Animorphs: 2010 - Chapter 7
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Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Nine (18+)The Andalite was behind me and I didn’t dare turn my head to look. I could see the others, though, eyes wide as they stared at the alien that had me literally by the throat.
Rachel raised her rifle and pointed it at the Andalite. “Let him go.”
“Rachel, stop.” Very slowly, I held my own gun out and dropped it. “Lay it down. Cassie, you, too.”
Cassie put hers down immediately, but Rachel hesitated. I gave her a stern look, as if I didn’t have a knife on my neck, until she relented and placed hers on the ground as well.
I held my hands out to the side slightly, palms open to show I didn’t hold anything. “We’re unarmed and we’re not Yeerks. We just want to talk to you.”
{Why should I believe that?} The Andalite took the alien gun out of my waistband - I’d forgotten I carried it - and pointed it over my shoulder at Rachel. {Nobody moves.}
His hand was in my sight. I tried to judge if I could grab him by the tail and the arm at the same time, but I didn’t know enough about this species. He might be able to decapitate me before I could move. He might be too strong for me. Our best chance of getting out of this in one piece was to convince him to calm down.
“No one’s going to move,” I assured him. “No one’s going to do anything unless you say so. Isn’t that right, guys?”
The others all nodded, and the alien twitched his gun between one bobbing head and the next.
“Just...just stay calm and maybe back up a step and we can talk like reasonable people. We didn’t come here to hurt you.”
{Shut up, Yeerk.}
We stayed that way for a full minute, no one daring to move. The alien clearly didn’t know what to do with us and his shaking hand on the gun didn’t give me much confidence that he wouldn’t lose it at any second and cut me. I tried to ignore my pounding heart and dry mouth and figure out what the hell we could say that would get us out of this, but without knowing anything about Andalites and their war, it was impossible.
“Elfangor sent us,” I said finally, figuring it had as much chance as anything else of working.
The tail blade bit into my neck and I hissed at the pain, but I didn’t move. An inch or two in the wrong direction and I’d be dead.
“He did. We found him two nights ago and-”
{Where is he?}
The blade pressed harder against my neck and I had to lean back slightly. “He’s dead. The...the-um...Visser. The Visser killed him. But he told us...ah, told us to find...” Shit, it was hard to think about anything except the trickle of blood running down my chest and the fact that I was millimeters away from death.
{What did he tell you?}
I realized my mistake. Elfangor hadn’t ‘sent’ us, and the alien behind me was trying to catch me in a lie. “He told us to warn people,” I amended in a hurry. “He told us about the Yeerks and the...the space battle and then said, ‘Tell everyone.’”
Another long moment of silence. I hardly dared to breathe for fear I’d slice my windpipe open.
“Look, we’re not Yeerks.” Marco held his hands up as he talked. “But there’s a bunch of people back there who are, and they might come over here any minute, so maybe we could continue this debate somewhere not out in the open?”
The Andalite hesitated for a moment, then finally he released me. I stumbled out of reach of that tail as soon as I could, turning to face him as I did so. The alien looked just like Elfangor, although I attributed that to the fact I didn’t know anything about the species. It was hard to look past the four eyes and slit nose and see any individual nuances.
{Come with me.}
Cassie ignored him and inspected the cut on my neck, even as the other three started to follow the Andalite.
“It’s okay,” I insisted, picking up her rifle for her and ushering her toward the others.
“It is not. You’re going to need stitches.” She walked backward, still fussing to get a good look, and pulled out a handkerchief from her pocket. “At least put something over it.”
“I’m fine. We’re getting left behind.” I balled up the handkerchief and pressed it against my neck to stem the blood. He’d only managed to cut the skin, and since I no longer had the blade against me, I wasn’t too worried.
The Andalite didn’t lead us to his ship, as I’d half-expected, but into the woods uphill from the path of destruction. He’d picked out a spot from which he could spy anyone approaching the crash site and had dug a shallow hollow underneath a tree. A tarp that perfectly mimicked the forest floor stretched halfway over the hollow like a tent, offering some protection from the elements.
“What’s your name?” I asked as we approached the impromptu shelter.
He looked back at me with one stalk eye, never breaking stride. {I am Warrior Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill.}
Like before, I received a world of information along with the name. He didn’t identify himself just with a string of sounds. I felt his pride in his rank, I saw his family. In a breath I knew that he loved his job, that he all but defined himself by it, and that Elfangor had been both his brother and his commander. In front of me, Marco stopped walking and muttered, “Shit.”
“What are you doing here?” Tobias asked. We reached the hollow but stood in a rough circle beside it. “We...ah, we were under the impression that no one...um, survived.”
{No one else did.} Aximili kept such a tight control on his pain that his words felt eerily hollow. {I was sent out with the burn ship, but I came here to look for my Prince.}
I couldn’t tell what a burn ship was, only that Aximili thought the assignment was beneath him. Rather than impression of the thing, all I got was contempt for it.
“We’re sorry for your loss,” Cassie offered hesitantly. “He died fighting, if that’s anything.”
Aximili blinked at her. {Prince Elfangor would not die any other way,} he insisted hotly. {He was not a coward!}
“No one said that.” I stepped between Cassie and Aximili automatically; every show of anger made me worried he’d lash out with that tail. “Not even close. We only knew him for a few minutes, but even so I could tell he was an honorable fighter.”
{He was the best.} Aximili looked toward the sky with all four eyes for a moment, then turned toward his shelter. {He should have died with his ship.} He reached under the tarp and pulled out a green bag.
“He was trying to help us,” Cassie said, stepping up beside me. “To warn us, so that we could have a fighting chance against the Yeerks.”
I glanced over at her, wondering what exactly she was getting at.
Marco did not suffer under the same confusion. “Thing is, we’re having a little trouble doing that on our own.”
Aximili declined to answer and instead motioned for me to come closer. I went, and he pulled a small, square green patch out of the bag. He took my bloody handkerchief and slapped the patch on my neck over the cut instead.
It burned my skin. “Hol-Wha-Ow!” I clawed at my neck, trying to get it off, but it felt like it had fused into place. There were no edges to grip, nothing for my fingernails to catch on.
{The burning sensation will cease momentarily,} he told me, clearly unimpressed with my antics. Even as he said it, the pain started to fade and I stopped trying to scratch it off. So long as it didn’t cause damage, it would certainly bypass the need for stitches. Aximili looked over at Marco with his two main eyes. {You are trying to ask for my help in fighting the Yeerks?}
Marco shrugged. “Something like that.”
Once again, Aximili looked skyward. {Our detachment was destroyed. With Prince Elfangor dead, I must return to the Fleet. We will send more ships as soon as we can.}
I didn’t need the telepathic undertones to understand that ‘as soon as we can’ wasn’t likely to be soon enough.
“Great, then you’ll come back to do battle against the humans instead of rescue them,” Marco snapped. “Look, we’re not asking you for much. We don’t want to fight these bastards. Just stick around long enough to tell a few key people what’s going on and then fly off in good conscience. All we need is some proof for our people that this whole invasion thing is happening.”
Aximili made a diagonal slicing motion with his hands before Marco even finished speaking. {It is not allowed.}
“Not allowed?” I thought Marco’s head would pop off right then. For the first time since I’d known him, he was rendered speechless.
{Your species is not sufficiently advanced enough to receive contact from interterrestrials.}
“Look, I hate to pop your bubble here,” Rachel pointed out, “but we’ve already been contacted by those creepy slug things, so it’s sort of a moot point.”
{That’s not my decision,} Aximili told her. {Revelation of interterrestials to natives who are unprepared for it has a history of inciting panic, internal conflict, and wars.} His words sounded dry, like he was reciting them from a text book. After a moment, he looked up again and added, {And those who tried it without Fleet backing tend to...die.}
That tidbit came with a slight shiver of fear, the impression of a boogieman-esque story. As if he’d heard terrible things about contacting ‘natives’ all his life.
“You don’t seem to mind talking to us,” I pointed out.
{You are only five and pose no threat.}
No threat? Really? We had guns, albeit useless ones. But he didn’t know that. Rachel and I were almost as tall as Aximili; Marco was stocky enough to look like he could put up a good fight, which he could. We outnumbered him.
I reminded myself that we didn’t want to threaten the Andalite and stamped down my annoyance. “You-”
“At least let us help you move away from this place.” Cassie cut me off, putting a hand on my arm to keep me from saying anything else. “The Yeerks already know where you and your ship are. We’ve kept them from finding you for now, but they will come back eventually.”
We all looked at Cassie, shocked and confused by this suggestion. Why should we help this guy leave us in a bind? Unless... After a moment of thinking, I wondered if she meant it to be a stall tactic. Give us an excuse to stick around and work with the guy, which would also give us an excuse to keep trying to convince him. An easy way to justify out continued presence and a gesture of goodwill all in one stroke. Subtle, but I’d expect no less from her.
{What do you mean, you kept them from finding me?}
“We had to fight off like eight of them on the way over here,” Marco said, embellishing only slightly. “They had a whole hunting party out looking for you. And they’ll have another one again soon enough.”
Aximili hesitated, one stalk eye glancing toward the end of the burned-out path, toward what I could only assume was his ship.
“The ship doesn’t work, does it?” I asked.
{It requires a few repairs. It is nothing I cannot solve given time.}
“Well, time is what you don’t have,” Marco told him, his tone needlessly cruel. Tobias jabbed him in the gut with one elbow.
“We can help you,” I told him, “but not indefinitely. There’s only us five, and they’ll bring more people when they try again. And even more if that doesn’t work. This isn’t a place to stand and make a fight of it, not if you’re trying to fix your ship at the same time. It’s not defensible enough.”
{I can’t leave my ship.}
“Well you can’t stay here.”
{I can’t leave my ship. It’s a burn ship. It carries all the unit’s most sensitive material, to be destroyed in case...in case the worst were to happen.}
In case the mothership were taken captive. To keep it from falling into the hands of the enemy. I was well familiar with the concept. Unfortunately, I also knew what had to be done, and I didn’t think Aximili would like it. The ship would have to be destroyed. The fact that it was sensitive didn’t change the fact that we couldn’t defend it.
Aximili kept glancing back toward the ship, and I knew from the slump of his shoulders that I wouldn’t have to point out the obvious to him.
Tobias perked up suddenly. “Hear that?”
Everyone started to look around, as if somehow that would help our hearing. Faintly, I made out the sound of approaching chopper blades. More than that, though. I’d worked around all sorts of aircraft; I could distinguish most of them by sound. This was a small bird, only one rotor. Probably a police or traffic helicopter.
“They’re searching.” I caught Aximili’s gaze with my own and held it. “Save what you can. Destroy the rest. We’ll hide you for now and figure out the rest later.”
{I cannot help-}
“No conditions attached. But we need to move now.”
Aximili hesitated a moment more, then he turned and pulled two more bags out from the hollow. With those slung over his back, he turned and headed through the woods at a quick pace, the rest of us running to follow.
Marco dropped to the back to run next to me. “Are you nuts? This guy is our best bet at getting some real help out of this mess, and we’ve got him by the balls. And you offer him a get-out-of-jail-free card? You know as soon as we get out of here, he’s going to split and we’ll never see him again.”
“I’m not going to threaten someone who’s supposed to be an ally,” I insisted. When Marco scowled at me and opened his mouth to make another argument, I added, “Besides, we’ll all die if we stand here arguing about it too long.”
That was enough to shut him up and we focused instead on keeping up with Aximili as we raced through the trees to the crash site.
His burn ship was tiny, about the size of a station wagon. It didn’t look large enough to get off the ground and had no obvious engines, nor did it look damaged beyond a few dents and scratches on the hull. When Aximili opened a hatch on the side, we could all see that the interior was barely large enough to hold one Andalite.
“This is all your biggest secrets?” Marco asked, peeking in the door.
Aximili opened one of the panels and started to remove what I immediately recognized as hard drives. Smaller and more complex than anything on Earth, the ‘motherboard look’ was there none-the-less.
“Oh.” Marco made a face and stepped back from the door.
Aximili stuff the drives into one bag and tossed it out of the ship. Then he started opening drawers and compartments and pulling out other stuff. Shrink-wrapped packages covered in odd script, piles of thin cartridges, vials of something, even a small sky-blue box. Most of the stuff he left in place and I couldn’t tell what his system was for deciding, if he even had one. Once they were full, he tossed out the other two bags as well.
{The self-destruction should be contained. But we should still get well away from it, just in case.}
“No argument there.” Marco picked up one of the bags and tossed the other two to Tobias and me. “Get out here and we’ll start running.”
Aximili worked on something that looked vaguely like a keyboard for a moment, then joined us outside the ship. The hatch sealed itself as we left.
We followed Cassie back toward the farm, trusting her sense of direction to get us out of things. The sound of searching helicopters kept us company, although thankfully they didn’t seem to be getting any closer.
Not until the muffled sound of an explosion went off behind us. The noise was slight, but the concussion effect rolled over us like a physical punch, making me stumble slightly. Cassie almost fell and I steadied her as best I could. “Come on. Keep running.”
The chopper veered closer after that, bearing down on us. It passed south of us and headed to the crash site, but once they found it, it would only be a matter of time before they spread out and caught up to us. So long as we only had the bird to worry about, we would make it to the farm. Probably.
I didn’t even want to think about what would happen if we ran into ground searchers, though.
Cassie led us on a twisting route through the trees, having to backtrack in places where the undergrowth was too thick. We weren’t on any real trial, which slowed us down considerably. Still we pressed on, the sound of approaching aircraft spurring us to move faster and faster.
“Spread out that way!” A faint voice, off to our left.
I held up my fist in the ‘halt’ signal which, thankfully, appeared to be universal.
“They might try to head toward town. Cut ‘em off here and sweep inward.”
I recognized the voice. The bull-like man who’d lead the last group. And now he was cutting off our only path to escape.
Boys and their Toys
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