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Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

The Andalite Chronicles-Chapter 14

quote:

The hunger never went away. Even as we spiraled down toward the Taxxon home world, I felt it. I was thankful Loren was safe back in the Jahar. I don�t know if I could have resisted the Taxxon�s appetite.

I really don�t know.

As we came in for a landing, ground control appeared on our screens and demanded our clearance. Our ship�s computer responded automatically.

Ground control told us they were backed up on off-loading cargo. It would be half a day before they could unload the Yeerks in our hold.

I didn�t know how to feel about that. I didn�t want thousands of Yeerks to make it safely to their destination. But I didn�t want to slaughter them, either. And I had no doubt: If we got away again in the Yeerk ship, Alloran meant to kill the Yeerks in the hold.

The spaceport was a large facility, obviously still under construction. As we came in low for a landing, descending through orange-and-green acid clouds, we could see dozens of other ships resting in their cradles on the ground. Hundreds of Taxxons and Gedds and even Hork-Bajir were busy building, adding new capacity.

But even amidst all the activity, we could spot the Skrit Na raider ship. That was our target. If we were right, the Time Matrix was aboard that ship.
A landing beam guided us to a cradle on the far edge of the facility. We were more than a mile away from the Skrit Na ship. A mile isn�t much in space.

But on the ground, on an enemy planet, in a body that makes you want to scream, it�s a very, very long distance.

<Whatever you do, remember what you are,> Alloran instructed. <You�re Taxxons, on a Taxxon planet. Act like it.>

The three of us, in Taxxon morph, exited out the hatch and into the air of the Taxxon home world.

The first thing I noticed was that the sky was a pale gray-brown. The color of dust. The bright clouds were too high up even to be seen. The second thing I noticed was the smell. Everywhere, warm, living hearts were beating. Hork-Bajir hearts. Gedd hearts. Taxxon hearts. Blood rushed
through veins � .

The spaceport was a vast array of ship-cradles in a dozen different sizes and shapes. Some were taller than ten tall trees. Some lay almost flat, rising just a few feet from the dirt. Some were empty, but most held ships.

There were slow transports unloading cargo, fighters in for repairs, even a gigantic Yeerk Pool ship. I could see the three spider legs of the Pool ship towering over the cradle. There were shredder burns and one of the �legs� was shattered. The ship had been in a battle.

Below the maze of cradles was bare, orange-red dirt. Not a blade of grass, just dirt. There were primitive magnetic levitation rails running through the massive forest of cradles. Train cars, some open, some enclosed bubbles, raced back and forth along the tracks.

Cargo was being loaded onto the train cars by Gedds. The Gedds were the Yeerks� first victims. The first race they enslaved. Gedds almost seem to walk on two legs, like humans, but they are actually always hunched over so that they can keep one hand on the ground for balance.

We took an open elevator from the cradle down to the ground. As we descended, I counted two ships landing and one taking off. The mag-lev trains zipped back and forth on the dizzying array of tracks. On the ground, big tracked vehicles moved heavier loads.

Everywhere were Taxxons, swaggering Hork-Bajir, and busy, clumsy Gedds. Each was a Controller. A slave to the Yeerk in its head.

It was a huge, raucous, noisy place, full of steel and dust and the smells of solvents and Taxxon filth.

Welcome to the Taxxon homeworld! Or at least the port part of it.

quote:

<Busy,> Alloran muttered. <Awfully busy.>

I knew what he meant. Back home, they�d told us the Yeerks were being stopped by our forces. The average Andalite civilian thought we were beating the Yeerks. But this spaceport was evidence to the contrary. The spaceport, just one of several on this one planet, was alive with hurried activity.

Suddenly �

�Sssnnnrreewaaaaaa!�

I looked up just in time to see a Taxxon slip from the mag-lev train track overhead. He hit the ground like a bag of goo. His needle legs crumpled and his worm body split open.

It was pandemonium! Taxxons came rushing from all sides.

WHUMPF! A big Taxxon slammed into me, practically knocking me over. More of them, all rushing, came toward their fallen friend.

But they were not rushing to help. They were rushing to eat the still-living Taxxon. Then I felt the hunger. It swept me up. I couldn�t resist. I was moving forward, jostling to get at the screaming worm myself! Rushing, pushing, shoving, desperate to reach him and � and �

NO!

I felt my own mind snap back to the surface. It had been overwhelmed by the Taxxon�s own instincts. But even now, even with all my willpower, I couldn�t resist!

It was as if I were being drawn by a magnet. As if I were being sucked into a black hole. The smell of the wounded Taxxon, the fevered beating of its heart, the �

NO!

I was there. There, looking down at the injured Taxxon through my shattering compound eyes. I plunged my upper body downward, mouth open, teeth gnashing, ready to �

NO! NO! I pulled back. But the power of that hunger would not release me.

I motored my dozens of cone legs, pulling back, and the other, eager Taxxons pushed me aside, heedless.

Where were Arbron and Alloran?

I�d lost them in my mad rush to feed.

I pulled back and back farther, each step like moving a million pounds. And yet I did move away. The feeding frenzy became ever more nightmarish. Taxxons crawled over each other to get at the fresh meat.

I managed to turn my huge, long worm body around and ran from it. I ran as fast as the Taxxon limbs would carry me.

I found a shaded spot under one of the towering ship-cradles and I cowered there, using all my strength to resist. Finally, after a while, the frenzy passed. Not because I had grown strong. But simply because I could now smell that there was no more meat left.

The Taxxon horde broke up and slithered off in various directions, back to their work. Where was Arbron? Where was Prince Alloran?

I was lost and alone on the Taxxon world.

All I could think of doing was heading toward the Skrit Na ship. Hopefully, my two fellow Andalites would be there.

I had to remind myself that we had a mission: the Time Matrix. If the Yeerks realized what was in that Skrit Na ship, there would be no hope at all.

Then, although the image was fractured, I saw Hork-Bajir coming toward me. Six or seven of them, moving in swiftly. Surrounding me!

There was nothing I could do. I couldn�t run. A ten-foot-long worm does not outrun a Hork-Bajir.

One Hork-Bajir-Controller swaggered up before me. At a signal from him, the others all leveled Dracon beams straight at me. Not that they needed Dracon beams. A Hork-Bajir can slice a Taxxon to ribbons in seconds.

And I had seen what happened to any Taxxon careless enough to be injured.

�Welcome to the Taxxon home world,� the Hork-Bajir said. �I am Sub-Visser Seven. You interest me. Yes, indeed. I am very interested in any Taxxon who will not eat fresh meat.�

Uh oh.

Chapter 15

quote:

Morphing power is a wonderful tool. It allows Andalites to pass among many different species. It makes us the greatest spies in the galaxy.

But it has an awful drawback. You see, if you stay more than two hours in morph, you stay there forever. You become a nothlit. An Andalite living out his life in a different body.

That was my greatest fear as the Hork-Bajir-Controllers led me to a mag-lev train car. The subvisser commandeered the train car. He ordered everyone else off. I stood there, helpless, surrounded, as the mag-lev car shot away from the platform.

It wound its way through the maze of ship-cradles, through the construction workers who were busy building up the might of the Yeerk Empire.

The Yeerk sub-visser said nothing. He seemed almost bored. He slouched his Hork-Bajir body and watched the passing sights gloomily.

I watched him as well as I could with my Taxxon eyes. A sub-visser is a high rank. I remembered that from the basic training classes where they taught us about the Yeerk foe. At the top of the Yeerk Empire is the Council of Thirteen. One of those thirteen is emperor, but no one knows which one. It�s a closely guarded secret. The Yeerks fear assassination.

Just below the Council of Thirteen are the vissers. They are the generals of the Yeerk military. They are numbered according to their power and importance. Visser One would be the most powerful, on down through Visser Forty or so.

A sub-visser is like a colonel. Very powerful, especially if he has a low number like seven. But not a visser yet.
The sub-visser spoke. �So, Andalite, how long have you been in this morph?�

I had to stop myself from crying aloud. He knew! He knew I was an Andalite.

No � wait. Maybe he didn�t know. Maybe he was trying to trick me.

�Ssssewwaari ssstwweeeshh,� I said. I didn�t know what it meant. The Taxxon body had Taxxon instincts, but not a Taxxon�s life learning. So I couldn�t speak the Taxxon language. But maybe the subvisser couldn�t, either. He�d been speaking Galard so far - the language of interstellar trade and commerce. It was the language many races had learned, back when the galaxy was at peace. It was used to communicate between different species.

The sub-visser looked at me with his slitted Hork-Bajir eyes. �Don�t waste that snake-speak on me. If you�re one of us, you�ll be able to speak Galard.�

Was this another trap? Could Taxxon-Controllers speak Galard? Was it even possible for them, with their strange mouths? I didn�t know. I had no experience speaking with sounds. And even though I still had the translator chip in my head, it could not interface with my Taxxon brain. What could I
do?

The sub-visser laughed. �So. You want to resist me? Good. I need the entertainment. It�s rather dull, being in charge of security for this sector. I suppose you�re one of the rebels. One of those mountain Taxxons who refuse to join the Empire. Well, we�ll get to the truth quickly enough.�

Mountain Taxxons? Rebels? I was so surprised I temporarily forgot to be terrified. There were still Taxxons resisting the Yeerks? This would be huge news to my people. We�d assumed all the Taxxons had accepted Yeerk rule in exchange for promises of fresh, unusual meats.

This is kind of a twist. Not all the Taxxons are voluntary hosts after all.

quote:

The train car was riding a hundred feet off the dismal plain now, just getting beyond the outskirts of the spaceport. Through the window I could actually see the cradled Skrit Na ship as we zipped past.

I hoped Alloran and Arbron had made it there. I hoped they would complete the mission.

Because it didn�t look as if I would be there to help them.

Then, suddenly, the train car veered sharply left and I saw a mound, almost a small mountain. It was maybe two or three hundred feet high. Nothing but a slag-heap of dirt excavated from the construction of ship-cradles, really.

But it seethed.
There were holes everywhere, holes the size of a Taxxon. Taxxons were crawling in and out of the holes. Their pulsating worm bodies would slither and wallow into the mound. Others would emerge, seeming to almost blink with their foul red mouths.

�Rebels are just fresh meat,� Sub-Visser Seven said calmly. �But being a Taxxon, you understand. Any rebels we catch go to feed loyal Taxxons. It�s sad, really. But I have no choice. It�s one of the idiotic regulations I have to deal with. It�s all part of our deal with the Taxxons: Any suspect Taxxon is turned over to loyal Taxxons for interrogation. Of course, Taxxons don�t really interrogate. They don�t have the patience for it. They ask one or two questions, then � well, then it�s dinnertime.�

I must have quivered in terror. The sub-visser grinned a Hork-Bajir grin. �Of course, you could tell me why you�re here, and what your mission really is � Andalite. You�ll still be executed, of course. But I can make it painless. Much better than being eaten alive.�

He did know what I was! He�d been toying with me. He knew I was an Andalite. But I sensed he was telling the truth: I could either confess and demorph, or die the death the Taxxon-Controllers would inflict.

This is what it had come to. All my hopes of being a great hero. It all ended here, just this quickly.

I felt sick down to my bones. How had everything gone so horribly wrong?

But I couldn�t tell the Yeerks anything. The Jahar was still up in orbit. If I confessed, the two humans would be taken by the Yeerks. Alloran and Arbron, who were probably still free, might be caught, too.

And there was the Time Matrix. The Time Matrix sat unnoticed in a Skrit Na ship, just a mile from where we stood. And that could mean the end of all Andalites.

I couldn�t talk. I couldn�t.

The sub-visser leaned close to me. He actually whispered. �There is one other possibility. This Hork-Bajir body I use is fine, but there are millions of Hork-Bajir-Controllers now. And what are my other choices? To go back to being a Gedd? Or to take a Taxxon body? No thanks. I won�t live with that Taxxon hunger.�

The train plunged into the Taxxon hive. Darkness descended. In the darkness, my Taxxon eyes actually worked better.

The sub-visser�s Hork-Bajir face was a shattered sparkling of tiny images to my Taxxon eyes. I could hear his heart beating faster.

�There is one other possibility, Andalite. There has never been an Andalite-Controller. None of us has ever succeeded in capturing an Andalite alive. Your warriors use that nasty Andalite tail blade on themselves rather than be taken alive.� He grinned. �Such a waste. Really. See, I want to be the first to have an Andalite body. With that body, with the Andalite morphing power, I wouldn�t remain a sub-visser for long. I could be a full visser.�

An Andalite-Controller? This Yeerk scum wanted to take over an Andalite body?

I felt a wave of revulsion. A wave of revulsion that seemed to grow out of some deep insight, as if I had caught a glimpse of the future. I wasn�t a mystic. I was in the military. But still, I felt a weird, unsettling sensation.

I looked at the sub-visser. I looked into his greedy, murderous eyes. And it was as if I could see him clearly. As if the veil of time was lifted.

And I knew then I would not die. Not yet, at least. I knew it deep in my heart. Because I knew that in looking at this creature, this Yeerk, I was looking at my true, personal enemy.

�Let me take that Andalite body,� he said. �You�ll live. It�s the only way you�ll live.�

<My name is Elfangor, Yeerk,> I said. <Remember the name. You�ll be hearing it again. But you will never take me alive.>

�A pity,� the Yeerk sneered. �Stop the car!� he yelled to his Hork-Bajir. �Open the door.�

The mag-lev train stopped smoothly. The door opened.

We were on a track deep inside the Taxxon hive. There was a large, open cavern around us, as if the hive was hollow at its core. And down below, perhaps twenty feet down, there was a seething mass of Taxxons.

�See them?� the sub-visser asked. �Taxxons. Not Yeerks. No, those are Taxxons in their natural state. Unimproved, you might say. As savage and bloodthirsty as any creature in the galaxy.�

The Taxxons below spotted us above them. They raised their eternally hungry red mouths up to gape at us. They knew what was going to happen next.

The Hork-Bajir surrounded me. I wanted to fight, but I had no weapons. There was nothing I could do.

�Throw him out,� the sub-visser said.

The Hork-Bajir rushed at me. They pushed my sagging, flaccid flesh. I scrabbled desperately with my rows of cone legs, but it was useless. They rolled and shoved and slid me, helpless, to the door.

And then I was falling �

Speaking of treatment of prisoners...

# ? Nov 19, 2020 03:47

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# ? Apr 28, 2024 01:52

Grammarchist: Jan 28, 2013

I never read these books because I was terrified of the concept of human-animal transformations (I think Pinocchio scarred me there) and now I regret it. This book in particular is actually pretty great.

# ? Nov 19, 2020 04:09

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Is there any reason the Yeerk couldn't take over Elfangor in Taxxon morph and then just demorph to get an Andalite body?

# ? Nov 19, 2020 04:20

Rochallor: Apr 23, 2010; ふっっっっっっっっっっっっｃｋ

Ravenfood posted:

Is there any reason the Yeerk couldn't take over Elfangor in Taxxon morph and then just demorph to get an Andalite body?

I suppose not, since Taxxons can become Controllers. You have the obvious danger of a Yeerk being out in the open around a hungry Taxxon, but since there are unwilling Taxxons they must have restraints or sedatives.

# ? Nov 19, 2020 04:46

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

I don't know. If a Yeerk infests an Andalite in Taxxon form, does he control an Andalite or a Taxxon? Would he be able to morph back? I don't know.

# ? Nov 19, 2020 04:50

Acebuckeye13: Nov 2, 2010; If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, crisis counseling and referral services can be accessed by calling
1-800-GAMBLER; Ultra Carp

From the Sub-Visser's perspective (who I think is gonna turn out to be Visser 3), he may simply think it's too risky�Elfangor is going to do his best not to be taken alive, the temporarily-freed Hork-Bajir may try to intervene himself, and there's a lot of space in-between for something bad to happen to the Sub-Visser while he's out of his host (And like hell would he let one of his subordinates get a crack at taking over an Andalite).

It'd still probably make more sense to restrain him until he can be properly restrained and infested�even if Elfangor did run over the time limit and become a nothlit in the meantime�since then they could ply various Andalite military secrets out of his head, including the details of his mission. But, :shrug:

# ? Nov 19, 2020 05:21

QuickbreathFinisher: Sep 28, 2008; by reading this post you have agreed to form a gay socialist micronation.
`

Epicurius posted:

Morphing power is a wonderful tool. It allows Andalites to pass among many different species. It makes us the greatest spies in the galaxy.

I misread this as "greatest species in the galaxy" and thought it was yet another instance of that good old fashioned ~~American~~ Andalite exceptionalism.

# ? Nov 19, 2020 05:48

freebooter: Jul 7, 2009

So from Andalite warrior culture to the Yeerks... if they only got off the planet and launched their empire in the '60s, how long have they had a Council of Thirteen and an Emperor and a whole officer hierarchy? They've presumably been controlling Geds for a very long time, so maybe they had a whole little surface civilisation/s outside the pools long before Seerow showed up?

Ravenfood posted:

Is there any reason the Yeerk couldn't take over Elfangor in Taxxon morph and then just demorph to get an Andalite body?

This actually raises the question of what happens to Visser Three when he makes Alloran's body morph.

# ? Nov 19, 2020 07:48

Fuschia tude: Dec 26, 2004; THUNDERDOME LOSER 2019

freebooter posted:

So from Andalite warrior culture to the Yeerks... if they only got off the planet and launched their empire in the '60s, how long have they had a Council of Thirteen and an Emperor and a whole officer hierarchy? They've presumably been controlling Geds for a very long time, so maybe they had a whole little surface civilisation/s outside the pools long before Seerow showed up?

This actually raises the question of what happens to Visser Three when he makes Alloran's body morph.

I figured he would just stay in place, embedded around the brain as it changes. That would make small morphs awkward, though, since theoretically the whole z-space magic wouldn't apply to parasites. But then Visser Three never morphs small, does he? He only goes for the big flashy ones.

# ? Nov 19, 2020 09:40

wizzardstaff: Apr 6, 2018; Zorch! Splat! Pow!

Fuschia tude posted:

I figured he would just stay in place, embedded around the brain as it changes. That would make small morphs awkward, though, since theoretically the whole z-space magic wouldn't apply to parasites. But then Visser Three never morphs small, does he? He only goes for the big flashy ones.

We do have an example of a Yeerk doing small morphs in the book where Jake is captured. I thought I remembered it working like you described, with the Yeerk itself staying intact while the host morphs around it, but I went back and read that section (about page 35 of this thread) and couldn't find it. And given that Jake does morph an ant in that state, I think it can't be the case.

The process of infestation seems so complete and intimate that the host's body makes no distinction between itself and the parasite, so it comes along with the morph while retaining its separate mind and identity. I guess if clothes can be morphed, so can a brain slug.

# ? Nov 19, 2020 10:03

nine-gear crow: Aug 10, 2013

wizzardstaff posted:

We do have an example of a Yeerk doing small morphs in the book where Jake is captured. I thought I remembered it working like you described, with the Yeerk itself staying intact while the host morphs around it, but I went back and read that section (about page 35 of this thread) and couldn't find it. And given that Jake does morph an ant in that state, I think it can't be the case.

The process of infestation seems so complete and intimate that the host's body makes no distinction between itself and the parasite, so it comes along with the morph while retaining its separate mind and identity. I guess if clothes can be morphed, so can a brain slug.

Yeah, the implication for Temrash's adventures in morphing seem to be that the Yeerk consciousness kind of sublimates in order to maintain control over both the morph and the host, again playing into that mind/body disparity that the series is so fond of. It's similar to how Jake can have his whole human brain consciousness shoved in the tiny brain of an ant even though the ant brain is clearly physically incapable of processing a human mind. I'd say there was some kind of information transfer facilitated through Z-Space, but then that kind blows up with Tobias, whose human body and mind are now officially gone thanks to Z-Space degradation.

tl;dr: "It just works."
- Todd Howard

# ? Nov 19, 2020 11:01

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

freebooter posted:

So from Andalite warrior culture to the Yeerks... if they only got off the planet and launched their empire in the '60s, how long have they had a Council of Thirteen and an Emperor and a whole officer hierarchy? They've presumably been controlling Geds for a very long time, so maybe they had a whole little surface civilisation/s outside the pools long before Seerow showed up?

Spoiler, because a lot of this comes from the Hork-Bajir Chronicles:

The Emperor and Council of Thirteen, as well as the control of the Gedds, predate Seerow. The Gedds are native to the Yeerk homeworld, and the Yeerks have been controlling them for a long while. Gedds just aren't that great as hosts. They walk by knuckle dragging and can't walk on two legs, they're barely sapient, they're clumsy, they're not very strong, etc. They're still used, but only by Yeerks who can't get anything better.

The Vissers are new, developed post-rebellion, as the Yeerks had just basically created a military and decided they needed people to run it.

# ? Nov 19, 2020 14:53

nine-gear crow: Aug 10, 2013

Epicurius posted:

Spoiler, because a lot of this comes from the Hork-Bajir Chronicles:

The Emperor and Council of Thirteen, as well as the control of the Gedds, predate Seerow. The Gedds are native to the Yeerk homeworld, and the Yeerks have been controlling them for a long while. Gedds just aren't that great as hosts. They walk by knuckle dragging and can't walk on two legs, they're barely sapient, they're clumsy, they're not very strong, etc. They're still used, but only by Yeerks who can't get anything better.

The Vissers are new, developed post-rebellion, as the Yeerks had just basically created a military and decided they needed people to run it.

The Vissers / military structure in general should have been something they picked up from the Andalites, honestly. It would have played to that whole Tolkien allusion thing the series has going on with the Andalites being Elves, and the Yeerks being Orcs, because the Orcs in Lord of the Rings were twisted and corrupted Elves.

We don�t get that good of a look at first contact-era Yeerk society but I seem to recall there was a tiny bit of �we want to be just like you, Daddy� idolism from the pre-Rebellion Yeerks towards the Andalites, which then turned into �No, gently caress you, Dad� very rapidly. So the Yeerks running around repping a hosed up version of the Andalite military structure�the one aspect of their society the Andalites are most proud of�would be a beautiful finger in the eye and another aspect of the shame the Andalites feel collectively with that whole �we set them loose on the universe� thing, w/r/t Seerow�s Kindness.

# ? Nov 19, 2020 16:49

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

nine-gear crow posted:

We don�t get that good of a look at first contact-era Yeerk society but I seem to recall there was a tiny bit of �we want to be just like you, Daddy� idolism from the pre-Rebellion Yeerks towards the Andalites, which then turned into �No, gently caress you, Dad� very rapidly. So the Yeerks running around repping a hosed up version of the Andalite military structure�the one aspect of their society the Andalites are most proud of�would be a beautiful finger in the eye and another aspect of the shame the Andalites feel collectively with that whole �we set them loose on the universe� thing, w/r/t Seerow�s Kindness.

We do find out in book 19 and the Hork-Bajir Chronicles, that Seerow is the only Andalite that the Yeerks have any respect for (which didn't stop them from killing him). Some of it is functional, obviously...he's the one who gave them the technology and knowledge of the galaxy. But also, given the sheer disdain that the Andalite garrison on the Yeerk homeworld feel for the Yeerks, he seems to be the only Andalite who actually treats Yeerks with anything approaching respect and trust, so I can see how the Yeerk-Andalite relationship went south quickly.

# ? Nov 19, 2020 18:07

freebooter: Jul 7, 2009

nine-gear crow posted:

human body and mind are now officially gone thanks to Z-Space degradation.

Oh, is this canon for how getting trapped works? I don't remember it at all but it makes a lot more sense than some of the other hand-wavey stuff!

# ? Nov 19, 2020 23:35

nine-gear crow: Aug 10, 2013

freebooter posted:

Oh, is this canon for how getting trapped works? I don't remember it at all but it makes a lot more sense than some of the other hand-wavey stuff!

Yeah, the official explanation is that the original body's mass that's shoved up into Z-Space can only survive for about 2 hours before it degenerates and is irrecoverable. Tobias can't demorph because there's nothing left of his original body to pull back out of Z-Space.

# ? Nov 19, 2020 23:40

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

The Andalite Chronicles-Chapter 16

quote:

Falling �

<Demorph!> I screamed at myself.

Even as I was falling, I was demorphing. If I was going to die, I�d die an Andalite, not some disgusting, cannibalistic worm.

WHUUUMMMPPPFFF!

I hit the ground. I hit it hard. The sides of my Taxxon body burst open from the impact. And in a flash, the other Taxxons were on me.

<Demorph!>

But I couldn�t possibly morph quickly enough. Red Taxxon mouths drew back and rose up high, plunging straight down into my shattered flesh.

The pain of the fall had been dulled by sheer shock. But this pain � this pain I felt. I have never known anything so terrible. In my darkest nightmare I�ve never even imagined �

<Ahhhhhhhhhh!> I screamed. But just as loudly, I screamed, <Demorph!>

It was a race. A race to see whether I would die before I could demorph. Again and again they ripped at me. But now my Taxxon flesh was shrinking away from them. It was changing. Becoming some strange, new meat.

It would all depend on how the morph happened. If my head emerged too soon, the Taxxons would simply rip it off. I didn�t need my head. I didn�t even need my legs.

I needed my tail.

If any Andalite in all of history needed his tail, I needed mine. Right NOW!

<Ahhhhhhhhhh!> The pain was unbearable. I was delirious, unable even to think, to focus, to keep track of what was happening to me.

It wasn�t going to work! I had been wrong to hope. Wrong to imagine I could survive. But then � I felt some distant part of me move. And I sensed a shudder pass through the ravenous Taxxons.

We had talked before about body horror, but transforming while being eaten alive....sort of kicks that up a notch.

quote:

With what was left of my Taxxon eyes, I saw it appear � all the way back at the end of my Taxxon body.

A bright blade! My tail!

I slashed! Missed!

But it made the Taxxons back away. And while they were reconsidering, my legs grew long and strong. The last of my bleeding worm body shrank and hardened. I heard bones growing inside me.

And then I could see. I could see again!

The Taxxons came at me again, rushing at me, bold with hunger. But now the situation had changed.

Oh, yes, the situation had definitely changed.

I aimed, I slashed! I aimed, I slashed! I aimed, I slashed!

<Come on, you filthy worms! Come on! Come ON!>

And suddenly, even the Taxxons had decided they didn�t want to eat me. Instead, the Taxxons I had cut were set upon by the rest.

Through my stalk eyes I saw the sub-visser and his Hork-Bajir soldiers looking down and laughing.

The cold voice of the sub-visser said, �Kill him. Shoot the Andalite scum.�

The Hork-Bajir soldiers raised their weapons and sighted on me.

TSEEWWW! TSEEWW!

Dracon beams singed the air above me and melted the dirt at my feet. I couldn�t outrun them. I had to hide! But hide where?

Oh.

I dove back into the Taxxon feeding frenzy. Their sluggish, sloppy bodies pressed in all around me. It was sickening, but it gave me cover.

�Go in after him,� the sub-visser ordered. �Cut him to pieces!�

Six huge Hork-Bajir leaped down from the train track. There was no way I could defeat six Hork-Bajir warriors. I was exhausted, on the edge of collapse.

But there was one last desperate hope. The kafit bird.

Once you do a morph, the DNA stays with you. Once you�ve morphed a creature, you can morph it again. And I needed wings as much as I�d needed my tail.

I squirmed between the huge worms, keeping away from their mouths. Not that they wanted to fight an Andalite right then.

And as I felt the Taxxon flesh pressing in around me - smothering me, but at the same time hiding me from the Hork-Bajir - I morphed again. I shrank. I grew smaller and smaller.

�Back, you Taxxon hogren kalach!� the Hork-Bajir yelled in a mix of Galard and the Hork-Bajir language.

The Taxxons began to pull away, driven back by slashing Hork-Bajir wrists and elbows. I was in the open. A Hork-Bajir was standing over me. He was looking right down at me.

Had I finished morphing?

No time to worry. I would either fly � or die.

I opened what I hoped were my six pairs of kafit wings. I spread them wide. I flapped hard.

And I flew.

Up off the ground. Up from the dirt. I flew!

I flew inches above the Hork-Bajir. I flew over the sub-visser, who was now screaming in rage at his soldiers. �Shoot it! Shoot it!�

�But the Taxxons may be hit!� one of the Hork-Bajir protested.

�I really don�t care, shoot! Shoot! Kill it! SHOOOOOT!�

But it was too late. I was in the air. I raced as fast as my wings would take me, back down the stinking tunnel toward daylight. I saw the brown-gray light ahead, and I flew toward it as if my life depended on it.

I exploded from the tunnel into the open with the outraged cries of the sub-visser ringing in my ears.

 I cried to no one but myself. 

I flew at the kafit bird�s top speed back toward the spaceport. Somewhere back there were

Alloran and Arbron. Somewhere back there the Time Matrix still waited to be discovered. There was still a mission and the hope of returning safe and alive to the Jahar.

And � there was life. Life! Life never feels so sweet as when you�ve come right up against death. Then I saw it.

It was descending the last few feet into a large ship-cradle. It was unlike any other craft at the spaceport. Unlike anything any Yeerk had ever designed or built.

The Jahar!

The Jahar was landing.

It was impossible! There was no one aboard the Jahar but the two humans. How could it be landing? Why was it landing?

I soared as high as I could and saw that Yeerks in all shapes and sizes were rushing to meet the amazing ship.

They clustered around, many with weapons drawn. Looking back, I saw a mag-lev train come tearing at top speed from the Taxxon mound. I knew in my heart that Sub-Visser Seven was on that train.

It took several minutes for the docking clamps to be fitted to the alien craft. And more minutes while the Yeerks trained every weapon they had on the one small ship.

The mag-lev train arrived, slamming carelessly into two slow-moving Gedds. Out stepped Sub-Visser Seven. He had only four of his original six Hork-Bajir with him. I guess the other two had paid the ultimate price for failing their commander.

The hatch of the Jahar appeared. It opened, and out stepped a creature no Yeerk had ever seen before.

It walked on only two legs. It held up its hands, and said, �Hey, hey. Relax. You can put down the weapons. I�m not here to fight. I�m here to trade.�

Chapman!

He realized that the Yeerks did not understand him. So with his hands he pretended to be handing them something, and then receiving something from them.

Sub-Visser Seven strutted to meet the alien. He laughed cynically. �It wants to trade,� he said. �This strange creature wants to trade. So. What do you have to trade, alien?�

Neither Sub-Visser Seven nor Chapman had understood a word the other had said. And yet, they understood each other perfectly.

Chapman kept his hands raised and made a human smile. Then, very slowly, he stepped back into the shadowed interior of the ship. And when he reappeared, he was shoving someone before him.

It was Loren. She was bound with wire. Chapman pushed her viciously. She fell to the ground before Sub-Visser Seven.

�That�s what I have to trade,� Chapman said. �A whole planet full of � that.�

And THAT is why I don't like Chapman in this book. I'm ok that a young Chapman is rebellious. I'm ok that he's kind of a jerk. I'm not ok with the fact that he seems eager to sell out earth to a bunch of aliens.

Part 2-Alloran's Choice
Chapter 17

quote:

It was an impossible situation.'

I was alone. Alone on an alien planet. Scared, sick at hearts, and overwhelmed.

I flew high above the scene, floating on my six pairs of wings. I was in morph. A four-legged, two-armed Andalite transformed into a twelve-winged kafit bird.

I really want to know how life evolved among on the Andalite homeworld. On earth, for instance, all vertebrates have four limbs...people, birds, lizards. Sometimes, like with whales or snakes, they're vestigial, but they're there. But you've got Andalites with six limbs, kaffit birds with twelve. Would be interesting to see...

quote:

Below me was the horizon-to-horizon expanse of the spaceport on the Taxxon home world.

Huge, weirdly shaped metal cradles nestled a stunning array of spacecraft. Craft from every corner of the ever-expanding Yeerk Empire: transports and fighters and even a vast Yeerk Pool ship, sitting like a bloated, three-legged spider.

Half a mile to my left was the Skrit Na transport we had chased to the Taxxon world. Inside that ship, unknown to the Yeerks, was the Time Matrix.

Half a mile to my right was the Yeerk transport ship we had seized in orbit. It was loaded to the brim with Yeerks in their natural sluglike bodies. Big, round tubs of Yeerk slugs. Yeerks I had saved when Alloran ordered them destroyed. And right below me was the Jahar. She was like a work of art
stuck in a junk pile. She glowed, beautiful amidst the clumsy Yeerk vessels.

And there, stepping from the Jahar, were the two odd creatures called humans.

The one called Chapman shoved a helpless, bound Loren. She fell before the feet of Sub-Visser Seven, the Yeerk in charge of security. The sub-visser was a Hork-Bajir-Controller.

�That�s what I have to trade,� Chapman said. �A whole planet full of � that.�

A hundred Yeerks in different forms - huge, glistening, wormlike Taxxon-Controllers, dangerous, bladed Hork-Bajir-Controllers, clumsy Gedd-Controllers - all stood watching with bated breath.

Where was Arbron, my fellow aristh? Where was War-prince Alloran? The last I�d seen of them they were in Taxxon morph. But the two-hour time limit for staying in one morph had passed. I could only hope they had demorphed at some point.

<Alloran should be dealing with all this,> I complained bitterly to no one. Alloran was the warprince. He�d been in wars before. He had fought in the Hork-Bajir war. I didn�t know anything! I was a nobody!

Okay, Elfangor, calm down and think.

But how could I be calm? The Yeerks were seizing Loren and roughly hustling her away. Chapman was trying to communicate with Sub-Visser Seven.

Then it hit me: Chapman knew! He knew about the Time Matrix! If he found a way to tell the Yeerks, we were all done for.

Okay, okay, so I had to do something. Something. Something. But what? What should I do? This was madness! The entire fate of my people rested on me? On me?

Priorities. Okay, okay, what was most important?

Rescuing Loren.

No. No, that was absurd. The Time Matrix. Everything came down to the Time Matrix.

Was Chapman going to tell the sub-visser about it? No. It was Chapman�s biggest bargaining chip. This human was like a Skrit Na - self-serving, greedy, and very, very strange. The Skrit Na are made up of two races. The Skrit look like huge insects and are somewhat less than intelligent. But the
Skrit each eventually weave a cocoon and a year later, out pops a Na. The Na stand on four slender legs, have heads shaped like Andalites, but only possess two eyes. All the Skrit Na care about is owning and possessing things. And it seemed the human Chapman was the very same way. So I truly
believed he would not give up the Time Matrix just yet.

I had time, but not much. The sub-visser would be kept busy with Chapman attempting to talk about Earth. Like any Yeerk, Sub-Visser Seven would be fascinated by the possibility of an entire planet of sentient creatures for the Yeerk Empire to enslave.

Think, Elfangor. Think!

I couldn�t count on finding Alloran and Arbron. But if they were still alive and free, they would reach the same conclusion I had: Go for the Skrit Na ship and its cargo, the Time Matrix.

I turned in the air and flapped my many wings hard as I headed toward the Skrit Na ship.

Below I saw Hork-Bajir grab Loren and pull her to her feet. They yanked her up by her golden hair and a human cry of pain floated up to me.

Priorities, Elfangor.

<Loren. It�s me, Elfangor!> I called down, focusing my thought-speak on her alone.

I saw her jerk and turn her head around the way humans do to see behind them.

<Stop. Don�t move! Don�t make them mad. Don�t worry, I�m using private thought-speak. No one else can hear.>

She stopped twisting around and kept marching forward between her Hork-Bajir captors.

<Tell the Yeerks whatever they want to know. Don�t resist. Just one thing: Don�t mention the Time Matrix. If they get that, it�s all over. You have to trust me. I will save you.>

Of course, the human Loren couldn�t answer. Humans don�t have thought-speak. Like most species, they make sounds to communicate. I could only hope she would trust me.

Right. She should trust me. Would I trust some alien who�d landed me in this mess?

I could only hope. She had to keep quiet about the Time Matrix. I knew Chapman would. I flew hard for the Skrit Na ship. At least I had a goal now. That helped. A little. And I just wouldn�t think about the insanity of it all. I would just put all that out of my head.

The Skrit Na ship was being fussed over by Gedd-Controllers. Gedds are clumsy, loping creatures. They were the first species the Yeerks infested. Only low-ranking Yeerks were still stuck in Gedd bodies. These Gedd-Controllers seemed to be busy checking the Skrit Na ship for hull damage.

I had to get aboard that ship. And I had to fly it off the planet.

No problem, Elfangor. Just steal the ship from the middle of a Yeerk spaceport and fly it away without getting zapped. No big deal.

I landed in the dirt beneath the ship�s cradle. It was dark and filthy down there. Endless debris and trash had been shoved in over the years. They had apparently even emptied ships�s sewage reprocessing plants there. The smell was overwhelming.

I demorphed amid the fossilized remains of sewage from a dozen species. Not pleasant. But it was a good feeling to get my Andalite body back.

I cowered behind the massive support pillars as I watched my four legs grow from four of the kafit�s wings. Two other wings became my hands. My sleek bird head grew large and sprouted my twin stalk eyes, while the bird�s own two eyes became my main eyes. The remaining wings shriveled and disappeared as my long, wispy bird tail became my swift, powerful Andalite tail.

I was so pleased to get my tail back. A bird�s body can be pretty helpless. But unfortunately, I couldn�t stay in Andalite form. An Andalite walking around on the Taxxon world, surrounded by nothing but various types of Yeerks, would be just slightly obvious. Slightly obvious, as in I�d have been dead ten seconds after I walked out of the shadows.

I had only one way to go. I would have to resume the Taxxon morph I had acquired. The Taxxon DNA was still a part of me. It always would be.

I swallowed my fear and loathing and began the morph.

And as I felt the huge worm body grow, and felt the screaming, desperate Taxxon hunger rise within me, I tried to form a plan. A plan to save my world, my friends, and Loren all at once.

I was halfway into Taxxon shape when I heard the shuffling, slithering sound of a Taxxon. My stalk eyes had already morphed away. But I still had my main eyes. I turned to look.

It was just a dozen feet away. It must have been lurking in the darkness. It had only to scream for
help and I�d be Taxxon lunch.

Then, to my surprise, the Taxxon spoke in Andalite thought-speak.

<Elfangor! Is that you?>

<Arbron?> I cried. I was flooded with relief. I wouldn�t be alone! I had Arbron with me. We�d never exactly been close friends, but at least he was one of my own.

<Yes, it�s me,> he said.

<What happened to you?> I asked. 

For a few moments Arbron said nothing. His silence drew a chill up my half-morphed body.

 Arbron said flatly. <So. We gonna rescue this Time Matrix thing or what? Hero time, huh?>

<Yeah. Hero time,> I agreed. But there was something wrong. Something very wrong. I could feel it. <Where is Alloran?> I asked.



He seemed to alternate between being flat and emotionless and sudden bursts of manic energy.

Maybe it was the strain. The fear. And the vile creepiness of inhabiting a Taxxon form.

That had to be it. Nothing to worry about. Just stress.

<If I end up being a hero, you�ll be one, too,> I said. <Besides, let�s just see if we survive first.>

<Yeah. Survive,> he said, flat and emotionless again. <Come on, Elfangor. Finish morphing.>

I don't have a good feeling about this....

# ? Nov 20, 2020 01:30

Zaphiel: Apr 20, 2006; Fun Shoe

When I was doing my re-read recently, I thought it was bad editting that the book repeated what a Skrit Na was and whatnot, but now, thanks to this thread, I realize that it was because the books were split into 3.

# ? Nov 20, 2020 03:26

Acebuckeye13: Nov 2, 2010; If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, crisis counseling and referral services can be accessed by calling
1-800-GAMBLER; Ultra Carp

Man, poor fuckin' Arbron. :smith:

Probably the single unluckiest bastard in the entire series.

# ? Nov 20, 2020 05:23

Comrade Blyatlov: Aug 4, 2007; should have picked four fingers

No, it's the homeless dude at the start of book 1.

# ? Nov 20, 2020 05:30

Turpitude II: Nov 10, 2014

it is pretty cool how arbron survives all this and ends up showing up and being plot important in #53. i wonder if that was planned, or just a happy accident? cause this seems like an unusual thing to seed this early but it makes sense, in both books he ends up leading rebel taxxons.

# ? Nov 20, 2020 07:05

freebooter: Jul 7, 2009

Turpitude II posted:

it is pretty cool how arbron survives all this and ends up showing up and being plot important in #53. i wonder if that was planned, or just a happy accident? cause this seems like an unusual thing to seed this early but it makes sense, in both books he ends up leading rebel taxxons.

IIRC Applegate agreed with Scholastic to write the Taxxon Chronicles, was then kicking herself because she didn't have a clue what she'd write about, and then remembered Arbron and decided to base it around him. It obviously never ended up being written but I guess she kept the idea and used it for the main series.

# ? Nov 20, 2020 08:26

GodFish: Oct 10, 2012; We're your first, last, and only line of defense. We live in secret. We exist in shadow.

And we dress in black.

quote:

“I really don’t care, shoot! Shoot! Kill it! SHOOOOOT!”

I love soon to be Visser Three.

# ? Nov 20, 2020 08:44

pastor of muppets: Aug 21, 2007; We were somewhere around the Living Hive, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold...

quote:

WHUUUMMMPPPFFF!

I hit the ground. I hit it hard. The sides of my Taxxon body burst open from the impact. And in a flash, the other Taxxons were on me.

<Demorph!>

But I couldn�t possibly morph quickly enough. Red Taxxon mouths drew back and rose up high, plunging straight down into my shattered flesh.

The pain of the fall had been dulled by sheer shock. But this pain � this pain I felt. I have never known anything so terrible. In my darkest nightmare I�ve never even imagined �

<Ahhhhhhhhhh!> I screamed. But just as loudly, I screamed, <Demorph!>

It was a race. A race to see whether I would die before I could demorph. Again and again they ripped at me. But now my Taxxon flesh was shrinking away from them. It was changing. Becoming some strange, new meat.

It would all depend on how the morph happened. If my head emerged too soon, the Taxxons would simply rip it off. I didn�t need my head. I didn�t even need my legs.

I needed my tail.

If any Andalite in all of history needed his tail, I needed mine. Right NOW!

<Ahhhhhhhhhh!> The pain was unbearable. I was delirious, unable even to think, to focus, to keep track of what was happening to me.

It wasn�t going to work! I had been wrong to hope. Wrong to imagine I could survive. But then � I felt some distant part of me move. And I sensed a shudder pass through the ravenous Taxxons.

Holy poo poo. :stonk:

This book is so good but man I am very glad I missed this one as a kid.

# ? Nov 20, 2020 16:06

ManlyGrunting: May 29, 2014

Looking back on it I'm pretty sure I can pinpoint this series as the start of my love affair of ultra-violence in literature

# ? Nov 20, 2020 18:57

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

The Andalite Chronicles-Chapter 18

quote:

<You have a plan?>

<Sure,> I said. <We bluff. We tell those Gedd-Controllers up there that we�ve come to fix the computers. Then we fly that sorry Skrit Na ship away.>

I wanted to sound casual. Nonchalant. The way the fighter pilots always sound when they are describing some terrifying battle. Like it was all no big deal.

Arbron stared at me through red jelly Taxxon eyes. <Okay. Lead the way,> he said.

Arbron and I slithered out from beneath the ship�s cradle and motored our rows of Taxxon needle legs up the ramp to the ship itself. Just a pair of bored Taxxon technicians going to work.

Totally calm.

Or as calm as any Taxxon, even a Taxxon-Controller, can ever be. There is simply no way to explain the awful hunger of the Taxxon. It is beyond any hunger you�ve ever imagined. It is constant.

Like a screaming voice in your head. Screaming so loud you can�t think. Every living thing you see or smell is just meat to you. You hear beating hearts and smell rushing blood and the hunger almost takes over your body.

And when someone is injured � when there is blood spilled � well then, as I knew personally, the hunger is all but impossible to resist.

I had come within a haunch hair of eating an injured Taxxon myself. Not something I wanted to remember. But not something I�d ever forget.

<Don�t hesitate,> I advised Arbron as several Gedds turned to blink curiously at us. <Look like you�re on your way to work.>

<Shut up, Elfangor,> Arbron said harshly.

Again I felt the chill of fear. Something was horribly wrong. But there was no stopping now. I pushed rudely past a Gedd who was in my way.

The Gedd-Controllers looked resentful. But they had no reason to suspect us. We were Taxxons.

They had to assume we were Taxxon-Controllers. We looked like we were there to work. No reason for them to be at all suspicious.
Except that one of them was.

One of the Gedd-Controllers stood right in front of us, seemingly unimpressed. He spoke in Galard, the language of interstellar trade. It sounded hard on his Gedd tongue, but I could understand him.

�Rrr-what arrrre you doing herrrrrre?�

If it was hard for the Gedd to make Galard sounds, it was almost impossible for me, with a Taxxon�s mouth and tongue. But I couldn�t use thought-speak. I might as well announce that I was Andalite. I had to try to speak Galard with a three-foot-long Taxxon tongue.

So I tried. �Sreeeee snwwweeeyiiir sreeeyah!�

Which was not even close to being the sounds I�d wanted to make. What I had meant to say was �computer repair.� But the Taxxon�s tongue is so long, that it would be hard even if I was used to using a mouth to make sounds.

The Gedd stared at me with its tiny yellow eyes. �Rrr-use rrr pad!� He pointed furiously down at a small computer pad attached to his wrist.

<It�s some kind of translator,> Arbron said. <Some primitive version of our own translator chips. Let me do it.>

He reached with one of his weak, two-fingered Taxxon hands and pressed several buttons. From the pad came a disembodied voice, speaking Galard.

�Computer repair.�

The Gedd snorted angrily. �Rrryou Taxxon wearrrers think you rrrown the planet! Arrrogant as Horrrk-Bajir!�

We've seen it before, but this is an example of internal Yeerk conflict. At this point, it's only the unimportant Yeerks who are still stuck in Gedd bodies, and they resent their comparably low status.

quote:

Arbron and I shoved past him into the Skrit Na ship. Unfortunately, it was so cramped and low that we could barely drag our massive bodies inside.

The bridge of the Skrit Na ship was identical to the Skrit Na ship we�d boarded to rescue the two humans. There were two cocooned Skrit glued into a corner. They wouldn�t cause any trouble.

They didn�t look ready to hatch into Na just yet. And there was an active Skrit, what Loren had described as a giant cockroach, scurrying around almost brainlessly, polishing and cleaning.

There were no Na that I could see. Aside from the Skrit, the bridge of the ship was empty.

<So far, so good,> I muttered. <I�m going to close the hatch. We�ll demorph, power up, and be off-planet before they know what�s hit them.>

<Yeah. Okay,> Arbron said. <Ready?>

<Yep.> I focused on my breathing, trying to fight the raging Taxxon hunger and my own fear.

<Okay, do it!>

Arbron punched the pad to close the hatch door. It slid shut and made a snug vacuum seal SHWOOMP!

I focused all my thoughts on demorphing. I wanted out of that Taxxon body. The two of us could barely move in the cramped bridge, let alone fly the ship. The idiot Skrit kept banging against me, unable to find a way to go around.

I demorphed. I shed that vile Taxxon body as fast as I could. I felt the awful hunger weaken and my own Andalite mind rise above, freed of the Taxxon�s instincts.

THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!

The Gedds were pounding on the hull. �Rrrrwhat arrrre you doing? Open rrrup!�

I ignored the noise and punched the engine power. The main engines began to whine as they powered up.

And then I realized it. Arbron was not demorphing.

<Arbron, what are you waiting for? Demorph!>

Arbron didn�t say anything.

THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!

�Rrrr-open up! Powerrr down rrryou fool!�

<Arbron! What are you up to? Demorph!> I yelled. I guess I hoped that yelling would make it happen. But I already knew. He stared at me through those shimmering red jelly eyes, and I knew.

More quietly, almost begging, I said, <Come on, Arbron. Demorph.>

 he said.

I think we all saw that coming after last chapter, didn't we? You might say being a hawk nothlit is bad, and you'd be right, but I have to think being a Taxxon nothlit is worse.

Chapter 19

quote:

There was no time to talk about it. We had to get the Skrit Na ship up and out of that cradle before it occurred to the Yeerks that we were stealing it.

No time to talk about it. But time to feel something of the terror Arbron felt.

I had been in Taxxon morph. I had felt the hunger. I�d rather be dead than be trapped in that body forever.

Arbron�s weak Taxxon �arms� pushed all the right buttons, and I felt the soft vibration of the engines reaching full power.

The Gedd-Controllers outside must have felt it, too. Suddenly they stopped pounding on the ship. They were probably running for dear life. The radiation blast of the engines would be captured and contained within the cradle. But if you were still hanging around on that cradle when the engines came on, you wouldn�t last long.

<Ready?> I asked Arbron.

<Ready.>

<Then hang on, because I don�t know how much of a kick these Skrit Na ships have.> I punched up a burn and we rose from the pad.

Unfortunately, we didn�t rise very quickly.

<What is the matter with this thing?> I yelled. I looked at the air speed indicator. We were doing a bare thousand miles per hour. And the acceleration rate was way too slow.

<It�ll take us ten minutes just to get escape velocity!> Arbron cried.

<Yeerk ships will be all over us before we can even think about going to Zero-space,> I said.

<The Time Matrix!> Arbron said. <We can use it! We can escape through time!>

<No! We don�t know how fast it works. If we try to activate the Time Matrix, the power signature will light up every Yeerk sensor within a million miles! What if it takes ten minutes for it to work? Besides � we don�t know who else might get mad if you use that thing.>

<What? You�re worried about what some prince will say if we survive?>

<No. I�m not worried about our superiors. Or at least, I figure my career in the military is already destroyed.>

<Then what are you �> Arbron fell silent. Then he laughed. <Are you kidding me? You�re worried about some mythical Ellimists?>

<Mythical? That�s what some people used to say about the Time Matrix itself. Someone built that machine. Who else, if not the Ellimists? And do we want to take the chance of making them angry?>

I felt a little foolish. My parents had told me Ellimist stories when I was a child. Stories of the all-powerful, inexplicable creatures who sometimes interfered in the affairs of simpler species. I halfway expected a snide remark from Arbron.

Not really the best time for a religious debate, but you do you, Elfangor.

quote:

But Arbron didn�t answer. He was staring at his display board. At least, I guess he was staring. Taxxon eyes don�t exactly focus normally. <Yeerk patrol ship coming up on an intercept vector! It�s a Bug fighter!>

<Can we take on a Bug fighter?>

<Are you kidding? All the Skrit Na ever have are secondhand, low-power Dracon beams the Yeerks sell off for scrap. That Bug fighter has twin Penetrator-Class Dracon beams. We can�t trade shots with them!>

He was right. And I should have remembered that. But I was shaken. Confused. My brain was spinning at a million revolutions per second and going nowhere.

I had to think. Focus.

The air speed gauge now showed two thousand twenty miles per hour. The hull was blistering hot from the air resistance. <Wait a minute! Bug fighters are slow in atmosphere, right? They can�t handle the heat. We can! So far, at least. We�re doing better than two thousand miles per hour. We�re
faster than they are in atmosphere!>

<You�re going to try and outrun them in the atmosphere?>

<You have a better option?>

<We have a second Bug fighter on us!> Arbron answered. <Two more launching!>

<We�re going to the grass,> I said, hoping I sounded more confident than I felt. <I�ll need direct vision. Real time, real aspect. Open a window.>

Arbron played his console, and suddenly the panel in front of me became a window. I could see the superheated air, blazing around the ship.

I nosed the stubby, round ship down. As we dropped we picked up speed. <Passing three thousand miles per hour!>

Down, down, down at over three thousand mph! The brown dust of the Taxxon world leaped up at us.

Spacecraft are designed for the almost total vacuum of space. Usually they are barely functional in atmosphere. But the Skrit Na were scavengers who went from planet to planet, kidnapping and stealing and performing their inexplicable medical experiments. So they needed ships that could
handle atmosphere.

But nothing is really designed to do three thousand miles an hour in atmosphere. Let alone fifty feet off the ground.

We had been seven miles up, right at the outer edge of the Taxxon atmosphere. We dropped back down to ground level in five point eight seconds.

<Yaaaaahhhhhh!>

<Yaaaaahhhhhh!>

We both screamed in a mix of utter terror and shocking excitement. Let me tell you something:

Millions of miles an hour in empty space is nothing compared to three thousand miles an hour going straight for the ground.

<Pull up! Pull up! Pull up!>

I pulled up, as the collision warnings screamed in the Skrit Na language.

We blew across the Taxxon desert, trailing sonic booms that must have sounded like nuclear explosions going off in our wake.

<Can you get the Bug fighters on visual?> I asked.

<On screen!>

I saw two Bug fighters racing after us, one behind the other. Their hulls glowed bright with friction heat. But they weren�t backing off.

<Fine,> I muttered. <Let�s see who�s faster.> I raised the burn and felt a slight lurch as the engines pushed harder still.

<Three thousand two hundred miles per hour,> Arbron reported. <Three point three K. Three point four K. Hull temperature is � you don�t even want to know. Three point five K.>

Three thousand five hundred miles an hour. The ground was a blur. We were a blazing meteorite. We were an arrow of flame as we shot across the Taxxon world at impossible speeds. The scruffy bushes and stunted trees of the Taxxon world burst into flame as we passed over. We were drawing a
line of fire around the planet!

<Pull up!> Arbron yelled.

Mountains rose up like a wall. <Where did they come from?!> I cried as I pulled up, straining every atom in the Skrit Na ship.

The ship bucked like a dying beast in its final agony. But we climbed. Up � up �

<Are we going to clear?>

Before I could answer, we shot over the mountain wall. I swear I heard the bottom scrape as we cleared the height.

Unfortunately, the Yeerks knew the local topography. They�d been ready for them. They had adjusted easily and had gained on us.

TSSSSEEEEWWWW!

A red Dracon beam lanced past us, missing by inches. They were close enough now to shoot.

We were approaching the dividing line between night and day. I could see it rushing toward me. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the lead Bug fighter simply explode! The air friction had finally worn down its compensators and the craft had burned to a cinder in a split second.

<Yah-hah! One Yeerk fried!> I exulted.

<Elfangor, we�re next if we don�t slow down,> Arbron warned.

<There are still three Bug fighters on our tail,> I said.

<We are about five minutes away from burning up,> Arbron said. <Can you guarantee those Bug fighters will cinder before we do?>

<What do you have in mind?>

<We take a shot. One, two, three. They won�t be ready. They won�t expect it.>

I turned my stalk eyes to stare at Arbron. <No one can make that shot.>

 he said.

<With Taxxon eyes?> I didn�t want to throw that in his face, but I had to be realistic. <With Taxxon reaction times? With Skrit Na targeting computers?>
 he said calmly.

<Look, Arbron, I want to come out of this alive.>

<And you think I don�t care if I live or die, right?> he said bitterly. <Maybe you�re right. This hunger � Elfangor, you�ve felt it. You know. But I can still make this shot.>

<You always laugh at me wanting to be a hero,> I said. <Now who�s playing hero?>

He didn�t answer.

I looked at the hull temperature readout. He was right. We would cinder in a few minutes.

You know what�s funny? I wanted to ask the captain what to do. It seemed ridiculous that I should make a life and death decision like this. Princes made those kinds of decisions. Captains made those decisions.

Only I was the captain. And if I was wrong, we would dig a hole in the Taxxon dirt at three thousand miles an hour.

<Okay, Arbron,> I said. <In ten seconds. Ten � nine � eight �>

It's a longshot, but Arbron is a very good shot, as we've seen.

# ? Nov 21, 2020 02:56

Fuschia tude: Dec 26, 2004; THUNDERDOME LOSER 2019

Epicurius posted:

<Sure,> I said.

I have to say, I'm kind of disappointed by the characterizations in this book so far, mainly dialog. This in particular was pointed out to me as an extremely American verbal tic the first time I lived abroad (as is "okay", for that matter). Ax seems like a more believable and 'alien' alien in the main series than Elfangor does in this book. Even if this story is meant to be from the POV of an Andalite addressing Andalites, he seems way too informal, slangy, and Americanized to read as a proud warrior alien military cadet, both in dialog and in his narration. He repeatedly highlights being caught off-guard by humans turning their heads to look at things, which, though it is a nice touch, also shows that his viewpoint isn't just being anthropomorphized. It feels sloppy.

I wonder if this story wasn't written much earlier than its publication date would suggest relative to the main series books, considering the lead-time that would be necessary to get the three serialized volumes of it into the Scholastic mail order catalog.

# ? Nov 21, 2020 11:01

pastor of muppets: Aug 21, 2007; We were somewhere around the Living Hive, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold...

Fuschia tude posted:

I have to say, I'm kind of disappointed by the characterizations in this book so far, mainly dialog. This in particular was pointed out to me as an extremely American verbal tic the first time I lived abroad (as is "okay", for that matter). Ax seems like a more believable and 'alien' alien in the main series than Elfangor does in this book. Even if this story is meant to be from the POV of an Andalite addressing Andalites, he seems way too informal, slangy, and Americanized to read as a proud warrior alien military cadet, both in dialog and in his narration. He repeatedly highlights being caught off-guard by humans turning their heads to look at things, which, though it is a nice touch, also shows that his viewpoint isn't just being anthropomorphized. It feels sloppy.

I wonder if this story wasn't written much earlier than its publication date would suggest relative to the main series books, considering the lead-time that would be necessary to get the three serialized volumes of it into the Scholastic mail order catalog.

Agreed. Ax's voice in his first (and only so far) book is so wildly different than Elfangor's here that it is almost jarring. Maybe it really is a stylistic choice since the whole theme of Ax's book is how othered he feels from the humans he's working with, but he still manages to come across as a relatable character. One scene that comes to mind is the one where he's performing his morning ritual out of habit and how well the text conveys his feelings of frustration and hopelessness without having to resort to modern human colloquialisms like saying "man this is stupid." If I squint hard, I can sort of see this being believable if Elfangor is telling his first-hand account at some point during or after his time living on Earth as a human, among other humans for years and would be far more familiar with human speech patterns and mannerisms, and probably incorporating them into his own recollections unconsciously. But, since we don't really know what the framing device is for ANY of these books and who these characters are giving their accounts to, that's hard to say.

I'm giving this book the benefit of a doubt because the plot is so good, but it almost takes me out of it.

# ? Nov 21, 2020 17:01

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

I guess, if you wanted to speak in the book's defense, you could say that the reason, or one of the reasons for the difference is that Applegate has Ax speak the way he does to emphasize his alienness, Whenever we see Ax, we're seeing him among humans. But with Elfangor, he's not. So his narration and diaglogue is more natural?

# ? Nov 21, 2020 17:43

feetnotes: Jan 29, 2008

It's kind of strange, but cute, how much of a crush Elfangor gets on Loren right away. Like oh, sure, a weird mostly bald monkey with excessive long head hair, from a primitive barbarian planet, hobbling around on too few legs? Hell Yeah :q:

# ? Nov 21, 2020 19:53

Soup du Jour: Sep 8, 2011; I always knew I'd die with a headache.

feetnotes posted:

It's kind of strange, but cute, how much of a crush Elfangor gets on Loren right away. Like oh, sure, a weird mostly bald monkey with excessive long head hair, from a primitive barbarian planet, hobbling around on too few legs? Hell Yeah

Elfangor got all the monsterfucker genes in his family

# ? Nov 21, 2020 20:21

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

The Andalite Chronicles-Chapter 20

quote:

<Three � two �>

I killed thrust and punched the air brakes.

SHHHHHRRRRREEEEEEEKKKK!

The Skrit Na ship shook; it bucked; it rattled; it vibrated; it bounced wildly just fifty feet off the grass.I was thrown off-balance. I sprawled across the deck. But Arbron�s rows of Taxxon legs absorbed the punishment. He never wavered. He kept his Taxxon claws on the targeting controls.

Our speed dropped from nearly three and a half thousand miles per hour down to half that. In mere seconds! Too fast for the Bug fighters to react.

What happened next would make Arbron a hero.

Our speed dropped off; the Bug fighters rocketed forward and blew past, doing fifteen hundred mph faster than us.

Arbron fired! TSSSEEEEEWWW!

Fired! TSSSEEEEEWWW

Fired! TSSSEEEEEWWW

Three shots at three targets doing a relative speed of fifteen hundred mph. Three shots in atmosphere! Three shots from a vibrating, bucking wreck of a Skrit Na ship.

I dragged myself up and stared in disbelief out of the forward window.

Three spinning meteorites, three balls of flame, slammed into the ground. They dug craters in the Taxxon dirt and extinguished themselves.

<Nice shooting!> I said. <Seriously nice shooting!>

<Thanks. It turns out Taxxon senses and reflexes are good at this kind of thing. Guess that�s why the Yeerks use Taxxon-Controllers to fly their Bug fighters. It�s nice to know there�s something useful about this disgusting body.>

<We�re going to find a way to get you out of that Taxxon morph,> I said. I tried to sound like I meant it. What else could I say?

Till that moment I�d been too busy trying to stay alive to really think about what had happened to Arbron. Maybe we�d never exactly been best friends, but it was still horrible to look at his foul Taxxon body and think that this was how he would remain. To look into those emotionless red jelly eyes and realize that he was in there, looking back at me.

And I knew what he was feeling, now that the battle was done. The terror. The despair. The awful Taxxon hunger.
I turned the Skrit Na ship around and headed back toward the rushing line of daylight.

<What are you doing?> Arbron demanded.

 I said. 

<Others? You mean Alloran?>

<And the humans,> I said. <They are our responsibility.>

<We are not going back to the spaceport,> Arbron said. <The Yeerks are back there. And Taxxons. They�ll catch us. Do you know what they�ll do if they catch me? They�ll eat me alive, Elfangor.>

<Arbron, you have to hold on. You have to try and hold on.> We were racing back across the dark mountains. Back toward the retreating line of daylight.

<Hold on? Hold on? Are you insane? If we go back there, they�ll eat me! Turn this ship back.

I�m going to use the Time Matrix! I�m going back in time. I�m going back to my life!>

<You can�t light up that Time Matrix. The power signature will be visible to every ship in orbit, every satellite, every ->



I turned my main eyes toward Arbron. I knew that inside there was a scared Andalite aristh. But what I actually saw was the nightmare worm. What I saw was the sloppy red eyes, the round, gasping, eternally hungry mouth.

For a moment that seemed to stretch and stretch, we stared at each other. I don�t know what was going through Arbron�s mind right then. I don�t know what conclusions he�d reached. I only know what he did.

�Sssrrrreeeeyyyyyaaahhh!� he screamed in his slithering, high-pitched Taxxon voice. He reared back, practically laying the upper third of his body horizontal. And then he slammed down on me. Slammed his upper body down, red mouth open wide.

I could have killed him. He knew that, of course. He knew that no Taxxon could hope to outfight an Andalite. But I could not kill him. Not even if that�s what he wanted.

I dodged to my right.

He slammed hard into the instrument panel. Sparks erupted!

He swept his upper body toward me, hoping to slam me against the bulkhead and stun me.

I leaped inside his reach and struck!

SLASH! Two of his needle legs went rolling across the floor.

SLASH! And two more legs were gone.

Arbron sagged. The front part of his body could no longer be held up. He lay, fully prone, a huge, helpless worm.

<Just kill me!> he screamed.

But I was busy. The control panel had been half-wrecked. The ship was bucking and yawing. It was unstable. I reduced power. We had shot across the line into twilight. But I couldn�t see into the deep shadows between the mountain peaks.

<You can�t leave me like this!> Arbron cried.

<I�m going to get you help,> I yelled. <But I have to land this ship!>

<Elfangor! You know what happens to wounded Taxxons! You know!>

<I�ll protect you,> I cried desperately as the ship bucked and shook harder and harder. The two cocooned Skrit seemed about to break loose from their moorings. The active Skrit had gone to the cargo hold. Maybe, even as unintelligent as the Skrit are, he knew better than to be anywhere near a hungry Taxxon.

<You can�t protect me. Fool! Nothing can stop them! Nothing can stop the hunger. I couldn�t stop it. Alloran couldn�t stop it. Don�t you understand? I ate, Elfangor. I ate that wounded Taxxon. I couldn�t help myself!>

If you didn't catch it, Arbron is trying to commit suicide by Elfangor here.

quote:

<Shut up!> I screamed. <Shut up!>

I didn�t want to hear anymore. I couldn�t. I had to focus. I had to land the ship or we�d both die. I had to shut Arbron up.

I swept my stalk eyes around the bridge. Where would the Skrit Na keep weapons? There. A green panel marked with Skrit Na script.

I stretched my left arm to reach the panel. Popped it open. Yes. A handheld Dracon beam. Old and dusty and probably badly maintained, like most Skrit Na things.

I found the power setting. I set it at the lowest intensity.

<What are you doing?> Arbron yelled.



<If you fire that thing, you�ll kill me,> Arbron said. <You have the settings backward. That�s originally a Yeerk weapon. Setting one is the highest setting, not the lowest.>

Suddenly, I knew what Arbron would do. He couldn�t rise up, but he could still scuttle forward.

He came straight for me, rushing and slithering, as if he were aiming his round red mouth at me.

He was trying to force me to shoot him. To shoot him with the Dracon beam set on maximum! But I was too fast for him. I twisted the dial to ten. I fired.

And just as my finger was tightening on the trigger � I realized Arbron had outsmarted me. He�d lied, and I�d fallen for it. Arbron had always been a better student than me. He was a qualified exodatologist.

He knew alien systems far better than me.

I tried to stop. But my finger squeezed. The Dracon beam fired. On maximum power.

But by chance, or maybe by some desperate, too-late twitch of my finger, the beam missed Arbron by a millimeter.
Instead, it blew a two-foot hole through the hull of the ship.

After that, everything was noise and spinning and pain and confusion.

And, he sort of succeeded, maybe.

The next two chapters fit better together, so we're just doing on chapter tonight.

# ? Nov 22, 2020 02:19

freebooter: Jul 7, 2009

I'm 100% sympathetic to his idea of using the Time Matrix to try to wind back the clock on his awful mistake. It's a seductively perfect solution and if this were any other series I'd expect, at this point, for that to be what happens.

Epicurius posted:

We've seen it before, but this is an example of internal Yeerk conflict. At this point, it's only the unimportant Yeerks who are still stuck in Gedd bodies, and they resent their comparably low status.

Given everything this book tells us about what it's like to be a Taxxon, I think I'd take the Gedd body any day!

# ? Nov 22, 2020 02:30

Acebuckeye13: Nov 2, 2010; If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, crisis counseling and referral services can be accessed by calling
1-800-GAMBLER; Ultra Carp

ahahaha Jesus Christ this series

# ? Nov 22, 2020 02:35

ManlyGrunting: May 29, 2014

Acebuckeye13 posted:

ahahaha Jesus Christ this series

I read this poo poo when I was nine!

# ? Nov 22, 2020 20:35

Acebuckeye13: Nov 2, 2010; If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, crisis counseling and referral services can be accessed by calling
1-800-GAMBLER; Ultra Carp

I actually just asked my mom why she let me read these books (not that I was complaining, they're obviously great), and her response was that they were in the school library so it's not like she could have stopped me anyway :v:

# ? Nov 22, 2020 20:45

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

The Andalite Chronicles-Chapter 21

quote:

I woke up.

I was on my side, lying in the dirt.

I looked up at a night sky. Stars, galaxies, three tiny moons.

Where was I?

I stood up. Every muscle in my body ached. Muscles I didn�t even know I had ached. My hooves tasted nothing but bare dirt. My stalk eyes swiveled quickly to look around, but I realized one eye was blinded.

Then I saw the ship, the Skrit Na transport. It was still more or less in one piece. I must have been able to land it. Somehow. I couldn�t remember much of those last few minutes. It was all chaos in my brain.

I forced myself to go over the facts. I was on the Taxxon home world. I was approximately four hundred miles from the spaceport. Loren and Chapman were in the hands of the Yeerks. Alloran � no one knew.

Arbron had tried to trick me into killing him. That�s what I remembered best.

<Arbron!> I called. <Arbron!>

No answer. I trudged wearily over to the Skrit Na ship. I saw the two-foot hole made by the Dracon beam. And then I saw the way the engines had been ripped half off. The ship would never fly again.

I climbed into the wreckage. My second stalk eye was starting to clear a little. I felt it and realized it had just been covered with mud.

Inside the ship I called again. <Arbron!> I looked around. Nothing was working except a tiny glimmer of emergency lighting. For some reason the Skrit Na liked their emergency lighting to be green. Who knows why?

Something was missing.

Of course! The two Skrit cocoons. They must have been knocked loose.

This could be important later. It won't be

quote:

The door to the freight hold was blown open. I went in. The same green emergency lighting illuminated a bizarre scene. In the hold were boxes and crates piled in wild disarray. Many had broken open on impact. They spilled an amazing mass of alien-looking objects. Frozen, preserved animals; bundles of the artificial skin that Loren and Chapman wore; glass objects that seemed to contain liquids; odd, antiquated electronic equipment; small objects that looked like hundreds of rectangular sheets of paper glued together on one side; and a long crate of what I could almost swear were primitive weapons.

All things that the Skrit Na had looted from Earth. Loren would know what they were, no doubt.

But in addition to all the small objects, there were two much larger things. One was a shiny yellow-painted creation with four black wheels.

The other object was the most powerful thing in the history of the galaxy.

It looked like nothing more than a smooth, off-white sphere. It was perhaps ten feet in diameter. Perfectly smooth. Unmarked. You would never know what it was if you hadn�t seen the power readings. Invisible to the eye, it spread its grid down through the very fabric of time-space.

The Time Matrix.

I found I had stopped breathing. I could barely imagine the power I was staring at. To move a ship into Zero-space took more power than a medium-sized star. To move anything through time took ten times that power. The power of ten suns. All somehow contained in that off-white sphere.

<Arbron!> I yelled.

But I knew he wasn�t there. He must have been thrown clear of the ship, just as I had been. Only I hadn�t seen him outside. And now it occurred to me that something else was missing, too. The active Skrit.

Both Skrit cocoons and the active Skrit were gone. Along with Arbron.

I turned slowly away from the Time Matrix. It had a hold over me. It drew my stalk eyes back to it, even as I walked away.
I went back outside. <Arbron!>

The light of the moons and stars was too dim to see clearly. But I had the impression I was in a narrow valley between tall, almost clifflike mountains. Where could Arbron have gotten to? Had he fallen from the doomed Skrit Na ship earlier? He could have ended up slamming into one of the
mountainsides.

I hated to even imagine that.

I went back inside the cargo hold and picked up a handful of paper sheaves. Some were larger and had pictures. By the dim green light I instantly recognized that the pictures were of humans.

I flipped through pictures of humans doing things I could not understand. But then there was one picture I understood immediately. It showed a marvelously tall waterfall. The waterfall crashed into a pool surrounded by trees, all of them green. Overhead was a blue sky.

Two humans were smiling and sticking tiny white cylinders into their mouths.

There was human writing beneath the picture. I don�t read human very well. But I was sure it was a poem to the beauty revealed in the picture.

The grass there looked sweet.

It would be a fine thing to run there. To run with Loren and forget everything that had happened.

Forget that I was alone on a planet of evil, my only companion probably dead, my prince lost. I turned to other pictures. I saw small, strange pictures of humans doing nothing but smiling. And there were pictures of human technology. A flying machine of some sort. Humans holding long rods that spit fire. What seemed to be hideous cities. And then, to my delight, a picture of an actual human spacecraft.

It took me a few seconds to understand what it was. It seemed to be a chemical rocket. An actual chemical rocket!

But the pictures that drew my gaze were the ones of beautiful beaches beside blue seas. And mountains topped with white. And rushing white-water streams surrounded by tall green trees. The trees were all very similar. Not as beautiful as the trees I knew. Still, the pictures spoke of a lovely world, filled with delicious green grass and cool water.

That alien landscape of Earth took me away from the drab horror of the Taxxon world. I wondered if Chapman might be from the jagged human cities. Was that why he was so much harsher than Loren? Was Loren from the beautiful green country where smiling humans stuck white cylinders in their mouths?

Loren is obviously from flavor country.

quote:

I guess I fell asleep looking at that picture. I awoke with lingering traces of awful dreams chasing through my brain.

There was light � natural light from the Taxxon sun.

I ran outside. As I had guessed, I was in an incredibly steep valley. And now I could see tracks in the orange dirt. The marks of dozens of needle-sharp legs. Taxxon tracks!

The tracks came right up to the ship. Had they come while I was asleep? No. I could see my own tracks from the night before. My tracks were over the Taxxon tracks.

Arbron! They were his tracks. Had to be. And yet � No, there had been more than one Taxxon. Three � four others. Five sets altogether.
And then I saw two additional signs. A set of wandering, insectlike tracks, and the evidence of something large being dragged away.

<The Skrit,> I said. <Okay. So Taxxons came. They took Arbron away. And the Skrit. And maybe the two cocooned Skrit.>

I glanced at the spot where I�d been lying unconscious. They had to have seen me, smelled me. And yet I was still alive.

<They have Arbron,> I realized.

I reeled back and fell down. The Taxxons had taken Arbron. I knew what Taxxons did with prisoners.

<No!> What had I done? I�d let them take Arbron alive!

And yet why hadn�t they taken me? And the Time Matrix? Surely Taxxon-Controllers would not have done that.

I recalled Sub-Visser Seven�s reference to Mountain Taxxons - Taxxons who refused to submit to Yeerk control. And I felt just the faintest glimmer of hope. If these had been Yeerk-controlled Taxxons, they�d have taken the Time Matrix. And me.

<What am I supposed to do now?> I asked the empty, dusty sky.

Should I try to follow the tracks to Arbron? No. I had to be logical. Whatever type of Taxxon he�d fallen in with, their hunger would almost certainly seal his doom. And the doom of the poor Skrit Na, too.

Alloran might still be alive. He was my prince. My duty was to get back to him. Tell him about the Time Matrix and Arbron. Somehow. But the Taxxon spaceport was hundreds of miles away, across burning sands.

Then � one of the human pictures I�d seen came back to me. It had shown two smiling humans sitting in something very much like the bright yellow machine in the cargo hold.

I went back to the ship. Yes, this bright yellow machine had four wheels. And you could easily see how humans might sit in it. It had a name in chrome letters: �Mustang.� Naturally, I had no idea what that meant.

I set to work enlarging the hole in the side of the cargo hold. Then I removed the chairs in the machine. I discovered that I could fit inside the machine if I removed the flimsy cloth top. I stared long and hard at the control panel. The computer was tiny and had knobs you could twist. But at first all it did was make static noises.

Then I discovered an actual tape drive! Astoundingly primitive. I pushed the buttons on the small keypad and twisted the knobs again, and to my utter amazement, the computer began to play music.

�I can�t get no � satisfaction!� it screamed.

I quickly turned it down. What kind of race would use a computer to play screaming sounds?

It took twenty minutes more for me to realize that a notched brass insert could be twisted. And when I twisted it �

RRRR RRRRR RRRRRRRR PUH PUH PUH VROOOOM!

The noise was amazing!

It was an actual chemical engine! Something from a thousand years ago! Ridiculously primitive, and yet I found when I pressed my forehoof on a pedal in the floor, the engine roared.

VVVRRRRROOOOM! VVVRROOOOOM! VVVROOOOOOM!

It was primitive, all right. But it vibrated in a most satisfying way. And I liked it.

Ok, So Elfangor's got wheels, he's got tunes, and he's ready to go.

Chapter 22

quote:

have run mag-hover trucks.

I have flown Bug fighters.

I have flown Skrit Na raiders at three thousand miles per hour in atmosphere.

But I had never experienced anything more exhilarating than racing down the valley and out across the open Taxxon desert in my Mustang. It only went a hundred miles per hour, but with the wind in your face, whipping your fur, bending your stalk eyes back, it was certainly a wild ride.
But everything was going wrong.

I was racing across the Taxxon desert in a human vehicle toward probable doom. But with the wind in my face, and the music in my ears mingling with the loud roar of the engine, I didn�t feel so badly.

I had gathered up some of the other human objects the Skrit Na had taken. The writing sheets with pictures. Some of the machines that looked like weapons. And some of the glass bottles containing liquid.

I broke several of the bottles before I figured out how to open them. After that, I quickly determined, that they contained water-based liquids. I poured, the liquids into a shallow pan, and was able to stick in one hoof to drink as I drove. DR. PEPPER, the bottles had said. I figured that was human writing for �bubbling brown water.�

Elfangor in the Mustang. Credit goes to betagore at Deviant Art.

quote:

For a while I just put Arbron out of my mind. I put Alloran out of my mind. And I pictured myself with Loren, driving in my Mustang across the green grass of Earth. Wind in my face. Bubbling brown water running up my hoof.

As I drove, I tried to come up with a plan. One thing was for sure: An Andalite in a Mustang was going to be just slightly obvious. I would need stealth. But I would not morph to Taxxon again.

Not ever.

That�s when the ground beneath my wheels simply opened up.

FFFFWWWUUUMMPPP!

<Aaaaahhhh!>

BOOM! BOOM! RUMBLERUMBLERUMBLE!

The Mustang tumbled and rattled down a steep, rough slope. A dirt ramp that led straight down into darkness.

<Aaaaahhhh!>

I took my hoof off the accelerator pedal. I tried to reach the key to turn off the engine. But the vibration was too severe.

I slid and rattled and rolled in my human machine, down, down, down into the ground. Down and down. And then I slid to a halt.

SCRRUUMMPPFFF!

The only sound was the noise of the engine and the weird human moaning that passed for music.

�� gimme, gimme, gimme the honky-tonk blues!�

I turned off the music.

I was in darkness, but not the absolute darkness I expected. This darkness still afforded sight. There was light enough for my main eyes to see, after they�d had a few seconds to adjust.

I was in a vast underground cavern. Dominating the center of the cavern was a sort of hill or small mountain. It was this mountain that glowed. It glowed a dim but unmistakable red. From this irregular glowing hill came tendrils, each perhaps three or four feet in diameter. As my eyes adjusted I could see that there were a dozen or more of these tendrils, and that each one extended to the edge of the cavern and then kept going into the rock itself.

The tendrils, too, glowed a dim red. I realized that I could see things moving inside the tendrils.

The tendrils were hollow! They were tubes, each about as big around as �

As a Taxxon!

I saw them then. My eyes finally pierced the darkness and saw the Taxxons! Dozens � no, hundreds! They swarmed around and over the glowing red mountain.

As I watched, I saw holes open in the sides of the tunnel-tendrils. Out crawled more Taxxons.

They had to see me. They couldn�t help but see me. And yet none moved to attack me. Instead, they busied themselves pushing dirt and rock back into place to fill the space my Mustang had created.

<IS THIS THE CREATURE?>

<Aaaarrrrggghh!> I screamed.

The voice in my head was huge! Massive! I grabbed my head with my hands. It was like hearing a planet speak! It was only then, as I staggered under the psychic blow, that I realized it: The red mountain was alive!

I heard a different thought-speak voice. <Yes. That�s him,> Arbron said. <He is called Elfangor.>

One Taxxon came slithering toward me out of the mass of bodies around the base of the red mountain. It moved clumsily. Two rows of legs were shorter than the others.

<Arbron?>

<Yes, Elfangor. It�s me.>

 I said.



<The what?>

He waved one Taxxon claw back toward the massive, glowing mountain. <The Living Hive.

Light of the Taxxons. Mother and Father of the Taxxons. The Hive has lost many of its children to the Yeerks. Many of its servants have betrayed the Hive and made an alliance with the Yeerks. But the Living Hive is still the Mother and Father of the species.>

<Arbron, what are you talking about? Have they done something to you?>

Then he laughed - the old Arbron again, for just a moment. <Have they done something to me? Well, they didn�t eat me, if that�s what you mean. The Taxxons who found us after we crashed wanted to eat us both. But I gave them the Skrit instead. I had no choice! And then the Living Hive learned what I was. It drew me here.>

<We�re hundreds of miles from where we landed. How did you get here? You couldn�t possibly have walked.>

<The Living Hive�s tunnels extend across thousands of miles, Elfangor. There is suction in the tunnels. A Taxxon has only to fold back its legs, and the pressure draws it swiftly down the tunnel, as the Hive commands.>

<The legs I � the legs you were missing. They�re growing back.>

<Yes. Taxxons can regenerate legs.>

<Arbron � what�s going on? It wasn�t an accident that the ground opened up beneath me. Did the � the Living Hive want me here for some reason?>

<Yes, Elfangor. The Hive is angry.>

<At me?> I asked, feeling my guts turn over several times. If this glowing red mountain was mad at me, all it had to do was yell in its monstrous psychic voice and I�d be shattered.

<The Living Hive is tired of losing its children to the Yeerks. The Living Hive has long sought a way to destroy the Yeerk invaders and remove them from this planet. But the Hive could not understand the Yeerks and their machines. Now � now, the Hive has an adviser. Someone who understands machines, spaceships, Dracon beams. Someone who will help the Hive destroy the Yeerks and their traitor Taxxons.>

I stared at Arbron. <You?>

He laughed. But this time there was no mirth. <What better future could I have, Elfangor? I am Taxxon now. And now I am preparing for a surprise attack on the spaceport. The Hive will send a thousand of her children with me. I will lead a Taxxon rebellion.>

I didn�t say anything. What was there to say? My hearts were breaking.

Arbron slithered closer, shuffling on his needlelike legs. He looked at me through red jelly eyes.

And even now, I knew he seethed with raging Taxxon hunger.

<Don�t pity me, Elfangor. I am glad I didn�t die. Any life is better than none. And no matter how awful things seem, there is always meaning and purpose to be found.>

<And you�ve found your purpose?>

<We attack tonight. The Living Hive is pushing her tunnels closer to the spaceport. A thousand Taxxons will pour from the ground, surprising the Yeerks and all their creatures.>

I imagined that moment. A thousand huge, hungry worms, erupting amid the technological cathedrals of the ship�s cradles. Erupting amidst Taxxon-Controllers and Hork-Bajir-Controllers.

<You�ll lose,> I said.

<We know,> Arbron said. <But even a Taxxon has the right to control its own planet. Even a Taxxon has the right to resist an invader.>

<But you can�t win,> I said flatly.

<Aren�t lost causes sometimes the best causes, Elfangor?>

How could he imagine that anything to do with Taxxons could ever be a good cause? TheseTaxxon were no less cannibalistic. No less murderous. And yet, if they opposed the Yeerks, could I refuse to offer that help?

<Tell me what I can do to help, Arbron.>

<That�s more like it, Elfangor. We�ll put some tail blades into these Yeerks, right? Right? We�ll be heroes, after all.>