Know how you can know something conceptually, even expect it, but the reality of it all can still overwhelm you? That's what happened to me when I stepped out into the hallway. I mean, I /knew/ there would be a dangerous, vicious animal out there. I knew the Animorphs were either going to fight or hold me off while the bulk of their forces retreated.
But I still pretty much wet myself when a twelve foot long crocodile started eyeing me in that hallway, letting out this low, half-hiss half-growl to express its hostile intentions.
"Please," I said, holding up my white flag even as I backed up a few steps. "Please, I'm not here to fight."
The crocodile's only answer was another growl.
"I surrender!" I stated earnestly, waving the flag awkwardly (the IV drip rod was a little bottom-heavy). "You /have/ to accept my surrender, otherwise it's not fair!"
The crocodile let out a thought-speak laugh. «Like fairness matters to the Yeerks.» She lifted her snout. «Fine, if you surrender, exit your host body.»
I sighed, backing up. I knew as the words came out of my mouth that they weren't going to do me much good, but they were unfortunately the truth. "I can't, I'm… well, I'm not a Controller right now, there's no Yeerk in my head."
The crocodile roared angrily, as the voice, a girl's, took on a disbelieving tone, reacting as expected. «You're an uninfested human seeking out the human resistance to surrender to it? Can I just say how many different levels that seems absurd on?»
I half-laughed, a mirthless gesture with no real humor behind it since, well… my sense of humor doesn't work well with large crocodiles approaching me threateningly. "If you think that's absurd, you're gonna love the /whole/ story. But I swear it's true."
The crocodile stopped advancing, but before she could say anything else, the hallway suddenly erupted in pigeons and red-tailed hawks, over a dozen flying a strafing run towards me. "AHHHHH!" I screamed in pain, sliced open by at least three of them before I managed to drop myself to the ground. The crocodile started demorphing while most of the Animorphs flew out the hallway window or the window in Craig's room, but five of them stayed behind, circling over my head, keeping me down.
«Keep on him!» a male Animorph ordered. «Keep him down until Colette can remorph!» I presume he included me in his thought-speech in order to inform me that my getting out of this alive required me to stay still on the ground.
I was, however, not alone.
«OWWW!» one of the hawks cried, suddenly flying erratically, crashing from one wall into the next as some kind of creature latched onto it's talon and started biting. I was having a hard time looking at it, as I couldn't raise my head for more than a second without a bird flying at me, but the crocodile girl, now a human girl sprawled on the ground next to me, was helpful in identifying it. "Seriously?" she asked me. "A ferret?"
«Lamest battle morph /ever/,» the Animorph male declared, although he was certainly unable to pry the ferret off of his fellow Animorph's talon. «Hang onto him, Ray, I'll get him.»
«I'm gonna fly him outside,» the Animorph named Ray responded. «Let's see how well he hangs on when it's a hundred foot drop.»
"No!" I complained. "Eric!" I tried to get up, but was again rewarded with a slash across the face from an angry hawk, wincing in pain as I fell back to the ground.
«Relax,» Eric said to me in private thought-speak. «I'll just hang out with this guy and find out where their backup base is, maybe convince them that we're trying to help. You just meet us tomorrow night over the spot where the King house was supposed to be, got it? Tomorrow night.»
I couldn't acknowledge him, of course, unable to thought-speak in my natural form. And just then, the girl Colette must have finished her pigeon morph, because suddenly the remaining birds were gone and I was alone on the hospital floor. All I could do was go to the window and watch helplessly as the flock of birds flew off into the night, one of them carrying a ferret on his leg.
"Good luck, Eric," I whispered into the sky.
Sub Visser Eighty-three (Orkath)
«Is that hawk holding a ferret?» my host wondered, snapping me out of my thoughts. We were on a military truck on our way back to the Pool ship, after having just engaged the Animorphs in battle at a human military installation, ATF-1.
Sure enough, a squadron of hawks was flying overhead, one of them holding on to a ferret prey. «It can't be them,» I pointed out. «They're all hawks, for one, and we know for sure there were at least two falcons leaving the battle scene. Plus why would one of them morph a ferret instead of something that can fly?»
«I guess,» the host agreed. «So, are you still going along with the plan?»
I nodded his head habitually and, of course, pointlessly. «Yes. You have to keep up your end, though – work at least the one shift at the Pool ship's operations station, and then you can just tell someone you're delivering a report and get the hell out of there.»
«But you're keeping the cookies, why, exactly?» I glanced down to the briefcase I was holding, it was filled with chocolate chip cookies from the supermarket.
«I'd rather not explain it,» I retorted. «The less you know, the better, right? In case you're captured.»
«And what about you, if I am captured? Won't they find you easily in the Pool ship's Yeerk pool?»
I laughed. «It's not so hard to hide in the Pool. I'll be one Yeerk among thousands. Trust me.»
«Listen, Orkath… thanks for letting me go,» the host remarked sincerely. «I'll make sure someday, if my people win this war, that they know there were good and courageous Yeerks who took a stand for humans instead of just using them.»
I sighed in my host's head. «Perhaps you could tell them, also, about the human boy who made me think about humans differently…» And thus I told him the tale of the human named Christopher Windward, and the series of events that had led to us being in the Yeerk Pool at the time that it exploded.
The retelling took quite some time, and we were already walking onto the Pool ship's bridge by the time I was finished. «Wow. Orkath, that's… that's just amazing,» the host said, when I was done. «Yes. I'll make sure everyone knows.»
«Thank you.» I saluted a human boy, a bit younger than Chris but still somewhat reminiscent of him. "Urbosh Eight-Six-Two?" I asked him.
He nodded his head. "Yes, Sub-Visser."
"I'm here to relieve you," I told him. "You're being reassigned as pilot to the technical team working on the new pool's southwest dracon cannon."
"Aye, sir," the boy responded, heading towards his Bug Fighter as I took his seat on the bridge, stuffing my briefcase with the chocolate chip cookies under the desk.
«Okay, an hour's work here, and then I'll go hit the Pool and you'll be a free being again. Remember to "resist" and pretend I'm reinfesting you and come back here.»
«I get it, it'll be fine,» the host acceded. «Now show me how to operate this thing when I get back so I don't mess anything up…»
Chance Windward
I threw the ball again, and Erek King caught it. We'd been playing catch for a good half-hour, amused at the three dozen dogs running back and forth between us like monkeys in the middle, trying to get their mouths on the flying spheroid as it traveled.
In the distance, other Chee were taking great pains to install the Kandrona we'd delivered, setting up a Yeerk pool facility that they ensured us could be used to hold any prisoners of war. They seemed ecstatic, going on and on about how great it was to finally have a non-violent solution. Jean was looking on nervously at their efforts, but I could tell she was quite impressed at the underground park we were hiding in, and Mr. King was telling her a lot of stories about Jake's actions during the infiltration phase of the war, just generally keeping her occupied.
"Chris is never gonna believe this."