Animorphs: Ressurection

[Underseen]

Dru stared at Fisher. "What? Is it something important?" He asked, waiting for the conversation.

[Estelore]

<Say your piece, Fisher, but don't forget that Aya probably has at least some surveillance equipment in this room.>

[Gumby]

Fisher didn't bat an eye.

"How can we trust this woman? She's a Yeerk for crying out loud, how do we know she won't just fly us to some uncharted system, snatch the cube, then eject us into a sun?"

[Estelore]

<<Fisher, any one of us could acquire her, given half a chance to get close enough, and I speak enough Yeerkish to operate some simple ship controls. Any one of us could also simply threaten to do irreparable damage to vital systems on the ship, if she attempts to double-cross us. You know and I know that I can move my tail much faster than she can draw her Dracon weapon. At this stage, while I do not trust her, I do believe she sincerely wants to get resources from Earth.>>

Reli retrieved the liquid grass bag from her hoof and looked for a place to dispose of it.

<<She will not be able to get within orbital range of the planet Earth, in a Yeerk ship, without us on board to win her flight clearance in Human airspace. She has to keep us at least that long, and killing us before landing would also result in her getting blasted to very small crispy pieces. Right now she is probably trying to find out from her computer if we are who we appear to be, and if there is any bounty for us in Known Space... or at least, that is how I would react, if a morphing cube and several wayward travelers appeared from Kelbrid Space and got on my vessel.>>

[Gumby]

Of course Fisher had much more pressing issues at mind, but he wasn't going to discuss them openly. He would not allow the slug to take the cube. Reli said she could operate some basic ship controls, good. That saved the trouble of potentially beating such information from the Yeerk -or starving it out of the creature. He hissed irritably and stalked back to his seat, slouching down in it. But he had to keep this argument up for appearances.

"Stasis Reli, Bio-stasis. She could potentially flip a switch and immobilize all of us without even blinking. And once she finds out who we are, she may very well flip the switch, jettison us, and sell the cube on the black market." He sighed in exasperation, and slid further into his chair.

[Estelore]

<<Fisher, have you noticed the size of this vessel? Yes, she could jettison us, but she would not have enough air volume left to make it alive to the nearest planet.  This room is too large to be a worthwhile atmosphere sacrifice. As long as we do not wander into smaller compartments along the external hull, it will be too risky for her to expend her own air on being rid of us or poisoning us into sleep.>>

[Gumby]

Fisher dragged his hand across his face with a sigh. Now he wished he had picked up on the morphing thing, thought speak would be mighty useful about now.

"No, stasis. She could just lock us up in our sweet sleep and kick us out the back door, if you get what I'm saying."

[Underseen]

Dru wondered why Fisher was being speciesist, or was it racist? Either way it was wrong. "Excuse me, but I doubt anything bad from her, she had giving us hospitality and is trying to help us. Even if she is a bad person, which she isn't, you should at least pretend to be grateful of her."

[Estelore]

<<To put us into stasis, she would have to capture us. Attempting to knock us out in this room with a gas would just poison her own air supply, and no human body is fast enough on a Dracon beam to stun all of us in the time it would take one of us to get to her and stop her. We do not have the upper hand, no, but she would be inconvenienced by any attempt to harm us, at present. Furthermore, she has much more to gain at this time by keeping us alive.>>

Reli resisted the urge to roll her eyes- such a human expression!- at Dru's naivete.

<<Just between you and me, Fisher, I think it serves us to keep the boy ignorant for now, but I will fill him in enough that he might not be a complete liability.>>

<Dru, it is less that she is automatically a bad person and more that her presence in this sector of space, in the type of ship she is flying, is extremely suspicious. Fisher's caution is well-founded, on those grounds. At this moment, we are at Aya's mercy to get us home safely, and if she wanted to make trouble for us and just take the bounty of our ship and our morphing cube, then the lot of us would be... in a cucumber.>

Reli blinked slowly as her brain's implanted translator chip refined the idiom she was attempting to use.

<...a pickle, rather. I do not know why humans make expressions relating plants to danger. Anyway, to put it simply, Aya is in a position to give us trouble or worse, and we are out of other options. We are the 'buyers' in a 'seller's market'. Aya could be the very kindest person, and it would still be wise for us to keep our wits sharp.>

[Gumby]

Fisher twisted his neck, looking dubious, giving a slight nod of the head at Reli concerning Dru.

"I don't care. I refuse to trust some Yeerk who's been on the run for God-knows how long in a stolen ship. She's either gone bush-crazy or she's got some plan in mind. I don't think she'd risk going to one of the places she's clearly avoiding, more likely she'll wait 'till we're asleep and then do something to keep us under lock and key." He leaned forward towards Reli across the table. "I wonder how much a morph-capable Andalite host body would go for on the black market, hmm?"

[Terenia]

There is a hiss as the door slides back open, readmitting Aya. Her expression has shifted from pleasant to stormy, and the smile on her face is knife-like -- nowhere near as pleasant as it had been. The bag, and its contents, are gone.

"Given the context of your conversation, I thought it would be fit to properly introduce myself," Aya's voice says in a stilted, staccato manner, giving confirmation to Reli's suspicion that they were being monitored. "Terliss Five-Seven-Eight." He gives Fisher a tight smile. "I'd like to assure you that this ship is not, in fact stolen. It was given to me as payment many years ago. I command a high price, in both Andalite and Kelbrid space. I could easily obtain a vessel that would be more inobtrusive, but I prefer Yeerkish technology."

The Controller leans against the doorframe, one hand resting casually on the butt of his Dracon. "It seems as if my host has not been particularly clear on our terms. Her downfall, being human, is the tendency to sympathize with your kind, despite the atrocities they have committed against mine."

Terliss licks his lips, his voice lowering. "Let me be perfectly clear, human. I am a turelek. Do you know the word? It is old Yeerkish. The closest English equivalent would be 'mercenary' or 'assassin'. I have no fear of going into human or Andalite space, as they tend to be some of my most frequent clients. It is dangerous, yes, but I have learned to avoid most of the dangers." His expression shifts into a knowing smirk. "Besides, I have military clearance with several of Earth's governing bodies."

He quiets for a moment, letting that information sink in, before continuing. "Now, none of my clients have a direct gashad on your head, so do I have any desire to destroy you. Right now, you will serve me better alive. So long as you follow my directives without complaint that will likely remain the case. Understood?" Aya's eyes narrow at his last words, and he directs them specifically towards Fisher, his distaste for the human evident.

[Gumby]

Fisher did all to refrain himself from snorting at the word atrocities, but failed, narrowing his eyes contemptuously at the Yeerk. He was willing to buy that she, that it was an assassin of some type. Certainly there had been cases like it springing up time to time. But he refused to believe it was employed by the UN. Fisher smiled thinly.

"I'm glad to see that's all laid out. And don't fret your pretty face, I don't plan to start shooting holes fifty million light years from the nearest non-artificial atmosphere." He said patronizingly, then leaned back in his seat, seemingly without a care in the world. He believed it that they had value to its purposes alive, so it surely wouldn't go through the trouble to kill him over a bit of sass.

[Estelore]

Now it was Arhareli's turn to watch Fisher with wary stalk-eyes. Please, human, do not give the Yeerk a reason to actively want to kill us. I had better change the subject.

<Greetings, Terliss Five-Seven-Eight, and thank you also for permitting us passage on your ship. Do you have a projected timetable for our  arrival in the Earth system?>

[Terenia]

Terliss' expression tenses at Fisher's response, and he turns his attention to the Andalite almost gratefully.

"That, my Andalite friend, depends entirely on how Z-Space decides to treat us," he says. The word 'Andalite' is anything but friendly. "If it does not reconfigure itself then it will be a matter of two or three days. If it does reconfigure...a good deal longer than that. In any case, we will be spending a number of days together, so let us make it as bearable as possible, yes?"

He gives Fisher one more suspicious look before sliding back, Aya's posture immediately relaxing as she regains control of her limbs. "Sorry about him," the human says, rolling her eyes. "Like I said, he doesn't talk much, and when he does he comes off as a bit out of touch. Hope the whole 'turelek' thing doesn't bother you too much." She shrugs, pulling her hand away from her Dracon to fold her arms across her chest. "It's a living, and a pretty darned good one at that, considering the fact that I've got a rogue parasite in my head."

[Estelore]

<While we are not ourselves mercenaries, we were hired as a group for various skills through which we collectively functioned not so dissimilarly from a mercenary team. Our mission was not, strictly speaking, legally 'on the level', in the sense that any foray into Kelbrid Space automatically comes with the assumption of being disavowed by the Andalite government if anything went diplomatically wrong while we were there. I cannot speak for my comrades, but I do not judge you negatively for your line of work, and if you have contacts in Earth governments, then no doubt there is a need for the work you do.>

Reli couldn't help thinking that her own involvement in the start of this mission was basically as an intelligent bit of muscle and firepower. How things had changed, to be the peace-making voice now! Perhaps their employers truly had been thinking ahead, to hire her. She certainly had no love for the Yeerks, but at the same time, she had a level-headedness in this situation which no military Andalite could ever possess: any member of the Fleet would have already attempted at least twice on Terliss' life. A military Andalite would have turned this into an inadvertent suicide mission for himself and the rest of the crew, and he would have made no sincere attempt to keep the humans alive following the ambush on the Pemalite planet. A civilian fighter like herself could be trusted to value civilian lives and to see death as a last resort instead of a means to an end.

Fisher's presence certainly made up for any hot-headedness Reli lacked, but at the same time, his open prejudice served a very useful purpose: it allowed Reli to appear, by comparison, the mature and peaceable member of their crew, and not the hostile Andalite a Yeerk would expect to find... and that was probably the only thing keeping Terliss from killing them on sight just for the sake of safety. If an Andalite can seem 'tame' to a Yeerk, then perhaps this venture home would be successful, and if Fisher, the military human, seemed a bit less tame... well, at least humans can appear to be disarmed. All his rage would carry a certain sense of inefficacy, no matter how skilled he was in unarmed combat, because he stood next to an Andalite. The overall effect was that they were both rendered benign-seeming, simply by comparison to each other: Reli seemed 'safe' by being calm next to an angry Fisher, and Fisher seemed 'safe' by being a Shredder-less human next to an Andalite's tail-blade. The other three humans, well... they were a joke, probably, in Terliss' eyes. Their immaturity and unfamiliarity with the situation belied the fact that Shaun and Chris had now both seen and created more bloodshed in a week than most humans experience in their entire lives. It belied that they were both pretty experienced morphers from just this one ill-fated venture. As for Dru, his obliviousness was even more protection for all of them, and Reli would preserve it as long as possible.