Xenofall (The Wasteland Chronicles, Book 7) Read Online Free PDF Page B

railgun? Where did you find it?”
    “We’ve had it for a long time,” Carin said. “It’s an artillery piece that rolls on treads. A halftrack. But, like I said, we don’t have the power to run it. These things fire using powerful electromagnets. First of all, I’d like to see if the damn thing works. I’ll need one of the ships to run some tests.”
    “Is it worth giving up one of the ships so you can shoot down dragons?” Makara asked.
    Carin shrugged. “I think so. My railgun could shoot down far more dragons than any of your ships. It shoots quickly, and even reloads automatically. A computer points and shoots, so there’s no way it could miss. The rounds fly too quickly – at Mach 10, to be precise. It could rip everything out of the air in a matter of minutes.”
    “I’m just wondering why we didn’t use this in the battle earlier,” I said.
    “Well, I’ll admit,” Carin said. “It’s a little hard to get something that big on top of buildings. Kept in the streets, it wouldn’t have gotten a good shot at anything. Besides, you guys really wanted to use your ship to find the old man. There were too many variables to have made it anything but a last-ditch defense. Now, if you guys had gotten here earlier, we might have had time to run the proper tests. But it’s no use crying over what might have been. Let’s run the proper tests now and we’ll all be better for it.”
    Makara looked around the table, seeking other opinions. No one said anything.
    “I think we should give it a shot,” Samuel said. “No pun intended.”
    “Alright,” Makara said. “We’ll do some tests.”
    “Thanks,” Carin said. “But in the end, I believe you’ll be the one thanking me.”
    “Don’t count on it.”
    As the planning continued, a man ran through the door. Two Praetorians escorted him to Augustus. I recognized him as the courier I’d seen briefly back in Augustus’s camp.
    “Are they here?” Augustus asked.
    “Yes, Princeps,” the courier said, a tall man with curly black hair. “The fleet has arrived.”
    “The fleet?” I asked.
    “That’s another thing I didn’t mention,” Augustus said. “My fleet, complete with reinforcing food, weapons, and supplies, has been en route for a while. I gave them orders to leave Nova Roma two months following our departure.”
    “That’s good timing,” Samuel said.
    “Char and Marcus need to know what’s happened here,” Makara said. “They said on the radio they’d be in Port Town.”
    “Port Town?” I asked.
    “A settlement down by Long Beach,” Augustus said. “Francisco can take you there.”
    I was wondering who Francisco was, when the courier nodded.
    “What are they doing in Port Town?” I asked.
    “Booze, if I had to guess,” Makara said. “And hopefully it stops there.”
    “It’s eleven in the morning!”
    “The bars will be open, because the sailors are in town,” Makara said. “And it’s never too early for a Raider.”
    I felt I was being given a pointless task, but if we hurried, it wouldn’t take long.
    “I guess I’ll see you all later, then.”
    Anna and I left our chairs, following Francisco outside the building.

Chapter 4
    I learned from Francisco that there were a lot of dingy bars, taverns, and brothels down in Port Town where the dregs of Los Angeles society liked to converge. In addition, Port Town itself was fairly sizeable, at almost two thousand people, which made it large enough to have its own seediness, even without L.A. feeding it from the north.
    When we stepped outside, we found a Recon waiting for us on the street. We climbed in, Anna and I taking the backseat.
    Francisco wove through the rubble-strewn streets. What few people were out parted as we passed. The dull red sky did little to illuminate the monochrome gray of the towering, crumbling buildings. Smoke belched into the sky from burning piles of crawlers.
    After a couple of minutes, we ascended an on-ramp and drove south. The highway