The mages who can Gate from pictures with some reliability are brought over. 

"- it's really far," one of them says. "I - don't think 'space' would normally be in my range at all. I can maybe do it but not blind-search for this." 

"I have a sense of distance and bearing from my Gate," Leareth confirms. "And - motion? I suppose it is orbiting Earth." He turns to the Andalite. "If I know where it is now, can you help predict where it will be soon? Having a direction will help them target more precisely." Pause. "Do we have a way of sending this footage to the other two bases. - Also Velgarth, we should send a copy to Velgarth immediately. For redundancy, in case they - escalate very hard..."

The Yeerks do have nukes, they might know 'Alaska' even if they don't know a specific location, and they must be panicking so hard right now. 

<You will have to open a Gate to Velgarth to send it there but I can send it to the other two bases now. I cannot predict its future locations based on one data point about its location, especially since they might have moved it in response to our Gate, which they must have detected. ...would it be easier for someone who knows the interworld Gate technique.>

"- Huh. I think doing it as an interworld Gate would make finding the target even harder, but someone who knows the technique might have greater efficiency." He glances around. "I can have them do it in concert. We should send a copy of the footage to Velgarth first, though. And...well, have an actual plan for what to do once we have the Gate up. Compulsions? Nayoki is not actually at this base so we do not have a Mindhealer to send here, but we can perhaps do simultaneous Gates from all the bases..." 

The Andalite tail-shrugs. <I do not know very much about what your magic can do but if we can have unimpeded access to the bridge of the Blade ship for a few minutes we could shoot down every other Yeerk ship in orbit and, if they did not shoot us down in the course of that, set this one to fly into the Sun. If all went well we could then Gate out as it approached.>

"...I think we could do that. With reasonable odds, at least, and - the worst likely outcome would be a Final Strike destroying the ship. It will require some planning." 

He nods. <I will monitor human communications and let you know of anything relevant.>

They plan

A Gate is raised to Velgarth and the copied footage of the ship is sent over. Leareth communicates with the other bases. It's going to be hard to do three exact-simultaneous Gates when the Gate technique in use is so challenging, no one thinks they can do it alone (except Leareth, and he's not risking this one again, blasting a Gate from the other side tends to kill the mage and this time the ship will be a lot readier.) 

They can get it close, though, and whoever's through first will shield the others. Nayoki will go through as soon as the room is secure, because she can set-command everyone for two hundred yards around in one go, order them not to move. (And then be very tired, and probably retreat.) That'll buy them time for more compulsions, and - more directly violent magic. And they can Farsee and find their way to the bridge and get the Andalites in, maybe via a direct Gate, and - then the rest - they have to be fast because probably a warning will be raised right away, and if the other ships realize this one is lost they'll start firing on it, if the person in charge is competent which they seem to be. 

Leareth has lunch and writes some notes and talks to someone else, and - 

"...Sorry, what was that?" He blinks at the Andalite he was speaking with. "I missed what you just said." 

<The news that was on the television was saying that the humans were - no, I don't think that was what I was saying, actually ->

"The news that were on the television were saying..." Leareth shakes his head. He turns to look at the actual television in hopes this will clarify matters. 

<I think it was important.> Very important, even, though what's on the television now doesn't look like it's important at all. <Maybe it was something else that was important, not the news on the television> he concedes.

"Was it about..." Leareth looks down at his notes. There's a diagram. "Oh, I was going to - talk, spell, to someone? I think not about the news on the television, though. Something else." There's writing on his diagram but he wrote it really small for some reason and it's hard to read. How rude of himself. 

<I think the important thing wasn't about the spell.> He pauses, tries to replay it in his head. <Not about the spell, and not about the television. About the war, though. Oh. I think - something bad. To do with the war. Andalites and humans both breathe - that's not the bad thing, though, because that's very convenient...>

Leareth furrows his brow at him. "It is. Very convenient. Bad if - not..." His memory is sort of sliding off something. "Space. I went to space, that - was bad...?"

The paper falls out of his hand, which is also rude of it, and he looks at it in mild irritation as it flutters down to the desk. 

<Space.> His tail moves, but not very emphatically. <Space is bad. There isn't air in space. It's - important -

You were going to....talk spell....maybe....even though the bad thing is not the spell.....maybe you should do that anyway -

- so -

- they -

- know ->