Um, Tom's unnamed second yeerk? I have a question.
How do you think a stabbing death at an isolated cabin is going to get you back home to feed sooner?
Oooh, I have a theory! I think the plan is:
Stab Tom's dad to death
Chuck him in the pond, weighted down with rocks
Run back inside the cabin and go "Guys? Dad's on a mushroom-hunting trip and he hasn't been home in a few hours"
Wait for the chaos of a search to break out
Announce "I'm taking the car and going for help!"
Take the car
Eat yummy kandrona snacks
Come back 6 hours later, resume pretending to be Tom, "search" for Steve
Get dismembered by tiger
Personally, I think that it was more anger than any real great plan driving Tom's yeerk at this point. The yeerk's superiors essentially left him to starve, and he can't do anything to them about it (until he gets the morphing cube later). So, the only target is this clueless human father who unknowingly is setting him up for starvation.
I think it's intriguing that the yeerk didn't try to stab Jake in his sleep since he had to sneak past Jake anyway on his way to murder the dad. I've always wondered the reason behind that. Did the yeerk want Jake alive so that when the surviving family was inevitably infested to cover up the dad's murder he could prove his points about war, such as "strong and weak. That's the reality. Winners and losers." Or did he not really register Jake as a factor in leading up to his potential starvation and didn't see the need to kill a potential host? Or some other reason?
I wonder about him ignoring Jake too. At that point his best plan would be to sneak a dracon beam along and incinerate the whole family and drive back to the pool. He'd lose his teenager cover entirely but he'd be alive. Guess the human cover was still important enough to the Empire that while killing one human to save him would be acceptable, killing a more suspicious amount of humans would not be worth one yeerk's life.
It does set up his future actions to know he's been abandoned by his own. The tunnel vision of a personal anger overriding the need for a plan is one of the running themes of the series (Alloran in The Andalite Chronicles, Marco's thoughts on the addictive power of rage in 10, etc.).
The yeerk's best plan would have been infesting the dad and what he thought was the normal little brother at the antique store Sharing meeting he intended to infest just the dad at. Instead, the yeerk tries to hide from Jake he's even taking the dad to this meeting by tossing a note in the trash.
There's also the failed whole drive-by shooting. It really doesn't matter whether they kill/injure Jake or his dad, no one would be forcing Tom's yeerk out of town either way. Yet, Jake switching places with his dad outside stops the yeerks from doing anything then.
As a last resort the yeerk could have just murdered everyone and lit the cabin on fire or something to cover it up. He could have tried to play the grieving, sole survivor card and probably still kept his Tom cover. But again, he only goes after the dad.
This yeerk spends the entire books trying to side-step around Jake in whatever his plot of the moment is and then gives Jake his personal philosophy on war. It's strange. And it really makes me wonder as to how the Conspiracy would read from the yeerk's point of view.
