Terminator Salvation: Cold War

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The Hunter-Killer was gaining on him again.

Geir reached the end of the ravine and was forced to abandon its sheltering walls. He pushed Thunderbird to its limit in a desperate attempt to keep out of range of the lethal pulse cannons. Flying at top speed—nearly 437 miles per hour—the plane raced toward the upper slopes of the Wrangell Mountains. Ascending above the tree line, it sped above majestic cliffs and glaciers, but Geir was in no position to admire the scenery. Not with a murderous flying machine on his tail.

Outgunned and way more fragile than the armored HK, he relied on speed and maneuverability to stay out of its sights. As agile as its equine namesake, the Mustang pulled out all the stops, banking and weaving, diving and climbing amidst the alpine peaks and canyons. A herd of caribou, dark shadows in the gloom, ran for safety as he buzzed too low over their snowy terrain. Geir worked up a sweat behind the controls, improvising wildly to keep the HK’s neural network from predicting his flight patterns. His hands were sweating beneath his gloves. His brain was spinning.

Okay, Svenson. How the hell are you going to get out of this one?

He just couldn’t shake the airborne predator. It kept after him like a bloodhound on the scent of a panicked fox. A blast from its plasma cannon incinerated one of the skis beneath the plane, throwing Thunderbird off balance. Geir frantically leveled off again, then climbed sharply upward toward the crest of Mount Wrangell. He glanced out of his left window to see nothing but a few scorched struts jutting out from beneath the fuselage on the left side. One entire ski was missing.

Landing the plane was going to be a bitch.

If I ever get the chance.

That was starting to look like an academic concern, but he still had one last trick up his sleeve, provided he could make it just a little further. He pulled back on the stick, climbing higher and higher toward the top of the enormous mountain, one of the largest in the territory. Just a few more minutes and, hopefully, the HK was in for a serious headache.

Mount Wrangell, which rose over 12,000 feet above the wilderness below, had been volcanically active even before Judgment Day. According to Doc Rathbone, its geothermal activity had been increasing steadily since the 1950s—long before Geir was born—and the thermonuclear blasts that had rocked Alaska had left it even more seismically restless. Plumes of hot steam, often visible from miles around, rose from numerous small craters rimming its central caldera, a feathery green in the light of the aurora. Frequent small eruptions and tremors shook the area. Geir had always made a point of not flying directly over it.

Until tonight.

He saw the main plumes jetting upward from the collapsed top of the mountain even before he got there. Geysers of churning white vapor blasted hundreds of feet into the air. Rising to 14,000 feet, he circled above the volcano. This was going to be a delicate balancing act. He had to stick close enough to the unstable caldera to—hopefully—mess up the HK’s heat-sensitive tracking devices, while keeping high enough to avoid being scalded by the sky-high bursts of steam. Being disintegrated by a plasma cannon would probably be a far less painful way to go.

The HK slowed as it approached the rim of the mountain. Its floodlights and lasers scanned the caldera. Geir guessed that it was evaluating the threat posed by the active volcano, and weighing that against its desire to terminate Thunderbird and its pilot.

He tried to read the machine’s mind.

Am I worth the risk or not?

The HK swiftly arrived at a compromise. An air-to-air missile dropped from its undercarriage onto a rail, then shot up past the crest of the mountain. The heat-seeking rocket locked onto the fighter circling above the volcano.

“Crap!”

Geir saw the missile coming. Risking getting hit by the steam, he dived toward the caldera 2,000 feet below. The missile reversed course and plunged after him. The smell of sulfur, rising from the fuming crater, filled Geir’s nose and throat. Not since Judgment Day had he been so close to hell.

This had better work.

Just as he’d prayed, the heat pouring off the volcano acted as a decoy, much more appealing to the missile than his own insignificant signature. It veered away from Thunderbird to strike one of the venting craters below. The explosion rattled the caldera like a tremor, causing its gray-black andesite walls to crumble inward. Billowing gouts of smoke and fire made it look as though the mountain was erupting for real. Shattered rock opened up fresh fumaroles at the base of the crater, unleashing even larger discharges of scalding vapor.

A sizzling pillar of steam shot up directly in Geir’s path, forcing him to bank hard to the right to keep from flying right through it. Yet another plume jetted past the plane’s tail, missing it by only a few feet. He suddenly found himself flying an obstacle course made up of fire, smoke, and steam. Two close calls in as many minutes convinced him that the airspace above Mount Wrangell had suddenly become way too hot to handle.

So he accelerated away from the volcano, abandoning whatever safety it had provided. The P-51 Mustang flew north over tracks of densely wooded forest. Frozen lakes and rivers gleamed like mirrors beneath him, reflecting the shifting colors of the aurora. Forgotten logging roads, on the verge of being reclaimed by the wilderness, connected ghost towns and campsites.

Can’t complain about the scenery, he thought. Despite Skynet’s best efforts, it was still beautiful country to live in. Or die in.

Not at all unexpectedly, the HK instantly noted his departure and resumed its pursuit. It circled past one side of the volcano—taking the long way around the unpredictable caldera—before picking up Thunderbird’s trail. Geir sweated in the cockpit, and not just because of the steam bath he had left behind.

He was running out of tricks.

He undid his seatbelt. A fully-packed and prepared parachute was strapped to his back, just in case he needed to make a hasty exit. It would kill him to abandon Thunderbird after all his work restoring it, but he wasn’t an old-time sea captain. He wasn’t going down with his ship—not if he could avoid it.

The HK grew larger and larger in his rear-view mirror. He looked ahead of him, seeing nothing but mile after mile of wintry wilderness with no place to hide. As if to emphasize his plight, a rattle in the plane’s engine gave new cause for concern. Thunderbird was showing her age.

Aren’t we all, he thought.

Then again, it was starting to look like getting older wasn’t exactly something he needed to worry about. Maybe arthritis and rheumatism weren’t on the cards.

He adjusted his parachute, getting ready to bail out before the inevitable plasma blast, when, to his surprise, the Hunter-Killer dropped back in the mirror. Just as he was almost within range of its weapons, the HK paused in midair.

What the hell? Geir didn’t get it. At first, he thought he must be mistaken, that it was some sort of optical illusion, but as he watched the fearsome aircraft shrink behind him, he realized that his first impression had been correct. The HK had come to a definite halt. It didn’t change course, or try to outmaneuver him, but just hung there.

Not that I’m complaining, he thought, but what is it waiting for?

An urgent transmission reached the Hunter-Killer’s CPU, informing it that the supply train had encountered resistance. Something had prevented it from completing its run. Analysis indicated that human insurgents were attempting to divert valuable strategic minerals.

Immediate action was required.

The HK’s advanced neural network processed the data in an instant. It swiftly assessed the value of terminating the fleeing aircraft versus the need to defend the crashed train. It was a simple calculation. The primitive aircraft and its pilot posed a minimal threat. Its primary imperative was to safeguard the uranium required by Skynet for future operations.

PURSUIT OF ENEMY AIRCRAFT: CANCELLED.

It switched off its targeting lasers and reversed course.

Geir watched the HK zoom away. An overwhelming sense of relief was swiftly followed by the terrifying realization that he knew exactly where it was going.

After Molly and the others.

He glanced at his watch. 11:10. No way could the train robbers have made off with the uranium by now. They’d be sitting ducks for the HK’s plasma cannons.

There was only one thing to do.

Crap, he thought. I must be out of my mind....

He turned around and chased after the Hunter-Killer. Throwing caution to the north wind, he ignored the worrisome rattle coming from the Mustang’s failing engine and came up behind the HK, catching up with it before it even got back to the volcano. He switched on his landing lights, strobes, and nav lights in order to reclaim the machine’s attention. He activated the control panel’s built-in CD player and turned the volume up to the max. Wagner’s Die Walkure rocked the cockpit. The stirring music fitted his mood. His inner Viking surfaced.

“Don’t you turn your back on me,” he muttered over the blaring music. “We’re not done yet.”

He opened fire with the Gatling gun.

But still the HK ignored him, its cybernetic mind on more important matters. Thunderbird dipped beneath it, firing up at its vulnerable turbofans, while zig-zagging back and forth to evade the rear-mounted guns and cannons. The plane darted in and out, stinging and retreating like an angry wasp. Geir yanked the control stick back and forth, relying on his wits and reflexes, like a teenager fighting the toughest level of a particularly challenging computer game.

Only this game was for his own life, and the lives of the people he loved.

That gives me the edge, he thought. It has to!

A lucky shot sparked off the spinning blades of the HK’s starboard turbofan. It barely scratched the engine, but it did what it was supposed to: convince the machine that the annoying fighter plane constituted a legitimate threat, one that needed to be dealt with.

The machine rotated to face Thunderbird. Blinding floodlights bathed the interior of the plane’s cockpit with a harsh white radiance.

But Geir wasn’t ready to go into the light just yet. Thunderbird looped upward to get away. Steam hissed from its overhead engines. Plasma blasts seared the air behind it. The Mustang fled again for its life, but Geir knew it wasn’t going to get far.

End of the line, he realized. He popped the canopy, which went flying off into the sky. A freezing gust of wind invaded the cockpit. He heard the HK swooping in for the kill.

‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ hit its crescendo.

“Geronimo!”

Pushing against the gale, he threw the plane into a roll, flinging himself from the cockpit. At the last minute, his boot got stuck between the seat and the rail, but the fierce slipstream tore him loose. Gravity seized him and he plummeted toward the snowbound wilderness thousands of feet below. Freefall sent his heart racing. His aviator’s jacket, helmet, and scarf provided scant protection from the frigid wind that was biting into his bones. Forests, lakes, and mountains seemed to lunge toward him at a breath-stealing clip. It was a risky jump. There was a good chance that he’d break his neck or end up impaled on a treetop.

Not that he’d had much choice.

Above him, a plasma blast finally blew Thunderbird apart. A boom worthy of its name momentarily drowned out the wind rushing past as he fell. Chunks of burning debris rained down from the sky, chasing after the falling pilot, who raced them to the ground below. A pang stabbed him in the heart as the venerable fighter plane was lost forever. Unlike the fabled phoenix, Thunderbird would not be reborn from its ashes.

He held his breath, waiting to see if the HK would come after him next, but apparently the tiny figure had proved beneath its notice. Turning on its axis, it headed south once more—toward Molly and the bridge. He could only hope that he had delayed it long enough to make a difference. His fellow Resistance fighters were on their own now.

Give ‘em hell, chief.

All sense of falling vanished as he reached terminal velocity, roughly 120 miles per hour. He fought to maintain a stable arch position, his belly parallel to the earth, but vicious winter winds buffeted him, making it all but impossible to control his descent. He felt like a leaf being tossed about by a hurricane—or maybe an out-of- control Aerostat with a defective gyro.

Estimating his rate of fall, he waited until the HK was entirely out of sight.

Then he pulled the ripcord.

Even though he was expecting it, the chute’s deployment was a jolt. The canopy billowed above him, yanking him upward. His gloved hands tugged on the risers. He peered downward, trying to spot a safe drop zone somewhere in the forbidding wilderness. A homing beacon attached to the chute would help Molly and the others find him if he ended up breaking his leg or something, assuming he didn’t freeze to death first. Or get eaten by wolves.

Ebony shadows cloaked the forest, hiding its secrets. He searched in vain for an open clearing or meadow. A lake or pond even, if the ice wasn’t too thin. If his canopy got fouled in the upper branches of a tree, he was in for a beating, but maybe he wouldn’t smack into anything too hard.

I can do this, he thought. If I can survive fifteen years of Terminators, I’m not going to let a rough landing do me in. I still have a chance.

The flaming debris caught up with him. Red-hot shards of metal tore through the nylon canopy, shredding it to ribbons. A jagged fragment, twisted and charred beyond recognition, struck him in the leg. It burned and cut at the same time, digging deep into the muscle. He let out an agonized howl even as his controlled descent turned into a sheer terror dive.

This isn’t good.

Geir’s life passed before his eyes. He remembered fishing and hunting with his folks, back before Judgment Day. His father teaching him how to fly and—more importantly—how to land. Breaking out of that Skynet prison camp years ago. Hanging out with Doc and Sitka and the rest of the Resistance. Scoping out the Skynet Express. Ducking enemy fire as the Terminators chased them across the snow. Making love to Molly in their cabin in the hills....

Thirty-five years, he thought. Fifteen after Judgment Day. He had lasted a whole lot longer than most of the world. Not a bad score.

The trees rushed up to meet him.