The Extreme Page 3

  "Stay low!" Jake reminded us. "Go for the belly!"

  A wall of blue fur galloped right across my line of flight. I saw two flies zip down and under the heaving curve and disappear from my limited sight. Then two more flies from out of nowhere.

  My turn.

  I shot through the air. Visser Three loomed straight ahead but I couldn't see clearly enough to tell whether his stalk eyes were looking in my direction. I focused on his stomach and made a beeline for it.

  Six inches away! I did the fly somersault, a midair Shannon Miller kind of thing that brought my legs up and wings down, vectoring in like a wobbly rocket.

  Two inches to touchdown! NO! He cut a sharp right and veered away.

  I shot toward him again, but now he bolted to the left. "What's with him, is he drunk?" I demanded in outrage.

  "Aren't you on board, Marco? Everyone else is here," Jake said.

  31 "No, we're playing catch. Ahh!"

  He'd stopped suddenly. A hand the size of Colorado reached around, trying to grab me! I slammed into reverse, spun in midair, and zipped away. Only then did I realize the true target of Visser Three's hand.

  He was scratching his butt.

  "Marco?" A thought-spoken whisper. Jake. "Are you here?"

  Suddenly, it got very dark.

  A big black shadow, blocking out the sun. Something straight out of a science fiction movie.

  A Bug fighter. They're called that for a reason. They look like a big, black cockroach. A roach the size of a school bus, with two long pincerlike things sticking straight out, like antennae with heavy starch.

  The Bug fighter slowly lowered until it touched the ground. I froze. Visser Three froze. A doorway - or at least a rectangle of relative darkness - appeared in its side.

  The big blue blob in front of me trotted inside.

  I followed him.

  Inside it was dark. A few lines of light along what was probably the ceiling and floor. An occasional box of light, probably display monitors. The air pressure around me suddenly changed as

  32 the entrance closed. I maintained and kept my eyes on the Visser.

  "Marco? Are you here?" Jake asked again.

  "Attempting rendezvous now, Houston. Ten seconds to contact."

  Visser Three came to a halt. I dove for his underbelly. Just as I felt his fur under my feelers, my brain exploded with the sound of very loud thought-speak.

  "Is the Blade ship ready?" Visser Three never whispers.

  Something answered. A Taxxon? They're smarter than Hork-Bajir. Weirder, too. They eat their own.

  But I couldn't see anything but giant blue stalks of fur. On the floor of this jungle was warm, pinkish-khaki skin. I didn't want to touch that skin. I grabbed a few blue stalks and clung.

  "Ax, what was that Taxxon saying?" Jake asked.

  "I believe he was stating estimated departure and arrival times."

  "And?" Jake asked.

  "And I am afraid we have a problem, Prince Jake," Ax said.

  My fly stomach bounced. Then it bounced again. I clung tighter to the Visser's fur. We were taking off and I was fighting the fly's panic reaction: Things vibrating means MOVE!

  33 "What's the problem, Ax?" Jake asked.

  "I am afraid our journey is going to be a long one."

  "How long?" I asked.

  "Approximately three and a half of your Earth hours."

  "Uh-oh," I heard Cassie reply.

  "Oh, man!" Tobias said.

  "You're kidding me," Rachel said.

  The reason we weren't happy to hear this news, of course, is that it meant we were going to have to demorph at some point in flight. Somewhere aboard a ship occupied by Taxxons and Hork-Bajir and Visser Three.

  34 "Three and a half of our hours! Where are we going, the moon?" Tobias asked.

  "Don't you start with the our-hour-your-hour thing, Tobias," I warned.

  "No," Ax replied. "Going to the moon would take less than three and a half of your hours. Our journey will take longer because we will be flying through the planet's atmosphere."

  "Any idea of our destination?" Jake asked.

  "The navigator did not say. I will, however, do my best to gauge our direction as we go along."

  "Ax, you'd have made a great Cub Scout."

  "A what?"

  "What are we going to do?" Cassie asked.

  Good question. We were trapped on a Bug

  35 fighter with our worst enemy. And now we had the choice of revealing our presence - suicidal - or spending the rest of our lives as garbage-eating insects.

  BOOOOM!

  "What was that?!" Rachel cried. "Man, this fly does not want to sit still."

  "I think we are docking with the Blade ship," Ax replied.

  If a Bug fighter is like a bus, a Blade ship is like a jumbo jet. It's shaped like a battle-ax from the Middle Ages. And it's Visser Three's personal ship.

  "This might actually be a good thing," Jake said. "At least the Blade ship is big enough so we might find someplace to hide and demorph. No way we could demorph on the Bug fighter without being seen."

  "Have I mentioned that I hate this morph?" Tobias added. "I mean, I'm finding myself very attracted to the Visser's sweat. How sick is that?"

  "Yeah," Cassie agreed. "He stinks. But to my fly brain, he actually smells kind of good."

  "He certainly does not stink," Ax said defensively. "This is an Andalite body, and Andalites have never been known to stink."

  Suddenly the air pressure changed, ever so slightly. Just enough to make me lose control. I

  36 started to fly, then canceled that order and ended up zooming back hard into the Visser's belly.

  "Oops," I said.

  "Oops what?" Jake said tensely.

  "Oops, he may have felt that." I glued my wings down and managed to calm the jumpy fly brain just as six gigantic blue columns crashed down around me, digging across the skin and through the fur like massive plows.

  "Oh, man, I'm being scratched!" I cried.

  "Cursed parasites!" Visser Three shouted.

  "Hey, he's one to talk," Rachel said.

  "Heads up, everybody," Jake said. "Be ready to jump at any second!"

  The first scratch missed me. As I tried to avoid the Visser's searching fingers, I jumped from palm-tree-sized hair to palm-tree-sized hair with blazing speed, like Tarzan after a gallon of Mountain Dew.

  "Marco, stay still!" Jake shouted.

  "That's easy for you to say!" I shouted back.

  Suddenly the fingers stopped raking and formed a cage around me. Trapped!

  "I'm about to get pinched!"

  "Marco!" Cassie cried.

  I felt a slight breeze wash over me. The kind of minuscule air movement only a fly notices. Then I felt a new vibration. Dozens of tiny impacts: the needle-sharp legs of a Taxxon.

  37 "He's welcoming the Visser back aboard the Blade ship," Ax translated. "Or he may be telling him his brother is a meteor fragment. I understand Galard, but this morph's hearing is very uncertain."

  The Visser took his hand from his belly. The telephone pole fingers withdrew.

  "Are all the Venber on board?" Visser Three growled.

  "Venber?" Ax asked excitedly. "He did say Venber, did he not?"

  "I don't know," Jake replied. "Is that important?"

  "Hey, Ax. You're not holding out on us, are you?"

  "I must have misunderstood," Ax said, not exactly answering my question.

  "Excellent," the Visser replied. "With twice as many Venber, our project will be completed in half the time."

  "Well, at least he knows his math," Tobias said wryly.

  And that was it for the better part of an hour. They say combat is ninety-nine percent waiting around and one percent sheer terror. They're right. We hung out upside down, clinging to Visser Three's stomach hair, and tried not to let ourselves be overcome by the unholy, screaming willies.

  38 I mean, it's one thing being a fly when you're busy. But just hanging out, you st
art to notice the spit dribbling off the end of your proboscis. And that's not good.

  "So," I said, "did anyone bring a deck of cards? Anyone seen a good movie lately? Anyone have any juicy confessions they'd like to make?"

  We were in what must have been the Visser's private quarters. A spare room with no furniture except for a computer console. After all, he was in an Andalite body, and Andalites don't sit.

  There were various things hanging from the walls, like art. Some were large and elaborate, made of steel or something like steel. Some had electrical probes. Some had teeth or spikes or saws. We had an idea they might be instruments of torture collected from around the galaxy.

  We had that idea because I recognized one of the artworks: It's called an "iron maiden." Not the dinosaur rock band, the Middle-Ages cage with the spikes inside.

  It was a little depressing to realize that some Earth museum had unwillingly made a contribution on behalf of Homo Sapiens.

  And it was even more depressing realizing that we were going up against a guy who thought you should hang an iron maiden on the wall instead of a Baywatch poster.

  39 He'd cleverly come up with two plans. Plan A involved Visser Three leaving the room voluntarily while the rest of us stayed behind and did a quick demorph followed by a remorph. But as time passed and the Visser made no move to leave, it looked more and more like we were going to have to implement the much riskier Plan B.

  Fine by me. I was ready to do something or go insane. Inactivity makes for way too much time to think about things like death and destruction and pain and violence. Inactivity makes for fear.

  Another good defense against fear is humor. From my point of view, if you're not laughing, you're crying. Humor as coping mechanism.

  40 Besides, I sort of consider it my job to keep us loose in these situations. Entertain the troops.

  "Say, Rachel, I got a joke for you," I said.

  "No you don't," she said.

  I ignored the warning. "Two blonds are standing across the river from one another ..."

  "Hey," Tobias interrupted. "Remember, I'm a blond, too. It may be dirty-blond, but it's

  still blond."

  "Yeah, for a couple of hours a week," I said. "Anyway, the one blond calls out to the other blond, "How do I get to the other side?" "

  "That is very funny, Marco," Ax said brightly.

  "I haven't told the punch line yet, Ax," I replied. "And the blond across the river calls back to her, "You ARE on the other side!" "

  "That does it," Rachel said. "Time for Plan B."

  "I've heard that one before," Tobias said, unimpressed.

  "I am afraid I do not understand," Ax replied.

  "Tobias, where exactly did you hear that joke before?" I demanded. "A sparrow, an owl, and you, hanging out and swapping stories?"

  "Ax, do you have any idea where we are?" Jake asked.

  "I believe we are heading north."

  "Still north?" Jake replied. "How much longer until we have to demorph?"

  "About twenty minutes," Ax replied. "of your

  41 minutes," he added, with what I swear was deliberate provocation.

  "Good plan. Let's do something, anything." Rachel. Of course.

  "Yeah. Guess we should," Jake said without much enthusiasm. "Ax, are you ready?"

  "I believe so, Prince Jake."

  "Break a leg, Ax-man," I said.

  "Whose leg?"

  "It's just a ... never mind."

  Everything was quiet for a few seconds. Then our brains were bombarded with the sound of very loud thought-speak.

  "Guard! Come in here immediately!" Ax bellowed. A pretty decent imitation of Visser Three.

  I sensed a breeze filled with the scent of a Hork-Bajir warrior.

  Visser Three's sudden, startled movement felt like a massive earthquake. I clung tightly to my chosen hairs.

  "What are you doing, fool?!" Visser Three shouted at the Hork-Bajir. "What is the meaning of this interruption?!"

  The Hork-Bajir muttered.

  "Get out!" the Visser raged. "Get out or I'll feed you to the Taxxons!"

  The guard left.

  "Again, Ax," Jake said.

  Ax bellowed.

  42 Another breeze. I smelled a different Hork-Bajir. I could feel Visser Three quaking with rage.

  "What?!" he screamed. It was like being in a front row seat at a Beastie Boys concert. Right by the big speakers. I thought my head was going to explode.

  A sudden muscle spasm. I knew right then that the Visser had snapped his deadly tail. Seconds later ...

  WHUMPF!

  Something big hit the floor. I didn't want to think about what it was. Who it was.

  "Once more ought to do it, Ax," Jake said. I could sense his hesitation.

  I almost felt sorry for the Hork-Bajir. They're just helpless slaves of the Yeerks. Whatever they do is at the command of the evil Yeerks in their brains. In fact, before the Yeerks conquered them, the Hork-Bajir were a peaceful race. They're just big, dumb, bark-eating lizards. And kind of sweet, really.

  Innocent victims in a war that didn't seem to have any other kind.

  Ax shouted a third time and I whiffed two Hork-Bajir entering. I guess they thought two at once would help.

  It didn't.

  The Visser lunged, out of control with rage. Toward the two Hork-Bajir, toward the door. Out!

  43 "Everybody off!" Jake yelled. "Stay low!"

  I let go and shot through the air. I watched as the huge blue blob disappeared through the doorw ay. The door shut behind him.

  "Demorph and remorph as fast as you can!" Jake instructed.

  I landed on the floor and immediately began to demorph.

  Morphing's never logical. It never happens the same way twice.

  This time, the first thing that changed were my eyes. Thousands of them went POP. Just like that, I had my human eyes again.

  This was not necessarily a good thing, since it gave me the chance to watch everybody - including myself - demorph. And it gave me a real good view of the poor Hork-Bajir on the floor. At least he was in one piece. He might still live. Hork-Bajir are a sturdy bunch. Yeah, he might live.

  If the Taxxons didn't find him first.

  44 Rachel's change was especially weird. At first, she just grew. Before my eyes she went from being a little speck to a five-foot-tall, thousand-eyeballed insect, with blond hair sprouting from the back of her head.

  Cassie has a talent for morphing. She does it better than any of us, even Ax. In a few seconds, she looked totally normal - except for the two gossamer wings attached to her back. She looked like an angel or a fairy godmother.

  I looked at my hands. They were hairy claws, gigantic versions of a fly's leg. I watched as the thick hairs disappeared, replaced by my own body hair. The ends of the claws cracked open

  45 like eggshells. My fingers slowly slithered out, like five baby snakes emerging from their shells.

  "Everybody take about two deep breaths and remorph," Jake whispered when we all were completely demorphed. Four humans, one red-tailed hawk, and one young Andalite.

  Easier said than done. Morphing is like running a two-hundred-yard dash at top speed. You're not ready to collapse afterward, but you're not ready to do it again right away, either.

  I took a few deep breaths and concentrated on becoming a fly. I imagined those thousand eyes and those hairy legs. That disgusting proboscis.

  Jake was already changing, getting smaller and smaller. Rachel's arms began to shrink and grow black hairs. Cassie's wings were sprouting. Tobias's intense hawk eyes began to double, triple, quadruple, while his hooked beak grew outward, transforming itself into a tube.

  Ax and I seemed to be behind everybody else. Then we heard a faint hissing. We exchanged worried glances before turning our eyes toward the door.

  The door slid open.

  The unconscious Hork-Bajir's luck had just run out.

  Taxxon! A tree-trunk-thick centipede with

  46
needle legs and weak claws and a red-rimmed mouth and raspberry Jell-O eyes.

  It saw me, only half-morphed. It was puzzled.

  Then it saw Ax. An Andalite. No longer puzzled. Terrified! The Taxxon hasn't been born who can confront an Andalite.

  "Ax!" Jake shouted. "Pretend you're Visser Three!"

  "What is the meaning of this interruption?!" Ax shouted.

  The Taxxon didn't reply. He wasn't fooled. He was motoring back out the door. And that couldn't happen.

  Just then my human eyes became compound fly eyes. I didn't see Ax's tail snap through the air like a bullwhip.

  I heard fwapp.

  A soft impact sound followed, like someone had dropped oatmeal on the floor.

  An extremely foul smell filled the room. I knew that smell.

  "I think we are in trouble, Prince Jake," Ax said.

  "Is it dead?" Jake replied.

  "In a manner of speaking," Ax continued. "One half of it is consuming the other half."

  Taxxons are the universe's most dedicated cannibals. They don't just eat other Taxxons. They even eat themselves, given the chance.

  47 Hunger defines their world. In death, the Taxxon was acting out of some awful instinct.

  "Ax," Jake said, in his very calm, no-one-freak-yet voice. "Finish morphing to fly and let's get out of here. Everybody stick close together. Hug the ceilings. Follow me. C'mon!"

  We shot out of the room into a long hallway. The walls and ceiling of the corridor were black. The floor seemed to be an illuminated path. Four thin tubes of solid light hung where the ceiling met the wall.

  "Ax, what are these lights along the ceiling?" Jake asked.

  "Each color designates the path to a certain portion of the ship. For example, on Andalite ships, following a green line will take you to the control room. A red line will take you to the engine room."

  "Do you think these light lines function in the same way?" I asked.

  "It is likely. Everything the Yeerks have they stole from us. However, my fly vision cannot distinguish the colors of these various lines of light."

  "What would be the quietest part of the ship, Ax?" Cassie asked.

  "Storage bays. They are most likely aft."

  "Can you tell which direction the ship is flying right now?" Jake asked.

  48 "The ship is still heading north, Prince Jake."

  "So we want to go south. Let's do that."