't want him to.

Not right. Disconnected? No, confusion. Yes. I couldn't think.

Scents familiar to me, Cassie, hunger and taste distant but waking a string of drool in the need to chew. To graze. I didn't want to graze. I wanted to…

Reach over and take what it wanted. The snarl in my throat knew better than grass and alfalfa.

Oz screamed.

His entire body came up in crushing, inch-long teeth. My neck strained to hold him there, uniform wetted dark crimson.

Little man couldn't run. A blow struck my head, weak as a fly, just motion registered by my own screaming. Jaw muscles worked to bite harder. It didn't pierce. It crumbled.

I crumbled.

Not me. «Not me!»

It wasn't me!

He collapsed. I tore free to run.


(To my readers; this note is to inform you of the three artistic interpretations of this work-in-progress linked to on my profile. They should help to enhance the experience of reading The Assignment and to expand the universe explored within its pages.)