The Attack

by K. A. Applegate

  It looked like there was a bearing halfway up

  51 his body, as if the top half of the torso was on a living lazy Susan, allowing the body to turn all the way around and keep the fighting claws in the game.

  The head was ugly, a slag heap of melted-looking, black pebbled skin. The entire creature looked like he had been formed out of still-cooling lava. Beneath the black, in the cracks and creases of his flesh, were lines of bright red.

  Within this face were eyes of a startlingly beautiful blue. Robin's egg blue, they call it. The entire eye was blue, with the cat's iris a paler shade.

  The Howler seemed indifferent to us. Didn't care. Wasn't concerned.

  He wore a series of loose belts around his torso, and each of these featured a different weapon. Or at least they looked like weapons. Something similar to a Dracon beam, what might almost have been an automatic pistol, knives, small metallic boomerangs, a gun that seemed loaded with darts.

  He was a walking arsenal.

  I looked back at Erek, above me on the stairs. His face was flickering. In and out. Not with emotion. With simple loss of control. The android under the hologram kept peeking out.

  52 The Howler's empty blue eyes locked on Erek.

  "Erek, get a grip," I said with forced calm.

  He shook himself and the hologram stabilized, but the Howler kept watching him.

  "Six against one, Jake," Rachel said. "We won't get better odds."

  I felt my stomach clench. Sheer drop on both sides. Unknown terrain below. Not the place for a fight. But Rachel was right: It was the time.

  "Morph," I said quietly. "Ax? You take the lead. Tobias? Get some altitude. Guide? Back off, this isn't your fight. Erek? Stay out of the way."

  That sounded harsher than I'd intended. But my heart was hammering and I was feeling the fear-sweat down my back. It had happened too soon. We weren't ready. We were tired from the run-ins with the Warmaker Iskoort.

  But mostly, mostly I was seeing pictures in my head. The eye. Crayak. The image from my dream. I could almost hear him laughing. Just a figment of my imagination, but it felt real enough.

  Six against one. It wasn't going to get any better.

  I began to morph, to call on the tiger DNA that swam through my blood. The tiger would be bigger than the Howler. The six of us together in morph can take on anything, I told myself. We can take on anything.

  53 The Howler's blue eyes narrowed as we shifted positions. He knew a fight when he saw one coming. But he was fascinated by the morphing. Fascinated and almost jealous, if it's possible to read an expression on a face made of tar with eyes as empty as sky.

  I felt the morph working on my body. The orange fur grew from my hands and arms. I had no time to get out of my clothes. They'd be torn apart by the morphing. Fur spread across my body. My fingers swelled, dark leather on the palms, orange and white on the back. Claws that could leave slash marks in a car door grew to replace my useless human fingernails.

  I heard the organs inside me shifting, squishing, relocating, configuring themselves for the tiger body.

  A long tail sprouted from the base of my spine and immediately began to snap back and forth, twitching in agitation and anticipation.

  I fell forward onto all fours. This made my head several steps lower than my hindquarters. Teeth filled my mouth, too big, so big they grew out like a saber-toothed cat's teeth.

  Then my mouth caught up and my face grew sensitive whiskers. My eyes, made for seeing through darkness like it was day. My nose, sensitive to every smell of animal life. My ears, pricked forward, quivering at attention.

  54 The Howler looked a little less intimidating now. The tiger was not worried. The tiger knew it was the fastest, deadliest creature in the jungle. The tiger did not fear the strange-smelling creature.

  Ax was just in front of me, tail bowed and ready, three eyes forward, the remaining stalk eye watching the rest of us. Rachel had morphed to grizzly bear. She stood up, a massive pillar of rough brown fur with power to uproot small trees. Marco had morphed to gorilla. He swung his pile driver arms back and forth almost casually, like he was waiting on the street corner for the bus to come. Cassie had morphed to wolf. The thick armor of fur on the back of her neck stood on end, and she'd drawn back her muzzle, revealing wet, glistening teeth.

  We were more than a ton of muscle and claw and tooth, all directed by human intelligence that could draw on animal instinct.

  Facing us, a single, man-sized alien.

  I realized Erek was talking. That he had been for several seconds and I'd been too distracted to hear him.

  "... will paralyze you and numb your senses. If he gets close he'll use the needle teeth retracted into his upper and lower jaw. He's not as fast as -"

  55 «Erek. What did you say about paralyzing?» I interrupted.

  "It's the reason they're called Howlers, Jake. The voice. Be ready to -"

  The Howler's hand moved. Reaching for the beam weapon!

  56

  ?Hhhhhrrroooowwwwrrrr!" I roared, a sound that made brave men fall down trembling.

  I gathered myself for a leap. But Ax was faster. His tail snapped, crack!

  The Howler's hand dropped. The weapon clattered down the stairs. But before the weapon had stopped rolling, the hand was growing back!

  «Attack!» I yelled.

  I leaped. Ax whipped his tail again, faster than the eye could follow.

  I roared again, bellowing a sound that had never been heard on planet Iskoort. The others surged behind me. Down we went, a ton of animal power.

  57 Then the Howler replied.

  "KEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-row."

  It was a blast of sound like nothing I'd ever heard before. Compared to it, my tiger's roar was the mewling of a kitten.

  "KEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-row."

  I missed my leap and fell in a tangle on the steps. I saw Rachel trip and fall, landing on top of me. It was like having a safe dropped on my stomach.

  The wind exploded from my lungs. I scrambled to get up, but I couldn't make sense of up or down. I clawed feebly. Rachel rolled off and I saw that Ax was reeling, running! Running away, back up the stairs, weak Andalite hands clapped against his ears, blood seeping between the fingers.

  Cassie was howling, all wolf in her pain.

  Marco seemed the least affected. He swung a cement-block fist that hit the Howler on his arm and spun the creature sideways.

  I got to my feet, hoping to attack while the Howler was off-balance. Except the Howler wasn't off-balance. The ball-bearing waist twirled him all the way around, using the force of Marco's blow to spin and bring the now-regenerated hand up to a weapon.

  F-t-t-t-t-t-t!

  58 He had fired! A dozen steel darts, tiny triangles, ripped a messy hole through my left front leg. I stumbled. The pain was intense.

  Marco swung another fist, missed! The Howler turned the flechette gun on him. A bloody hole you could have pushed a Coke can through appeared in Marco's back.

  He dropped like a load of bricks.

  Cassie had recovered enough to bound into action, using Marco's fallen mass as a springboard. The Howler raised the gun, but too slowly. Wolf jaws clamped down on the arm and Cassie held on like a bulldog, ripping, tearing.

  I was up and moving on three legs. A lame leap! I clamped my teeth on Howler leg. Rachel was up, too, and charging on all fours, looking to knock the creature down.

  Tobias came swooping down at full-stoop speed, talons out for the Howler's eyes. We were getting the upper hand!

  "KEEEEEEEEEE-row!"

  Someone exploded a hand grenade in my head. I clamped my jaws tight, but all else was a blur, a swirling, mad blur.

  Blue-and-tan fur leaped over me, rust-red feathers shot past. What? What was happening? I couldn't think . . . couldn't make sense . . .

  A searing sharp pain. My eyes cleared just

  59 long enough to see the ornate dagger handle that protruded from my neck.

  I'd been stabbed! In the neck. The t
iger's blood ... my blood . . .

  "Jake! Demorph!" Erek said in a voice loud enough to penetrate the death fog creeping through my brain.

  Then there came other orders, all rapped out in a loud, clear voice. No, not orders. Just information.

  "Cassie, he's trying to stab you. Ax, you are too close to the edge, stop moving! Rachel, the Howler is within two feet of the edge, to your right."

  I was demorphing. Or at least I thought I was. I couldn't be sure. The tiger was dying, blood pumping out of his severed neck arteries. "Demorph, Jake! Demorph!" Erek's loud voice urged. "Do it now!"

  I heard a bear's roar. I heard an impact: body against body. I saw nothing but shapes, meaningless shapes.

  "Cassie, demorph!" Erek ordered. "He's gutted you, demorph! Do it now."

  From far off, a hawk's cry. A bear's bellow. The bullwhip crack of an Andalite tail.

  All far, faraway.

  60

  Crayak turned his bloodred eye on me, watching as I lay helpless. Watching as the Howlers stood around Cassie in a circle, watching as they lowered their claw hands into place, watching and laughing as she stood, eyes closed, helpless, seconds away from -

  "Cassie! Lookout!"

  I jerked up, eyes wide, hands flailing, fending off an attack.

  "Chill, chill," Marco said. He grabbed one hand and Rachel grabbed the other. "It's okay, dude, fight's over."

  I looked around, still wild. A room. Walls of solid colors, one red, the others yellow. Still in Lego Land.

  61 I slapped my legs. Human. My arms. Human. All me, with no ragged holes.

  I'd made it out of morph. I looked around the room. Rachel and Marco. Tobias sitting on the back of a strangely shaped chair. Erek standing alone, head down in thought. Ax as far from me as he could get, all four eyes turned away.

  "Cassie?" I asked.

  "I'm here," she said. I realized she was behind me. I felt her palm on my cheek. Then she put her arms around me and hugged me from behind. It made me want to cry.

  "It's taken you a while to wake up," Cassie said. "You barely demorphed in time. Then it was like you were in a coma, like you weren't going to wake up at all."

  I remembered dreams. They were dreams, weren't they? Hard to be sure. Reality itself was weird enough to be a dream.

  "The Howler?" I asked Rachel.

  Her mouth was an angry line. "We hurt him. But he walked away."

  "Six against one and we got a draw," Marco said angrily.

  "Not six," Rachel corrected. "Seven. Erek saved our butts. He was the only one who could handle the howls."

  "Yeah, right, thanks a huge load, Erek," Marco said angrily. "He gave us directions. Not

  62 to hurt the Howler, you understand, 'cause that would violate his programming. But directions on how to crawl out of there."

  I held on to Cassie's hand. I didn't want to get into this. I wanted to hold on to a moment of feeling glad to be alive, glad to feel Cassie's concern.

  Then I sighed, squeezed her fingers, and pushed her hand away. "Erek did what he could, Marco. You know that as well as I do. My brain was scrambled. I'd be dead without him. That's enough for me."

  Marco looked like he wanted to say something else, but then his anger collapsed. "Yeah. We all did what we could."

  I spotted Guide back against a wall, uncharacteristically quiet. "You stick with us after that?" I asked him.

  His eyes glowed. «0h, yes, yes, yes. I will be able to sell the memory of that battle for a small fortune! And if each of you would sell me your own unique perspectives, I could buy my own corner with the profits!»

  I drew Cassie around to where I could see her. I nodded at Ax. "What's with him?" I asked.

  She shook her head. "He ran away. He came back, but I guess that's not enough. He won't talk to anyone."

  63 "Let him be for a while," I said. "Then I'll talk to him."

  I felt weary. Bruised and beaten, although my human body reconstructed from DNA was un-scarred by the battle. It was my brain that was worn out. I could see similar feelings on the faces around me.

  We'd been beaten in a fair fight. No, not a fair fight. It had been six of us plus Erek against one Howler. We'd fought to a draw. A tie. Seven against one. A tie.

  If there had been two Howlers, let alone all seven, we'd have been killed in ten seconds.

  We weren't scared, not the way we might be, facing a battle. We were worse than scared: We were beaten.

  "What is this place?" I asked.

  Rachel shrugged. "Some place Guide got for us. This room and a bathroom - well, I think it's a bathroom. Hope it's a bathroom."

  A pile of rags lay in one corner. Our clothing. What was left of it after we'd morphed while still wearing it. We were in our morphing outfits now. But I guessed we didn't look any more out of place than we would have, anyway. The Iskoort probably didn't care much about human fashion.

  «What do we do?» Tobias asked.

  "I'm for dialing up the Ellimist and telling

  64 him to go jump off whatever super-dimensional bridge he can find," Marco said.

  «He wouldn't have put us here if we weren't at least theoretically capable of winning,» Tobias said.

  "Unless there's some other, deeper game the Ellimist is playing," Cassie said. "He's fighting a battle for entire species, entire planets. We're just pawns."

  That was more cynicism than I was used to hearing from Cassie. But she wasn't wrong. The Ellimist and Crayak were both way over our heads. And I was haunted by the suggestion that maybe this was all a setup. That maybe Crayak wanted us here. Not because we were important by ourselves, but because eliminating us would help the Yeerks.

  Why had the Ellimist brought us here? He had to know how powerful the Howlers were. Had to.

  "This is a rotten, stinking deal," Rachel said, expressing the thoughts in my own head. "We're leaving our own planet defenseless to save these Iskoort." She said "Iskoort" like a curse word.

  I found myself looking at Erek. I could only imagine what was going on inside his head. He had the power to fight Howlers and win. But wasn't able to fight.

  Erek said, "Maybe the Ellimist would repro-

  65 gram me. Remove the prohibition against violence."

  Marco groaned. "Well, it's official: The situation is hopeless. When Erek starts talking that way it's because we're beat."

  "Beat this," Rachel said rudely.

  It made me smile. Rachel felt as down as anyone, but she refused to admit she couldn't just go out and nail the next Howler she saw.

  "They're faster than we are, stronger than we are, better armed than we are," Cassie said glumly. Then she lifted her face, eyes wary. "But are they smarter than we are?"

  "Erek?" I asked him.

  He sighed, a very human reaction. "They had faster-than-light ships at a time when humans still thought the wheel was a radical new invention."

  «Doesn't make them smarter,» Tobias said. «The Ellimist said some species evolve quickly, others slowly. If you get a billion years' head start, of course you have better weapons and technology than a species that started later. Doesn't mean you're smarter. Maybe it just means you started earlier.»

  It was a weak thread to hang by. But it was all we had.

  "Erek? Tell us all you know about the Howlers," I said.

  66

  ?I only saw them from the point of view of the victims," Erek said. "I can use my holographic systems to recreate what I saw. But there may be a way to get even more information."

  «Yes!» Guide said, picking up on it right away. «Yes, of course. You could purchase Howler memories!» He walked over to the wall and touched a panel. The panel opened. A shelf popped out, an array of buttons and colored touch pads.

  «l can load memories directly into your android friend, here. But they will be expensive.»

  "You're not getting any more of my hair," Rachel warned. "Not a kidney or an arm, either."

  Guide whined from the diaphragm in his

  67 c
hest. It may have been a laugh of some kind. «l will pay for you to view the Howler memories. In exchange for harvesting your own memories^

  I sucked in a breath. "What is this memory-selling? Does it mean we lose our memories?"

  Guide looked perplexed. «0f course not. Why would it? We simply make a copy.»

  "They Xerox our memories?"

  «Can't do it,» Tobias said. «Those memories could end up reaching the Yeerks.»

  He was right. Maybe. "Ax?"

  No answer. Ax was swaying slightly, back and forth. His tail was low, curved forward. He was way deep in private thoughts.

  "Ax!" I said louder. "Ax, we need you."

  He looked up, startled. «Yes, Prince Jake.»

  I didn't tell him not to call me Prince. This wasn't going to be handled with a little joshing. The Andalites are an essentially peaceful race, but with a long warrior tradition, too. Ax was an aristh. A military cadet. And he'd spent his entire life in the shadow of his brother, Elfangor, who was considered a great war hero.

  "How far are we from the closest Yeerk outpost?" I asked him.

  «!...! don't know where we are. I don't have a star chart.»

  Guide touched a wall panel. A small, flat

  68 screen appeared. Muttering and whining to himself, Guide called up a star chart. It was meaningless to me, of course.

  Ax looked at it with no visible interest. He touched the screen, pulling the perspective back, widening the view. He did this twice more, till even I could recognize the spiral arms of our own Milky Way galaxy.

  «We are more than five hundred million light years from Earth,» Ax said. «Before the Yeerks could spread a tenth of this distance they would have had to swallow not only Earth, but my planet as well.»

  I nodded. "Thanks. Okay, then. It's a deal, Guide. But if I understand what you've told me, our memories would make you very, very rich. So this is it. If we live, you get to copy our memories. And you don't ask for anything else, and you advance us whatever we need."

  I thought Guide was going to fall over. I had the feeling we'd just turned him into the Bill Gates of the Iskoort.