They have no idea! Probably not. A couple them can Gate from pictures though it'd be helpful to also have, like, a direction to aim. 

That's very reasonable and he can also point it out on a map.

He contacts Cayaldwin for the passcode. Cayaldwin quite reasonably wants to verify he is not being controlled. He tells Cayaldwin to get a look at the situation outside the base where Leareth (and Talik) were. Cayaldwin cheerfully agrees that Leareth is definitely in the possession of Yeerks and this is a disaster but Matirin might be too. Matirin observes that even if he were, the pictures of the base where Leareth is wouldn't make things worse. Cayaldwin wants to take a moment to think about whether that is true.

Cayaldwin watches people carried out on stretchers, at Leareth's base. 

Cayaldwin tells him the passcode. 

He pulls up the pictures. 

Leareth's mage Gates into the mine and between one breath and the next, before there's time to think or have regrets or second thoughts, calls down Final Strike. He's scared, and - it hurts, below the surface, that he might be killing Leareth himself - but mostly he's furious. 

The fireball gets all of the formerly-inhabited parts. Makes some ceilings collapse. Most people in the mineshafts are singed and thrown around but not utterly incinerated. 

<Pool ship> he says to everyone but not to anyone in particular, watching the space he left from. <And then the pools in D.C. and New York, we know the locations. And then they all starve, in three days, and it's over.>

There are tense nods. Someone glances at the timer counting down the minutes left until they can go back to the Blade ship. 

He has it in his head, but he looks at it too.

Fifteen more minutes.

An hour is plenty of time to rest between Gates. The pair who did it before get ready. 

They contact Cayaldwin's base to tell them to go in too; it's probably going to be incredibly dangerous in some fashion, there's a lot you can do with ten minutes and a starship, and the more people they have involved the better the odds of some of them surviving whatever's up. Mostly they want to send Andalites, though they'll need some Farseer-mages to Gate them to the bridge; the mages are going to be needed for the final stage, tomorrow, destroying the Pools on Earth. 

And a few Andalites will be needed in case this fails, to go back to Velgarth and get the Dome ship. The surviving part of the Dome ship doesn't have weapons that could be brought to bear on the Pool ship, but it is one. That's the backup plan. 

Matirin feels very numb. He's not really sure it's safer to be here than on the Blade ship but - they have people watching the surface of their own mine, now, they'll know if the Yeerks come here and they can Gate out to Velgarth the instant anything looks suspicious.

When the timer is up he nods and sends most of his people through the Gate.

Mages leap out first. No demons, as planned. Lots of gore. Moderate damage to the ship's interior, but this particular segment is holding atmosphere. No one in it had time to fight back, with dracon beams or otherwise. 

Farseers reach ahead. That section is open to vacuum. Move further. Do they have a floorplan of this ship or something, to help them find the bridge faster...? 

That is one of the many things they would have had in the version of this plan that was not a last-minute desperate pass at anything at all other than destroying planet Earth.

Four and a half minutes later they find something that looks plausible. :Is this the bridge?: Mental image held up. 

<Yes.>

A Gate goes up. 

The Yeerks are still using stolen modified Andalite starship technology, and Andalite starship weapon systems can be run, bypassing the computers, from the brain chip if needed, because usually when the computers are offline it's due to damage, because nobody boards other peoples' starships these days, it's so easy to make impossible - 

- he takes most of their computer systems offline because he doesn't have time to try to break into them and then starts working on the much simpler systems that grant direct access to the weapons system. 

<They're firing on us.> someone says. 

<Don't distract me> he snaps back. 

They try not to distract him. Mages are very underequipped to do anything about being fired on by weapons capable of destroying starships, but they can try...shields...? 

The other Andalites are more distractable. The Blade ship has its own shields, which should hopefully be holding; if they can do magical shields too that's good? They presumably can't Gate to the Pool ship or hit it with weapons from here?

No, the Pool ship is way out of their range. Leareth could maybe do a blind Gate to the Pool ship (with some chance of hitting vacuum but apparently he fixed his shields?) but it's well out of Farsight range and they can't get a scry anchored on it and none of them have Leareth's Gating skill. 

They'll try shields. 

With only the computer systems directly necessary to operate the weapons and shields still running, it's dark. The artificial gravity keeps hiccuping. Cayaldwin barely notices when he's floating as opposed to standing, totally lost in trying to reconstruct the ways this isn't an Andalite weapons system and fit into place the things that'd let him operate it

The mages wait. It's been eight minutes, give or take. The other ships are still firing on them but, it seems, not getting through the Blade ship's shields. 

Someone has broken into the shield system by now  - it's easier to operate than the weapons by far - and is reinforcing them. They should hold another couple minutes, which is all that is needed. 

<Pool ship's...flashing lights at us.> someone says. 

<Is it...surrendering?>

<They'd be bluffing, we can't listen - >

<Not surrendering. I don't know much of this code but I know the signal for surrendering.>

The antigravity glitches again. The Andalite's tail lashes irritably. <- okay, got it. They're saying the ship is dangerous and we should leave - seriously, are they wasting our time with that - ship is dangerous, we should leave, they want to talk ->

Cayaldwin is not a party to this conversation because he told everyone not to interrupt him. The last bit of the weapons system control setup falls into place.

<Got it> he says, and opens fire on the Pool ship. 

           <We've got a radio broadcast, telling us that the ship is dangerous and they recommend we get our people off immediately and they want to open talks.> someone tells Matirin. 

He is - very surprised. And confused. And - still numb - <Did the other base get that too.>

           <Checking. ...no>

The universe makes slightly more sense. <Might be an effort to pinpoint our location. By broadcasting in different areas.> The other base is in Russia. He thinks none of the captured people in Leareth's base had enough information to know that for sure. 

Nine minutes. One of the mages has their Farsight on the Pool ship, for a slightly better view. 

:...Can we, um, set it to keep firing and Gate off?: one of them asks. :Now that we've got the bridge and the weapons, I mean: Obviously they absolutely cannot open talks with the Yeerks, but also this mage is not keen to die horribly if it turns out the ship is booby trapped, which would be very smart of the Yeerks really. 

<We can get everyone off who isn't running the shields and weapons systems through their brain> one of the Andalites says. <Gate now sounds good.>

Gating back from the ship is much easier than Gating to it in the first place, though harder because they're tired now, but it's up within thirty seconds and they're piling through - a stressed glance back at the remaining Andalites -