The Future War t2-3

by S. M. Stirling

  Tell me, and tell me the truth."

  He lay as still as he could, swallowing hard. She could see his heart beating overtime.

  "What's the difference?" she asked, deadly quiet. He opened his eyes and turned his head slightly. Tears trickled down his cheek. "The difference is, if you don't answer me, or if I think you're lying to me"—she held up the pill—"I'm going to put this away."

  "I'm gonna tell them about that kid of yours," he said, sneering as best he could.

  Mary put the pill and the water down, her heart pounding, and picked up a pillow. She stood beside his bed.

  "I could always do you the favor of putting you out of your misery," she said. "Mention the boy again. Go ahead. Mention him." She could see that he saw the truth in her eyes; he turned away, blinking.

  "Am I gonna make it?" he asked.

  Mary bit her lips. Then decided to tell him the truth. "No.

  You're too badly wounded and we don't have anything like the facilities for treating burns of this magnitude." She watched him take that in.

  "They shoulda let me die," he said.

  "Yes, I guess they should have. But they didn't know that you didn't have a chance and they wanted to give you one. They were friends and they meant you well."

  "Stupid bastards."

  "Yeah, well. Thing is, you could last anywhere from forty-eight hours to two weeks. Two long, long weeks. And I could help you.

  Keep you as comfortable as possible; let you die with a little dignity. Or I could just ignore you and let you die in your own shit." She rolled her eyes thoughtfully. "Unlessss, you threaten the boy again. In which case"—she tossed the pillow away—"this is much too kind." Mary leaned close. "I know some very, very painful ways to die, Sam."

  She shook her head sadly. "You don't have to go through this.

  Just answer me. C'mon. Tell me what I want to know and I'll give you the pill. Trust me, you'll feel a lot better."

  Mary stood back and waited. Soon he was shivering again, in pain and from the effect of losing so much skin. Mary bit her lip.

  Withholding medication went against everything she believed in.

  She could only do it for Kyle, and because she despised this man.

  "There's fewer Luddites," he said at last, sounding out of breath. "Most of my friends are gone."

  Mary rolled her eyes. Like I care, she thought.

  "There's tons more Terminators. Whole squads of 'em. They're everywhere. And the HKs, they're bigger and better than ever.

  Some of 'em can fly; they're deadly accurate, very heavy weapons."

  "And they just 'happened' to get you by mistake," Mary said.

  He opened his eyes and looked at her, breathing heavily.

  "Go on," she said. "What about the resistance?"

  "They're still there. They're not winning, but they're not losing, either. That's why they need us Luddites," he said, his voice sounding plaintive. "We could infiltrate, spy, sabotage.

  They'd never know what hit them."

  Oh, yes they would. "Skynet doesn't control you," she said aloud. "If you'd turn on your own kind, you might turn on Skynet. It could never trust you. And why should it, when it can manufacture the perfect soldiers? To Skynet you're a risk not worth taking."

  He closed his eyes again.

  "And Skynet will make the rest of the world just like this valley. One unending industrial shed. Because it doesn't need deer and elk and trees and free-running streams. It needs mines and factories. It's going to make the world into your worst nightmare. That's what all your work is going to amount to." She watched him swallow and knew she'd hit the mark. "What's it like up there, around this place?"

  He looked at her. Then he began to speak.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  MISSOURI

  Jack Brock came out of one of the cave complex's side tunnels and almost ran into Dennis Reese, charging in the same direction. The tunnels were a world of gray anyway—gray uniforms, gray faces if you'd been underground long enough, equipment painted with the new gray nonreflective paint that baffled mechanical sensors. Like most resistance centers, this one was also as much a gypsy encampment as a military center; people were born and raised here as well as training in it, and were sent out to fight from it. The air always bore a slight tang of wood smoke, seldom-washed bodies, and cooking food.

  Reese stuck out his hand and Brock took it before he quite recognized him. Captain Dennis Reese looked like his own father might have, lean and grim and gray. It was hard to believe that this was the smiling young man Jack had married to Mary Shea just ten years ago.

  Reese's looks shocked the older man to silence as they walked along, their boots rutching on the sand and rock of the cave floor; once they had to stop for a second while a group of screeching children ran by, playing some wild game—People and Terminators, probably.

  He'd heard that Mary and Kyle's disappearance had hit Reese hard, but he'd expected that time might have smoothed off some of the rougher edges. It didn't look like that was the case, though.

  What it looked like was a man eaten by his inner demons, and ready to unleash hell at the slightest provocation.

  "It's good we're finally doing this," Reese said quietly as they followed the aides.

  Brock knew that Reese had been agitating for a strike on the Skynet factory for two years now. It had grown to be the largest in the heartland and was possibly, at this moment, the greatest threat to the resistance in North America. From the moment his people had discovered it, Reese had insisted that it would be.

  I don't imagine he's getting much satisfaction in knowing he was right, Jack thought. Especially knowing what a tough nut this thing's going to be to crack.

  But Skynet was a canny machine. It had launched major attacks in Europe and Africa, then, when those didn't prosper, though Africa had been a near thing, it had launched a campaign in Australia. It had continued the strategy to this day, keeping the resistance off balance and shifting its small strategic reserve of troops and high-quality weapons hopping across the world. Rising in one area while it rebuilt in another. Now, apparently, it was North America's turn.

  "He's here." That was Reese's commander, Colonel Symonds.

  The three men looked at one another. Having John Connor in your mission was as good as saying, "We're going to win this one." It wasn't an ironclad guarantee, but it was as close as you were likely to get to one in this uncertain world. It gave the men a good feeling.

  "How many people has he brought?" Reese asked.

  "Lots," the colonel said. "And a shitload of weaponry the like of which these little outposts haven't seen since before Judgment Day. Plus stuff that didn't exist before Judgment Day—those captured factories are really starting to produce."

  Brock's grin was unstoppable. "It's like Christmas morning and Santa has brought everything on my wish list."

  "And a couple of things I didn't even think of," Symonds agreed.

  He and Brock glanced at Dennis, who wasn't smiling, but still radiated satisfaction like heat. He'd long claimed that the factory was the reason his wife and child had disappeared. Destroying it was going to make him a very happy man.

  They continued on to the area that had been turned over to Connor and his people. Jack found himself with butterflies in his stomach. Amazing, considering he'd hosted John Connor when he was a kid. At the time he'd considered the visit a kind of babysitting job and had shamelessly used John's services to look after his own daughter. Now here he was, sweaty-palmed at the thought of shaking the man's hand. Funny how things turn out, he thought.

  An aide met them at the entrance and led them to a curtained-off area where John was just putting a piece of paper onto a table dragged in for this conference. He looked up and smiled; the scarred face had lost all trace of youth, and settled into a weathered grimness that would probably remain much the same until he reached his sixties.

  "Jack," he said. "Good to see you. How's Susie?"

  "Outshinin' her old
man more every day," Brock said. He extended his hand across the table and John took it in a firm grip.

  "Colonel Symonds," John said, offering his hand. After they'd shaken, Connor turned to look at Dennis Reese. He stared, unmoving, looking him over from head to foot as though he was some alien presence.

  Jack thought he didn't know who the captain was. "This is Captain Dennis Reese," he said. "He heads up the outfit here in the Ozarks."

  "Of course," John said, sitting down. "My apologies, Captain. I went totally blank there for a moment. Please, have a seat, gentlemen."

  Other commanders filed in and the seats were rapidly filled.

  To Jack's surprise, John allowed two of the other men at the table to describe the factory and to show satellite photos of its rapid growth over the last six months. Then General Vedquam outlined the plan of battle while his aide distributed the order of battle to the others.

  Connor listened respectfully and asked a few questions. All very nicely done, Brock thought. John allowed Vedquam, as the leader in this area, to do the talking and to assume battlefield command. But at the end of the day everyone at the table knew who was really in charge. You could tell it by the questions he chose to ask, never mind the deferential manner in which he asked them. The man radiated authority.

  "What about the human presence?" John asked.

  "Some are Luddites," Vedquam said. "Though the Luddite presence has decreased markedly in this area over the last year.

  There are still a small number who seem to visit the facility, apparently to get supplies." He put down his pointer and sat at his place. "There are the usual signs of human habitation—small vegetable gardens, unprocessed human waste, and the occasional body. Going by the size of the food plots, we're assuming no more than a hundred or so prisoners."

  "We'll need to be careful," John said.

  "Yes, sir. We've made certain that the troops will be advised."

  John slapped his hands down on the arms of his ancient office chair gently. "Excellent," he said. "If there's nothing else we can do here, I'm sure everyone has a mountain of work waiting for them."

  Everyone rose, most talking with one of their counterparts, and began to move from the makeshift conference area. Reese and Brock followed behind Colonel Symonds. Jack turned before they went through the curtain and saw John giving Dennis Reese a most peculiar look. Then Connor noticed Brock watching him and smiled. Jack smiled back, gave a thumbs-up, and turned away. But the moment left him with the strangest feeling that something beyond his ken was going on.

  * * *

  Kyle had company with him the next time Mary saw him.

  Whether it was a girl or a boy was impossible to tell, not that it mattered. The two of them were crouched down behind a dormant stamping machine, quiet and still as the machine itself; the dim-ness of the echoing metal halls stretched back into what seemed like infinity, as if the whole world were a place of metal and scurrying machines and fear, scented with the ozone reek of terror.

  Mary crouched down near them. She wondered how far Skynet monitored its prisoners. Did it know what the Luddite had told her?

  "The resistance is still fighting," she said quietly. Kyle's eyes brightened and he leaned forward excitedly. "But Skynet is gearing up for a big push. It's built this place up." She frowned.

  "You remember when we came in here, the whole valley was filled with the factory?"

  Kyle nodded.

  "Well, the place is much bigger now. It goes on for miles instead of acres, Sam says. There are people locked up there that we've never seen."

  "Yes'm," Kyle said. "I knew that. There aren't a lot of people, though. Most of the ones left are hereabouts."

  Mary looked at them. "Sounds like you've been all over the place."

  The two children nodded.

  "So what is it that you kids do, exactly?"

  "We have chores," Kyle said. "Cleaning mostly. But where we do 'em and how long we take's usually up to us."

  His mother shook her head in puzzlement. "Why would it let you do that?"

  "I think it finds us interestin'," Kyle's friend said in a curiously rough little voice. "The Terminators are al'ays lookin' at us, like they's measurin' us. Y'know? When I's little I thought they's gonna eat me when I got big enough."

  When you were little? Mary thought in wonder. The child would barely top her waist. "Are either of your parents here?"

  she asked gently.

  "No'm. My ma was here once. But I ent seen 'er for I don'

  know how long. An' I looked. I looked all ober this place. 'Course I cain't 'member what she looks like. 'Cept she had brown hair."

  "You'd know her if you saw her," Mary assured him/her.

  "Oh," Kyle said. "Mom, this is Jesse. Jesse, my mom."

  "Jesse," Mary said with a smile and a nod, getting a more solemn nod in return. Not an awfully helpful name, she thought.

  It could still be a boy or girl. I can't just ask, she would be insulted. And I couldn't blame him/her.

  "Anyway," she said aloud, "Sam says that Skynet is getting ready for a big push and that it's really active around the factory.

  Lots of HKs and Terminators all over the place. He was burned, he says, because he wasn't quick enough giving his designation.

  So they're looking to kill right now, not to take prisoners." She bit her lip, looking at both of them, so young, so fragile. "I don't think this is a good time to try and get away."

  "Mom…"

  "Something is going to happen!" she insisted. "Soon."

  "Something is happening right now!" Kyle said. "Mom, I'm goin' crazy in here! And you don't know what the new place is like. I do!"

  "All right, tell me," she said calmly.

  "This place is old; it's made so people can help the machines.

  But the new place is made so the machines run each other. Jesse and me can barely squeeze through most places. And there's no people. Not a one." He was breathing hard in his distress. "And there's fewer people here all the time. You don't know that because you grown-ups aren't allowed to go places like we are.

  There's no new people, Mom. Not ever."

  "We have to go now, ma'am," Jesse said gravely.

  Out of the mouths of babes, Mary thought. "Okay. Just let me see if I can at least get us some water to take with us, and maybe some food." And maybe Tia and Sally.

  Then she looked at her son and decided to be selfish. The fewer who knew about this, the less chance of betrayal or accident. She didn't like it, but when it came to Kyle, she had to be ruthlessly practical. It was the only sure way to keep him alive.

  * * *

  "Well, this is a real battle," Dennis Reese said, a little surprised.

  John Connor smiled a little, squatting, grim and silent, with the rest of the command group around a thin-film display beneath dead hickories—killed by the acid efflux from the Skynet Complex three miles away.

  A line of actinic light lanced into the sky from a crew-served weapon nearby, and high overhead in the frosty blue sky something blew up in an improbable strobing ball of purple fire.

  "Damn," Reese muttered.

  "Mostly it doesn't try to use high-fliers anymore," Connor said, not looking up from the screen. "Not when we've got heavy plasma rifles available." He smiled again, a remarkably cold expression. "You know, it would be a lot better off if it had stuck to pre-Judgment Day designs. Plasma weapons and perfect dielectric capacitors are wonderful equalizers—lots of punch, not much weight."

  "It has them, too," Reese pointed out.

  "Yeah, but it doesn't need them," Connor said. "Anything can kill a human. It takes something pretty energetic to kill most of Skynet's ground-combat modules."

  Columns of troops were moving up in the narrow wooded valleys that stretched all around them, local guerrillas and the assault troops John Connor had infiltrated over the past few months. They were sheltered by the crest lines. Sheltered until—

  The warning came through the communications n
et a minute or two before they could hear the roar of the ducted fans. The command squad jumped into their slit trenches, barely slowing in their job of coordinating the resistance units; everyone in the marching columns hit the dirt, too. Around the perimeter were pre—Judgment Day vehicles, mostly four-by-fours of various makes; each of them had a light antiaircraft missile launcher mounted on it.

  The RRRRAAK-shwoosh! of the missiles sounded almost the instant the Skynet fighting platforms cleared the crest lines.

  Lines of light stabbed out from the fighting machines as they launched missiles and plasma bolts of their own, but one by one the twisting lines of the heat-seeking missiles found them.

  "Of course, some of the old technology still works," Reese said.

  His eyes met John Connor's. They nodded once, in perfect agreement, as the ruins of the HKs burned on the poisoned hillsides.

  SKYNET

  Things were at a desperate juncture. Skynet needed to drive the human fighters from the factory or it would inevitably lose the facility. If worse came to worst and it seemed that nothing would save the factory, Skynet had developed a recent innovation—a self-destruct sequence that would eliminate the plant and everything in it as well as obliterating several miles of surrounding countryside. ICBMs might be beyond its capacity to produce, but nuclear bombs were simply a matter of putting together the right materials.

  It had set a part of its consciousness into a planning subroutine that would give it maximum advantage in the productivity of its factories before the humans discovered and moved against them. If it could determine the point at which they would make their move against the factories, it might be able to influence how many of them would become involved—luring in the greatest number for the kill. Thus if Skynet lost, then so did its enemies.

  Of course, the resistance fighters would quickly learn the consequences of an attack on a major facility such as this one.

  But by then it would be too late for a great many of them.

  In this case, the humans had taken far longer to act than had been projected. Skynet had assumed that it was the presence of hostages within the facility that had held the humans at bay. For this reason it had continued to harbor the one hundred and three individuals long after they were no longer needed for productive purposes.