reason not to.
Now the tall, silver-haired woman said, “I still think it’s a mistake dealing with a baron at all. Even if it’s through a trusted servitor.”
Long Tom shot her a pained look. “Isis, we’ve been through all this—”
“There’s still time to come to our senses.”
“But, Ice,” Katie said, “it’s Baron Tobias.”
She cocked a thin-plucked brow at the other woman. “And that matters how?”
“Well, he’s hardly a typical baron. He really tries to help his people.”
“So did the old baron, Dornan—in his way,” Randy said. “He got the same concern for the people a rancher has for his cows. It profits him to keep the livestock healthy as possible. Nothing more.”
“Oh-hh,” Katie said in exasperation. “You people.”
“If we judge people by actions and not what we imagine their motivations are,” Long Tom said, with an air that made Ryan sure he was invoking some long-held principle of Tech-nomad life, “then Tobias is a pretty right guy. He hasn’t shown any of his father’s hard-ass tendencies so far.”
“He certainly has a fondness for leading the troops into battle,” Great Scott said. “Not one to lead from behind.”
“You people aren’t exactly backward when it come to a fight,” Mildred said.
Ryan frowned at her. He didn’t want to get into any debates with these people. Anyway, they seemed to do ace at arguing without any help from outsiders.
But instead of snapping at Mildred the shaven-headed man just shrugged. “Well, true enough. When we have to.”
“Beside the point, anyway,” Isis said. “Power corrupts. If Tobias isn’t objectively bad now, he’ll go bad. And he’ll have more of our tech to help him.”
“Fine grasp of cliché, Isis,” Great Scott said, sneering. “But does power really corrupt, or do only the corrupt seek power?”
“Tobias Blackwood had power pretty much thrust on him,” Long Tom said. “He was born to it.”
“Aside from the killing his dad part,” Randy said.
They started an increasingly savage wrangle. More crew were drifting over to join in, not all of them from New Hope’s contingent. Apparently word a juicy argument was on had spread among the squadron.
Ryan quickly caught the eye of each of his companions in turn and jerked his head, slightly but emphatically, aft. Moving softly so as not to attract attention, he headed amidships himself. When he turned his back to the rail near where one of the water-strider pedal-craft was strapped to the hull and leaned back, he saw the others drifting after.
“’Bout time,” Jak said. “Bored.”
“I think it’s their favorite sport, arguing,” Mildred said, shaking her head.
“Indeed,” Doc agreed.
“Speaking of which, Mildred,” Krysty said with a smile, “do we really want to wade into the middle of it ourselves? These people have spent years roaming the Deathlands in each other’s company. The whole wide world, as far as we know. They’ve got a whole complicated spider’s web of relationships spun together. Do we want to get tangled in that, especially with emotions involved?”
Ryan raised a brow at that statement. He’d been about to raise that very issue with Mildred himself.
Mildred sighed. “Yeah. Sorry. I realized what I was doing the moment I opened my mouth. I guess I’m as bored and stir crazy as Jak, here.”
Krysty caught Ryan’s eye behind the other woman’s back and winked. He grinned.
“Trader used to say when minds and hands were idle the Devil’d find a use for ’em,” J.B. said. “Like most everything Trader said, that proves out true. Except when he was trying to pull a fast one, of course.”
“What do?” Jak demanded. “Stuck on boat.”
“Well,” Ryan said slowly, “as to that, we can always clean and oil our weapons again. The spray and salt air can eat a barrel from inside like belly worms. And we never know when trouble’s going to hit. Only that it’s going to, sure as the sun rises in the east.”
A patter of bare feet on the deck brought everybody’s head around. Katie was running toward them, her hazel eyes wide.
“Why, Katie, dear child,” Doc said. “Whatever has put you in such a state?”
Ryan caught the eye of a wolf-grinning J.B. and shook his head. Slick old bastard, he thought.
“Long Tom wants you up front,” she said breathlessly. “There’s a fleet lying just over the horizon, off the entry to the estuary where Haven is. Tom thinks they’re Black Gang pirates!”
Ryan nodded briskly. “Saddle up, everybody. Break time’s over. And the last easy day was yesterday.”
Chapter Five
“For what we are about to receive,” Doc murmured, “dear Lord, make us thankful.”
Ryan smiled a tight smile. Engines thumping like a giant’s heart, the tubby steamship tossed on a rising storm swell. The sky was gray and rapidly being overtaken with black from the west, just as the little fleet was rapidly being overtaken from the east by at least a dozen pirate craft their own size or larger.
They were splitting the difference and running for the coast. A little inlet gave onto the bayou network. There they hoped to lose the pirates and shelter from the storm. Or at least make it harder for the pirate ships to come at them all at once.
J.B. and Jak were riding on the rotor-ship in the middle of the convoy. In the urgent calm following news of the Black Gang Ryan had dispatched Mildred and Krysty to the Snowy Egret. They couldn’t object; they were leading the way, after all. The fact that they were running for safety didn’t matter. If safety existed on this planet in this century, their best efforts hadn’t turned it up so far.
Of course the fact was the Finagle’s First Law was closest to the pursuing foe, and the most likely to be able to intercept enemies going after her two sisters. The risk was overwhelmingly greater here. But the two women never said a word to show they realized they were being protected.
While the six companions had talked among themselves amidships of the New Hope, the Tech-nomads had a lookout mounted atop the mast of the rotating sail sixty or seventy feet over their heads. Along with all their fancy detector gear, radar and lasers and who knew what, the thing the Tech-nomads relied on most to keep their convoy safe was a keen pair of basic-issue human eyeballs and a good pair of binoculars.
And the lookout had seen something that made him lose his mind in buckets: the Black Gang pirate fleet, standing right over the horizon, dead between them and their goal. But that was where their ways diverged from the old days, at least as they were portrayed in the storybooks it had been Ryan’s
