The Andalite Chronicles

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.

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!>

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?>

<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!>

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.

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.

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 …

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?>

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

<I can,> 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?>

<I can make the shot, Elfangor,> 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.>

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 …>