The Bug fighter turned, bringing a modified rear door into contact with the invisible outer hull. A Hork-Bajir bounded inside. A Taxxon slithered behind him. And then, moving almost daintily as he stepped from the Bug fighter down into the Pemalite ship, came Visser Three.
The Yeerks broke the code. The outer door of the decompression chamber opened.
The fighters disgorged Hork-Bajir and Taxxons into the Pemalite ship. They formed up around Visser Three in the decompression chamber, some fanning out to take up flanking positions.
“Oh, dilemma! Oh, drama! Oh, the tension and excitement of it all!”
The voice was new. Not thought-speak. High, shrill, grating.
“Right here, Jake. From me, Big Jake. Jake, the reluctant leader. Jake, the oh-so-tiresomely decent one. A sanctimonious killer: my least favorite kind.”
“Come out, come out wherever you are,” the voice sang mockingly. “Of course. I’ll even come out with my hands up.”
It appeared from behind a tree. It moved on two legs, body held forward and balanced by a stubby tail. It walked like a bird or a small dinosaur. It did hold its hands up. But they were weak, flimsy things, multiply jointed but obviously designed for very light work or very low gravity.
The head was surprising for that almost reptilian body: vaguely human in shape, with a narrow lower jaw and wide-set, intelligent, laughing eyes.
It was wrinkled, like your thumb after a long bath. Its flesh was dark, almost black. The eyes and mouth were rimmed in green.
Marco said.
“Oh, Marco the funny one!” the creature cried, slapping its limp hands together. “How’s Mommy, Marco? Is she alive or is she dead? Does she scream with the Yeerk in her head?”
Marco reached for the creature with two long tentacles. But neither touched the withered thing. They stopped and bent back.
“All here together?” the prune thing mocked. “Cassie, the hypocrite? ‘I don’t believe in violence … except when I do.’ Aximili, the pitiful, pale shadow of his dead brother? If only you’d insisted on going with Elfangor, maybe he’d have lived. Too bad. And Tobias, ah, yes, Tobias. The boy not really so trapped as a bird, eh, but too gutless to resume life as a human? And Rachel. My very favorite Animorph.”
The thing smiled a lipless smile. “Rachel, Rachel. Do you feel the adrenaline rush of murderous desire? Do you feel the urge to reach out and destroy me? Of course you do. You and I have that in common.”
“Haven’t figured it out yet? Ooh, so slow. Allow me to introduce myself,” it said. “I am the Drode. It’s a word from my species. It means ‘wild card.’”
“Oh, very clever, Big Jake, Prince Jake. Have you killed your brother yet? No? Well, you will.”
The Drode grinned. Then the grin disappeared. “Payback,” it said. “You ruined his Howlers. Ruined his plan for the Iskoort. Crayak doesn’t like you, Big Jake. Any of you.” Then it looked straight at me. “Although you have potential.”
I let that go by. I didn’t want to think about what it meant.
“Whale killing? Me?” the Drode said in mock horror. “No, no, no. That big lump on the beach falls just over the line into sentience. And I never kill a sentient creature. Your whale will survive.”
“Yes, yes, oh yes,” the Drode sneered. “Mustn’t upset the balance. Not directly, anyway. But! Create problems? Yes. Create opportunities? Yes. Play the wild card? Of course. And now, no more time for chat. The Yeerks are here for you. Will they kill you outright? Or will they make you Controllers? I don’t care. Either way, my master will reward me.”
Cassie said desperately.
The Drode laughed. “They’re machines, you silly girl. Androids.”
“Nonsense,” the Drode said. “There’s always a way left for you. That’s also part of the rules. Now, if you don’t find it, well …”
The creature walked back behind a tree. A tree much too narrow to conceal it. And yet it disappeared.
I looked left. Hork-Bajir and Taxxons were filling the decompression chamber. Twenty, maybe more Hork-Bajir. Half a dozen Taxxons. And Visser Three: an army all by himself.
Trapped!
Demorph, and give up our greatest secret, a secret that protected our families as well as ourselves.
Or simply wait to die.
Immediately, a dark, roiling cloud of ink billowed out of me like a dense wall of fog, creeping out farther and farther, blocking and isolating everything in its path.
I couldn’t see through it. But I didn’t know how long it would last.
I began to demorph. Speed was everything. Ax and Tobias would try to slow the advancing Yeerks. But they wouldn’t last more than a few seconds against that army.
I began to shrink, becoming small within the vast bubble. My tentacles rolled up, suckers disappeared, my beak mouth became teeth. Too slow! Soon I’d be a human, sucking on water.
No. Wait! Water. Yeah, it was water. Black water. Opaque water.
I was a creature half-cephalopod, half-human, a horror, a hideous slimy thing with blond hair and shriveling tentacles.
I swam straight up. Up through water as inky black as the water outside the ship. My head, my increasingly human head, poked out through the top. Around me was a gently rolling bubble of ink-filled water. I could see the ceiling above, and Tobias flapping hard for altitude. I could see the rounded, down-sloping edges of the flying bubble itself. But I could not see the Yeerks.
And if I couldn’t see them, they couldn’t see me.
I began to morph again.
Sharp, curved claws as long as paring knives sprouted from my fingertips. Thick, shaggy fur raced across my growing body. Gleaming fangs erupted where my hu
man teeth had been.
I dove down, as any good grizzly could, down through the black bubble. I swam straight down. Down till my huge, shaggy head erupted from the bottom of the bubble. The bottom of the bubble was about ten feet off the grassy floor.
Suddenly, I dropped.
WHAM!
I landed on my shoulder. I rolled and bounded up to my feet.
The others were dropping around me. A tiger slipped from the bubble nearest mine and landed with all the easy grace my bear lacked. A wolf. A gorilla.
The huge black bubbles continued to float over our heads like very low storm clouds. Ahead of us, a hundred feet away, no more, stood Ax.
Facing Ax, a small Yeerk army.
Lying on the ground were two Taxxons, huge, needle-legged centipedes. They’d been sliced open by an Andalite tail blade. The other Taxxons devoured them noisily, round red mouths descending to rip and tear their brothers.
Visser Three himself had a gash that had almost removed one of his stalk eyes.
Tobias’s handiwork.
But the lull was temporary. The Visser was getting ready to renew the attack.
Marco said.
I said.
I didn’t hesitate, I didn’t think. I dropped to all fours and charged.
Sheer, massive aggression.
But then, a movement! A Taxxon motoring across my path!
I slammed into it like a tractor rolling over a snail.
“SKKKRREEEEE!” it shrieked. I flailed back in shock and pain. I sank my teeth into its head. Its foul taste flooded my mouth. I whipped my head in fury, tearing the Taxxon in two.
I raked its still-squirming upper body with my claws, shoving it aside. But my charge had been ruined. My chance lost.
With a loud roar — animal, Hork-Bajir, and Taxxon — the battle erupted. We charged; they charged. We exploded into each other.
I caught a blurred movement.
Turned as the Hork-Bajir’s sharp, razor-bladed arm fell like an ax and buried itself in my hip.
Agony exploded in my brain, driving me into frenzy.
“RRROOOAAARRR!” I screamed, twisting away, staggering as the pain shot a thousand burning spikes through my body.
Cassie leaped and buried her teeth in the back of a Hork-Bajir’s neck.
I closed my jaws around the Hork-Bajir. I shook him until he flopped like a rag doll.
I tossed him away.
The battle raged, the lush, peaceful, Pemalite ship a nightmare scene of screams and roars, blood and rage.
“Guhroooar!” Marco, in gorilla morph, leaped down from an outcropping of rocks and tore into a Taxxon.
“SSSRRREEEE-wah!” It fell, writhing, squirming, its lobster-clawed hands clicking and snapping in its death throes.
A sleek, powerful tiger hurtled by, pouncing on a Hork-Bajir’s back and burying its fangs in his neck.
The Hork-Bajir staggered. Screamed. Collapsed.
Three huge, fearsome Hork-Bajir had converged on Ax and backed him to the edge of the small lake.
One darted forward, swiping at Ax with his bladed arm.
Lightning-quick, Ax’s wicked, scorpion tail flashed.
The severed arm flew and plopped into the lake.
The Hork-Bajir moaned and fell.
The other two advanced.
Growling, I thundered toward them.
Rose up on my back legs.
And stumbled, pitching sideways as my wounded leg gave out, sending me crashing into a Hork-Bajir and knocking him to the ground beneath me.
For one, brief moment our eyes met.
And suddenly, eerily, we were more than warriors on separate sides.
We were each other.
And for a frozen moment, the world went still. Then …
Slash!
His arm came up, wrist blade out. I jerked my head back and rolled into him. He slashed again and caught me in the side. I twisted and brought my right paw around. I didn’t have the leverage to slash. Instead, I did what a grizzly wouldn’t: I drew back my fist and punched him in the face.
I clambered up off his unconscious body.
The battle was everywhere. And we were losing. The grass was littered with fallen Taxxons and Hork-Bajir. The air was thick with dying screams and clogged with the hot, coppery stench of blood.
“Ghafrash!” A Hork-Bajir, charging Jake.
Jake slashing, roaring.
Cassie, hobbling, dragging a broken back leg, snarling and dodging a Taxxon’s claws.
Marco, bleeding, cheek laid open, his huge, powerful hands wrapped tightly around a Hork-Bajir’s neck. Squeezing.
Ax, whirling, slicing, the master of deadly perfection.
But we were losing. Because all alone, surrounded by his Hork-Bajir guard, Visser Three was morphing. Growing. Some hideous creation from some far-distant planet.
Huge! Deadly.
We couldn’t defeat all his Hork-Bajir and Taxxons. Let alone this monster.
“Ah-hah-hah! Wonderful! Lovely! Perfect!” the Drode cackled happily. “I love the smell of battle. Oh, J-a-a-ake? Are you dead yet?”
It had reappeared, stepping out from behind the same tree, seemingly oblivious to any danger.
The Drode grinned its green-rimmed grin. “You know, Crayak could use you, Rachel. Why stay with these weaklings? You’re already more like us than like them.”
“Yes, isn’t it? You can survive this debacle. Just do us one small favor: Kill your tiresome cousin. Crayak would like to see that. So would I. Kill Jake.”
I laughed.
I lunged for the Drode.
It dodged me easily.
My momentum carried me past it, straight into a pair of Hork-Bajir.
Slash!
My other rear leg buckled. Buckled like it was made out of rubber.
I rose halfway up on all fours, but I couldn’t reach the Hork-Bajir. They laughed, seeing I was done for. Laughed at me, at my helplessness.
Then … something new. Something steel and ivory, moving at a speed no human, no Hork-Bajir, no Andalite could match.
It raced for the tree. Visser Three slapped at it with one of his morphing claws, but the steel-and-ivory creature simply blocked the blow.
“No! Nooooo!” the Drode groaned in disbelief.
Erek reached the tree. He punched something into the control panel.
The Hork-Bajir was suddenly moving very … very … slowly….
“Oh, this is not at all what I had in mind,” the Drode said.
I rolled aside and reached to gut it.
But my paw was likewise moving very … very … slowly.
The thought-speak voice of the ship spoke.
“And you wonder why Crayak destroyed the Pemalites,” the Drode said, enraged. “What tedious creatures they were. Pacifist androids! What is the point of machines that cannot kill? They could have ruled the galaxy with their Chee as warriors!”
The battlefield was frozen. Only Erek and the Drode were able to move. Erek calmly lifted Tobias from the Hork-Bajir’s grasp.
The Drode came over to me. It took in the violent tableau: me and the two Hork-Bajir.
The Drode leaned close, close enough to whisper
so that only I could hear. “Your friends are all relieved. Are you? Are you happy that peace has been restored? Or don’t you itch for the chance to press those deadly claws another six inches forward, to tear open that exposed throat?”
The Drode smiled. Cruel. Smirking.
“If you ever find yourself desperate, Rachel. At an end. In need. Remember this: Your cousin’s life is your passport to salvation in the arms of Crayak.”
Then it was gone.
The Pemalite ship carefully, politely, regretfully, packed the Yeerks, including a furiously enraged Visser Three, back into their modified Bug fighters.
Once the Yeerks were gone, we morphed and left the way we’d come in. The ship was polite to us, too. But it wanted us gone, just the same.
It had been only ten minutes from the time we turned off the interference with the Chee till the point when Erek arrived at the ship to interrupt the battle. Ten minutes to get from land to a spot three miles underwater. If it had taken fifteen …
The Drode was right about one thing: The Chee had powers that would have made the Pemalites masters of the galaxy.
All that power. And all the Pemalites had ever wanted was to play, to learn, to be happy.
Before we reached the surface of the ocean, the Pemalite ship had been moved. This time to a depth only an android could reach.
It was late when we got home. We were tired. Worn and brittle from a day harsh with fighting.
We each told our separate lies to our various parents, and were each grounded. I don’t think anyone minded.
I wondered if I should tell Jake about the Drode’s foul offer. But I decided against it. I knew I would never, ever give in. I knew myself.
I did. I knew my limits. I knew.
But what the Drode and his evil master Crayak had seen inside of me was real. Jake knew it. He trusted me, but there might come a time when he would doubt …
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