The Andalite Chronicles-Chapter 12
quote:
We had shoved the Taxxons and the badly wounded Hork-Bajir into the cargo hold of the ship. We had not even looked into the hold to see what else might be in there.
Now we looked.
We opened the door and Alloran and Arbron stood with their shredders ready in case the surviving Taxxons tried to attack us. But the two Taxxons had other things on their minds. They were attempting to kill and eat each other. They had already finished off the wounded Hork-Bajir.
<Stop it or I'll kill you both!> Alloran yelled.
But the Taxxons were out of control, caught up in their own evil bloodlust. It was a vile thing to watch. Taxxons don't have powerful tails like us, or blades like the Hork-Bajir. They can only rear up and slam their upper bodies against each other while trying to gouge with their round mouths.
<Their Yeerks have left them,> Alloran said. <This is how Taxxons behave when they are not Controllers. Their Yeerk parasites have left them to destroy each other.>
<Where did the Yeerks go?> I asked.
Alloran calmly leveled his shredder at the Taxxons and fired. It was a low-level blast, just enough to knock the Taxxons unconscious.
We stepped past their sagging bodies, careful to keep our hooves out of the gore. Behind them, the hold of the ship was filled with transparent circular tanks. It was too dark to see what was in the tanks.
<Computer. Lights,> Alloran said.
Lights came on, and I instantly wished they hadn't.
The hold of the ship stretched for perhaps a hundred feet straight back, with a width of a third that. Filling most of that space, glowing a sludgy green, were dozens of tanks.
And in each tank, swimming through the viscous liquid, were gray slugs.
<Yeerks!> I said.
<There must be thousands! Tens of thousands!> Arbron said.
<I suspected this might be the case,> Alloran said. <These are Yeerks being transported to the Taxxon world. They're here to get bodies. Hosts. Each of these will be given a Taxxon.>
<What do we do with them?> I asked.
<We seal the bridge then open the outer hatch,> Alloran said calmly.
It took me a few seconds to realize what he was saying. If we opened the outer hatch while we were still in space, the vacuum would suck everything in the hold out. Out into the airless cold. The Yeerks would die almost instantly.
<Prince Alloran, we can't just kill them all,> I said. I looked closely at him to see if maybe he had been joking.
His eyes were cold. <Aristh Elfangor, I give the orders. You obey the orders.>
<But they're helpless,> I protested.
<They are Yeerks. And this is war. Would you rather wait till they have Taxxon bodies?>
I didn't know what to say. I looked at Arbron. He kept his face carefully expressionless.
<We ... we can't do this,> I said. <It's wrong. They are our prisoners. We can't! It would be murder!>
<Be careful what you accuse me of, Aristh Elfangor,> Alloran said harshly. <You're a child, so I forgive your impertinence. This time. But you are here to learn, not to question orders. And one of the things you'll learn, my idealistic aristh, is that war is not about striking brave poses and playing the hero. War is about killing.>
<Andalites do not kill prisoners,> I said.
Alloran laughed. <Is that what they taught you in school?> He laughed again. <Well, child, I learned my lessons in the battle for the Hork-Bajir world, not in a classroom. And let me tell you: The only thing that matters is staying alive. Besides, little aristh Elfangor, it's a bit late for you to get delicate. Not now, with the blood of your enemies staining your tail.>
This wasn't happening. It couldn't be. Alloran was a war-prince. I couldn't disobey a warprince.
But this was monstrous.
<I won't kill prisoners,> I said. <Not even Yeerks.>
<I could execute you right now for disobeying me,> Alloran said.
For a moment that seemed to stretch on and on, we stood there, face-to-face. I could barely breathe. I was risking my life, and probably destroying my future in the military, just to save my enemies. It was insane!
But I could not imagine myself sending the Yeerks flying off into the vacuum of space. I couldn't do it.
<Sir,> Arbron said tentatively. <We are so close to the planet surface that Yeerk sensors might pick up the heat signature of thousands of Yeerks being ... flushed ... into space. And they would investigate.>
It was true. Maybe. But was it enough to get the prince to back off?
<Well, we wouldn't want that,> Alloran said sarcastically. <We'll wait till we've completed our mission on the surface. Then, as we leave the system, we'll clean out this filth.>
I breathed again. But I wasn't fooling myself. I had made an enemy of Prince Alloran. And I wasn't sure I could count on Arbron, either.
<Time to acquire the Taxxons, if that meets with Aristh Elfangor's high moral code,> Alloran said.
I turned away and walked back to the two stunned Taxxons. Without hesitating, I placed my hand on one of the Taxxons' slimy flesh.
Morphing technology allows a person to absorb the DNA of any creature he touches. It takes concentration and focus, because the biotechnology of morphing is triggered by thought commands.
Focus, I told myself. Put everything else out of your mind, and let the Taxxon become a part of you.
And as I stood there, the Taxxon's DNA migrated into me.
My life, which had gone rapidly downhill at a shocking speed, was about to get much worse.
And then, with the skeptical eyes of Prince Alloran and the frightened stare of Arbron upon me, I began to morph.[/quote]
So while Elfangor would never have heard of Geneva, as far as human wars are concerned, here's the beginning of the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners.
quote:
1. Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.
To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:
(a) Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
(b) Taking of hostages;
(c) Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;
(d) The passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.
While the Andalites obviously aren't signatories, Elfangor seems to have a natural sense that, as prisoners and non-combatants, the Yeerks in the tanks deserve that sort of treatment. Alloran, obviously, disagrees.
What do you think? Who's right? When is it legitimate to kill your enemy, and when is it not? These Yeerks right now are obviously helpless and no threat...they're a bunch of almost blind slugs in tanks. That being said, this is a raid, The only purpose here was to get Taxxon DNA to morph. They're probably not going to be able to take the Yeerks back to the Andalite homeworld. And, if they land with the shuttle, undercover, as they're planning to do, once they land, the Taxxons will just take the Yeerks off the ship for implantation, not knowing anything is wrong. Does that change anything?
On the other hand....So, in December, 1944, there was the Battle of the Bulge. The Germans, in a last ditch attack, massed their troops and led an offensive into the American lines, driving US troops back (the aforementioned bulge), until the Americans were able to counterattack and stop them. During the offensive, part of the German 6th SS Panzer Army captured an American convoy, and took it prisoner. The unit decided, since they were on such a tight schedule, they had no way of dealing with the American prisoners. So, they lined them up in a field and machine gunned them. Even though some escaped, about 84 died, This became known as the Malmedy Massacre. After the war, the perpetrators of the massacre were put on trial....some were sentenced to death, others to life imprisonment, and others to shorter terms. If we accept that the Malmedy massacre wasn't justified (and I don't think it was), how is that different than what Alloran wants to do?
The Andalite Chronicles-Chapter 13
quote:
As an Andalite aristh, I'd been trained in morphing. Back at basic training they first transformed us with the morphing technology. And they gave us a djabala to acquire and morph.
A djabala is a small, six-legged animal, maybe a third the size of a young Andalite. It has a mouth and a tail and no natural weapons. It lives by climbing trees and eating the highest leaves.
You have to morph the djabala in order to pass the morphing proficiency test. So I did. But then, like a lot of arisths, I morphed a kafit bird. I have heard that some planets have many types of bird. But since we only have three, and since the kafit is the best species of the three, it's popular with
young cadets looking for fun.
It was a wonderful experience. I always loved the idea of flying. But of course, morphing for pleasure is discouraged. So I only did it one time.
That was all the morphing I had done. A djabala and a kafit bird. I had never even dreamed of morphing a Taxxon.
Taxxons are a nauseating species. Even if you've seen holograms of them. But trust me, till you've been up close to a Taxxon, you just don't know how awful they are. The smell alone is enough to make you sick.
But now I had no choice. I had to show Alloran that I was still a good soldier. I had to prove that I was brave, no matter what he thought of me. I couldn't show any hesitation.
So I focused my mind on becoming the Taxxon. And the changes began immediately.
I felt my upper torso begin to melt down into my lower body. As I watched, my blue-and-tan fur ceased being individual hairs and melted into a plasticlike covering. The bare flesh on my upper body did the same thing, turning hard and shiny.
I felt myself falling as my legs shrank. They seemed to be sucked up into my body. Way too fast!
My stomach hit the deck so hard it knocked the air out of me.
Then, almost as quickly, I was lifted back up off the deck. Dozens of sharp cones were sprouting from my belly. I was growing Taxxon legs.
I looked backward through my stalk eyes and saw that my body was stretching out behind me. I was rapidly becoming a fat worm. Ten feet of rippling, slimy segments rolled backward, engulfing my tail. The process made a sound like wet cloth being dragged over gravel.
I could hear my own internal organs dissolving. Squishing, slippery sounds. I could hear other organs, organs I didn't even have a name for, take their place.
Then ... I was blind!
My eyes had all been blinded at once. I couldn't see anything. I felt fear grow within me. Fear that threatened to become panic. I was blind!
Muddy at first, then sharper, my sight slowly returned. But it didn't exactly make me feel better.
It was an eerie, distorted, broken world I saw.
Taxxons have compound eyes. Each red globule eye is really a thousand smaller eyeballs, each one taking its own tiny picture of the world. Everything I saw around me was shattered into a million small frames. It was overwhelming.
And then I felt something new. A new sense ...
I moved unfamiliar muscles and realized that they operated my mouth. My round, red mouth. And through that mouth came a deluge of sensory input. It was like smell. And like something I'd never really experienced before. It's called the sense of taste, I think.
And what I tasted ... what I smelled ... all that my senses cared about was the bright smell of blood.
I never even felt the Taxxon's instincts well up beneath my own troubled and battered Andalite mind. I had no warning. All at once, the Taxxon was in my head.
How can I even convey the horror?
Have you ever felt in yourself some awful, evil urge? Some fugitive thought that you quickly snuffed out? Well, as I became fully Taxxon, I felt such a feeling. And it was not some faint wisp of thought, but a raging, screaming hunger.
A hunger for anything living.
A hunger for anything with a beating heart.
My shattered Taxxon eyes saw two Andalites.
My own people! I wanted to devour my own people.
But Taxxons are not fools. My Taxxon brain saw and understood the Andalite tails. It knew they were weapons. It knew it could not fight them. And that weakness gave rise to a rage that was like a nuclear fire in me.
I was hungry! Hunger like no hunger any other creature can ever know.
As I struggled to reassert my own identity, I understood why the Taxxons had made their alliance with the Yeerks.
The Yeerks had weapons. Weapons to use to feed fresh, warm flesh to the raging Taxxon hunger.
The Taxxons had given up their freedom. But freedom is nothing to a Taxxon, compared with that hunger.
<How are you doing, Elfangor?> Arbron asked me.
<Fine,> I lied. <Only ...>
<What?>
<When you morph, be very careful. Be strong. You'll have to fight the hunger.>
Arbron laughed. <What, are you afraid I'm gonna morph and try to eat you?>
<Yes, Arbron. I am afraid.>
Honestly, how can you not feel sorry for these things?
