Author's Note: There's a very complicated thing that happens, when you try to write down what a non-linguistic, telepathic species is trying to say in a rationalist fanfic. For the most part, Andalite concepts are not likely to be expressed in words, when they can be transmitted directly with no need for compression or encapsulation. However, SOME concepts will have been so central, so important to the shared culture and experience, that they will have been encoded in multiple ways. Just as we have the word "peace," the sound "peace," the symbol we make with our fingers, and the circle-with-lines-in-it symbol, so too some Andalite ideas would end up having sights or sounds associated with them—likely through some kind of onomatopoetic metaphor. That's how we get names like "Aximili," "Elfangor," "Alloran," "Seerow," and "Iscafil," and that's how we ended up with the words in the chapter below.

As always, pretty pretty please leave me some comments or reviews (the more words, the better) either here or at r/rational. It's the only data I get on what's working and what isn't! Thanks for being awesome.

Next update (Esplin) comes some time before January 1st, after which I'll likely take a break, and resume posting again with the next arc after Valentine's Day.

Chapter 12: Aximili

[A FOUR-WINGED INSECT, BEAUTIFUL AND DELICATE, CAREFULLY CRADLED IN SEVEN-FINGERED HANDS …

‹You will need to be exceptionally cautious, Aximili.›

I came awake in an instant, the echo of my brother's voice still fresh in the dain. Information flooded my thoughts as the suspension field withdrew from my body—a full cycle's worth of recordings, compressed and prioritized.

(Why, Elfangor? I could have helped.)

I looked through the eyes of the cradle, into the past. I saw the stars whirling beyond the dome as it spiraled down into the atmosphere, saw the grass shrivel and die as the air itself caught fire. The red-white light of Yeerk Dracon beams seared across the field, carving away massive chunks of my home.

(Was it a feint all along? Is that why the shredders would not fire?)

((But why wouldn't you have told me?))

I saw, in a flash, the nature of the decoy—the bright explosion, the scattered debris. Saw the bank of cradles, all seven of them still in their places, and my own, black and cloaked, emerging from a hidden compartment, hurtling perpendicular to the path of the falling dome and entering the water well over the horizon.

(The Yeerks would have collected the wreckage, of course.)

I saw the beings who had pulled me from the water—

(How had they found me?)

—saw their forms change—

(The monopoly on morphing has been lost!?)

((The cradle could be deceived. The charade could be achieved with holograms, for some other purpose.))

—from angular, many-limbed aquatic darts to soft, pale climbers, ill-adapted for the water—

(Their true form?)

—to an enormous, rock-like swimmer, and back once more to the climbers—

(Their true form. The timing is consistent with the mass synchronization collapse limit.)

((The image they want you to see as their true form. It may still be a hoax.))

—and then—

—impossibly—

—into the shape of my brother, Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul.

No.

No.

It is a lie. A deception. It cannot be.

(But the cradle responded.)

((But they followed the signal.))

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I felt it awaken—the thunder-crack, the thought-that-is-not-to-be-denied. It moved forward, relentless even as I fought it—as I pretended stone, turned my stalks to the earth.

Elfangor is dead.

I didn't know it—not with the brightness of the sun. He could have been captured. He could have been incapacitated. The two strange aliens could have been his agents, his confederates.

But it was the most likely explanation. A full cycle beneath the water—I would not have lain alone so long had he been turned, or had he been capable of maneuver. And these aliens were not equipped, were carrying none of the weapons or tools which my brother surely would have provided them.

(They carry the morphing power.)

((How long would the cradle have held me, if they had not appeared?)

Elfangor is dead, and his burden falls to me.

Releasing the recording, I opened the cradle's eyes, looked out at my brother's stolen face.

‹You see the problem, don't you, Aximili?›

Elfangor's voice, speaking from the dain. I listened as I danced my mind across the controls. Fuel levels—good. Stealth capabilities—intact. Navigation—online, and rapidly mapping.

‹They will come for you.›

External weapons—none.

‹They will come for you, and you will have to face them alone.›

Zero-space communications—none.

‹There is no way to be sure. No sign that cannot be forged, no secret code that cannot be mimicked.›

I ran down the list of my emergency supplies. Food—enough for three cycles. One compact scanner, fully charged. Three Shredders, all claiming to be in working order, though after the disastrous battle I had my doubts.

‹There is no proof which you could trust, that you speak to me, and not to one of them. And there is no proof which you could offer me, either.›

A single command, and I could be in orbit. The cradle was well-made; it was almost certain that it could evade the Yeerks' notice.

‹You cannot rely on the eib. You cannot even rely on the dain. For seven full sunrises, Alloran walked among us, already lost.›

A different command, and it would take me to the epicenter. To the structure Elfangor had identified, the lair of the Yeerk coalescion.

‹And do not lower your guard, simply because you see me laying waste to the enemy, or because you have waited for a cycle's passing. The enemy is not stupid. They understand holograms, and they would gladly sacrifice an ocean of their brood for a seventh of a seventh of a chance at capturing another Andalite.›

In front of me, the alien leaned forward as if trying to peer through the cradle's plating, confusion plainly visible in the movement of its stalks, the angle of its tail. I felt the touch of its mind brush across the eib, heard the whisper of a greeting.

‹They will know that you know this. They will remember this very conversation. They will twist my words against you, undermine your reason, play upon your emotions. They will do everything in their power to confuse and ensnare you. They are like the Ellimist, Aximili—everywhere and nowhere at once.›

I could kill the alien, weapons or no weapons—could use the cradle's own weight to stun it, crush it, tear open its false form. It was standing there, stupid and defenseless, wearing my brother's face, an abomination—

(Just as it would if it were innocent.)

((Just as it would if it wanted me to think it were innocent.))

‹You will have to be strong. But more than that, you will have to be clever. You will have to be unpredictable, even to me. Even to Alloran. You will have to leave the Path, become like the wind in thought and deed, or you will find them waiting for you wherever you strike.›

Fighting back against my despair, I turned away from the dain, closed my mind to the eib and sank deep into the endless quiet of the hirac. With an effort, I could manage four lines of thought at once—one bright, one glow, one shade, and one dark.

Elfangor—

(is dead.)

((is taken.))

(((lives, but is constrained.)))

((((lives and is free, but has left me to my own devices for reasons I do not know.))))

Then these aliens—

(are agents of the Yeerks, or allies Elfangor made before he died, or thieves who plundered his ship.)

((are Yeerks.))

(((are his allies, and he has sent them to rescue me, but he has given them no passwords because he knows I cannot trust them anyway.)))

((((are Yeerks, or some third faction that has stolen the morphing power.))))

Which means—

(I can do nothing until I know more.)

((I must kill them—except that they expect me to do so, which means it will not hinder their goals, and may somehow further them.))

(((I must avoid them—which Elfangor knows—but that they may be useful in the future.)))

((((they must die.))))

I felt the darkest line end, felt the shadow and glow dissolve into uncertainty as the bright turned once more to the image of my brother's face outside the cradle.

What would you do, brother?

The question was tinged with the deepest sadness. Always before, there had been an answer, and that answer had been my guiding light. Always before, Elfangor's path had been my path.

But no longer. Not until I knew for sure that the Yeerks were not hunting along that same trail.

Outside, the alien stretched forward its stolen hand, pressed seven fingers against the side of the cradle.

Friend, or foe?

I didn't know.

Rising from the hirac, I reached out to the cradle, gave it my instructions.

I'm sorry, brother.

On a sudden impulse, I dialed down the shielding on the cradle's core, sending a wash of radiation outward, bathing the two aliens in a particle glow. The half-life of the exhaust was short, and most of the radiation would disappear in the morphing process. But some would remain, some fraction of a fraction of a fraction—enough, I hoped, to be detectable even after multiple cycles, multiple transformations. If these aliens were my allies—

—Elfangor's allies—

—I would want to be able to find them again.

I took one final look at the alien—at the face of my brother, which I might never see again.

And then I rose into the sky.

One pool ship, lurking behind the planet's satellite—an unfamiliar design, but certainly too small to hold more than two coalescions and a few thousand Controllers.

Four Bug fighters, superficially cloaked and holding in a tetrahedron around the planet—one of Alloran's favorite siege formations. Four more fighters hovering by the pool ship. Presumably four more down on the surface. I wasn't sure where the thirteenth might be—I had scanned space for an orbit's width in every direction and was reasonably confident there were no other ships nearby.

There were signs of infestation sprinkled across the globe—a scattering of strange electromagnetic signals and traces of rare metals—but only the one large cluster, centered on a tightly organized group of structures near the coast of one of the larger land masses.

I had no trouble locating the pool. It was underground, inside one of the alien buildings, defended by an absorption field.

A full absorption field—not a plate, or a wedge, or even a dome, but a complete, flawless sphere, extending as far underground as it did above. There had been rumors that the Yeerks might have salvaged a sphere from the wreckage of the thirteenth fleet, but the rumors had never been confirmed. Certainly there had been no sign of it during the war for the Hork-Bajir, nor in the ongoing struggle for Leera—

(Perhaps it was damaged, and has only now been repaired.)

—nor in any of the skirmishes that had taken place around Gara, or Desbadeen, or the Yeerk homeworld.

It was by far the most powerful weapon in the Yeerk arsenal, for all that it was purely defensive. The entire first fleet could rain fire down upon it for seven cycles, and not cause so much as a warm breeze inside. The Yeerks couldn't possibly have stolen more than one, and it would be seven revolutions or more before they had the infrastructure to build their own—that they had chosen to deploy it here, of all places, was confirmation of everything Elfangor had feared.

This planet—this tiny, undeveloped, backwater world—was Visser Three's true target.

(But then where is the rest of the Yeerk fleet? Where are the massive arks, the swarming Bug fighters, the endless waves of Naharan drones?)

((Perhaps this will convince the war council, where Elfangor's arguments could not.))

I settled in to observe, hovering invisibly in the sky to one side of the massive sphere. The holograms were cheap and flimsy, and the cradle had no trouble penetrating them. Through the building's transparent panels, I had an excellent view of the shape of the interior—the cavernous pool, the barracks of Hork-Bajir Controllers, the beginnings of a Naharan weapons manufactory. I watched as various Controllers passed through the field, noted the system of locks and compartments—

(It will not be possible to gas them, then.)

((No Gleet bio-filters. Important enough for their only absorption field, but not important enough for basic anti-morph security?))

—began collecting data on the duties and rotations of the sentries inside. Understanding the patterns would be crucial, if I was to infiltrate without drawing attention. I had Hork-Bajir, Taxxon, and Naharan morphs, and would have no trouble acquiring—

(What had Elfangor called them?)

—no trouble acquiring a human.

I felt a tightness in my muscles, the beginnings of an ache at the base of my tail, and I triggered the cradle's nutrient-search protocol. I would need to feed soon, or begin using up the three cycles' worth of emergency supplies. I wasn't looking forward to consuming the dry, insubstantial grass I had seen in my pass over the wilderness—hopefully the cradle could detect a richer source of energy nearby.

A soft chime sounded in the eib, and my stalks were drawn to the fuel gauge. My journey out to the satellite had been expensive, as had been my long, atmospheric approach as I quick-scanned the other continents. The cradle wasn't meant for sustained flight—if I wanted to maintain the option of returning to space, I had only a seventh of a cycle of power remaining before I would need to land and power down.

Time to make a decision, Aximili.

I had several obvious options. I could begin preparing for guerilla warfare in the center of the infestation—acquire local morphs, gather intelligence, stay close to the pool and wait for my chance. I could investigate one of the further signs of infestation, building up knowledge and experience away from the enemy's main strength. I could search for the necessary components to build a long-range communicator, and attempt to make contact with the war council. I could seek information about the aliens' social structure, and try to either recruit their leaders or expose the invasion to the larger population.

But if these options were obvious to me, they would be obvious to Elfangor, and to Alloran. The Yeerks would have plans in place—contingencies, countermeasures. It needn't even be a trap—simple competence on their part, and I could wind up captured or dead.

Further.

I could return to the aliens in the ocean, the ones with the morphing power. Track their movements, scan their surroundings, perhaps rig together some kind of holographic disruptor from the components of the cradle. For that matter, I could look for signs of morphing power here, in the Yeerk stronghold—if they had access to the Iscafil device, it was extremely unlikely that they would hold back on using it.

I could try to draw the Yeerks to me—expose myself, but not in a way that would catch the attention of the entire planet. Lay a trap, catch a few Controllers, and start getting a sense of the state of the invasion's security procedures.

Not far enough.

I reached into the dain, into the place where Elfangor's voice lived alongside my own. ‹Help me,› I whispered.

‹I cannot help you, Aximili. I cannot help you see what-I-cannot-see.›

‹But you can see the shape of the problem. What would you do?›

‹Have you not already realized?›

I hesitated. The dain was never quite real—it was a shadow, an echo, a reflection. But it was also Elfangor—it was a part of my mind that was not truly my own. It could know things that I did not, make connections I wasn't capable of making.

What would my brother do?

In the structure below, an alien bent over the water, as so many had done before. Two Hork-Bajir warriors stood on either side, their clawed talons gripping its arms as the Yeerk slid from its ear, as it began to struggle and scream. It fought—uselessly—and was thrown into a cage alongside the rest of its kind.

Know victory, Alloran had taught. Know victory in every form and every shape—know its every property. If you cannot recognize it when you see it—cannot tell it apart from defeat—then you will never know which of the available paths is the true Path.

Victory was a galaxy in which the Andalites were free of the threat of Yeerk domination. Any future with that property was sufficient.

‹I see,› I whispered sadly. ‹That is why you wouldn't let me be your stalks-and-tail.›

‹I did not want that weight on your back, Aximili. It was not your stone to cast. Not yet.›

‹But it did not work.›

‹Apparently not.›

I thought for a moment. If Elfangor had meant to scour the surface, wipe out all of the aliens—

‹Would you have given them weapons?› I asked. ‹Having already failed—would you have armed them? Warned them?›

‹I do not know, brother. I think perhaps I might have—but then, I am only dain. What Elfangor knew, that I do not, I can only guess.›

I looked out through the eyes of the cradle, at the cage full of aliens. I didn't know their body language, what the expressions of their faces meant. But I could see the violence with which they pulled at the bars that imprisoned them, the desperate effort with which they fought the Hork-Bajir who came to drag them out.

I could kill them all, perhaps. Find some process by which to empty the planet of life—a virus, or a chemical reaction, or an unconstrained self-replicator. Finish the task my brother had set out to complete.

Or I could try to help them help themselves, could give them knowledge and power, at the risk of making them even more dangerous in the event of failure.

Further.

What else was there? I was no Ellimist.

A sudden movement in the chamber below caught my attention—an interior panel flying across the open space as a pair of aliens burst through, a dense, muscular biped of a type I did not recognize carrying one of the pale climbers on its back.

In an instant, the entire chamber erupted in chaos. The biped collided with one of the climber guards, emerging with a handheld Dracon beam clutched in its fist as the Hork-Bajir began to converge on its position. A moment later, it wrapped its thick fingers around the bars to one of the cages and pulled, tearing the door off its hinges and hurling the twisted metal across the room.

Flashes of Dracon fire began to light up the room, one of them striking the alien a glancing blow. It didn't slow down—just barreled across the room, vanishing from my line of sight for a moment before reappearing through one of the exterior doors.

Moving at top speed, the alien tore across the flat, black surface, passing through the one-way absorption field without resistance, still carrying both the climber and the weapon as it headed for the foliage. I was about to turn the cradle to follow it when I caught sight of a third alien, this one a brightly striped quadruped lounging in one of the taller plants near the structure. It dropped down just as two Controllers emerged from inside, following the first alien.

They didn't follow it very far.

I hovered, indecisive, as the climbers in the pool chamber poured out of the broken cage and began to do battle with the guards, as the quadruped slaughtered five more Controllers outside the structure and then turned and disappeared into the undergrowth.

Behind me, the first pair of aliens dropped off the screen, having gone too far for the cradle's sensors to distinguish them from the background heat and chaos. I set a tracker on the quadruped, and on the mass of climber Controllers that were now streaming out of the structure unimpeded, communicating with resonant pulses of air as they fanned out to search the area.

Is this a trap? I wondered. An illusion, designed to draw me out, trick me into revealing myself?

But I was no longer looking at a passive recording of the type a hologram might fool. The cradle's sophisticated sensors were running at full strength, and there seemed to be no doubt—the scene unfolding before me was real.

It could still be fake, I cautioned myself. A performance, for your benefit.

(To what end, though? If the Yeerks already have enough morph-capable hosts to put on a show like this—)

Still, caution was appropriate. Continuing to observe, I readied the cradle for a swift and automatic exit skyward, keying it to take over at a single, short command. Inside the structure, the chaos was already dying down, the Hork-Bajir forcing the escaped humans back into the other cages one by one. Outside, the climber Controllers were organizing themselves into a somewhat coherent pattern while the quadruped looped back around.

I recognized the tactic—simple enough to be almost laughable, but no less fundamental, for that. Never be the hunted, Alloran had written. Always be the hunter.

(Had I overlooked a possibility? Could these be Andalites somehow?)

Quietly, carefully, I brought the cradle closer to the ground, hoping to get a better angle for seeing between the densely packed trees. The first wave of Controllers had arranged themselves in a wide, semicircular arc, and a second wave was now passing through them, expanding the perimeter. I noted that, while they'd used Dracon fire inside, none of the aliens outside was carrying anything more sophisticated than directional explosives.

A quiet alert in the eib drew my attention back to the quadruped, which had hunkered down in the middle of a thick tangle of plant life and was now transforming into one of the pale climbers.

(Task: confirm only one sentient species on the planet. Are they all climbers, or do some of them have a different true form?)

Drifting still lower, I maneuvered cautiously through the trees until I was directly above the thicket, then once again lowered the containment shielding on the cradle's core. The wash of radioactive exhaust blanketed the area below, and I noted with satisfaction that the alien below had finished demorphing—this trace would last much longer than the one I had put on the other aliens, whose construct bodies would have been refactored back into zero-space when they demorphed.

I was debating whether or not to chase after the first pair of aliens—to tag them, too—when the cradle sounded another quiet alert. Glancing at the screens, I immediately understood what had caught the computer's attention.

One of the climber Controllers in the outermost ring of searchers had broken formation—it was nearing the edge of sensor range and moving fast, about to drop off the screen. There was no sign that it had sent any messages, or that any of the other Controllers had noticed—the rest of them were still moving forward in their slow, meticulous pattern.

Intrigued, I took the cradle up above the canopy and began to follow. A moment later, the alien emerged from the forest, its skin slick and shining in the moonlight, its torso heaving as it breathed. I watched as it paused next to a grate in the ground, digging through the folds of its fabric covering. It pulled three items out of various pockets—a stunner, a communicator, and a cylinder I didn't recognize—and dropped them into the darkness, then slid a ring from one of its fingers and discarded that too before resuming its sprint away from the Yeerk complex.

An escapee?

I continued to trail after the alien from a distance, keeping my stalk eyes on its progress as I turned my main eyes back to the cradle's interface. Pulling up the sensor recordings, I began playing them in reverse at triple speed, watching as the alien backpedaled through the foliage, across the black, and back into the building. It had spoken briefly with one of the Controllers that seemed to be in a position of authority; before that, it had taken a weapon from a rack guarded by Hork-Bajir; before that, it had helped to drag several other climbers back into the cages; before that, it had wrestled with a large climber on the edge of the pool—

Wait.

I began playing the recording forward, more slowly this time.

The two aliens were both running, both apparently using the orifices on their faces to produce sounds that the cradle hadn't been able to pick up. They had collided—struggled briefly—

And then the one I was observing had killed the other, with a sharp, violent twist of its neck.

I reversed the recording again, watching as the other alien returned to life, as the pair of them separated. Before the struggle, the one who had died had been running around the edge of the pool, coming from the far side of the chamber—

And the one I was observing had emerged from the cage.

I began playing the recording forward again, at doublespeed. There was the struggle—the lethal movement—the gentle splash as the victor rolled his opponent's body over the edge and into the pool, then stood up—

Traitor.

Without any sign, without a moment's hesitation, the alien had turned on its fellows—the others who had emerged from the cage with it. It had helped to point them out, to hunt them down—had rallied the other guards and dragged no fewer than four of them back into captivity with its own two hands. Then it had walked calmly over to the Hork-Bajir, requested a weapon, and joined the Controllers in the search party outside.

And once it was beyond the walls, and out of sight of the others—

I turned my main eyes away from the recording and back to the main screen that my stalk eyes had been monitoring. The alien was moving oddly, furtively—with no stalks of its own, it had to turn its whole head to look behind it or above, which it did every few steps. It was avoiding other aliens, sticking to dim-lit pathways and the narrow spaces between buildings as it cut its way through the settlement, headed for the outskirts.

I reached for the dain. ‹Brother?› I asked.

‹Watch for treachery.›

I had already extended the cradle's sensors as far as they would go, but I increased the sensitivity of the scanning algorithms, to alert me if anything moved in the sky around me. Immediately, I received a flood of warnings, and filtered through them—nothing but avians and insects.

Below me, the alien had found a two-wheeled metal device lying on the grass in front of a small, standalone structure and had mounted it. Its legs were pumping furiously, driving the device forward down the hard, black surface of the artificial path, quadrupling its speed. The cradle matched it easily, and soon enough we were approaching another of the standalone structures, this one with a many-peaked roof and a wide assortment of plant-life.

Abandoning the machine, the alien sprinted to the door at the front of the structure and burst through it, disappearing inside. Quickly, I spun the cradle around, adjusting its position in the sky, searching for an angle that would allow me to peer in through one of the transparent panels.

By the time I located the alien again, it was crouched over another of its species—a smaller, slender specimen with longer hair and softer lines, lying unconscious on the artificial grass as red blood trickled from a wound from its head. The larger alien was searching frantically through the fabric that was draped across the other's form, pulling out object after object. Eventually, it ceased searching and selected three of the objects—a stunner, a communicator, and a mysterious cylinder, as before—setting them aside before reaching for the other alien's hand and pulling the ring off of its second finger.

Putting the ring together with the other objects, the alien stood and strode over to a large storage space on one side of the room, rummaging through several bins before emerging with a long, flexible cord, which it used to immobilize the smaller alien's limbs, looping around them over and over and over again.

That one is a Controller, too, then.

The situation was obvious enough. The smaller alien must have had some special relationship with the larger—perhaps they were family, or mates—since the larger had already proven itself willing to sacrifice others for its own freedom. Clearly, it was planning to escape, taking the smaller with it—perhaps to some secluded location, where it could starve the Yeerk out of its partner's head.

Standing again, the larger alien passed out of sight, disappearing deeper into the structure. I set the cradle on an irregular loop, checking every window in a cycle as I tried to sort out my options.

The odds that this was intended as a trap for me were low, and falling. There was no reason for the Yeerks to lure me away from their stronghold, even given that I would be more vulnerable once I had left the cradle.

Could the alien make good on its escape? It wasn't clear how good the Yeerk security apparatus was. If the four objects the alien had abandoned were indeed its only links to the other Controllers, then there was a chance. It would take a while for the coalescion to notice a missing host, and if the other members of the search party were sufficiently disorganized—

(or sufficiently paranoid, such that they assumed a missing teammate meant enemy action, and not an internal escape)

—then it was mostly a matter of making it out of the immediate vicinity. If, on the other hand, someone had noticed the alien's departure, then this was surely the first place they would check. And if they tried to raise the smaller one on a communicator, and got no response—

A sudden flash of light from inside the structure caught my attention, and I spun the cradle around just in time to see a second and a third.

Dracon fire.

The cradle was already moving, automatically heading for the best vantage point, and after a moment I could see the source of the fire—a third climber, this one not even half the size of the others, standing over the prone figure of the larger alien with a weapon in one hand and a communicator in the other. As I watched, it finished making orifice sounds into the communicator and reached into a pocket, withdrawing yet another of the mysterious cylinders. Popping it open, it crouched next to the larger alien and held the cylinder close to its ear.

There was movement—a tendril of gray, the sparkle of something wet. Slowly, a blind slug emerged from the cylinder, oozing and probing as it searched for the entryway.

Stasis technology.

Even in the tight confines of the cradle, I felt my tail droop. The Yeerks had not had stasis technology half a revolution ago, and they had certainly not had enough grubs for every Controller to carry a spare at all times. The war was changing, and it was changing fast.

Starting a timer, I lifted the cradle high into the sky and doublechecked the cloaking field. Now was as good a time as any to start evaluating Yeerk operational security. Would they send a team to confirm that the situation was resolved? If so, would it be composed of human Controllers? Did a near-escape rate a Bug fighter?

I opened myself to the dain once more, where my brother was waiting as he always had, as he always would be.

‹Have you made a decision, brother?›

I had not. Every option seemed predictable, every consequence opaque.

‹Welcome to the universe.›

I reviewed my options once again. Destroy the planet, arm the aliens, warn the aliens, warn the war council, destroy the pool, ally myself with the mysterious morphers.

There was something I wasn't seeing.

‹Will you sit and wait for it, then? Pretending stone, until the decision is made for you?›

That wasn't what I meant.

‹And yet, that is what you have done thus far. You witnessed two aliens morphing, and you ran. You witnessed a battle at the pool, and you ran. You passed undetected past every Yeerk vessel in the system, and took no action. Even now—there are three Controllers in the structure below, and you continue to do nothing.›

‹Says the brother who locked me in a cradle and went out to face the Visser without me!› I shouted aloud, no longer content to let the dain draw meaning from my thoughts.

‹Yes—I held you back from battle, then. But I am not here to hold you back now, am I?›

Pain like a tail blade piercing my chest.

Elfangor is gone.

He is gone, and I am alone.

‹Yes. I am gone, Aximili. There is nothing left of me but a shadow, a scratch upon the wall. If you are waiting for someone to tell you what to do, you will wait forever.›

I turned the cradle's eyes downward, to the building where the aliens waited—including the alien who had killed one of his own, who had sacrificed four others for the chance to free two, and ended up a slave anyway.

Know victory.

Three fewer Yeerks—it wasn't victory, not in the slightest. But it would be something.

‹For you, brother,› I whispered, and I pointed the cradle downward.

The chime was no longer gentle—had become, instead, a constant, annoying whine. I could have silenced it with a thought, but a part of me welcomed the distraction, was glad to have a focal point for my frustration.

I had freed the family—two mates and their offspring, each with sound-names I hadn't bothered to remember. It had been easy. The Yeerks had not bothered to send anyone to check on them after the near escape, so I simply waited until they were all asleep and stunned them through the transparent panels.

Excising the Yeerks from their heads had been trickier, but I had managed it by adapting three of the defensive ear blocks in the survival kit, replacing the usual gate with a frequency modulator tuned to the exact characteristics of a Yeerk neuron. It had been painful, and the climbers would suffer some lasting effects, but they were free.

Unfortunately, we had been completely unable to communicate.

Correction—I had been completely unable to communicate. The translator had handled their stick-speak just fine, after it had gathered enough data to begin its analysis.

But these aliens had no eib. There was no place for my thoughts to go, and so my attempts to converse had led to disaster. Seizures, hallucinations, disorientation—after the third attempt, they had begged me to stop, the larger one physically shielding the others behind it, as if that would make any difference. I took on its form, thinking to speak with them after their own fashion, but that had failed, too—the translator had told me what sounds to make, but not how to make them. I had barely managed fourteen words before giving up in disgust.

I had hoped that setting them free would give me some sense of accomplishment, of purpose, but all it had done was highlight the enormity of the task before me. Operational security notwithstanding, the Yeerk machine was fast and efficient—with just the resources I had already seen, they could start an exponential growth cycle that would convert all seven billion humans within a single revolution. Soon, destroying the planet would be the only viable option—and even that would be futile once the Yeerks managed to export a viable breeding population.

So far, the only thing preventing me from declaring defeat was the fact that they had only a single pool ship in the system, but that was confusing in its own right—every Andalite knew that the Visser was in command of a fleet of thirteen. If this was his main target—and the more I observed, the more convinced I became—then where were the rest of them?

The whine of the cradle increased in frequency, and I looked once more at the fuel gauge. I had less than a forty-ninth of a cycle remaining before I was using up final reserves—reserves I would need, if I ever wanted to leave the surface under my own power. If I didn't find the aliens soon, I was going to have to abandon the search.

I had decided to investigate the morphing connection—a second visit to the pool had turned up no evidence of morphing power among the Yeerks. It was seeming more and more likely that my brother had transferred the ability to some of the locals before dying—had possibly even left them with the Iscafil device. If so, then I had allies—or at the very least, resources. It had seemed safer to search for the pair that had first drawn me up from the deep—I had clear evidence that they, at least, were not hostile, and it was dangerous to continue flying around close to the Yeerk stronghold.

But the ocean was vast, the currents uncertain, and the range of the cradle's scanners insufficient. For ages, I had been criss-crossing back and forth across the path between the island and the pool, and thus far I had found nothing.

It was possible that they were deep below the surface, but I lacked the fuel reserves to power through the water, and so I'd simply continued my pointless search—helpless—useless—at the whim of random chance. At this point, even if I found them, I would have to abandon the cradle and swim back to shore.

I had tried to stay in touch with the dain at first—to gain wisdom and perspective from the shadow of my brother. But it had been too difficult, as the hours dragged on and there was nothing to distract me from the pain of my loss. Eventually, I had silenced dain and eib alike, sinking deep into the hirac where my thoughts could chase one another around in endless circles.

The cradle's whine had ticked up twice more before the sensors finally detected a trace of exhaust radiation. Zeroing in on it, I saw two of the gray, rock-like swimmers, both close to the surface, their breath sending up enormous geysers of mist. On closer inspection, it was clear that the two swimmers weren't just similar—they were identical, completely alike in every way.

Morphs.

I came in low, close to the swells, near enough that the fall would be unlikely to injure me. Taking in a breath, I gave the cradle its final instructions—to go to a specified set of coordinates and power down—and opened the hatch.

A frigid wind whipped into the tight space, bringing the blood rushing to the surface of my skin. For the first time in nearly a cycle, I felt true starlight on my face—a small, yellow sun, somewhat cooler than the one of my homeworld. I turned my stalks in all directions, taking in the blue sky, the pale clouds, the slate-gray of the horizon.

For a brief moment, I found myself reluctant to leave the cradle. It was small, uncomfortable, defenseless, and cold. But it was Andalite. It had saved my life. It had been a part of my brother's ship.

I felt myself reaching for the dain, for Elfangor's reassuring voice, and forced myself to stop mid-thought. It seemed wrong, somehow—important, that I do this one part without help.

Pushing off the cradle with my tail, I stepped out into the emptiness.

The water was shockingly cold, and surprisingly bitter through my hooves. Keeping my stalks above the surface, I ducked my main eyes under the water.

One of the swimmers was right in front of me, its own eye within striking distance of my tail. The other was rising up from underneath, and in a few moments I was standing on my own legs atop its back, struggling to keep my balance as the waves pushed it up and down.

I felt a gentle brush across the eib, a memory of stick-speak that the translator identified as a tentative hello. I ignored it, focusing instead on the memory of the alien climber, beginning my transformation. It seemed likely that the construct would insulate the aliens from the side-effects of thought-speak, but it wasn't worth the risk—especially not when a seizure might dump me back into the icy water.

The other swimmer surfaced and rolled, floating on the surface, watching me as the transformation neared completion, as my fur disappeared and my hooves were replaced with soft, handlike appendages. I felt the unfamiliar orifice open up in the center of my newly flattened face, felt the organs for food-grinding and vocalization emerge as my airways shifted into place.

Finally, the change was finished. Smacking my flesh-flaps together, I took in another breath and carefully formed the stick-syllables the translator had taught me. I had hoped to share my name the way it sounded in my head—the call of the amphibious hunter that danced through the wetland reeds, its skin red like the rising sun. But in the end, it had proven impossible to pronounce, and I'd settled on something shorter.

"Hello," I said, looking down at the monstrous eye. "My name is Ax."

‹Hi, Ax,› came the reply. ‹My name is Tobias.›