Terminator Salvation: Trial by Fire

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The first T-700 had nearly made it through to the surface now, and for a brief moment Kyle allowed himself the hope that the rest of the machines might have been buried so deeply underground that they wouldn’t be able to claw their way out. That would leave just a single T-700 for them to face. Surely Connor’s guards could stop a single T-700?

But then the machine reached the surface and stepped to the side, and Kyle’s heart sank as he saw a second skeletal metal hand reach up from underground.

There were more of them down there, ready to come up and kill. Maybe even the entire tunneling contingent.

He looked at the medical recovery tent behind them. One of Connor’s guards had a whistle to his mouth, and through the ringing that the underground explosion had left in his ears Kyle could faintly hear the frantic screech of the emergency code signal. Two more seconds, he knew, and everyone within hearing range would come running.

But it was a useless gesture, because there wasn’t anyone out there. Not at this hour. Not close and well-armed enough. The only thing that stood between Connor and the Terminators were Connor’s guards and their weapons, and Kyle and his shotgun.

And in that frozen second, as Kyle turned back to the Terminator standing in the fading daylight, he knew what he had to do.

He took off in a dead run, his shotgun gripped across his chest. The weapon still had three shots, and he would make sure he used those shots to their best advantage.

Something brushed his sleeve. He turned, and found Callahan and Zac running alongside him. Callahan’s mouth moved, and even though Kyle’s ears were still too paralyzed to hear the other’s words, his lip movements were easy enough to read: What are you doing?

“Blocking that hole,” Kyle shouted back. He waved his shotgun. “Get back!”

Callahan’s gaze turned to the Terminators, and out of the corner of his eye Kyle saw his face harden.

He’d figured it out. Kyle couldn’t hope to stop even one Terminator with his shotgun, not with its remaining three shells, not even at point-blank range. The one, single chance any of them had of slowing down the deadly invasion—

“Go on, get back!” Kyle shouted.

Callahan didn’t bother to answer. He turned and said something to Zac, and Kyle saw the younger teen shake his head.

“Zac!” Kyle shouted. “Get back.”

And then, to Kyle’s chagrin, Callahan put on a burst of speed, pulling ahead as he charged the Terminators.

“Callahan!” Kyle shouted.

But it was no use. Callahan was bigger, older, and faster... and as he’d been willing to sacrifice himself earlier, he was now determined to take this mission on himself.

Kyle clenched his teeth. Fine. If Callahan wanted to get himself killed, Kyle couldn’t stop him.

But even if Callahan managed to jump on the half-emerged Terminator, any hope of pinning it down would last only as long as it took the first T-700 to pick him up and toss him off.

Maybe Kyle could do something about that.

He would use two of his remaining shells on the Terminator’s arms. Then he would throw himself at full speed against the machine’s torso, with luck knocking it over onto its back. If he was still alive at that point, he would fire his final shell up under the Terminator’s chin, in the direction of its braincase. Maybe a pellet or two would get through the metal and damage one or more of the motor control lines leading to the machine’s limbs.

Callahan was a good five paces out in front now, and flicking his eyes to the side Kyle saw that Zac was also starting to pull ahead.

And, to his surprise, Kyle felt a grim smile crease his lips.

There had been times, back in Los Angeles, when he’d wondered about this far-away Resistance he’d heard so much about. He’d wondered whether he and Star would ever link up with it, and if they did if it would be worth his allegiance.

Now he knew. If Connor and the others could inspire men like Callahan and Zac to make the ultimate sacrifice, this Resistance was indeed worth Kyle’s allegiance.

His allegiance, and his life.

The T-700’s red eyes glittered as it contemplated the three reckless humans bearing down on it. At least it wasn’t armed, Kyle thought with an odd sort of emotional detachment. That was something, anyway. His thoughts flicked to Star, and he wished briefly that he’d had a chance to say good-bye to her. But the others would take care of her, he knew now. The Resistance took care of its own.

And then, five meters in front of him, Callahan suddenly slowed, his head turning up and sideways. He snapped his arms out to both sides.

Kyle was just starting to wonder if Callahan’s courage and determination had somehow failed him when the T-700 standing in front of them abruptly disintegrated in a burst of dimly heard automatic gunfire.

Kyle twisted his head around. There, swooping in on them like an avenging angel, was a Resistance helicopter, its door-mounted machineguns blazing away as it spat destruction at the two Terminators.

A second later, Kyle stumbled into Callahan’s outstretched arm. A second after that, he found that same arm wrapped around his shoulders as Callahan gripped the two of them, Kyle on one side, Zac on the other, with the released tension of a man who has just faced certain death and then had that doom snatched from him.

Kyle had cheated death too many times, him and Star, to go all sentimental that way. Still, his knees were suddenly feeling a little weak. Probably because he hadn’t had anything much to eat since breakfast.

The chopper set down near the demolished Terminators. A half-dozen men armed with heavy weapons jumped out and headed to the machines’ rat hole to see what else might be lurking down there.

And waiting behind them in the chopper, her face bright with relief, was Star. She raised her hand toward Kyle and the others and waved.

Kyle waved back... and as he did so, the tension of the day started to fade away, leaving only fatigue, hunger and thirst.

But that was all right. Because they’d made it through, and John Connor was safe.

And all was finally right with the world.

* * *

The area around Bear Commons wasn’t the best battlefield position Barnes had ever seen. Even so, there were a good half-dozen places in and around the clearing’s rim that should work well enough as defensible positions.

Skynet had other ideas. Barnes and Preston had just reached a big rock outcropping right at the edge of the clearing, when Preston spotted the broken T-700 dragging itself determinedly through the grass toward them. They stumbled from behind the rock to a wide tree trunk, only to have the Terminator change direction and again launch itself into a slow-motion charge.

Three moves later, the damn thing was still chasing them.

It would be easy enough to simply blow the machine back into its component parts and be done with it. Barnes had no doubt that Skynet was hoping he would do exactly that.

But Barnes knew better than to give in to that temptation. They had Barnes’s rifle and the Terminator G11, with only around forty-five rounds left between the two weapons. Barnes had no intention of spending any more of them on a T-700 that was already half broken and of no serious threat. Not with Jik still skulking around somewhere out there in the woods.

Barnes frowned into the gathering darkness. Back when they were by the wrecked cabin and had been distracted by the T-700’s attempted sneak attack, Jik had tried one of his own, running toward them across the clearing. He’d backed off when his ploy failed, but the fact remained that Skynet had sent him into enemy fire without hesitation.

And why not? He was a Theta, very tough, very hard to kill. He’d already taken on Halverson’s hunting force, after all, and killed all of them.

So why was he still hanging back instead of going on the offensive? Had Skynet actually calculated that Barnes could take him out with forty-five rounds before he could kill the two of them?

Or could something have happened that had suddenly made Jik’s survival more important than it had been earlier?

That question was obviously on Preston’s mind, too.

“You think he went back to where he killed everyone to look for a better weapon?” he murmured.

Barnes shook his head. “If there’d been any working guns back there, he would already have them.”

“What about bows?” Preston countered. “Maybe he went back to get one of those.”

Barnes grimaced. That one hadn’t even occurred to him.

“Yeah, good point,” Barnes grunted. “Well, whatever he’s got, my guess is that he’s waiting for full dark. You’re the expert hunter—how close could he get to us without us hearing him?”

“Probably not too close,” Preston said. “But if he’s got a bow and some arrows, he can probably get close enough.”

And then, faintly in the distance, Barnes heard a familiar sound.

“We may not have to find out the hard way,” he said. “Hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“That,” Barnes said, nodding his head to the southeast and the sound of a Blackhawk’s rotors. “That’s Williams in our chopper.”

“It may be your chopper,” Preston said ominously. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean Williams is the one flying it.”

Barnes scowled, a flicker of doubt darkening his new confidence. Could Preston be right? Could that be Lajard and Valentine in there, coming in to pick up Jik and head off on whatever new killing spree Skynet had planned?

The moment passed. Williams had gone to get the chopper, and she was better than that.

“Don’t worry, it’s her,” he assured Preston, looking upward at the camouflage canopy. It had been starting to open before the H-K wrecked the cabin, but it was still mostly in place above the clearing. “The big question is whether she’s going to be able to find us.”

“Yes,” Preston said thoughtfully. “You suppose that thing’s flammable?”

“No idea.”

“Let’s find out. You still have any of that aviation fuel on your boots?”

Barnes reached down and touched his boot.

“Maybe a little.”

“Give me a piece,” Preston ordered, slipping the bow he’d taken from Halverson off his shoulder.

Barnes pulled out his knife.

“How big?”

“The biggest you can get without cutting off any toes.”

Barnes nodded and set to work. A few seconds later, he had freed most of the upper toe section.

“Got it.”

“Stick it on here.” Preston handed Barnes one of his arrows and dug into his pocket. “Run it down to just below the arrowhead.”

Barnes did so. Preston took the arrow back and handed him a small object.

“My lighter,” he identified it as he set the arrow into the bowstring and drew it back until the wet leather was almost touching the fingers of his bow hand. “Gasoline fueled, so watch out for your fingers.”

Barnes wasn’t expecting much of the aviation fuel to still be left in the leather. He was wrong. At the first touch of the lighter’s fire the piece of leather blazed into bright blue-yellow flame.

Preston angled the bow upward.

“I’ve always wanted to do this,” he murmured, and let it fly.

The arrow shot up, tracing a flaming arc up toward the camo netting. It hit, jamming itself into the mesh.

For a long moment nothing happened. The fire smoldered and faltered, looking on the verge of going out. Then the fire began to gain new life. It caught, brightened—

And abruptly roared back to life, burning and spreading across the net. A minute later, the whole circle was ablaze, the flickering flames lighting up the clearing below.

“Perfect,” Barnes said, picking up the G11 and returning his attention to the forest around them. “If she doesn’t see that, she’s gone blind and stupid.”

“Now what?” Preston asked.

“We wait for her to get here,” Barnes said grimly. “And we expect Skynet to make one last shot at taking us down before she does.”

Blair had the Blackhawk in the air when she spotted the first glimmer of light amid the forest gloom. Frowning, she started to turn to Halverson, strapped in at the portside M240, to ask what it might be.

And then, abruptly, the glow flared and spread out. By the time the Blackhawk reached the river, it had become a complete circle of blazing fire.

“That’s the place!” she heard Halverson shout over the wind buffeting her through the broken windshield. “That’s Bear Commons.”

Mentally, Blair threw Barnes a salute. “Get ready!” she shouted. “Hope?”

“I’m ready,” the girl at the starboard gun called.

Blair pitched the Blackhawk forward, sending the aircraft racing toward the circle of flame. Hope might say she was ready, but Blair knew better. She’d seen the look on the girl’s face after what had happened with Valentine and Lajard, and she was anything but ready to do that again.

Blair could hardly blame her. Shooting red-eyed metal Terminators was one thing. Shooting Terminators with human faces looking back at you was something else entirely.

They were nearly to the fiery circle now. Barnes and Preston were somewhere down there, Blair knew, hopefully still alive. Jik, another Terminator with a human face, would also be down there.

Blair would have to make sure that, when the time came to open fire, Jik was on Halverson’s side of the Blackhawk.

The fire was fading as Blair eased them into a hover directly above it. Much of the camo mesh itself had already burned away, revealing a network of slender cables anchoring the mesh to the treetops around the edge of the clearing.

“What now?” Halverson called.

Blair settled her hands on the controls.

“Hang on,” she advised.

Shoving the throttle forward, she sent the helo into a stomach-lurching drop straight onto the mesh.

Open-area camouflage nets were designed to support their own weight, the additional pressure of an occasional curious bird, and very little else. The mesh held the helo’s weight for maybe half a second before collapsing in a flurry of displaced sparks and snapped treetops. Blair was ready, hauling back on the throttle to kill the Blackhawk’s drop and bring it back up to treetop height again.

“Look sharp,” she shouted as she set the helo into a slow clockwise rotation around its vertical axis. “They’re down there somewhere. So’s Jik.”

“There!” Halverson snapped. “That clump of birch trees. I can see someone.”

Blair craned her neck, angling the helo a bit so that she could look past Halverson out the portside door. But the fading fire wasn’t bright enough to give any clear light to the edges of the clearing.

Paradoxically, it was bright enough to throw flickering shadows across the ground, adding that much more visual confusion to the gloom already filling the forest.

“I don’t see anyone,” she called.

“He’s there,” Halverson insisted. “Crouching behind those birches.”

“Was it my father?” Hope called from the other side of the Blackhawk.

“I couldn’t tell,” Halverson said with an edge of impatience. “I need to get closer.”

Unfortunately, that was exactly what they couldn’t do right now. Like all Resistance helos tasked with hunting ground-based Terminators, the Blackhawk had a heavily armored underside. Hovering here at treetop height, they were reasonably safe from anything Jik could be waiting to shoot at them.

But once they headed down, all bets would be off. The main cockpit skin was much thinner and more susceptible to weapons fire, and Blair didn’t have even the modest protection of a windshield anymore. A single shot into her head, and all three of them would die.

“We can’t get closer,” she told Halverson. “Not until we know who that is.”

“How the hell do you expect me to figure that out from way up here?”

And then, almost as if on cue, there was a fresh flicker of fire from below them. Not from the birch trees Halverson had indicated, but from halfway across the clearing. The flame faltered a little, shifted position slightly—

And then flashed across the clearing to impale itself chest-high against the trunk of a big tree a couple of meters away from the birches.

“That’s a fire arrow!” Halverson shouted, a note of triumph in his voice. “That’s Preston—he’s marked Jik for us!”

“Can you see him?” Blair called. “Can you see that it’s Jik?”

“He’s there—he’s right there,” Halverson confirmed excitedly. “But I can’t—damn it, I can’t swing this thing far enough around.”

“Hang on,” Blair ordered, slowing the helo’s clockwise rotation and starting it turning back the other direction. “And don’t lose him.”

Suddenly, without warning, a burst of fire from the forest on the other side of the clearing shot across toward them. Reflexively, Barnes ducked—

And with a sharp thunk a flaming arrow buried its tip in a big tree two meters to Barnes’s right.

Preston gasped, dropping lower as a shower of sparks rained down.

“What the—? Barnes?”

For a fraction of a second Barnes just stared at the burning arrow. What the hell was Jik up to?

Tearing his eyes away from the fire, he looked upward.

The chopper, which had been slowly turning as Williams searched for a target, had come to a stop. He watched, with a surge of horror, as it started turning the other direction.

Moving around to bring its portside M240 into range.

“He’s suckering them,” he growled. “Jik saw you light the camo net with a fire arrow, figured we might be smart enough to try marking his position with another one, and decided to get there first.”

“How could we mark him?” Preston said, his voice bewildered. “We don’t even know where he is.”

“We do now,” Barnes said, looking across the clearing to where the arrow had come from. In the fading light from the smoldering camo net, he could just make out a figure standing motionless beside one of the bigger trees.

“Shoot him,” Preston urged. “Come on, shoot. That’ll show Blair who we are.”

Barnes sighed. Only it wouldn’t show Williams anything of the sort. If things had been reversed, if it had been Preston who marked Jik’s position with a flaming arrow, the Theta would certainly respond by opening fire toward his attackers with whatever weapons he had.

Williams would know that. Rather than getting her to hold her fire, an attack on Jik now would simply get her shooting at him and Preston that much faster.

He looked up again, his mind whirring as he tried to figure out a plan. The chopper was too high for Williams to be able to distinguish either of their faces well enough for a positive ID. Ditto for their clothing, Preston’s bow, or anything else they had with them.

Their only hope was to find cover.

Only there wasn’t any. Not from a machinegun firing from above.

“Barnes,” Preston said, the name a sigh of resignation.

Barnes squeezed his hand around the grip of the G11. The chopper was nearly to firing position now. Five more seconds, maybe six, and they would be dead.

He had exactly that long to come up with some way to stop Williams. Any way that he could.

“Almost there,” Halverson called tensely. “Come on, come on.”

“Easy,” Blair said, frowning out the side door as the Blackhawk continued to turn back toward firing position. She could see the figure down there now, just visible in the flickering light from Preston’s fire arrow. He was standing still, possibly hoping the hunters wouldn’t spot him. There was a flicker of movement a meter to his side—

“Hold it,” Blair said, leaning toward the door. Was that a second figure hunkered down in the bushes? “I see someone else.”

“Oh, damn,” Halverson snarled. “I knew it. He got one of the T-700s working. Come on, come on—we’re almost there.”

Blair bit hard at her lip. Yes, that could indeed be a T-700 down there. It could also be a T-600, or even another Theta they hadn’t yet accounted for.

It could also be a human being.

But it had to have been Preston who had fired that arrow. Preston had a bow, and there was no reason she could think of why Jik would have bothered to pick one up.

And if that was Jik down there, he had every reason to position his reconstructed T-700 under just enough cover to masquerade as another person in hopes of throwing Blair off track.

She huffed out a breath. It wasn’t perfect, but it made more sense than any other theory.

And until and unless she got some solid reason to think otherwise, she would just have to go with it.

* * *

“We’re going to die, aren’t we?” Preston murmured. “They’re going to shoot us down, and we’re going to die.”

And then, with the chopper nearly to firing position, Barnes suddenly had the answer.

Maybe. Maybe the whole thing was complete insanity that would do nothing but get them killed a little faster.

But it was all he had.

“Here,” he said, shoving the G11 into Preston’s hands. Taking a deep breath, he left his partial concealment and stepped directly in front of the burning arrow.

And standing straight and tall, he threw his arms out to both sides.

“You want to stop me?” he murmured toward the sky, the way he’d snarled at Blair last night from outside the chopper. “Shoot me.”

And as Halverson swung the M240 onto his target, the vague figure down there stepped directly into the light and threw his arms out to both sides.

And suddenly that image, and the accompanying words, flashed up from Blair’s memory.

You want to stop me? Shoot me.

“Stop!” she snapped at Halverson, twitching the Blackhawk’s nose to throw off his aim. “Don’t shoot!”

“What are you doing?” Halverson snarled. “That’s Jik.”

“That’s Barnes and Preston,” Blair snarled back, resettling the helo’s nose and looking past Hope out the starboard door. The flaming arrow had come from somewhere over there...

And there he was. Another figure, standing beside a tree.

Waiting to enjoy the show as Blair cut down her own people.

“That’s Jik, over there,” she called back to Halverson. “Hang on—I’ll bring the helo around.”

But she didn’t. There was no need. Even before the words were completely out of her mouth, the starboard M240 unexpectedly roared to life, sending a long, violent stream of machinegun fire down at the shadowy figure below. Even as Blair caught her breath she saw the body jerk and spasm, then duck behind a tree and stumble out the other side. Another long burst of fire, and it crumpled to the ground.

The roar of the machinegun ended, and Blair raised her eyes from the motionless Theta to the girl hunched over the weapon.

And in the dim light she saw the tension lines in Hope’s young face. The grim set to the jaw, and the dark unyielding resolve in her eyes.

Hope Preston was no longer a girl. Not even a girl hardened by a tough forest life.

Hope Preston was a warrior.

And even amid all the death and misery of the post-Judgment Day world, Blair found a distant part of herself mourning the girl’s loss.

And suddenly, the perfect plan fell apart. Without warning, without reason, the sky opened up and began to rain death on him.

“No!” Jik shouted in fury and disbelief. He ducked sideways, trying to get to the shelter of the tree beside him. But it was too late. The heavy machinegun rounds had already hammered across his side, shredding skin and bursting blood vessels and shattering bone. His left leg collapsed beneath him, pitching him back out from behind the tree and into range of the guns again. For a moment the fire faltered, and then the stream of killing lead once again opened up full fury.

No! he tried to shout again. But his voice was gone, as was most of his throat. No! You can’t do this! I’m John Connor! I’m John Connor!

He was still trying vainly to scream that message to the distant traitors when his vision faded into eternal darkness.