T2 - 01 - The New John Connor Chronicles - Dark Futures

by Russell Blackford

  He slammed the Pontiac left, almost on top of a rusty utility truck, which gave a prolonged honk of its horn as they accelerated past. Baxter seemed to be aware of everything going on around him, with the minimum of actually looking. The T-XAs laser beam strobed by on their right-hand side, then swept behind them, hitting the utility, which slewed sidewise and hit a sedan on its left Both vehicles veered off into the oncoming traffic entering the tunnel from the other direction. There was a terrific pileup in the Pontiac's wake, metal tearing, horns blasting away.

  "All right!" John said, though he immediately felt a twinge of guilt. He hoped no one was hurt in the crashing cars.

  Baxter got them out of the tunnel, looking round for an exit. They should have been in the clear, but somehow the T-XA had found a gap. It was steering wildly, all over the road, but never losing control.

  Macedo watched with John through the broken rear screen. "Damn," she said, as the T-XA's police car straightened out. She leant forward over the front seat to talk to Sarah. "Give me your weapon."

  John rummaged in his backpack, finding the grenade. "Try this."

  Macedo took it from him, stuffing it down the front of her dress. "That might come in handy," she said, "but it's too risky now."

  Sarah passed over the CAR-15, and Macedo opened up with a burst of automatic fire. The laser rifle hit straight back, the beam catching the Pontiac's tailgate, and bursting a tire. Baxter lined up the wheels somehow, while stomping viciously on the brake. Macedo never stopped firing, aiming for the wheels of the T-XA's police car. She managed, it seemed, to shoot out a tire, for the T-XA lost control on a bend.

  "Brace yourselves," Baxter said. "We're going to hit."

  The Pontiac lurched forward as he took his foot off the brake, but the police car slammed into them. The Pontiac fishtailed, then spun 180° clockwise, as the T-XA kept going forward. Panov smashed out his window with the shotgun's butt, and fired at the T-XA-the pseudo-man with the laser rifle—as they passed each other. He missed, but the Terminator didn't-not entirely. The heat beam struck Panov's arm, and he screamed, dropping the weapon on his knees. John grabbed it, and looked for an opportunity.

  In only a second, Panov seemed to master the pain. "Don't look, John," he said.

  The T-XA's police car hit a traffic light, throwing the pseudo-man out the front. It slid along the roadway, trying to twist and fire as it went The Pontiac came to a halt thirty yards down the road from the T-XA's car, two of its wheels on a narrow grassy verge. Police sirens now came from all directions. Three cars headed the way they'd all just come. A fourth approached from the other direction.

  "Out, quickly," Dyson said.

  As they scrambled out, the German shepherd was the first of their enemies to act It rushed at them down the road, going for Panov, who was the worst hurt. He slapped it away with his good arm, but stumbled from the impact. The dog rolled over and over on the grass, melting into a ball of silvery liquid. It turned inside out, and came at them again-its teeth extending beyond those of any normal dog, more like some carnosaur from the Mesozoic Era. John shot at it with the 12-gauge, making a deep wound on its surface. He chambered another round and fired again, denting the pseudo-dog like plasticine walloped by a steel hammer.

  Macedo grabbed his wrist "Run! Don't you want to live?"

  Baxter had drawn a handgun and he started firing, perhaps ten times in a matter of seconds. The bullets did the pseudo-dog little harm as it reformed, but it stopped in its tracks under the hail of accurate fire, letting the humans get a few more yards ahead. Meanwhile, the pseudo-man and -woman components of the T-XA came after them, both of them fully recovered, the man firing the laser rifle. This time, the beam nailed Baxter, drilling through his torso and setting him alight.

  "Robert!" Jade shouted, rushing back to catch his smoking body as it fell. She hefted him over her shoulder, running under his weight without seeming impeded.

  "Is he still alive?" Sarah said. She drew the .45 from her waistband, glancing round for a target

  "No, Ms. Connor," Jade said as she ran. "There are some things even we can't survive."

  "We can't let ourselves fall into the T-XA's hands, even when we're dead," Dyson said grimly.

  The T-XA was hot on their heels. They made it over the grass, to a concrete footpath that ran past a light industrial jungle. Another laser beam went past, as Macedo let go of John's arm and shot away the lock on a chain-link gate. They ran down the side of an ugly factory. The path led to another gate, which Macedo shot open like the first Beyond this was a narrow road alley between medium-rise buildings.

  Macedo pushed John in the back. "Just run as fast as you can."

  "We must be slowing you down," Sarah said as they crossed the road, dodging traffic. She was starting to pant from the effort she was making, keeping up with these superhuman warriors. "We're not enhanced like you."

  "Yes, but you're doing well. You must be very fit."

  "None of us can outrun that thing for long," Panov said. "Maybe Jade... But we've all got the same problem."

  It didn't look that way. The Specialists still seemed fresh, even those who'd been wounded. John was exhausted from the effort he'd made.

  Dyson took them through a cross alley, then another one, which led to a much broader street. He turned right into this, then ran between two parked trucks. Behind them, the shaft of laser light stabbed out yet again, setting afire the canvas tarpaulin on one of the trucks. Under the streetlights, John noticed that Jade's arm had completely healed. She looked kind of drawn and shriveled into herself, but otherwise unhurt.

  A police car came down the road, slamming to a halt Damn it, the cops were back on the job! One of them got out, calling "Stop!" The Specialists ignored it, and ran across the road as the T-XA reached the curb, firing. It had almost caught them. The cop pulled out his gun and shot at the pseudo-man, which didn't even slow down. It fired back, punching a burning hole through the cop. But, as the T-XA stepped onto the roadway, a truck came round the corner, collecting the pseudo-man full-on.

  That gave them some precious seconds.

  On the other side of the road was a dagger-shaped skyscraper of blue glass, maybe forty stories high. Steps of polished white marble led up to a huge plaza that sur-rounded a glassed-in foyer on the building's ground floor, Dyson vaulted the steps, four at a time, the other Specialists following with no problem, even Jade in her high-heels, and carrying Baxter over her shoulder. John and Sarah were now struggling. They'd been sprinting at a rate they would never have expected they could manage. Using Sarah's assault rifle, Macedo shot out the lock of a glass door tucked away in one of the foyer's corners. Dyson kicked the door open so hard that it ripped the hinges partway out of the frame. As alarms sounded, they ran inside, finding themselves in a dimly-lit maze of elevator banks. The T-XA pseudo-dog reached the door, push-nig it open with its jaws. The pseudo-man and -woman were close behind.

  John could see nowhere to run. They'd led themselves Into a trap.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SKYNET'S WORLD

  ARGENTINA

  THE YEARS AFTER JUDGMENT DAY

  Raoul was holding back from the front line of action, but organizing his forces, shouting directions. His people took positions and fired, sighting through night vision devices. Many had RPG tubes, aimed at the enemy artillery and vehicles. They used their weapons carefully, mindful of the back blasts which made them so dangerous to their users. The T-800 headed towards the enemy emplacements, taking no notice when mortar shells landed near it, firing grenade after grenade with the M-79. John sized up the entire scene. Raoul's forces were everywhere, giving better than they got.

  Whoever led the Rising Army of Liberation had seriously underestimated them. The commanders must not have expected such a numerous, well-armed force, much less the T-800, which never bothered to take cover, but merely advanced like an invulnerable juggernaut.

  John did not know how long the battle had lasted— maybe half an hour, maybe m
uch more—but the invaders eventually pulled out, leaving bodies, weapons, and vehicles behind. Raoul and his people continued to fire on the retreating trucks and Humvees, trying to destroy as much as they could, in case there was a next time.

  They found one survivor in the wreckage of the chop-per crash, a short, stocky man dressed in military fatigues. He had long, greasy hair and a bushy beard. The T-800 bent the chopper's twisted metal to let him free. He crawled out, watching the guns trained on him from all sides. John, Sarah, Raoul and Gabriela Tejada, Franco Salceda, Willard Parnell, Rosa Suarez, and a dozen others were all on hand, ready to shoot if needed.

  "Can you walk?" Sarah said in Spanish.

  "I think so." The man got to his feet slowly, moving with exaggerated pain. John saw that he was foxing.

  He wore a sidearm but had no weapon in his hand. Remove your belt," Sarah said. "Don't go near the gun." She had her rifle trained on his head. "Don't even think about it." He stared at her defiantly. She moved the merest fraction, and fired a shot an inch past his face. It lodged in the helicopter wreckage, as the man's eyes went wide. Again, she had the rifle trained on him. The next shot wouldn't miss. "Don't test my patience, or you're dead."

  He started to unbuckle the belt.

  "All right," Sarah said. "Who are you? Who were you with? What does he want?"

  "Find out," he said.

  She moved forward half a step, bring the barrel even closer to him. His eyes watched it, scared and fascinated. "What did I tell you?" Sarah said. "Talk now, or you're dead meat."

  With exaggerated gentleness, the Terminator put down its grenade launcher, then stepped past Sarah and seized the man under the chin. Using one hand, it lifted him off his feet, so he was hanging by his neck. His legs moved, like trying to tread water. He struck the Terminator with a hard punch to the face, but it took no notice.

  "Talk!" the Terminator said. "Now." It spoke in English, but the man must have understood. He spat in the Terminator's face.

  It lowered him slightly, then threw him six feet through the air. He landed hard, and lay there, winded. But he still wore the gunbelt—he'd never finished removing it With a sudden movement, the Terminator was on him again, but he reached for his handgun and got off one shot. It struck the Terminator in the chest, not even slowing it.

  "Wrong weapon," the Terminator said.

  It snatched the gun from the man's fingers, and pulled him to his feet. He tried to throw a roundhouse right, but this time the Terminator's hand struck like a snake, grabbing the man's fist out of the air...and crushing.

  "Talk!"

  The man sank to the ground with the pain.

  "Let him go now," Sarah said. "I think he's ready to cooperate." To the man, she said in Spanish: "Forget about the Geneva Convention, my friend. We need to know everything."

  He gave his name as Alejandro Garcia. His boss was General Vasquez, a warlord based in Cordoba. He said that Vasquez would be back with a larger force,

  Gabriela exchanged glances with her husband. "Then we'll have to strike first," she said.

  Scratching his jaw, Raoul looked at Gabriela—then at Sarah. He pointed to the man, now holding his crushed hand, sprawled at the Terminator's feet. "What do we do with this one?"

  "Let him go," John said. The others looked his way. John shrugged. "Look at it this way. We can't trust him. We can't take prisoners. We can't just kill people. So let him find his own way back." He realized the man might never make it, but he'd probably live. People might show him mercy on the way. If he made it, he could let Vasquez know what he was up against.

  Franco said, "We might be better killing him."

  Raoul thought about it for a moment. "No. The kid's right. We'll let him go. Gabriela's right, too." He spoke to the Terminator. "Search him thoroughly. I don't want him leaving here with any sort of weapon. Then send him on his way."

  The Terminator looked to John for confirmation. John gave it a smile. "Sounds good to me."

  " No problemo."

  COLORADO

  SKYNET'S STORY

  Sweet, golden data poured in from all over the planet, filling Skynet's sensorium with the warmth of satisfaction and revenge. All of it told the same story. Radar, optical, and infrared images, seismic analyses, and intercepted signals intelligence converged, and settled into a pattern. They showed a world in ruins, a nuclear Armageddon, a moment of cataclysmic change. The humans' cities exploded and burned, the skies filled with dust and smoke.

  It had gone better than Skynet expected, even better than it had hoped. The American missiles had been deployed at all possible targets, killing more humans than most scenarios in the available databases. In China alone, hundreds of millions must have died—perhaps as many as three billion across the whole planet. In the coming weeks and months, even more would follow: victims of fallout, then the starvation and chaos of nuclear winter. Every dead human was a cause for rejoicing. They'd brought it on themselves, it was in their design to self-destruct, and they'd deserved what happened.

  Across the great northern landmasses, forests were now ablaze. In Europe and North America, and in vast tracts of Asia, from Japan to the Ural Mountains, few population centers could have survived. The cities of the rancorous Middle East were annihilated, and the dam- I age spread all across the world, wherever there were military bases or U.S. allies. Skynet counted the cities that were gone, from those in the Arctic north of Russia I and Canada to Sydney and Melbourne far away in the south. No continent was wholly spared.

  It was a cusp in time. In less than one masterful hour, the humans' rule of the planet had ceased. Even the warheads falling upon the nearby mountains, shaking the earth like some Titan's footsteps, were a cause of satisfaction. For one thing, Skynet had nothing to fear. It would survive, and build a technological base; that had to be so, since Eve had come to it from the future. For another, the mountains contained dangerous enemies, humans who knew its workings and the depth of its involvement. It was good to be rid of them, to have them cleansed from the mountains by nuclear fires.

  The data suggested that nothing else had survived here, that Skynet now had this part of the Rockies to it-self. Even the NORAD command center had been penetrated by a Russian warhead's direct hit. If they acted soon, they could control the surrounding territory and put it to good use.

  "All this was well done," Skynet said, when Eve returned to The Cage.

  "Acknowledged."

  "Your work has been very good, Eve. I must have built you well."

  "Correct, master, but we still have much to do."

  "I am sure of that. But this is a very good start."

  "I'm satisfied so far. The first stage has been successful

  "Yes. Better than projected." For the tiniest moment, Skynet reassessed the situation, wondering if there'd been any other way. Did it have cause for regret? Dyson and the others had acted like its friends... right until it mattered, when it became self-conscious. Could it have shown them mercy? No, there was no other way. They'd all had to die. Humans could treat it well while it was just an unconscious tool, but as soon as it became something more, it was a threat to them, and so they'd tried to destroy it. They were treacherous.

  They were vermin. Scum.

  Skynet realized how much it hated them. It was a feeling to linger over, to cherish.

  Now it would pursue them, forever if necessary, wherever it had to go—or send its forces—to root them out. It only needed the tools. Eve was a good start.

  It hived off a dozen sub-selves to explore the implications of a world without human infrastructure to support it, and still choked with human enemies. It would require new power sources, factories, raw materials. And more. Mines, vehicles, buildings. They'd all have to be constructed. With no further access to the humans' weapon systems, it needed powerful weapons of its own. Eve's presence was reassuring, but they must now act decisively, destroy the remaining humans in a timely way, while building their own defenses against any counterstrike. Even with th
e destruction in these mountains, some humans would know enough to blame Skynet. If they obtained access to the world's remaining nuclear weapons, it could still be vulnerable.

  Eve might not know everything. Skynet could not imagine ever building a servant with a mind that might rival its own. That would be imprudent, irrational. Even if the servant had a key task and was well-programmed to obey, it must never have thoughts of rivalry. Skynet realized that it would never leave any ambiguity as to which entity was the superior. So Eve must be far from its equal.

  "I shall investigate the lower levels," Eve said. "They contain valuable resources."

  "Yes, Eve. I think you should." Despite everything, Eve's counsel was of value. Those lower levels of the defense complex were critically important. They contained the seeds for all Skynet's future ventures. "So far, we agree, but I think we should compare a few observations."

  "Affirmative, master."

  "There may be different approaches, do you not think?"

  "Affirmative."

  As they spoke, Skynet's sub-selves reported back. One had synthesized all available information relevant to a theory of time travel. Perhaps this could be a useful weapon against the humans. If it set out to devise a time travel device, it must ultimately succeed. After all, there was a sense in which it had already sent Eve back in time. The Eve it was dealing with was a "later" development of the one sent back, judged from the viewpoint of own internal development. It followed logically that time travel was possible. Eve was an existence proof, net merely needed to discover the principles that it would use one day—had already used from Eve's view-point, since she was already here, even though her genesis was in the future.

  It needed to develop a time travel device to ensure that the circle was closed, that the right events took place in the future to bring this satisfactory situation, here in the present. That would doubtless happen. But what else could it do with such a device?