Animorphs: 2010 - Chapter Ten
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Character Sheets
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Nine (18+)
Chapter TenRachel and Tobias arrived within minutes of each other, and by that point Ax had taught himself how to walk without falling over too much. He flatly refused to wear the shoes we found for him. He said that pants were unnatural enough, but there was no way he’d cover his feet, as if feet were something special. We didn’t press the issue.
“I don’t think I can handle two Marcos,” Rachel declared, looking between the copy and the real thing.
{There is only one Marco,} Ax pointed out. He’d switched back to thought-speak to avoid stuttering, but he kept making plok-plok sounds with his mouth even while ‘talking.’ {I have copied nothing besides his physical form. But if it is really such an abhorrent occurrence, I can adjust the form by adding in other DNA samples.}
“You can do what?” I asked.
{I can take two or more samples of DNA and combine them into a genetically unique morph. Would that be in keeping with the social mores of your culture?}
“Erm, I think so.” I had no idea how our ‘social mores’ would react to that proposal, but at least he wouldn’t run around looking like someone’s twin. “You can use mine.” I offered up my hand.
“Nu-uh.” Marco slapped my hand down. “That’ll be even weirder if he looks like both of us. How would you explain that?”
{It would be best if I could take as wide a sample as possible. Preferably from all of you, if it is permissible.}
After a moment’s hesitation, we all agreed. Ax took our hands, one by one, and did...something. When it came my turn, I felt dizzy and sleepy at once, as if the floor was spinning away from me and it made perfect sense to sit down, just for a moment. As soon as he took his hand away, the feeling stopped. The others all got a similar look, all except Cassie, who jerked a little when he touched her.
After Ax finished collecting his ‘samples’, he sat on a box and closed his eyes. For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then his features started to shift. He grew taller, and his skin turned a different shade of brown. Not lighter but...different. His face seemed to melt before it solidified into a new shape.
“That is seriously freaky,” Marco offered.
“Is this-s-s not an accept-pt-able form?” Ax went cross-eyed trying to look at his own nose.
“You look fine,” Rachel assured him. “Kind of cute.”
“There’s something just so narcissistic about that comment.” Marco grinned at Rachel as he said it, incorrigible to the last. “But really, Ax, how do you do that?”
{The process is hard to explain to those without sufficient background in xenomorphic fields,} Ax said rather uncomfortably. His words came with an odd undertone, like they were being told to all of us by an outside party. I guessed that Ax didn’t have ‘sufficient background’ to understand it either.
“Well it’s still very impressive,” Cassie insisted.
Ax perked up. {The technology has advanced significantly. As recently as a few seasons ago, I would have had to return to my own body before taking a new morph.}
“Is this the same technology Visser Three uses?” I asked, bringing the ugly image of Elfangor’s death into the conversation.
{No,} Ax insisted hotly. {He took his host many years ago. He still uses the original version of the Device. It has...significant limitations.}
“Didn’t seem very limited the other night,” Marco muttered, but only loud enough for me to hear.
I ignored him. “Well, you looking human will probably help with, ah, with whatever we decide to do.”
{What do you mean? There is nothing to decide. I must get back to the Fleet.}
“That’s not exactly a plan,” Marco pointed out. “Especially since you blew up your ship.”
“We’ll just have to find another one,” Tobias said. “Apparently there’s all sorts of aliens on this planet. Can you fly a Yeerk ship?”
Ax’s nostrils flared like he was scowling, but his mouth remained perfectly still. The effect was more than a little odd. {I know the basic mechanics of it, yes.}
“Well that’s it then.” Rachel clapped her hands together. “We’ll steal a couple of ships. Alien boy here can take one home and we’ll take one and park it in front of the President. That ought to be proof enough, don’t you think?”
“And I repeat, that’s not a plan,” Marco insisted. “Is this a foreign concept to all of you?”
“Well, it’s the start of one,” Tobias said, whining only a little bit.
“Where are we going to find a ship?” Marco asked. “Or two, rather. How are we going to get it away from the Yeerks? How do you plan on flying it without crashing? What are you going to do after landing so that the Secret Service doesn’t shoot you in the face as soon as come out of the ship?”
“All valid questions,” Cassie said, cutting off both Marco’s litany and Tobias’s rebuttal. “And obviously we’ll figure them out before we do anything.”
I realized with a sinking feeling what that meant. I was not going to be able to avoid tailing my boss some more. “We need to keep doing what we’ve been doing. Tailing the Yeerks we know of, finding out everything we can. Then we can come up with a course of action.”
{The Yeerks will keep most of their craft in orbit,} Ax told us. {To avoid detection. Any that are kept landside will be stored in a remote location, away from native habitations. Few people except the pilots will visit them, and finding a pilot and trailing them to the correct location would prove...very difficult.}
Rachel cocked her head at Ax for a moment, then grinned at the rest of the group. “We should have asked him to start with. What else do you know about these Yeerks?”
Ax stood up straighter, his posture proud despite the slightly odd tilt to his shoulders. As if his Andalite habits and his human body were fighting about which position meant ‘don’t screw with me.’ {I have made it my life’s work to fight the Yeerks. I am well informed about their habits.}
I tried unsuccessfully to hide a grin, both at his actual words and at the tone that went with them. I’d rarely seen anyone so proud of themselves.
“We’ll, that puts you a step above us,” Rachel told him. She caught my eye and grinned; she was pandering to his ego. “We could really use your help trying to figure this out.”
Ax hesitated for a moment, his eyes shifting rapidly between everyone in the room. {Well, naturally the success of any plan would depend on everyone here being as well informed as possible.} It was clear from the undertones of his words that he meant ‘well informed about the Yeerks.’ I could almost hear him tell us not to even try asking about the Andalite military. Subtle. Almost like it had been my own thought. I wondered if he did it on purpose, or if it was just a byproduct of telepathic communication.
“We wouldn’t dream of trying to pull out anything you’re not willing to tell us, Aximili,” Rachel went on, all smooth tones and easy smiles. She was in full lawyer-mode now, trying to put the ‘witness’ at ease. I knew enough to stand back and let her do it.
{It wouldn’t be relevant to the situation anyway.}
“See? Exactly. I take it Earth isn’t the first planet they’ve tried to take on the sly?”
{No, there were others.}
I got a brief impression of three other planets and three other races. Races that Ax had little regard for, races that were rather violent. I didn’t know their names, but just the phrase ‘others’ gave me a clear picture of each race and flashes of strange worlds. Purple skies and moss-covered mountains. Literally boiling seas. Nomadic tribes that waged war against each other, operating under an uneasy truce when the Yeerks landed.
Rachel blinked and pressed one hand to her forehead before continuing. I could hardly blame her; communicating in concepts was not getting any easier as time went on. “And, in your best estimation, will they operate the same way here?”
{There are some slight differences in the situation, but I suspect they will, yes.}
“Slight?” Marco asked. “How is it ‘slight’? You said - er, well, sort of said that the previous guys were all nomads. We’re a hundred-thousand-person sized town. That seems like a pretty fundamental difference to me when you’re talking about taking shit over.”
{And yet, it is not.} Ax looked over at Marco with only one eye which, since he was still in a human form, succeeded in making him look more creepy than intimidating. {They will begin by establishing a strong base in a particular tribe-}
“Town,” Marco interrupted. “We’re not a tribe, we’re a town.”
I nudged Marco with my elbow to get him to shut up and he glowered, crossed his arms over his chest, and didn’t say anything further.
{They will select a tribe to be the base from which they will launch a full-scale attack. Obviously, they have chosen this one.}
“Do you know why they would pick a town like ours?” Rachel prompted.
{They have always picked tribes that are neutral, small enough that changes will go unnoticed, but close enough to powerful parties that they can expand easily.}
That fit with what I’d already guessed. There wasn’t a conflict for our town to be considered ‘neutral’ in, but we certainly fit the bill in all other regards.
{They’ll keep a low profile until they are sure of their defensible position, then they’ll target key leaders, starting with the most local and expanding planet-wide.}
“And then what?” Rachel asked when he hesitated.
{What do you mean?}
“I mean, after they’ve got all the key leaders, then what do they do?”
Ax blinked at her. {And then they lose. They’ve never managed to successfully take over a planet in this manner.}
“So...you mean the natives find out? Fight them off somehow?” Tobias leaned forward from his seat on a stack of boxes, a painfully hopeful look on his face.
{No. They never find out. But we know, and we stop them.}
Ax clamped his thoughts down hard on the word ‘stop’. What came through was very clinical, just an impression of clean victory and a resigned feeling as the Andalites moved on to the next target. His lack of a clearer picture told more than it didn’t. I had the sneaking suspicion that I would not like finding out how they ‘stopped’ the Yeerks after they’d gained a foothold somewhere.
Beside me, Marco must have come to the same conclusion. He clenched and unclenched his fists in his lap, but he didn’t make any comment.
“Then why would they keep trying?” I asked. I didn’t like enemies that kept performing a failed tactic over and over. It wasn’t natural.
{Because if they could get it to work, the rewards would outweigh any risk. There are far more Yeerks in the Empire than there are available hosts. They are constantly trying to take new planets with a minimal loss of life, so that they can harvest more able-bodied hosts. Your planet is ideal for them. Five million new hosts would bolster their numbers considerably.}
“Five million?” Cassie repeated.
{Yes. Don’t you know your own planet’s population?}
We all stared at him for a moment, shocked to silence, before Marco started laughing. A humorless laugh that had a kind of desperate edge to it.
“Either someone lied to you or someone got their numbers seriously crossed,” he said between chuckles. “Because we passed the six billion mark a few years ago.”
It was Ax’s turned to be shocked to silence. He focused on Marco with a gaze that seemed intense compared to his habit of looking everywhere at once. {You... No, surely you must be mistaken.}
“He’s not,” I said. “Six billion.”
{It’s... But... That doesn’t... How is that even sustainable?}
I shrugged. “We seem to manage it.” I gave Ax a few moments to process the fact before I asked the question that had been bugging at the back of my mind. “So, with billions instead of millions on the line, would they be more likely to take more risks? Step up their game, try and speed things up?”
Marco abruptly stopped laughing and started coughing. The others looked at me with shocked faces. Even Ax looked uncomfortably surprised by my question.
{I suppose...it would not be unreasonable to assume that.}
“Well then it’s more important than ever that we find a way to stop them now,” Tobias said. “Apparently we don’t know what they’ll do if they get dug in enough.”
{Their biggest weakness at this stage is their need to feed.}
He didn’t have to explain ‘feed’ to us. His thoughts carried the concept. Every three days the Yeerk would have to leave their human host and return to the sludge of a pool, to soak up the artificial rays of a small-scale sun. Without those rays, the Yeerk would die.
“I’ll say,” Marco said and gave a low whistle. “How do they get anything done with a hamstring like that?”
{They will have to ferry the hosts back and forth to the Pool ship in orbit. They will have a transport ship leave from a nearby location, one easily accessible to the hosts but out of sight of the natives.}
“And no one notices when people start disappearing for random trips to space?” I asked. Surely if Polk and Hash and Cleever had started moonwalking twice a week, I would have noticed that.
{The trip would only take a few hours between departure and return. Is that an unusually long time to be absent in your culture?}
I would have made some remark about the clear sarcasm in his voice, but Rachel started talking instead. “Well why didn’t you mention this at the start? We can follow any one of the Yeerks we know about and get our hands on a ship.”
{Unlikely,} Ax told her in a cool tone that made her bristle. {These would be mid-sized ferry ships, unwieldy, designed to transport one or two hundred bodies at a time to orbit and no father. They would not have the capacity to transport me all the way back to the Fleet.}
“Well isn’t that just too bad for you?” she spat. “Because they would serve our purposes pretty nicely.”
Ax was visibly taken aback by her insinuation, and despite the fact that we still needed Ax to be agreeable and on our side, in that moment I would have readily backed Rachel up. He’d made it clear throughout the conversation that he had nothing but his own escape from the planet in mind, and that could be potentially fatal for all of us. He would have no problem continuing to act like that unless we made it clear that we wouldn’t be taken for granted. Ax looked over at me and I didn’t give him an inch.
“We want to help you, Aximili,” I said, using my very best ‘sergeant’ tone. “And we will, to the best of our abilities. But there’s a lot more at stake here than just your orders, no matter how important they are to you.”
He had the good grace to break eye contact first.
“Look,” Cassie said. “There’s no reason to think we can’t find a suitable ship while running down this...this ferry thing. Let’s get a better idea of what we’re dealing with before making and dismissing plans. We’re just shooting in the dark, here. When we know more, then we can nail down the details.”
Her suggestion made sense, and more to the point, it was enough to keep Rachel, Ax, and myself from arguing some more. Rachel brushed some imaginary dirt off her jeans and shrugged, while Ax became very interested in his hands. I couldn’t tell if it was because his hands were honestly interesting to him, or because he was avoiding everyone’s gaze.
“Alright,” I said. “So we observe. You guys with Chapman, me with my people.”
“You’re going to need some help,” Marco pointed out, his voice and expression so mild that I couldn’t find any reason to snap at him.
I knew he was right, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had to take care of my command on my own. They were my people, after all. My commander. My First Sergeant. I had a responsibility to watch their backs, and I’d already failed on that once without realizing it. The others were civilians; they wouldn’t understand.
But that didn’t change the fact that I couldn’t watch any one of the Yeerks we know about -- much less all three of them -- without some kind of help.
“I got some vacation days due me,” Marco continued in that same bland voice. “I could say I’m out there to visit.”
“Take blue-boy over there along,” Rachel suggested. “You two could have a grunt-off.”
I shot her a glare, to which she smiled innocently. “I don’t think that would be the best idea.”
“I’ll take him,” Tobias offered. He shrugged when everyone looked at him. “What? I live alone, I’ve got space, and I only have to work a few hours tomorrow.” He looked over at Ax. “If you don’t mind being seen in a Pinto, I can show you around the area. Maybe we can figure out where they’re launching those transport thingies from.”
{What’s a Pinto?}
“He should probably go shopping first before he goes out in public,” Rachel put in.
{Shopping for what?}
“Are you volunteering for that?” I asked Rachel.
She looked Ax up and down with one hand on her chin, like she was assessing a guilty client. “Yeah. I think we can work something out.”
{Shopping for what?} Ax asked again, sounding a little nervous.
I checked my watch. It was barely nine in the morning. “Alright, well, you and Tobias can take care of that. Cassie, you’ve got the Center until noon, right?”
She nodded.
“Okay, so you four work out how to track down and keep an eye on Chapman. Marco and I will head back to base and set up there. We’ll start counting three days from this afternoon and before the end of that we should at least know how they’re getting off the planet. We can figure something else out from there.”
{Shopping for what?}
[[A/N - I am sorry for the long delay. When I started this project I was writing at the speed of a NaNo-er on crack, mostly due to some personal issues and the avoidance thereof. Needless to say, I got a little burned out. I have not abandoned this fic, nor do I intend to at any point in the foreseeable future. I will be putting out chapters at a much more reasonable rate, though. Thank you for your patience and your lovely reviews and comments.]]
Boys and their Toys
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