The Assignment
Star Trek – Animorphs
I was a grey smear. A greenish-grey splotch on someone's finger. Blind. Dying. But not deaf.
And I knew that roar. Thank God a morph doesn't need a functioning brain for directed thought-speak.
«Jake...!»
«Tobias!»
His voice. Jake's voice! Chocolate rain in a dry, angry desert.
I could have died from relief. Only I was already dying.
Bugs are practically unstoppable. Behead a roach and it'll eventually starve to death. A nuclear bomb might make it do a backflip. I've yet to morph an insect with actual intelligence and I'm perfectly happy for them to stay that way.
The ultimate snack could conquer the world if it just had a little more brains.
Death isn't so scary. It's been an ally and constant friend. Necessary. I've caused enough... seen enough.
I wasn't afraid.
Jake said something terse. I had more important things to care about.
Blindness isn't like closing your eyes. It's like opening them after a nightmare, in a familiar bed, without streetlights or digital clock to reaffirm you're back in the land of the living. Off-balance in a place that used to make sense.
The me behind the fly needed recalibrating.
So I twitched a leg. The sole piece of me left, waving at my own remains.
There's something about that. I should be doing something. It's important.
Workaholic Tobias. Bored Tobias. Keep finding new entrances to the Pool, Tobias... keep an eye on the time, Tobias...
...
«TOBIAS!»
«No,» I told the voice. Murred because it sounded funny. «Not it.»
The voice snapped like a wound cable. My foot clutched in reflex.
«Demorph! Tobias, demorph. You're squashed, man!»
Huh. Well, I guess I could do that. That something pulling at me, somewhere in my gut, it agreed. Good idea. Probably going to hurt, but what's a little more pain, huh? I'm good at pain.
«What's... oh.» I stared into the void. Stunned. «I'll do that.»
Stunned, because what the hell, man? What was I doing?
Focus. The hawk. I'm dying. I'm dying!
It came slower than morphing in the bitter cold. A noiseless slurp and connecting agony that shouldn't have been possible. I actually felt the bulging fly butt suck its insides from the outsides. The fragile sac knit itself together again.
Leftover slime stuck me to a warm fingertip. Like someone blowing out their cheeks, my mass ballooned and drooped from the extra weight.
The hard carapace, smashed into shards, melted straight through brand-new skin. Settled into internal bone.
And peeled me off to splat by the Controller's tattered sneaker.
Vibrations. A slammed foot, right beside me. It missed.
A boom startled through the confused haze. It muffled out. Came back louder. Reformed into separate tracks of noise, the rage and terror mixed into one cacophonous scream.
Sproooot. My leg shot out of my underside, lifting me up for a second into downwards dog. Crack. It broke in half. A joint.
Now the size of a baseball, I made an easy target. And terrified, angry Yeerks love an easy target.
"Filth!"
With a disgusting popping sensation, I had eyes again. Enough to see the shoe. The toe dug into my throat and right under my body. I went flying.
«Aaaahhh!» I cried.
"Hrrrrrrooooooaaarghh!"
Seven hundred pounds of infuriated siberian tiger lunged right under me. Fast as the wind, bleeding tracks sliced one, two, three human-Controllers. One of them, a woman, clutched her forearms and bawled.
Another aimed his handheld ray gun.
I hit wall. Pain rushed through the point of contact. Something deep inside crunched at a rough floor landing.
I didn't have a neck I could crane to see what happened next. But I could shout a warning.
«Look out! He's got a Dracon beam!»
«Aaaaghh!» he yowled.
A beak. My sense of smell waited for an invisible hole puncher to cut out nostrils. My nares formed right in time to catch the stench of burnt hair.
I lunged forward, desperate to see. «Jake!»
«Fine!» He landed on the Dracon beam and pawed it over to me. The length of his tail whipped left and right like a full-blast garden hose. «You okay?»
«Yeah.»
«Get out of sight, Tobias.» He sounded frustrated. «Take that with you. We need to get out of here.»
Jake needed out. So did I, sure. He came first.
Two fully-formed hawk legs raised my undefined blob meat-bod in the most disgusting imitation of a bird ever witnessed by human eyes. Grateful to be missing the freakshow, I kicked the gun to the doorstop. Balanced on one foot, I closed talons round the barrel and dragged it past the threshold.
Snarls followed my jerky go-stop-go round the corner. A hallway. More doors opposite than the way I'd chosen and an open window slit far left.
Steady light didn't reach inside the closest room. It lay open.
I chose it.
Immediate quiet settled uncomfortably round non-existent shoulders.
I finished demorphing. «Aaahhh,» I groaned.
Staying in that body seemed a bad idea for multiple reasons. And Jake needed help.
That didn't explain the rush of relief through my wings - wing - but as I've said before, I'm pretty good at ignoring stuff that doesn't matter. «I'm coming to help, Jake. Hold on!»
«What's taking so long?»
«Morphing.» Decision made, I rapidly took on weight. My breastbone lay on the floor without more resistance than a gentle thump. Weary sighs turned gasps for breath as new lungs grew at alarming speed.
Legs and arms. Tail and curved neck. Spikes creeping through my skin in an excellent impression of Wolverine, I stumbled from the dim room.
Three inch-deep talon trenches in the wood kept misshapen feet from tripping me onto my own knee blade. I ripped my hand from the doorstand and bounded back to the fight.
The intelligent gaze of Jake's tiger warred with a bloody red stained chin. He chuffed. Black gums split to drop his snarl when he saw me. «Ready? I've had enough of this Castlevania garbage and it's been like ten minutes.»
«Felt more like twenty,» I said. «I gotta do something first.»
«Like what?»
«Sorry,» I said briefly, and lunged. «Don't bite me!»
Slash!
"ROAAWRRRRRRRRRR!"
«What the hell?!» Even seven feet over this angry kitty, my bowels clenched hard against an ear-popping yowl. «Tobias?!»
«Just your whiskers - and got your nose. Sorry, man.» Poised to bring down sharp hellfire, I edged between him and five quaking Controllers. I certainly didn't look sorry. «I need in their good graces. I'm just another Controller, right?»
Jake rubbed his pink nose on a paw bigger than my head. «Warn me next time! I could've dodged right into it! Oh, and did I mention, OW?»
The hackles on his nape settled down.
«No! Don't look away! We need to sell this,» I said urgently. Took a wide cowboy step.
Jake didn't skitter away. A flash of stained yellow fangs made my role reversal almost too real. Spine curved almost before he began to pace, the tiger cast a long look over his shoulder. As if waiting. Watching the door.
And us.
«Tobias, tell me what's going on or I'll keep thinking this is a really stupid idea,» he said.
«I need to find the Yeerk boss. The Visser, if they've got one.» I followed his silent padding over stone. Back and forth. «These idiots can lead me to him. I needed their trust.»
«You didn't know I'd be here. Don't try to play it like some master plan,» Jake growled. «There's no reward for getting yourself killed. I thought we'd... I thought you'd learned how important you are. To the fight. To us.»
«I'm not - I didn't come to die,» I said, stung.
He scoffed. He somehow made it a caring sound of disgust. «They saw you leave. They know it's you!»
«Actually, they saw me go out the door, and in came a Hork-Bajir,» I said quietly. Then, «Help! Help me!»
Jake started. The Controllers behind me flinched. I'd poured on the volume, a little panic on the side. A grin pulled the rubbery skin round my beak.
«There's Controllers coming! I need your help, Jake!»
«You said my name,» Jake whispered. Horrified. «That's my real name. What have you done?»
«Nothing that's not already been done. We've been ratted out.» I raised the black weapon in my overlarge fist. Snarled for good measure. «So go and rescue me, then get out of here, okay?»
«Are you crazy?»
A thousand different ways to come to this point flashed over the reflective alien alloys in my hand. None of them guilt-free. All of them my fault.
The tiniest squeak of rubber on concrete. Breath warmed my elbow. "Kill it! Don't let these filthy humans escape!"
«Sorry, Jake. This is how it has to be.»
"Kill Bandit," I uttered. "My kill."
I depressed the trigger. His eyes went huge.
Tsseeeeeeww!
Contorted in an instant, the unfair grace of Jake's battle-morph lifted all four paws off the ground. My deliberately off-target blast smoked a hole in the striped afterimage of his hind leg.
«AAAARGHHHH!» I bellowed, willing fear into the shout.
Cause I really was happy to see him. And Jake didn't deserve tangling up in my mess more than he'd already gone and stepped in it.
A sidestep to the door and a lingering snarl for everyone else's benefit passed that yellow stare as a promise for future violence. Only I saw regret hiding under pinprick pupils. A characteristic droop of his whiskers.
«I'll help as soon as I can,» Jake said. His chin lifted up. «Go get 'em, and come home safe.»
«I will. And Jake?»
He slunk out the door, every bit the defeated Animorph. «Yes?»
«It's awesome to see you.»
«Wish I could say the same, bird-brain.»
I couldn't hide a genuine smile.
Patient. Controlled. The trained shock trooper guarding his precious assets and their more valuable host bodies. I waited three seconds.
Nothing over thought-speak. Jake knew I needed space to keep up the act.
I stomped out. Held a hand behind me and glared both ways.
The little group of scared slugs followed me.
"Is it gone?"
A slap just above my elbow blade. I gave that Yeerk a flat stare.
"You missed it, fool! I could have killed a Bandit but for your interference," it sneered, twisting a rather attractive blonde's face all out of order. Three red droplets dried like freckles on the side of her nose.
Not my allies. Not my friends. A barbed tongue doesn't lend to clear speech without some tricks of the trade. Like a parrot, Hork-Bajir imitate better by using their throats. It felt like singing through gargling water.
I loomed over her. "Injuries?"
She scoffed. Held up a hand, the index finger gone.
"It bit off my finger," the Yeerk said as if commenting on the weather. "The one I'd squashed that vermin on. I was getting a promotion out of that finger."
A slow blink. "...Where?"
Jake bit off her finger. When did that happen? It seemed a little out of character for Mr. Do-It-Right-Or-Not-At-All.
Genuinely curious, a man slightly shorter than my uncle at a full slouch bent over the pink digit. Picked up between thumb and forefinger, his beard almost touched the stump.
Not overtly careful, I snatched it. Disgusting.
But handing the severed finger to the grumpy blonde Controller felt more a nod to the trapped host than its Yeerk. Easy to be blase about amputations when you can just steal another host body.
"Get fixed."
"There's Bandits here," a slender woman whispered into her ponytail. "Where is our communicator?"
We looked at each other. I slapped my thigh, not feigning exasperation.
"Report to Boss. Who will come?"
And that's how I found myself walking straight to the VIP without firing a single bullet. Escorted by Yeerks, hands cuff-free and nothing aimed to spill the beans. My brains.
I may have impersonated a cement truck in my heavy tread. The draw to lean left in one shoulder was entirely my own artistic license.
Acting the powerful patsy isn't my usual role, but I've got to say, Marco has it right. There's every reason to enjoy what we do. Take the fun where you can, cause tomorrow, we might be dead.
Okay. That's enough out of Marco.
Not a word from Jake.
From the slack jawed front-facing expressions, I hadn't rang any alarm bells. And they kept it up. Maybe communing with their hosts. Maybe dreaming of stepping on babies' necks. Could be wondering what stewed beetle they'd be having for breakfast. Excellent protein, after all.
Ugh. No, it's too soon.
Down two corridors running parallel, through a room carpeted by some local furry creature I hadn't met and past a spacious lobby. Gelatinous strands of a web hung from the dark corners of the ceiling, the fat caterpillar-esque thing dangling over its trap. Tiny amber eyes glinted at us beneath the crevice of its helmeted face.
We, meaning everyone aside from me, didn't look up.
Braziers aglow with pinkish crystals marked the way. It seemed an odd colour choice for Yeerks, but I may be generalizing.
Cassie might've been upset at their gratuitous use of native lumber. My claws clicked on floorboards.
I nearly brained one of my lackeys to scratch an itch between my shoulder blades. This was taking too long.
"Where is Visser?" I demanded.
Curious George smiled. His beard parted from mirthless lips. "One of those, are you?"
The other four exchanged similar disgust.
"The Sub-Visser's overseeing the Bore. Last I heard," added a man with a receding hairline. He could have been a lawyer. Or an accountant. He patted his haunch, played with the material of his belt. "Radio silence."
"Radio failure," his bearded friend muttered.
"Poor communication lines." Baldy shrugged. "The next project'll cut down enough cursed trees to make precautions unnecessary."
"Trees?" I said stupidly.
Beardy and Baldy smirked at each other. Their eyes flicked behind me. "You'd think a Hork-Bajir would know," Baldy said.
The tag-a-longs matched smiles. Kinda creepy.
"Explain."
Familiar black boots kicked at Beardo's ankle. Elbows up to protect vulnerable sides, he avoided impalement on me with a flailed step back behind Ms. Four-Fingers.
Blondie cast her suspicions wide. She squinted at me. "Who are you, anyway?"
Sloped as I was, thumping my chest brought my chin down to close proximity with her own. "Temrash 933," I grunted. "Just dropped."
A wave to the world in general seemed expansive enough. Vague. Natural, I hoped.
Dropping in must be a common answer; if all Yeerks mocked the newcomers, did they know how it worked? Could it be reversed?
Where in the galaxy was home?
"Lost. Not Earth," I said.
"No, not Earth," she mimicked. "Remarkable insight, my thorny friend."
"Why trees? What problem?" I prodded.
Rolled eyes. Disturbingly human. Blood trickled between her knuckles from the severed finger. She clutched it in her palm.
"Just the big ones." Mr. Receding Hairline gained a wheedling tone over heavy breathing. "They grow near the crystal grottos. Some kind of symbiosis. The natives practically worship them."
"It's not worship," protested a small voice near the back of our party. She'd been avoiding my dragging tail without complaint. "It's a real, observable side effect of a long-standing cultural -"
"So we cut 'em down," Baldy said loudly. "Frees up the lines, reveals the crystals. A win-win for the Empire."
Beardy muttered something mutinous into his collar.
Blondie turned those spotlight eyes on Baldy. "Takes too long. You're dreaming, Havar 3552, we don't have the resources."
"I heard the first samples contained enough Mercorsite to blunt a diamond edge," piped up a kid maybe a few years older than me. His eyes blazed with enthusiasm.
"And you can't just burn them down," Beard Guy whistled through his moustache.
Someone gave me a sympathetic shoulder pat. I may have looked a bit lost. "You'll catch on, big guy. The Sub-Visser won't waste your host body on fighting vermin. Seeing him first is for the best."
Blondie tsked at this display of a genuine warm, human feeling.
Hand taken back in a jerk, the Controller turned the simple door handle leading to another set of stairs. We went down.
Down. Bricks laid in solid grey withdrew to chipped and chiseled stone. Taxxon toothmarks cut arching rings in a fascimile of the natural timber upstairs. They set skin-crawling shiver just below my leathery skin.
Not missing a puny step took all of my blessed focus. Sliding like a spiked cannonball through my motley crew might be funny but it wasn't on the agenda for today.
The Yeerks edged in front of me.
Further down. It could have been five minutes, or twenty. Concentration did funny things to time.
Until the next landing turned left into the bathing of a warm pink light. With these eyes it could have been a deep red. Like blood.
I squared my shoulders and followed the quietly squabbling Controllers.
I saw it from the landing. Heard it before that.
Quiet. My eardrums felt pressed with it. Footsteps echoed up to us, reverberated and confused. Clicking. Hundreds of spiny feet.
Water lapped at the shore.
The last steps could be ignored. Grimy stone beneath spread feet, I peered across a room better suited to nocturnal eyes. It wasn't exactly huge. At least, not compared to the Yeerk Pool.
Twenty-two feet across, maybe nine up. Not much room to fly. Not tall, not wide, dished around the centre. A gleaming black hole in the floor.
The hole's surface rippled. Water.
My gaggle of Yeerks waited at the foot of the stairs. They looked up at me, across the room at him. A well-built human figure cast his silhouette against studded pink crystals.
The Sub-Visser.
My tread was steady. Measured. I felt a few kicks on my tail as the others kept at my heels.
He turned with a brilliant smile. Fondness touched could-be-hazel eyes and met my stare without qualm.
My chest tightened under invisible claws. I never forgot a face. This deep in the Yeerk operations, it couldn't be a ploy.
"Another Hork-Bajir. Excellent." Without losing eye contact, he straightened his yellow shirt by the hem. "Your name, soldier?"
Fist to my chest, I refused to blink. "Temrash 933."
"Sub-Visser Four-hundred-three."
No you're not.
"...expect my orders to be obeyed, no quibbling about the Council."
This is bad. This is so, so bad.
"Understand?"
That's an easy question.
"Yes, Sub-Visser."
"I see you're armed."
I tightened claws on the grip.
"Trouble?" The Sub-Visser turned his fixed smile on the tag-a-long Controllers. They stood at attention. "Who authorized his weapon?"
Beard Guy cleared his throat. "Not authorised, Sub-Visser. Temrash defended us from Anda - from human Bandits. He took it from me."
"Then take it back."
Tobias the boy aside, releasing my shiny new Dracon beam took some willpower. Tobias the Hork-Bajir liked holding things. «Not a tree branch, buddy,» I told myself. Talons passed in a snick over metal now clutched to Beardo's chest.
He let the tip rest on the edge of his hip holster.
"Now," Boss Yeerk said, "I have a job for you, Temrash. And you're not going to like it."
What does an undercover bird say to that?
"...Yes?"
"We have a shortage on Hork-Bajir, and only one way to get more." Levelled on my chest, his gaze took on a shade of warm sympathy. My bones rattled. "Report to our second site and begin relations with a receptive host. This body is male, correct?"
No way. No way was he asking me to... I sucked in a breath. He'd poked me in the stomach.
"Sir, about the Bandits," Crazy Blonde said. "They're inside the compound. Two of them."
A kick. It didn't register with my generously slow frontal lobe. The yellow-shirt captain stepped away from my ankle. It almost unbalanced him.
Blondie pressed her advantage. I feared for her health.
"I crushed one of them. An Earth housefly."
The Sub-Visser scrubbed a hand through his hair. "Dead? Hmmm..." The corners of his lips pulled in that natural way of an often smiling face. "I think not. Red alert on-base."
The quiet Yeerk and Baldy shifted under his wagging finger. "Remain here. Guard the Bore. Everyone else," and we snapped to attention, even my ludicrously towering seven-foot self, "to your stations."
Speaking into a radio, he turned his back. Paced around the watery tunnel.
That's my cue.
Boooooom.
Vibrations cast circles across the pool. Crystals flickered, two dying out to red embers. Fine grit escaped wooden slats across the ceiling, my eyes stinging from a caught handful.
BOOOOOOM.
That's not an earthquake. That was...
"Exploshhhhdd!" I exclaimed.
BANG. Crunch.
Slick with water, my foot dipped out. Slipped into the hole. I threw my tail out. Used the weight of it to keep from falling all the way.
Screaming. Beardo pointed the Dracon beam at nothing. Then at the Sub-Visser. His face contorted.
The radio chirped.
But I wasn't listening. In fact I absorbed the snarling, wet whistles from a hole in the ceiling with my signature absolute focus. Taxxons. Controllers, maybe. Hopefully.
"Attack! Kill them! All of them!"
Sub-Visser Four-hundred-three pointed up. Out. Into a screaming night, into the muted thunderclap of honks, bellows and firing Dracon cannons that lit cloud undersides a sick molten yellow.
As one, the Taxxons turned to crawl aboveground. Hungry. Blood in their globule eyes.
"Rebel scum!" spat a faceless Controller.
Honking rebels. I'd raised my arms, blades at the ready, before realizing it. The Resistance. No. I'd told them to wait. I said it was dangerous!
ZzzzzZZAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPP!
Photons the most intense shade of white imaginable seared my retinas. I covered my face. A cool breeze brushed my wrist. Blue dots swam behind my eyelids.
Standing stock still, crucially aware of my own weight and the struggle to swim if I did happen to slip, I drew my arm back. Squeezed my eyes open just a little. Just enough. The flash was gone.
I dashed for the ceiling.
Boss Slug screamed after me. But honestly? I was so, so done with that guy. This Hork-Bajir don't belong to no man.
Climbing to a rhythm of claw, spike and leap seized the day. Solid muscle powered past a struggling Taxxon until I crouched atop a foot-sinking pile of soft earth.
And saw a brand new world.
Disrupted ground, just as the bat described. Streaks of colour across mud, black splotched like paint on a cow's backside. Lit up by spotlights on every defence tower.
Absolute pandemonium. Struggling. Humans and Eirine all meshed together, fighting like animals.
The tip of a Dracon cannon glazed cherry red on an empty swathe of ashes and shrivelled bones. From this distance I couldn't tell who they belonged to.
And at the centre of it all, a wail. It joined with a hundred throats and thumped the air until my skull rang with it. They trumpeted above the aimless fury.
Alien. Eirine.
A presence overhead shook me from that painful reverie. The specialist wings of a great horned owl rushed past, a swift shape against the struggle below. Noiseless. Jake.
«Hey, you're alive! Guessing it worked?»
A dumb nod. Then a shake. «No. No, it wasn't supposed to be this way.»
I'd volunteered for the risk. It should be me.
«Buddy. Tell me,» Jake said calmly. «What on Earth is going on?»
