Chapter Text
-Earth date: 01.09.1999 (Gregorian calendar, continent: Europe)
Like all initiates, I left my birth pool for the first time for an extended period, when my 144th molt was fully completed.
Too old to be called a grub, too young, to be a valuable member of the Ya-Terash- Crew, but ready for duty and for a permanent host.
Since my previous performance had always been satisfactory, neither particularly promising nor worrisome enough to warrant further investigation and I also physically conformed to the norm, my observer decided to keep me alive shortly after the sixth Z-space transmission along with my final development reports, reached them.
The memory of my first permanent host isn't something I dwell on often. It's just a fading echo in my thoughts. What I saw with my first eyes, I now see only in a blur. Comparable to the faded, sepia-toned photographs of the humans.
Photography refers to a type of primitive imaging method in which, with the help of optical processes, a light image is projected onto a light-sensitive medium and stored there directly and permanently.
Just as antique photographs endure over time, these memories are still there. They are a part of my past.
The first tasks assigned to a young Yeerk are simple and reflecting their limited experiences.
There were simple, logistical tasks aboard my birth ship, in my case. Menial tasks in the pool area, or on the lower decks were added later.
The Gedd who was assigned to me for this work shifts, was a good tool for my immature mind.
As I grew older, the tasks and my hosts changed.Two Nahara and a Mak followed.
But even though they were completely different on the outside, possessing different abilities than my first Gedd-body, they were all the same in their minds: Host-born, submissive and weak.
Raised to serve the empire for their lifetimes.
One generation and two cycles I spent in the brain of my female Mak.
I monitored the values of the pool in which I was born: nutrient levels, temperatures, oxygen saturation, searching for pathogens.
Details that ensured the survival of the crew.
I was given this task, because I had a talent for numbers and a low error rate.
Three other Yirks with similar skills shared the shifts with me. When one of them was assigned to the Isaro-Niao pool to procreate and my siblings were gradually transferred to other posts, I didn't complain.
I would spend the rest of my life scanning pool fluid I was certain then.
A menial task, but at least it made me less useless.
Less expendable than others.
Understandably, therefore, I was surprised when I was suddenly reassigned to another position.
Not as a pool janitor, but as a lowly ship´s guard.
Dull service, the kind many initiates face at the beginning of their careers.
I was nervous, when I gave up my Mak body and was transferred from the Ya-Terash to my Visser's command ship.
Of course, I went with a hundred others, was just one of many young Yeerks.
Most of them were several generations younger or older than me.
None of them were close to me, or directly related.
The only comfort was the confines of our transport container and being surrounded by the last familiar scents.
Wrapped in the warm liquid of my home pool.
It tasted dirty and used up, when they days later finally freed us from the transport container and, after routine scans, relocated us to the ship's internal pool.
Our hosts, we were told, wouldn't arrive for another two days. Two more days to absorb the strange environment that would now be my home. Two days filled with education and simulations to ensure the best possible congruence with my new body.
But when I finally entered the head of my new host, it was like nothing I'd ever felt before: The Hork-Bajir wasn't as skilled as a Mak.
Less nimble and agile than a Nahara, but I sensed a power none of my previous hosts had ever possessed.
The intellect, on the other side, was primitive like a Gedd's, but also powerful.
Freeborn, rebellious!
The subject was male, and its designation was “Mek”.
It had been found on the northern perimeter of the Simplat-Plains, clinging to the corpse of a full-grown Hork-Bajir female.
It was a pitiful, sickly bundle, blades still blunt. The mouth was full of sour, smelling, pre-digested bark.
The leader of the border patrol had nevertheless decided to take Mek along to uncover the headquarters of the resistance cell the juvenile came from, because the Hett-Simplat Pool was still plagued by aggressive freeborns.
Not a real threat, though, since, except for a tiny patch of impassable terrain, the entire planet was posessing by the Yeerk-Empire, and the majority of the remaining wild population of Hork-Bajirs had perished from the Andalite´s quantum virus.
But it was a resource-sapping nuisance though, that needed to be eliminated once and for all.
Unfortunately, the memories Mek´s first Yeerk found in its head, were garbled and incoherent, worthless.
The Hork-Bajir´s mind was just too young to gave us usable information.
It was decided to keep this host anyway though.
Like few specimens, Mek was immune to the virus, so he was valuable and had served many Yeerks before finally being assigned to me.
Nevertheless, this host never lost his rebellious behavior.
Especially not towards me!
To my horror, it seems literally to sense that I was young too and as the first of my five hosts so far, Mek resisted. It tried to disrupt my work, interrupted my regeneration cycles.
Was fighting for control whenever it could.
At first, it was a difficult experience for me. Frustrating, terrifying!
I missed my loyal Mak Sriil, but as it was expected from me, I endured it.
The Hork-Bajir body served me for two Noortrani.
Then, there was an “incident”: A broken plasma conduit in the prisoner decks.
Another Yeerk serving with me, died painfully.
I, my body, had also been severely injured: plasma burns. Not life-threatening, but it would be a long time, before Mek could be released for infestation again.
Until then, the Hork-Bajir had to be kept in a stasis chamber, and I had to be assigned a new host.
A Taxxon who would replace one of the engineers injured in the plasma breach and could pilot a Bugfighter too.
Another new task and knowledge to acquire, in short time. Another species unfamiliar to me. I prepared myself for my first encounter with the new mind. I participated in every education offered to me and went through simulations, until my mind was exhausted and my exoneural-tissue sore.
I wanted to be prepared.
But I never received the intended host.
The transport ship carrying the Taxxons was attacked and completely destroyed by an Andalite fighter squadron in the Aka'rem sector, so I was in a pool again. Without a host, but not exempt from duty, because of course the Yeerks stationed in the pool aren't exempt from work either:
We archived other Yeerk's data to make it accessible to the Inexperienced. We eliminated errors in the internal pool computer system and organized files.
But knowing, that I wouldn't have to deal with the Taxxons primitive urges, calmed me down nevertheless, even though, in this state, I couldn't contribute anything worth mentioning to the empire and was as useless, as the day I was born.
So why I was proposed for the stealth invasion on Nan after just two cycles of passive duty, along with 250 other Yeerks and into the immediate Area of responsibility of my observer Yaheen Two-Two-Four, was unknown to me.
At least I was reliable and worked quickly. I hadn't done anything wrong up until then.
No one could blame me for the temporary loss of my last host body, and even if they had, I would at most be demoted pro forma, due to my lack of expieriences with freeborns and my young age.
Nevertheless I wasn´t sure whether I should feel honored or punished.
If I should agree or not. I´ve never served on a planet before, travelling trough space was all I know.
My sibling Yarash One-Eight-Two was now actively involved in a planned second wave against Leera.
They congratulated me in a final Z-space transmission, encouraged me to go.
They said, Nan was a promising world to us Yeerks.
Our strongest weapon in the war against the Andalites.
The sentient species there would be far more pleasant hosts to me than a Taxxon.
Easy to handle, primitive and not even remotely aware of the invasion, even though thousands of Yeerks lived among them at this time, Yarash explained.
It was the same information I had obtained from the archives.
The simulations of human host bodies were incredible, compared to my experiences, but harmless too.
Peaceful, compared to the mind of a Taxxon, and there was even the possibility of receiving a host, that would cooperate with me!
On average, 22.5 percent of the hosts yet to be acquired, wouldn't resist presumably.
According to our records this kind of humans tended to agree with infestation either from the start, or they gave in a few Kandrona cycles after their initial assignation to a Yeerk.
22.5 Percent feels like a good chance to lucked out for me and I was already in a critical age:
My instincts longed for a host just to move on to a new pool.
A place, that maybe promised ʏaemari to me, as it was the nature of our species from a certain point of life on, but I also longed for peace too after my experience with Mek. So, I believed Yarash and I agreed to the promotion.
I couldn't wait and was eager, to see my first planet through the eyes of these humans.
A water world, they called "ground" or "dirt" nonsensically.
I was, until I received my human host.
- Improvised replicated excerpt from the Earth diary of Issrin Ya-Terash, Six hundred ninety-two-two-forty-two-one hundred twenty-two-eighteen-two-thirty-five-one-eight-three