Raiders Read Online Free PDF Page A

running around..”
    Colonel Eiger’s assistant shrank the large lightmap down and away from the audience using her Assistant wrapped around her left arm. A new display emerged, an image of the Raider's Coilgun. The intern said, “Here is our most disturbing find. This Coilgun here. The engineering and design that went into this thing is impressive. How they could have even fabricated this weapon is beyond us. What we do know is that almost all of our body armor and most of our ordnance shields are essentially worthless against this gun.” The large Coilgun diagram changed from a standard photograph into a wireframe schematics. “This Coilgun platform was built on a twenty-stage design, nothing earth-shattering here but the control circuitry was built using a much more complex polyphase acceleration process. When the projectile passes by one coil within the gun, the coil reverses polarity at just the right time to generate an incredible forward momentum. The circuit complexity is,” the intern paused in search of an adjective, “well it’s just impossible to imagine how they did it. To be honest we can’t even come close to anything like it.”. The innovation spells bad news for us because we have no tactical answer to this particular weapon.”
    Colonel Eiger resumed. He said, “We are going to place the City on a conditional state of alert. Our lab technicians will continue analyzing the Coilgun and we will try and eek out any information from our new capture.. Our hope is that we can come up with a set of countermeasures to either disable the Coilgun or at least develop a shielding material that can hold up to its projectiles. Now we will discuss the citywide roll out for yellow state and what is expected from all Divisions, and you.”
    For the next two hours City officials reviewed their individual plans. The power and electric men, agriculture and livestock reps, supply logistics executives, even waste management organizers, representatives from every City section had a little stage time to talk. All the external greenhouses would be more heavily guarded and back-scaled and primary farming activity would fall back into the giant biodome simply known as the Lens inside the City.. Expeditions would be put on hold as would extra-City excursions, purposeful and recreational both except for critical missions.
    The debriefing wrapped up and everyone slowly shuffled out of the auditorium. Aurelia walked up the presentation platform where the Colonel and his assistant stood as they gathered and packed their presentation equipment. She snapped off a firm salute. She said, “Colonel Eiger, sir. I Request permission to see the prisoner Raider.”
    “What? Why the hell do you want that?” The Colonel stared at her as if Aurelia, one of his strongest soldiers had just lost her grip on common reality. “Aurelia she’s a barbaric rock. We've had her interrogated for over six weeks and yet all she's given us so far are grunts and spit.”
    “With respect Colonel, please. I want to see what she looks like. I never got a visual on her when she was peppering me with that freaking Coilgun.”
    Colonel Eiger’s face washed over with a look of resignation and disbelief. He sighed. “Fine, fine. Whatever.” He waved two fingers to his assistant. “Janica. Please see that she has biometric clearance to see the Raider in hold.”
    Janica nodded and then quickly saluted. She entered a quick voice memo into her Assistant which was a newer model. Her device felt like a regular everyday cotton lined sleeve and nothing else. “She's clear, sir.”
    “Thank you Colonel.” Aurelia saluted him again and then she dismissed herself with a nod. She walked down the stage's ramp and then back to Julian, who stood at its base. “I’m hungry. How bout you?” They walked toward the auditorium’s rear where the exits were. The Colonel's voice boomed from behind them as they walked.
    “And Aurelia, before you go see the Raider