Nomad Read Online Free PDF

droplets of blood.
    "Get back on the road!" Raven shouted. She looked out her window again.
    The armored man rode directly beside her now, his cannon turned sideways. His next shot would plow through her and demolish the cab. She knew what his weapon was now--a rail gun, an artillery weapon that fired small metal rings at ultrafast speed, doing catastrophic damage while leaving little evidence behind.
    She aimed for the rider's heart and pulled the trigger, and she held it down until all the hydrogen in her cartridge was spent.
    The concentrated, accelerated plasma fired from her rifle as a dense, white-hot beam. It punctured through the rider's black breastplate and emerged from his back as a glowing white cloud. He slumped over his handlebars, engulfed in white fire that rapidly cooled to purple and blue. The bike slowed to a crawl.
    "I got another one on my side! He's a-coming!" Jebbie announced.
    "I'll take care of it. Don't make any sudden turns." Raven stood on her seat and leaned out the window.
    "Hot pickled potatoes, what kinda crazy girl are you?" Jebbie asked as she climbed up onto the roof of the cab, her rifle in her hand.
    She squinted against the high wind, moving in a low crouch across the truck roof as they hurtled along the interstate. The second rider was in the grass median, drawing close to the truck cab and lining up a shot with his bike's rail gun.
    Jebbie shot at him, but Jebbie was firing backwards with an antique gun while steering the truck. One bullet actually hit the rider, but shattered uselessly on his armored sleeve.
    Raven fired, but the truck hit a bump in the road, jostling her. The rider fired a round from his rail gun just as her glowing beam of plasma passed through his bike's right front tire, sending the bike into a burning tailspin. The rider let go and dropped to the ground inside the median.
    His shot cratered the side of the cab, crushing it inward like a wrecking ball. The entire rig was swept away beneath her boots, leaving her hanging in midair. The truck slid sideways across the road, tires shredding and burning, broken axles kicking off showers of sparks as metal shredded against asphalt, filling the night with a horrible, ear-splitting screech. The truck finally scraped to a halt in the emergency lane on the right side of the road. The fuel from the ruptured gas tank ignited, raising a wall of fire.
    Raven slammed into the asphalt, and the impact knocked the wind out of her. Her plasma rifle skittered away. She'd already emptied the hydrogen cartridge inside it, and the rest of her ammunition was in her pack inside the burning truck.
    She forced herself up to her knees, her head swimming. The second rider was several feet away in the grass, also pushing himself up, slowed just a bit by the mass of his armor. Raven had no weapon left, but her attacker had a plasma rifle mounted in the holster clamps on his back, and probably a number of other weapons built into his armor.
    The truck cab was still engulfed in flames, but she saw another weapon available--the high-powered rail gun on the wrecked bike. She ran toward it, letting her jacket shield her torso and hip from the burning tire. She turned the handlebars toward the rider as he slid the plasma rifle from his back.
    "Any chance we can talk this out?" she asked.
    He leveled the plasma rifle at her chest.
    To fire the rail gun, she pressed thumb buttons on both handlebars at the same time. The round boomed through the air, leaving a rippling shockwave in its wake, and slammed into the front of his armor, crumpling it into his chest. The round caught him at an upward angle and lifted him off the ground.
    He rocketed high and away, back over the median, above the four lanes on the other side of the interstate, and he skimmed the tops of the trees beyond, flying much farther into the night than Raven could see. She heard a distant thud when he finally landed. There was no way he could have survived, she thought.
    Police sirens