Adrift
Copyright© 2025 by Gina Marie Wylie
Chapter 18
Becky Thatcher settled in the crook of Tim Wylie’s arm and wrapped an arm around his chest.
“I haven’t known you long, Becky,” he said. “But long enough to know that something is bothering you.”
She was silent for a long minute, and then exhaled heavily. “On Samoa, I was confident. I might not have known what I was doing, but I felt it was right.
“I boarded the plane, resigned to people going to question me every day for the rest of my life. Then we came here. I grit my teeth, lied to everyone about how I felt, and after we landed, I applied myself to our problems.
“The Gunny took the wind out of my sails when he asked me, rightly, not to boss his Marines around. God, Tim! I was seduced by how easy it was, how willing they were to obey...”
Tim laughed. “Sweet Becky, it didn’t hurt that no one else had a clue, no one had any better ideas, and Marines seem to go with a winner.”
“I told myself that, and I understand the Gunny’s concerns. Pugh was a wake-up call.
“It’s just that ever since, it seems I’m sliding into uselessness. I make no difference anymore.”
Tim laughed harder. “Some of the people are competent as well, and just as capable of figuring out what to do next as anyone. They know you were there when you were needed. This is like a football team being up 42-0 and putting in the second string to rest their most valuable players.”
“I’m not useless?”
“Dear Becky, you are nothing like useless. We are ahead of the game now. Rest, relax, and destress. Destress.
“I studied my captain for a long time. At first, I never understood when she’d have me take over. Then I recognized the signs of her fatigue. A few times, she was really frazzled. Even the Coast Guard is knuckle-headed at times. She’d tell me I had the ship, curl up in her cabin, and when she’d next appear, it would be rested and refreshed. We got so we knew the signs in each other and gave the other plenty of time to rest.”
He looked into the distance. “She was the mother I wished I’d had. There was nothing I wouldn’t have done for her.”
“Tomorrow looks to be an exciting day, Tim.”
“That is it. Maybe we should sleep.”
“You have been patient with me,” Becky told him.
“The virtues of an executive officer. We’re there for our captain. Whatever it takes.”
She snuggled close, and he dipped his head and kissed her hair.
Harry settled next to Jack Pierson, a grin on her face. Jack laughed. “You are thinking evil thoughts, Harry!”
“I mean it about Griff having second dibs.”
“Like that’s something a man wants to hear!”
She stared at him for a minute and knew he was again pulling her leg. “Hey, I’m okay with Sandy having second dibs on you!”
“I’m a slab of meat you are going to divvy up?”
Harry sniffed. “There is a surplus of males and a deficit of fertile women. Yes.”
“Not yet, you understand? Things are up in the air. Maybe if the Chinese really are as friendly as they sounded.”
“Jack, I don’t know if they are friendly or not. But think about it from their perspective. We are offering a whole lot -- contact with the locals has to be one of their goals. Sure, they could just bull ahead, but a misstep and they’re up that creek without a paddle. Yes, they have ships, and I assume guns and stuff to match. But having everyone against them seems like a bad choice. That may or may not be friendly, but they are going to have self-interest to deal with.”
“I thought you were going to say they are likely a peace-loving and good, just misunderstood.”
“Jack, I’m not a total idiot. If they aren’t going to look out for Number One, they won’t last long.”
“I expect it will be more complicated than that.”
Harry grinned. “Just to show that all of this is going to my head, I want to be part of the party that meets with them tomorrow.”
“You realize that there is a chance that they will come in, guns blazing?”
Harry snickered. “I told the birds that if they do that, to come in at 1000 heights -- they measure altitudes in bird heights, call it 20,000 feet. They will send one at a time first, each carrying a heavy rock -- ninety pounds. They will drop them on the ships. That will wreck their radar. They will keep it up until they win or lose.”
“That kind of ‘bombing’ isn’t very accurate.”
“On Earth, maybe. They tell me that they can land a rock from 20,000 feet within three feet.”
“That’s hard to believe,” Jack said.
“They’ve had many millions of years of evolution. They used to be plagued by the dinos. Drop a hundred-pound rock from 20,000 feet, and even big dinos will roll over and drop dead. Their whole society is centered around protecting the nest.”
Jack gathered Harry to him. “Soon, Harry, I promise.”
Mei Lei grinned at Sandy. “Sister, I told you not to worry.”
“I couldn’t face tomorrow without you.”
“I knew something you don’t. The senior people in the party sent their kids to the US for university. I was one such, so was the captain of the Shenyang. Our parents didn’t realize, but anyone with a modicum of intelligence could see what was important in a society. Yes, we tried to bring you down, all the while secretly admiring what we were attempting to destroy.
“Our hearts weren’t in it. Our peers are those who are in the upper management these days. We are determined that the dinosaurs of our elders not be permitted to mess things up. We aren’t at the top level, to be sure, but most of us are very senior.
“Even a party man would have pause in this situation. Their training would be to hold back, learn what they can, and find a way to report back.”
“Mei Lei -- I never thought I was like this, but hold me, hug me, kiss me, and tell me that you love me.”
“Sister, that is the easiest thing in the world.”
In the cold light of dawn, the command group gathered at the entrance to the caves. Owen and Roman were each eating a dino steak, and Jack laughed. “I was fond of steak and eggs for breakfast. I suppose that is out of the question.”
“At least until we know more,” Owen said.
Harry spoke up. “This was a quarter of a dino. They kill one every other day. If they feed us, it will be two every three days. They say it is no problem -- their meat herds are about two thousand mature dinos and five hundred young. They cull their herds by killing the weak and runts. They have, for the most part, domesticated them to a degree. They are very adept at domesticating dinos, even those that live in the water.
“As I understand it, they call some of the water dinos, and they come and let themselves be harnessed to the log rafts of the fuzzies. They pull it someplace, and then they are released. Some of the water dinos hang around to be called on -- those that object leave. It’s amazing, really.”
Commander Shumway cleared her throat. “We need to get the party off to meet the Chinese. I’d like Griff there to translate.”
The gunny grinned. “Most of us are Chinese linguists; our new Marines aren’t. You’ll have Jack and Smith, with Smith in mufti. That’s it for the Marines.”
“I want to go,” Harry said. “I can talk to the birds.”
“So can Owen and Roman,” Commander Shumway said.
“They should be held back, because they know a lot about the bird culture, weapons, and things. I don’t know diddly,” Harry retorted.
Jack guffawed, and there were several smiles. “Commander, let Harry go. Send Dr. Sanger, and that’s it,” Becky said. Becky turned to Mei Lei. “How will the Chinese react to Harry?”
Mei Lei shook her head. “They will think that there is someone very senior amongst us, and Harry is his daughter, there to report. Such things are normal back home.
“If you think it safe, tell them that the daughter of a former president is here. Just don’t tell them it’s not Harry,” Mei Lei finished.
Jack nodded. “Let’s get going. The sun will clear the horizon soon.”
They stepped out rather fast; Harry had a much better time of it. They got down to the 747, and they could see a small boat a mile offshore, being rowed their way. Jack spoke softly. “Notice the oars -- they are being cautious of their fuel. The ships are still holding their position, I’m sure.”
Two of the Chinese stayed with the boat, and four came forward. Everyone was carrying slung weapons, except the Marines, who carried them at port arms.
One man stepped forward, with an officer’s shoulder boards. “I am Qin Lung, a lieutenant commander in the People’s Liberation Army’s Navy. I speak English.”
“I’m Marine Staff Sergeant Jack Pierson. I realize that we are carrying our weapons at the ready, but I would advise you to do so as well. The hostile birds drop small, as in meter-sized, raptors, here at night. We have friends who fly dawn patrols, looking for them, but we advised them not to fly today to avoid mistakes.”
The officer spoke a command in Chinese, and Jack smiled at him and spoke a sentence in Chinese.
There was a moment of awkward silence punctuated by the sounds of their weapons being unslung.
“We talked to the captain of the Shenyang last night. Have you been briefed on that conversation?”
Lieutenant Commander Lung nodded. “I listened in.”
“There is no reasonable explanation for our being here. One thing we know -- we came after you. The world thinks your ships were sunk by nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. Honestly, there was a lot of hostility on your government’s part about nuclear attacks on warships. Except the missiles were incontrovertibly not American -- no one has missiles like those.
“We experienced electrical disturbances when we were brought here, serious disturbances. One second we were flying between Los Angeles and Samoa, then we were flying over land -- we couldn’t see any oceans.
“Finally, we came to this lake, and our pilots decided to make a water landing. Captain Roger Parker guided our aircraft, Jack waved at the 747, “to a safe landing. And he was dead a second later from a coronary. Since then, we’ve lost two other people killed, one seriously wounded, and one lightly wounded. The last two were by the raptors. They are blazingly fast and about as intelligent as chimps.”
“You said you had made contact with indigenous sapients.”
“The friendlies first. Birds about twenty feet tall, with wingspans of forty or so feet. They are at least as intelligent as we are. A species of three- or four-foot hominids that are about as intelligent as we are. The hostiles are birds as well, but they have a white band on their wings. We don’t know how intelligent they are, but likely...”
“As intelligent as we are...” the Chinese officer said.
“What we’ve seen so far, our friends are early Bronze Age. We haven’t had enough contact with the White Bands...”
Smith lifted his weapon and started shooting at a charging raptor. There was an obvious hesitation on the part of the Chinese, then two of them started shooting as well. The raptor made it only halfway from the forest verge to the beach.
“They are a little hostile, and like I said, they are fast,” Jack said.
Harry spoke up. “It was a diversion, there’s a raid about twenty minutes out.”
The Chinese officer looked at her without expression.
Jack turned to Lieutenant Commander Lung. “Radio your ships. Get everybody below decks, button her up, and you’ll be okay. Anybody exposed will be at great risk.”
“It will take us longer than that to get back,” Commander Lung said.
“We can take shelter in the aircraft. We dog those doors, and they can’t get through it either. The birds are paranoid about fire, and without fire, they can’t even scratch the surface.”
One of the other sailors lifted a radio and spoke a staccato series of orders.
The Chinese followed them up the slide. It wasn’t nearly as easy to ascend as it was to go the other way. Harry spent some time pounding on the air raid alarm, and then scrambled up, arriving just after Dr. Sanger.
The botanist laughed. “It’s too bad we don’t have a bathroom scale, I’m probably down to what I weighed when I was thirty. All this healthy living and daily exercise running for my life.”
The Chinese officer looked at Dr. Sanger, then Harry. There was still no expression on his face.
Harry decided to take the bull by the horns. She went and stood in front of the sailor who had the radio and bowed the tiniest bit. “Our conservatives got into a hissy fit when our president bowed to yours. Yeah, we fought a war to prove that Americans had to bow to no man. I figure a little gesture of respect is a different thing.”
“Indeed, young woman. Among my people, it is merely considered polite. However, my people think that those who don’t bow out of politeness are barbarians.”
He bowed back.
Jack laughed drily. “That’s Harry, sir. She’s the one who made the first contact with the hominids, and she and I got together to treat with the birds.”
The sailor Harry had bowed to grinned. “Obviously, she is older than she looks, Sergeant.”
Jack nodded. “I think so.
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