A Boat Off Shrikeport

Harris watched the tape of the small fishing boat back again. The large screen of the previous generation held the small monitoring booth in rapt attention. He had been called into his shift early, as the "expert" on such matters. The small boat bobbed up and down, almost weightless in the calm waters just off Shrikeport. It might have been mundane, certainly an unthreatening image, if it hadn't been off this specific coast, in these waters, this wouldn't have been an issue.

"Are you sure we're seeing live footage?" He asked, voice set in tension. Reynolds, the new guy, nodded: "We sent a drone to verify."

"And?"

"It's a boat."

"So?"

Harris scrutinized the video feed from the drone that was displayed on a small tablet in a teal rubber case. He recognized it as the private tablet that one of their colleagues used to watch cartoons on during slow nightshifts. It really didn't seem like the boat was anything to worry about, safe for the fact that apparently none of the creatures that roamed beneath the surface had touched it. It was made of wood, painted white with a red stripe bisecting it into a front and back half, two planks serving as makeshift benches and a single oar - one of two, he would have wagered - laid across its length in the leg area. Considering that those creatures were often hungry and/or territorial, that seemed highly unusual. He grumbled something about this being a ridiculous problem to call him out for in the middle of the night, then retrieved a phone from a drawer in his desk: "I'll be right back."

He dialed the number labeled 'Old Handsy', and stepped out of the booth and into the salty port-side air. From there, he could see the periodic flashing light of the drone hovering over the water. Shrikeport could do with some better equipment, but until someone found a way to protect electronics against magic, or the administration could scrape together enough magi to keep up with the creatures this place attracted, they would have to make do with shitty hobby-drones and phone cameras.

The only indication that Old Handsy had taken the call was that the ringing stopped without the line disconnecting. They didn't exactly have vocal chords. There was muffled ambient noise in the background, enough that Harris believed that they'd be able to make their point clear.

"Sorry about the hour, buddy." he could taste the smoke forming on his tongue as he spoke. It tasted like sea salt and algae. A series of plopping sounds interrupted the low hum on the other side of the line. It felt ambivalent. Old Handsy apparently didn't keep traditional working hours.

"Listen, I just have a few questions about something you might have heard about. Do you mind running some errands for me?"

_plop_

That one was familiar enough that Harris could almost put words to it. He wanted something in return.

"Anything particular you have your eye on?"

There was a bubbling noise in response.

"You can't have the lighthouse. We've been over this. Why do you think that's changed?"

More bubbling, indignant this time.

"I could arrange water-proof floodlights, if you'd be willing to settle for those. You'll have to give me a week's time or so."

More plops, apprehensive, but not an outright rejection.

"Which part is giving you trouble? Floodlights?"

_plop_. A no.

"Water-proof?"

_plop_.

"What- a week?"

Bubbles.

"Uh..." Harris pulled his personal phone out of his pocket and made a few calculations "168 hours? It does sound long, if you put it like this, huh? But you'll be sleeping or hunting for at least half of it anyway."

_plop plop_. He seemed amenable.

"Good. Great. I'll have someone on it first thing after sunrise - in a few hours. Listen though, there's a boat drifting on the surface above you somewhere. You know anything about it?"

Bubbles.

"Okay, then can you figure out if we need to do something about it, or who claims it? It's freaking people out up here."

More bubbles. He wasn't going to get much more out of him, so it would have to suffice for now "I'll call in a bit."

He exhaled a few times deeply, after hanging up, letting the smoke clear from his lungs, mouth and nose. The drone in the distance had since crashed into the water. Electronics like those never lasted long when in close proximity with magic. That was why he used a separate phone for work - one, that wouldn't be a problem to replace. He returned inside. Now all he could do, short of swimming out there himself to check, was wait. He looked over the drone footage to pass the time. In the relative darkness, with only the flashlight of the drone illuminating the approximate area around the boat, there was really very little to see, but he had hoped that perhaps he could spot motion beneath the waves. Ever since the maritime traffic had been heavily restricted in Shrikeport, the waters had cleared into an almost serene turqoise. The waters had taken some time to recover. Harris could remember the milky soup that lapped at the shore back when he first moved there. Now, a look at the things happening beneath the water's surface was a good enough argument to keep boat traffic to a minimum there, not the very least because many of the creatures down there seemed to hold a similar dislike of interacting with the land-dwellers. The drone footage, overall, was a grainy mess, compressed up to the edge of recognition, even though the camera sensor worked into its chassis had an 8K resolution advertised, one would have to expect some loss in performance when operating it in magic-saturated areas. He could about stand watching the footage sped up, where the jittery motion of the image made the blur of the resolution seem less jarring. He spotted something in the water and rewound the video, once, then twice, then he tried zooming into the image, onto the area just a few meters next to the drifting boat, just outside the cone of light the drone projected down onto the boat. He could definitely see something moving counter to the steady rise and fall of the waves, but the patchy spots of dark blue didn't look like anything in particular to him. Some technomancer might have been able to recover the data, but alas, they were rare and he didn't know any. The boat's oar moved several seconds later, maybe moved by something hidden from view, maybe by the tilt of the waves.

Old Handsy had come around with a few leads. Most sea-dwellers living off the coast knew that the boat was there, but so far none had claimed it. General lack of interest, it seemed. As long as it didn't encroach on any of their resources, they'd leave it be. Harris didn't think that was very typical of them. Instead he would have expected them to pull it under the moment it had crossed into their waters. Apparently, some had sent scouts to verify that it was just a wooden boat, with nobody inside. Old Handsy's explanation became illegible at that point. Harris would just have to trust that it wasn't important to their understanding of the matter. At the same time, it meant that they wouldn't bother anybody by removing it. The floodlights were already ordered and being encased in something that would survive the depths that Old Handsy lived in. Harris sent for a telekinetic to remove the boat. It was just easier to know that every on that surface belonged there, and everything that didn't, would get dealt with by either the sea-creatures, or them.