David Hagberg - Rise of the Machines

The pilot's door opened and a woman dressed in a rust-colored outfit climbed out of the machine.

Kate took a step backward, her complexion turning instantly pale. "It's her—"

c.32

Crystal Peak

The T-X showing up here was the one thing Connor knew that he should have counted on, but had not.

Kate was losing it. The T-X had become her worst nightmare.

"Come on, come on, the next prompt," Connor shouted at her.

She looked at him. Her mouth worked, but no sounds came out. She remained frozen, but then she blinked as if she were waking from a trance, and turned back to the security screen.

"RED, one-seven-six," she replied.

Connor flipped through the cards, his hands shaking. He dropped them and had to scramble on his hands and knees to pick them up. He found the correct card. "AV-ALON, four-one-two."

Kate punched in the new code. The reader beeped twice, the prompt disappeared from the screen, and was replaced by a single word: authorized.

An alarm came to life, and red warning lights began d rotate as a powerful metallic bang reverberated in the

thick steel door. It began to rise on the hum of powerful motors.

But it was slow, ungreased metal on metal squealing in protest, a deep rumbling vibration spreading through the tunnel. Small rocks skittered down the walls and dust drifted down from the ceiling.

The T-X was halfway up the tunnel and moving fast. Too fast, Connor gauged. They would never make it through to the other side and get the blast doors closed and locked before she was on them.

They were so damned close.

Connor pushed Kate aside and reached into his knapsack for a brick of C-4 and a fuse. He might be able to buy them some time by setting off a charge as far down the tunnel as he could toss it. If the timing was right he might be able to bring down a section of roof on top of the T-X's head.

If he was off, he could bring the roof down on him and Kate.

A tremendous noise filled the tunnel. It was even louder than the rising blast door. It took Connor just a moment to identify what he was hearing. It was another helicopter, this one much larger than the one the T-X had crashed into the tunneL

He stepped back another pace.

T-X heard the same deep-throated thump of large rotor blades lifting a heavy machine, and she stopped and turned just as a large troop transport chopper crashed through the already breached tunnel entrance.

This one moved much faster than hers, its rotors

sheared off immediately on the tunnel walls and the fuselage dropped to the concrete floor.

Its weight and momentum carried it over and through the parked trucks, jeeps, and even the bulldozer, all of which exploded like firecrackers on a string.

Still it came, shearing past the Iroquois helicopter and careening down the tunnel like an express train on tracks of fire and sparks.

T-X spun on her heel and headed in a dead run down the tunnel toward where Connor and Kate stood momentarily stunned, rooted in place. The helicopter was right on her back.

Connor came alive first. He grabbed Kate by the arm and propelled her across the tunnel to a maintenance trench in the concrete floor. They leaped into it, and Connor shoved her below the edge, shielding her body with his.

The transport helicopter and vehicles it had picked up smashed into the T-X, engulfing the cyborg in twisted metal and flames. The chopper finally ground to a halt, pieces of burning wreckage flying down the tunnel and hammering off the blast door.

A different siren started to blare, and another set of red and yellow warning lights began to strobe.

Connor and Kate lifted up from the edge of the trench in time to see Terminator emerge from the twisted wreckage of the helicopter.

Half his skin and much of his clothing had been sheared away and burned off in the intense heat of the

aviation-gas-fed flames. His metallic endoskeleton was exposed, and even some of his hydraulics and electromechanical mechanisms were open to the air.

But he moved like his old self, with a smooth determination. And though much of his duraplast skin was gone or shredded they could recognize his usual sardonic expression.

Connor had never been so glad to see anyone in his life.

Terminator stopped in front of the trench and looked down at them. "I'm back," he said.

The blast door had only opened a couple feet, and then stopped.

Connor and Kate jumped out of the trench as the security keypad and LED screen began beeping. The screen was flashing a new message: abort—emergency closure.

The blast door started to close with a tremendous squeal. The fire had triggered some emergency circuit. Connor had a feeling that there would be no way to override it.

Terminator brushed past Connor, got down on his hands and knees, and pulled himself under the closing blast door, catching the bottom part of it with his powerful shoulder.

The motors lowering the door hummed in overload, sparks flew from around the edges of the mechanism, and groaning gears stripped with loud cracks as Terminator put his back into the effort to not only hold the massive

steel blast door from closing, but to raise it one millimeter at a time.

Behind them, within the twisted, burning wreckage of the transport helicopter, T-X managed to shove an engine block off her chest. She raised her head and torso above the flames, her optical sensors locked on the bottom of the blast door.

Her infiltration covering was completely gone now, leaving only her battle chassis that itself was scarred and dented from the tremendous heat and forces it had endured over the past twenty-four hours.

But T-X's imperatives were still intact, her programs were still up and running, and her prime directive was still driving her actions.

She had been sent to eliminate twenty-two targets. John Connor and Katherine Brewster were at the top of the list.

They were here.

She would kill them.

Terminator's internal mechanisms were strained to their limits, exceeding even their built-in safety and redundancy engineering.

He knew that he would not be able to hold out much longer.

He was also aware that the T-X was struggling to free itself from the wreckage. There was no time left. "Go!" he told Connor and Kate. "Now!"

The fire and smoke were getting thick in the tunnel, making it difficult to see, let alone breathe.

Connor tossed the heavy knapsack filled with C-4 under the blast door, sliding it all the way through to the other side.

He helped Kate crawl under the door. She paused long enough to give Terminator a grateful look, and then scrambled the rest of the way through.

Connor got down on his stomach and pulled himself under the massive blast door that vibrated like a live beast just above his head.

Terminator's body trembled with exertion. Connor could hear overloaded hydraulics and servo motors, and smell the stench of burnt electronic circuitry. A joint in Terminator's shoulder failed with a loud pop, and hydraulic fluid began to spurt from beneath the mechanism.

"Thank you," Connor said. He had lost this friend once before. It was very hard to go through it again. So much had happened, so much had gone on.

"We'll meet again," Terminator said with as much emotion as was possible for a cyborg.

Connor scrambled the rest of the way under the door, which, at the base, was nearly two meters thick.

Kate was there. She reached down for him when

something clamped over his left ankle, tearing into his flesh.

The pain was impossible to bear, and he screamed.

The T-X, her legs sheared off in the wreckage, held on to Connor's ankle with her right hand and began to inexorably draw him back under the blast door.

Terminator grabbed her wrist with one hand and her throat with the other in an effort to drag her away from Connor.