Dark Life: Rip Tide by Kat Falls Page A

gulls screeched overhead. Where were the market sounds? For that matter, where was the market? The Surface Deck was barren. No colorful stalls circling the promenade. No fish vendors hollering, no buyers haggling. And only a scattering of boats bobbed along the outer docking-ring. A chill swept over me.
    “Go around,” Zoe said, leaning over the pilot bench between us. “Maybe everyone is on the other side.”
    As I started to circle the Surface Deck, three skimmers shot out of the waves ahead of us. With their two pods linked by a slender joint, they looked like wasps.
    “What are those?” Zoe cried.
    “Seaguard skimmers,” I told her.
    “Probably here for Nomad,” Gemma guessed.
    As the skimmers rounded the curve of the docking-ring, the larger pods in back of all three tipped on their sides.
    “Glacial,” Zoe said.
    I knew that not only could a skimmer submerge entirely, but also when cruising atop the waves the backpod could flip over to let the strapped-in trooper scan the ocean below. Yet I didn’t share that information. I was too sick and shaken about my parents to care about fast vehicles.
    I followed the skimmers around to the opposite side of the Surface Deck and nearly plowed into a long line of hitched Seaguard vessels. But that wasn’t as alarming as what the uniformed troopers were doing. Like a bucket brigade, they were carrying corpses out of the derelict township.
    The Seaguard captain stepped over the bodies laid out along the promenade as if looking for something, though what, I couldn’t guess because—thankfully—tarps covered the dead. When I’d come aboard, I’d told Captain Revas about Drift taking my parents. Now as I waited for her to say that the Seaguard was on the case, I stayed down by the corpses’ feet, some of which poked out—bare, callused, and crusted with salt.
    The line of dead circled the whole Surface Deck and was more than a little tough to look at. Gemma had done me the favor of taking Zoe below, promising to get her a scoop of whale-milk ice cream in the dining hall. After letting me out at the docking-ring, they took the Slicky down to the lower station, to enter at the access level. If they’d docked up here, they would have had to waltz past the dead surfs to reach the elevator shaft.Zoe was a fierce little girl, but she was only nine. Why put an image like this into her brain? I knew it would haunt me forever.
    Squatting by a body, Captain Revas pulled the tarp back and frowned. Clearly not the person she was looking for. She flipped the tarp back into place and stood. Like her troopers, she wore a trim jumpsuit of windproof material with mesh strips running down the sides for ventilation. Finally, she faced me. Her eyes were barely visible under the brim of her patrol cap. “What were your parents doing anywhere near Drift?”
    I stiffened at the question. “We were selling them seaweed and kelp.”
    Revas was probably in her late twenties—younger than I’d expected a Seaguard captain to be, but it didn’t make her any less intimidating, with her hard expression and her dark hair lashed back tight.
    “We weren’t doing anything illegal,” I added, trying not to fidget under her stare. “The ’wealth said we can sell our crops.”
    “To townships?” Her tone was both incredulous and insulting. As if my parents were idiots.
    “To anyone we want,” I snapped.
    Stepping over corpses, Captain Revas strode to me. “And your parents thought it was a good idea to do business with desperate people who
hate
subsea pioneers?”
    “What are you talking about? They don’t hate us.”
    “Really?” she scoffed. “You know that ordinance that keeps townships from crossing into Benthic Territory …?”
    “What about it?”
    “The surfs are holding on to some resentment about it. At least, that’s what I’ve heard.”
    I bristled at the judgment in her voice. “Those townships would drag their nets through our farms, scooping up our livestock and