Glitch brought his chain gun into line and opened fire.
* * *
Ten hung in space for a years-long split second, gripping with one hand a piece of rebar protruding from the ceiling, flailing with the other for something else by which to haul himself up, and helplessly watched as the assault robot’s plasma rifle swung into line.
Then the door set into the concrete wall to the right of the robot deformed and crashed to the floor.
Glitch stepped forward and kicked the door into the assault robot’s legs. The impact bowled the robot over as it fired. The plasma discharge scored the ceiling less than ten yards away from Ten, then moved away from him, splashing along the near wall, instantly burning its paint and the top three or four inches of concrete into superheated powder.
Ten’s free hand caught something firm but pliable, and then Earl hauled him up onto the ground floor above.
“Run,” Ten said. They were in the remains of a waiting room, enclosed by white wall on one side and shattered glass enclosure on the other three sides. Most of the furniture that had been in the room was gone; Ten supposed that it had rained down on their pursuer. He ducked and lurched through the hole where a pane of glass had once stood. Emerging into a main hallway, he took a spare second to get his bearings and dashed toward an intersection ahead, where—assuming his memory hadn’t failed him—he should find a set of stairs heading up.
Earl ran along behind, his footspeed not quite up to the younger man’s. His voice was ragged: “That was a T-X, wasn’t it?”
“Yep.” Ten rounded a corner into an open area that must once have been a lobby and veered right, crashing into another fire door. The metal barrier swung open slowly to reveal a set of stairs. A corresponding door on the other side of the stairs had been crushed aside.
Rapid gunfire echoed out through that doorway. Ten ignored it and raced up the stairway as fast as he could.
“How’d you know?”
“She didn’t react to the fumes.” Ten didn’t need to add the fact that any human found in a Skynet-controlled facility was automatically suspect. Most would actually be Terminators. Some might be traitors, selling information to Skynet, unwilling to believe that the computer mind now controlling the world would eventually calculate that they were no longer useful and terminate them, too.
* * *
The T-X rose from beneath the several-hundred-kilogram mound of rubble that buried her, an unlikely Venus emerging from an unlovely sea. Her face and nurse’s uniform were caked with dust and debris, but both surfaces rippled and the discolorations disappeared.
She spared a moment to glance back the way she’d come. The assault robot that had accompanied her was locked in a hand-to-hand struggle with what appeared to be a T-801 Terminator, doubtless a machine captured and reprogrammed by the humans. Each held a weapon in its own right hand and gripped its enemy’s weapon with its left. As she watched, the T-801 swung the assault robot around, slamming it into the wall, which buckled under the impact.
This was a one-sided competition. The Terminator would have superior combat programming; it was a far more elaborate machine. Still, she could not waste time attacking it. Her communications gear already indicated that the assault robot was calling for assistance, and the two humans she’d seen were free in the facility. The facility had to be protected. That was her secondary mission.
Her olfactory and taste receptors registered the presence of fuel fumes in the air, but, optimized for analysis of living tissues and DNA, could not inform her just what the level of saturation was. Still, with a large supply of fuel nearby, any spark might cause a fire and damage the facility. She radioed a command to the assault robot: DO NOT FIRE YOUR PLASMA WEAPON. DO NOT ALLOW THE T-801 TO FIRE ITS SLUG-THROWER. DO NOT CREATE SPARKS. REMOVE THE T-801 TO SOME OTHER LOCATION BEFORE TERMINATING IT.
The humans had to have fled via the ceiling. She looked up and leaped through the hole, a movement as graceful and effortless as that of a world-class diver falling from a ten-meter platform.
Heat traces in the ruined chamber above, showing as slightly brighter spots on the floor in her infrared vision, indicated the direction the humans had fled.
* * *
The assault robot ceased in its attempts to swing the enemy Terminator into a concrete support pillar. Instead, it channeled all available power supplies into its hand servos, an effort that overloaded those mechanisms and threatened to damage them.
But the effort had its desired effect. First the trigger housing of the chain gun crumpled in its left hand. Then the trigger housing of its own plasma cannon collapsed in its right.
The enemy Terminator, which looked like a stock T-801, paused in its attacks to glance at the two weapons. The assault robot took that moment to initiate the second phase of its new programming.
It released both weapons, turned, and fled toward the stairway by which the Terminator had arrived.
The Terminator followed.
* * *
“Last one,” Ten said. He planted his final shaped charge against a hallway door, then pulled out his remote trigger. He trotted back to where Earl waited. “Call for evac.”
“You got it.” Earl set his rocket-propelled grenade on the counter of the nurse’s station, then dug out his field phone.
One floor up, Mark should still be hard at work at the corresponding station, but Ten didn’t want to reach that place physically and perhaps lead their pursuit to the other members.
Reaching the station, Ten turned and kept his attention on the doorway he’d just booby-trapped. He heard Earl say, “All H-H, bug out. Repeat, bug out.”
Mark’s voice came back across the field phone: “Roger that.”
Something moved, visible only as a vague shape beyond the circular window in the door. Then it was a face in the window, the nurse’s face. Ten triggered the remote.
The explosion yanked at his clothes, caused him to stumble backward … and most of the force had been directed the other way, toward the T-X. He regained his balance and brought up his M16 to cover the doorway. Beside him, Earl readied the RPG.
Flame filled the doorway, and smoke beyond the blast zone was so thick that they could not see through it.
Ten grimaced. The longer an enemy was out of sight, the more likely it was that the enemy was circling around, firing out an alternative approach. He took a moment to look behind them, farther along the corridor, but there was no movement from that direction.
There would be, soon. The T-X or the assault robot had to have called the situation in. Skynet forces would be racing this way, probably from the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, one of Skynet’s chief resources in the San Diego area.
“Movement,” Earl said. He brought the rocket-propelled grenade up to his shoulder and prepared to fire. Ten turned to look.
Ten saw something moving in the smoke. Then it tumbled out toward them, out of the smoke and fire: Glitch and the assault robot, locked together, hammering one another with bare fists, slamming one another into cement-and-plaster support walls that buckled under their impact.
“Shit,” Earl said. “Where’s the T-X?”
Ten shook his head, confused. The T-X might have been damaged by the blast, but she wouldn’t have been destroyed.
Then the truth dawned on him. “She’s tracing Mark’s broadcast.”
* * *
Mark gathered all his tools and equipment into his shoulder bag, even the apparatus still plugged into the facility’s network. It was still downloading data. He’d leave it plugged in until he literally had to run. He’d done that more than once in his career, scrambling for safety while trailing wires and connectors behind him. “Ready to go?”
Kyla smirked. “Whenever you are. Unlike you, I don’t have to put out place settings wherever I go.”
Down the corridor, Ripper growled. The bullmastiff stared off to the right of Mark’s line of sight, down a side corridor Mark could not see.
Mark glanced at Kyla. She l
ooked perplexed. “What is it?”
“That’s his ‘Stranger’ growl,” she whispered. “Not his ‘Machines’ growl.”
“How much dog do you speak, anyway?”
“About six dialects. I can’t make sense of rottweiler, though.” Kyla whistled, two sharp notes, and Ginger and Ripper came loping back to her, visibly anxious about what they were leaving behind.
His gear ready for transport, Mark brought his weapon to bear. It was an Uzi submachine gun, a tough, reliable weapon that fired 9mm ammunition, a round favored by the Resistance for the availability of its brass … but only favored for use against civilian vehicles. It was of next to no use against any Terminator later than the ancient T-400 series. But Mark was currently so heavily laden with computer equipment that a full-sized assault rifle or plasma rifle could slow him fatally.
There was a bang from down the corridor, a door being thrown open and slamming into a wall, and the sound of footsteps—light, arrhythmic steps. Then the source of the sounds rounded the corner and came into sight.
It was a man. He was tall, lean, and raw-boned, pallid like many members of the Resistance, whose lifetimes were largely spent belowground. His face was long, with mobile features that would, had the world not ruled by machines bent on murder, have belonged to a hyperactive university professor or a television comedian. His hair and eyes were dark, nearly black, throwing the pallor of his features into sharp contrast. He wore a light beard and some sort of body stocking that seemed singularly out of place in this strange environment. He carried a bundle of cloth in one hand.
“Hold it,” Kyla said. “Don’t come any closer.” Her dogs, now at her face, reacted to the hard tone of her voice by lowering their heads and growling at the newcomer.
The man wove forward another two off-balance steps, then managed to stop. He leaned against one wall. By his behavior, he was drunk or drugged. “Don’t shoot,” he said.
Kyla kept her eye to the weapon’s iron sights; she’d removed the scope, which was next to useless in these close quarters, and raised the improvised close-range sights as soon as they’d set up at this station. “Identify yourself,” she said.
“I think my name is Paul,” the man said. “Paul Keeley.”
Shock, like a bucket of ice water in the face, jolted Mark. He straightened. Some part of him, the vain part, recognized that he had to be wearing an unappealing expression of complete surprise and bafflement, but he couldn’t seem to bring his features under control. “No way.”
The newcomer staggered another step forward, sliding along the wall. “Mark? Mark Herrera?”
“Jesus, it is Paul.” Mark moved forward, unconscious of the wires and leads from his shoulder bag pulling free of the station’s computer.
Up close, Paul looked like hell, even skinnier than he was when last Mark had seen him. His eyes had trouble focusing and were full of confusion. “What are you doing still alive?” Mark asked.
Paul shook his head. “I don’t—I don’t—where are we?”
“Not fit to travel.” Mark stooped, pulled Paul across his shoulder, and straightened, lifting the man up as though he were a duffel bag full of laundry. It was a bit of a strain on his legs, but the last man Mark had to carry this way weighed something like fifty kilograms more, so this wasn’t a tremendous effort in comparison.
Mark turned back toward Kyla. “Let’s get our asses out of here.”
She rose, giving him an unhappy look. “He might be booby-trapped. There might be a tracer on him.”
“You think we should leave him?”
“Yes.”
Around the corner behind Mark, the door by which Paul had entered clanked open again. Back at the nurse’s station, Mark turned to look.
Ten limped around the corner. His uniform and the right side of his face were burned—still smoking. His left arm gripped his right, holding it protectively; Mark couldn’t see the extent of the injury to that arm.
But Ten was still moving, still in command. “Where’s Earl?” Mark asked.
It happened almost all at once: a long, awkward pause with Ten not answering, merely staggering forward; Ripper’s growl, far more ferocious than the one he’d offered for Paul; Ten’s injured arm starting to come up; Kyla firing, an explosion that hammered at Mark’s ears.
The .50-caliber bullet from the Barrett struck Ten in the forehead.
The hydrostatic shock from the bullet should have created an exit wound the size of a saucer out the back of Ten’s head. It didn’t. Ten’s head snapped back and the man fell. Then he shook his head dizzily and rolled over, attempting to rise. Where his right arm should have been was a weapon, all spars and spikes and dancing blue light.
“Run,” Kyla said.
Mark ran.
* * *
Glitch rode the assault robot, his legs wrapped around its waist, his right arm locked around its neck from behind. The robot’s hands gripped his arm, but could not seem to dig in, to crumple his arm mechanisms. Glitch calculated that the robot’s hands were damaged or malfunctioning.
That was good. That gave him time. He exerted more and more pressure, felt the neck attachments begin to give way.
Then, suddenly, he was straightening involuntarily, and the robot’s head was flying out of the crook of his arm to bounce along the corridor. The assault robot crashed to the hallway floor.
Glitch rose and assessed the situation. Behind him, fire was dying down in an intersection. Ahead of him, Ten and Earl waited, ready to open fire upon the assault robot, had it been the victor.
“Any sign of Mark or Kyla?” Ten asked.
Glitch shook his head. A pop-up window in his field of view suggested adding an audible/verbal component to his response, from the choices “Negative,” “Uh-uh,” “No,” and “Not in this life,” but Glitch dismissed the window. Though many humans seemed to appreciate redundancy in response, Glitch’s learning programming increasingly indicated that the Hell-Hounds were not among them.
“Correction,” Glitch said. “They are coming now.”
Behind Glitch, a group on foot ran past the burning doorway—two dogs, two humans—according to Glitch’s sound analysis systems. Mark’s running pattern had changed, indicating that he was injured or more burdened than usual. As Glitch turned to look, the quartet skidded to a halt, reversed direction, and came back, turning into the hallway where the other Hell-Hounds were.
Kyla was in front, her dogs pacing her. “There’s a Terminator coming,” she said. “I think it’s a T-1000.”
“T-X,” Ten corrected. “Everyone out this way. Glitch, not you. Hold the T-X here.” He grimaced, an expression Glitch was coming to recognize meant that he was experiencing an unpleasant thought or was being forced to communicate an unpleasant thought to others. “Fight to delay. If you make it, find us at the listed rendezvous.”
Glitch nodded and watched as the humans retreated along the corridor. None looked at him, except for the one Mark was carrying, who lifted his head from Mark’s back and gave him a bleary stare. Earl left the RPG he was carrying on the countertop beside him and added another one from his pack before accompanying the others.
Interesting. Glitch felt no particular emotion at being instructed that he was now to embark on a suicide mission. He was to fight against a vastly superior Terminator, and instead of fighting to win, which was statistically very unlikely, was merely to protract the battle as long as possible, making it a virtual certainty that he was to be destroyed.
Those were his orders. He would carry them out. He moved to the counter and picked up the rocket-propelled grenades.
* * *
The T-X moved down the flight of stairs. Portions of her visual display were still replaced by static-filled boxes; not all her analytical processes had completed rebooting. The impact from that shot had not caused all her programming to go off-line, but what she’d been left with in the moments after the impact—imperatives to reach a protected location and defend herself until a majority of th
e remaining processes could restart—had given her prey long moments with which to escape.
Her goal-oriented programming drove her with what would, in a human, have been a combination of emotions of duty and greed. Duty was foremost, of course. She was charged with protecting and maintaining this facility and had been unsuccessful tonight. But a machine form of greed was present, too. While there were many female snipers in the human Resistance, few had access to weapons capable of inflicting the sort of temporary injury on the T-X that this sniper’s had. That fact, plus the brief glimpse T-X had of the woman, convinced T-X that she’d just had an encounter with Kyla Connor, daughter of Resistance leader John Connor.
Elimination of the entire Connor family was T-X’s long-term goal. Now she had a chance to accomplish a portion of that goal, and this enhancement to the priority of her goal of defending the facility quickened her step.
Slightly brighter patches on the floor, warm spots where the fleeing humans had stepped, showed the intruders’ flight path. As she reached the ground floor and quickly followed the path into back corridors, she recognized that the intruders were heading once again to the point at which she had been struck by one of their small missiles. As she made one last corridor turn, she recognized the spot where she’d sustained that missile attack, a doorway, its double doors now disintegrated, still rimmed by fire from the attack.
She hadn’t continued down that hallway previously. She’d intercepted the brief radio message from the other set of intruders and realized that they were closer to important facility resources. But now all the intruders seemed to be together. Still, her prey had shown itself to have some tactical resources.
A few steps short of the burning doorway, she turned right and walked into the wall, effortlessly smashing through its wood and plaster construction, disappearing into the dark room beyond.
* * *
Glitch, one RPG in each hand, heard the approaching footsteps, then heard and felt the impact of the distant Terminator’s collision with a wall.
Terminator 3--Terminator Hunt Page 4