Marian finds Leareth a blanket and then sits there being worried. Probably his lips are blue because he's cold and not because he's having trouble breathing enough, but it would be nice if she could be more sure of that. 

The humans huddle up and try to keep each other warm and Nayoki slowly musters the energy to dry everyone's clothes with a heat-spell. 

They reach the Andalite ship in orbit. 

Leareth is, with great effort, able to stand up while holding onto Nayoki and Marian, and drag himself out of the shuttle and make it to the ship's medical bay. 

The ship doctor would like him to morph off the various things wrong with him from his extended seawater adventure, can he do that? 

He can manage it eventually with some prompting. 

After demorphing he feels a lot less physically miserable, but morphing doesn't address mage-reserves and he's still pretty exhausted. 

Nayoki approaches Matirin once she's gotten fresh clothes. :I think we need to slow down for a while: she sends. :Leareth was too tired going into this: 

<We were aiming to get everywhere before word did. It is too late for that. We should assume going forward that every planet has heard the news, which requires significant reconsideration and removes many of the arguments for moving as fast as possible. It's ...honestly possible that we should let word catch up everywhere and hope they surrender at that point.>

:That makes sense: Sigh. :At least we got everyone out of the Dome ship. I - am sorry - I must have missed something, I have no memory of how they caught me...: 

<I assume they were forewarned, in which case it is not surprising they could have a plan to disable you. Hopefully some of the Yeerks in the captured Pool ship know something; we are trying to find out.>

The Yeerks in the Pool ship don't know anything about the robots that took out the Dome ship. It sounds like it was a contingency-plan set up with extensive secrecy. Given the destruction of all the other Yeerk ships and the land base, it seems possible no one is left alive who knows any more about when and how Visser One decided to implement Mhalir's theoretical contingency plan.

They do know that a courier ship arrived two days ago with panicked news. It came from a recently-conquered system, where no courier ships had been seen fleeing and also the Andalites thought was twelve days' travel away, but the Yeerks somehow knew of a different route which took only half that time. 

This isn't very surprising - was, in some sense, bound to happen somewhere eventually. The Andalites will get whatever else they can about the situation on Leera from the Yeerks in the Pool ship, since there's now the daunting task of freeing all the Leerans.

The main Leeran underwater city is called the 'City of Worms' and its current (much reduced) population is entirely Controllers. The city is guarded by the genetically engineered hammerhead sharks, though Yeerks dislike them as hosts; they're smarter than normal sharks but still pretty dumb. The city has a Yeerk pool and Kandrona generator, cleverly re-designed to work underwater, and it's well fortified and still equipped with most of the weapons that the Leerans used to defend it during the Yeerk invasion. 

The rest of the planet, including most of the total Leeran population, is still free; the Leerans in smaller underwater settlements fled into the underwater wilderness when the City of Worms was taken.

It's going to be pretty irritating to fight the City of Worms, and probably they want to sneakily infiltrate instead? Have someone obtain an underwater-capable morph - the city isn't actually that deep so possibly even a dolphin or orca could make it on a single breath - go in shielded and try to get into mind-control range to disable, if not the weapons themselves, at least their operators. 

:I can do dolphin with Gifts and go in: Nayoki suggests to Matirin. :Leareth should not do it: She's feeling unusually protective of him right now. 

<I would not even have guessed dolphins with Gifts would work. Yes, that makes sense, if you're up for it.>

:Neither would I! Leareth did his orca with Gifts on the spot, when he realized he needed to be less distracted by the giant waves in order to get me out. He thought it might work after I mentioned that dolphins show up a little to Thoughtsensing. I am surprised I could do it, I am not as good at morphing, but I suppose I had to practice composite morphs a great deal for the Alloran one:

She sits down with some of Leareth's other staff, rather than bother him, and starts going through what they know of the seafloor terrain to plan an unseen approach she can manage on a single dolphin-breath, and figuring out shielding. They should take their time and plan carefully, for this. 

Leareth sleeps for six hours, and wakes up clearheaded enough to realize that he completely failed to ever reach the rest of the Andalite fleet with the interworld comms spell. He can't really blame himself, it takes a couple of minutes of uninterrupted focus to get the routing and it's draining, but he really wishes he had remembered and told someone a lot earlier. 

He manages to cast it this time and provide a very brief, clipped update to a mage elsewhere, Mindspeaks Nayoki to tell her he's done so, and then falls asleep again for another five hours. 

When he finally seems to be awake for good, he gets up, morphs Andalite, and goes looking for Matirin. <I think I owe you an apology.> 

He looks at him somewhat quizzically.

<I was - not being very careful. About pacing myself. Normally I - would have noticed, that I was too low on reserves to attempt a Gate, instead of passing out with no warning.> Though he doesn't know what he could have done instead, there had been so little time. <Also I did not manage to contact the rest of the fleet until a few hours ago and failed to pass this on to anyone.> 

<...these are all very normal things to have happen in battles that go unexpectedly poorly. I appreciate you saving all our lives.>

Tail-nod. <I - was very scared. Of not being able to save you.> It was possibly one of the most stressful ten-minute periods in the entire war so far. Definitely worse than when he went down to the Council planet with Mhalir in his head. 

<I - think it would turn out all right? I wouldn't be here if I thought otherwise. We're very happy with the results of the alliance, everyone's given speeches about how mercifully we're treating the Yeerks... I do not expect it to fall apart if I die.>

Leareth isn't sure how to explain why that doesn't help at all. 

- actually maybe it's not that complicated. <You are my friend. Everything is already so hard, and - I would be very sad if I lost you.> Tail-shrug. <I know I cannot let that guide my decisions at the expense of strategic objectives, but.> 

<I will try not to make you very sad, then.

Should you - see a mind-doctor? I know they are annoying but they can also be helpful with not having unexpected brain problems from pushing yourself too hard>.

Leareth glances at him, surprised but not displeased. <I think I ought have listened to Nayoki and taken the full week of rest. And - should listen to her now, she thinks I need at least a fortnight of - how did she put it - of not trying to carry the entire war on my own. And not doing any Gates. I suppose if we are assuming other systems have probably heard, then...there is no point in rushing anymore.>

His tail lashes. <I was fully aware that I was pushing myself unsustainably hard, but - it seemed worth it, as long as we were still ahead. I suspect it was worth it. My failure analysis here is mainly that I cannot actually do that many Gates without a node-generator on hand, but I am also still unsure what else I could have done. Anyway. I think I will be all right. Nayoki is not really a mind-doctor the way Melody is, but she has the same Gift and she is very sensible.> 

<I think at this point it might make sense to just slow down and send terms to the remaining Yeerk systems. They are few, and remote, and mostly far from one another. I worry that some Yeerks will sneak off elsewhere into the galaxy to continue their conquests quietly, but - we will have to do a lot of interrogations to determine whether they did, I guess, rushing isn't going to be sufficient to prevent that now.>