Alan Foster - Terminator Salvation

A man shouted as they streamed past.

“Let’s go! Everyone out! Now! Kyle! Kyle Reese! Is Kyle Reese in there? Head to the Transports!”

No one paused. They all just kept running.

Continuing to call Kyle’s name as he desperately pushed through the sea of fleeing human bodies, Connor noticed one cell door that was still closed. He approached, nudged it open and peered inside. In the dim light, the outlines of the room were indistinct. Except for a single hunched figure the holding cell was empty. Connor took a hesitant step inward.

“Kyle?”

Unfolding its limbs as it did so, the figure rose. Red eyes opened, flickered briefly, steadied as they locked on the intruder. It was the same relentless, invincible, unfeeling killing machine responsible for so many deaths and near-deaths in past, present, and future.

It took a step toward Connor.

He didn’t hesitate. In the heartless, brutal world of the present there was no time for indecision. Not for those who wanted to live. There was no time for Connor to wonder why he was in a room with the machine that had tried to kill his mother or to speculate on Kyle’s current whereabouts. There was only time to react.

He turned and fled, with the Terminator accelerating in pursuit. As it had been designed to do.

Out in the hallway, Connor whirled and lit up the machine with the compact flame thrower he was carrying. It melted away the Terminator’s face but barely slowed it down. Snatching the weapon out of the human’s grasp, it snapped it in half. Trying to duck, Connor caught a weighty metallic punch that sent him flying backward to slam into the far wall.

Bruised, he scrambled to his feet, whirled, and stumbled down the hall. The machine followed, in no particular hurry to dispatch this particular prey.

As he tried to run faster, a ferocity of thoughts churned in Connor’s mind. What had gone wrong? It made no sense, no sense at all. Employing force and skill, knowledge and stealth, Wright had fought his way into the heart of Skynet Central. To what purpose? To lure Connor to his doom? If Wright’s aim all along had been Connor’s death, he’d had ample opportunity to kill him on the outside. The hybrid could have slain him easily when they faced one another beside the river. Why this elaborate subterfuge to draw him to Skynet itself?

Unless....

With all that had happened, with all the changes to past and future, it might be that Skynet would not trust reports of Connor’s death without assurance. Without incontrovertible proof. And what more convincing proof than to have Connor die on site, where his body could be incontestably identified down to the last strand of intractable DNA?

Or was there another reason? One that was unknown to the fleeing Connor—and perhaps even to Wright himself?

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“What the hell is happening?”

Losenko was moving as well as speaking with purpose.

“Skynet’s using the signal as a trace. We’ve been deceived, badly.” Pushing past the general, he loomed over the chief technician. “Stop broadcasting, god-damit!” When the harried tech failed to respond fast enough, the general didn’t hesitate. Drawing his pistol, he unloaded a barrage into the nearby broadcast unit. He would have ripped away the central antenna as well had it not been fastened to the exterior of the hull.

In the confusion and the noise no one noticed the chief radar operator. Hunched over his screens, he stared as a large disturbance appeared on the radar display. Not waiting for confirmation from another operator, he raised his voice over the uproar behind him.

“ Incoming! HK missile closing fast. I can’t resolve the signature but....”

Before he could finish, Losenko was behind him and peering over his shoulder at the screen. Heavy brows wrinkled in puzzlement.

“What the hell ...?”

The missile was huge. Beams of red light pierced the dark water as it homed in on its objective. While the signal that had drawn it to this corner of the sea had abruptly and unexpectedly been lost, it had already made sonar contact with its target.

The missile smashed into the sub, and the vessel exploded in a ball of fire.

In the staging area of the main Resistance base in California, Barnes and his compatriots crowded around the radio. The screams issuing from the speaker were all too lucid, the helpless cries all too familiar. Except that this time they were coming not from some poor isolated rural community that had attracted the attention of the machines or from a cornered squadron out on sortie, but from Command. There was little to distinguish between the shouting.

Generals or farmers, they all died the same.

Standing by herself off to the side, Kate Connor looked on in silence. While the precise details of the ongoing catastrophe were unforeseeable, their advent was not. She had spent a lifetime knowing that things were going to get worse before they got better. That insight did not make it any easier to listen to the shrieks of the dying.

Before long, the frequency that connected them with the Command sub went silent, until there was nothing left hissing from the speakers but static. Stunned, the comms officer looked up at those clustered around his station.

“They’re—they’re gone.”

Barnes pivoted to stare in the direction of the wreckage of the broadcast unit that had been so meticulously assembled by the base’s engineering staff. The one that an absent John Connor had taken the time to blow to bits.

“Connor was right about the signal. He’s no traitor. He saved us.” Looking around, his gaze settled on Kate Connor—who said nothing.

Frustrated and angry in equal measure, the lieutenant searched the faces of his fellow fighters.

“What the hell do we do now?”

Having moved to begin loading a shotgun, it was Kate who supplied the answer.

“We save him.”

The Terminator was in no special hurry. It would follow its quarry to the end of the hallway, the walls of Central, or if necessary to the ends of the Earth. Termination was simply a matter of time. The outcome was as certain as if it had been predetermined. Humans could move fast, but only for a brief period and over a short distance. The frail organic engines that powered them required constant refueling and hydration and quickly ran down. The individual it was presently tracking was no different.

A small object in the center of the floor ahead drew the attention of the machine’s visual perceptions. Leaning forward, it looked closer with the intention of analyzing the anomaly and adding this new information to its individual database. While the half brick of plastic explosive was of known chemical composition, the Terminator was not concerned. In the absence of a detonator the material was harmless.

Unlike the not-quite-so frail human who was standing at the far end of the hallway carefully balancing a 25mm grenade launcher against his shoulder.

Before the Terminator could react, Connor fired.

The resultant explosion was deafening. It blew him backward off his feet and sent him skidding several yards down the hallway. As the smoke and particulates began to clear, he climbed to his feet and made his way cautiously toward where he had planted the explosive.

Of the machine there was no sign. There was, however, a gaping, ragged-edged hole in the floor from which smoke continued to rise. The Terminator was down there somewhere. Damaged, if Connor was lucky. More likely just momentarily stunned and disoriented. That would not last. A mere grenade might slow it down but it wouldn’t stop it. The ploy had bought Connor some time, but nothing more. He needed to use it.

Limping down the hallway, he gritted his teeth as he ignored the pain from assorted bumps and bruises. He shouted as he ran.