Author's Epilogue:
So here's the thing – I made myself a promise that I couldn't write anything else until I finished this story. This has essentially led to me not writing anything, because Animorphs was an amazing, wonderful ride, but I've kinda moved on and I can't find the energy to give the last three chapters what they deserve, much less crank out the sequel that this was supposed to be the lead-in to twelve years ago.
Maybe some day that will change and I'll come back and give this a proper ending, but for now, I don't want to leave those who'd followed the story in the dark and I kinda want to start writing other things again, so, here's the last seven plot points in my outline:
1. Chris, Eric and Ewell sneak on board. They are present for the Cassie/Erek deception, and, believing the Animorphs actually defeated, decide that they need to stop Tom. Eric and Ewell, convincing Tom through morphing that they are Chris and Orkath, accompany Tom and Rachel onto the Yeerk Blade ship.
2. While infiltrating the pool ship's bridge, Chris meets Orkath's military host and discovers that Orkath has gone into hiding in the Yeerk pool. He morphs Yeerk and infests the man in order to get down to the Yeerk pool himself and find Orkath. Before he has a chance to leave, Visser One arrives. Chris is present for the elimination of the Auxiliary Animorphs. By acting as one of the gunners, he is able to save five of them, including Craig, by firing in such a way that they fall underground rather than being shot outright.
3. Chris enters the Yeerk pool while the battle in Engineering is going on. He encounters Orkath, and the two of them leave the pool less than three minutes before it is dumped into space. Orkath reinfests Chris and, in the wake of such a massacre, debate which side they should be helping and how to best stop the killing.
4. Eric/Ewell is a bystander at the confrontation between Tom and Rachel on the Blade ship. From his vantage point, he can see that "Tom" passes through a natural Yeerk form before morphing the cobra, revealing that the Yeerk was in Tom morph for unknown reasons and the real Tom was not killed by Rachel (Eric speculates that this was probably part of a contingency plan devised by Tom's Yeerk in case Jake survived being eaten by the Taxxon, in order to manipulate Jake's Animorphs further by revealing Tom to be elsewhere and threatening to kill him if Jake didn't cooperate).
5. The announcement of Visser One's surrender is broadcast to the Pool Ship at large. Chris and Orkath join the Yeerk holdout forces, ultimately advising the remaining subvisser that surrender is in the Yeerks' best interests. Chris laments about the loss of Eric and Ewell and wonders whether the Andalites can stop the Blade ship from leaving the system.
6. Eric and Ewell find the real Tom captive on the Blade ship, and the three attempt to escape before the Blade Ship goes into Z-Space. Their final fate is unknown as of the end of the story (I had never cemented my plans for the sequel, but likely I was going to have them in an escape pod, rescued by Ax and the Intrepid, and part of the subsequent events that led to Ax's capture.)
7. While assisting in the refueling of the Pool Ship, Orkath suddenly goes into pranorf - the surreal biological urge to facilitate the Yeerk mating process. After a tearful goodbye to Chris, Orkath disengages and mates with two other Yeerks in the pool, creating the first generation of Yeerks born in peacetime, away from the influence of the Council of Thirteen. Chris takes possession of the gestalt entity and brings it to the Chee Yeerk Pool, swearing an oath to watch and care for Orkath's children as his own and teach them the values of peace, tolerance and mutual friendship that he and Orkath had developed for each other. They become known as the Orkath Windward pool.
Kind of a bittersweet ending, which, hey, so was Animorphs itself, right? I think some of my original readers would have been sad that Chris and Eric didn't ultimately end up together – but I guess that's the problem, after twelve years I doubt more than a couple of my original readers are left, and it's time for this project to be officially over. Sorry it's kind of a flat ending. If I'd tried to force myself to do it properly it probably wouldn't have been much better, since the whole point of doing this when you're not doing it for money is to do it for FUN, and I just wasn't feeling it anymore. I'm hoping that this liberates me to start focusing on other projects, with the feeling that at least I "sorta" finished this one.