Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

C.14

Terminator could see the blue glow in the cab of the Champion crane as the T-X made ready to fire a second time.

Ahead, Connor was maneuvering wildly, but that would not work for long. The police cars would box him in and T-X would destroy him and Kate.

Terminator took the Mossberg from the saddle rack, cycled a round into the breech, and fired at the crane's left rear tire. The machine had eighteen wheels, but the one shredding tire was enough to cause T-X to lurch a little to the side at the same moment she fired.

The shot went wild. The beam of raw energy struck the rear of the squad car off Connor's right, instantly incinerating it. The flaming wreckage tumbled end over end.

Terminator prepared to take a second shot when the ambulance behind him jolted his rear tire, almost making him lose the bike.

The crane's boom accelerated to the left as it extended, dropping a massive hook on thick cables that swung like a lethal wrecking ball.

The hook smashed into Terminator's chest, slamming him off the motorcyle. At the last moment he grabbed on to it with one hand, still holding the shotgun in the other.

Suddenly he was swinging wildly to the left. He twisted his body just as he slammed hard into the pursuing ambulance, shoving it over on its side, sending it skidding down the street in a trail of sparks.

Terminator swung right again in time to see Connor, still harried by one of the squad cars, duck down a side street and disappear.

It was too sharp a turn for the crane, which roared through the intersection. Terminator, dangling from the hook, smashed off parked cars, lampposts, and anything else in his path as he continued to try to bring his shotgun to bear on the T-X's head.

The crane suddenly swerved to the right, crashed over two parked cars, jumped the sidewalk, and smashed into the glass wall of a building.

Terminator found himself crashing into pieces of brick and steel and wires and pipes and girders as the massive machine careened down a long work area and burst through the opposite wall, back out onto the street in the next block.

As the big crane made the impossibly sharp right turn with the boom extended, carrying Terminator's two hundred kilos out at ninety degrees, it lifted off the nine wheels on the left, balanced there, ponderously, like a huge whale about to be beached by a gigantic comber, but then regained its balance when the front end finally came around.

Connor was on the next street over, and Terminator's head-up overlay map of the local streets showed that the pet van would have to come down this street. T-X had the same overlay.

Terminator twisted around and brought his shotgun to bear directly on the T-X's cranial case, hoping to at least take out its optical lenses, when something large, horns and sirens blaring, loomed directly in front of him. He turned at the same instant a mammoth hook and ladder fire truck, moving at high speed, struck him square in the torso. The force of the collision was so great he lost his grip on the crane's hook, which went flying upward to the right, and his shotgun, which arched overhead to his left.

The Champion crane flashed away. Terminator felt the much weaker metal and glass of the fire truck collapse under his weight. The entire machine shuddered from front to rear, two massive motor mounts on its Cummins diesel snapped like dry twigs. Ladders broke loose and lights shattered under the sheer mechanical shock wave that coursed through the truck's frame.

Terminator's head and upper torso passed through the shattered windshield, and he found himself, one hand on the big steering wheel, looking up at two firemen, shocked beyond movement, mindless of the blood streaming from the cuts on their faces from the flying glass. What they were witnessing simply could not be happening.

"I'll drive," Terminator said.

Both firemen came to life at the same moment They shoved open the doors and bailed out, hitting the street and tumbling end over end, protected by their helmets and heavy fire suits from any serious injuries.

Terminator, still holding the wheel, climbed into the cab of the rapidly decelerating fire truck, studied the controls for just a moment, then jammed the gas pedal to the floor as he prepared to make a 180.

Connor had managed to shake the big crane, but he'd also lost Terminator at the last turn. The one cop car was still on his tail, repeatedly smashing into the Toyota's rear fender, trying to spin him out.

The temperature gauge on the panel was just about in the red and the fuel tank was getting low, but other than that he figured his luck was holding so far. Some luck, he thought.

"Kate, are you okay?" he shouted over his shoulder.

The cop car came up on his left side again, edging closer. It was almost as if the driverless squad car was trying to herd him.

"What do you think?" Kate shouted angrily.

The squad car was trying to herd him.

Connor made a sharp right turn, then left again, coming back out onto the main avenue through the industrial district.

The Champion crane was there. Less than fifty yards down the street, barreling right at him. Its boom was extended forward and its hook was throwing up showers of sparks as it tumbled and banged along the road.

Connor slammed the gas to the floor, but the squad car pulled ahead and swerved directly into his path. He had to hit the brakes.

He hauled the pet van left and tried to get around the cop car, but he was cut off again.

The crane halved the distance between them, and T-X recharged her weapon for a final shot that could not miss at this range.

Terminator pulled up alongside the Champion crane.

The T-X was preparing to fire again.

Terminator knew that she could not possibly miss at this range. Even if he could somehow shove the crane aside at the moment the T-X fired, she would fire again and again until she succeeded. Or, at the very least, she would simply run over the pet van, crushing John Connor and Katherine Brewster to death.

The T-X had to be stopped.

Terminator found the control for the fire truck's stabilizers and activated it. The thick metal arms, which were meant to provide a broad footing for the truck when its ladder and basket were deployed, extended from the bottom of the truck's high chassis.

When they were nearly fully deployed, Terminator hauled the fire truck hard to the right. The stabilizers bit into the eight remaining tires on the crane's left side, chewing them apart like office paper through a shredding machine.

The crane swerved to the right, almost impossible even for the T-X to maintain a straight track.

Terminator pulled away and immediately hauled the fire truck back toward the crane, hoping to knock the big machine over the curb and onto its side.

The Champion's much larger stabilizers deployed at that moment, slashing into the side of the fire truck in two places, the thick metal arms impaling the hook and ladder unit, lifting it partially off its wheels.

Terminator now had no control over the fire truck, but neither did the T-X have much control over the combined mass of both machines.

He looked up in time to see T-X point her fully charged plasma cannon at him.

The cab of the fire truck disintegrated in a blue flash, molten metal and glass bursting outward as if the truck had been a mass of mercury dropped onto the pavement.

T-X found that she still had enough control of the Champion crane to complete this element of the mission. In fact, the fire truck attached to her left side acted like an outrigger.

The Emery pet van was less than ten meters ahead, just out of the range of the dangling hook, but still effectively boxed in by the squad car.

All other traffic on the road had pulled out of the way. It wouldn't be long before the LAPD arrived in force. Already the 911 switchboard was being flooded with calls, even more not getting through because of computer problems at Pacific Bell's main LA. exchange.

T-X waited indifferently for her weapon to recharge.

As the power cell came into the green range, she aimed the weapon at the back of the van, her target-acquisition stabilizing system switching to active.

Terminator, his chest smoking from where his torso had caught the edge of the plasma beam before he could get out of the cab and the bare metal of his cranial case exposed where the patches of flesh on his face had been seared away, grabbed a fire axe from its bracket in the back.

The T-X was getting ready to fire again. The blue plasma glow was rapidly intensifying.

Terminator scrambled up on the fire truck's ladder basket and swung over the top of the Champion's cab, the roof sagging under his weight.

He stepped back, balancing on the edge, as the sheet metal was blasted from inside, and the T-X burst up through the blue-tinged opening, moving like some predatory creature out of its lair ready for a battle to the death.

Terminator was waiting. He swung the fire axe with every kilo of his T-850 chassis's strength at the cyborg's skull as she rose up out of the cab.

The axe blade bit into the first layers of the T-X's cranial case, but immediately struck the malleable ceramic/titanium armor. The axe handle shattered, and although no vital circuits had been damaged, the force of the blow was enough to sweep the T-X off the roof of the crane, and down between the two vehicles locked together as they barreled down the street.

Terminator dropped down into the Champion's cab. The T-X had taken control of the throttle, so despite the unstable condition of the damaged fire truck and the shredded wheels on the left side of the crane, they were actually gaining on the pet van, which was very close now.

He angled the rearview mirror down so he could see what was going on between the fire truck and crane. The T-X was pulling herself up from one of the stabilizers, her plasma cannon charging again.

Time was running short. If the T-X incapacitated him again the way she had in front of the animal clinic, she would be free to destroy John Connor and Katherine Brewster.

He could not allow that to happen.

He was about to steer the crane into the brick wall of a building when his optical system spotted road hazard sawhorses in the middle of the street about fifty meters ahead. Traffic was meant to maneuver around some kind of an obstacle.

He enhanced his optical circuits momentarily. The obstacle was an open manhole. The steel cover was lying to one side.

Connor, behind the squad car, did not spot the barricades in time to avoid them. But he did manage to miss the open manhole by inches. The pet van fishtailed nearly out of control down the street.

The cop car spun out and stalled at the same time Terminator hauled the Champion's steering wheel hard right, then left, then right again.

The big hook, bouncing and skipping up the street at the end of the extended boom, swung left and then right like a pendulum. It just caught the edge of the open manhole and dropped down inside the tunnel, the thick steel cables unreeling like a fishing line that had snagged a whale.

Terminator pulled himself back up on the roof of the cab as the hook caught on something solid.

The cable suddenly went taut as Terminator leaped from the Champion crane onto the roof of the pet van.

He swung himself over the side through the open driver's door, shoving Connor aside.

"Hold on," he said, and he stamped the gas pedal to the floor.

He swung around the cop car and glanced in the rear-view mirror in time to see the entire tangled mass of the Champion crane and the LAFD truck, between which T-X was preparing to take her shot, stop dead in the street as the front of the boom dug into the pavement.

The back of the wreck shot straight up into the air, the eighty or ninety combined tons of metal and glass and plastic coming down like an earth-shattering meteor on the squad car, instantly flattening it. The entire mass erupted in a huge ball of fire, the blast shattering windows along the entire city block.

Terminator divided his primary action circuits between driving and checking his rearview mirror and electronic emissions detectors for any signs that they were being followed.

He wanted to get out of the city as soon as possible, but not via the main highways or the more heavily traveled county roads. In the condition the pet van was in they would attract too much attention. They did not have time for diversions.

He also understood that the T-X had not been destroyed in the crash. That chassis was extremely battle-hardened. It would probably take more than the crash of even something as large as the Champion crane with its attendant explosion and fire to destroy the cyborg.

Which meant that T-X would continue to follow them, acting on her prime directive, that of assassinating John Connor and Katherine Brewster.

But there was even more at stake than just their lives.

They were finally out of the industrial areas of the city, and they got on a two-lane highway that led up into the hills.

Safe, Terminator thought. He was not able to detect anyone behind them, nor was he picking up the satellite downlink signals that the T-X had used to control the emergency vehicles that had nearly cost Connor and Kate their lives.

Safe, Terminator thought again. But only temporarily.

He turned to look at John Connor, who'd been staring at him since their narrow escape. He reached out and gently touched Connor's face, raising one eyelid and then the other, his optical sensors set on magnify.

"No sign of brain trauma," Terminator said.

Connor pulled his head away. "Yeah, I'm fine. Thanks."

Terminator glanced at the highway. Traffic was slowly starting to pick up as people headed for work. It was a Saturday, otherwise there would be many more vehicles on the road.

Originally, the T-800 series warrior/cyborgs had been programmed to do battle primarily with other robotic units, and human soldiers from enemy states. After Judgment Day, Skynet reprogrammed most of them to hunt and kill any and all humans. His particular unit had been upgraded to a T-850 and programmed to act as a human infiltration model with one mission: preserve the lives of John Connor and Katherine Brewster.

That was his prime directive.

He neither liked nor disliked humans, Connor included. But he was programmed to protect them, and to understand their motivations well enough to help predict how they might act under any given set of circumstances.

Humans were, in his estimation, highly irrational organisms. Their directives were continually being influenced, most often for the worse, by emotional considerations: love, hate, envy, jealousy, fear. And many others. In Terminator's main memory he had access to a file with more than one thousand different emotional elements that modified human behavior. And that, his file cautioned, was only a partial list.

Compounding the difficulty was the phenomenon of multitasking; humans were almost always motivated by more than one emotion. Sometimes by a multitude of them, each subtly acting upon the others in an endless series of combinations.

Starting with the one thousand elements in Terminator's files, he could come up with something in excess of 8 X 109, or eight billion, combinations.

It was no wonder, he continued in the evaluation process, that even for humans the job of understanding each other was often next to impossible.

"Do you even remember me?" Connor asked.

Terminator glanced at him, but made no reply.

"Sarah Connor? Blowing up Cyberdyne? 'Hasta la vista, baby.' Ring any bells?"

"That was an old model T-800," Terminator said, which was technically true. That had been a different chassis.

Connor looked away momentarily, and shook his head. It seemed as if he felt the weight of the world on his shoulders. "So, what—?" he asked. He looked at Terminator. "You guys come off an assembly line, or something?"

"Or something. I'm a new model. A T-850."

Connor was less disappointed than he was bemused. "Oh, man. I gotta teach you everything all over again."

Terminator looked over his shoulder through the dividing window. "Katherine Brewster. Have you sustained injury?"

Kate came to the screen. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth where she'd bitten her lip. Her hair was a mess, and the rear of the pet van was in complete disarray. She looked as if she'd been through the spin cycle of a washing machine.

"Drop dead, asshole," she told him.

Terminator closed the window. "I am unable to comply," he said.