Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

C.24

The big green highway sign said EDWARDS AFB. ROSA-MOND GATE, 11 miles. A hundred yards later they passed a sign that said exit 6. Lancaster, QUARTZ HILL, 1 mile.

"Turn here," Kate told Terminator.

So far no one had come after them. The sky was clear of police helicopters, and traffic was very light on the interstate.

Kate had tried twice more to reach her father, with the same results as earlier. The cell phone networks were down. Even the radio didn't work, especially on FM, although she'd been able to pick up something that sounded like music in the very faint distance on AM.

Terminator got off the interstate and headed east across the desert. There were three ways onto Edwards: the Rosamond Gate off 1-14, the North Gate off Highway 58, and the South Gate at the southeastern extremity of Rogers Dry Lake.

The South Gate was the least used entrance for the air base itself, but was the primary entrance for the CRS Research & Development facility.

Edwards was a large place, more than five hundred square miles in which a lot of black projects, including CRS, had been and continued to be hidden from the public's view.

Kate had been out here only twice before; once at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for CRS. That was before she started college, and before her parents' divorce. There hadn't been many family members at the opening, and Kate remembered how proud she'd been of her father. He'd just received his second star, and to her he'd seemed to be twenty feet tall that day.

The second time she'd come out here was last year when she'd talked to her father about her engagement to Scott. Her mother had been all for the marriage, but she'd always been her daddy's girl, and she'd desperately wanted his approval.

Which he'd given. But she'd not seen him since, not once. They talked on the phone, but he was always too busy to come into L.A., even for a weekend.

She glanced back at Connor, who was still working on getting the explosives ready. By the looks of it he meant to destroy the entire complex. But he had no idea how big the place was.

When he'd started making suggestions how to get onto the base, Kate had cut him off. "I'll take care of that part," she told him.

He'd exchanged a glance with Terminator, but then nodded and went back to his work.

"About ten miles and there'll be a sign for Cyber Research," she told Terminator. She got up and went to where Connor was stuffing bricks of C-4 into satchels, and sat down across from him.

There seemed to be weapons and ammunition, rockets, grenades, explosives everywhere. She shook her head. "This is so…" She was at a loss. "God, there isn't even a word for what this is."

"Yeah," Connor said. He fastened the flap of a satchel and set it aside. "Look, none of it's going to happen. We get to your dad, pull the plug on Skynet, and the bombs won't fall." He nodded toward Terminator, driving. "He won't have to kill me someday. He'll never even exist."

Terminator looked up at them in the interior mirror, but said nothing. The rolling desert hills were bleak, almost like a moonscape.

"And you and me," Connor said. "We can go our separate ways."

Kate was confused. She didn't know how to take what John was telling her. She looked out the window at the passing desert, her thoughts drifting back to when she was a kid. She had to smile.

She turned back to Connor. "You know Mike Kripke's basement? That was the first time I ever kissed a guy." "Really," Connor said, grinning. "Now that's weird." Kate returned his grin, and they both laughed a little. Terminator glanced at their reflection. "Your levity is good," he said solemnly. "It relieves tension and the fear of death."

Connor gave a derisive snort, shook his head, and sat back. The up mood had evaporated in an instant.

A pretty young first lieutenant whose name tag read Hastings got off an elevator one floor below the Computer Center and headed down the broad, well-lit corridor as if she were on a mission.

There was a sense of urgency throughout the complex. Worldwide communications were failing, military networks were crashing, and a lot of the people here whose job it was to see that such things did not happen were in a near panic.

Hastings was blond, slender, and attractive in her Air Force blue cotton blouse and dark blue skirt Halfway down the corridor she stopped at a door that was marked by a placard:

Please make sure T-l unit power charge connection is complete and secure at

hook-up point for proper charge transference.

The corridor was empty of people for the moment. Hastings tried the door, but it was locked. She turned the handle past its stop, snapping the lock pins as if they were matchsticks.

Checking again to make sure she had not been observed, she slipped into the large, dimly lit room and closed the door behind her.

Row upon row of large, plastic-shrouded figures were packed into the storage bay. T-X hesitated only a moment to study the sensor readouts in her head-up display, before she ripped the plastic off the first T-l robot and tossed it aside.

The index finger of her left hand morphed into a long, slender drill bit that she used to enter the warrior robot's tiny skull case.

A millisecond later her fingertip glowed blue with plasma energy and she transferred a stream of data into the T-l's processor.

Finished almost as quickly as she had begun, T-X withdrew her data probe and moved to the next robot in line.

Both times Kate had been out here the CRS complex had come as something of a surprise to her. First there was nothing but desert; rolling sand hills, scrub brush, Joshua trees. Then, over the crest of a low hill the complex was suddenly spread out in the distance.

Protected by a double row of razor wire, the gate manned by serious-looking armed Air Force Security Police, the main Research & Development facility was housed in an ultramodern three-story glass and steel building that bristled with satellite dishes, laser guidance transmission heads, and its own separate power station and air-conditioning plant.

Some distance behind the rambling building from which a dozen different wings branched in all directions was the antennae farm for worldwide communications and data links from the upper gigahertz frequency range all the way down to ELF — Extremely Low Frequencies — used for communications with submarines.

In the basement and subbasement levels were beehives of laboratories where sensitive experiments took place around the clock. Beneath the hangars and stretching in a huge circle nearly a half mile in diameter was a supercooled particle accelerator, the electromagnets of which in themselves constituted a radiation hazard when operating at full power.

An airstrip ran east and west with a modern control tower and several hangars and maintenance buildings nearby. Several military transport aircraft, a number of helicopters, and several small private aircraft were parked on the ramp or inside the hangars.

Terminator spotted the LAPD helicopter in front of one of the hangars.

"T-X is already here," he said.

Kate scrambled to the passenger seat as they started down the long hill to the gate, still a half mile away. "How do you know?" she demanded, her heart in her throat.

"The police helicopter. N-one-zero-zero-nine. It was in the air near the cemetery." Terminator pointed to the chopper on the ramp.

"Oh, God," Kate said. "Hurry." She turned to Connor. "Cover up that stuff. I'm going to talk our way onto the base."

Connor grabbed a blanket and covered the weapons and explosives as Terminator slowed for the gate.

A pair of Air Policemen stepped out and motioned for Terminator to stop. He pulled up and opened the side window. Kate leaned across to talk to the security cops. "I'm Kate Brewster. My dad, General Brewster, is expecting us," she said.

The security officers were dressed in BDUs with black berets, M16s slung over their shoulders. "May I see some identification, please?" the tech sergeant asked.

Kate took her driver's license out of the wallet in her jacket pocket and handed it down. "My fiance, Scott Peterson, is in back," she said. She smiled and placed a hand on Terminator's arm. "This is… Tom Peterson… his brother. Our best man."

The sergeant went into the guardhouse with Kate's ID, while the other guard kept a watchful eye on them. There was no traffic.

A couple of minutes later the sergeant came out and handed Kate's driver's license back. "The general's a little busy right now, ma'am. But his secretary's authorized your visit."

The second guard swung the gate open. "Straight ahead to the main entrance," the sergeant instructed. "Someone will meet you there and get you signed in."

"Thank you," Kate said. "Please hurry," she said under her breath to Terminator.

CRS was at the highest state of readiness it had ever been. There was an air not so much of panic, but of expectation. Awe. A little trepidation.

General Brewster stood next to the Mainframe Duty Officer's console, looking up at the display on the large plasma screen on the back wall.

The field was deep blue, a Mercator projection of the western hemisphere centered on the North and South American continents, with the shoulder of Africa off to the right and the Pacific out to Guam to the left.

U.S. air, naval, and ground stations were highlighted by icons, the electronic networks connecting them marked by lines, along with the great circle flying and sailing routes to battle zones.

The display was labeled SKYNET BATTLEFIELD MANAGEMENT SYSTEM. Tool bars were labeled firewall penetration. LOCAL DEFENSE NETS. SYSTEM STATUS.

In rapid succession every military network, base, unit, or weapons system currently en route came up with an on-line icon.

At the end of the list was the simple interrogative: Y/N.

The big room quieted down by degrees as the last of the installations came on-line.

Skynet was telling its human controllers that it was ready. It was asking if they were ready too.

Tony Flickinger was at Brewster's elbow. "Sir, shall I?" Brewster shook his head. "No. It's my job now." He had trouble dragging his eyes from the display. He hesitated.

This was what they all had worked for over the past several years. This was what the Pentagon had spent more than fifteen billion dollars on. Actually more had been spent, but the above-the-line budget, the number that Congress saw, was fifteen billion.

Skynet was going to assure world peace. No national leader in his or her right mind would dare attack when such an efficient, emotionless, capable system stood watch, unblinking twenty-four/seven.

Attack the U.S. or one of her allies and die. Simple. All the power of the mightiest nation on earth would be unleashed.

An unstoppable force.

Worldwide domination — benevolent domination — was possible for the first time in the history of man.

Still Brewster hesitated. Maybe Mr. Watchdog — Congressman Stevenson — was right. Maybe turning over our entire defense network to a goddamn computer was nuts.

But they had run out of options. The U.S. and her allies were, because of the virus, totally defenseless at this moment.

Brewster reached out, almost languidly, and touched the y key on the Mainframe DO's console, and a moment later enter.

The console monitor brought up the CRS logo, and the message skynet link established.

The system began to shift and change, slowly at first, but rapidly accelerating as tens of thousands of Skynet links were established worldwide.

"We're in," one of the techs at a computer console announced. "We're past the firewalls. Local defense nets, minutemen, subs—"

It was moving too fast now for the technician to keep up with it verbally.

"Skynet is fully operational," another of the techs reported. "Processing at sixty — now ninety terafiops a second—"

"Sir, it should take less than a minute to find the virus and kill it," Patricia Talbot advised.

Brewster glanced at the systems chief tech. He didn't know if he shared her optimism. "Let's pray to God it works," he said.

The plasma screen and every terminal in the Mainframe Center and out in the main room suddenly went blank.

It was as if someone had pulled the switch.

Brewster looked up, his heart in his mouth. "What the—?"

"Power failure?" someone asked.

"Lights are still on," someone else observed.

The monitors and the plasma screen suddenly came back to life, and for a few seconds Brewster breathed a sigh of relief. Skynet had merely been clearing its throat.

But then it became obvious that something very wrong was happening. The screens and monitors were filling with line after line of some alien code, symbols racing across the videos at inhuman speeds.

"What the hell is going on—" Brewster muttered. What indeed.