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Containment may be a moot point, old friend, the exodus continues. It's like the party's over and the last one to leave gets stuck with the check... WHY YOU SORRY LITTLE INGRATES!
— Zed, Men in Black (1997)
<Open hatch!>
The Bug Fighter had come to a hover inside the Blade Ship’s hangar bay, and still loomed a meter above the docking clamps. Clutching his prize—the Coveted Cube of the Defeated Elfangor—Visser One leapt through the porthole and landed gracefully on the deck. The engine wash ruffled his fur slightly as he crossed the bay towards the bridge. It was an entrance crafted for maximum theatricality—well worth the four lost Bug Fighters and flight crews it had taken to perfect it.
The Visser passed his subordinates with a regal strut, holding the cube in front of his chest. As he passed, he took special note of who slouched, cowered, or otherwise minimized themselves in his presence; they were the smart ones.
He came to rest in front of the most secure space on the ship: his personal feeding chamber. It was the only place he felt comfortable leaving the Cube while he made the necessary arrangements.
<Recognize Esplin 9466, Greater. Access code Antares four-six-two-eight-one-seven!>
Welcome, Visser, the computer intoned in its deferential tone.
Visser One entered the chamber. The door automatically slid shut behind him.
He held the cube up in front of his main eyes, balancing it on his fingertips, and took a private moment just to savor it. Visser One had been keenly aware of the bitterness emanating from the lieutenant inside the human host “Tom” when he had been ordered to turn the cube over to the Visser, but he had obeyed. They always did.
This quiet moment was not just for the Visser’s own benefit—he needed to make sure he saw it. Alloran. He needed to understand the magnitude of this victory. The totality of it. The battle had been savage; the cost, great… and yet also, scarcely anything at all. Hosts were cheap. Yeerks were cheaper.
Esplin didn’t hear from Alloran much anymore, but he could feel it. His slave understood.
Satisfied, Visser One placed the cube within the assembly holding his portable Kandrona—a symbolically appropriate pairing: the Yeerk sun, and the Andalite’s greatest weapon, together, in the lair of Visser One.
Visser One exited the chamber and entered his private quarters just down the passageway. He needed a computer terminal and communications equipment, neither of which was available in the feeding chamber. Now, the arduous process of selecting the first Controllers to be granted use of the cube would begin. This would be scrutinized to no end; the political ramifications of every Controller selected or snubbed would echo through the eras to follow. There really was no winning. But, by the time the Council or any competing Vissers could mount a response, Visser One would be backed up by a billion-strong army, and thousands of morph capable warriors.
The most dangerous time for the Visser lay directly ahead: the moment a second Yeerk gained the morphing ability was the time he was most likely to be deposed. The power would have to be granted purely on the basis of loyalty.
Loyalty.
To worthy Yeerks such as…
The Visser was flummoxed as he realized the names of any such lieutenants had temporarily slipped his mind.
Surely there were some? Wasn’t there that strapping young Hork-Bajir in Sector 7-G? What was his name?
<Computer: open Captain’s Log, search terms ‘personnel’ and ‘commendations.’>
Searching Captain’s Log of Visser Three…
Scandal! Esplin 9466 no longer bore that title. He was Visser One, and he had earned it!
<Computer, read date of last entry?>
Last updated: 746 days ago.
Oh.
Surely such oversights could be excused; Esplin 9466 Greater hadn’t risen to his level based on the prowess of his record keeping. Still… it hadn’t been that long, had it?
<Read last entry.>
The forces of the Yeerk empire, under my unquestioned command, have successfully fended off an incursion of two Helmacron warships. Casualties were mini—
<Cancel read-out.>
This was going to take a little more finesse.
<Computer: Display personnel roster.>
Three columns of text scrolled by on the display, too fast to read, for far too long. This had to be like the personnel roster for the Pool Ship.
<Computer: clarification— Blade Ship personnel roster only!>
This is the full historical personnel roster of the Blade Ship of Visser One.
“Historical.” Perhaps that factor was significant. A Blade Ship would typically be crewed by a platoon of twelve Taxxon technicians, six Hork-Bajir warriors, plus the Bug Fighter crews: two additional Taxxon pilots and Hork-Bajir gunners. Even factoring in turnover, the list should be no more than a few dozen lines long.
<Line count: personnel roster.>
Six hundred twelve items.
<Group by host species; voice readout.>
Andalite: one.
Hork-Bajir: fifty-seven
Human: eighteen
Taxxon: Five hundred thirty-six.
There had to be some mistake. Visser One used the touch display to highlight a particular symbol that he saw next to nearly every Taxxon host.
<What does the highlighted glyph signify?>
Deceased.
Well, dapsen.
Visser One manually scrolled through his archive of personal files. In his more youthful days he had taken to keeping a “friends and enemies” list. What the hell had he named the thing?
ProjectMeatPuppet
That was the stupid bovine additive, meant to make the humans more docile, unable to resist persuasion. A dead end.
BeKindRewind
The de-morphing ray. Another dead end.
IceToSeeYou
Ah, the Venber. Such a disappointment. Remote-controlled warriors! True, they had never exactly figured out a practical use case in any habitable climate, but at least the project hadn’t been a total loss: they melted into almost-pure ammonia with trace amounts of organic abrasives. Wonderful at removing stuck-on Taxxon innards. The interior of the Blade ship had never been so clean! True, there were cheaper ways to obtain solvents, but results were results.
SorryToBugYou
Oh, his precious Veleek. How that one still stung.
LonelyAtTheTop
Eureka! This file was even more out of date than the Captain’s Log… this one pre-dated the discovery of the not-so-Andalite “bandits” following their completely ineffective raid on the Yeerk Pool.
<Computer: Duty status, Ellgee-452?>
Hork-Bajir host; deceased, Leera sector.
<Smasnug-618?>
Hork-Bajir host; reassigned, Anati sector.
<Still? Reference date, Anati sector has been abandoned.>
Confirmed. Smasnug-618 accepted voluntary demotion and requested outpost duty.
How odd. This once-promising warrior had volunteered to sit alone in a three-chamber capsule at the edge of disputed space rather than rotate back to the Terran system?
Visser One cross-referenced a dozen-odd other names, with more variations on the same theme. Every Yeerk with whom the Visser had developed a rapport in the past decade was either dead or reassigned to a remote sector, with the most fascinating example being the saga of Hisense-161.
Hisense had received a field-demotion when his Hork-Bajir host was killed by Visser Fourteen in a routine disciplinary matter. Hisense had bailed out of the dying host just in time to be placed into a Taxxon. His first assignment was janitorial duty, which included consuming the former host. In the process, the Taxxon body nicked itself on one of the Hork-Bajir’s blades, leading to a chain reaction feeding frenzy and fire fight, the victims of which included Visser Fourteen himself. By the time it was all over there were so many holes in the command structure that the Council had decided to abandon the entire station.
One more nasty surprise lay at the bottom of the list: Ynos-245. Visser One had personally requested them to serve aboard the Blade Ship due to their combat flying record: after shooting down six Andalite Fighters during the battle that destroyed the GalaxyTree , they were the first Ace-designated pilot in the Terran sector.
Upon receiving news that they were being reassigned to the Blade Ship, during the next feeding cycle they had instead found two like-minded unhosted Yeerks, formed a tripartite bond and reproduced, dying in the process.
Attention. Attitude suboptimal; course correction required.
The alert had not come from Visser One’s personal console: it was echoing from the bridge.
<Whichever one of you incompetent fools is at the helm, do your job. Don’t make me come out there!>
Leadership is all about knowing how to address your inferiors.
When the alert echoed a second time, followed by a persistent alarm, Visser One stormed out of his quarters, sharpening his tail-blade on the bulkhead as he walked. He observed the scuff mark it left, and made a small mental note to see if they had another vat of VenberGone in the cargo hold.
Upon arriving at the bridge, the first thing Visser One noticed was the crew. It was missing. The second thing he noticed was the cube, lying in the middle of the main deck.
<Well Visser… now you see who your friends are.>
<Oh this is when you decide to wake up, Alloran?>
<The way I figure, the only thing worse than realizing
how alone you are, is realizing you’re alone… with me.>
Visser One took an indulgent, if impotent tail swipe at the vacant air in front of him. He picked up the cube and set it on a workstation. Somehow that felt more dignified than leaving it on the floor, if only trivially so.
He had to think… and before he could think, he had to deactivate the alarm.
<Computer, off!>
This only turned the bridge lights off.
<Computer, on! Alarms, off.>
All mealtime alarms deactivated.
The bridge alert continued at full volume. Gods dammit.
It took a handful more tries before he figured out that the correct command was:
<Cancel alert!>
Now that he could think—
<Bravo, not even your computer takes orders. Truly
a destroyer of worlds, conqueror of the highest—>
<Shut! Up!>
Now… where the hell was the crew? They couldn’t have abandoned ship at this altitude, and there were only limited places to hide. And the cube… how had they gotten the cube? And once they had, why hadn’t they taken it with them to… wherever it was that they had gone?
With minimal difficulty (and less than minimal mockery from the prisoner with whom he shared a thought stream) Visser One called up the feeds to the security cameras. All were functioning except the one in the brig, not that it would ever have come in useful. Both Bug Fighters were docked. Every hold, room, and corridor was empty and still.
<Computer, replay last ten minutes.>
The bridge was teeming with activity in the recordings, with the entirety of the crew gathered around the morphing cube. A Hork-Bajir was awkwardly passing something to a Taxxon comrade, but with the limited resolution and framerate of the security cameras it was difficult to tell what.
<Backtrack five minutes.>
Now the Visser saw a replay of himself strutting through his bridge, towards his feeding chamber.
<How the hell did they get into my chamber? It’s not as if I don’t understand the difference between private and public thoughtspeak…>
<Recognize Esplin 9466, Greater. Access code Antares four-six-two-eight-one-seven!>
His own thought-speak echoed back at him, loud and clear from the recording.
Oh. Well dapsen.
<Esplin, you’re louder than a mating
Mardrut and half as subtle.>
<Computer! Forward, 2x speed.>
The crew made use of the blue cube with the utmost cooperation. At the same time, one of the Hork-Bajir gunners and a Taxxon technician were deeply interested in something outside the Blade Ship. The main ingress hatch opened by just a small amount, letting atmospheric air blast in for only a second, and then—
The Taxxon technician caught something on its adhesive-like tongue, and, by some miracle, did not immediately swallow it. It was an Earth bird, one of the smaller varieties. His Hork-Bajir confederate carefully peeled the dazed creature off the tongue before acquiring it himself, and passing it on. That was what the Controllers had been passing among themselves.
One by one, they acquired the bird, and morphed. Even in the depths of his betrayal, Visser One couldn’t help but be amused by the end (or was that Alloran’s amusement he was feeling?) at the sight of a lone Taxxon standing amidst two dozen frantic birds. The last Taxxon opened the hatch one more time, ate the specimen bird, and morphed it.
When the deck was abandoned, the security system closed the hatch automatically. This was going to be tough to explain.
<If you live long enough to explain.>
<One more word from you and I’m feeding you beach grass!>
<I can take it if you can.>
Warning. Loss of attitude control imminent.
Before anything, Visser One had to stabilize the Blade Ship’s flight path. No problem. He had flown scores of fighters, and large ships; multiple generations of Yeerk craft, Andalite, salvaged Hawjabran and Ongachik…
<Flown anything from a terminal built for a Taxxon before?>
Visser One studied the various terminals and control panels before him and had to admit he had no idea what he was doing.
<Computer…>
He couldn’t believe it had come to this.
<Read manual. Key word: Attitude control.>
Reading from Blade Ship operator’s manual, flight commander edition, sixth revision, chapter ninety-four, section three, paragraphs seventeen through nineteen inclusive…
<Get on with it dammit!>
To re-orient the attitude of your Blade Ship, the preferred procedure is to—
<Yes?>
…order your seniormost Taxxon to perform the needed maneuvers.
<Oh this is absurd…>
…if your seniormost Taxxon is unavailable…
<Yes?>
…order the first subordinate Taxxon to do it.
<Fuck!>
<Well, you and this ship had a good run. How long
was it before you piloted your first Blade Ship
directly into a black hole? Twenty minutes?>
Again Visser One found himself manually scrolling through the names of computer files, but this time, he was looking at stored flight procedures. He found one that looked promising.
<Computer! Engage Emergency Protocol Alpha!>
Visser One winced in pain at the massive noise, which he briefly thought was another alarm. It wasn’t. It was much worse.
It was the pulsating beat of some sort of human dance music. The bridge lights dimmed, and a segmented sphere composed of hundreds of small mirrors descended from the ceiling. Dozens of ceiling tiles retracted, dropping their concealed cache of brightly colored oblong spheres, as well as piles and piles of colorful scrap paper. One of the oblong spheres hit the Visser’s tail blade and burst with a sudden POP!
Worst of all, a banner bearing Alloran’s visage unfurled from a hidden compartment above the main display console, bearing the phrase in large block letters:
GOOD NEWS! HE'S DEAD!
<I don’t believe this—>
<I agree. I look terrible in that picture. You’ve really let myself go.>
Now the ship was pitching to the point where the Visser had to brace his hooves on the deck. The detritus from the party favors began to slide past the terminals, pooling at one end of the bridge. The Cube went with it.
<Computer: execute… ‘YOLO maneuver?’>
The music stopped and the bridge lights came back to standard intensity.
Attitude restabilized.
<Oh thank Gods.>
Plotting collision course for Pool Ship.
<Wait, what?>
Prepare for maximum burn.
<CANCEL MANEUVER!>
The ship pitched back towards the atmosphere and the drift returned. Within seconds, Visser One was again struggling to stay upright. Gripping the terminal input with one hand, and even using his tail to brace, he frantically scrolled through all the available commands with his free hand.
<What’s this… ‘Frequently Used Commands’?>
Flush_Pool
No.
Flush_Lavatory
An invaluable procedure to be sure, but not what he needed right now.
Cleanup_Deck
Cleanup_Taxxon
BakersDozen
What the hell did that do?
Stall. Stall. Entering free fall. Terrain impact in ten seconds.
Visser One’s stomach flipped and his hooves left the deck.
<Ten… nine… eight…>
What choice was there?
<Computer, execute stored procedure BakersDozen!>
BakersDozen. Reporting total loss of Taxxon platoon. Placing order for twelve replacement Taxxons. Engaging intercept course with Pool Ship for pickup.
The Blade Ship pulled out of the fall and stabilized. They were pitching upward now, and beginning a leisurely autopilot ascent to space.
Users who executed this procedure frequently paired it with: ‘FenderBender,’ which orders two replacement BugFighters. Execute?
<No.>
Rendezvous with the Pool Ship in… forty-eight minutes. Have a nice day.
Visser One sulked to the edge of the bridge and gathered up the Cube from the pile of trash intended for the celebration he was never meant to see. He hugged the cube to his chest. He eyed the banner that still covered the main display. It would need to be cut down before anyone else was allowed on board.
Or he could delegate it. What was he afraid of? It’s not like they didn’t already know his reputation.
Besides, if anyone mentioned it in front of him, he’d kill them.
<Well, there’s always next time...>
Leadership, Visser One recalled, was all about delegation. In order to determine who would be the twenty-fourth Controller to receive the morphing ability, and twenty-fifth, and so on, he’d have to act like a real leader.
He’d make Chapman do it.