Alan Foster - Terminator Salvation

Ashdown’s impatience filtered through the transmission.

“Connor—what the hell are you talking about?”

He tried another tack.

“Delay the attack. I have a chance to infiltrate Skynet and rescue the prisoners. Give me that opportunity, General.”

“No. Absolutely not. This is not the time for a rescue mission, Connor. What you are asking would undermine the whole operation.”

“You’re not hearing me, sir. I support the attack. But not at this price. I will not kill our own people.”

“We’re not ‘killing our own people.’” Ashdown was losing patience. “It’s called collateral damage, Connor. I said that when the time came I’d do the right thing. And I’m doing it. This shutdown signal works. It’s our key to victory. We stay the course—and that’s an order, Connor!”

“I’m telling you, General. We stay the course and we are dead. We’re all dead. Who do you think you are—General Sherman? Tamerlane?”

“Personally, I think Sherman would have approved of what we’re doing today. I know who I am, Connor. Right now it’s who you are that’s troubling me.”

Connor looked over his shoulder. Behind and around him soldiers, pilots, mechanics, tech and support personnel were putting the last touches on the impending attack. The attack that somehow he had to stop. He returned his attention to the handset.

Ashdown wasn’t through.

“We’ve got victory in our grasp and at the last minute, the last second, you and you alone suddenly decide it’s out of reach. All your prattle is bullshit, Connor. This is no time for defeatism. We’re going to win, and I’m not going to let you do anything to put a crimp in what will be the greatest military victory in the history of mankind.”

It was all so familiar, Connor thought wearily. How many times in his remarkable, anguished, astonishing, grief-ridden life had he been forced to suffer through this sort of uncomprehending obstinacy on the part of others? Why, when events came to a head, when critical moments in the confused litany of the future and past materialized, wouldn’t they listen to him? One thing was certain—Ashdown was beyond listening to him, or to anyone else. He tried yet another tack.

“Skynet has Kyle Reese. He was number one on their kill list.”

Ashdown’s reply was as cold as the waters through which Command’s sub was cruising.

“Then that’s his fate, Connor.”

“No! I have to save him. He is the key. The key to the future. The key to the past. Without him we lose everything.”

Ashdown was not listening. Or not hearing. Or both.

“We stay the course.”

“We stay the course and we are all dead.” Connor struggled to control his emotions. “We are all dead. I’m asking you one more time, General. Delay it. A few hours. Enough time for our tech people to finish some simulations I’ve got them working on, and for me to make an attempt to try and rescue Kyle Reese and the other prisoners being held in Skynet Central.”

Ashdown turned deadly calm.

“You get in the way of this assault and I’ll kill you myself. You do any thing to jeopardize the plan, I’ll wipe out your entire base. Too much has gone into this, Connor. We can’t take any chances with this attack.”

“That’s just what I’m asking you to do, General. Not take chances.”

“Negative again, Connor. We strike now. ”

The communications officer looked up at his leader. So did Barnes, who had stopped by to listen.

They were running out of time.

Always running out of time , Connor thought resignedly. Only this time around, it might be for real. It might really be the last time, in every sense of the term.

“I’m going to Skynet,” he said flatly into the pickup. “With your permission or without it—sir. Those people being held prisoner deserve at least that much. Maybe they don’t want to be remembered as heroes. Maybe they’d rather be remembered as survivors.”

Ashdown had no difficult communicating his fury via the encrypted frequency.

“Then as of now you’re relieved of your command, goddamit.” His voice echoed as he addressed men on the sub. “Get back to your stations.”

The encryption timer hit zero and the transmission cut out. Connor slowly put the headset down. As he did so, Barnes took a step forward. The lieutenant’s expression was unreadable.

“Transmission got pretty garbled there at the end, sir. I didn’t make out that last statement.” He nodded toward the communications officer.

“Neither did I.”

Barnes stiffened, almost to attention.

“We’re with you ’til the end—sir.”

Connor nodded tersely. Handing the comm set back to the officer, he turned and walked away, his pace increasing as he left the communications station behind. A weight had been lifted from his shoulders and from his heart. Once again he was back on the outside, where he understood the rules.

Not least because he had made so many of them.

***

At the speed he and Barnes were moving it did not take long to reach the broadcast stack. Though a ramshackle compilation of antennae, signal boosters, cabling, and isolated computer components, he had no doubt that when turned on it would send out the signal sequence that had been programmed into it. Incongruously, the whole high-tech pile was powered by a single clattering, reasonably intact diesel generator.

Entering a storage room nearby, he studied the contents. Grabbing a roll of C-4 det cord, he passed it across to Barnes.

“Here. Wire the broadcast stack for detonation.”

Barnes looked uncertain. “Our own?”

“Yes.”

The lieutenant fiddled with the loose end of the cord.

“If you don’t mind my asking, sir—why?”

The expression that came over Connor’s face was one the lieutenant had seen before.

“The hunter just became the hunted.”

While Barnes and the communications officer wrapped the cord around the just completed broadcast stack, Connor picked up the handset for the short-wave radio. Activating it, he hesitated, trying to gather his words. Then he just started talking.

“This is John Connor. If you’re listening to this, you are the Resistance.

“I once knew a woman who told people to fear the future, that the end was coming. That all would be lost. Nobody wanted to hear her truths. Society locked her away. That woman was Sarah Connor, my mother. Now we know that what she was predicting all came to pass. And so I ask of you to please, please believe in me, her son, as we all should have believed in her.

“Command wants us to fight like machines. They want us to make cold, calculated decisions. But we’re not machines. And if we behave like them, if we make the same kinds of decisions they would make, then what is the point in winning?

“Please. Please listen carefully. I need every one of you now. We have to stand down. Believe me when I tell you that if we attack tonight, our humanity is lost. Our hope for a future—is gone. Sarah Connor told me a moment would come when we would need to make our own fate. That moment has arrived, and that fate will not come to pass without you. Without all of you. You must stand down until sunrise.

“Everything we’ve fought for, everything we’ve achieved, comes down to this one moment.” He paused a moment, then rushed onward.

“Our fate is created not in the past, and not in the future. It is being created right here and right now. If even one bomb is dropped on Skynet before sunrise, our future will be lost. Please stand down. Give me the time I need to finish this. Give me the time to protect the future that we—that all of us—are fighting for.”