Messages are sent. 

...

Up on the Dome ship, Nuvia twitches. :War-Prince Matirin, the Yeerks received a transmission from the ship claiming it's theirs: 

<Thank you.> They could step out of normal space, maybe should, but then they'll be out of comms. 

An Andalite ship probably wouldn't claim to be a Yeerk one but it's not impossible, if they'd cracked their codes and thought Earth was in Yeerk control and wanted to be sure to get close before they opened fire - 

"Reply from Leareth," says Mhalir's lieutenant. "He says he's at the Andalite safe house in El Paso, suggests you join him so he can evacuate you if necessary, though he doesn't want to do that until the message is translated. Asked for an ETA on that; I'll send him whatever the computer's estimating - six minutes -"

"- Right, of course, thank you." That makes sense. Leareth would be paranoid in this situation - it's not wrong of him - the odds of a coup just went up significantly...

He paces. 

Leareth has no room to pace. It's not worth going out on the sidewalk just to have more space to breathe, even though he feels like he can't think when he's crammed in next to the fridge; the apartment isn't very shielded but it's got some. 

"Anything from Mhalir yet?" he asks the mage. 

"No, nothing yet." 

Pace pace pace pace pace. :Van, you holding up all right in there?: 

:I'm literally sitting in the bathtub right now: It means he can close the shower curtain around it and have some blessed privacy. 

"ETA?" Visser 3 asks the lieutenant, as he feels the shuttle start to descend. 

"We're two minutes out."

Vanyel makes a face. Someone is currently pissing in the toilet right on the other side of his shower curtain. 

:Van, you could come out here an– VANLOOKOUT:

Yfandes' Foresight doesn't work very well on Earth. In Valdemar she's tied into the Web and her gut feelings are pretty reliable; here, there's mostly nothing. But the current feeling of DOOMDOOMDOOM is very, very loud. 

Van, battlefield reflexes soaring to the front of his awareness, flings everything he has into his shields - not just his, over everyone. - :'Fan–:

And a shuttle plummets out of orbit to obliterate the apartment building in New York.

They have less than a second's warning but Leareth's people have fast reflexes - the instant Vanyel starts shielding, so does everyone else, the shielding is focused over Leareth, and someone tries - but doesn't quite have time to complete - the comms spell to the Dome ship. 

...

"–Unhh?" Nuvia says, startled, she thought she felt someone reaching for her but maybe she was just imagining it? 

She waits a beat, and then tries for the mage with Leareth, just in case. <Did you contact me just now?>

Nothing. 

<Hello?>

Nothing. 

<Leareth?>

Not him either. 

<Vanyel?>

Silence. 

"Goddamnit." :Matirin, I can't reach Leareth's safehouse: 

Visser 3 is already on the way to disembarking the shuttle as it touches down. He doesn't have thoughtspeech anymore, which right now is infuriating, he wants to talk to Leareth now not two minutes from now. 

"Anything on the coded message yet?" he snaps to his lieutenant. 

"One more minute," she says.

Then several people step out of the safe house, dracon beams drawn, and shoot him. 

They seem to be on stun, and the shield-talisman Leareth gave him (for his host to wear; Yeerks cannot wear jewelry) is capable, on its emergency-strength power mode, of blocking the full-strength dracon beams that can punch through metal. It's not on emergency settings now, of course, but even passively is more than capable of blocking the stun mode, and an instant after the first shot it is at emergency power. (Which means he has maybe half an hour of mage-power for the shields, the quiet voice in the back of his head says - but fights do not, in general, take that long.) 

"UNDER ATTACK!" he shouts, and draws his own weapon to shoot back. It's not set to stun. He's taking no chances here. 

There are twelve of them, and when stunning him evidently doesn't work they switch to full power, but they - really didn't expect that to not work -

Mhalir cannot blame them! This should absolutely have worked and he wouldn't have even thought to ask Leareth for a shield-amulet that could hold off dracon beams at the setting that punches holes in steel walls.

He's really frustrated, right now, at his lack of Andalite reflexes and particularly an Andalite tail-blade. He feels slow and stupid and his aim isn't that great and he has to keep shooting before getting any of them. But he is, at least, invincible for the next half-hour, and the closer they come the easier they are to hit, and probably at some point the survivors are going to notice this is doomed and surrender or run. 

- is anyone still in the shuttle, he can't tell without looking over his shoulder (which he's absolutely not going to do) who else is shooting alongside him right now. "Get a message to Leareth!" he shouts. "Coup attempt - he could be in danger too–"

After about fifteen seconds no one is shooting at him. It's unclear, because the safe house is entirely wrecked and on fire, whether any of them managed to run or whether this is because they're all dead. 

(His host is screaming and having a panic attack somehow made more unpleasant by the lack of any physical correlates).  

Two members of his shuttle crew are dead at his side. His lieutenant is at the computer. "Messaged him," she shouts back. "Just - under attack - can send a followup -" 

"One second!" Visser 3 switches his weapon to stun. Then spins around and reaches the shuttle in a single fluid motion and shoots her. He doesn't think she's the one responsible for the false communications here; he vets his people very carefully; but, well, he clearly wasn't paranoid enough. 

<You can't reach anyone at the New York location? Can you reach people elsewhere - if they don't have a Gate location I bet they'll be able to get one off the television in sixty seconds - tell me as soon as you've gotten through, I want to leave normal space immediately.>

He actually doesn't even want to wait that long but there's no power known to Andalites that can take out a Dome ship without a second of warning and if there's any chance Leareth is still alive it's worth risking an additional person to get to him immediately.

"Got through to Chicago, they don't - you can jump, they can reach others–"

They jump. 

The dome of the ship, which had been showing a live view of Earth, switches to a preinstalled view of a lush blue savanna under a red-gold sky.