Visser

Chapter 1


The Andalite Bandits were the first piece of good news he had had in quite some time. Oh, he had dealt with the Andalite task force easily enough and killed the beast Elfangor but with the size of the fleet involved there was little glory in that for someone already of his rank. A sub-Visser? Perhaps a promotion would have been in the offing from the council, and a significant one at that. But for himself? No, such things were simply expected in course.

But now there was a guerilla movement alive on the planet itself or at least the spawnling of one, and now for the first time a hole appeared in Visser One's carefully orchestrated plans for a secret invasion of this planet. They should have all been killed last night – even now after all these years the remnants of Alloran came out of the depths to taunt him over last night's debacle. He twisted, a portion of his true Yeerk self pressed into a tendril finer than a single hair on his host's back, which then slithered into the hindmost corner of the brain, sending a jolt of pain down his spine and checking Alloran's mockery.

He had sent word back of course. There was no choice, Visser One's agents were everywhere. Best to send a report back that admitted to everything he couldn't hide anyway. Still, not all was lost, not hardly. War was chaos, that was inevitable. Both of him, Esplin 9466 and Alloran-Semitur-Corrass, shared that sentiment down to their very neurons. And in the chaos, the weak and the stupid fell to the wayside, cut down as though by Dracon Beam, and only the smart and ruthless and those bold enough to strike even into the fire survived.

Rage coursed through him in a hot streak. He had been denied chaos for far too long. Visser One had handed him a Sflorif – a dark pool, literally – when he had taken over this assignment. The Council had been clear that Visser One's plan for a stealthy inception into human society was to stand, and damn her thrice over to the darkest pool of her own, she had seeded with entire invasion force with her own followers and spies; Yeerks he could not remove from power without cause and without a battle no cause was to be had. Instead he had stewed, caught in a web of impotence as the invasion crawled at levels just below what he could accuse his subordinates of deliberate negligence and treason.

He had a few of his own Yeerks now in place at least, his own web to begin the growth of his own spawn here, but Visser One had left deep marks in her stay here. But now… now maybe that was about to change.

Andalite Bandits. It was something that perhaps the rest of the Yeerk Empire might believe. That he had defeated an Andalite force only to allow some of the fighters to make it to the planet surface. But no other Yeerk had an Andalite body, no other Yeerk had put in the time and effort and diligence researching the Andalite foe.

And perhaps most importantly, no other Yeerk had an Andalite brain at their disposal, and a particularly inquisitive brain at that. And one that couldn't help but share his fury at incompetence in subordinates or treasonous superiors; that of a disgraced War Prince. However much as he might resist, Alloran would advance his cause. He always had. He always would. His own brain betrayed him at every step.

Point the First: No Andalite fighters were unaccounted for at the end of the battle. He had not thought any were missing at the time, but after sending his report of losing sight of the Bandits he had rewatched the recordings again with great interest. The Dome Ship had released forty-four star fighters before the disintegration of its flight bays. Five short of the full complement of forty-nine, but such was the nature of real battle compared to tidy manuals of protocol and doctrine. He felt Alloran sneer at that; he pressed down on the emotions in the frontal lobe, feeding that sense of anger to those who had not done battle yet demanded picture perfect results. Yes, he knew how to push his Andalite to do his bidding.

Forty-two of those forty-four had been destroyed. Thirty-one in the battle itself, at the cost of barely a third of that in bug fighters, he thought with no small amount of satisfaction. Eight more had made for the planet's surface, but seven of those had been either destroyed or fallen apart in the planet's atmosphere. One had landed, containing Prince Beast Elfangor, and he had been dealt with personally, in the most literal sense. Eaten by the Visser himself. Three more had self-destructed after their Dome ship had been destroyed, preventing Yeerk capture of either the ships themselves or new Andalite hosts.

That did leave two fighters unaccounted for, but; Point the Second:

There had been at least five so-called Bandits at the Pool last night. One had morphed a giant orange-and-black striped beast. It had been magnificent, he planned on picking up such a morph for himself. There had been an even larger beast, grey with a tail for a nose. There had been a primate, much like the humans themselves only larger and far stronger. There had been the horse, that one he had remembered from the briefing upon arriving on the planet, among those animals most commonly used by the humans. And one had taken an avian form of some kind. That meant that even if two of the bandits were from the missing but presumed destroyed fighters, there were still three bandits that could not be accounted for.

Unless, Point the Third: The Dome itself had been attacked and clearly damaged, but there was no confirmation that it had been destroyed upon impacting the planet's largest ocean. It was possible that there were anywhere up to a dozen arisths on board a fully loaded Dome Ship. They could have survived, acquire an appropriate aquatic morph and escaped. It was certainly possible. And yet-

Point the Fourth: all the Andalite Bandits had morphed animals native to this planet. Why? It might have made sense had they attacked a Yeerk facility hiding among the humans themselves but in the Pool? Would any other Yeerk make the connection? Afterall, even now most battles between Andalites and Yeerks occurred in space, the Andalite morphing ability was as much myth and legend as it was fact. Most did not know that the technology was primarily one for evasion and intelligence gathering than battle itself. And why should it not be this way? An Andalite Warrior would want to be able to hold weapons that had been designed for Andalite physiology (weapons conspicuously missing let it be noted), and his own body was its own weapon. Esplin twitched his own tail instinctively. He fed Alloran a slight pulse of pride.

And perhaps most importantly even beyond biology or technology, an Andalite in battle would wish to die in his own body. And even failing that, he would not go into battle in a morph when doing so would require him to demorph before he could morph into a form necessary for escape or evasion. Morphing was time and energy consuming, and carried significant risk.

But most damningly of all, Point the Fifth: This band of Andalites lost on a foreign world with overwhelming Yeerk superiority and freshly defeated, had not come to the Yeerk Pool for intelligence or to seize weapons or perhaps try to send a signal back to the Andal… no, they had tried to rescue humans. Rescue Hosts. Not even Hosts they could assume were bodies to high ranking or valuable Yeerks, just a random assortment of Hosts, by sheer chance dictated most would be little more than grunts. It made no strategic sense unless, conclusion:

The Andalite Bandits weren't Andalites at all.

He felt confusion coming from his body now, and Esplin waited, feeling the trigger of confusion that kept him completely still, waiting to see how Alloran would react. Ever so gently, he stretched forward, creating a synaptic link to his host's memories of the before times, pushing to the fore wisps of the humiliations he had endured on the Hork Bajir homeworld. Of another guerilla war that could have gone so differently if one of them, either of them, had been listened to by their respective sides.

The girl had sided with the Hork Bajir over her own people, taking his great weapon that would have ended the Yeerk invasion of the galaxy at this planet. And in doing so had doomed so many more. Would another Andalite do the same, here?

He knew his host well. And while he could admit that Alloran's mind was greater than his own, he was a master at manipulating it into an extension of his will. Fear bubbled up in Alloran. He tried to suppress it of course, but even the most subtle of tells were enough for Esplin to know that he had a theory, one he wished to hide as best he could, futile though such was.

There was an Andalite who might very well put the humans first. One that had survived the atmosphere of the planet. Had spend seven minutes and forty-two earth seconds on the surface of the planet before being picked up by his own ship. Alloran roared in despair as Esplin read his fears, spread them out around himself and pieced them back together.

Elfangor the Beast, Elfangor the War Hero, Elfangor the confused and nave and far out of his depth aristh. Somehow, he had an Escrafil Device. Somehow he had smuggled one on board his ship. Somehow, he had in those seven minutes and forty-two seconds passed on the most advanced technology every produced to a group of humans. It was madness, it was impossible… and yet the evidence suggested it was so, nonetheless. He froze, then cursed inside the brainspace, molding into the contours and venting his frustration so that even Alloran was broken from his calculations and forced to endure Esplin's anger.

He had been so close to an Escrafil Device and had likely vaporized it in his haste! Oh the bandits would be the least of his concerns had he gotten his hands on such power! Or perhaps… a cautious optimism filled him, perhaps one so willing to break the law and given the power to humans would go a step further and given them the device itself. He paused, probing into Alloran's thoughts. The host was unsure either way, which was enough for hope to being to spring inside.

He was getting ahead of himself. Conclusions: A group of humans had the ability to morph, and had acquired some of their own Earth species. Possibly, two Andalites had survived and were on the planet, and may or may not be part of these 'bandits'. And third – glee radiated through him at the thought – he now had a change to the script that Visser One had written for him. No longer would he be forced to play her game, taking over the planet in her name and looking mildly incompetent as he did so much more slowly than anticipated.

He needed to find the bandits. He needed to track them down, and then he needed to steer them to where he wanted them to go. To attack outposts and objectives that would bring disgrace on Yeerks loyal to Visser One. To make it clear to the Council that he was the one having to clean up his incompetent superior's messes. To kill as many of the current sub-Vissers on this planet as he could and replace them with his own loyal cadre.

Alloran's mind sped off down this track; thrilled at the chance to kill Yeerks even if at the benefit of Esplin. It was a dangerous path he now sought. To control his own opposition as a weapon against his own. Yet he still had to deliver Earth, but in a way that would make it his own conquest and not Visser One's. And for that matter, keeping the "Andalite" Bandits alive might be too great a task in itself, if these were not trained warriors but a group of primates using technology their species was certainly centuries away from beginning to understand. They might even reveal themselves tomorrow, and then he would have nothing but a stain on his record compounded by the fact that the tailstroke had come from humans.

One step at a time. One cannot strike with the blade that which one does not first see. One cannot infest the Gedd from the safety of the Poolmud. They had attempted to rescue humans from one specific set of cages. He sent out an order that he was not to be disturbed and opened his private terminus; bringing up the schedule of feedings. There were twenty humans in the cage at the time the bandits had attacked. As fortune would have it, more than a few were Controllers to Yeerks loyal to himself, even if not of particularly high rank or import. He would keep this quiet for now, make it appear to be a sensitive but not particularly important request for more information on all close connections to these particular Controllers.

And then, after he captured the bandits without Visser One being the wiser, the games could truly begin.