Page 2 of Heart of the Deep

The lighthouse atop the promontory vanished from her view as their ascent drew them nearer to the cliffside. Larkin glanced up; the crane’s cable dangled over the edge of the cliff, swaying in the breeze. Beside it stood the large warehouse in which the townsfolk stored their fish. A handful of small houses skirted the path. As far as she was aware, they all belonged to fishermen.

Larkin and her father entered the town proper shortly afterward. The setting sun created harsh highlights on rooftops and walls but blanketed the paths running between the buildings in long shadows. The homes to either side were an eclectic collection — concrete and metal structures dating to the early days of colonization, mixed liberally with new structures and additions crafted of wood and scrap.

They passed few people during their walk to the town hall at the heart of The Watch. Larkin had grown used to the open, vexed stares of the locals. She couldn’t blame them — the rangers had essentially commandeered the town, its laborers, and its resources. The fishermen were the most disgruntled. They’d already given over three good boats — one of them lost at sea with Randall and his men — and countless hours of their time and expertise for what they deemed a fruitless endeavor. They wanted the rangers off their dock and out of their town.

The town hall was the largest building in The Watch and saw more traffic than any other — it operated as a pub and the center for socialization among the locals.

The din of numerous conversations hit Larkin first as she followed her father inside, but the smell that followed was more potent. Body odor, the aroma of cooking food, and the stale scent of spilled drinks combined to create an overwhelming stench that nauseated her almost every time she walked in. Tonight, the smell was strengthened by the stifling heat in the main room.

Cots and pallets lined the stage toward the rear, and there were more in the back rooms; this was the only place large enough to house all the rangers who’d come with them. A dozen tables were arranged between the sleeping area and the door, occupied by clusters of locals and rangers. More people were gathered along the bar on the left side of the room.

It was cramped and stuffy, noisy and stinky, but Larkin would deal with it for as long as necessary. They had a mission to accomplish.

“Hey, commander! Elle! You hungry?”

Larkin followed the voice to see Jason Dane, one of the rangers, standing beside the bar. Three bowls were perched awkwardly on his open hands, tottering at the end of his extended arms. He hurried toward Larkin and her father, raising and lowering the bowls as he wove through the crowd.

Somehow, he arrived without spilling anything.

“Took down a couple krull today.” He smiled and jabbed a thumb at the bartender; Larkin’s heart leapt, and she barely stopped herself from lunging forward to catch the bowl he was surely about to drop. “Aiden here made a damn fine stew of them.”

He passed a bowl each to Larkin and her father.

She accepted the offering and set the bowl onto the table. Steam flowed up from the mixture of meat, vegetables, and thick broth. It was a miracle the bowl had survived the trip from the bar.

Nicholas led them to one of the few open tables.

“So tomorrow, huh?” Jason asked as they took their seats. “Think the monsters are just like those sketches Cyrus sent?”

Larkin had studied the drawings many times over the last year. Most of them were parts of a greater whole — tentacles, webbed fingers tipped with long claws, eyes with strange, oblong pupils. As detailed and lifelike as they were, much was left to the imagination.

Whatwerethe kraken?

“Probably uglier,” Nicholas replied around a bite of food. “You need to be prepared to set aside any wonderment you might experience when we find these things, ranger. We have a job to do. They are the enemy.”

“You won’t catch me gawking.” Jason wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “How we gonna find them?”

“We found a treasure trove of tech stashed away in the bunker under the lighthouse,” Larkin said. “There are enough functioning spectra goggles that we can have three or four on each boat.”

“And what do those do?” Jason asked.

There was still some old military tech in working order back at Fort Culver, but most items from the colonization had long since worn out or been lost. Beyond the command team, few rangers knew much about the old stuff, because they weren’t likely to see any of it in their lifetimes.

“They provide enhanced optics,” she explained. “Increased viewing distance, like a spy glass, but they can also be switched through various spectrums of light the human eye cannot detect.”

“Oh.”

“And they can scan for lifeforms up to fifty meters out,” Nicholas said, still chewing; his bowl was nearly empty. “That’s all we need them for. We know those bastards have been watching our boats. I have at least four confirmed sightings, and they all corroborate these monsters having some kind of natural camouflage that makes themalmostimpossible to see, even when they break the surface. But now we’re going to knowexactlywhere they are, and we’ll be ready when they get too close.”

Larkin scanned the room as she ate. Apart from the bar — where everyone went to make their orders — the rangers and the locals kept to their own groups. The friendliness of the townsfolk hadn’t evaporated, but it was certainly worn thin after eleven months of constant ranger presence. The underlying tension between the two groups was undeniable.

When they were young, Nicholas had taught Larkin and Randall that one of the most important parts of entering a town in their official capacity as rangers was befriending the locals and setting them at ease.

You have toearntheir trust, he’d said.

He hadn’t been doing a good job of that, and it worried her. Nicholas Laster wasn’t sloppy in his work. At least not before this excursion.

It didn’t help that some of the townsfolk seemed to be holding a grudge against them before they ever arrived.

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