by Timothy Zahn
Blair checked the rest of the sky around her, just to be sure, then once again turned her A-10
back toward the beleaguered neighborhood where she was supposed to be helping out.
Still, all things considered, it had been a remarkably quick battle. She’d dealt very efficiently with the first two Capistrano HKs, destroying both before the four in the follow-up wave were close enough to join in. The sheer number of opponents had made that second dogfight trickier, but whatever Skynet’s knowledge of aerial tactics, the HKs’ physical limitations simply didn’t give the computer much to work with.
In the end, Blair had turned all four machines into blazing scrap metal, and Skynet had apparently decided it had taken enough losses for one night.
But the victory had been costly. Her single Sidewinder missile was gone, and the counter on her GAU-8 showed only five rounds left.
Which, thanks to Wince, meant she actually had 155 rounds. Enough to deliver one good sucker punch, maybe two, before Skynet woke up to the fact that its own count was seriously off.
That ought to be enough for Yoshi and me to take out the final two HKs and give Connor the clear air space that he needs—
Blair’s train of thought froze. The two HKs were still there, still meandering their watch over Skynet’s mass slaughter.
But in the distance to the north another HK had appeared from somewhere and was engaged in a savage dogfight with Yoshi’s plane.
And Yoshi’s A-10 was on fire.
“Hang on, Jinkrat,” she snapped as she twisted her fighter toward them. “I’m on my way.”
“Stay there,” Yoshi ordered, his voice nearly inaudible over the staccato beat of the shells slamming into his cockpit and the roar of the flames blazing around him. “You’ve got a job to do.
Do it.”
“Damn it all, Jinkrat—”
“So long, Hickabick,” Yoshi interrupted her, his voice calm with the quiet serenity of someone who sees death approaching. “Kill a few for me, will you?”
“I will,” Blair promised, her stomach twisted into a hard, nauseated knot. “Good-bye, Yoshi.”
“Good-bye, Blair.”
And with that, Yoshi spun his crippled fighter around in an impossibly tight turn and rammed its nose full speed into the HK’s side.
The vehicles were still locked together in their death embrace as they tumbled in a blazing fireball to the earth.
Blair blinked sudden tears from her eyes, her throat aching. The odds had finally caught up to Yoshi…and Blair had lost yet another friend.
But at least this time she’d been able to say good-bye.
She turned her eyes back to the two hovering HKs, forcing down the pain and grief and fury.
Allowing those emotions to control her would only get her killed, too. Yoshi wouldn’t want that, nor would any of the rest of the long line of ghosts of her late comrades, a line forever haunting the back of her mind. They would all want her to live, and to keep fighting, and to send Skynet and its damned killing machines to hell.
“Skynet, this is Hickabick,” Blair said softly into her radio. “Ready or not, here I come.”
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
The first attack had been, in Orozco’s opinion, arrogantly casual, almost to the point of carelessness.
Skynet had learned from its mistake. It had learned all too well.
The second attack was brutal. There were at least ten of the hulking T-600s involved this time, their miniguns blasting away in a brute-force approach that tore at least three centimeters off the stone of the archway, pockmarked every one of the lobby walls, and destroyed most of the fountain wall that the first-line defenders were using as cover.
When the dust finally settled, five of those first-line defenders were dead.
“Damn every one of them to hell,” Grimaldi snarled as he and Orozco stood next to what was left of the archway, peering cautiously outside as the frantic clatter of barricade rebuilding went on behind them. The street looked even worse than the building itself, Orozco noted, with fragments of at least five more Terminators lying among the bullet scorings and grenade pits.
Some of those pieces were already trying to pull themselves back together.
“Damn it—look,” Grimaldi snapped, jabbing a finger toward one of the quivering pieces. “It’s—”
Snatching the chief’s arm, Orozco yanked him back under cover just as a burst of minigun fire burned through the air where his hand had been.
“Careful,” Orozco warned mildly. “You may need that hand later.”
“Not likely, the way things are going,” Grimaldi muttered. “But thanks.” He nodded toward the Terminator parts. “How many of them do you think will reform?”
“No idea,” Orozco said. “They’ve certainly got plenty of raw material to work with, though.
Especially since all the parts from that first assault are also still there.”
“I hadn’t thought about those,” Grimaldi admitted, shaking his head. “Damn it. You can’t kill them; and even when you do, they don’t stay dead.”
“They die permanently enough if you blow up their skulls or cook their electronics,” Orozco said. “Otherwise, no, they don’t go easy.”
The chief ducked his head to peer out at the building across the street, which looked in worse shape than the street and the Ashes’ lobby combined.
“You suppose any of those folks survived?”
“If I had to bet on any of us getting through this, I’d bet on them,” Orozco said candidly. “The real question is whether they’ll be able to do anything more to help us, what with those Terminators that seem to have moved into the bus down there. Between that bunch and the ones to the north, Skynet pretty well owns the street right now.”
Grimaldi grunted. “Damned stupid bus,” he said sourly. “We should have blown the thing up years ago.”
“You’re right, we should have,” Orozco agreed. “A little too late now.”
Grimaldi sighed. “Yeah, I know. I’m not blaming you, you know.”
“I know,” Orozco assured him. Some men dealt with danger by swearing, or praying, or clamming up completely. Others, like Grimaldi, opened their mouths and babbled.
“Wait a second—maybe it isn’t too late,” Grimaldi said suddenly, leaning a little farther out toward the edge of the archway, though not far enough to draw any fire. “We’ve still got some of your pipe bombs left, right? Could we toss one into the bus from the southwest sentry post?”
Orozco shook his head. “The second-floor overhang would block the toss. Ditto for anywhere else we can get to in the building.”
“Damn,” Grimaldi muttered. “So what do we do?”
Orozco looked back into the lobby, where Wadleigh and Killough and the others had nearly completed the replacement barricade.
“We finish getting the barricade set up, make sure our guns are loaded, and wait for the next wave,” he said.
“Yeah.” Grimaldi looked up at the archway. “Who knows? Maybe they’ll actually make it through the archway this time.”
“It could happen,” Orozco said.
“Tee two: second swing eagle,” Barnes’ voice came again in Connor’s ear. “Lobster remains, green eight, Gulliver, maybe hole four. Estimate all other greens cleared.”
Connor shook his head, in relief and amazement both. Judging by the level of gunfire he and the others had heard coming from that direction, Skynet had cleared out the area, all right. It had cleared all its Terminators out of the other buildings and alleys and sent them straight at Barnes and the people in the Moldavia.
And it was almost for certain that the six T-600s that had just emerged from the staging area warehouse were heading out to join in the next wave.
The big question was whether those six were everything Skynet had kept in reserve, or whether there were more of them in there. Unfortunately, there was no way to know other than to walk inside and do a head count.
Meanwhile, som
e of the Terminators that had been wrecked would be pulling themselves back together, and those that were still whole would be running short of ammunition. Sooner or later, the machines would start coming back for reloading and field maintenance.
Connor and his men had to be inside and in control of the warehouse before that happened.
He watched the six Terminators as they climbed the wall of rubble, an idea niggling at the back of his brain. It would be risky, but it might be the way to force Skynet’s hand.
He motioned McFarland close.
“Pass the word,” he whispered in the man’s ear. “As soon as those Terminators are clear, we’re following them.”
McFarland threw him a quick look.
“How far?” he asked.
“All the way,” Connor told him. “Skynet probably thinks it’s got Barnes pinned down, at least on a north-south line. I’m guessing this bunch is going to come in from the west, which means that if we come up behind them we’ll be able to pin them down.”
“Okay,” McFarland said slowly, clearly still working through this sudden change in plans.
“What do we do about the warehouse?”
“We don’t do anything,” Connor said. “If we can help force Skynet to clear it out, David and Tunney should be able to take and hold it without us.”
McFarland still looked doubtful, but nevertheless gave a brisk nod.
“Right,” he said. Moving over to Joey Tantillo and his brother Tony, he began whispering the new orders.
Connor looked upward. Nothing was visible, but from the low rumble vibrating across the city he could tell that at least one HK was still moving around on spotter duty. Possibly more than one.
Resolutely, he looked away from the sky. Every leader faced the temptation of getting bogged down with all the details of an operation, and giving in to that urge was a sure way for the operation to end in disaster. The HKs were Blair’s assignment, just as demolition was David’s and decoy was Barnes’.
And all of them were damn good at what they needed to do. Connor had given the orders, assigned the best people to the tasks at hand, and now he had to sit back and let them do their jobs while he concentrated on doing his.
McFarland eased back up to his side.
“Ready,” he murmured.
Connor nodded. “Nice and easy, and don’t let them spot us,” he said. “Let’s go.”
The HKs didn’t change position as Blair drove in on them, but continued to hover over the battle zone, dark and silent, like a pair of overconfident street toughs inviting her to take her best shot.
But she wasn’t fooled. There was no bravado in Skynet’s programming—only cold, hard calculation. It knew Blair’s GAU-8 was down to its last few rounds, and it was deliberately holding its HKs steady, probably hoping they could shoot her down into the neighborhood that she and the others were trying so hard to save.
She held her vector steady, once again playing chicken with the HKs. Unlike the last time they’d done this, though, Skynet apparently decided there was no point in sacrificing any of its killing machines by attempting to ram. She had barely reached the edge of their range when both HKs opened up with their Gatling guns, filling the air around her with lead.
Blair maintained her vector, wincing with the thud that came each time one of the rounds found its target. The single impacts became pairs and then triads as Blair closed the distance and the HKs fine-tuned their aim.
And as the triads became quads and suddenly blossomed into a hailstorm of impacts, Blair twisted the stick hard to the right, curving out of their line of fire and heading east.
“I’m hit!” she shouted into her mike. “I can’t stay with you.”
“Get clear, Hickabick,” a voice came promptly in her headset. “You can’t do any more back there.”
Blair frowned. It was indeed the correct coded response to her coded fake distress announcement.
But that had been Connor giving the reply, not Barnes. Connor, who was supposed to be maintaining radio silence, lest Skynet figure out there was trouble lurking in its private little paradise. Could he have launched the warehouse attack already?
It seemed way too early for that. But then, the ground operation wasn’t Blair’s concern. Her concern was clearing out the sky over Connor’s head.
She was still in the middle of her evasive turn when one of the two HKs broke formation, revved its turbofans to full power, and turned onto an intercept vector.
Blair smiled grimly. Skynet had taken the bait.
Time to make it regret that decision.
It was one of those times, and there had been many in their life together, when John had done something Kate wasn’t sure whether to be proud of, stunned at, or furious over.
“Hole four probable; forward bad lobster fifty; clear lobster duo,” John’s situation report ran through her earphone, the field jargon nearly as opaque to her as it hopefully was to Skynet.
“Check,” Barnes replied crisply. “Tee two; Gulliver hole three; dogleg tee nine.”
“Check,” John said. “Clear lobster duo.”
“Check.”
The radio went silent again, and Barnes looked at Kate.
“You get all that?” he asked.
“Most of it,” Kate told him, still struggling through the translation amid her swirling emotions.
“I know he’s left his position to come help us, or he wouldn’t have used the radio.”
“Yeah, but it’s not just for us,” Barnes said. “Lobster means five to ten T-600s coming in on a pincer.”
“From the west,” Kate added, visualizing the holes of the imaginary golf course that John had created for their position reports.
“Probably along that north cross street,” Barnes said. “With T-600s north of us, and the damned busload to the south pinning us down—”
“That was the Gulliver reference,” Pavlova put in helpfully.
“Yes, I got that,” Kate told her.
“—the only retreat we had was out the back of the building,” Barnes continued, throwing a brief scowl at Pavlova. “So now Skynet’s trying to close that one off, too.”
“Which then puts it into position to hit us from three sides,” Kate said, her annoyance fading. As long as he’s concerned for the whole squad’s safety, and not just mine.
“Right,” Barnes said. “But what Skynet doesn’t know is that Connor’s squad is coming up behind this new bunch. When they get within range, a couple of us’ll pop open the back door and hit them from the front while Connor hits them from the back.”
“Movement,” Simmons called from the north-facing wall, his eye pressed to one of the holes the Terminators’ last attack had opened up in the brick and stone. “Five T-600s, middle of the street, moving in.”
Barnes barked a laugh.
“Yeah, right. Middle of the street. That must be the ones who’re out of ammo, or just about.
Simmons, wait’ll they get into Orozco’s line of fire before you take them. Might as well cross-fire
’em. Pavlova, Dozer; you’re out the back door with me.”
There was a brief shuffling of weapons and feet, and then the three of them were gone.
“Where do you want me?” Kate asked, crossing to Simmons’ side.
“Thanks, but I can handle these,” Simmons told her. “You just stay with Reynolds.”
“There’s nothing more I can do to help him,” Kate said. “Tell me what I can do to help you.”
Simmons’ lip twitched. “I guess you could go back there and keep an eye on the bus,” he said, gesturing behind him at the south wall.
“You know, I can shoot,” she pointed out.
“I know,” Simmons said, just a little too quickly. “But Barnes is right—this bunch is probably out of ammo, which means they’re coming in mostly to distract us. We don’t want the ones in the bus blindsiding us while we’re potshotting clay pigeons.”
“Fine,” she fumed, and retreated across the room to
the position Simmons had indicated. The assignment made sense—it really did. And if she wasn’t here to handle that job, Dozer or Pavlova, one of the more experienced fighters, would have had to take it.
But logical or not, it still felt like Simmons was babying her. And she hated being babied.
She squeezed her rifle hard. Stop it, she ordered herself. What was with her these days, anyway?
Anger at perfectly legitimate orders, her strange mood swings, this near-obsession she’d suddenly developed for the Moldavia’s children, when people were dying all around her? Maybe she was just grouchy because she seemed to start every morning these days feeling nauseated…
She froze. Oh, no. No. Not now.
“You okay?”
She looked back at Simmons. He was eyeing her oddly. “I’m fine,” Kate assured him as calmly as she could, fighting the sudden impulse to run somewhere safe and hide.
There wasn’t anywhere that was safe. Not here in the middle of a fire zone.
Besides, she had a job to do.
She searched for a moment until she found a spot where she could watch the Terminators in the bus and also keep an eye on the wide archway leading into the Moldavia. If she was going to protect her squad from a sneak attack from the south, she might as well do the same for Orozco and his people, too.
Wiping the sweat from her hands, trying to settle the sudden horrible fluttering in her stomach, she got a firm grip on her rifle and settled in to watch.
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
Blair had dodged and jinked and run and been as panic-stricken as she could possibly manage, taking fire on her beloved A-10’s tail the whole way.
But all the crap had been worth it…because she’d finally succeeded in drawing the pursuing HK
away from Connor and over a completely uninhabited part of the city.
Payback time.
She pulled back on her stick, guiding her fighter up and over into yet another of the Immelmann turns that Skynet probably had memorized by now. But that was fine, because she knew that the quickest and most straightforward way for the pursuing HK to counter the maneuver would be to simply lift straight up, wait for Blair to turn toward it, and then pour point-blank fire down her throat.