The Assignment
Star Trek – Animorphs
Flash! Pzshshshshshsht!
My eyes slammed shut against a brilliant flash of green. Swift as turning on a lamp, all the lights went out. I don't remember hitting the ground.
I was out. Who knows for how long.
What could have been hours later I stirred to nothing but a mild headache.
I'm the leader of a guerilla team. Our lives depend on fast and hard strikes against a much larger fighting force, using every trick in the book to keep up the fight. To prevent Earth's downfall and the enslavement of unknowing innocent people. So we take great pains to avoid dracon beams.
A blend of Andalite Shredder and Ongachic particle-wave technology, every time one gets fired at us we run the risk of being blasted to smithereens. Literally. Yeerks tend for the lethal end of tech. And yeah, I don't want to die.
The few close calls we've had felt exactly as Ax explained, if you're wondering where the Ongachic particle-thingy stuff came from. Like your cells are tearing themselves apart. Like being deconstructed into steam and broiled microplasma. Agonising. Scary.
Odd. That's what struck me when I sneezed out the dust covering the floor that I'd breathed in while unconscious.
Oh, and the most enormous fish lips I've ever seen, attached to a vaguely camel-like face.
My chest jolted. I scrambled back and winced. Panic ran into sharp jutting elbows, all in the wrong places. Like moving a limb wrapped up in plaster. For some reason my arms just couldn't bend that way. It didn't stop a startled strike at the lips nearly touching my forehead.
But I fell short. My shoulders ached.
That wasn't a human hand. Just shy of the stooping alien's nostril slits, a line of white fur where the underside of my forearm should have been meshed with orange hair. It curled against my chest where I dropped it, the wrist flexible enough to fold perfectly perpendicular to my arm.
Not human. My confusion boiled into dread.
Claws retracted, I stretched out again and watched a paw large enough to curl almost all the way around my entire head reach carefully across the floor. It obeyed my command.
How long? Without Ax, the clock could be five minutes or fifty overtime. I had to demorph. In front of a stranger – and I was on my feet, muscles bunched to fight or flee from a mess of bleeding seal-aliens and unconscious or dead hork-bajir. No humans left standing, not the Visser and none of his cronies, either, but the important thing was -
«Cassie,» I realized. And I wasn't dead.
Not bleeding. Nosing my belly found nothing, not even a scar. But I remembered. The cuts, the disgusting sense of my own unspooled bowels. Blood and a foul-smelling brown goop crusted to the floor sent a cold shiver down to the tip of my tail.
I took a deep breath and steadied myself. Took another.
So I did demorph. Everything happened like I'd thought. The desperate try at taking out the Visser, taking blades to the gut and losing my head. Like I'd never seen my own insides before.
No Rachel, no Ax or Marco. It was Tobias, Cassie and me against an infested garrison of Yeerk soldiers. Not enough of us to go to war.
I couldn't leave. It's just us. There's too much to do to give up, and I knew it.
It didn't matter that I didn't belong here, that none of us belonged in another war on an alien planet far from home.
And Cassie was alone, now. She didn't have back-up. I had to find her.
I shifted on the spot. No soreness. No fatigue. My headache dissipated seconds after waking up.
Morphing might reset the clock but who knew how long she had to spare? And I wanted to fight. The tiger tasted blood or I'd somehow translated the need between demorphing and remorphing because my approach to the slow-moving 'friendlies' on the opposite end of the cavern raised their voices to an uncomfortable pitch. Afraid, I guessed.
It wasn't necessary but I sent the thought-speak equivalent of clearing my throat. «Hello.»
The gaggle of aliens mumbled in their strange language, watching me with an equal intensity to the unnerving stare of my morph. A questioning blurble brought my eyes to one in particular. Smaller. Its dark eyes shone in the dim light. It looked familiar.
«I need to find my friend.» I forced myself to sound calm. Composed.
Head cocked to the side, the short alien repeated the lilting sound. Orange tubes coming from its nose slits bulged with a series of pops. The throaty clicks were muffled as though spoken by a kid with a cold. I didn't understand a word of it.
Thankfully the mechanics of thought-speak overcome speech barriers.
Trying not to be impatient and upset the admittedly powerful living torpedoes, I continued. «She looks like you.» Right now, anyway. I couldn't help adding, «guessing you noticed she didn't belong.»
Not all aliens feel the way we humans do. I knew that from personal, miserable experience. But the sneer on that flexible set of lips had to be condescension. Or a great sense of smell. That brown stuff wasn't blood, after all.
Shut up, Marco.
Orange-Face made an offensive honk.
«Alright, great.» She did a pretty good job getting to this point, though. Despite the havoc Cassie found herself in without the excuse of a brain-sucking slug in her ear, it was always too easy to defend her. «Where did she go?»
The look in its eye turned grim. Gaze cast down, Orange-Face glanced to its brothers and sisters. The alien hesitated - then pointed. Down.
My stomach dropped for the second time in one night.
The Yeerk Pool.
Rancid, at least to my mind, the darkly rich scent flooded an unpleasant tingling over my body. Vulnerable without a body and protective skull, Yeerks in their natural state could be killed by a child. By a baby.
She went down there? I wanted to shout. Questions rapid-fired from my brain, none of them out loud.
I didn't notice Orange-Face come to squat beside me. The bulbous egg-shaped belly moved easily into a new shape without any sign of discomfort on his camel face.
Or her. Nothing about it struck me as male, biology-wise. The atmosphere just had that strong silence of two guys contemplating life.
No time. I couldn't breathe. The smell. For some reason, I couldn't move. There was nothing I'd like less than to take a dip in Yeerk sludge.
The little ears on his head perked up. I followed his line of sight. A loud scuffle had me turned before Orange-Face moved.
Grit fallen from the ceiling scraped under boots striking, kicking against a merciless pair of alien hands. Her face ringed by braids looked almost corpse-like on cheeks the colour of parchment, mouth wide in a wail that started the moment our eyes met.
She knew. What I was. Possibly who. A Controller.
But still human, somewhere behind that disgust and a hocked loogie that joined the gore we'd been too weary to acknowledge or avoid underfoot.
"Filth! Filth!" she bawled. "Andalite - HUMAN scum!"
«Looks like you-»
Wait.
I cut myself off. She started with the typical rage and fear, the scorn reserved for a Yeerk's most hated enemy. She might just need a little push in the right direction. Maybe...
Hope is a useful tool. Just for a moment, Cassie could wait. I sent a silent apology in a downward glance.
Heart pounding in my mouth I accessed the part of the tiger that wanted nothing more than to lounge in the sun. I want to rest, I told the tiger brain. After a successful hunt the killer deserved to sit down.
As if totally relaxed, my coiled legs edged forcefully down into the stone. At peace. Unthreatened.
Sinking into natural instinct was easier than pretending I could waste time right now. I stretched out and lounged like a housecat on a hot day. My toothy grin should look properly contemptuous.
«I suppose you fell for it. Typical Yeerk. Now that we're... we are alone... without witnesses,» I added, rolling my eyes skyward.
Her chest heaved. Forced to kneel with arms crossed overhead, the human-Controller didn't break eye contact with me.
«What human,» I scoffed, «could do what we have done? Who else but the elite could halt an invasion of this scale?»
Sell it, Jake. Quickly.
"Halted? Arrogant-"
A click of her jaw was loud as falling pennies. The dark scowl twisted with fear.
I waited. «As the humans would say, vice versa.»
Smooth muscles slid into an easy prowl. The tiger rose in a split second, liquid across the three strides close enough to catch waves of acrid terror on her breath.
«But I am pleased,» I hissed, «to see results. You follow a fool.»
"I don't - he's not-," the girl spluttered.
The faintest pink flush on her cheeks and nose could have been shame. Most likely she was dreaming of throttling the 'bandit' strutting about like he owned the place. A quick gasp let her speak in a rush of stammering, useless to me and painful from her pulling against the hold on her arms.
I dropped the 'pretense'. My snarl vibrated the teeth in her jaw and drew a 'meep' of terror from our captive.
«Where is he?»
Mouth in a wordless o-shape, she didn't say anything. The whites of her eyes were luminous to the tiger. Irises slatted forest and moss green darted between my teeth and eyes.
I stared her down.
«The Visser. Spare yourself and give him to me.»
She frowned. Eyebrows plucked with what could have been errant thoughts pricked my interest. Hesitant, she twisted her neck to look at her captor. At the seal-aliens bloodied and defiant. It drew her lips down into a faux grin from the stretch of neck and tendons.
But then the Yeerk turned back to me and she was smiling for real. "Fool!"
A shift at my side. Splayed feet steadied themselves next to me. Orange-Face hummed and the grip on the girl's wrists loosened until her hands dropped to her lap. My ribs thrummed. Unperturbed, even gleeful, the Yeerk ignored the bruises already forming on pale skin and continued to boast.
"Behind as usual, scum. All of your spying is for naught if you believe he is a Visser."
I cocked my head. «Sub-Visser.» Big whoop.
"Not even that!"
The poor girl's pupils had shrunken to pinpricks. Spittle flecked her lips. "I won't waste my air. Slay the pretender, Andalite! The Empite will not suffer for his incompetence!"
She told me. I turned on the opposite end of the room.
Shrouded and hidden by living bodies. A staircase had been cut into the wall, some kind of concrete. Flabby aliens parted before me, picking up the tension crackling beneath my skin. Cassie would be with the sub-Visser. She had to be.
I paused.
My glare at Orange-Face was venomous. «Let the filth go.»
Broadcast to everyone for the benefit of the kneeling Controller, my choice was calculated. These 'friendly' aliens watched their prisoner with too-gleeful expressions. Leaving another human being in the hands of her enemies wasn't part of our M.O.
Controller or not.
«I will see our bargain through,» I told her in private. Then to Orange-Face, «And I'll know. Let her go.»
I'll know if you don't.
Because he lied. He lied to me. Cassie didn't dive into the Pool. She'd never leave one of her projects in the lurch. Especially if she needed to protect it from me.
And if the Yeerk went off to tell her tale? There might be just enough confusion to keep word from spreading about 'human' bandits in place of their natural enemies. I could live with that.
When the aliens hesitated, I didn't. Even to the tiger the roar was deafening.
"HrrrOOOAAAAAAAAAAARGGGHHHH!"
The seal floundered away from the lone human in our strange gathering, flippers in the air. Wide bluish eyes blinked in a startled fashion.
The Controller didn't waste her chance. Once her sneaker-clad feet, unprepared for a humid, muddy jungle as we Animorphs were, dug their way up and over the rise leading to the battlefield, I didn't waste mine either.
The tiger's bodily lunges made quick work of at least five landings. Up and up, legs beginning to burn as my short burst of activity petered out and I forced myself to keep going. To keep climbing. Not built for stairs - but built for enclosed hunting, for sprinting and climbing. The tiger was in its element.
Around the last bend. A landing opened out to scrambling paws and legs. They collided on slippery wooden planks until I steadied myself and paused to sniff.
«CASSIE!» I shouted.
Silence ran thick and suspiciously free of hostile Yeerks. Most sources of light were out to the perfect advantage of my superior night vision. Paws pounded after the faint scent of waterweeds trailing along corridors I hadn't visited on owl wings.
Most importantly, the silence in my own head meant one thing. Well, two.
She didn't want to be found. Or she wasn't anywhere nearby and I didn't have an answer for that second option unless I counted interrogating every sentient thing within a mile of this stupid castle.
«Okay, bygones. You don't have to do this,» I panted. My shoulders bounced between railing and stone wall up another flight of stairs. «Stop! Come on!»
Nothing. A set of wooden bars led up to a sealed metal hatch in the ceiling. Her scent ended here.
That is, the alien morph's scent.
«Open up!» I shouted, adding a roar to better my volume.
"Squuuuuirrrrr!"
Shrill squealing sent me awhirl, ready to kick some Yeerk butt.
A Seal. A shade darker than the ones I'd seen downstairs. Its bowed neck allowed the creature to stand upright in these narrow quarters.
Not Cassie. Not hostile.
Not important. Ignoring the elephant in the room I stretched as far as the tiger could go and the hatch was still too far up. I couldn't reach it. Not in this form.
I lunged for the hatch.
WHAP!
"Blllrlllp grruup."
Solid metal rang uselessly from the blow. I hadn't made a dent.
«Unless you're gonna open this thing, you can shut up,» I growled. My tail lashed violently. «CASSIE!»
"Bggrrrrrrr," the Seal said. It was almost a growl, as if a chihuahua dosed up on helium.
Then with one great step it pushed into my spot, shoved me almost effortlessly to the side and hooked the tip of its arm into a release catch in the door. It heaved. The strain bulged out muscles along the skinny flipper.
Without fanfare the hatch flopped open. I could have kissed the saggy alien but the roof access meant maybe, maybe I could get up there.
How did Cassie climb this thing in that body? She hadn't...?
A dark night swirled above, the stars drowned out by superheated stadium lights and red dracon flashes.
Like the curve of the planet itself a great sheet of spiny yellow material domed just within sight of the hatchframe. The rounded piece was only just visible by peering at the rightmost bottom corner. I paced back and leapt to my hind legs to better see it. Then I saw the serrated spear.
Dracon emitters. That was a bug fighter. A Yeerk fighter craft had been landed on the roof.
And Cassie's scent led directly to it.
