Chu looked down at him with a sinking heart and a poker face. He honestly hadn't expected it to be easy, but he'd hardly expected them to be so blatant. "You are welcome to board, gentlemen, with the understanding that upon boarding you are in U.S. territory."
The men on the dock looked at one another and conferred quietly. Then the spokesman stepped forward once more.
"Perhaps we should leave you to contemplate your options, Captain," he said. He gestured toward the mouth of the harbor.
Chu's eyes widened as he watched a huge oil tanker slide into place behind the Roosevelt. He turned to stare at the grinning men on the dock.
"Just send us a message when you're prepared to be reasonable." The man waved affably and the whole group turned and walked away.
The captain crossed his arms over his chest and watched them go in disbelief. When he'd pulled into this berth his biggest worry had been how he was going to pay for supplies. Now he was faced with capitulation to as-yet-unknown terms or doing something pretty vile. Though with a hundred SEALs aboard, he should be able to limit any necessary damage.
But damn! I don't want to go down in history as a pirate.
Nor did he want to be remembered for simply surrendering his ship. His father had arrived in the United States from South Vietnam via a rickety boat and a stiff brush with Thai pirates.
He didn't intend to start the family saga over again in Latin America.
Reasonable, my royal Asian-American ass! he thought, and turning went below. "Get me Commander Smith," he half snarled.
* * *
Sarah watched the show through binoculars; Comodoro fortunately had a nice selection of high places from which to view all the kingdoms of the earth—or at least of Patagonia. She didn't need to be a lip-reader to work out what had happened. As soon as she'd seen that tanker on the move, she'd guessed how this conference was going to end. The sub was neatly trapped and there wasn't a lot the captain could do about it. Nothing civilized anyway. Clearly they needed help.
Sarah turned and walked away. She had a number of arrangements to make, and information to acquire.
And I'm not all that civilized, either, she thought.
* * *
After a cheerless supper of steamed rice and water, Chu had retired to his cabin to "consider his options." Which prospect made him glad of his bland meal. He had decided not to allow shore leave as he'd originally planned in hopes of allowing the men to find their own more substantial dinners. It was a sure bet that any American leaving the Roosevelt would be immediately arrested.
Of course, then at least they'd get a square meal.
There was a tap on the door.
"Enter," Chu called out.
"Sir," his XO said, "there's a message for you, but you'll have to take it at the decoder terminal."
The captain raised his brows. It was a rare message that couldn't be patched through to his quarters. "A message from command?"
"No, sir. It's being transmitted via the hydrophones—modulated sonic from outside the hull. Expertly blurred—the sonar watch can't give a location."
"Who is it from?" he asked, with a spurt of well-concealed alarm. If the locals have frogmen outside the hull with limpet mines, we are fucked.
The younger man looked at Chu and swallowed, more emotion than he usually showed in a week; he was very black, and stress thickened the Mississippi gumbo of his accent. "She says she's Sarah Connor, sir. The message could be coming from anywhere."
Chu rose and followed his second-in-command down the narrow corridor. Avoiding the jagged bits that stuck out ready to tear your uniform or bang your elbow, and color-coded conduits, was second nature, but he did appreciate shoreside fresh air. The big boomers didn't develop a ripe stink like the old-time pigboats, but things did get sort of stale after a few weeks submerged.
And sailors get sort of thin without food, he thought grimly.
Let's hope this Sarah Connor can help.
* * *
Sarah floated beside the sub waiting to hear from the captain; it would have been dark fifteen feet down in daylight, and this was well after sunset. The water was cold, but her wet suit made it tolerable; she didn't think she'd need to worry about anyone on board finding her here. They were being carefully watched from the harbor and from the oil tanker, and at the first sign that the sub might be deploying sailors, there'd be trouble.
Her expensive face gear would allow her to speak to them as though she were on dry land. Eventually they'd figure out that she was right beside the sub, but probably not until she'd swum away.
"This is Captain Thaddeus Chu of the USS Roosevelt. Please identify yourself."
Her lips quirked, not a request. "This is Sarah Connor," she said. "You may have heard my broadcast."
"Yes, ma'am." Damn, it did sound like her. "What is it you want?"
"To help. Down-coast at Puerto Deseado, there's a cache of supplies waiting. You'll have to pick them up yourselves. I'll be there waiting for you."
"Thank you, ma'am," Chu said. "But we have a small problem here." Which you may have noticed since it's as big as a city block and sitting on my back.
"It's being taken care of, Captain. Be prepared to move momentarily. Connor out."
"Ma'am?" Chu said. He looked at the radioman.
"She's gone, sir."
Chu looked up and met Bob Vaughan's eyes for a long moment. Then he shrugged. "If worse comes to worst we've had a drill. If we're lucky and the lady is as good as her word, we're back in business. Status?"
"Ready to go, sir, as per your orders."
That was one good thing about a nuke boat; as long as you kept the reactor hot, you were ready to roll whenever you wanted, and you didn't have to worry about wasting fuel much.
* * *
Sarah swam off, guided by an occasional glimpse at the GPS
compass on her wrist, confident in the knowledge that she'd hired the best pirates that pure gold could buy. She'd left them scaling the side of the huge tanker. They were well armed and quite capable of capturing the small band of soldiers aboard and two of them could pilot the tanker if no crew had been left aboard.
She popped up on the far side of the harbor, well away from the lights the army had set up. Her battered Jeep—driving something too desirable, like a Humvee, was asking for trouble—and clothes were all as she'd left them; something very loud and unfortunate would have happened if anyone had tried to lift them.
The pebble beach was rough under her hands and knees as she leopard-crawled up from the waves, and the air was cold on her naked flesh as she peeled out of the synthetic fabric and quickly donned her clothes, shivering and stamping. The high-tech binoculars came next. There was nothing she could do to make the operation go better at this point.
God, she thought suddenly. All these years … I wonder how Sarah Connor the student and waitress would have felt? Men may be dying out there— because of me— and I'm completely calm about it now.
Then she shrugged. That was how it had to be if Skynet was to be beaten. What had that German philosopher Dieter told her about said? He who fights dragons becomes a dragon?
No muzzle flashes through the binoculars, though. She switched to thermal imaging…
They've got her engines hot.
She could see the heat plumes from the stack at the rear, and more faintly as a blob of different color on the side of the hull at the stern. The tanker wasn't a super-giant, which would have used steam turbines and taken a long time to move. It was a medium-size job used to shuttle refined products along the coast, about fifty thousand tons, powered by big diesels. Those you could fire up right away; if it was even remotely modern, the whole process could be controlled from the bridge at a pinch.
Yep, there she goes.
So slowly that at first it didn't seem she was moving at all. The tanker had backed halfway to its own berth before the soldiers onshore realized what was happening, and the sub had begun its turn away from the dock. It maneuvered cautio
usly— Ohio-class boats were a good five hundred and sixty feet long—but swiftly, backing and then heading for the entrance to the harbor with a rush that sent a smooth black wave breaking into foam.
Sarah grinned as she gathered her diving gear and tossed it in the back of her Jeep and vaulted into the driver's seat. She had a sub to meet.
* * *
The only good thing you could say about Puerto Deseado was that it was more picturesque than Comodoro's tangle of refinery tanks.
Which isn't saying much, Sarah Connor thought. Well, all right, the turn-of-the-century architecture was interesting.
More important for her purposes, the local government hadn't broken down; there weren't any—well, many—bandits in the area around it, and food was reasonably cheap. Particularly if you liked mutton, because the estancias all about had lost their markets.
Sarah was thoroughly sick of it, enough so that the sight of the piled carcasses was faintly nauseating, though she'd long ago overcome any city-girl squeamishness about butchering livestock or game.
Still and all, the sailors will be glad to get it, she thought.
The carcasses were as the trucks had left them; not entirely sanitary, but needs must, and the weather was cold enough that they wouldn't go bad in a day or two. She'd gotten sacks of flour as well, and canned vegetables from the Chubut Valley.
She sat atop the pile of boxes and watched the sub rise gleaming from the waves through her binoculars. Teams of men emerged and began to inflate rafts and put them overside; then some dropped into the sea beside them. They and the men still aboard the sub maneuvered engines onto the craft, climbed aboard the zodiacs, and headed for the shore. She could see the night-vision apparatus on their faces and wondered if they'd spotted her yet.
The men were well trained and efficient; deploying the inflatables with the engines had taken only a little more than five minutes and some of that had been because the rafts needed time to inflate.
Oh, this is a happy day for the resistance, she thought. A hundred trained SEALs, the rest of the crew, the sub herself…
They were armed, and going by the position of their heads, they most definitely had seen her. Sarah smiled grimly.
Technology was a wonderful thing—when it was on your side.
She slid down from the top of the pile and stood waiting for the zodiacs to beach themselves. /
One of the men trotted up to her—young, hard, fit, in cammo fatigues and body armor, face hard to see behind the goggles.
"Are you Sarah Connor?" he asked.
She nodded, then said, "Yes. I'd like to speak to your captain if he wouldn't mind."
"Sarah Connor would like to speak to the captain," he said.
She blinked, then realized he was wearing a throat mike, almost invisible in the dark.
"The captain would like me to bring you now, ma'am," the sailor said.
"Let's fill the raft with supplies," she said. "No need to waste fuel."
The sailor relayed that, then nodded and grabbed a sack of rice. Sarah followed suit, and in short order they had the zodiac filled to capacity and were on their way, cold salt spray flicking into their faces.
Looking up at the conning tower, she saw two shadowy figures outlined against the night sky, above the diving planes.
"Permission to come aboard," she called softly.
"Permission granted, Ms. Connor," Chu said. "Welcome aboard."
* * *
It wasn't until he'd sat at his desk that he realized exactly how small she was. Somehow he'd been expecting an amazon, six feet tall or more and pumped with muscle. Although for a middle-aged lady she was, in fact, quite muscular and moved with the ease of one who kept very fit. He gestured her to a chair and she gave him a polite smile and sat.
"Thank you for your help, Ms. Connor," he said.
"It was my very great pleasure," she answered. "Throwing a spoke in Senor Reimer's training wheels has made my day."
"Reimer?"
"The shark in the sharkskin suit," Sarah told him. "The one who, no doubt, arranged to fence you in. He annoys me." She sat straighter, leaning slightly forward. "But let's get down to business."
"I might have known," Chu said ruefully. He folded his hands on his desktop. "This is a U.S. Navy vessel, Ms. Connor. Neither my crew nor I have any business doing anything with it without orders."
Sarah looked away and nodded slowly, then looked at him from the corners of her eyes. "Are you going to try and tell me that whenever you've come in hailing distance of any other United States Navy vessels, it's been a peaceful, brotherly encounter?"
He blinked before he could stop himself and smiled at her knowing smile. Although how she could have known that when he refused the order to report to San Diego, his ship had immediately begun drawing fire from other navy ships was beyond him. One, a brand-new Los Angeles— class boat, had fired a nuclear-tipped homing torpedo toward them, nearly destroying the Roosevelt.
But he knew—he knew—that the crew had not done it. Calls from the captains' private cell phones had warned him that they had lost control of their ships. Once refitted, they'd been stripped to skeleton crews and it turned out that none of the men and women aboard had the technical knowledge that would have allowed them to take over the computer-controlled vessels.
They'd also found out too late that the computers were very well defended with an impressive battery of automatic weapons.
Chu stared at Sarah Connor. How could she possibly know?
She stared back at him, her expression sad and a little tired. She shook her head and brushed her hair back.
"It doesn't really matter how I know," she said, startling him again. "What matters is that my information is solid."
The captain's aide came in with a tray bearing two bowls of chicken soup and hot biscuits. /
"I'm cool," Sarah said when he tried to lay the bowl at her side of the desk. "Why don't you enjoy that."
The aide glanced at Chu, who nodded, and smiling, he picked up the tray and began to leave.
"Talan," Chu said. He pushed the little basket of rolls toward him. "Take a couple of these."
"Thank you, sir." The aide took two and left.
Chu looked at Sarah, who smiled. "Enjoy," she said.
"Thank you again for this, ma'am." The captain dug in; he could practically feel the hot soup giving him strength. "We were pretty much down to our belts."
She grinned briefly, then grew very serious. "Not to spoil your meal, Captain, but I do have some very bad, if not fully unexpected news for you."
"And that would be?" Chu asked.
"There is no federal government anymore."
The captain continued to spoon up soup as he thought about what she'd said. Then he dabbed at his lips with a napkin. "With respect, ma'am, there's no way you could know one way or another."
With a sigh, she laid it down for him. "Skynet. You must have heard of it." At his nod, she went on. "It controlled everything, ships, planes, missiles, and"—she tipped her head forward—"all bases and bunkers. As soon as the missiles started going up, the heads of the government and many of the 'best minds' in the country were hustled to air-conditioned safety in the deepest hardened bunkers on the planet. And since that sorry day, not one of those people has been seen alive. And they never will be.
"The damn computer has run mad, Captain. We didn't send those missiles aloft and your fellow captains haven't been hunting you down of their own free will, and you know it." She spread her hands. "At the very least you must suspect it."
He didn't answer as he split a biscuit, then bit into one flaky half. Sarah Connor was a very disconcerting woman. Half the time she seemed to be reading his mind; the rest of the time she was telling him things that rang horribly true. "Why don't we just cut to the chase here?" he said. "What, exactly, do you want, ma'am?"
"I want you to serve the people of the United States, who desperately need your help." She smiled to see him blink. "Things are worse than you think
," she said. "The bombs were just phase one. Since then, people have been rounded up, ostensibly at the behest of the government, and put in relocation and reconstruction camps."
Chu frowned. "Doesn't sound quite right," he said. "But it doesn't seem altogether unreasonable, either."
"Which is why so many have gone along with it," Sarah said agreeably. "In many of these camps, the inmates have been deliberately infected with diseases such as cholera, or they're being forced to work under dangerous conditions with inadequate food and shelter. Men and women in that uniform are doing these things."
He tilted his head toward her. "Men and women in this uniform as distinguished from… ?"
"As distinguished from those who are actually in the military." Sarah leaned forward. "No doubt you've heard of Luddites?" He looked troubled, but nodded. "Apparently some of them have been preparing for these times with an eye toward reducing the human population of this planet. They're dedicated, well organized, and well supplied. God knows how many deaths they're responsible for so far, or how many they'll be responsible for before they're killed themselves."
"By us?" Chu asked. "Because, you know, I'm not going to send my people out to fight without proof of what you're saying."
Sarah looked at him for a long time before she spoke. "Once again it's Skynet I'm talking about. It's an amazing computer,"
she said. "There's never been anything like it before, and I hope to my soul there never will be again. The damn thing has become sentient, and it's decided that we are a danger to it and therefore must be eliminated."
"Proof, Ms. Connor," Chu said.
"Surely you heard about all those cars and trucks running amok?" she asked.
"Of course. But…"
Sarah sighed deeply. "Skynet was originally created by Cyber-dyne Corporation. Cyberdyne created the first completely auto-mated factory. Then, somehow, the plans for those factories became public knowledge and they proliferated all over the planet like some kind of fungus. And in each and every factory Skynet had a root. It hid programming in every car, truck, and tractor produced over the last two years. As the time approached for the government to give it control of all military operations, it began to experiment, sending orders to its various components, taking control from their drivers and causing thousands of accidents. I researched this; I can give you a disk on it." She watched him absorb what she'd said.
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