The Andalite Chronicles, page 2
I searched the hologram of space for a clue. Then I saw it: a tiny, bright point that was moving against the background of the ringed planet.
Was it a Yeerk ship?
the captain said.
Suddenly the hologram shifted and we were looking at a small planet with a single large moon. The planet was blue with swirls of white, and land masses that were brown and green.
The captain cut him off by raising one finger on one hand. Then the captain turned his head and his main eyes toward Arbron and me.
He looked right at me. Right at me. I felt my blood turn to sludge and my brain grind to a halt.
No, this wasn’t happening. The captain really was asking my advice. Clearly I was dreaming.
I sucked in air and tried not to faint.
Then he blew it.
The captain, the prince, the T.O., every warrior on the bridge, and I all stared at Arbron like he was insane. Which he obviously was. You don’t say
The captain looked at Prince Breeyar and the tactical officer. He shrugged.
That got a laugh from everyone on the bridge.
Suddenly, I realized that everyone on the battle bridge was looking at me and Arbron. And then I realized we were both younger and smaller than anyone else.
And that’s when I almost did faint.
The captain was going to send us into battle.
I said coolly.
I could see that he wanted to argue. He wanted to fly the fighter, of course. But there was no chance I was going to miss out on flying my first combat mission. No chance. And I did have seniority.
The inside of a fighter is not exactly roomy. This was an older model, built for two, but it was still not exactly big.
For a second I forgot that this was my first official combat command. I shot a glance at Arbron, and the two of us almost burst out laughing.
Arbron said.
I closed my main eyes, leaving only my stalk eyes open. I wanted to focus. I had been trained on fighters, of course. I was pretty good as a pilot. But still, I was going to be flying alongside Prince Breeyar in his personal squadron. Everyone in the squadron was a great fighter pilot. And Breeyar could just about fly a fighter through a black hole and back out again.
I deeply did not want anything to go wrong. The thought of how humiliated I’d be if I missed a turn or something was too awful to think about.
You could feel the old fighter come alive. The monitors glowed. The floor hummed and vibrated up through my legs. I touched a screen with my fingers and the viewport became transparent. We could see directly out now, through an actual window, not just a screen. Of course we were still in the fighter bay inside the Dome ship, so there wasn’t anything to see.
FWOOOOOSH!
We were blown out the hatch, out into black space. Ahead of us, four other fighters, all Model 22s, dropped from the bottom of the Dome ship’s fighter bay.
Two of the fighters lit up their engines. With a brilliant blue glow, the two fighters flashed out of sight into the black of space.
I waited with my fingers just millimeters above the engine control pad. I was not going to miss my cue.
I punched the control pad and it was like we’d been kicked in the back.
SHWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOF!
We were out of there! Out! Of! There!
Unfortunately, we had taken off so fast we’d shot right past the prince’s own fighter.
The next thing I heard in my mind was the prince.
I was relieved he didn’t reprimand me. But I was burning with embarrassment. There it was: my big chance to look like a veteran. And I’d looked like an amateur.
I maneuvered my fighter back into formation behind the other two chase fighters.
Arbron brought the Skrit Na raider up on the holographic imager. It was very different than any Andalite ship. Our fighters were elongated ovals with two long, cylindrical engines attached by stubby “wings” on either side. Our main weapon, or shredder, arced overhead much like an Andalite tail.
The Skrit Na ship was round, with tapered sides. It looked like a fat disc. You could hardly even see where the engines were, and the Skrit Na had blinking colored lights all around it. I guess they find that attractive or something.
Then …
Prince Breeyar rapped his orders.
I looked at Arbron. We both nodded. It was getting more complicated now. We could actually have a fight!
Suddenly a bright blue engine flame shot from the bottom of the nearer Skrit Na.
The Skrit Na ship hauled. And we hauled after him.
Then, to my total shock, the Skrit Na fired his weapons!
A thin beam of greenish light lanced toward the prince’s fighter. It missed!
A split second later, the prince fired and missed. His wingman fired and also missed.
It hadn’t even occurred to me that Arbron would actually want to take the risk of shooting. But then he said,
I didn’t need to be asked twice. I punched up Maximum Burn, and we went to one-tenth light speed in about three seconds!
The acceleration was outrageous! The compensators were slow and we were thrown back against the bulkhead.
I fought to get back on my feet and to the controls. I renewed my thought-speak link to the computer.
The computer adjusted and we climbed painfully to our feet. Arbron reached his weapons station and took aim. I heard the hum of the shredder powering up, followed quickly by the sound of firing.
Hmmmm. TSEEEEWWW!
The shredder beam sliced through space and burned away a section of the Skrit Na’s engines. The blue engine flame died instantly.
It was the most beautiful thing I’d seen up to that point in my life. But at the same time I felt a wave of jealously that Arbron had taken the shot and not me.
Of course he only complimented us because we were arisths. I mean, for the regular pilots it would have been no big deal. But who cared? Prince Breeyar had said we did a good job.
At that moment I just loved being alive. I even loved Arbron, as annoying as he was sometimes. This was why I’d joined the military. This was why I’d become an aristh. This was what it was all about.
Arbron gave me a dirty look.
See, it’s kind of a slight insult to say an aristh is good with computers. That’s like a technician thing, not a warrior thing. Even though warriors are supposed to be good at all kinds of science and art as well as fighting.
I was on top of the universe. I was a hero-in-waiting. Practically a prince already. The war with the Yeerks would be over just as soon as I could get in the game.
I was a fool.
I guess most people know about the Skrit Na. But in case you don’t, I’ll tell you what I know.
The Skrit Na don’t care what anyone else in the galaxy thinks about them. They don’t belong to the Yeerk Empire. They aren’t one of our allies. They don’t care about laws or customs or anything.
All the Skrit Na care about is collecting things and owning things.
The Skrit Na are unusual in another way: They are actually like two different races. The Skrit look like huge insects, almost as large as an Andalite. They have fourteen legs and six sets of antennae, and aren’t really very intelligent. But the Skrit each eventually weave a cocoon and a year later, out of the dead Skrit there pops a Na.
The Na are a whole different story. The Na have four very slender legs. Sometimes they rear up and walk on just two legs, using the other legs as hands. They have large heads shaped like Andalite heads, only they have just two huge eyes.
Skrit Na are constantly going to peaceful planets and kidnapping the local species. Sometimes they perform medical experiments on them. Sometimes they just fly around with them and then let them go. But often they carry local creatures away to add them to zoos on the Skrit Na home world.
Like I said: a weird species. No one understands the Skrit Na. Personally, I don’t think they understand themselves.
I pulled our fighter up alongside the damaged Skrit Na ship and turned on the tractor beam to hold the two ships tightly together.
The Skrit Na decided to make it easy. I guess they figured they’d made us mad enough. Skrit Na are no match for Andalite power.
I married my hatch to the Skrit Na hatch and popped it open. I equalized gravities and marched as boldly as I could into the captured ship, with Arbron just behind me.
There was smoke in the other ship. And there seemed to be storage boxes strewn here and there. Two clumsy Skrit lumbered past, kicking through the debris. The ceiling pressed low, and I had to duck my head or risk bruising my stalk eyes. A pair of cocooned Skrit were more or less glued to a corner of the ceiling. One looked about ready to hatch a Na.
There were three Na that I could see. The Na captain was pressed back against his command console. He looked scared. But not of me. He was glaring at a bizarre creature that had a Skrit Na hand weapon, a modified Yeerk Dracon beam, pointed at the Na captain.
The bizarre creature stood just a bit shorter than me. And what was incredible was that it stood on just two legs.
Just two. It had arms, but you could see that it didn’t use them to walk. They wouldn’t have been long enough.
The creature’s face was the same size as mine, but rounder. There were two small bluish eyes on the front of its face. And the lower third of the face was split open horizontally.
Many species have such openings. They’re called mouths.
Its body had no fur, but did have brightly colored skin that seemed to hang loosely in some areas. Its upper body was covered in loose, almost billowy, white skin with tiny pastel patterns. Its two legs were covered in a rough-textured blue skin that stopped suddenly at its hooves. The hooves were white and adorned with what looked like thick threads or cables laced together.
But what caught my eye was the hair that sprouted from its head. It was long and wavy and as gold as a yellow sun.
“Freeze, horse-boy,” this bizarre creature said, making the sounds with its mouth. It turned the Dracon beam on me. “One move and I pull the trigger. I don’t know what this gun will do, but I’m willing to bet you won’t like it.”
Of course, at that point all I heard was gibberish sounds. The translator chip, which all members of the Andalite military have implanted in their heads, requires a few minutes to begin to understand new languages. Some languages it never does get right. Fortunately, almost all species can understand our thought-speak since it works at a level beyond mere words.
“Be careful, Andalite friend,” the Na captain said. “They are savage, violent beings. Crazy! Wild! Oh, yes! This female is a vicious beast! Better to kill her! Or even better, let us cage her again. Yes, yes, that would be best. As soon as you mistakenly fired on us, she sprang up and grabbed my weapon. Wild and dangerous, oh, yes!”
The translator chip handled the Na language easily. I didn’t bother to answer the Na. Everyone knows Skrit Na will lie to anyone about anything.
The Na captain winked one of his big eyes at me. As if he and I were on the same side. His fellow Na officers all looked scared. The Skrit went on with their simple duties like nothing was happening.
To be honest with you, I didn’t know what to do. I was as confused as the Skrit Na.
The only one who seemed to have a clue was the bizarre two-legged creature herself.
