Terminator Salvation: Trial by Fire

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

But the ropes themselves were sturdy enough, and the young Preston and his visiting friend had done a good job of anchoring the bridge to the banks. Despite Barnes’s misgivings, both men made it across.

Equally surprising was the fact there was nothing waiting on the other side. Either Skynet had mistakenly written off the bridge as impossible to cross, or else its resources were indeed down to Lajard, Valentine, Jik, and whatever Jik was in the process of salvaging from the two broken T-700s.

The sun had passed behind the mountains, and the sky was rapidly headed toward dusk, when Barnes and Preston reached Bear Commons.

“Hell,” Preston murmured as they crouched behind a thick fallen tree trunk at the edge of the clearing. “I thought this was going a little too easy.”

Barnes nodded silently. In the middle of the clearing—the exact geometrical center, if he knew Skynet—was a small cabin, similar to some of the houses he’d seen in Baker’s Hollow, except that this one was constructed of slabs of metal instead of wood or brick. Above the clearing, strung across the empty space, was a thick camo netting that, as near as Barnes could tell, was a perfect match for the contours and coloration of the ring of fifty-meter-tall trees supporting it.

And squatting silently on the ground at the far side of the clearing, like a dragon guarding its hoard, was the dark metal bulk of an H-K.

“What now?” Preston asked.

“Give me a second,” Barnes growled, eyeing the H-K. He’d been hoping that Skynet’s bungled attempt to get hold of their Blackhawk the previous night had left it without any more aircraft in the area. He should have known it would be careful enough to keep at least one heavy fighting machine in reserve.

And that lack of foresight was going to cost him and Williams.

Especially Williams.

Preston was obviously thinking the same thing.

“How fast can Skynet get that H-K into the air?” he asked.

“Fast enough.” More than fast enough, actually. Even from a cold start, if Skynet kicked in the H-K’s ignition ramp-up as soon as it picked up the noise of the Blackhawk’s engines, it could probably be in the air well before Williams arrived.

Unless he and Preston could keep it from leaving the clearing in the first place.

Barnes frowned up at the camo netting. The mesh was laid out across a loose crosshatch of cables that looked capable of being pulled out and back along two thicker cables running along the north and south ends of the clearing. Another pair of cables, thinner than the support lines, snaked down one of the trees on either end and ran along the ground to the cabin in the center.

Which implied that either the control or the power for retracting the netting was inside the cabin. And from the sheer size of the netting and its support cables, not to mention the way it was bending in the treetops it was connected to, the covering had to be both strong and heavy.

Strong enough and heavy enough to trap the H-K inside the clearing? Maybe. Especially since the things weren’t designed to fire upward.

It was worth a try.

“We’re going to make for the cabin,” he told Preston. “There should be extra guns and ammo there, plus the controls to the netting.” He looked sideways at Preston, the face of Preston’s daughter suddenly flashing to mind. “On second thoughts, maybe you’d better stay here,” he amended. “I can do this myself.”

“We do it together,” Preston said firmly. Maybe he was thinking of his daughter, too. “Though we might want to angle a little to the right so the cabin will be between us and the H-K.”

“Way ahead of you,” Barnes assured him. “Follow me. Quietly.”

Keeping an eye on the H-K, Barnes circled around the end of the log and headed toward a gap between trees that should bring them into the clearing at the right spot. He stepped over a mass of brittle-looking dead branches, passed one final clump of bushes—

The swiveling of the H-K’s main guns was his only warning.

“Down!” he snapped, throwing himself forward onto the ground.

Just as the thunder of the H-K’s Gatling guns shattered the evening calm, stitching a line of death above his head.

Barnes was on his feet again even before the burst ended, hunched over and clutching his minigun to his stomach as he made a desperate sprint for the cabin’s gunfire shadow. A second burst hammered through the air at him, and he winced as a sudden slash of pain ripped across his left shoulder. Once again he threw himself forward.

And as he hit the ground he saw that he’d made it. The H-K’s Gatlings were now out of view behind the near corner of the cabin.

Or at least they would be until Skynet revved up the engines and got the damn thing into the air. Even with the canopy closed, there was more than enough room in here for the aircraft to hunt down a couple of human targets.

There was a flicker of movement at the corner of his eye, and Barnes looked over to see Preston heading for the cabin. Heaving himself to his feet, Barnes followed.

They were nearly there, and Barnes was looking for where to aim his thirty rounds in order to blast open the wall, when there was another thunder of Gatling gun fire.

And without warning, the wall they were heading for exploded violently outward.

Barnes found himself once again on the ground, this time without any conscious memory of how he’d gotten there. Preston was beside him, his face turned upward, his eyes closed, the right side of his head wet with blood.

“Preston!” Barnes shouted over the roar of the H-K’s guns as they continued to rip into the cabin.

There was no answer. Crawling on elbows and knees, Barnes worked his way to the other’s side.

“Preston?”

For a moment there was nothing. Then, the man’s eyes fluttered open, narrowing again as the pain from his head wound came jarring back.

“What happened?”

“Skynet’s decided it really, really wants us,” Barnes ground out, throwing a look at the cabin.

Or rather, what was left of the cabin. The entire top half had been shattered, its metal walls turned into shards and splinters by the gunfire still raking systematically across it. Only the lower meter or so of the four walls were still intact.

Cautiously, Barnes eased up enough to sneak a look into the shell that had once been a structure. Sitting on the floor just below the demolished section of the far wall were a pair of generators.

He craned his neck to look skyward. High above the clearing, the canopy was starting to retract.

Snarling under his breath, Barnes rolled up onto his knees and brought the minigun up into firing position. He had maybe five seconds to put the generators out of commission before the canopy opened far enough to let the H-K escape into the darkening sky. He pointed the minigun into the demolished cabin—

“No!” Preston said, grabbing at his arm and pointing toward the edge of the clearing near the H-K. “There. Shoot over there.”

Barnes frowned as he searched that section of forest with his eyes. Had Jik arrived? But he couldn’t see anything.

“That one—right there,” Preston persisted.

Barnes frowned harder. There was nothing there except—

Swinging the minigun around, aiming carefully, he squeezed off his last thirty rounds in a half-second of blistering fire.

And with a crackling groan, the tree whose lower trunk the hail of lead had disintegrated toppled ponderously over and landed with a deafening crash.

Squarely across the top of the H-K.

The echoes faded away, and a new silence filled the clearing. Cautiously, Barnes lifted his head.

The tree’s impact had crushed the entire top of the H-K, burying the machine’s nose in the ground and jamming the muzzles of its Gatling guns deep into the dirt.

“Nice call,” he said, turning back to Preston. “How’s the head?”

“I’m okay,” Preston said, looking a little shaky as he got to his feet. “What now?”

“We get some fresh firepower,” Barnes said, sniffing the air as he dropped the empty minigun on the ground. Now that the stink of the Gatling rounds’ propellant was dissipating he could smell the equally pungent aroma of aviation fuel. The falling tree must have ruptured the H-K’s fuel tank. Glancing around the clearing, he got up and went over to the wreckage of the cabin.

The equipment inside had indeed included a set of the T-700s’ preferred G11 submachineguns. Unfortunately, the weapons had been racked or wall-mounted in the upper part of the cabin—which had just been obliterated by the H-K’s firestorm. Barnes could see several of the weapons lying amid the debris, all of them badly damaged. He climbed up onto the broken wall and dropped over to the other side.

And jerked in surprise as his feet landed with an audible splash.

“What was that?” Preston asked, coming up and peering over the wall.

“Aviation fuel,” Barnes said, wrinkling his nose. So it wasn’t the H-K that was leaking, but the reserve tank he could now see peeking out from beneath a broken slab of metal along one of the other walls. “Stay there—if I find something in decent shape I’ll pass it to you.”

But, to his frustration, nearly every gun he spotted had been damaged beyond safe use. Midway through the search he found a single functional weapon, but everything else was useless.

He’d seen plenty of Terminators wreck their own G11s rather than let them fall into Resistance hands. Clearly, H-Ks were even better at it than T-700s were.

“Come on, come on,” Preston urged, his voice low and strained. “Jik could be here any time now.”

“I’m hurrying, I’m hurrying,” Barnes responded. Across the cabin, beneath a section of broken ceiling, was what looked like an operating table with a collection of surgical gear scattered around it. Sloshing through the pool of aviation fuel, he crossed over to it and crouched down to look beneath the broken ceiling.

And felt his whole body go rigid. It was an operating table, all right. And lying half buried beneath it...

“Anything?” Preston asked.

“No,” Barnes said quickly. Too quickly, but Preston didn’t know him well enough to catch it. Straightening up, he headed back to where the older man was waiting. “Here,” he said, handing Preston the G11. “I’ll see if I can find some more ammo—”

“Barnes?” a voice called from across the clearing.

Barnes spun around, snatching back the G11 and turning it in the direction of the voice.

“Jik?”

“The name’s Connor,” Jik said sternly.

“Whatever,” Barnes said, eyes straining to pierce the gloom. “Welcome home. You like what we’ve done with the place?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jik said. “I’ve never been here before in my life.”

“You’ve just forgotten,” Barnes said. “Come have a look. Maybe it’ll come back to you.”

“What are you doing?” Preston asked quietly. “Shouldn’t we find some cover?”

“Don’t worry, he’s not armed,” Barnes murmured back. “If he had a gun he’d be shooting, not talking.”

“So why are we talking?”

“Because I can’t shoot what I can’t see,” Barnes growled. “And because there’s a chance we can break Skynet’s programming.”

“Don’t give me that,” Jik admonished him. “It’s a trick. I told you I’ve never been here.”

“Sure you have,” Barnes said. He took a couple of steps farther into the cabin and pointed to the operating table. “Here—right here—is where you were created.”

“You’re insane,” Jik bit out. “My name is John Connor. I was born in—”

“You’re a Terminator hybrid that’s been code-named Jik,” Barnes interrupted him. “Right here is where your memories were loaded into your brain chip and your voice was changed to match Connor’s.”

There was a pause.

“My voice was changed?” Jik asked, his tone suddenly odd.

“Of course,” Barnes said. “Everyone on the continent with a radio knows what Connor sounds like. Skynet had to do some work before it could send you out to play.”

“You’re talking about throat surgery,” Jik said tightly. “And a pain in... I thought a tree branch had hit my throat. I remember a tree branch hitting it.”

“Another false memory,” Barnes told him, feeling a stirring of hope. It was working. It was actually working. “I can see what’s left of a big transmitter in here, too. This is where your little radio was sending to. Probably where all your future messages were going to go out of, as well. Come take a look—”

“Behind you!” Preston snapped.

With a curse, Barnes spun around. The oldest trick in the book, and he’d been so focused on breaking Jik’s programming that he’d nearly fallen for it.

Not that the T-700 crossing the clearing toward them was breaking any speed records. It was limping badly, its left leg dragging through the leaves and undergrowth. The rest of its body wasn’t in much better shape, with large dents at its shoulders and hips, and one arm twisted visibly off.

Still, it was a Terminator, and it was targeting them, and it needed to be dealt with. Lowering the muzzle of his G11, Barnes fired a short burst into the machine’s left knee.

With a screech of shattered metal, the knee disintegrated, sending the T-700 tumbling to the ground.

“Barnes—” Preston snapped.

“I know,” Barnes said, turning around again. Across the clearing, Jik had broken concealment and was sprinting toward them, Williams’s Mossberg gripped in its hands, its face and body torn and bloodied.

Barnes grinned humorlessly. So Jik did have a weapon. Unfortunately for him, it was a big clearing, and shotguns didn’t have nearly the range of rifles or even handguns. Hence the T-700’s distraction, and Jik’s own suicidal dash across open ground to try to get into range.

And it had nearly worked. Another ten paces, and the shotgun might do some actual damage.

Barnes let him get three of those paces, then put a three-round burst squarely into his torso.

The Theta staggered back with the impact, the rounds ripping clothing and flesh and ricocheting off the metal torso beneath. Before Barnes could line up for another burst, Jik reversed direction, turning and sprinting across the edge of the clearing and disappearing again into the darkening woods.

“Watch it—the other one’s still coming,” Preston warned.

Barnes looked back at the T-700. With half of its left leg gone, the machine had been reduced to crawling, its skeletal hands gripping the grass as it pulled itself toward them.

“What do we do?” Preston asked.

Barnes looked back to where Jik had again gone to ground. The forest, especially at night, was no place to play hide-and-seek with a Terminator. Even one armed only with a relatively short-range shotgun.

But hanging around a wide-open area with a semifunctional T-700 crawling around wasn’t any better.

“We find ourselves some cover,” he replied, climbing back over the wall out of the cabin. “You know of any defensible places nearby?”

“I don’t know,” Preston said. “That’s not something we usually think about.”

“Then it’s time you started,” Barnes said grimly. “Let’s go take a look.”

The conversation between the helicopter and the woods went back and forth, back and forth. Blair continued to probe for information from behind a tree across the clearing, while Lajard crouched out of sight beneath the control board and bragged about how clever he and Skynet had been.

Through it all, Hope stood silently behind her own chosen tree, her hands gripping her bow and her nocked arrow, her heart thudding with anticipation and dread.

Her soul aching as it never had before.

She, Hope Preston, was about to shoot another human being.

Not accidentally, the way beginner hunters sometimes did. This wouldn’t be any accident, a careless slip of the finger. It would be deliberate, direct, and premeditated.

It would be like murder.

They’re not human, she tried to remind herself, as she’d been trying ever since Blair first suggested this plan. Not anymore. They’re machines. They’re Terminators.

But no matter how many times she said it, she knew it wasn’t true. Not completely.

Because they were human. Real, living, thinking people. People Hope had lived with for three long months. She’d hunted with them, eaten with them, laughed with them. Once, six weeks ago when whooping cough had taken two of the town’s children, she’d cried with them.

And now, she was going to shoot one of them. Maybe both of them.

Even worse, she was going to shoot them from behind.

And then, without warning, a sudden gunshot shattered the calm.

She jumped, her body twitching so hard that it jerked the arrow off the bowstring. Had Blair given up on her and decided to take matters into her own hands?

Hastily, Hope nocked the arrow into place again. Carefully, tensely, she looked around the side of her tree.

She was still trying to figure it out when a second shot hammered into her ears.

Only this time she spotted the flash from across the clearing and caught a glimpse of sparks as Blair’s shot ricocheted off the helicopter’s roof, beside the shaft that connected the helicopter to the big overhead rotor.

Blair wasn’t even shooting at Lajard and Susan. Was she trying to wreck the helicopter?

And then, she got it. Blair was only pretending to shoot at the rotor, pretending that she’d given up hope of taking the aircraft back.

She was trying to lure the others into a counterattack. An attack that would turn Susan’s attention toward Blair, and her back toward Hope.

With a conscious effort, Hope relaxed her clenched teeth. It had to be done. Drawing back the bowstring, she waited.

A third shot caromed off the roof... and with that, Susan finally rose from the pilot’s seat and stepped past Lajard’s half-concealed form to the far side of the cockpit. Taking hold of the door-mounted machine gun, she swung it toward Blair’s position.

And as Hope’s eyes blurred with sudden tears, she sent her arrow flying into the back of her friend’s head.

She had expected a gasp, or a scream, or at the very least a violent spasm in response. But there was nothing. Susan’s head snapped forward with the impact, but she made no sound. She regained her balance and again took hold of the machinegun.

Blinking back her tears, Hope drew another arrow from her quiver and set it into the bowstring. Maybe she’d missed the spot.

Or maybe Blair had been wrong about there being a vulnerable point there. In that case, Blair was already dead.

So, probably, was Hope.

And then, Susan froze.

Hope stared at the woman’s back, her heart pounding even harder as she drew back the bowstring. Slowly, Susan turned around, and even in the fading light Hope could see the pain, confusion, and disbelief on her face.

And with a huffing gasp that Hope could hear all the way across the clearing, the woman stepped away from the gun and bent over, her hands jabbing into the space beneath the control board like a pair of striking rattlesnakes. There was a strangled gasp, and she straightened up, hauling Lajard up out of his hiding place by his upper arms.

“No!” Lajard gasped. His grabbed at her wrists, trying to pry her hands away.

But those were Terminator hands, and no mere human had a prayer of breaking their hold. Lajard tried to pull back, then tried to rock or squirm his way out of her grip. None of it worked.

“No,” he snarled. “Valentine—listen to me. Attack Williams, not me. Williams, not me.”

“No,” Susan breathed, her voice dark and husky. “Traitor.” Still holding onto his arm with her left hand, she let go with her right and shifted her grip to his throat. “Traitor!”

Through the far door, Hope saw Blair emerge from cover and run toward the helicopter, her gun ready in her hand.

“Traitor?” Lajard echoed. He jabbed his finger against Susan’s chest. “Fool.” He raised his voice. “You like kill switches, Williams? Try this one. Dies irae.”

Abruptly, Susan’s shoulders sagged, her hands slipping from Lajard’s arm and throat and dropping like broken tree branches to her sides. Her mouth dropped open and she gave a strangled gasp.

Contemptuously, Lajard turned away from her, swiveling toward Blair. His right hand darted under his jacket and emerged with a small pistol. Blair skidded to a halt, snapping up her gun toward him.

Frantically, Hope pulled back on the bowstring, knowing full well that her arrow would never make it to Lajard’s back in time. The two guns were nearly homed in on their respective targets, and in less than a heartbeat Blair or Lajard—or both of them—would be dead.

And then, the thundercrack of a shot boomed across the clearing. Not from Lajard or Blair, but from somewhere to Hope’s right.

The impact slammed Lajard into Susan, his head exploding with blood that sprayed across her face and onto the rear cockpit wall. He bounced off her immobile body even as Hope’s arrow belatedly dug itself into his back. His knees gave way, and he fell to the deck.

Shaking like a windblown leaf, Hope stepped from her hiding place and peered across the clearing.

Halverson was limping toward them, his face rigid with pain, his shirt wet with perspiration, his rifle still pressed to his shoulder. His gaze flicked to Hope, then to Blair, then back to the helicopter.

“You two okay?” he called gruffly.

“Yes,” Blair said for both of them as she climbed up into the cockpit. Crouching over Lajard, she twisted the pistol out of his hand.

She was peering down at the body when Susan gave a long, hissing sigh and collapsed.

Blair was saying something about staying back as Hope raced to the helicopter. Hope ignored her, brushing past and dropping onto her knees at Susan’s side.

“Susan?” she called, wincing at her friend’s blood-spattered face and her closed eyes. “Can you hear me? Susan, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Shh,” Susan murmured, her eyes flicking half open. “I’m the one who’s sorry, not you. I’m the one... I didn’t want to hurt you, Hope. I never wanted to hurt you. But I couldn’t... I couldn’t.”

“But you did,” Hope assured her, her throat aching. “You broke Skynet’s programming. You stopped him.”

Susan shook her head wearily.

“You stopped him, Hope. Not me. You stopped him with this.” She started to reach for the broken arrow shaft still embedded in the back of her head.

Her hand never got there. It flopped weakly back down onto the deck and lay still.

She was gone.

For a long minute Hope just knelt there, gripping the woman’s hand, memories swirling through her mind like the bittersweet smoke from a cooking fire. Behind her, she could hear Blair and Halverson murmuring together, but she had no attention to spare for whatever they were talking about. Hope’s friend was dead.

She had killed her.

“Hope?” Blair murmured quietly. “We have to go.”

Hope tried to blink away her tears. She couldn’t.

“Can we—we can bury them, can’t we?” she asked, her voice shaking. “We have to bury them.”

“We will,” Blair promised. “But not now. Your father’s in danger.”

And with that, all the pain and sorrow abruptly flowed back into the far corners of Hope’s mind, still there but no longer overwhelming her. Her father was in trouble. The grief and guilt would have to wait.

“Where?” she said.

“Bear Commons,” Halverson replied. He had hold of Lajard’s arms and was dragging him out of the helicopter, his face contorted with pain and determination. “We think that’s where Skynet’s base is.”

“Go over there,” Blair ordered, pointing Hope across the cockpit toward the door-mounted gun on the helicopter’s right-hand side. “There’s a safety harness attached to the wall. Strap yourself in.”

Hope stood up, forcing herself not to look back as Blair dealt with Susan’s body. She hadn’t noticed before just how big and fearsome the gun looked. Especially up close.

The gun that Susan had been preparing to use when Hope shot her in the back.

But she wouldn’t think about that. Not right now.

Backing into the safety harness, she began fastening it around her.