Alan Foster: Terminator Salvation

“Wait. Go back.”

Barbarossa hesitated, realized who had made the appeal, and immediately complied. Connor’s eyes widened as the section he had requested reappeared and was played back more slowly. David crowded close to his commander for a better look.

“Jesus, Connor,” he muttered, “it’s just like you said it would be.”

“No.” Connor exhaled sharply. “It’s not. It’s worse.” He nodded at the tech. “Okay, I’ve seen what I needed to see. Resume.”

Noticing that Connor was paying attention to the readouts rather than the prisoners, the impatient Olsen turned back to him.

“Sir.” Staring wide-eyed at the screen, Barbarossa’s voice was almost inaudible as he tried to understand what he was seeing. “Sir....”

Olsen had moved closer to the other man.

“Connor, this isn’t your business. Get your nose out of there.” He jerked his head to his right, in the direction of the pleading prisoners. “Let’s cut these sorry bastards loose.”

Intent on the information that was pouring across the screen in front of him, Barbarossa finally managed to raise his voice even as his fingers continued to race over his laptop’s keyboard. Pausing the info flow, he glanced back at the general.

“I’ve found something else, sir. Looks like intel on our people.”

Olsen nodded dourly. Such a discovery was hardly surprising.

“This isn’t the time or the place to try extended analysis. Just send everything you find on to Command. Let them break it all down. We can’t do anything from here.”

Another pair of techs came forward and began compiling a temp surface feed utilizing the officer’s computer. With a number of satellite dishes on the surface still intact it was just a matter of locating a live contact within the cluster, hacking the feed, and taking over the uplink.

Those soldiers not engaged in freeing and assisting the prisoners or guarding the entrances crowded around to watch. Most of them couldn’t follow the procedure. Tech wasn’t their business—killing was. But it raised morale to see how efficiently the tech team was going about its work.

Olsen barked into his radio.

“Jericho! Come in!” The only response was static. Not good, the general knew. “Jericho,” he repeated. “Shit.”

The room shook. Not an earthquake. At least, not one that had been propagated by a tired Earth. Olsen snapped into his radio again.

“Jericho, what’s the damn ruckus up there?” The response was more static, which was soon drowned out by a second, louder roar that reverberated through the entire chamber. Dust and dirt sifted down from the ceiling; a slow earthy rain. The shouts from the remaining imprisoned grew frantic, the looks on the faces of the soldiers strained.

“Jericho, come in!” Olsen’s fingers tightened on his communicator.

Jericho didn’t come in. Neither did any of the captain’s colleagues. The communicator’s locked frequency was as silent as the grave. A bad simile , the general thought, especially considering his present subterranean location. As he had done on previous occasions, he found himself turning for advice to one particular squad leader. Unlike Jericho, he was not reluctant to do so. Like any good administrator, good soldiers are able to suborn their egos to necessity.

“Connor, get your ass topside and remind those men they need to answer me when I call, even if they’re dead. Connor!”

Solemn-faced as ever, Connor acknowledged the order and headed for the hatchway he and his men had blasted wide. Olsen followed him with his eyes for a moment, then gestured toward the holding pens as he turned back to his immediate subordinates.

“Let’s cut these people loose. Seeing them like this makes my stomach turn. Listening to them hurts my heart.” Nodding agreement, the small circle of officers and noncoms that had clustered around him dispersed to see to the opening of the last cells.

By this time the world was supposed to be swarming with inventions designed to make life easier , Connor thought to himself as he worked the hand-held ascender that was taking him up the cable. Jet packs and synthetic food. Colonies on Mars and rejuvenated oceans. Computers that could be controlled by thought.

Those things had not come to pass because of one unfortunate oversight: Machines that could be controlled by thought had indeed come to pass.

The problem was that they were thinking for themselves, not for their creators, and their thoughts had turned out to be not at all nice.

A tremor ran through the ground as he reached the surface. He hesitated there until he was able to identify the source of the deep-throated rumble.

Passing almost directly overhead, a huge Skynet Transporter thundered past. Part of it was open construction, allowing him to see that the interior was crammed with more human prisoners. The ones who had been dumped in the top of the container were crushing the life out of the poor beggars trapped at the bottom.

On the other hand , he mused as he pulled himself out of the hole, those on the bottom might be the lucky ones.

Though he doubted there was anything he could do for them, he knew he had to try. Had to keep trying, until there was no more try and no more life left in him.

It was his destiny.

Scanning the battlefield and the remnants of the Skynet satellite array, his gaze settled on an apparently intact chopper idling nearby. Whatever it was, its original mission was about to be changed. Hefting his gear, he raced toward it and clambered inside. A glance showed the big Skynet Transport picking up speed as it angled northward.

“They’ve got human prisoners on board that thing!” he yelled as he pulled himself into the cockpit. “Get after it! If your weapons systems are operational maybe we can....”

He broke off. The chopper’s weapons might be operational, but its pilots were not. Both slumped dead in their seats, a single hole in their respective foreheads. Telltale Terminator work. A hasty look around indicated that whichever machine had killed them had moved on in search of other organics to exterminate.

The Transport full of hapless prisoners was nearly out of sight. One reason Connor was still alive was because he had learned to move fast. Linger too long over a notion and the machines, which were subject to no such hesitation, would splinter your skull before you could conclude your thought.

Working fast, he unbuckled the dead pilot from his harness, dragged him backward, and laid him gently if not reverently in the chopper’s hold. The steady whup-whup of the idling rotors rose to a whine as he threw himself into the now vacant seat and took control.

While the pilots had been coldly executed, the craft had been left untouched. No minion of Skynet would harm another machine, even a non-sentient one, without cause. Connor himself had seen tanks and other heavy vehicles from which their human occupants had been extracted left unharmed on the field.

The chopper was responsive, undamaged, and full of fuel. It rose obediently at his touch. Trailing the by now almost out-of-sight Transport, he accelerated in pursuit.

Far below, the work of Olsen and his troops was slowed as liberated prisoners threw themselves into the arms of their rescuers. Soldiers tried to comfort them as best they could while continuing to break locks and wrench open oddly welded cage doors.

Behind the sob-filled commotion, Barbarossa continued to probe the server cluster they had hacked. Frowning at something on the main monitor, he once again paused the flow of information. As he looked closer at what he had found, his thoughts surged back and forth between a steady flux of technical analysis and a serious attack of whatthehell.