Rise of the Machines t3-1

by David Hagberg

  The police officers and SWAT team crew dove for cover.

  Silberman's face turned ghostly white. He stammered something incomprehensible.

  Kate got to her feet, the blanket falling off, and she backed away from the ambulance. "They can't stop him," she babbled. "We have to get out of here—"

  She turned, but Silberman was already gone, running as fast as his legs could carry him from the battle zone.

  "Oh, God," Kate cried, and she started after him.

  Terminator reached the hearse during a momentary lull in the return fire. He tore open the rear door, shoved the coffin inside, and slammed the door shut.

  The police units opened fire again as he moved around to the driver's side, got in behind the wheel, yanked the ignition set out of the steering column, and hot-wired the engine.

  Bullets had retorn the flesh from Terminator's neck and head, exposing bits of his metallic cranial case, but

  doing nothing other than superficial damage to his main systems.

  The hearse was beginning to take fire, some of the windows blowing out, bullets slapping against the sheet metal like hammer taps in a tinsmith's shop.

  The lid of the coffin opened, and Connor, who'd been jammed inside with the weapons, rolled out, keeping below the level of the windows.

  "Get us out of here!" he shouted.

  The engine caught. "We must reacquire Katherine Brewster," Terminator said. He swiveled his head and did a quick scan of the cemetery with his sensors.

  "Why?" Connor demanded. "What makes her so goddamn important?"

  "Through her you make contact with the remnants of the U.S. military and learn to fight Skynet, forming the core of the resistance," Terminator said.

  They were taking a lot of heavy fire, but Terminator acquired two moving targets. One of them was a 96.55534 percent probable match to Katherine Brewster. He slammed the hearse into low and peeled out.

  "Later, your children become important when—" Terminator continued as if nothing else were happening.

  "Whoa," Connor stopped him. "What?"

  "She is your wife," Terminator said, matter-of-factly.

  think the cops stood a chance against that—thing. Not after what she'd seen it do.

  A dark blue Chevy sedan came roaring up the road and through the broken gate into the cemetery. Someone was slumped in the front seat.

  Kate pulled up short as the car screeched to a halt fifty feet away. The back door popped open and Scott jumped out.

  Instant relief poured over her like ice water on a blistering hot day. She couldn't believe it. Scott. Here.

  "Scott," she cried, starting for him. "Thank God!"

  T-X moved toward Kate, morphing, as he seemed to glide over the grass, back into the persona of Nancy Nebel in the rust-colored Gucci leather suit.

  Her right arm was changing into the plasma weapon, and Kate stopped in midstride.

  This was the same monster from the pet clinic. The one who had killed Betsy. The one who had nearly killed them all.

  "No—" Kate moaned, stepping back Was there no end to this insanity?

  T-X raised her plasma weapon, the blue glow sur-rounding her arm as the unit came to a full charge.

  Silberman had disappeared, and the shooting was still going on behind her. Kate had no one to turn to. She didn't

  c.19

  Valley of Peace Cemetery

  "Give me an RPG," Terminator ordered.

  "You said you can't kill anybody," Connor argued.

  "John. The RPG. Now."

  Connor had spotted the heavier Russian-made RPG-7 Rocket Propelled Grenade Launchers in the coffin. He'd practiced with them in Baja a couple of years before his mother had died. One of her biker friends had come up from Honduras or someplace like that with a bunch of shit.

  He dug one of the weapons out of the coffin, loaded the 85mm shell, and slapped it into Terminator's outstretched right hand.

  The rocket, which carried a five-pound HEAT warhead, could penetrate a foot of armored steel plate. The Russians had built them to bust tanks. Terrorists used them to stop cops.

  Connor was trying to figure out what Terminator wanted to shoot at. He suddenly spotted Kate standing alone, her hand up, as if she were trying to ward off an attack.

  Then he saw the T-X, her right arm engulfed in a blue glow, pointing the plasma cannon directly at Kate. "It's Kate," he shouted.

  Driving with his left hand, Terminator rested the tube of the RPG on the windowsill across his chest. He uncaged the firing circuit and without hesitation pulled the trigger.

  The shell was ejected from the tube, and about fifteen feet out its rocket motor ignited, propelling it almost instantly the last few meters to the T-X's right arm just as the plasma cannon was firing.

  A sharp, bright explosion engulfed the T-X's weapon arm, staggering her backward a few feet. A split second later the misfiring cannon erupted in a huge blue flash-bang that hurled the cyborg off her feet, sending her flying twenty meters onto her back.

  Terminator veered the hearse sharply to the right, just missing a row of headstones, and slid to a stop next to an openmouthed Kate, who seemed to be rooted to the ground where she stood.

  Connor reached over and opened the passenger door. "Get in," he shouted to her.

  She didn't move. The cops were charging toward them, guns drawn, but the firing had stopped for the moment. But only for the moment.

  "Do you want to live?" Connor shouted. "Come on!"

  Kate looked over to where the T-X had already gotten

  to her feet The cyborg's weapon was a mangled ruin, but

  she ripped off the tip of the cannon and the artificial skin

  began to form over the machinery. She was damaged but not out of commission.

  T-X looked up, and started for the hearse.

  Move or die, the thought was like a high-power bolt of electricity to Kate's brain. She jumped into the hearse and pulled the door shut.

  Terminator slammed the gas pedal to the floor and the hearse shot across the cemetery, spewing grass and dirt from its back wheels.

  He glanced in the rearview mirror as the T-X picked up speed, crashing through gravestones as if they were not there.

  But she was not gaining on the hearse. The dispersal of the plasma energy had apparently caused an overload in her power circuits. But that reduced capacity would not last for long. Terminator had been programmed with what few specs the resistance had managed to gather. Among them was the T-X model's ability to recharge its own power cells. The tiny fusion generator in its chest cavity took a finite amount of time to replace such a large loss of power, but the recharge time was very short.

  Measured not in minutes, but in seconds.

  Terminator hauled the hearse around a mausoleum, bumped up onto the driveway, and shot through the gate back to the blacsktopped highway.

  The T-X was no longer visible in the rearview mirror.

  "What the hell was that thing?" Kate demanded. She was all out of breath. "Why is it after me? What did I do?"

  "It's what you're going to do," Connor said from the back. He pulled out another RPG rocket in case the T-X caught up with them. "You're important in the future. We both are."

  Terminator headed to the highway that led away from LA. and back out onto the desert.

  There was almost no traffic, only an occasional fanner in his pickup or delivery truck, and a tractor pulling a flat wagon on car tires loaded with hay.

  There would almost certainly be police units, but for the moment the only thing that Terminator's sensors were picking up was a helicopter. Judging by its attempt at radio communications it was probably a police chopper outbound from Los Angeles.

  Kate looked nervously from Terminator to Connor, fear and uncertainty in her eyes. "It was Scott," she said. "How could it be Scott?"

  "Your fiance?" Connor asked.

  Kate nodded, Unable to speak.

  "The T-X is polymimetic, able to take the form of anything it touches,
" Terminator told her with no hint of emotion. "Your fiance is dead."

  Kate's complexion paled. She looked like a ghost.

  Connor had to wince at Terminator's lack of tact, but he kept his eyes on the road behind them. The T-X would not stop coming after them. Not until her entire chassis was destroyed.

  If such a thing were possible.

  "Looks like we lost her," he said without much conviction. It was mostly wishful thinking on his part.

  The road swept around the base of a steep, boulder-strewn, wooded hill. The embankment loomed close to the highway.

  The T-X suddenly emerged from the woods at the top of the hill at a dead run and leaped out into space, landing with a tremendous bang on top of the hearse.

  The roof was crushed inward almost to the level of the coffin by the impact of the T-X's 150-kilo mass. The back windows shattered into thousands of pieces, and the windshield starred but held in place.

  Connor had just pulled an AK-47 assault rifle and a thirty-round box magazine out of the coffin. He barely managed to roll left and flatten himself on the floor before he was trapped by the collapsing roof.

  The hearse swerved sharply left, nearly off the road and down into a ditch before Terminator was able to bring it under control.

  Kate screamed in absolute terror, crouching as low as she could get in the front seat.

  A high-pitched angry whine came from above the hearse, and suddenly the lower half of a circular saw cut through the roof in a shower of sparks.

  Terminator hauled the hearse to the right, laying rubber on the highway as he slammed on the brakes.

  He immediately jammed the gas pedal to the floor and swerved sharply left in an effort to dislodge the T-X from the roof.

  But it did not work.

  The T-X's left arm had morphed into a high-speed metal cutting saw that was opening a U-shaped flap in

  the roof as easily as a razor blade through tissue paper.

  "Do something!" Kate screeched in desperation.

  Terminator ignored her. A map of the rural area was overlaid in his head-up display with a thermal imaging picture. The road they were on intersected with the highway in three hundred meters. Barreling down the highway from the west was the heat signature of what Terminator identified as an eighteen-wheeler.

  His processors did the math, and he reduced his speed slightly to 71.3 miles per hour, which gave him the solution.

  The saw retracted from the roof and the long, rectangular flap peeled open like the lid on a sardine can.

  No longer hemmed in by the collapsed roof, Connor swung the AK-47 to bear on the T-X as he pulled the cocking slide back and flicked the safety catch forward.

  He pulled the trigger, firing the 7.62mm rounds directly into her face, emptying the magazine in three seconds flat.

  The T-X recoiled after each shot, but then came back to the opening and reached down to grab Connor, who scrambled a few inches forward just out of her grasp.

  A semi's air horn suddenly blared right on top of them.

  Terminator shoved Kate farther down in the seat as he hunched over, steering the hearse beneath the trailer just behind the turnbuckle with a last-moment burst of speed.

  The roof and the T-X suddenly disappeared as the bottom of the semi trailer sheared off the top of the hearse

  with a shriek of tearing, twisting metal, breaking plastic, and shattering glass.

  Connor got a split-instant glimpse of the semi's rear wheels less than one foot from the side of the hearse when they were on the other side and clear on the empty highway.

  A tremendous wind roared through the now open hearse. Connor sat up cautiously as they rounded a curve, the semi sliding sideways across the highway behind them.

  Kate sat up too. Tentatively, as if she couldn't believe that they had come through the crash alive.

  Terminator was impassive. They had merely completed another phase of his assignment

  "We need a new vehicle," he said to no one in particular.

  Kate looked at Connor and he couldn't help but laugh with relief. She laughed too. This was insane. All of it. His entire life. This morning. This moment.

  T-X sat up. She had landed at the side of the road fifty meters from the jackknifed semi.

  Her diagnostic circuits registered some damage to her infiltration overlay, but only superficial damage to her battle chassis.

  The most severe damage had been done to her plasma cannon by the small missile's explosive warhead that had made a perfectly timed hit.

  Her flesh retracted from the mangled discharge head

  of the cannon. She studied the damage for a few milliseconds, her diagnostic-repair processor immediately devising a solution.

  With her free hand she artfully twisted and bent the various plasma magnetic containment conduits into a new, much smaller, cruder transmission head.

  Only a fraction of her available power could be transmitted with the new arrangement, but the repaired weapon would still be formidable.

  The trucker jumped down from his rig and took a few steps up the road toward T-X. He was dazed, and still uncertain of what had happened.

  T-X glanced at him. He was typical of humans of his socio-economic class in this era: round shoulders, potbelly, wearing a red baseball cap, yellow checked shirt, and dark trousers and work boots. Probably not well educated.

  The trailer bore the advertising legend for something called xenadrine efx, with the advice, experience the

  POWER.

  Ignoring him, T-X raised her jury-rigged weapon and fired a short plasma burst at the side of the hill. Grass and bushes went up in flames and a small area of gravel and rocks was instantly reduced to slag.

  Out of the corner of her optical sensors she saw the truck driver turn and run away as fast as his bandy legs could take him.

  She would not kill him. He was meaningless.

  Her electronic emissions detectors picked up the transmissions from what she determined to be an LAPD

  helicopter, flying at one hundred meters above the terrain, two kilometers away.

  She adjusted her internal communications circuitry and made contact with the helicopter. "Nancy-one-zero-zero-niner, LA. base," she radioed. "Copy?"

  c,20

  Angeles National Forest

  Beneath the protection of a canopy of trees Connor stared at the empty, mostly cloudless sky.

  There had been police activity all morning and into the afternoon. But it was coming up on two-thirty and he hadn't seen a spotter plane or helicopter in at least forty-five minutes.

  Kate was still in a state of semishock. Other than drinking from the cool mountain stream, she hadn't spoken or moved to try to escape. Nothing.

  The T-X was still out there, coming after them. If being crushed beneath a crane and fire truck hadn't destroyed her, then being struck by a semi truck had probably not even dented her armor.

  Terminator had done something to the hearse's engine and he slammed the hood as Connor came over.

  "It's been clear for almost an hour."

  Terminator didn't bother looking up at the sky. "I am unable to fix this vehicle."

  "Will it run?" Conner asked.

  "Yes. But not long."

  "Then let's find something eke and get as far away as we can," Connor said.

  They got back into the hearse and headed farther up into the mountains where within a couple of miles they passed twenty or twenty-five trout fishermen working the stream that was just off the road there. A registration table was set up under a bright red canopy.' The sign flapping in the light breeze read fifth annual angeles forest

  TROUT FEST.

  No one noticed the heavily damaged hearse as it passed, and minutes later they came across an RV campground filled with campers, but devoid of people. The RVs belonged to the fishermen in the trout contest downstream.

  Terminator pulled alongside a midsized Winnebago that appeared to be in good condition, and shut off the hearse's engine. The motor buck
ed and dieseled for a few seconds and then died.

  He got out, went over to the Winnebago, and yanked open its locked door.

  Connor jumped out of the hearse. "Come on," he said to Kate. "We have to keep moving."

  Terminator came back, scooped up an armful of weapons, and took them to the RV. Connor grabbed the AK-47 and a bag of magazines and brought them over to the Winnebago.

  "He was killed because of me," Kate said from the passenger seat. She made no move to get out

  Connor gathered four canvas satchels of C-4 explosive and acid fuses. He stopped and looked at her. He could

  feel her pain. He knew what it was like to lose someone who was very close.

  He shoved a 9mm Beretta pistol into his belt, first making sure that its magazine was loaded and the safety catch was engaged.

  "I know it won't help, but sometimes things happen that we just can't change." He shook his head. He didn't know what to say to her. He didn't have words to make a difference. "It's not your fault."

  Kate looked at him without moving, without saying a word.

  Connor took the plastic explosives over to the RV and placed them inside. Terminator was there.

  "You're sure about this?" Connor asked him, keeping his voice low enough so that Kate couldn't hear him. "About her and me, I mean."

  "I do not experience uncertainty," Terminator replied.

  Connor laughed. "Must be nice to be you."

  Terminator studied him for a moment. "Your confusion is not rational. She is a healthy female of breeding age."

  "I think there's more to it than that," Connor said, feeling a little warmth at the base of his neck.

  "My database does not encompass the dynamics of human pair bonding," Terminator said. He went back to the hearse for more weapons. Connor followed him.

  "This Terminatrix, how many others does she have on her hit list?"

  "Twenty-two," Terminator replied, gathering the belted ammunition for the machine gun. "Anderson, Elizabeth.

  Anderson, William. Barrera, Jose. Brewster, Robert—"

  Kate sat bolt upright, her eyes wide. "My father?" she demanded.

  Terminator turned his optical sensors to her, noting her pupil dilation, the tightening at the corners of her mouth, and her increased heart and respiration rates. But there was no need to lie by omission at this time. "Having failed to acquire its primary target, the T-X will resume its default program."