Emril doesn't understand the question because it's in Spanish. She's also trying to lean into the drugged grogginess and not have any thoughts. 

"She thought so at the time, yes."

"How many of these humans are on Earth currently, to her knowledge, and who is in command of them?" 

"She expects there are a few hundred magical humans here, reporting to a commander called Leareth who she knows to have the gates-exploding-and-generalized-spellcasting ability, the mindreading ability, and the thoughtspeak ability. There are also one or more magic horses because they have brought in some allies from a different command structure that involves magic horses."

He has so many questions but, priorities. "Does she know the location of their base, that the small groups stationed in various cities would have evacuated to." 

"Alaska. She couldn't point it out on a map but it's an abandoned mine."

"One moment." This isn't especially surprising but it lets him make his earlier orders a little more informative - get the location of every abandoned mine in Alaska, especially near Juneau and Anchorage, review sensor coverage for minor blips not previously noted as relevant but that may be close to one of the candidate mines, make plans to move agents to Alaska but do not engage yet. "Thank you. What other kinds of capabilities do their forces have as a result of the generalized spellcasting ability - uses in combat, defence, spying...?" 

"...a lot. They can tell whether there's a Yeerk in someone with mindreading from a variety of ranges, blocks to up to miles, those of them with that ability, and pick up surface thoughts from us and the host alike. Generalized spellcasting has offense including lightning and fireballs and demon summoning, assorted defensive shields, trap spells. Some spells can be applied to artifacts and carried by other people but need recharging. Their strongest thoughtspeakers have a range of a few hundred miles; there's a longer-range spell the casters can use. There's a separate ability that can telekinese or teleport things, increasing in difficulty if they're going far or the thing is heavy. There's an especially rare ability that is called 'mind healing' but like the biokinesis healing is better understood as fairly general mind editing; there aren't many of those but Leareth's second in command has that and the general spellcasting one and my host is terrified of her. - in a general sense; they have good unit discipline. Both the casters and mind healers can force people to do things, including Yeerks separately from hosts and vice versa, possibly in ways that persist on a host after infestation but fortunately mine right now can't explode."

"What does she know about the Andalites involved and the resources they are bringing in here?" 

"They have a Dome ship and some shuttles. She's heard the names Matirin and Cayaldwin and Rilem, there are more but she can't tell them apart well enough to guess how many and hasn't seen them in very large groups. At least twelve."

"Noted. I assume she was deployed to do reconnaissance in Washington and made reports back to their base. What has she observed of our operations here?" 

"They know about the president. This one knows the location of the northwest pool. She wouldn't expect to be receiving a lot of intel, they probably know a lot more."

The Visser starts to ask another question, and then there's a loud alarm in the background, and he cuts off. "–Written report," he says, very fast, and then the call ends with a click. 

Enstat starts writing. (In Spanish.)

<Hi Emril,> she remarks while jotting down estimates of the prevalence of various Gifts.

Why is the brain slug talking to her. She didn't think they cared at all about the people who used to own the bodies they were wearing. 

<- I can see why you'd assume that but actually it varies a lot? I was friends with my last host.>

Wow. What does 'friends' even mean, when it's talking about the person who is permanently locked up in their own head and can't make any decisions? The Andalites think compulsions are pretty bad but you absolutely couldn't do this to someone with compulsions. 

<Uh, it means we'd watch TV together and argue about which of the characters should kiss, and I kept up with her laundry even though that was kind of out of character because she didn't really like never having her favorite dress clean, and I got her through family holidays without letting her yell at her bigoted grandfather stuff she didn't want to say out loud, and stuff. I know a lot of people don't want to be friends with their Yeerks but I think it works out well for people who give it a shot even if you don't get off to a great start.>

...Huh. Well, there was that girl who said she thought Yeerking someone was kind of sexy and she wished the Andalites would give her morph so she could morph Yeerk and control her boyfriend - and there was the Yeerk tests, people weren't alarmed about that, because the Yeerk was harmless for them, or was a morphed Andalite before that. But, well, how is she supposed to be friends with someone on the opposite side of the war from her. She was stupid and got captured and now it's going to kill a lot of her friends and be her fault and this is really awful actually. 

<Wars are bad! I don't think they get... more bad if you make friends? I think that's normally how they get less bad. It's just, you know - you'd put up a hell of a fight if someone was trying to put out your eyes and chop off your hands and cut away your voice - and if you win, we don't have those, same as if you had a knife. We don't have much we don't get from somebody else. But if we're friends we can share.>

She does feel sort of bad for the Yeerks. That their lives must be not really lives at all, without hosts. Seems unfair. Someone said they heard Leareth talking about a way to fix that with technology, someday, if they could win the war and then get on good terms with the Yeerks again and talk it out, but it seemed very implausible to her that would happen. 

<Not while the Andalites are running things, I bet. They hate us, so much, even the idea that we might go find people who didn't hate us as much and work something out with them was enough to make Seerow start killing people, and Seerow mostly seemed to hate us less than the other ones!>

...What? That's not what they were told at all, Seerow went and gave the Yeerks technology, let them go to the stars, and then they betrayed and murdered him in a surprise attack. 

<Wow, is that what the Andalites really think? Honestly I just assumed Andalites were so racist that "Yeerks said 'thanks for the spaceships, we'll go find hosts besides Gedds', Seerow opened fire" would sound totally reasonable to them. And, I mean. If we betrayed Seerow. Don't you think we'd have kept him around?>

That is definitely what the Andalites think! And what Leareth thinks, and she remembers her friend saying he was less hopeful for a, well, satisfyingly okay resolution to this war, because of that - because he didn't know how he could work with that - but if it wasn't...