Haven's Blight Read Online Free PDF Page A

word from?” J.B. asked.
    “The Tech-nomad flotilla,” Long Tom said.
    Ryan scratched at an earlobe. “What’s that mean, exactly?”
    The captain shrugged. He lived up to his name. He was a long lean drink of water with muscles like cables strung along bone, a long narrow head with ginger beard and receding hair both shaved to a sort of plush.
    “Lot of things,” he said. “It can refer to the seaborne Tech-nomad contingent, or even all Tech-nomads worldwide. In this case it refers to a group of seacraft passing across the mouth of the Gulf.”
    “Tom,” said Great Scott, an overtly gay guy in a loose canvas shirt and shorts, who shaved his head and wore a tiny little soul patch. His voice had a warning tone.
    He was another technical wizard of some sort Ryan didn’t even understand. Then again, that pretty much defined any random Tech-nomad. Even when they had some kind of readily defined and comprehensible specialty—like Sparks, the commo guy, or Jenn, who kept the Hope ’s unconventional power train turning smoothly and was keeping to her cabin today, unfortunately incapacitated by grief at having watched her lover die the previous day—they usually had a raft of other skills. Almost always including ones Mildred and even Doc Tanner strained to grasp, and which went right by Ryan.
    The captain scowled. “Blind Norad, Scott. They’re two hundred miles away. It’s not like these people know where they’re heading, or could pass along any information to anybody. And besides, they’re on our side. Remember?”
    Long Tom smiled. He had what amounted to extraordinary diplomatic skills for a Tech-nomad. Ryan reckoned it had a lot to do with why he was boss of this traveling freakshow.
    Great Scott just glowered. Ryan reckoned he could read that pretty clearly, too. There were Tech-nomads, and there were outsiders. Never the twain should meet.
    And he could understand that, at least. It was the same way he felt about the little group of survivors he’d gathered around him, who’d become his family in a deeper and truer way than any blood kin ever had.
    Voices pulled his attention aft. Doc was walking toward them talking animatedly with the squadron’s chief engineer, a pretty woman named Katie who wore incredibly baggy khaki coveralls with only a green sports bra beneath them. She had her brown hair covered by a red bandanna. Her normal gig was boss wrench on Smoker’s Finagle’s First Law. But her skipper had virtually built the ship’s steam-powered engines with his own hands, Ryan had been told. He could keep them turning smoothly while his mechanic spent much of her time doctoring up the eccentric and cranky rotor-sail-driven system onboard New Hope.
    Doc and Katie were just passing the foremost of the three rotor-sails: tall white cylinders pierced with spiral whirls of holes that apparently could catch wind from any angle to turn the rotors. These in turn could either act somehow like sails, or drive propellers. They also turned generators to store power in batteries for when the winds died down. It was a mystery to Ryan, and it was fine with him if it stayed that way.
    The sails tended to creak shrilly and annoyingly when a stiff wind turned them rapidly, as it did now. Everybody had to raise their voices to make themselves heard.
    “What I’m endeavoring to understand, dear lady,” said Doc, who was in his shirtsleeves, the height of informality for him, “is, why do you not share the gifts of your wondrous technology with the world at large? It sorely needs them.”
    The group of Tech-nomads at the bow went silently tense. “What do you mean by that?” Randy barked.
    “Why, nothing deprecatory, friend,” Doc said, blinking like a big confused bird. “I merely…wondered. Oh, dear.”
    Doc’s experiences being yanked back and forth through time had had effects other than prematurely aging him. They had fuddled his mind. It didn’t keep him from being brilliant, nor functioning at a very