Kicking hard to catch up with the others, Shara arrived just in time to see the nearly-transparent submarine scudding by twenty feet below them. It wasn't shaped like any normal sub that Shara – and, she suspected, any of the others – had ever seen before. In fact, it resembled a child's drawing of a manta ray.
Kind of simple, almost to the point of being crude, but it was still recognizable.
The oddest thing about the sub, aside from its basic design, was the fact that it was completely transparent. The only things that couldn't be seen through were the insides of the engines, the passengers, the furniture the passengers used, and the tools that were most likely used to keep the engines in top condition. There were three decks on the submarine below them, each as transparent as the sea around them, giving the odd illusion that the passengers in the submarine were standing and sitting and walking around in the water.
As for the passengers themselves… she could see the creatures that Cassie had described to her, and she could see that there were humans mixed in with the aliens on the submarine. She knew from Cassie's information that these weren't really humans at all. They were under the complete – or near enough that it didn't really matter – of the Yeerks in their heads.
They could, in fact, easily be considered even less human than her and Slade.
As he watched the Yeerks' quasi-transparent submarine pass by underneath them, carrying its crew of human and nonhuman Controllers, Marco wasn't seeing it so clearly as he otherwise might have. He noticed the large, tentacled, froglike alien sitting next to what was obviously the main seat of command on the submarine, but he wasn't really paying so much attention to it.
He couldn't help remembering the way Shara had butchered those sharks. She hadn't even seemed to have any trouble with it; it was like him kicking down a sandcastle, or Rachel shopping for fashion accessories: just something that came naturally to her. Something that she didn't really have to think about.
That wasn't very comforting at all; to have someone with them who could kill with the kind of brutal efficiency that Shara had just displayed, someone for whom killing was clearly second nature.
I wonder how she feels about that, he thought briefly, then forgot about the thought entirely. This was because the person sitting in the command chair, the person who was in charge of the submarine – and a great deal more besides – had stood to stretch and look around. She was now staring almost directly at them.
Almost directly at him.
It took a great deal of his self-control to keep himself from calling out to the woman who was now looking almost directly into his eyes. He hadn't ever been more grateful to be morphed than he was now, facing her again.
(Visser One,) Rachel hissed angrily. (So the main creep is here on Earth.)
He mostly ignored her, focusing instead on the submarine as it passed underneath them. Watching as she sat calmly back in her seat and directed the submarine back into the concealed base. Back behind the hologram of a perfectly normal seabed.
(We should leave,) Jake said. (We've seen what we came here to, and I know they're probably going to notice those dead sharks sooner or later.)
(Yeah,) he said, though it took him a second or two to catch onto what Jake had been talking about; his mind had been… elsewhere.
(Let's head back to the island,) Jake directed gently. (We've done enough for one day.)