Mhalir, honestly, has no idea what he's doing here. Twenty-four hours ago everything still made sense and he was in control of the world and they were a long way from victory but they were on the path to it, and now...

Now he's reading the mind of someone who is...uncannily like him except better, and that person is very confidently thinking at him that he should surrender. Leareth - wishes he had surrendered to Urtho, two thousand years ago. Even though he would likely have died (and maybe not come back, his methods had been untested at the time, just as Mhalir's are now.) Even though it would have cost him all the progress he had made, everything he had built at such effort and cost... 

Do the math. 

Five billion people. 

He feels almost dizzy, and it's not because Leareth's body is still suffering pretty hard from the ill effects of being gassed. He feels like he was sailing down and river and didn't see the waterfall until he was already past the edge. 

He's looking into Leareth's mind and his memories of Matirin and he's wishing he had known any of that yesterday. Wishing he had listened to Enstat and done something about it sooner - he hadn't felt like he had the leeway to act, but in hindsight, maybe what he lacked was the leeway not to act on that information...

<Any updates?> he asks. <Are they still not firing> 

"No response. Haven't opened fire yet. 

- oh, now they've opened fire. And - we've got another hyperspace jump-signature -"

Alloran is delighted. The Andalites might get out and take down the Pool ship, it's perfect -

There's no point in repeating his order to have all the other ships protect the pool ship and keep returning fire. The only good news, here, is that the Andalite force can't have more than one, maybe one and a half minutes left. 

He waits.

The Visser should surrender he should do it now just goddamned broadcast it at all of Canada and - do something really costly - it may already be past the point of no return here but Leareth is pretty sure there's no path out of this, other than the Yeerks surrendering, that doesn't lead to a massive pileup of bodies. 

Leareth thinks of the Pool ship. Innocent baby Yeerks who haven't even done anything. He would be crying, right now, if he had any control of his body to do it. He thinks of Seerow, who sounds a little like Urtho, and aches for it. Immutable past that he can't undo, repeated across another world - an echo of confusion, there, it's weird that he feels so much recognition...

It's not weird because Mhalir is now coming to the conclusion that they are, in some baffling metaphysical sense, literally the same person. Separated by thousands of years and different species and worlds. Which is ridiculous, he can't think of any explanation for why that would be a thing that could happen, he must be missing some normal explanation... 

- or he could be missing something else, unknown unknowns, blank places off the edge of his map - doesn't matter now anyway. 

He sucks a heaving breath into Leareth's lungs. <Order the pool ship to signal surrender> 

This order is less confusing because they're assuming it's a ruse of some kind. They pass it along.

<And> point of no return but they already passed it <broadcast the same signal to Canada again do it NOW> 

- sure, okay -

And now there's really nothing else to do but wait, he's dealt all his cards. 

Mhalir doesn't think he's ever been this scared. 

Leareth is daring to hope now, and that almost hurts more. 

Also he's very confused, and starting to tug at it, why is the Visser appears to be actually listening to him and implementing his suggestions. 

"- Andalites blew up," Visser 3's staffer reports, thirty seconds later. "Pool ship's badly damaged but intact, Blade ship's gone -"

<Direct everyone available in space to repair the Pool ship> If it even matters. The Andalites have a Dome ship. It's on Velgarth, right now, but they have communications, Leareth confirmed that. 

It's...probably too late, now, Leareth's best guess here is that Matirin interpreted the communications as a trick - so reasonable of him, really - and now that the ship's blown up, with Matirin's people on it, Leareth finds it really unlikely he'll - be in a headspace to consider de-escalating right this second. 

...Was the ship firing until it blew up because that seems like relevant information actually, Matirin won't risk replying to the surrender broadcast if it could give away his location but he might, just might, have tried to get his people off the ship... 

Mhalir thinks someone would have said something, surely, but...

<Review all the sensor logs. Find out if there was any length of interval before the explosion when the ship was not firing. Do it now> 

It takes a few minutes; the best timestamped records are on the Pool ship and they need corroborating with the other ships and several of the timestamps don't match because there's a lot of damage to every ship involved. 

"Uh - looks like seven, eight tenths of a second before the explosion they stopped firing. Or paused firing, we don't know if they actually meant to stop..."

...It could be a fluke. But it could also mean that Matirin listened, to the second message claiming surrender, and they got the people - or some of the people - or tried and failed to get the people out...

It's hard to model Matirin's current state of information and the inferences he's made, but Leareth thinks it's probably worth talking to them more. 

<What would you say, if you were in my position> 

Hmm. It's a pretty difficult spot! The only thing that might, repeat, might change Matirin's mind, here, is if the Visser is telling the truth to Leareth - Leareth can't tell at all, his Thoughtsensing isn't working - and is in fact willing to make some really heavy concessions.

<Concessions such as what> 

Leareth really doesn't know what would do it! Maybe if the Visser agreed to stay in Leareth's head, in a body they know to be crippled of its Gifts, and go alone to a neutral location, and allow himself to be knocked out by a Healer, and then Nayoki can set-command both of them and read the Visser's thoughts...

<I am absolutely not doing that> 

Leareth wasn't really expecting him to. It's a gamble and the Andalites might, at this point, straight-up murder him anyway. Both of them, technically; Leareth can't manage much emotion about that, right now. He's died before anyway. Been murdered by people he thought were his allies, even. Lots of times. 

They could...offer to get their ships out of orbit around the planet, hand Earth over to the Andalites while getting the poor baby Yeerks out of danger. Can the Pool ship do a hyperspace jump? 

<I doubt it can right now, it was heavily damaged> 

Sigh. Well, can they...turn off all its shields or something? In an externally visible way? 

<Why would we do that>