<That makes sense. We can just shoot the ships down, typically, with the ability to use your Gates to bring the whole fleet to bear on any location at a precise time.>

<I am also considering if we should just go for that option. It has the downside of significantly more Yeerk casualties, but - possibly fewer Andalite casualties.>

<Substantially fewer, I think, and no risk of someone Gifted being infested somehow.> Tail-lash. <We could at least do it for the ships that don't have a pool.>

<That makes sense. And it is simpler. Fewer moving parts to go wrong.>

Leareth is currently wanting to stand there all day being near Matirin, but probably he should not do that.

<Anyway. Do you want to head to a conference room and look at the detailed report and the intelligence on the other planets?> 

<Mhalir here, I think you only need one of us for that> Mhalir adds. <Is Cayaldwin around?>

<He is working. We can stop by him and then look through our intelligence on the other planets.>

<All right.> Leareth walks with Matirin, a little closer than usual but not actually touching. 

They are very adorable and Leareth is being very oblivious and Mhalir is unsure whether he should say anything. He goes with 'not'. 

He finds Cayaldwin. <The assault on the secret Council planet went off safely. Do you want Mhalir.>

<Sure.> He makes a point of not putting on gloves, holds his hand out to Leareth.

Leareth deposits a Yeerk in Cayaldwin's hand, meeting his eyes levelly. He's long past any feeling of disgust about Yeerk bodies, and mostly he's even stopped dwelling on how small and squishy and fragile Mhalir is in his hand. 

Cayaldwin holds Mhalir up to his ear and rolls two of his eyes at Leareth and Matirin and then turns back to his work.

Mhalir slips in and it feels so oddly like coming home. 

He doesn't say anything about the battle. Cayaldwin isn't going to care. <Catch me up on what I missed?> 

Sure, he can do that.

And Leareth heads to a conference room with Matirin and gets the reports up on a computer to review. 

They already knew of most of the places where Yeerks had operations, but not all of them. There's one where they're studying whether hosts consuming a local plant lets them go longer between Kandrona soakings, that seems valuable. There is a plan for an eventual assault on the Andalite homeworld which Matirin lingers on a while even though it's of course obviated now.

Leareth adds his own commentary. Eventually he has to demorph, and finds that he's yawning and leaning on the wall. 

<Get some sleep. My people can help me look through this and we can let you know in the morning if anything stands out as important.>

"All right. We can speak again in the morning." 

It's sort of a good thing he came out of this so tired, really, because it's now a reasonable human bedtime and he's able to fall asleep in about three minutes despite sleeping on and off half the day. 

He does wake up at three o'clock in the morning, disoriented and wide awake, and he goes out and paces in Andalite form for a while before he can manage to sleep again. (His Andalite body really wants him to go join the sleeping herd, but he cannot do that while in morph.) 

He eventually goes back to bed and gets up at a normal time, feeling mostly normal. They can go on with all the preparations that need to be made before they can leave Earth again. 

It is going to be awful and stressful but - four months. The fastest hyperspace route to the farthest Yeerk planet is four months. That means that if they do this right it will all be over inside four months. 

He has a summary for Leareth in the morning.

Leareth looks over it. "Yes, I think we can do this. Not with as much leeway or as large a margin of superiority as I would like, for all of them," there aren't enough Andalite troops, he doesn't have enough mages, he can't wage a war simultaneously across so many planets without sacrificing somewhere, "but - enough to win, we can do. I want to bring in most of my mages - they have far more training than the Andalites, and more of them have adequate shielding against Dracon beams." 

<Yes, I agree that makes sense.>

"- Probably Healers too, in case there are injuries. I can have many of them prepared to leave today, and the others can be Gated over later for the more distant planets that we can afford to leave for later." This is so much logistics and it doesn't all fit in his head. 

<I can ask how many humans Nerefir is prepared to accommodate immediately. Since they all require separate sleeping quarters it can be more complicated.>

"They do not require it, many will be willing to share rooms for this, but fair enough." And Leareth can get to work on lists of who he wants to bring.