Terminator Salvation: Trial by Fire

by Timothy Zahn

  Barnes hefted his assault rifle.

  “Bring it on,” he invited darkly.

  A minute later they were making their way through the trees, the rushing water a constant muffled roar off to their right. As they walked, it occurred to Blair that if Skynet’s actual plan was to lure her and Barnes away so that it could hit the town without any serious resistance, they were playing right into its hands.

  Still, if Skynet wanted the town destroyed, it could have sent in the T-700s last night. Or this morning, while she and Barnes were walking in from the Blackhawk.

  No, there was something going on that she was missing. Some piece to the puzzle she didn’t yet have. Maybe they were about to find that piece.

  Maybe all they were about to find was more Terminators.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  From Kyle’s vantage point, the Terminators’ midnight attack had been short but incredibly noisy, with an awesome display of firepower from both sides.

  It was therefore something of a surprise to discover how much ammo the Terminators hadn’t fired.

  Callahan put it into words first.

  “Good God, we’ve hit the jackpot,” he breathed as they stood together by the broken machines, gazing at all the extra magazines still strapped to the Terminators’ upper arms and thighs.

  “That we have,” Yarrow agreed. “Callahan, you and Reese take left; Steiner and I will take right. Get the magazines off the T-700s themselves first, then hunt around for anything that might have fallen or been shot off them. Remember that a magazine blown off by a high-speed round can fly and bounce quite a distance.”

  “Vincennes said to check the guns, too,” Kyle said as they fanned out across the thirty or forty meters of last night’s field of destruction. “Some of them might be worth tagging for salvage.”

  “I’m not optimistic,” Yarrow said. “T-700s are usually fast enough to wreck their guns before they shut down completely. But sure, go ahead and check—we might get lucky. And don’t forget to pull the magazines out of the wrecked guns. If we can’t get the weapons, we can at least salvage their ammo.”

  Yarrow’s prediction turned out to be correct. The T-600’s minigun was still in decent shape, though two of the six barrels were badly dented. But all of the T-700s’ submachineguns either had warped barrels or broken firing mechanisms.

  “You suppose that’s why they’re using this caseless ammo, too?” Kyle called across to Yarrow as he picked up an intact magazine and slipped it into his pack. “Skynet figuring that it can wreck all the guns that can fire the stuff and we won’t get any extra brass to reload?”

  “Could be,” Yarrow called back. “The G11s were still in the prototype stage when Judgment Day happened, so there were damn few guns around that could take their ammo. Skynet must have either severely modified an existing assembly line to build the things, or else created its own from scratch.”

  “Lucky for us, Chief Armorer Dockery can build anything,” Callahan added as he dropped another handful of ammo into his bag.

  “You’re right there,” Yarrow agreed. “I hear he’s already got three machine guns up and running that can use this stuff, with six more on the way. Probably why Vincennes wants us to sweep the whole Skynet Central area as fast as we can, so that we can build up a decent stockpile before Skynet catches on to what we’re doing and switches weapons and ammo again.”

  “Ah,” Kyle said, a funny feeling in his stomach as he looked down at one of the broken guns. Back when he, Callahan, and Zac had been living at Moldering Lost Ashes, as they had nicknamed The Moldavia Building in L.A., Kyle had known everything that was going on.

  Now, suddenly, he was the new kid in town again. Not the person other people came to with questions, but the person everyone else had to explain things to.

  It was embarrassing. More than that, it was dangerous. How could he protect himself when he didn’t know how things worked?

  How could he protect Star?

  “Which could be any time now,” Yarrow continued. “Skynet’s already fitting the latest H-Ks with those new plasma guns. Dockery says it’s only a matter of time before it comes up with a smaller version for the T-700s.”

  “Or whatever Terminators it’s got going by then,” Callahan said. “But for now, we can still collect their brass and their caseless rounds and send some fresh lead back at them.”

  “In the old days we called that recycling,” Yarrow said with a touch of humor. “Callahan, you and Reese finished with that side yet?”

  “I think so,” Callahan said. “Should we start on the brass now?”

  “Go ahead,” Yarrow said. “Same sweep pattern as you did on the ammo.”

  The unspent ammunition had been well consolidated, either strapped to the Terminators or else in magazines lying in plain sight. The spent brass, in contrast, was anything but. The casings were all over the place, some of it scattered as far as ten meters away from where the Terminators had fallen, much of it half buried in tangles of wire or under exposed rebar or mixed into the piles of concrete dust that the restless breezes had funneled into nooks and crannies around the exposed concrete blocks.

  It was long, boring, backbreaking work. Small wonder, Kyle thought more than once, that the team that had confirmed the Terminator kills had passed off the duty to someone else.

  The sun had crossed over into the western sky when Kyle heard a shout over the distant sounds of sporadic gunfire coming from the hunting teams.

  “Hey! Everyone!” Zac called. “Come here a minute.”

  Kyle turned, wiping sweat and dust off his forehead. Zac was crouched beside what was left of the rubber-skinned T-600 that had led the midnight charge. Hefting his half-full backpack onto one shoulder, Kyle slung his shotgun over the other and headed across.

  Yarrow was squatting beside Zac when Kyle and Callahan reached them.

  “Down here,” Zac said, gesturing.

  Frowning, Kyle lowered himself down beside the others. As far as he could tell, the shot-up T-600 looked pretty much like any other shot-up T-600.

  “What are we looking at?” Yarrow asked.

  “Underneath it, all the way down,” Zac said, pointing at the spot where the Terminator’s back was resting against the cracked masonry. “I was going for a casing that was pressed against its back, and it slipped down here and fell.”

  Trying not to flinch, Kyle pressed his palm against the T-600’s side and pushed back the ragged clothing and rubbery skin as far as he could, about a quarter-inch worth. There was a gap down there, all right.

  “Must have hit pretty hard when it fell,” he commented.

  “There’s more,” Zac said, and this time Kyle could hear the cautious excitement in the younger teen’s voice. “When that casing fell, I’m pretty sure it took almost a second to hit anything.”

  “Really,” Yarrow said thoughtfully as he stood up and walked around to the other side of the Terminator. “That would mean a drop of four or five meters.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Zac agreed. “It was a little hard to tell with all the shooting going on over there, but I’m sure it was at least half a second.”

  “Which would mean there’s another whole level down there,” Yarrow said, crouching down. “Yes, you can see the hole on this side, too. Reese is right—it must have hit really hard to break through that much concrete.”

  “Has to be more of the complex down there,” Callahan said, standing up and getting a grip on one of the Terminator’s outstretched arms. “Let’s see if we can move it.”

  Yarrow took the machine’s other arm.

  “On three.”

  But T-600s were heavy, and not even the four of them straining together could lift or roll it from its resting place.

  “That’s not going to work,” Yarrow said breathlessly, straightening up. “We’ll need to find another way down.”

  “Wait a second,” Kyle said. “You want to go down there?”

  “Why not?” Yarrow said, looki
ng around. “If there’s an actual room down there, there might still be some useful stuff in it.”

  “Like what?” Callahan asked.

  “Guns and ammo, maybe,” Yarrow said. “Or food. Wouldn’t that get us some smiley points if we brought back a few cartons of food.” He pointed at an angled, meter-wide section of broken concrete pipe sticking half a meter out of the ground. “That looks promising. Let’s take a look.”

  The top of the conduit had been crushed inward, possibly from an impact with a piece of girder lying nearby. The broken section was connected to the rest of the cylinder by twisted pieces of the pipe’s metal reinforcement mesh, and was hanging in a loose flap that covered most of the opening.

  “Might be clear,” Yarrow said, shading his eyes as he looked in past the concrete flap. “Can’t tell until we get this stuff out of the way. Either of you bring any tools?”

  “I’ve got a knife,” Kyle offered.

  “Me, too,” Callahan added.

  “I was hoping for something more along the lines of a pry bar,” Yarrow said.

  “How about my shotgun?” Kyle suggested.

  “Better than nothing,” Yarrow said. “Let’s have it.”

  It took a few tries, but he finally found the right combination of positioning and angle to pry the dangling concrete away from the opening.

  “Wish we had a light,” he muttered as he stuck his head and torso as far into the cylinder as he could. “Looks like it goes all the way down. Bend this flap a little higher, will you, Callahan?”

  “What are you going to do?” Kyle asked as Yarrow handed the shotgun back and got a grip on the sides of the conduit.

  “I’m going in for a quick look,” Yarrow said. “You three wait here.” Jumping up, he slid his feet inside the opening.

  Kyle looked at Callahan. His expression was troubled, but he didn’t look anxious to challenge a superior’s decision. Zac, in contrast, merely looked intrigued.

  “Shouldn’t we check with someone first?” Kyle asked, feeling his heart starting to beat faster. This didn’t sound like a smart idea.

  “Like who?” Yarrow countered, grunting as he eased his hips into the duct. “You want to go all the way back to camp and find someone to ask if we can do something other than the job we were assigned? One of the things you need to learn, Reese, is that Connor really likes initiative and bold thinking.”

  Kyle looked around. With the sentry ring spread out beyond the hills of rubble so that they could cover the whole hunt area, there wasn’t a single person in sight. Even the edge of the main camp over half a mile away was deserted, with everyone there out of sight somewhere inside the camp.

  “You could whistle it in,” he suggested.

  “You find me a code for this situation, and I’ll be happy to use it,” Yarrow said. He was all the way inside the conduit now, gripping the edge as he did a controlled slide down the rough concrete.

  “What happens if you get hurt?” Kyle persisted.

  “Then you’ll come down and get me,” Yarrow said. “Relax, Reese—I can see the ground from here. Nothing’s going to happen.” His head disappeared into the darkness, and then his hands. “Okay, I’m touching bottom,” he called, his voice echoing oddly. “Let me see if I can see anything—”

  And he broke off amid a sudden crunch of breaking concrete.

  “Yarrow!” Callahan snapped, pressing his face into the conduit. “Yarrow! Can you hear me?”

  There was no answer.

  “I’m going in,” Callahan said, grabbing the sides of the opening and jumping his feet inside the way Yarrow had. “Reese, whistle a distress signal, will you?”

  “I can’t—Yarrow has the whistle,” Kyle told him, biting back a curse. So much for initiative and bold thinking. “No, wait—”

  But he was too late. With a sliding hiss and a second, quieter crunch of breaking concrete Callahan was gone.

  “What do we do?” Zac asked anxiously.

  Desperately, Kyle looked around again. But there was still no one visible. If both Yarrow and Callahan were injured, or even dead—

  “Reese?” Callahan’s voice floated up hollowly from the cylinder.

  “I’m here,” Kyle called back, sticking his face into the opening. It was too dark down there to see anything. “You okay?”

  “Yes, but Yarrow isn’t,” Callahan called grimly. “He must have hit his head on the way down—there’s some blood on the side of his face and he’s not really conscious. And his leg’s jammed.”

  Kyle clenched his teeth. Great.

  “How far down are you?”

  “Not very,” Callahan replied. “It’s less than three meters from the floor to the base of the pipe, plus the two meters of the pipe itself. If you and Zac can find a rope or something we can tie up there and then tie under his arms, I think the three of us can get him back up by ourselves.”

  “Right,” Kyle said, looking around again. “Let me think.”

  “How about the backpacks?” Zac suggested.

  “Worth a try,” Kyle agreed. “Dump ’em.”

  It took half a minute for them to dump all the scavenged ammo and brass out of the four backpacks. Kyle tied their shoulder straps together, then took the sling off his shotgun and added it to the makeshift rope. A quick knotting of the sling to one of the bits of metal mesh protruding from the edge of the conduit, and it was ready.

  “Here it comes,” he called, and lowered the packs down. “You need any help down there?”

  “Yeah, and a lot of it,” Callahan called, his voice grim.

  “I can’t get his leg free. It’s bleeding, too, pretty bad.” “We’ve got to get some help,” Zac breathed.

  Kyle nodded. “Callahan, I’m sending Zac back for the medics,” he called into the conduit.

  “There’s no time,” Callahan said. “We have to get him back up before we can treat him, and I’m going to need both of you down here for that. Once he’s up and we’ve got room to start bandaging, then Zac can go for help.”

  Kyle grimaced. But if Yarrow really was bleeding badly, Callahan was probably right. The main part of the camp was a good mile away, which meant at least a fifteen-minute round trip, plus whatever time it took to find a medic.

  “Hang on,” he said. “We’re coming.”

  “I’ll go first,” Zac volunteered. Before Kyle could say anything, the younger teen grabbed the edges of the conduit, swung his legs inside, and slid out of sight.

  Grimacing again, Kyle rested his shotgun against the side of the conduit and got his legs up inside. Holding on with one hand, he retrieved the weapon and shoved the barrel awkwardly down the waistband of his jeans. He shifted his grip to the sling and slid carefully down the pipe.

  There wasn’t a lot of light down there, but as Kyle worked his way down the line of backpacks his eyes adjusted enough to see that he was heading into a relatively narrow area lined by more of the tangled debris that littered the surface. Callahan and Zac were crouched beside a hunched-over Yarrow, and Kyle had to splay his feet to either side as he came down to avoid landing on any of them.

  “How is he?” he asked as he came to a halt on the uneven ground.

  “I think he’s starting to come to,” Callahan said, his voice grim. “He’s moaned a couple of times. Come on, give me a hand with his leg.”

  Kyle looked down. Yarrow’s leg was jammed up to his shin between a couple of blocks of broken concrete. Even in the dim light Kyle could see the man’s pant leg was soaked with blood.

  “Right,” he said, gingerly getting a grip around Yarrow’s thigh. “I’ve got the leg. You two see if you can pry apart the blocks.”

  “Shee—!” Yarrow hissed suddenly.

  Kyle jerked in surprise, but managed to keep his grip on the leg.

  “Yarrow?” Callahan asked anxiously. “You all right?”

  “It look like I’m all right?” Yarrow bit back between clenched teeth. “What the hell are you doing to my leg?”

  “Trying
to get it free,” Kyle said. “Hold on to my shoulder.”

  “Wait!” Zac said suddenly. “Shh.”

  They all froze. Kyle kept his grip on Yarrow’s leg, trying to take some of the man’s weight onto himself. He looked around, wondering what Zac had heard.

  And felt his blood run cold. He’d assumed Yarrow had crashed into some sort of chamber, some accidental gap randomly formed by the blast, shockwave, and collapse that had devastated Skynet Central. But this wasn’t simply a gap.

  It was a tunnel. A twisty, meandering tunnel that wound its way haphazardly between huge slabs of concrete or around twisted tangles of metal or broken machinery. Its floor was littered with debris and pieces of broken concrete. Its roof was even more irregular, and at places there were pieces of girder or twisted nets of rebar that had been pressed into service to hold up sections of the ceiling.

  This wasn’t something that had happened randomly in the explosion. This had been deliberately, carefully built.

  And there was only one possibility as to who the builders were.

  “Terminators,” Zac breathed. “I can hear their footsteps. They’re coming.”

  “Get out of here,” Yarrow murmured. “All of you, get out. Now.”

  Kyle looked up at the line of backpacks hanging down from the conduit. If the Terminators were close enough for Zac to hear...

  Callahan had come to the same conclusion.

  “There’s no time,” he murmured back. “Zac, find us a place to hide. Reese, give me a hand with Yarrow.”

  “No,” Yarrow, said, pushing Kyle away. “No time.” He looked around. “There—that gap at the edge of the floor. See it?”

  Kyle looked around. The gap was little more than a darker shadow at the side of the tunnel a dozen steps away.

  “Yes.”

  “See if it leads someplace where you can hide,” Yarrow ordered. “Go.”

  Clenching his teeth, Kyle headed toward the shadow, trying not to trip on the uneven ground. He reached the gap and looked down.

  They were in luck. The hole opened into a deep dropoff, deep enough that the faint light trickling down from the broken pavement above them showed no sign of a bottom. He couldn’t see if there was any place for them to stand, or whether they would have to hold on to concrete or rebar until the Terminators went away. But at least they would be out of sight.