«Well, so much for that idea.»
We were hovering over the address given to us for the King household… or, at least, somewhere in the general area of the street. It was impossible to be sure – because there were no streets anymore. Houses, street signs, basketball hoops…. all completely vaporized. It wasn't your standard Earthly devastation – even nuclear weapons leave /something/ behind. This was just scorched, red dirt, everywhere.
Flapping my wings, I took to a higher altitude and circled. Everywhere, as far as the eye could see, was the same result – Yeerk Bug Fighters were destroying the entire town. «I guess the Yeerks finished evacuating everyone they cared about,» Eric noted glumly.
Then, on his heels, Ewell, oddly still in Eric's thought-speak "voice" - «I know this formation. They're performing a Gyllkin Sin maneuver, establishing a circular perimeter.»
It didn't look much like a circle to me, yet, but then there were easily dozens of Bug Fighters ripping into targets of opportunity all over the place, so it was certainly possible that they just hadn't reached the edges yet. Then something caught my eagle eye on the right – the whir of a helicopter's rotors. A news crew, filming the devastation.
«Look,» I urged, "pointing" to the copter the only way my eagle body can, by banking towards it and flying a few feet in that direction.
«Why are the Yeerks just letting it film?» Eric wondered, followed immediately by his own voice giving the answer on Ewell's behalf. «Because we're done being subtle about our invasion, Eric. The Yeerks are announcing themselves to your planet in a big way.» Then, Ewell addressed me. «Think your brother got away from here before it happened?»
I considered it for a moment. «I'd already thought him dead once over the last few days,» I admitted. «I guess after being proven wrong last time, I don't even feel worried about it anymore. He made it out.» I sighed mentally. «I'm more worried about our mom. Even if by some miracle she survived everything that came before, no /way/ she survived this.» When I said it, I suddenly felt it – that acute, throbbing pain in the heart that comes with the thought that your loved one might be gone, and that even if she wasn't, it was safe to assume that she was torn with grief wondering whether /you/ were gone. Add the fact that she, unlike me, probably still had no idea what the heck was going on, and for a moment the pain was unbearable.
But only a moment. The eagle's instincts were strong in me, and the eagle knew only one thing – survival was paramount. «There'll be time to worry about all that later, though. Right now, you're right, Ewell – the Yeerks are going for Endgame, so it's time for us to take action.»
«But what do we do?» Eric wondered. «We don't want Visser One to win, obviously… but we don't want the Animorphs to completely win either, not if it means losing the Yeerks we care about.» There were a few moments' silence, where I could tell that Eric and his Yeerk were having an internal conversation, probably involving waves of affection for each other. I felt a surge of jealousy about it – that was /my/ boyfriend, and Ewell knew him in a way that I never really could, not without morphing and infesting him myself. And if I did that… would I like what I found there? What if Eric loved Ewell as much as he loved me?
Then I felt another loss pain, and I realized how much I missed Orkath, in some ways even more than I missed my mother. It didn't mean I didn't love Eric, but Orkath was just as much a part of me, and if he was still here, I'd expect Eric to accept that. So I guess I had to accept Ewell. Still… it wasn't an easy conundrum to wrestle with. If we did get our way, and the Yeerks got to stick around in a coexistent relationship, marriage counselors were going to be making a fortune.
That's what made my next move easy to figure out. «The Kandrona is still the key. The Yeerk resistance is off the table, assuming any of them even survived down there, but the Kandrona still gives whoever holds it a lot of leverage. Right now no one has any choice – Yeerk, Animorph, everyone has to kill or be killed because there's no room for middle ground. If we give the Animorphs control of our Kandrona, then they can offer surrender terms to the Yeerks.»
«Assuming the /Kandrona/ survived that mess down there,» Eric pointed out.
«I'm sure every one of those Bug Fighters has orders to scan what they're shooting and avoid anything that even /might/ be the Kandrona,» I retorted.
Ewell let out a short, disgruntled laugh. «Right, but it's in that meat truck, it's heat signature hidden. The Yeerks wouldn't have /known/ they were destroying it. And we can't call Chance now – all the cell towers in this area have been destroyed.»
I banked north. «Okay, then, that's the plan. We get /out/ of this area, up to the hospital where Craig is staying.»
«Who's Craig?» Eric and Ewell asked simultaneously. Again, no outward sign of it – just, I could tell somehow.
«An Animorph,» I replied. «Long story as to how I know, and he doesn't /know/ I know, but he'll know what his people know and we can tell him what we know, y'know?»
Eric snickered. «You made that sentence confusing on purpose,» he accused. «Okay, so we contact the Animorphs through this Craig kid. Then what? We still only have maybe two days before every Yeerk on this planet dies from Kandr….» He stopped short, looking up at a shadow that blocked out the sun – the shadow of a very large Yeerk vessel. I had only been aboard it once, when my mom's decision to send me to "summer camp" had led to a few quick deceptions and a six week stint where my Yeerk could focus completely on his own duties and not on imitating me. It was the Yeerk Mother Ship, or "Pool" ship, as they called it. And as it started to approach, I saw one of the Bug Fighters in the distance shoot down that news copter that had been filming.
«I think that point has been rendered moot, Eric.»
Silently and quickly, we flew as far away from what was left of our hometown as we could get.
By the time we got to the hospital, we were seriously wet birds. Sometimes it really seems like weather "knows" what's going on in the world, because the sudden downpour of rain after the Pool ship's arrival seemed pretty damned ominous.
We flew in through the open window. I didn't marvel at the fact that it was open despite the rain – the Animorphs would want a quick escape route, if a mission required it. Craig was sitting in a chair on the other side of the room, reading a book. A history book, about World War II. Again, unsurprising, considering that he had become a soldier in a very real war.
Putting the book on his lap, he looked up at us as we landed on his bed. "Welcome back, James," he said to me with a half-smile, before glacing over at Eric's peregrine falcon morph. "You brought Jake?" he asked curiously. "Did you decide what to do about the Pool ship?"
«It's not James,» I responded, beginning my demorph to human. «Craig, I need y-»
Okay, yeah, I really should have seen what was coming next. What can I say – I was tired, I was wet, I was cranky. What I wasn't was sympathetic to what a guerilla warrior would do upon making contact with a known Controller, and there was no way that Craig didn't know at this point - my sudden disappearance a week earlier would have made him suspicious, and it would have been easy enough for him to find out from Jake.
"YEERK!" Craig yelled, grabbing an IV drip stand and sending my mostly-bird body flying across the room. Ewell, reacting mostly on instinct, took Eric's falcon body and raked Craig's arm in response, making him drop the IV stand and run out into the corridor. A nurse, having seen Craig paralyzed for years, fainted outside the door at the obviously healthy boy running down the hall, presumably for help.
«Well, that went brilliantly,» I commented, still loopy from the impact, a grotesque looking bird with miniature human feet. I reminded myself to resume demorphing, and suddenly those mini feet became full sized, and the feathers along the rest of my body sucked in.
«What do we do?» Ewell asked. «We should run, we're going to have a menagerie on us in a second!» Nevertheless, seeing that I had resumed demorphing, he began demorphing himself. On him, the growth happened before anything else, making him look like a huge four foot tall falcon. So that – a tall falcon and a naked eagle with human feet – is what the poor doctors who came to investigate the commotion saw. Needless to say, another fainted body hit the floor. The doctor who managed not to faint instead started screaming and running away.
Watching him run made up my mind for me. «We can't leave here. We've completely ruined this as a hideout for the Animorphs – they're going to run away forever, go underground. If we don't make contact right now, we'll never find them again.»
«So then what do w-» Eric asked, but he had crossed the line on his morph and his thought-speak voice cut out.
I answered anyway. "I'll stay human, try to do the diplomacy thing. You get into a battle morph in case they're not in a talking mood." My own morph complete, I grabbed one of Craig's blankets and ripped off a piece of it. I detached half the IV stand and tied the white cloth to it. Makeshift surrender flag in hand, I said a short prayer and waved it out into the hallway. "Please be kind," I muttered, stepping out…