This time, he didn’t wait to be thrown. Having backed up to the point where he was closest to the launcher, he turned and went over the edge, continuing to fire up at his metal tormentor as he did so. Following, the Terminator was close behind.
Rolling as he hit, Connor grabbed up the launcher and backpedaled. He took careful aim at the oncoming machine. But he didn’t fire at it.
As soon as the Terminator was in position, Connor whirled and let loose with the last grenade at the finishing furnace. As he threw himself backward, the explosion sent a gush of molten metal spewing onto the Terminator below. Awash in fiery, glowing metal it maintained its steady advance.
Which was when Connor took his pistol and blasted away at the cooling pipe running across the room directly overhead.
Gushing outward and flooding the room, the indust-rial coolant contacted the layer of molten metal dripping off the Terminator. Lock-up was instantaneous. As the metal casing solidified around it, the machine slowed, kept coming, slowed. Reaching out, an arm extended toward Connor. Open fingers extended to grab hold and—stopped. One made contact, lightly, with Connor’s left cheek.
“Do it, you son of a bitch!”
Functioning but unable to move its limbs, the Terminator stared at him.
Wiggling clear, Connor edged around the frozen machine and stumbled toward the inert body of Marcus Wright. Searching the walls, he found a panel, opened it, and tore live cables free from their connections without a thought for his own safety. Sparks jumped. More flew as he jammed the open leads against Wright’s body.
“Come on! Move!”
Intent on Wright, he did not see the Terminator move behind him. Did not hear the slight cracking noise as frozen metal flaked free from its arms, its torso, its legs.
Absorbing the fury of the cables, Wright’s body jerked once, twice. Connor opened his mouth to offer further encouragement—but nothing came out. Staring blankly, he slowly lowered his gaze. A metal bar was protruding from the lower portion of his chest.
Eyes flashing open, Wright grabbed the bar and rolled. Standing above Connor, he pulled the bar free, turned, and as the machine charged, drove it forcefully into the Terminator’s neck. Grimacing into the staring red eyes, he twisted the bar sharply.
A metallic squeal came from the Terminator’s head as it flew off. It bounced a couple of times before coming to rest against a far wall. For the first time, its eyes were blank.
Picking up the severely injured Connor and placing him over his right shoulder, Wright headed for the nearest exit.
Appearing out of the darkness outside the processing plant, a pair of T-600s began firing into the throng. Screaming, the freed prisoners tried to scatter. Then one of the machines came apart, shredded by heavy-caliber machinegun fire. Its companion was decapitated as a flurry of heavy shells tore into its upper body.
The spotlight from the helicopter played over the crowd as the chopper set down. Flanked by Barnes and a small but determined clutch of soldiers, Kate Connor stepped out onto the surface of Skynet Central.
Using the cover provided by surviving Resistance aircraft, they had managed to make their way into the compound by flying low and fast.
Running to a downed prisoner, Kate bent over the woman.
“Can you hear me?” Lifting her head, she yelled back in the direction of the chopper she had just exited. “Chris, Chris! She’s hypovolemic. Start a line.”
Rising, she found her attention drawn to nearby conversation. Confronting an attentive Barnes, an anxious young man holding the hand of a small girl was gesturing frantically in the direction of a blazing building.
“John Connor’s in there! John Connor’s in there!”
Hearing his words, Kate rushed over to join them, her attention shifting between the youth and the sergeant. She cried out.
“Barnes, Barnes! Find him!”
“I will.”
It was not necessary for her to ask. It was what they had come for.
The sergeant checked the tracker he was carrying. Linked electronically to the one Connor had used to find Kyle Reese, it had enabled the chopper to get the rescue party this close. From here they would have to proceed on foot, to try and extricate Kate’s husband. Commandeering two of the soldiers who had piled out of the helicopter behind him, Barnes led them off into the darkness.
Finding herself alone with the two children, Kate shepherded them toward the waiting helicopter.
“Who are you?”
“Kyle Reese.”
She stared at him, then led them on board.
“Come on. Are you injured?”
“I’m okay.” Reese smiled at her—but then his attention was back on the factory he and the little girl had just fled.
Kate’s spirits remained down until Barnes and Marcus Wright appeared. Between them they were supporting a bruised and badly injured figure. The man’s wounds were disfiguring, but through all the blood and bruising she still had no difficulty recognizing her husband.
“John!”
They laid him out gently in the back of the helicopter. As her eyes traveled over the length of his battered, tormented body she gradually realized the full extent of his wounds.
“John!”
He didn’t respond. She told herself that his injuries, while severe, were not life-threatening. They couldn’t be. She would save him. She had to save him.
Barnes was hovering nearby, dividing his attention between the domestic drama immediately in front of him and the crowd of prisoners who continued to mill about on the outskirts of the factory. Those who had started to run, to try and hide themselves in the far reaches of Skynet Central, were now returning, drawn back by the sound and light of the idling chopper.
“How the hell are we going to get all of these people out of here?”
A voice sounded from inside the helicopter. It was weak, but still commanding.
“Transporter,” Connor gasped. “There are some parked between here and the bridge. I hacked the nearest one. Overrode the receive and command component.” He fumbled at a pants pocket. “Here—bypass unit....”
Stepping toward him, Barnes took the compact device. Their hands made contact, just for an instant. The sergeant smiled down at the Resistance leader.
“I’ll do it. You hang in there, Connor.”
The man on the floor tried to nod, could not, and managed only the faintest of smiles.
Turning away from him, Barnes gestured to the remaining soldiers. Following the sergeant out of the helicopter, they raced toward the nearby field where the motionless Transporters were parked. Finding the one Connor had indicated Barnes saw right away that it was big enough to do the job. He only hoped it held enough fuel. As he entered the unsealed craft and made his way toward the control pod, his men began to organize the survivors and lead them to the waiting craft.
Back in the chopper, Kate Connor yelled forward. Up in the cockpit, Blair Williams nodded understanding and turned her full attention to the controls. Overhead, the whine of the engine rose. Then it began to spit. A hissing sound made itself heard above, over the noise of the fleeing crowd.
Williams uttered a curse, added more loudly, “Something’s wrong with the turbine!”
Leaning out the open side of the aircraft, Wright peered upward. Spraying from a stray bullet hole, hot fuel was running down the side of the helicopter, sizzling as it struck the metal. Some of it hit him in the face. Casually, he wiped it away, along with part of his cheek. Reaching up, he deliberately slapped a hand down over the puncture. Steam rose around the edges of his fingers.
“Try it now,” he suggested calmly.
Williams complied. The turbine hesitated, coughed, and began to spool up. Rotors began to turn, accelerated, picking up speed.
In the back, Connor continued to flit in and out of consciousness.
“Charges,” he mumbled. “We set charges. But the detonator—there was a fight. Leave me here. Need to find it, set it off—after you’re out of r
ange.”
Screams sounded from outside. Something massive and monstrous was coming toward them out of the night. Single-minded as it advanced on the chopper, the Harvester ignored the remainder of the crowd that was piling into the waiting Transporter.
Leaning out of the opening, one hand still clamped righteously over the hole that was leaking fuel, Wright reached across the gap with his free hand. Exhibiting strength prodigious even for him, he hoisted up the door gun in his other arm and took aim at the approaching machine. Finding the trigger, he let loose a mad barrage of shells. Tearing into the oncoming Harvester, they shredded section after section, until one shell finally struck something volatile.
The big machine whoomed skyward, bits and pieces of it raining down on the remaining survivors.
Parts of it landed on the factory. Hissing and sparking, they also struck the ground in the vicinity of the legless but indomitable Terminator that had just crawled clear of the building. Searching its surroundings, its crimson gaze settled on a nearby helicopter. Dragging itself along the ground, it started determinedly toward the idling aircraft. But the chopper was already lifting off, rising above the devastation beneath it, leaving only destruction, flames, and a single pair of hate-filled red eyes in its wake.
Behind it, a deeper rumble filled the night air as the Transporter, now packed with men, women, and child-ren who had once given themselves up for dead, lifted off, banked sharply to the north, and began to accelerate in the direction of Mount Tamalpais.
Inside the chopper, Kate Connor leaned toward her husband.
“The others—the rest of the survivors—they’re on their way.” Reaching down, she wrapped the fingers of both hands tenderly around his. He nodded slowly to show that he understood.
“But the charges—have to go back—find the....”
He broke off as his gaze fastened on a small shape hovering nearby. Star moved closer. Silently, she unfolded her closed hand, the fingers opening like the petals of a flower. Still intact and full of quiet promise, the detonator lay exposed in the center of her tiny palm. As their eyes met, her lips trembled with the effort of trying to speak.
Fighting through horror, she formed words. Two.
“End this.”
Connor nodded. Gently, he took the detonator. Then he rolled his head to one side so he could see out the open side of the chopper. After everything that had happened, after all that had transpired, he did not want to miss the fireworks.
He squeezed the trigger.
In order for any designated Terminator to operate and carry out its programmed functions, an enormous amount of energy had to be packed into the small, portable container that powered it. Thousands of such containers lay stacked in a secure corner of the main Terminator factory below. When the C-4 cord that had been wrapped around them detonated, so did they.
This in turn set off a great many unstable substances that were also stored within the factory. When the factory went up, in a blast sufficiently wide, deep, and loud enough to satisfy the most vengeful Resistance fighter, this in turn touched off similar explosions in every facility nearby.
By the time the chopper was well on its way across the bay, a good deal of machine-transformed San Francisco was blowing itself skyward in a series of sequential eruptions that were little short of volcanic. The moonlight that glistened on the placid water below was in complete and peaceful contrast to the cataclysm that was ripping apart the land falling steadily farther behind them.
One hand still clamped over the fuel leak, Wright hung half in and half out of the chopper. He did not mind the wind that whipped at what remained of his face and hair. Despite his awkward position he could clearly see those who were safely inside the helicopter.
Lying on its floor near the back, Connor—badly damaged but still alive. His wife tending to him with a mixture of professionalism and affection. Kyle Reese, tougher than he knew. The little girl Star, silent but aware.
Reaching into the chopper, the moonlight softened and seemed to heal all of them, rendering Kate Connor’s face angelic instead of just determined, making Reese look as young as he actually was, glinting redly off one of Star’s eyes....
Wright blinked. The glint was gone. As if it had never been.
It was nothing at all, he told himself with assurance. There had been nothing there, nothing to see. The briefest of flickers of moonlight on cornea. Nothing more than a second of reflection, singular twinkle.
Or a singularity.
The disparate collection of fighting aircraft, from helicopters to converted civilian planes to A-10s, sat in the broiling sun of the desert dawn like so many shiny carapaced insects waiting for the rising heat to bring them back to life. That would eventually be done not by the sun but by the exhausted yet triumphant crews scattered nearby. Tired as they were, they did their best to offer succor and reassurance to the prisoners they had just rescued from Skynet.
Considerably less joy was present in the wind-stirred tent that had been set up nearby. Inside, the leaders of the attack on San Francisco stood in silence. Their attention was focused not on the victory they had just won, but on a single figure lying at the center.
The great spark of life and defiance that was John Connor was slowly but inexorably fading away.
Struggling to sustain the life of the prone human to which it was attached, a portable heart-lung machine muttered softly. It made more noise than any of the somber onlookers. Connor’s wife held his arm—gently, reassuringly, but without hope. Certainly less than her husband evinced. He managed a feeble smile.
“Don’t worry, Kate. See you later....”
She nodded, then rose to confront the others. The words she spoke were her responsibility to them.
The tears in her eyes, however, belonged to her alone.
“He’s dying.”
Hat dangling from one hand, Barnes kept his voice low.
“How long?”
She tried to shrug but was unable to lift her shoulder.
“Any moment. His heart can’t take it.” Her eyes meet the sergeant’s, and she continued. “The Terminators have beat him up and history has worn him down.”
Barnes tried to think of something to say. Of the right thing to say.
“It’s going to be okay.”
The smallest figure in the tent moved forward to take the hand of the most complex. Star’s small soft fingers slipped into those of Marcus Wright, and she felt the warmth of his response through the cool metal. From the cot, Connor looked toward Kyle Reese, then to his jacket. Interpreting the glance correctly, Wright picked up the jacket and handed it to the younger man.
“Kyle,” Connor croaked, “take it. You’ve earned it.”
Nodding, the teen accepted the jacket. As he stepped back he saw that Star was holding Wright’s hand. Marcus eyed him evenly.
“Remember the difference.”
Remember the....? What was Wright talking about? As he pondered the cryptic command Wright gently eased the little girl toward her original protector. Kyle took her hand as the bigger man moved back.
“Kate. Take mine....”
John Connor looked at him, visibly uncertain. Only one person in the tent was certain of what the big man’s words implied. Blair came up to him without hesitation. There were tears in her eyes and when she spoke, her voice cracked.
“Marcus....”
He gazed down at the woman who had saved him, who had made the great, grand difference in his recent existence.
“Everyone deserves a second chance. This is mine.”
Smiling, she stood tall and regardless of what anyone in the tent might think, kissed him affectionately.
“Thank you.”
He eyed her a moment longer, out of eyes that had already seen too much. Then he turned away and began to strip off his shirt....
Wright and Connor lay side by side on tables in the portable operating theater. Two warriors: one dying and the other—the other....
No words passed b
etween them. None were needed. Knowing looks, a respectful nod, were enough for these two. Prepped for surgery, Kate Connor moved first to the side of Marcus Wright.
A host of conflicting emotions raced through her as she stared down at the powerful, silent, strangely calm figure. She had been wrong about him, all wrong, and now it was too late. She might have said something, but she couldn’t find appropriate words. Not for the sacrifice he was about to make. A surge of compassion rose within her.
She made herself force it down. Deeply as she might want to express it, there was no time for that now. All she could do was what she had been trained to do.
The syringe she wielded was substantial. It had to be....
A single slab of smooth river rock constituted the tombstone that stood at the head of the grave site. Despite the heat, the young man patting down the last shovelfulls of dry earth wore a heavy jacket. Sweat streamed down his face but neither the heat nor the dripping perspiration dissuaded him from his work. He had carved the obituary on the stone himself, with his own knife.
MARCUS WRIGHT
A GOOD MAN
A short epitath, he knew, but no better one could have been composed.
Taking a break before placing the last spadeful of dirt, he dug into one of the jacket’s pockets for the handkerchief that rested there. Deeper, his fingers encountered something less flexible, less soft. Brow furrowing, he pulled out the old photograph. It showed a single woman, attractive but stolid, her expression resigned. It was just a picture, nothing more than a photograph—but the eyes of the woman he was staring at seemed to burn into his soul. A tremor ran through him. He was not looking at an old picture—he was gazing at his destiny.
The woman in the picture was Sarah Connor.
More than a little to everyone’s surprise, including that of Kate Connor, the transplant not only took but held. But then, John Connor had always been just a little stronger, just a little tougher, just a bit more resilient than any other human she had ever met.
Face sutured, chest swathed in heavy gauze, he stood outside the chopper and regarded the surviving core of the Resistance. He was not the only survivor. And, he knew in his heart as well as in his mind, there would be more. Many more.
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