Sure it seems like a distraction to hide the real mission from ever going down in history — a failed assassination attempt with the most expendable soldiers available. But killing Visser Three would be big. It would be worth a lot (even though the Yeerk empire is not remotely playing to his strengths having him in charge of Earth, he's still a very powerful leader, after all).

I know there are a lot of reasons to say killing Visser Three is a ruse to stall their way to the Yeerk pool but I think Arbat meant to do it until he heard his name in his brother's voice. Because even when the playful teasing is a gut punch, a knife in the back, it's the sound of a childhood. It's playfully sparring while their parents are busy, training after school, roughhousing as young adults who've never seen war or eliminated a species for the good of the universe.

The voice of a brother you haven't seen for 15 years or more, calling back memories of your childhood except this time the fight is real (it doesn't matter if it's real. What's real is your brother, worse than dead by all accounts, and he didn't really try to hurt you, just disarmed you. It wasn't a real fight, it was Alloran. You've looked after his family disgraced twice over, but how can you be disgraced when this is YOUR BROTHER)

I think this is the only time Esplin has interacted with Alloran's family. I think he's genuinely delighted to twist the knife, for both Alloran and his brother. Watch me break him, too, butcher of the Hork-Bajir. You watched every soldier in your unit massacred, took the fall for a planet that could not be saved and your brother? He was never that. Soft. Scientific. So female in his interests. Oh, how easily one of my lieutenants could break him. Or, if I'm feeling kind, I can torture him, and morph, and you can live with the knowledge of having eaten him. Isn't this fun, War-Prince Alloran?

Ax's sexism is... on the one hand, I want to smack that precious cinnamon bun. It's grating. On the other it's a look into andalite machismo, which both tells us about andalites and about how Ax sees his human friends.

Even the fact that Ax is hung up on Estrid's being a *gasp!* girl aristh stands in contrast to how he sees Rachel and Cassie. It's insight into how he sees humans and andalites as operating under different rules. What Rachel and Cassie can do is, as far as Ax is concerned, standard human skills. He's not used to human-style sexism so he doesn't go in with preconceived notions about the differences in human abilities. It's his own in-group he can't quite figure out because he's grown up with andalite expectations of andalite gender roles.

Considering the andalites who would be in need of organs are presumably the ones that cannot remorph healthy tissues themselves I imagine vecols pretty much have to rely on the black market if they want to survive rather than wither away out of sight the way andalite culture demands.

EDIT:

Visser Three looked at the Andalite. <Arbat!> The Andalite's eyes flickered and his finger hesitated on the shredder.

oh duh. he knew his bro was there.