Chapter Six
Everyone was in the bridge a few hours later. It wasn't that hard to stay awake – it was an Andalite bridge, so there were no seats on top of the overall stress of the workload.
It was sort of like the last few weeks of some of the high school grades. Except when we got sick of one thing we could move onto some other person's work.
Ax and Leah worked on either landing gear or coordinates most of the time. Both made fairly good pilots. Marco and I would try to take over the weapon controls, though Ax said the planet had no system for attacking things in space. When Ax or Leah chased us off weapons, we'd work on more important things – monitoring systems or a variety of other things. Tobias usually handled communications – intercepting messages (that he would then have to give to Ax to translate) or ready for issuing communications.
Marco and Leah got hard to listen to, though it seemed like both of them tried to rein it in just a little.
I think if they'd tried to continue their normal bickering Ax or Tobias would have tail-slapped them at this point.
Eventually the planet started seeming a lot larger. Closer. Ax and Leah started paying a lot more attention to the controls and everyone else got in sync. Tobias was intercepting more communications, but nothing that seemed important to Ax. In a lot of ways, Marco and I were the least useful for this particular mission – we'd be most necessary for entering the atmosphere.
‹Prince Jake, we are almost approaching,› Ax said suddenly.
Somehow, in spite of Ax being a captain of his own ship for over two years, I was still the leader. Ax was only willing to be second in command. I didn't know if he was overestimating my ability at commanding, or if he was just less willing to be in command because of the Intrepid. Either way, it was annoying even if there was more of a command chain than there had been previously.
"So, do we have a general plan?" Marco asked.
"Yeah, like anything useful?" Leah contributed.
"Well," I admitted, "Ax would know the most here, and even that isn't much. I think we're going to mostly be winging it."
"Cool," Marco said, "The old days. Stupidly running into places, tearing things up, barely saving the day."
I rolled my eyes. I wasn't sure, but I could have sworn Tobias was doing the same thing with at least one of his stalk eyes.
"You saved a whole planet," Leah pointed out, "That's a lot better than 'barely saving the old days.'"
‹We know that's true in hindsight,› Tobias said darkly, ‹But considering the price we paid I doubt it'll ever feel like anything more.›
Leah shut up. Fast. She seemed to like hanging out more with Tobias and Ax than me – and I thought she might prefer a serious case of lice over dealing with Marco. But she didn't like dealing with people in a bad mood and it didn't take many snippy comments before she found a reason to be quiet and, if possible, get out of the room.
"Man, she just always knows how to dig a hole, doesn't she?" Marco muttered, "I guess it doesn't pay to be stuck with a bunch of war-damaged folks."
"She's not exactly free of scars – even from the same war," I whispered, "She just doesn't get that our feelings don't necessarily match public perception."
Marco nodded. "It just seems so weird. I mean, we knew a few crazy Yeerks that got tied into their hosts too much some way or another. But she says Essat did that just because she wouldn't shut up? It usually took quite a bit more than that."
"It's always more complicated than that for us, huh?"
"Yeah, seems to be. Think I should ask Leah why I might have a dream commenting on the oddness of her name?"
Marco laughed derisively. "If it means anything – and it's a dream, so it's unlikely – do you think she'd tell you?"
"Only one way to find out," I muttered. "Leah," I called over, "Is 'Leah' a strange name?"
Leah, like Tobias and Ax, had a hard time expressing normal emotions. Still, she hesitated just a moment before answering, "Seems like a normal name to me."
Marco shot me a sidewise glance. I nodded slightly. She found something strange about it. Or at least, thought the question was offensive.
Though I guessed I might have thought it a bit mean to ask myself.
"Jake," she said, changing the subject. "We need to prepare for landing. We're coming in. You should prepare the systems for going through the atmosphere."
I nodded and started paying more attention to the screens and controls. Tobias and I were the least fluent in these thing so far, but since we'd had as much time under our belts as we had, "least fluent" was still actually fairly good. Or at least, good by "human standards" which Ax would still often quip.
Marco sometimes thought Ax just had to find a way to be frustrated so he couldn't get angry at how fast most of us learned things. I liked to think he would get a little less frustrated as we kept getting more familiar with flying and our usual posts.
Well, that and procuring language chips.
"How do language chips work anyway?" I asked.
Everyone stared at me, except Leah who seemed too engrossed at the post.
"Sorry," I muttered, "My mind just got on that track."
‹I tried to explain that while we were trapped by The One,› Ax pointed out. ‹It is an incredibly small chip implanted into the brain.›
"Well, doesn't that interfere with morphing?" Marco asked.
‹No,› Ax reassured. We'd had a bad experience with technology not morphing with us in the past, when the Yeerks had been trying to redesign sharks that could be infested. ‹As you have noticed in the past, I can morph flea, fly, and other insects with no difficulty.›
"Does it go with your own body when you morph?" Leah asked.
‹No, like the Yeerk device it stays with your body – it was not designed for traveling with morphing. It only works in close physical proximity to what it is translating.›
"Will Ondrean manage to get some?" Marco wondered.
‹Actually,› Ax said, ‹If we are truly fortunate there will be translation chips available on this planet we are about to land on. Honestly, I am not sure I could tolerate months more of being the only person available to understand transmissions.›
‹Why can't the ship translate for us?› Tobias asked.
Ax rolled his stalk eyes back toward Tobias. ‹If every Andalite that goes into space is commissioned a translation chip, why would we make it so the ship automatically translates? We only focused on military decoding in the case of Yeerks.›
"So, basically, you Andalites just sort of blanked out on the idea that on-board translation might be useful?" Marco put in helpfully.
‹Yeah, basically,› Tobias threw in.
Ax ground a hoof into the floor. Then nearly stumbled as the the Researcher started hitting some major turbulence.
"Heeeey, we're gonna need to start focusing on the landing here," Leah said suddenly, "We're at the atmosphere!"