T2 - 03 - The New John Connor Chronicles - Times of Trouble

by Russell Blackford

  Twelve hours before, he'd had a report from Gabriela Tejada, who'd been left in overall command of Resistance operations in North and South America, in General Connor's absence. The message was that her old property in Argentina was about to fall to the Rising Army of Liberation. If they heard no more, she'd said, they could assume the old estancia had been lost. There had been no more messages overnight. There was a buzz wherever Danny went within the complex. People wanted to know what could be done to fight back. Seen from here, there was one thing that they could have done by now, something almost unthinkable, but the time had come. It was overdue.

  "I hope everything's okay, Mr. Dyson," Messner said.

  Danny realized he'd been quiet for more than a moment. "Hey, just daydreaming."

  "I don't think so," Fiedler said. "You're a man with plenty on your mind."

  "Just what you'd expect," Danny said. "The machines. The warlords. Just what we're going to do about them." He smiled ruefully. The kind of stuff that keeps me from getting to sleep at night. You know how it is."

  "It'll be okay now the General's back," Messner said.

  “Yup. I hope that's right." General Connor must still be somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, but he would be arriving in New York today, flying back from Spain. Having him back in North America, closer to the other leaders here, could make all the difference to them.

  "Damn sure it's right," Fiedler said.

  They didn't address Danny by rank or show any undue deference. That was not needed. The Resistance militia was an army, but not like any other in history. It had been held together by personal loyalties, a common sense of survival, and a commitment to protect the human species itself. It had never depended on strict military discipline or empty rituals. It couldn't have operated that way, with so many different interests merged into its being. By and large, people addressed each other informally, though they knew how the chain of command worked. Except for the mutinous warlords, there'd always been strong loyalty up and down through the ranks.

  "Yeah, you're right," Danny said. "I hope we can sort it out...today if possible. John Connor will be in New York before noon. We're not even going to let him sleep on it. I expect to have some decisions very quickly. Right now, that's all I can say. I won't give you any bull. That's where ft stands."

  "I know, sir," Messner said. "We're with you—you and the General. We know what it takes."

  Both guards seemed sincere, but Danny didn't want to give away the decision before it was even made. In rough terms, at least, everyone knew the options. "Thanks," he said. "I just wish I was sure, myself." He gave a wry smile to soften the force of his words. "You'll know the decision very soon. All right? Everyone will. Look, I'd better get to work."

  There was still so much at stake. The Resistance itself was breaking up. Meanwhile, Skynet may have lost—but tell that to its machines. The attacks went on and on. Just three days before, nearly thirty people had died in an expeditionary force over in Virginia, attacked by aerial H-Ks. It couldn't go on like this.

  It was time to make things happen.

  TWO

  ATLANTIC OCEAN

  EAST OF NEW YORK CITY

  SEPTEMBER 5, 2029

  The ocean's deep blue waters undulated like the skin of some monstrous panting reptile, a creature whose flattened body stretched beyond the horizon, The Hercules transport bearing General John Connor to the North American shore had traveled for hours through the pitch-dark night of this world, racing the sun. It was now mid-morning, and the closest thing daylight. A leaden sky arched over the land and sea. It was like the gloom of a stormy day, back in a normal reality, one that had not been polluted by nuclear warfare.

  There were fourteen human beings on board the plane, most of them seated on hard benches along the walls of the cargo bay, up front near the flight cabin. The two youngest passengers sat alone in the aft. Up in the plane's nose, Anton Panov piloted them, without the need for a copilot.

  General Connor stretched his back, pushing against the wall with both palms, as he watched the ocean beneath. Soon they would reach New York City, and start putting some plans into effect. He returned to his seat beside the woman who really was his mother, Sarah, even though she was several years younger than him...and even though Sarah had died in this world, fighting the machines. This Sarah Connor came from another world, another timeline, but she had a real claim to be his mother, just as young John Connor, the teenager who'd come here with her, had a real claim to be him. They were not just cross-time counterparts of each other. It was more like they'd actually split off, like an amoeba reproducing, at a particular point in the past. That was hard to get used to.

  He didn't like to get too close to Sarah, didn't want to relate to her too deeply, not sure where his emotions would take him, especially if she were killed in the ongoing troubles. Though he valued her intelligence, and knew what she'd been through in her own world—as well as this one—he found himself physically shrinking from her.

  "We'll be there soon," he said. "I wish it could have been earlier. Things are getting out of control."

  "You can't be everywhere, John," she said. "We've done good work in Europe. If you'd been here, things might be going to Hell over there."

  "Maybe," he said grudgingly. "But the Americas are where they're going to Hell, and something's got to be done about it."

  They'd been stuck for the past six weeks on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, doing their best to rally the troops in the European war theater, but losing control in North and South America. The Resistance leadership was loyal at the top, and North America was solidly behind him. But the forces they'd left behind in South America, when they'd taken the war to Skynet, were now divided, fighting among themselves.

  It had taken weeks for the human Resistance to locate an aircraft capable of being repaired, modified, and used for a transatlantic flight. In their decades-long war against the machines, the Resistance had made little use of large air vehicles, and few had even survived Judgment Day. Back in August 1997, the major airports of Europe, Asia, and North America had been destroyed, along with many others all over the world. Finding the Hercules, rotting in a hangar outside the ruins of Toronto, Canada, had not been a simple task. They'd had to go from rumor to rumor to track it down. Then there'd been hours of labor to get it into working order, and fitting it out with sufficient weaponry to defend itself against attack from marauding war machines.

  Covering the miles across the Atlantic was not a problem in itself-—a near-empty Hercules could complete that haul, once it had sufficient fuel. But finding that fuel—first in North America, then in what remained of Europe—had taken a huge logistical effort. Then there'd been the most dangerous task of all: piloting the aircraft across the open sea, in ferocious weather. Two Canadian pilots had made it the first time. On this return trip, Anton was the ideal man. He could work for days, going without sleep, unless he needed to recover from the after effects of injury. He'd skirted the worst weather over the Atlantic, "reading" the contours of the storms with no assistance from maps or any weather bureau, seeing into the night with senses enhanced beyond anything human.

  "What happens now?" Sarah said in a flat voice. She'd experienced so much. General Connor recognized the way she kept her emotions hidden, not committing herself until she really wanted to—though then she could be passionate and forceful.

  "We have to decide whether to use the Devil's weapons."

  "But you've already decided, haven't you, John?"

  "In my own mind, yes."

  She glanced away, silent. Like everyone else on this flight, she was heavily armed. The seven Resistance fighters who shared the benches with them were a mix of Canadians and Spaniards. The Canadians were returning; the Spaniards provided extra backup if they had to defend themselves against their deadly cargo. General Connor himself had a phased-plasma laser rifle at his feet, under the bench, a weapon salvaged from enemy war machines. Sarah's weapons included a 12-gauge shotgun, res
ting on her lap, one of the few light firearms with enough stopping power to slow down a Terminator.

  "What are you thinking?" he said. "You're not going to oppose me, when it comes to the crunch?"

  "That's not my call. Besides, no one would listen to me."

  "Don't be so sure of that."

  "Well, whatever. Sometimes I feel like washing my hands of everything. It just never stops...even now, with Skynet destroyed."

  "I know, Sarah. We have to keep going."

  She gave him a fierce look, not exactly angry—or not with him specifically. "Of course we do, John. But if it's come to this, then God help us all."

  COLORADO

  Danny walked slowly across the deserted concrete expanse of Level H. The only human beings, or other animals, were the pairs of guards, with their dogs, standing at each elevator and set of stairs. They were a hundred feet beneath the five original levels of the Advanced Defense Systems Complex. When the U.S. military had constructed it, back in the 1990s, it had been a place for human beings to work, even though it was built inside a mountain, even though it was the home for Skynet's hardware.

  Cyberdyne had carried on its most secret research here, under the technical direction of Miles Dyson, Danny's father. Now the human Resistance had re-conquered it, and Danny found himself in charge of its technological secrets. At least until Jade and Anton returned, he was the expert on the spot when it came to artificial intelligence and time travel.

  Skynet had been the most advanced computer system ever built, designed solely for the purpose of strategic surveillance, analyzing complex data that might show an attack by Russian ICBMs. But its potential must have gone far beyond that. To Danny, more than thirty years later, that was obvious enough. At the time, it must have shocked its creators. No one knew exactly what had happened on the night of August 28-29, 1997. Perhaps the information was held somewhere in digital form within this complex, but much had been destroyed in the final battle six weeks before. No Terminator CPU or other device that Danny had examined told them much more than they had already known, that Skynet had somehow displayed self-awareness. When its makers had tried to shut it down, it had retaliated, pronouncing a death sentence on all of humanity.

  Since Judgment Day, the war computer had assumed control here, changing the complex so that it was no longer, in any sense, a place for humans. Its mechanical slaves had dug down into the core of the mountain, creating additional levels. The machines had gutted the original complex, removing all decoration and internal structure, making it as ugly and alienating as was possible to imagine—though presumably that had not been Skynet's motive. It had simply created an environment for intelligent devices that had no need for comfort, privacy, or any values pertaining to beauty. That was what the Resistance had found. Nothing they'd been able to do since had made it much more "humanized."

  Danny walked to his work desk—actually a folding table of gray metal, in one corner of the vast area, right next to the time vault. Half a dozen metal chairs were scattered nearby, while the table's surface was cluttered with two very old desktop computers with different-sized screens, plus several keyboards, and a tangle of other salvaged or jury-rigged equipment. There was a Vietnam-era radio, connected by a long trail of wires to an external antenna. One of the computers had been wired into the machinery that controlled the time vault.

  The time vault was a massive cubical structure, built by Skynet. Inside it was a space where a powerful displacement field could be generated and contained, enabling movement in space, or time, or both. In theory, the time vault could also be used to travel between the different timestreams that diverged from each other at critical moments in history, though there was no indication that Skynet had worked out how to do that before it was destroyed. Still, that was how help had come to the human Resistance from another world, from a timestream where Judgment Day had not happened in 1997.

  Using a similar device, John and Sarah Connor—the John and Sarah of that other world—had traveled here. With them had come two others, enhanced humans from that world's future. No, even that was not quite right. The presence in that world of Jade, Anton, and a Terminator from their time and world had again changed the course of history. The future world that Jade and Anton had originally come from, with its own Judgment Day in 2021, was not necessarily the future that awaited Sarah and young John when they returned to their own world and time. They would have to continue their own private struggle, and try to avert Judgment Day.

  To Danny, it had become clear that there were now three timelines, for the course of history had been changed twice already. Every journey into the past had the potential to change events and create a new future from that point. The struggle against the machines had to be fought in every timeline that was created, and they had to stop creating new ones. Each time events were altered, a new world came Into being—one in which Skynet might be triumphant. For the past six weeks, he had experimented with the time vault, testing its capacities, using it as a tool to probe at the shape of space-time, attempting to find out more about time and history. There was much he still wanted to learn. With the Specialists returning today from Europe, he hoped to make more progress. Jade and Anton had brought with them a level of technological knowledge and sheer fighting ability that had been critical in the final victory over Skynet. They had traced the war computer to Spain and been among the group who'd followed it there, using the time vault essentially as a teleportation device: sending them across space, without traveling in time.

  Danny booted up both computers. Quickly, he entered a series of codes to test his control over the time vault. Everything appeared fine. He could open and close the heavy steel door that sealed the vault, adjust the power supply, and control the configuration of the space-time displacement field. He worked through a program that he had written to fine-tune the field. One way or another, they would need to use the vault again—as early as today. It was one of the few advantages that they had in their latest battles, against the rebel warlords in South America.

  He shut down the program, then tested his connection with the ectogenetic pods—the incubator machines in which Skynet's T-799 and T-800 Terminators took their final form. Everything was as it should be, including the latest programming that he had written for a small group of Terminators. Satisfied, he shut down that connection, but left both the computers running.

  It was cold here, though they were deep inside a granite mountain, which provided insulation from the bitter cold outside. Heat generated by machines and human bodies was retained, keeping the temperature bearable as long as they wore sufficient layers of clothing. All the same, Danny wore a knee-length gray coat over a short jacket and his military uniform. Under that was an old, stained T-shirt. His feet were encased in sturdy boots that came up almost to the hem of his coat. In this ravaged world, few people could dress as well as the leaders of the Resistance, but Danny still felt the chill that crept in from the snow-covered surface of the mountain.

  He longed for the sunshine that he remembered from his childhood, or at least for some real warmth in the air. When the current troubles were over, they would destroy this facility once and for all, so no one could ever misuse its secrets, then move south, closer to the equator, where the sun still generated a certain amount of heat all year round. He looked forward to that day.

  He'd set up a smaller table ten feet away, with an urn patched into the power supply. Beside the urn, he kept a ceramic jar full of ground coffee, the best that could be grown in this world. It came from one of the poor farms that the Resistance operated in

  Brazil. By now, that farm had probably fallen to the warlords.

  Human beings often had to forage in the wreckage of the cities, looking for rats or even insects to feed upon, but General Connor had kept some farms going in South America, protecting them well from attacks by Skynet's machines. They'd provided his forces, and the other humans under their protection, with at least a small amount of decent food. Selfish as
it might have appeared, they'd made sure that the fighters in the front lines were fed, even in the worst times. The Resistance fighters would have been no use in battles against Skynet's killing machines if they'd literally been dropping with starvation.

  But now things had changed so much. So many people had died, here on this mountain, and in the valleys nearby. Skynet had massacred them, but it had been mutual destruction: thousands of its war machines had been destroyed, and the remnant of the Resistance militia had forced its way into here. Skynet had been destroyed, but the fate of humanity Mill hung in the balance—partly from the remaining machines, still obeying Skynet's last commands, but partly, too, from human ambition and greed.

  Now the Resistance faced a series of problems:

  Item 1: Despite Skynet's destruction, war machines still ravaged the countryside, following whatever orders it had left behind. People were being killed every day. There were still Terminators out there, primed to infiltrate whatever new society emerged, Larger machines, such as air and land H-Ks, still controlled territory. Until all of those were mopped up, the planet was not safe for human life. That gave the Resistance an ongoing job, as they started to create a new world, a world post-Skynet.

  Item 2: Despite that, some commanders who'd been left behind in South America, at the time of the final battle here in Colorado, had seen their chance to break free of the Resistance. Those commanders had been left with the aim of holding territory. They had soldiers and military equipment, entrusted to them to fight off Skynet's war machines. Now they used them for private armies, fighting among themselves and against bases in South America that were still loyal to General Connor. Worse, the Resistance had few loyal forces that it could deploy to put down local rebellions and attempts at conquest. Far too many people had died right here in Colorado.