Adrift
Copyright© 2025 by Gina Marie Wylie
Chapter 14
For an hour, the command group went over everything, backwards and forwards.
Jack was simply dismissive of the lieutenant and the other two who had left with him. “The tracks were blurred. I think they came right down to the water, loaded the gear, and pushed off. One of them must have a compass. We didn’t see them in the water, and there was no way they could have reached shore if they’d waited until light to push off. Unless, of course, there really are critters in the water and they didn’t get far. I can’t say as I’d be comfortable with that assumption. On the other hand, Harry and Griff have been fonts of information regarding contact with the locals.”
Jack went on to describe what had happened. Harry had had a minute to go to the bathroom, a fresh blouse in her hand. Once again, she was presentable. Actually, the biggest issue was Jack having given her a pistol. When Alexis Ogden had added that she had one too, the conversation went off on yet another tangent.
Finally, the conversation returned to the “conversations” with the bird and the female whatever it was. “She wasn’t an ape,” Harry said firmly. “She wasn’t a chimp, or any kind of monkey. More like us, except shorter. She had more breasts.”
“You took too many chances, Harry,” Commander Shumway said eventually.
Harry lifted her chin. “I don’t want to die. Okay? Do you understand? The birds just stood there. I was careful, and it worked. The female -- person -- was the same thing. I had to go to my knees facing her to be eye-to-eye. If we try to fight everything on this planet, we will lose. We will.”
Becky came to her defense. “I think you did just fine, Harry. Just fine. And above all else, her comment about fighting is spot on, Commander. We have to pick our enemies; we don’t know enough, and we’ve made mistakes already. Our situation is a day, perhaps two, from being desperate. Harry says those bushes are an organized planting -- that means they are someone’s crop.”
Harry was surprised when Owen spoke.
“I’m a cultural anthropologist. I know some of you want to gag, and I don’t blame you. Most of the people in my field make me gag. But not all of us. Yes, it is -- was -- a big cop-out, toeing the party line to get my degree. But it was that or not even get close. So I held my nose and spewed the shit they wanted to hear. Well, here I am, and here you are. We don’t need shit; we need informed advice.
“Griff yesterday -- we need to raise a statue to him, I kid you not. If we’d continued down the path we’d been on, we’d be considered bird feed, I’m sure.
“Harry, today. Gosh! I like to think of myself as an expert in these things, but she was out front, leading. Do you understand? She exchanged gifts twice? In practically every primitive society on Earth, gift-giving to strangers had a special cachet. The more princely the gift, the more incumbent on the recipient to give princely back.
“A gold chain versus a copper bracelet might not sound like a bargain, but I bet it’s a hell of a lot harder to forge a gold chain than a copper one. Harry’s blouse? A small thrill for Jack...”
Jack flipped Owen off, to the amusement of everyone else. “But more important, the female hominid Harry was talking to didn’t have anything to give in return. Tomorrow or the next day ... maybe we can negotiate for some tubers. Dr. Sanger says they are quite edible; their nutritional value is still iffy, but she has high hopes for that too.”
Owen spoke to Commander Shumway, but Becky as well. “We have to stop shooting at things. Griff has done a good job twice; he got the critters out of these caves without killing them. He defended his party with intelligence on top of the hill. We simply do not know enough about this planet at this point to safely say what’s intelligent and what’s not. Or what’s rational or not. We have to go easy.”
There was a mild stir, and Chavez, the man who’d been Jack’s number two on the trip, joined them. “You’re talking about things.”
“Yes,” Commander Shumway said.
“What do you want, Corporal Chavez?” the gunny asked.
“Gunny, Jack, Griff ... we don’t want to piss any of you off, okay?”
“You have some opinions, is that it, Corporal?” the gunny asked.
“Yes, Gunny. We have a few opinions. First off, the enlisted men request the right to be a majority of the jury in the court-martial of Lieutenant Pugh.”
The gunny shook his head. “I’m sorry, Chavez, but we don’t have juries at court-martials. There’s just a panel of judges; usually three people.”
Commander Shumway nodded. “However, since we’re short of officers, what I’d be willing to do is state Lieutenant Riley will be the President, the gunny, and someone of his choice from the enlisted ranks. Is that satisfactory, Corporal?”
“Yes, Commander,” the corporal paused. “Gunny, there’s another thing ... well, two things.”
The gunny stepped close to Chavez. “Speak up; stop nickel and diming us to death, you hear?”
“Yes, Gunny. I think we should have a board, like a court-martial board, but not that. To decide promotions, to decide who we induct into the Corps. Griff, he’s okay. Bess, she’s got guts; she’ll do. The two other guys, Stevens and Calderon, they’re okay. But we need more, Gunny. We want to have a say in who, and what rank they hold after we take them in.”
The commander stood still looking at Chavez, then turned to the gunny. “I was about to make a mistake. I was going to suggest that you, me, Lieutenant Riley, and Becky go off and talk this over. I’m going to decide, but I don’t want such limited input.”
“Fine by me,” the gunny told her. “But what isn’t fine is that Marines aren’t going to elect NCOs, much less officers. That’s not ever going to happen.”
“No, Gunny, that’s not what I meant,” Chavez said. “I meant like a promotion board. To decide if someone is qualified. Not everyone voting, just like three.”
“I don’t have a problem with that,” Becky said. “So long as they only vote on volunteers. Me? I don’t want to be a Marine! You guys are too tough!”
There were chuckles.
Becky turned to Harry. “What do you think, Harry?”
“I think it’s something that the Marines should decide between themselves. The rest of us should let them.”
“Probably not a bad idea,” Lieutenant Riley said.
“A good idea,” Mei Lei added. “I do not see myself as a Marine, either.”
“I can live with a promotion board and an enlistment board,” the gunny told the corporal.
“Can you live with the fact, Corporal, that the boss appoints the board? All of them?” Commander Shumway told him.
“Yes, ma’am. CO’s do that all the time in the Corps.”
“Good, then right now our personnel board president is Lieutenant Riley, and consists of Griff and you, Chavez. If one of you is up for a promotion, I’ll appoint someone else to temporarily fill your slot. The Military Board is tasked to handle military affairs -- that is, enlistments, promotions, court-martials, and other tasks that I come up with.”
Bess listened with half an ear to the discussion. She’d started listening when she’d heard her name, and continued listening to the end. She thought something important had just happened, but she wasn’t exactly sure what.
Sure enough, someone else spoke up, the older man standing next to Alexis.
“Perhaps we should have a similar board for the other passengers?” Owen said.
“That’s next on my list,” Commander Shumway agreed. “Five, though, I suspect. In this case, I’m simply going to order what I want. Becky, you are President. You will organize a secret ballot to be held at local noon tomorrow to select four more people. Anyone can run. From that election, all with more than three votes will be eligible to continue. They get to campaign the rest of the day until after dinner tomorrow.
“Then, another ballot tomorrow evening. An Australian ballot, you know what that is?”
Becky nodded and then explained. “For the rest of you, each person marks down their first four choices. The winners will be anyone with a majority of first-place votes. Keep voting until there are four winners.
“And who gets to vote? Me?”
“You’re President, of course, you can vote,” the commander responded.
“Harry?” Becky asked.
“Sandy?” Mei Lei spoke as well.
Bess was surprised when Owen spoke in German. “Jugendweihe.”
“Gesundheit,” Bess said, trying to be funny.
Owen nodded at Mei Lei. “I’m revealing my upbringing here, but it didn’t take, I assure you. It was a term I heard often in East Germany. Call it coming of age, only more formal. A little like confirmation in Protestant churches, only they meant joining the Communist Party. The board can hear petitions from young people for voting status.”
“And now?” Commander Shumway said, looking at Owen warily.
“Thirteen would be a good lower age limit,” Owen said, without looking away. “But it should never be automatic again. Let the young person apply, and then the board can decide.”
There was more talk. Becky and Commander Shumway went out to announce the election, while the gunny was assigning more work parties.
Bess found herself with a group of six who were to go to the top of the ridge, doing some more work on the map, then pushed on a little further. She was mildly distressed when Griff wasn’t one of the Marines, but the gunny was leading. If she wasn’t safe with him, was she safe at all? Still, she wished Griff had been put in charge.
The afternoon was warm, unlike the days before. There were fewer clouds; it didn’t seem as humid either.
At the top of the ridge, they discovered that the bird-person killed the day before was gone. There were scrape marks left in the dirt to show where it had been.
They spent an hour updating the map, and then they pushed on. They were on a small plateau that continued for about a half mile, before it dropped down again.
In the distance, they could see a higher set of hills, five or six miles distant. The rocks were lighter colored than the rocks they were on. In fact, a couple of layers were almost white, but most were slate gray.
Again, to the northwest, across the lake, they could see dinosaurs coming down to the water to drink. Bess found herself drawing pictures of them for the gunny.
Late in the afternoon, the gunny was looking with the glasses towards the southwest and called Bess to him.
“Birds going up,” he told her. She looked and saw a swarm of black dots, ten or twelve miles away to the southwest.
She watched them, nervous. Theory said they didn’t have to run; seeing them, even from a distance, gave Bess a strong desire to find a niche in the rocks, crawl into it, and pull it in behind her.
“That’s odd,” the gunny murmured, his eyes glued to the binoculars.
Someone else asked the obvious question, saving Bess from having to do it herself.
“What’s odd, Gunny?” one of the Marines asked.
“They are circling, just gaining altitude. Man, can those babies fly!”
Bess nodded; they were indeed just circling, but each circle was hundreds of feet higher than the last. And it was quick; in just five minutes, the birds were miniscule specks, very high in the air.
“They’ve stopped climbing,” the gunny told them. “Now they all are just gliding. East, out over the water.”
“Over the water?” someone asked, and Bess wanted to chuckle at the surprise in the other’s voice.
“It will be really interesting, someday,” the gunny opined, “when we learn how wide this lake is. Because it’s pretty obvious the birds are going to glide as far as they can. Their destination must be just barely in range.”
“Hawks back on Earth like to soar just for the hell of it,” Bess said. “When I was sixteen, my family visited the Raptor Center near Boise, Idaho. I remember them talking about how hawks and eagles will just fly high and coast for the fun of it.”
The gunny nodded, took his eyes away from the binoculars. The birds were just visible, black specks, even though their wings were spread wide. After a couple more minutes, they were gone, lost in the haze over the lake.
Bess was close enough to hear the gunny say softly, “I wonder how fast they can come down? At that altitude, they could sneak anywhere unseen, drop like rocks, and surprise us.”
The gunny shook himself. “We still have some time left before we have to turn back. Let’s press forward for another mile.”
They reached the higher hills. These were steep, perhaps a thousand feet tall, with a stream in a gully between them and the hills. The gunny headed for a ravine that went down towards the water, found an animal trail that led down to it, and started to go down it.
“Whoa up, Gunny!” one of the women Marines said. Bess recognized her as the one who’d made comments the other day about knowing Griff; that and Bess had heard she was Owen’s daughter.
“This is a bad place,” the woman told the gunny, waving ahead. “Where there’s a trail, there’s traffic. Where there’s traffic, there are hunters. Think of it as a choke point,” she explained, waving at the place where the trail crossed the stream.
The gunny looked around carefully.
It took just an instant. Without warning, there was a blur, running right at them. Instantly, there were a half dozen shots; Bess stepped back, the blur whizzed past her, inches away, slamming into the gunny. The critter summersaulted into the air, flopping into some bushes. An instant later, another shot, behind Bess, from where the critter had come out. She turned and saw another of them, staggering. Two more shots, and it crumpled.
Bess felt a wave of dizziness, then a sharp pain in her side. She looked down and almost did a comic double take, although it wasn’t funny. Her blouse was slashed and gapping wide, and blood was running down her side.
She frowned, trying to make sense of it; it didn’t hurt. Without warning, the world tilted and spun, and she was looking up at the sky.
Two of the Marines were there, tearing at packets, pressing them against her stomach. “It doesn’t hurt at all,” Bess said with as much aplomb as she could manage. “It’s just a scratch.”
It was odd; a few seconds before, she could hear sounds, now it was quiet. She looked up, blinked again. She was being carried, level. A stretcher? They didn’t have a stretcher with them. It was odd. Her mind wandered off, contemplating where they could have gotten a stretcher and not thinking about her injury.
Someone was holding her hand. She looked up and saw Griff; he was pale, her hand hurt where he was holding it. “Hurts now,” she told him, glancing at her hand.
“I know, Bess, just hang on. Stay with us.”
Bess frowned. “I don’t think I can get away.”
She blinked. Her eyes were leaden, very hard to keep open. Her mouth tasted funny, but at least Griff didn’t have a death grip on her hand anymore. “Water,” she croaked. A second later there was something pressed against her mouth; cloth of some sort. Only a few blessed drops of water. “More,” she pleaded, trying to sound forceful.
Sandy and Harry had been sitting wiSandy and Harry had been sitting with Jack and Mei Lei, eating their meager lunch. In the distance came the sound of gunfire. Then, more and more.
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