A/N: First, I've decided to try using { for thoughtspeak rather than the standard (. I hope it ends up working well. Jimanji, if you do know how to make the 'real' thought-speak symbols show up, please don't hesitate to shoot me a PM.

This particular chapter would have been out sooner, except that my muse decided to randomly ambush me with the Harry Potter story that I've been posting to the last week or so, and has been a fanatic little tyrant about writing for that one. Sorry about that. But hey, writing is writing and it's at least gotten me focused on doing more consistent chapters. So we'll see.

Cutest girl was indeed a tease, as were many things in this particular book. There will be more payoff from that in the next book, since that one is Marco narrated.

Which brings me to my major point, which is that this is it! This is the last of chapter of the last book of those I haven't used as narrators before. The next book will be Marco, which puts us all the way back at the beginning of the cycle. It's taken long enough, huh? Hopefully the next cycle won't take nearly as long, and won't have a huge multi-year break in the middle.

Anyway, thanks for reading, guys, and I hope you enjoy the end of this particular book and the set-up for the next one. Which, coincidentally, actually makes the title fit better than it did in the original series, I think...

Chapter Nine

For almost two Earth minutes, no one spoke. Prince Jake's hands were gripping the control panel so tightly his knuckles had turned a shade of white that I was certain was unhealthy. Melissa and Rachel had both sat down rather heavily near the front viewscreen, while Marco remained where he had been standing, his arms folded while he stared at the wall. Tobias perched nearby, glaring at the spot in space where the two vessels had been.

This time, I was certain the glare was not merely a product of the hawk's typical gaze.

As for myself, I stood and let my tail lower all the way to the floor. We had failed. Nothing could change that. Perhaps if a true warrior had been stranded on the human's planet, there might have been a chance. I was only an aristh.

I still do not know how long we might have stayed there, wallowing in the misery of our loss, had one of the consoles to the right not begun to beep urgently.

Prince Jake's voice was hoarse, but firm as he looked up. "Ax?"

With two bounding steps, I moved to the console. My fingers danced over the unfamiliar controls, trying to isolate the reason for the sound. {I believe that it is the proximity alert, my Prince. It is telling us of an imminent collision.}

He stared at me. "An imminent collision?"

{Yes. It means that another ship is-}

"Imminent means now!" Marco had lunged between Prince Jake and the controls. His hands moved swiftly, and the Skrit Na vessel abruptly flipped over and dove away. The inertial dampeners were not quite up to Yeerk standards, and obviously lagged far behind that of Andalite technology, so we were all thrown violently end over end by the unplanned maneuver.

As we fell into jumbled heaps, Melissa managed to lift a finger to point at the screen. "Look!"

Through the spot we had just been, an enormous vessel flew. It was the equivalent of an earth whale to our mosquito.

{A pool ship...} I said softly, barely daring to breathe.

"There's one problem with that sentence, dude." Marco corrected me. "The word 'a'." He pointed to another Pool Ship drifting into view.

{Look past them.} Tobias's voice was as soft as Marco's had been, barely a whisper in spite of the fact that he was using thought-speak. Speaking loudly was simply unthinkable, as though the great ships would hear us.

Picking myself up, I used the controls at the screen to magnify the view on what Tobias had been pointing out. Then I truly wished I hadn't. The Yeerk Armada was vast, and a sizable portion of it was currently passing right by us, their collective firepower sufficient to wipe the insignificant spec that we were off the face of the galaxy with as much effort as I had seen a single human being use to flick an unwanted bug away from his delicious food.

"Ax, how many?" Prince Jake was helping Marco to his feet, while Rachel helped Melissa. "How many are we dealing with?"

I glanced to the sensor screen, double checked, and then triple checked before answering. {One hundred and twelve, Prince Jake. One hundred and twelve bug fighters. Two Pool Ships. Two escort cruisers.} All four of my eyes closed. {And a Nova-Class Empire Ship. Only three exist. Two protect the Yeerk Homeworld. The other is assigned to the top ranking Yeerk military leader.}

"Visser One." Marco said quietly. I knew the reason for the sudden hitch in his voice. The Visser was currently possessing the human woman who had been Marco's mother. It was... difficult for him.

"What are they doing here?" Prince Jake's brow was furrowed as he stared at the screen, trying to understand.

{It is clearly the Visser and her escort.} I explained. {They have detected the source of the Z-Space shockwave and have come to investigate. It is likely that Z-Space travel within the small area of space, from Earth to here, is still possible, explaining their quick arrival.}

Even Rachel, eager for battle as she was, could only say, "We don't stand a chance." Then she blinked, as though what she had just said only then penetrated. "We don't stand a chance." This time, her voice was contemplative.

I saw Tobias fix his intense gaze on her. {What is it, Rach?}

"Yeah." Marco agreed. "There was whole lot less 'I'm currently peeing my pants as I say this' the second time."

Rachel was still frowning at the screen. "We don't stand a chance. Like, at all. At this point one of those two hundred fighters could make mincemeat out of us, let alone any of the others. We don't even have any weapons up."

It was a true testament to the direness of the situation that I was able to resist the urge to ask what mincemeat tasted like. {That is correct. There is nothing we can do to defend ourselves at this time.}

"So why haven't they?" Rachel's question was simple. "Why haven't they done a single, solitary thing about us? We're right here. One of those bastards almost ran us over. Now they're just passing by? What the hell?"

"Maybe we're... cloaked?" Prince Jake offered with a shrug. "Ax?"

{While the Skrit-Na vessel is more than capable of shielding itself against the scans of humans and other relatively primitive civilizations, though they choose not to in some cases for reasons unknown to me, that cloak is neither currently active, nor would it be at all effective if it was.} I explained carefully. {The Yeerks should see us perfectly.}

Now Prince Jake was frowning, an almost perfectly matched expression as that of his cousin. "Then Rachel's right. Why aren't they doing anything? That many eyes on that many sensors couldn't have just missed us entirely."

{I will attempt to locate an answer, Prince Jake.} I focused on the console, running all the scans I could think of. Then my main eyes blinked, followed by both stalk-eyes. {We are not here.}

"Say again?" Marco had moved up behind me, as though he hoped to learn how to read the controls himself by peering over my shoulder. The others were all looking at me with puzzled expressions as well.

{I have examined our own sensor data of the nearby area of space.} I explained. {I can identify every ship present in it. We are not among those sensor signatures.} Seeing that they still didn't completely understand, I started to speak again, only to be interrupted.

"He means we can't see ourselves." Melissa spoke up. "The sensors are showing every ship in the area, but they're not showing us. We're invisible to them." At the looks she received, the small human seemed to shrink a little bit, her voice quieter. "I watch a lot of sci fi. You pick stuff up."

{She is correct.} I continued to examine the data. {As far as our sensors, and clearly theirs, are concerned, we do not exist.}

"How?" Prince Jake had come up to stand next to Marco, both watching what I was doing. "You said any cloaking device wouldn't work against them."

{It would not.} I insisted. {And we would be able to detect our own signature in that case. This is... nothing I have seen. It is- wait. Give me a moment, Prince Jake, I would like to check a theory.}

"Be quick." He prompted before turning to look back at the screen. "How'd you know which controls would get us out of the way, Marco?"

"Didn't." The other human boy shrugged. "I employed the HEISAP defense."

"HEISAP?" Melissa questioned, sounding curious.

He nodded. "Hit Everything In Sight And Pray." She giggled, and he grinned back at her.

After another minute, I leaned away from the console. {I believe I know what has happened.}

"You don't sound sure." Prince Jake pointed out, resting his hand against my side. I took it as a sign of encouragement, though it was likely equally a product of his own nerves.

{I am relatively certain. It is just that...} I hesitated before continuing. {It is not anything I could ever have heard of before. It is unique to our situation. I believe that, as a product of our proximity to the explosion at the time of its occurrence, this ship has become partially... stuck in Zero-Space.}

{Which means... what?} Tobias flapped over to land atop the next console over.

I sighed, taking a moment to try to figure out how to explain something I barely understood myself. {This ship is mostly in normal space, but it is also very slightly in Z-Space. It is still in normal space physically, but visually and by all methods of scanning, it is in Z-Space. It is stuck in between the two states.}

Rachel whistled. "So they can't see us at all then." Her smile turned fierce once more. "We could break a lot of their stuff."

{Unlikely.} I pointed out. {Even if I could get weapons back online, they would only have to direct their firepower toward the place where our attacks were originating from. It still would not take much to destroy us.}

Tobias started a little as something occurred to him. {Wait, does that mean it affect us too? Are we invisible?}

I shook my head. {No, I do not believe so. The ship itself has shielded us from the effect. We would have had to have been outside of the ship, taking the explosive wave straight on for it to affect our individual forms.}

"So what do we do now?" Marco asked, still staring at the screen. "We're invisible to them, but we can't do anything about them or they'll swat us like the fly we are."

Prince Jake sighed. "Now... now we set a course for Earth. We go home. And try to figure out what the hell else we can possibly do."

{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}

By the time we arrived back on Earth, taking a short Z-Space jump both to test my original theory of how Visser One's forces arrived so soon, and to test another theory, that going through Z-Space again might knock the ship loose and back into normal space entirely, some of the shock about our failure had worn off.

Prince Jake looked very tired. "Ax," He said quietly. "Find a safe place to land."

I hesitated. {The ship is still partially stuck in Zero-Space, my prince. It appears to be the ship's default state now. I believe that any place would be safe, so long as people were unlikely to walk directly into it.}

He nodded at that. "Fine, just put us down in the forest. Anywhere away from the normal hiking trails."

After following his instructions and putting the ship down in a remote section of the forest, beneath a cliff outcropping, I shut the power of the ship down and then stepped away from the controls. {We should check the outside of the ship, and see if it remains undetectable visually as it is via sensors.}

"Ax," Marco's hand patted my side absently. "You could have just said 'let's see if the ship's invisible'."

{That is what I said.} I protested as the six of us left the ship and walked down the ramp to walk on the pine-needle covered ground once more.

"Yup." Melissa had turned around before the rest of us, walking backwards as she gazed up at nothing. "That is one super-invisible flying saucer."

I had shown them images of what the ship was supposed to look like while we were making the short jump back to Earth. {It appears that I was correct, Prince Jake. The ship is undetectable, so long as we do not give the Yeerks targeting data by shooting at them ourselves.}

"So what you're saying is," Prince Jake began, "we have a ship that is completely invisible to the Yeerk Armada, as long as we do nothing to make them notice us."

Marco shook his head, lifting a hand to rest against where the unseen hull of the ship was. "Dude, what he's saying is, we have a spaceship. An honest to god spaceship. A flying saucer. Do you know how long we've wanted to have our own alien spaceship? Since we were five, that's how long."

I frowned at that. {You were unaware of the existence of aliens at that point in time, were you not?}

"What's your point?" Marco asked bluntly. "We were five. I also wanted the Lost Boys from Peter Pan to crew my alien spaceship. Spaceships are always cool, whether they exist or not." He paused then before shrugging. "There's a failure in logic there somewhere... ehh. Point is, everyone wants a spaceship, even if they don't exist, even if they don't know they want a spaceship."

"I wanted a TARDIS." Melissa spoke up, rather unhelpfully since I had no clue what that was.

"Speaking of failures in logic." Prince Jake's voice had turned a little colder as he turned back to me. "Ax, you chose poorly today."

I stiffened, straightening. {I chose the best option that I could find at the time. If we had failed, it would still give Estrid a chance to find her brother and prevent him from becoming a host for-}

"Ax, shut up." Prince Jake interrupted flatly, his tone more Prince-like than I had often heard it. "I know you have this whole speech planned about making the best of a bad situation, making the best call you could. But what it comes down to is, you didn't trust us." He held up a hand to stop my objection. "You tried to hedge your bets, Ax. You said you trusted us, but in the same breath you prepared a way to put our planet in the situation it's in right now. Yeah, Taylor could have done that anyway without you, which is the only reason I'm not knocking you the hell out right now, but the point remains that you chose to strand a bunch of pissed off Yeerks on our doorstep. That is not trust."

Looking even more tired, Prince Jake rubbed his forehead. "Look, we all remember the story from Jara, about how the Yeerks took over the Hork-Bajir homeworld. One of your people decided they needed a failsafe then too, a failsafe that killed every Hork-Bajir on that planet. All the males, females, and children were killed because he decided that was his choice to make. What did it accomplish, Ax? Other than killing millions of innocents, what did he accomplish?"

My own voice was quiet. {Nothing.}

"Nothing!" Prince Jake screamed the word, the sound echoing off through the forest as he caught both of my shoulders and stood directly in front of me. "He accomplished nothing! You, you and Estrid here, both accomplished nothing! If you had just trusted us! If you hadn't distracted us so that Taylor could get loose! If you just... if you just..." There were tears in Prince Jake's eyes, and he closed them before looking away. "I don't know what to do now. The Yeerks up there, even their reduced fleet... and with Taylor and Estrid out there, probably with David by now... I think we're done, Ax. I don't think we have any moves left."

For a minute after that, silence reigned. None of the others seemed to know what to say, and I certainly didn't trust any thought that I had on the subject. Prince Jake wasn't wrong. I wanted to say there were differences. I hadn't willingly released an unstoppable virus on the the entire world. But were there that many differences? The Yeerks were worse than any contagion. They were a plague all by themselves. And, like the others, I had no clue what we could possibly do about that.

"Oh Jake..." When the voice finally spoke up, it wasn't any of ours, but that of Cassie. She stood nearby, her voice quiet but strong as she raised a hand to take Jake's, tugging him away from me. She turned him to face her. "You should know by now, as long as you still live, as long as you can still talk, as long as you can still stand, as long as you can still fight, it's not hopeless. It's never hopeless."

"We failed." Prince Jake's voice was quiet, strained, painful. "You asked us to do something and we failed, utterly."

"Jake..." Without another word, Cassie embraced the human boy, her arms going around him tightly. "No. You did the best you could. I will never be ashamed of you as long as you try. Don't give up, Jake. Please. And there is one thing you have to remember." She pulled back to look at him seriously. "The Ellimist plays chess, Jake. And just because you lose a knight doesn't mean you've lost the game. Sometimes, you sacrifice that knight to take the enemy's Queen."

Prince Jake frowned and started to ask what that meant, but Cassie leaned in and touched her lips to his in what I have repeatedly seen in human cinematic movies and television shows (and a couple of times had even witnessed Tobias and Rachel perform) as a kiss.

"I trust you, Jake." Cassie said softly, yet with unmeasured power. "Remember what I said, remember all of it, nothing is hopeless until you surrender all hope."

Then she was gone, as easily and as quickly as she had appeared. For a long moment afterward, Prince Jake simply stood there, his eyes closed and a pained expression on his face. It was an expression of longing, of a need that could never, would never be fully fulfilled.

Finally, a bird called from far off, and Prince Jake's eyes opened. He looked to me. "Ax, hypothetically, could an order be given to force all those Yeerk ships to self-destruct?"

I frowned at that, uncertain. {Yes, Prince Jake, hypothetically. But it would require an order from very high up.}

He nodded and then looked toward Marco. "What is the one order you have been waiting for me to give, pretty much since we started this whole thing?"

Marco was silent for a moment, before his eyes widened. "We're doing it?"

Prince Jake nodded, his earlier indecisiveness and uncertainty gone. "We're doing it." Then he turned to the rest of us. "People, we have an invisible spaceship. We are going to shove it right up their asses and take their Queen, just like Cassie said." He looked to the other boy. "Say it, Marco."

Marco straightened, smiling the same predatory smile I had seen on Rachel's face so many times. "We're going after Visser One."

"We're going after my mother."

Next... Redux: The Attack

My name is Marco...