Yeerks and their hosts are herded into locked rooms by Andalites who assure the hosts in Thoughtspeech that the Andalites hold no grudges against the hosts, and will try to get the Yeerks out and the hosts somewhere safe as soon as possible.

Leareth rides his shuttle up to the Pool ship and immediately finds somewhere to lie down in human form. The Pool ship is largely furnished for humans, so has more options on this front than Matirin's Dome ship did. 

He doesn't feel like morphing again to give Mhalir thoughtspeech, but he'll let Mhalir talk out loud with his mouth, even though this makes it pretty much impossible to nap. 

Mhalir asks for a more thorough update on the orbital side of the fight, and whether any couriers are known or suspected to have made it out of the star system. 

Not once the Andalites arrived, but they think some got out before then. Mhalir can have a detailed update. The Yeerks had this place very well defended but they were not expecting an attack and they certainly weren't expecting their ships to be boarded by magic. Casualties were on the low end of projections.

That's good. They know the nearest Yeerk systems, and hyperspace travel times; as long as they can move on the closest worlds in a week, they should be in ahead of any possible warnings.

Mhalir asks his people to get an estimate from the Andalite boarding parties on damages and repair time for the captured Yeerk ships, and for updates to be prepared on the ground attacks still in progress, and then he says he's going to let Leareth take a nap, he's very tired after doing so many challenging surface-to-orbit Gates, and they should wake him and Mhalir only if absolutely necessary. 

His lieutenant is not at all comfortable around all these Andalites and will stand at the door intercepting anyone who wants to interrupt their nap unless it's very important.

If no one interrupts him, Leareth stays asleep for six candlemarks or so. Which is going to completely mess up his sleep cycle, it's now the middle of the night Earth time, but it was such a long day.

He prepares a message to send to the lead Andalite ship in the fleet, requesting a meeting to debrief on the operation before he brings the Pool ship back to Earth. All the baby Yeerks were evacuated for this mission, of course, but the Earth surface pools are at maximum capacity accommodating them. 

Things are going smoothly and the Andalites are prepared to set that up.

Whenever they're ready, Leareth gets a shuttle over. He's in Andalite morph again, but his usual one, not Alloran. (He feels mildly weird about going around looking like Mhalir's previous involuntarily-enslaved host of twenty years.)

He congratulates the Andalites on their help with a very successful operation. He'd like to discuss what to do next. Obviously this planet needs a garrison, although probably not all the current forces. His recommendation would be to keep some of Matirin's soldiers on-site, since they have the mage-training required for basic compulsions and thus can force Yeerks out of their hosts, and they can also morph Thoughtsensing to interrogate hostless Yeerks in pools. Keeping most of the Yeerks in pools on the surface, and freeing their hosts, seems reasonable, since the hosts are presumably all or mostly involuntary and the Yeerks will be a lot easier to hold securely if they're not in hosts with spikes on all their limbs. He would like the Council and any Vissers and Subvissers on-planet kept at a separate location, if possible, for ease of future interrogations. They were able to capture approximately all of the computer records on the planet, which Mhalir can access, so Leareth intends to head down once more and have copies of everything made to take back to Earth.

He'll also prepare a message for the Andalite homeworld, which he can transmit via tiny-Gate and robot; he's happy to append any reports the Andalite forces want to send, he just asks that they have it ready within the next six hours, there's a lot of planning to do and he would rather not delay his departure for Earth. His message will include guesses at what support they might need from the Andalites to arrange semi-simultaneous attacks on all the Yeerk-held worlds before any fleeing courier ships can make it there. Leareth's new ability to cast Gates big enough to move starships through will come in handy, here, though it's inconvenient that he's the only one who can do it, and means he won't be available to pull the trick he just did on every planet, but they'll figure out a reasonable approach. 

The Andalites are boggled that he can send starships through his more-targetable kind of Gate and eager to free all the Hork Bajir... and the few Taxxons? Probably you can use compulsions to help with their hunger problem? They'll keep the Council and other Yeerk leadership under very close guard, in their own pool if possible. They assemble their own report for their command.

Leareth heads back down to the planet, in a shuttle again rather than by Gate. He lets Mhalir have his body to start pulling all the computer data, since Mhalir knows the access codes; the few he doesn't know, Leareth can drag out of relevant Yeerks with compulsions and Thoughtsensing. 

While that's happening, he Mindspeaks the Andalite in command here and asks about having all the Taxxon hosts brought over, so he can test whether his skill with compulsions can help keep their hunger in check without accidentally preventing them from eating entirely or otherwise being disabling. Probably what you really want for this is Mindhealing, but Leareth is far from confident about morphing and using that Gift for anything fiddly, even if he did Yeerk Nayoki to get her procedural knowledge. 

Sure, they can bring the Taxxons over for him to work out how to do that.

The Taxxons, brought over, turn out to mostly be voluntary Controllers.

Would they prefer to be voluntary not-Controllers, if it turns out that Leareth's 'advanced technology' from another world (it's easier to explain that way) can control their hunger as well as a Yeerk can? 

For the most part it seems like that would involve not being on the losing side of a war so it seems better. Some of them are kind of worried about their Yeerks (they don't say this, but they're thinking it.)

Leareth tells the Taxxons who are voluntary controllers, in private Mindspeech, that Yeerks who took only voluntary hosts are likely to be pardoned by the Andalites, and that on Earth many human Controllers requested to keep their Yeerks and this was allowed and actively supported. It's very important to him, personally, that this war not contain any more death, and loss of more intangible things than lives, than it needs to. Anyway, if they want to keep their Yeerks, wanting to keep their Yeerks is allowed. If they're worried that the Andalites garrisoning the planet are going to feel differently, well, he's happy to take them to Earth, where things are a bit less tense. 

Anyway, if they still want to try the Velgarth compulsions, he'll attempt it first on one of the Taxxons who wasn't a voluntary Controller and he can see how well it even works. First a simple one to keep them from eating anything while he tries something more subtle, then - hmm, he wants something on the level of goals-and-motivations more than actions. Really what he wants is a Mindhealing redirect, something analogous to a calming loop except instead it's an away-from-hunger loop, with a conditional firmer compulsion the Taxxon can trigger on themselves for a set time period if they're close to losing control. It takes him a while of fiddling to get as close as he can to replicating the thing he wants. 

And then they should probably be put in a room alone with some food, minus Yeerk, and Leareth will remove the unsubtle action-compulsion - from outside the room - and they can test if they're capable of using willpower to not eat the food. 

They vary in whether they have to invoke the firmer compulsion and it's confounded by not being used to having control of their bodies at all and most of them eat the food but it's definitely an improvement?

All right. Leareth will do it for all the Taxxons if they want it, and request that they be kept in separate accommodations with a good supply of food that is not people until the system is better tested. Also he doesn't think it should interact badly with having a Yeerk too, if they end up wanting their Yeerks back.

Once Mhalir has copies of all the computer data on the other Yeerk planets, for planning the next phase, Leareth Mindspeaks Matirin's Andalites privately - about half are still guarding this base, the other half are back on the Pool ship - and asks for volunteers to stay here, in order to provide coverage for compulsions if those are needed. Also, he adds, he would like people on-site to make sure the Yeerks are being treated reasonably and not unnecessarily harmed. Attitudes towards Yeerks on the Andalite homeworld are - understandable, but it'll make the future peace efforts and cleanup a lot harder if the Yeerk prisoners-of-war are treated badly by their captors. 

They want to get all of the Yeerks out of slaves and into pools as quickly as possible and are not very worried they'll be mistreated at that point, since it'd be hard to do, but they understand why it's so important; Mhalir's cooperation helped a lot with this plan. (They're past being so suspicious of his motives and are on to having concluded he is desperately trying to save his own metaphorical neck.)

That makes sense. 

Eventually Leareth has checked everything he wants to check, and he wishes the Andalites good luck with their host-freeing work, and gets a shuttle back to the Pool ship. It's morning now, Earth time, and he's starting to feel gluey-headed, his internal clock extremely confused.

He sends a message to the Andalites asking if they have their report ready to send yet. 

They do! They have tallied all their ships salvaged and have valuable intelligence from the computers and have a report here for him, in code.

Leareth can send that for them by mini-Gate-robot along with his own updates and requests, mostly dictated by Mhalir in morph-thoughtspeech while he multitasked, it's very handy. He has to hold the Gate for longer than usual, it's a lot of message, but it's tiny and not as far as Earth and he can rest while they travel in hyperspace. 

And then everything is done, and they can jump out, and Leareth finds a place to flop and sleep until they need to wake him for the giant Gate to Earth. Which feels - not quite like going home, nowhere has felt like home for Leareth in a very long time and possibly not since Urtho's Tower, but it's closer than anything else he recalls. 

Eventually they wake him for the giant Gate to Earth.

Ughhhhh Leareth's body is so unhappy to be woken at what feels like three am. (It's in fact early afternoon, on Earth.) He drags himself up and switches on the generator and manages to summon enough alertness, somehow, to route the Gate and hold it until the ship is through. 

He announces that he is going back to sleep until they're in orbit and time to get a shuttle down to the base. 

Mhalir is less tired than Leareth, he wasn't the one doing vast quantities of mage-work, and the fatigue is hitting him to some extent too - he is using Leareth's brain - but less. He's mildly frustrated at his inability to get started on planning while Leareth is napping all the time, but he waits it out. 

Matirin notifies Vanyel when the ship makes contact. <It worked. They're safe.>