by Chris Hechtl
“If he does this, he'll break all our records,” one of the others said quietly. That was picked up by Malik. Emboldened by the idea, he swam on.
“Remember, no turning back or you'll be a coward forever,” Ulbureak growled.
“I won't,” Malik said as he porpoised through the water.
<)>^<)>/
“Oh, what is that little idiot doing?” Aga demanded as she recognized her son headed for the drop. “No …,” she shook herself and moved to the water.
“What's wrong?” Nilak asked.
“Him!” Aga said, waving to their second eldest.
Nilak looked out over the water and then snorted. His whiskers twitched. “Well, at least we've got one brave pup in the group,” he said. “Leave him be,” he said. “He's only doing what comes naturally. You know that.”
“But he's not ready!” Aga wailed.
“Nilak, there are reports of a group of shark hunting near the bay,” a hunter called out.
“What?” Nilak demanded. He gaped at the hunter. The hunter turned and pointed his spear to the drop. “Wh …?”
“Does it matter? Milak! Come back! It's not safe!” Aga barked, wading into the surf.
<)>^<)>/
Aga's distress alerted the other mothers who also called out to the wayward juvenile. Heads turned in the water to the beach and then back. The young picked up on the elder's growing anxiety and also started to call him back just as Milak crossed over the drop-off line. He passed the buoys and then bobbed in the water before he upended to look below. The inky depths gave him the willies, but he stayed put and started to count to himself.
“Damn it, Ulbureak, get him back here!” Nilak snarled, cutting through the young selkie's cheering. Ulbureak looked back to the elder.
“We're all going to catch hell for this,” Olive said worriedly.
Ulbureak studied the angered elder and the wave of adults coming after them. “Damn it …,” he turned back to Malik. “Okay, you've proved yourself …,” he said, raising his voice to be heard.
“Not yet I haven't,” Malik called out over his shoulder. “The minute isn't up!” he said. To prove he wasn't a coward he had to hang there near the edge for a count of one minute before he could return.
He waited thirty seconds too long. He looked down in time to see a dark blur rushing up at him. Before he could dart to the side like the games and his training said to do he felt the water gushing up in a geyser around him. Then intense pain as something wrapped around his body and clammed down hard … the sensation of flying through the air, then the devastating impact of hitting the water in the jaws of an incredibly powerful force of nature.
Malik blacked out from the loss of blood as the monster bit down incredibly hard and then shook his body like a rag doll. A few seconds later it spat him out as horrified selkies nearby either swam for shore or swam in to help him.
<)>^<)>/
Jethro happened to see the pups on the water edge and felt something was up. He like a lot of people in the community had seen Aga and a few of the elders yelling and moving into the surf, then further away the pups yelling at someone. He followed their line of sight to the daring pup just in time to witness the horrifying shark attack.
The thing had to be six-meters long; a monster that powered through the water into the air with the hapless pup in its mouth. Jethro didn't need Bast to replay the incident; it was etched into his mind. The selkie pup had to have been killed by the shark breach.
“Oh my gods,” Kendra said in a hushed voice. The medic gulped and then rushed in to help. Jethro was fairly certain the effort would be in vain.
He also vowed to never, ever, get in the water. Not these waters or any other salt water after witnessing that. If he had to choose between hunter and hunted, he'd stick to land. It wasn't the evening breeze that made him shiver uncontrollably for a minute or two.
<)>^<)>/
“It's almost always the young ones,” Anik said with a mournful shake of her head. “As usual, one of the males. They always want to prove themselves. So foolish. You'd think they'd listen to us, the voice of experience, but they are so full of self-importance and think they know better. That nothing can touch them. So full of life … until something comes around and proves how wrong they are and snuffs it out.”
“He'll never learn. And now he'll never get the chance. Hopefully, the others will take his death to heart,” another selkie female said quietly. “I'm sorry, Grandmother.”
“So am I,” the female said with a shake of her head.
“Damn,” Al said softly. They had heard that selkie had a shark problem; they were so similar to the fallow seals and sea lions in some ways. But when a shark took a bite out of a selkie, it got less blubber and more bone and other tissue than it bargained for so it spat it out and either waited for its prey to bleed out or swam off for other tastier prey.
“Perhaps it is better they go with you. Maybe they'd learn,” Anik said with an air of finality in her voice. She looked out to the grim group of armed selkie hunting for the shark. The group was in the boat out on the water. They were ducking their heads over the side and into the water but the shark was nowhere to be found.
“I don't know. One would hope so,” Jethro said quietly as they watched the body pulled out of the surf. The selkie around the body were grieving in solemn silence as the lone medic in his group tried to work with the selkie healers to see if there were any faint signs of life. He could tell through his implants that their efforts would be in vain. No one could survive that much loss of blood. The pup had been nearly bitten in half by what had to have been a six-meter-long predator. Just seeing the pup flying through the air in the mouth of the predator would haunt him he knew.
“If you'll excuse me, I've got to go bury my grandson,” the selkie said with quiet dignity as she waddled off. The other female followed.
Tia gaped at the duo. Jethro watched her back, stunned as well, before he closed his eyes in sympathetic pain.
“Why don't they move?” Tia demanded after a long moment of silence.
“They do. The sharks follow.”
“Oh.”
“The normal seals and sea lions are better prey for the sharks since they have a lot of fat. But the sharks don't discriminate. They tend to get a selkie anyway since they are so much alike,” Lieutenant Johnson explained. “And don't get me started on why the sharks are here. It's all part of the food chain.”
“I wasn't going to get into that, honest. I didn't know there were fallow breeds here,” Tia observed, looking around them.
“They have their own colonies further up the beach and don't interact with the selkies,” Zanjeer explained. “I saw them when we went out clamming.”
“Oh.”
“What, you thought they interbred?” Al asked, eying Tia.
Tia gaped then shook her head. “No, no, of course not.”
“I don't know honestly if they do or don't myself. But it's rude to ask so let's not,” Jethro said. “Change the subject.”
“Yes, Master Sergeant.”
<)>^<)>/
The group stayed long enough for the funeral. At first, it was quiet and mournful as the body was laid to rest in the sands above the high tide line. But that changed from a soulful dirge to something of a more festive beat once the body was buried. Jethro wasn't the only one to wince at what the locals considered music. They seemed enthusiastic about it as if reconfirming that life went on and that they accepted their part of the food chain.
“It's a blending of traditions,” Kendra murmured thoughtfully. “The first part reminded me of something called a New Orleans funeral. But they've got Inuit names and some other traditions …”
“More selkie coming in,” Lieutenant Johnson observed, nodding his chin to the bay waters. Heads looked up to see selkie porpoising in the waves as they came in. The group waddled out of the surf and made greetings to some of the elders. A few of them had strings of fish with them.
“Is this a funeral or
a party?” Al asked. “A kid just died and …”
“It's an excuse to have a get together. Don't knock the native's traditions. Observe only,” the lieutenant texted the group. Al winced but shut his mouth in a firm line of disapproval at the goings-on.
Near evening they saw instruments being set up.
The slap of flipper hands on crude drums started softly but then rose in pitch to cut over the chatter. Fires were built up, and some of the selkie bobbed their heads as if they were going along with the beat. Others pulled out hollowed-out logs or small drum sets and sat Indian style with the instrument in their laps and began to play along.
Others produced some brass cymbals and cans, flutes, and even a xylophone. “Are you getting this?” Jethro asked Bast. She nodded. Jethro looked around and made certain his implants were recording it all to show his kits and Shanti later.
Some of it was soulful music that made him feel lonely for Shanti and the kittens. He recorded the party, including the dancing that followed after the first set of songs. Then masks were brought out along with speeches and lectures that threw the outsiders off.
The group talked with Miki, Nauja, Kuvageegai, and Sangilak quietly when they were totally lost. Each of the selkie took turns and interpreted some of the speeches and dances for them. “Poseidon, you call him Neptune, is god of the seas of water and space.” Nauja explained, waving the stump of her missing flipper to the water.
“Well, one of the gods of space at any rate,” Al muttered.
Kuvageegai paused as he opened his mouth and then cocked his head to the chimp. Al shrugged the look off. “Long story, kid,” he said.
“For another time. You were saying?” Tia prompted, poking Al to get him to behave.
“Dakuwaqa, also known as Kamohoalii is the shark god,” Nauja explained, pointing to a wood-carved totem nearby with her good flipper hand. Al went over to it and examined it. Jethro looked over to it and scanned it as he cocked his ear to the selkie's explanation.
“Dakuwaqa demands the occasional sacrifice of the foolish or insolent. Since we are selkie, we tend to fall into both according to my mother,” he said with a shake of his head. “Only by growing up can we get through that and learn wisdom from our elders.”
“Not always, kid,” Al murmured.
Jethro snorted. Bast put the image of the totem up on his HUD in a separate window and then used her sensors to visually enhance it and then turn it into a 3-D image. It was an image of a half-man, half-shark. He wondered briefly where they'd gotten the idea. The totem was weathered and rather old.
“Some have said we have tested Dakuwaqa's patience by hunting the sharks in return. A few of our people believe them to be sacred as the manif …,” he paused in confusion.
“Manif …? Manifestation?” Kendra prompted.
“Yeah, that,” the pup said with a nod. “Manif …,” he looked at Kendra for help.
“Manifestation,” she supplied.
“Yeah, that,” he said with another nod. “Manif whatever,” he said as the military personnel looked amused. “That word of Dakuwaqa and his agreement with the god of death. They are reapers.”
“Ah,” Kendra said with a nod. “Well, speaking as a medic, we have our own battles with the god of death and his reapers,” she said, taking up the conversation. Nauja looked at her with wide eyes. “We know we will never win out in the end, for all of us born owe the god of death a life to close our circle and open it for another to take our place, but we medics try to stave him and the reapers off for a day. If the patient was truly meant to go, whatever we do wouldn't matter in the end. And sometimes,” she looked sad. “Sometimes that is too true. But, we still don't give up.”
“Neither do we,” Kuvageegai said proudly. “We are forever tested, but we will not give up or give in.”
“Good answer,” Kendra said with a nod of approval.
<)>^<)>/
During the memorial, a female selkie named Akrittok slipped away from a visiting tribe and came to Kendra. Jethro couldn't pick out their conversation since they were near the pit where the outsiders were using as a latrine, but from the way Kendra looked and the way the female joined them, it was clear that she'd asked to apply to join up.
Only when he saw Kendra's bleak look did he realize something was going on. The female turned, and Kendra put herself between her charge and some of the male selkie. That made him wonder. He'd seen a few things; the males were sometimes brutal to the females. He wondered briefly if the female wanted to sign up to get away from sexual abuse by males. The beachmaster system was tantamount to rape and was a very good way to promote inbreeding he knew.
“Her name is Akrittok. She's twelve, and she's signed on with us,” Kendra said quietly from the back of the group when she arrived with her charge.
Motion on his HUD caught Jethro's attention. Bast indicated the female had lied about her age, but the Navy recruiters were apparently going to let it slide.
“Akrittok! Get over here!” a male bellowed, cutting over the drums and chatter of people talking. The party seemed to quiet in their area.
“No. I am going with them,” the female said. She sat down in the middle of the outsider group.
A male selkie elephant seal waddled up and puffed up his chest.
“Yes?” Jethro asked as he flexed his claws and pretended to clean a bit of sand out between his fingers. “The lady said she doesn't want your company anymore. Do you have a problem with that?”
The elephant bull eyed him over his snoodle. Black eyes met glittering yellow ones. Jethro felt the elephant seal rumblings. His own throat rumbled a bit in an answering subsonic snarl of challenge.
After a long fulminating moment, the bull turned away. Apparently Jethro's reputation made the elephant bull seal back down.
“You'll be back!” the scarred seal snarled over his shoulder. “With your flippers between your legs! Then you'll pay for embarrassing me!” he snarled.
“Unlikely!” Akrittok answered back. “Unlikely,” she said softer as she settled down. Jethro realized she was feeling suddenly safe but alone. The other selkie reached out to touch her or made soft introductions. Miki instantly took a shine to her when she didn't shun him. The other recruits were polite to her and welcomed her to their “tribe.”
“You still don't know what you are getting into, so let me explain,” Tia said. She took turns with Kendra to explain service in the Federation military. Tia had a small hand-sized holo projector as well as a tablet that she used to illustrate some of the points she was trying to get across. The other recruits pitched in excitedly from time to time.
Jethro judged that the female wasn't that interested in joining the Navy once she had realized it wasn't sea borne. “I want to be on a planet with water,” she said.
“You can do that. We can work out a place for you to serve. But there are places in space that also have water,” Al said. “I saw one in San Diego. The Navy built a massive …,” he spread his hands and indicated the bay, “habitat for you water folk. Big. No sharks, some fish, lots of stuff to do. You can work in the station, then go swim,” he said enthusiastically.
“Serve in space and have your swim time too,” Lieutenant Johnson said with a nod. “And then there are the SEALs,” he said.
“SEALs?” Miki asked, confused. His whiskers twitched.
The lieutenant tried to describe the SEALs. From the way he was going on, it seemed like he was only confusing them further, but they were trying to grapple with the strange concepts he was promoting. Jethro knew that once the Navy had them they'd be directed to where the Navy wanted them. Their MOS wouldn't matter. He felt a little guilty over participating in hoodwinking them.
“For now, just go with the flow. Trust me, it'll all work out in the end,” the lieutenant said.
Jethro winced internally. He wasn't certain if it would work or not. Once they were out of his fur though, he wouldn't care.
<)>^<)>/
Just before they were sch
eduled to leave, mail came on the regular trade run. The mail chip that the trader delivered to the elders was played. To their surprise it was from some of the Caroline helm team. Jethro was concerned by the pained look Lieutenant Johnson had on his face when he heard about where the chip had come from. He wasn't sure why. He'd heard something about the ship on a special mission, but word was she hadn't come back yet.
Some of the members of the clan who had free time gathered around the yurt to hear the mail being read. Jethro found him and his team quietly off to the sidelines. He used his enhanced hearing to listen to the story.
“It's from Qilaq and Tulimak!” a couple of the selkie cried out in excitement.
The recording told the story of the team, including Qilaq. The tribe hadn't heard about Caroline, but were impressed when they heard that a selkie had been selected to helm the ship in a special mission. The concept was a bit hard to grasp, however.
Some were inspired by what the duo were up to, but some others remained confused. When Qilaq's separate message was played to her parents and siblings, word quickly spread through the selkie, quieting the discussions.
“Here it comes,” Lieutenant Johnson said softly.
“Here what comes?” Jethro asked. He glanced at the lieutenant and then to the Navy recruiters. They looked a little grim and unsettled. “Someone want to clue me in?” he said out loud.
“Not here,” the lieutenant ordered firmly but quietly.
“What did they mean she was made to do this?” Kuvageegai asked. “I remember Qilaq. She was a junior healer in another tribe, but I met her several times when I was a pup. Her family joined our tribe a short time before she left. I heard she studied with Arnaaluk,” he said, indicating the healer. He turned to the lieutenant with accusing eyes.
More accusing eyes turned to the outsiders. “What did they mean that she didn't have a choice? That they stopped her from her chosen path and put her on another?” a mother sea lion demanded indignantly. “They can do that?”
“When you are in the military, duty matters as it does here. Sometimes you have to do things you don't want to get the job done,” the lieutenant said.