<I did not understand what you wanted and why you planned to conquer Valdemar and how you were - reasoning about the war, what things were decisive for you about it, whether you were in fact only helping us because of the contingency plan if we lost Earth...whether you agreed that Yeerks were bad, whether our laws made any sense to you and whether you would consider it reasonable for us to follow them...>

:- And what is your current model of how I was reasoning and what things were decisive for me?: Leareth is so curious if it's right. 

<I think you do care less than I do about people being enslaved by Yeerks, but still quite a lot, and I don't think you would've yourself authorized killing everyone on Earth on the information I had - and if it's actually true that the Yeerks were never going to enslave the whole galaxy maybe you were right about that, though I still don't really know if I believe it...if nothing else one lucky Andalite ship at any time could have killed Visser Three and he seems to acknowledge that without him things would be very bad, and obviously assassinating him is a top priority of Andalite command...but I think mostly you were going to try to intervene on behalf of Earth not getting enslaved regardless of most details, though you might've ended up not wanting us to come out ahead either.>

:I think that is accurate. Humans in general, and myself in particular, I think are more likely to have the intuition that death is worse than enslavement, whereas Andalites are the opposite. I told Alloran that, leaving aside strategic consequences, on a purely selfish level I would prefer to be enslaved than dead, he unsurprisingly found this very alien. I suspect that is upstream of most of our remaining disagreements here: 

Shiver. <I can imagine - trying to be someone who preferred to exist even as a puppet for a Yeerk, but it feels like - trying to concede my core values so that I will be less upset about the state of the world, and that seems like a very awful thing to try to do.>

:Oh, I would absolutely be miserable. Just - if I had a choice between a thousand years of torture, and death, I would choose the former, because at least there might be a future after it. When one ceases to exist, there are no more options ever again. I - do think that my desire to continue existing is unusually strong, even for humans, and my willingness to endure unpleasantness is higher: 

Shrug. :That is a digression. I...do not think I am relevantly still confused. I think my mind is - doing the thing where it feels as though if I yell at the world that it is not allowed to be this way, it will stop. Which is not how the world works: 

<Not really.>

There's a loud chime and Matirin stiffens. Some other Andalites, grazing in the field, dart over to the computers. Matirin's screen changes from Earth internet to sensor readings.

Leareth freezes, all his Othersenses instantly on alert. Not that they're going to help at all with this problem. 

:What is it: 

<Hyperspace jump. We weren't expecting anyone.>

:Who could it be? Other Andalites, other Yeerks...?: 

<Either one and neither's great, nor is anyone else interfering - you should maybe get off the ship, if you can make one of the shielded houses on Earth from here ->

Leareth gives him a mildly alarmed look. :Should I get my people off too - should I get you off, I am worried about leaving you here if you think there might be danger...: 

<If they're Andalites I will need to be here. By all means evacuate your people.>

:I will do that. ...How much warning would you have if they attack the ship? Seconds, or less than that?: 

<I would expect the shields to hold long enough for us to jump out - not going anywhere, just jump sideways out of this plane. But I do not want to do that yet because if they're Andalites they'll fire on the Pool ship.>

Leareth takes a slow deep breath and lets it out. :All right. I will Gate out with my people and leave one mage with you, in case you need an urgent Gate or to reach us with the communication spell: He finds himself bizarrely reluctant to leave while Matirin is still here, but it does seem strategically correct. 

Matirin is barely paying attention; he wants a read on the other ship but they haven't seen anything since it jumped in, which is totally unsurprising; almost anyone on either side would've chosen to jump in far enough out that their ship could evade most sensor detection. Only one jump, so not an arriving fleet - unless it's a scout for one - 

If it's Yeerks they have to run, the ship is still in no shape to fight. If it's Andalites - they're not going to believe him, but if he can get them not to shoot down the Pool ship for long enough to explain the rest -

<Message the Pool ship. Ask if they have the capabilities to jump-to-hyperspace, communicate that we won't take it as hostile in light of uncertainty about who showed up ->

Someone does this. The Pool ship doesn't respond immediately, maybe checking its orders.

<And...ask the new ship to identify itself, in a rotation of ten languages known to be spoken in this region by z-space-capable civilizations, including ours and theirs ->

The response will be at least twenty minutes in coming, based on where the jump location was. He watches the mages evacuate and paces and tries to think.

Someone passes the Andalite communications on this topic on to Visser Three. "If it's, uh, our reinforcements - do we un-surrender?"

"One minute. Let me think." 

Visser 3 paces. (It's a habit, from his Andalite body.) He gives it the full minute of thought. Even though there's not, in his mind, all that much uncertainty. 

"- No. Leareth's alliance with us is conditional on ending the war." Mhalir doesn't think much of anyone's chances on the opposite side of a war with Leareth. 

And Leareth's mages, lent to them, are the reason the Pool ship was repaired quickly enough that it can, in fact, jump now. He passes on orders for it to move out and do so. 

...He's on edge. If it is the Yeerk side's reinforcements, now is a not-unlikely moment both for a coup to be attempted against him, and to succeed. 

Leareth orders his mages to split up. There are still a dozen rented apartments across the country. They won't all fit in one place anyway. 

Vanyel ends up crammed into the same apartment in NYC. Yfandes doesn't fit. She paces up and down the sidewalk outside instead. 

"- we have contact," Mhalir's lieutenant tells him. "Says it's Yeerk courier ship Hundred Suns, with news of our glorious victory against the Andalites at Anati. There's a long coded message for you, the computers are working on it."

- Mhalir freezes. Stops mid-step. Every part of him is screaming that this is the most inconvenient thing that could possibly happen right now.

"Get on comms with Leareth," he snaps. "Inform him of this, ask him to reply immediately. Get the message translated as fast as possible. No other new orders."

She messages Leareth in New York. "We have a communication from the ship. Identifies as Yeerk courier ship Hundred Suns, with news of our victory against the Andalites at Anati, along with a much longer coded message we're working on, reply requested immediately."

Leareth swears in a couple of different languages. Immediately passes this on to one of the Mindspeakers, who conveys it to everyone else crammed into the tiny apartment.

He starts to dictate a reply and then stops, frowning. He doesn't know what, exactly, he's confused about here, but he's noticing a tickle of confusion somewhere in his hindbrain. 

"Reply and ask him if he was expecting a victory at Anati and how surprising this is," he says to the mage who's been handling messages for him. "Ask him to summarize the coded message to us as soon as he's read it." Pause. "Tell him I recommend waiting on any further decisions until he's read it." 

And he turns to another mage. "Use the comms spell to contact Nuvia up on the Dome ship, alert Matirin of this. Tell him I don't expect a betrayal from Mhalir but obviously things just got a lot tenser down here, and - tell him I'm confused."