He sends the additional confirmation codes without hesitation, and then records a brief message on his unanticipated but fortuitous victory against the Andalite forces that showed up to attack on Earth, which he sends along with a longer written report on the battle. (It's faked, of course, but he spent weeks on it, and had the help of actual Andalites to game out their side of the action, it's very convincing.) The Blade ship was their greatest loss, it's unfortunate, and the captured Andalite ships were too badly damaged to jump, which is why he had to travel here on the Pool ship. 

The space battle was of course very conspicuous to the humans, so it required rapidly advancing his timeline on the takeover of Earth. Enough of the groundwork had been laid, though, and he's proud to report that the conquest of Earth is now, approximately, complete. Which asks for an overhaul of their timelines on various other objectives, so he thought it worthwhile to make the trip over in person and discuss that with them. 

This pause is considerably longer than the lightspeed latency. The response is congratulations and an invitation to land and discuss.

He acknowledges this, and they keep flying in. 

Leareth demorphs, reviews Mhalir's notes on the layout of the landing area for the hundredth time, and then the Pool ship settles into orbit, and they embark on a shuttle with Mhalir's lieutenant. (Who is, in fact, Mhalir's real lieutenant, not an Andalite in morph; she's met the Yeerk staff at the base before, and she has a voluntary human host who was eager to help with such a critical mission.) There are also a couple of Andalites in concealed insect morph, who will fly off once they land and scout for Gate locations; they can't do interplanar Gates, yet, but they can manage bringing down the rest of the Andalite troops on the Pool ship.

They land. 

Just before they do, inside the shuttle and out of sight of any sensors the Yeerks on the ground can access, he morphs Alloran again, and gives Mhalir control of his body and thoughtspeech, to carry out his script while Leareth focuses entirely on compulsions.

The shuttle contains a concealed mage-energy generator, by necessity much lower-powered than the one for the space Gate but still enough to imitate a node, and unlike a node it won't run out. Leareth doesn't expect to need it for the compulsions, it's just a contingency in case this turns into a full-on battle. 

Mhalir moves Alloran's body with his usual cold precision. Greets the Yeerk guards in his usual manner, perhaps with a little more pride or even smugness (he's earned it), but he's never been demonstrative. Asks if the Council is ready to meet now. 

Leareth is almost unaware of Mhalir thoughtspeaking through his body. His attention is entirely on his Othersenses, spreading out and out, scanning the area for minds. 

The Council is ready to meet him; one member, not on site, will be calling in. 

Leareth Mindspeaks to one of the Andalites in morph on the ground (since Mhalir is busy using his thoughtspeech), asking them to figure out where said Council member is calling in from, and if possible get to that location and drop one of the simpler clumsy compulsions they can do on them when he gives the signal. They should have at least an hour or two while he does the initial part. 

Leareth isn't sure how long it'll take him to get everyone within his substantial range. Once people are out of mage-sight range, which stretches a mile at best, he can't do the very subtle kind of compulsion as well, but as long as they're in Thoughtsensing range he can still cast at a distance, and pull off the kind of compulsion that just makes people freeze and drop whatever they're doing; this will be conspicuous so he's going to start doing it after the signal. Meanwhile the ship in orbit should be going over sensor coverage of the system, studying the Yeerks' orbital resources, and once the situation on the ground is under control Leareth can Gate some of the Andalites down to the ground, and then back into the Yeerk ships in orbit - he just needs to read some of the Yeerks here who've been inside them, to get the Gate-location for searching. There are a lot of steps here that need to be him, specifically, because no one else has the requisite mage-training yet. 

He's already sent a message-robot through a tiny Gate, in a room on the Pool ship that he shielded well to evade the Yeerk sensors, warning to the Andalite homeworld force staged in secret around a nearby star system. He told them three candlemarks. One way or another, by then the secret part of this should be over. 

Mhalir isn't tracking any of that. His mind is entirely on the false narrative they've spun of what happened on Earth; he's a decent liar when he wants to be, but it requires half convincing himself to live in that alternate world, where what he's conveying is the truth.

He greets the Council, radiating muted pride in every line of Alloran's body language, not that most of the Yeerks can tell what Andalite body language means. 

Sneaky compulsion, inactive at first, to be triggered when he starts demanding surrender. Then another. Then another. 

The Council is glad of his news. Which Andalite fleet was this, who commanded it, was anyone captured, what is known about the status of the Andalite forces in that part of the galaxy?

He's got details on all of that! Incomplete, because the Andalites were able to partially purge the computer records on the ships they were able to capture rather than entirely destroy. He gives the fleet designation; the commander was Nahar-Astal-Nerefir.

Additionally, a ship commanded by Matirin-Ashal-Nelinfir was, they suspect, supposed to scout ahead, hyperspace jumping in far enough out that the Yeerks' sensors would miss them. However, they bungled it, came in too close, and Mhalir's Blade Ship engaged the Dome ship and severely damaged it; they were able, almost by sheer luck, to take Matirin alive, which is how they learned enough about the approaching fleet to defeat it soundly. Unfortunately, none of the other Andalites allowed themselves to be captured alive. Matirin is back on Earth; Mhalir informs them which Subvisser has him, claims he was left behind to have coverage for any missions requiring morph-capability on Earth. 

He can give a report on what they learned about the other Andalite deployments, with the proviso that it's somewhat out of date now, both the Andalite fleet and his Pool ship had long travel times. 

Leareth has silent, unnoticed compulsions on all twelve members of the Yeerk Council present on-site, plus their staff, and is working on a wider circle, now a quarter-mile radius out. Which should, at this point, be enough coverage to keep them out of Dracon beam range if their plot is somehow noticed, but he prefers to drag it out as long as possible. 

:Anything on the thirteenth Council member?: he asks the Andalite in morph, with morphed-Mindspeech rather than thoughtspeech because they seem to be out of his thoughtspeaking range. 

The Council is delighted by this news, and inclined to reassign the second-ever Andalite host to one of the more active fronts; it'll be good for morale, and it's data on the always-worrying background question of whether the Andalites will escalate to further heights of xenocidal lunacy as it becomes clearer that they're losing. 

The remaining Council member appears to be on a ship in orbit.

Yes, that makes sense, Visser 3 is inclined to agree. Here are the other considerations he's been thinking over for their other operations, based on what he learned from Yeerking Matirin... (Some of it's made up, some of it extemporized from information he did actually pull out of Matirin's head; it's not like the Yeerks here are going to have any opportunity to pass that intelligence on.) 

Leareth switches his focus to reading the thoughts of everyone nearby who seems important enough to have maybe visited the ship. He can use teensy, brief compulsions to promote it to their attention, by nudging them toward thinking about the Council member calling in, and if anyone's thoughts include an image, he'll yank it from their mind so he can Gate Andalite shock troops in as soon as he's moving openly.

:What do we know about their other ground forces?: he asks the scouting Andalite in morph. 

The Yeerks seem to have a number of geographically distributed bases on this planet, each with a pool, hosts mostly Hork-Bajir. One of the bases seems to have lots of young, not-yet-enslaved Hork-Bajir; the others are more purely military. They can send him all the details they have. 

Someone can be nudged to think about the ship where the thirteenth Council member is.

Can the Andalite try to get him maps and ideally recorded videos or pictures from the other bases. They can hide somewhere and morph Gifts in order to compulsion a minor sentry or something to obtain this. They're successfully stalling for time here, the Council doesn't suspect anything, and he would prefer to have a way of Gating Andalite troops to every base before he triggers the surrender here. Though it's been nearly two hours, and both his morph time limit and the remaining time before the Andalite reinforcements jump in will run out in the next hour. 

The Andalite finds an unoccupied room, morphs Andalite, morphs from there to an Andalite with Gifts. looks for a sentry. Does a clumsy compulsion - without notifying anybody, walk into this empty office. Pull up floorplans and security footage from the other bases. 

For about two minutes this seems to go fine. The Andalite is Mindspeaking it to Leareth as it comes in. 

Then one of the Council members gets a text message. [Andalite infiltrator] it reads. 

Leareth cannot read all of the surface thoughts and sense-inputs of everyone in range, especially not while multitasking, so he doesn't notice the text message in itself. 

He has his morphed Receptive Empathy fully open, though, for composite-morph purposes it's borrowed from one of his Healers and it's very strong. If the Council member is within a hundred yards of him and feeling any emotions about this then he's absolutely going to notice. 

He's panicked! He mostly doesn't show it on his face, but - if an Andalite is here they got here with Visser Three, somehow, which means that might not be Visser Three - might be his host without a Yeerk - 

[Stun Visser Three and everyone who arrived with him, simultaneously, ASAP] he starts to text back.

The instant Leareth senses PANIC, he's on alert, dropping what he's doing and focusing on the mind that's panicking, reading the unshielded thoughts. 

Unless the man is an absurdly fast texter, he's not going to have time for that, because Leareth instantly Mindspeaks everyone in the room and the adjacent rooms. :SURRENDER NOW: 

That should trigger their no-longer-sneaky compulsions, which will drive them to stop what they're doing, put their weapons down, and not move unless ordered to do so, in which case they should cooperate with the order. 

...And there they go. Mhalir was oblivious of all this until he sensed the sudden shift in Leareth's mood, and even then he wasn't sure, Leareth's affect was still one of focused calm, just...differently-focused, laser-precise rather than spread out across his surroundings. 

Leareth has the body's Gifts, but Mhalir has its thoughtspeech, and he checks if either of the morphed Andalites is within the Alloran-morph's thoughtspeech range. 

Everyone in the room and adjacent rooms surrenders and now they are ALL panicked.

The morphed Andalites seem to be out of thoughtspeech range.

Leareth is on it a second later. He reaches for the Andalite who was getting plans for him first. :Someone saw you, triggered stage two, are you all right: