David Hagberg - Rise of the Machines

"We need to get to a plane," Connor said. But he knew that there was no way they could make it across to the hangars in the open. He stuffed the red envelope into his knapsack

They needed another route. Some way out of the main building and across to where the planes were parked without crossing the ramp.

Connor went to the general's desk and searched for something, anything that might help them. A map, a building plan, anything.

His eyes lit on a book marked edwards air force base locator. He opened it to a foldout diagram of the CRS facility that showed the main R&D building plus the power station, air-conditioning plant, hangars, tower, and all the interconnecting corridors on each level.

"Okay," Connor said, racing through the diagram. "This looks like a passageway." It was marked on the third sublevel.

Terminator was at his shoulder. "The particle accelerator."

"It runs under the airfield," Connor said, trying to

make sense of what he was looking at. "There's an emergency exit here," he said, stabbing a blunt finger at a spot on the diagram. "Right by this hangar. We can follow it out."

The general took a last quiet breath and his heart stopped. Kate grabbed his uniform blouse and tried to shake him awake. But he was dead, and she knew that there was nothing she could do to bring him back. It was too late.

A Hunter-Killer aerial weapons system suddenly appeared outside the window, its rocket pods trained directly at them.

Terminator raised his AK-47. "Get down," he ordered, and opened fire.

At that moment an air-to-air missile shot from the H-K's rail, trailing a long sharp tail of fire as it came directly at the broken-out window.

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CRS

Connor pulled Kate behind the general's massive desk and shoved her to the floor, shielding her body with his.

The missile exploded like an atomic bomb as it hit the window shards, instantly filling the room with blinding white light, a tremendous crash, and an intense stab of heat that singed the hair on the back of Connor's neck.

It was as if a gigantic vacuum cleaner came right behind the initial explosion, sucking up nearly everything in the room and spewing it out the window that was now a huge, gaping hole in the side of the building.

Glass and debris flew everywhere. Connor kept his head down, his arms wrapped around Kate, his body tight against hers.

But then it was over and he slowly raised himself up off her, his ears ringing from the concussion. It didn't feel as if he were injured, and as far as he could tell Kate wasn't hurt either.

Terminator had taken the brunt of the blast with his torso. He'd been shoved backward off his feet. He picked himself up, his jacket smoking, more of the artificial flesh

on his face and neck burned away, exposing even larger sections of his cranial case and optical sensor sockets.

Kate suddenly pushed Connor away and half scrambled, half crawled over to where her father lay tangled in a mass of debris. His eyes were open but sightless.

"No!" Kate cried. It wasn't supposed to end like this for him. Not destroyed by some mindless machine. There had been time. She could have given him CPR. Something. Anything.

She looked up at the hole blasted in the wall. The H-K was gone.

She gathered her father in her arms and held him, her body wracked with sobs. Not like this, she kept repeating to herself.

Connor came over to her. He could see now that she had been hurt in the explosion. Her leg had been cut just above the knee, and she was bleeding. But as far as he could see it was nothing major. Blood was seeping from the wound, not spurting as it would, had an artery or major blood vessel been severed.

He disengaged her grip on her father's body, took her by the shoulders, and tried to pull her away. Gently. The H-Ks would be back. He was sure of it. "There's nothing you can do now," he told her, his tone compassionate. He could write a book on what it felt like to lose someone. "Come on."

"I can't," she said. She looked up at him, pleading, and shook her head. "I can't."

"Yes, you can," Connor insisted.

She tried to turn away, but he pulled her back and

looked into her eyes. Willing her to understand what had to be done. She was covered in blood now, her own and her father's. She was on the verge of collapse.

"Kate, listen to me. He wanted you to come with me. To get to Skynet and shut it down."

She kept shaking her head, as if she could blot out the death and destruction around her. But she allowed Connor to help her to her feet.

She almost collapsed, suddenly feeling the sharp pain in her leg. Connor helped her catch her balance.

She nodded after a moment.

Connor pulled his AK-47 and knapsack from the debris behind the desk. "How much time do we have?"

Terminator was at the door, looking toward the corridor. "Fifty-one minutes," he said.

"We better hurry," Connor told him.

He and Kate followed Terminator through the general's outer office and into the broad corridor as the T-X turned the corner and came directly at them.

Terminator stepped between them and the charging T-X. "Run," he said, and he stepped forward into her charge.

Connor grabbed Kate by the arm, hauled her around the opposite corner, and they headed down the corridor in a dead run.

At the last instant T-X leaped into the air and kicked Terminator in his face with the heel of her boot, putting

all of her considerable power into the blow.

It was a force even stronger than the H-K's missile, sending Terminator smashing into the wall.

T-X came down light-footed as a cat, and without a glance at Terminator started after Connor and Kate.

Terminator's CPU was unable to register surprise, or at least not the human variety, but he was able to register a reevaluation of new data that his processor instantly used to overwrite an old subroutine. The T-X model was stronger, much stronger and even more agile than he had been programmed to expect

He would not make the same error twice. Before the T-X managed to take three steps, Terminator came off the wall like a prizefighter off the ropes and went after her.

As she reached the corner he caught up, clamping his arms around her upper body, and swung her to the left She went with the direction of the force, then dug her shoulder into his chest and slammed him completely through a steel-reinforced concrete wall into the executive staff men's room.

Terminator no longer held confidence that he could win this fight. At the beginning he'd evaluated his chances of disabling the T-X at 18.773 percent His estimate based on the new data was now at 4.331 percent, with a ¹4 percent margin of error.

But his program allowed for no options other than the preservation of John Connor's and Katherine Brew-

ster's lives.

A sink flew off the wall, shattered porcelain peppering

the stall doors like machine-gun fire. Water gushed from a broken pipe, and a section of the tile flooring cracked and sagged under the pressure of their combined weights landing with such sudden force.

T-X had broken free, and she turned to step back into the corridor, but Terminator grabbed the broken sink by its drain pipe and swung it with all his strength at her head.

Her cranial case nodded under the force of the blow, otherwise she seemed undamaged.

She turned back to Terminator, grabbed him between the legs, lifted his bulk off the floor, and tossed him like a piece of trash across the men's room into the stalls that crumpled like tissue paper.

Even if he had been human, Terminator would have felt little or no pain. As a human his adrenaline would have been coursing through his body. As a cyborg a series of action circuits were firing, providing the electronic equivalent.

He was pumped, as Connor would say.