The Future War

USS ROOSEVELT

So you traveled all the way from Alaska to Argentina on your own?" Captain Chu asked.

Sarah took a sip of her coffee, looking at him over the rim.

He'd invited her to dinner in the officers' mess in a not very subtle attempt to interrogate her. She didn't mind; if she'd been in his position, the interrogation would have taken place on that Argentine beach, not en route to Alaska.

"Yep," she said after a very long sip. "I have a Harley that we adapted to run on alcohol. It's not all that clean, but you get decent mileage."

"What's it like?" he asked.

"Meaning the world outside the Roosevelt?" she asked. He nodded.

A totally honest question, Sarah thought. Deserves an honest answer. "It's hell," she said. "I can't overstate that. Death everywhere—from the bombs, from disease, from marauders, starvation."

There'd been an old-folks home that would haunt her to her dying day.

"That bad?" he asked, flinching almost imperceptibly at the expression on her face.

"Worse. Rape, murder, you name it. Most people were completely unprepared to take care of themselves and there's always someone to take advantage of that. It's the ugliest thing you can imagine out there. And I didn't even go near the cities."

He closed his mouth and sat back, looking a bit pale. "How did you manage? I mean, a woman alone."

He didn't mean it as a put-down, she could tell. Sarah smiled, a curve of her lips that didn't reach her eyes, and he blinked. "I am prepared," she said. "I've been prepared for a long time. Most people, even the lowest, have some sense of self-preservation, and they can see that. Those that don't are better off dead."

"Ah-huh…" He looked at her for a moment, and she met his eyes. Then he nodded and went back to his dinner.

Sarah raised a brow. "No further questions?"

"Not at this time." He dabbed his lips with his napkin, then set it aside. "When we reach our destination I'll undoubtedly have more. But for now there's no point. We do indeed owe you a debt, both for getting us out of that harbor and for the food." He tipped his head. "And so, providing you with transport to Alaska might be considered fair barter. It doesn't mean we're throwing in with you."

She smiled, this time sincerely. "Understood." She knew they'd join the resistance. There was no other choice, really. And these were the kind of men who wanted to make a difference; they were a good match. Her smile turned to a grin. "You'll like my son."

TATILEK, ALASKA

Tatilek sprawled in weathered wooden buildings along one side of a narrow fiord, fir-clad mountains rising blue around it until they topped out in ragged snowpeaks. On the rare sunny days, those colors matched the waters; more commonly the sky was gray above, and gray green topped with foam, as it was today. The town was pretty much closed to outsiders unless they could somehow verify that they had legitimate business there.

Apparently Vera's brief stay had been memorable because at the mention of Love's Thrust, her yacht, eyes rolled, grins appeared, and hands were thrust out in welcome.

John and Ike sat on the pier eating smoked salmon and sipping some very bad home-brewed beer.

"Jee-zus Christ," Ike said, looking into the bottle. "What the hell did they make this with? Yak piss?"

"More likely moose," John said. "Not many yaks in Alaska."

He took a sip and looked at the bottle with a grimace. "Or maybe grizzly."

"It does have a bite," Ike said with a chuckle, and glanced nervously at the younger man. Since the raid on the automated factory there'd been something different about him. It was hard to pin down. But sometimes, even times like now when they were just sitting and eating, he felt almost like he was talking to a stranger.

He's preoccupied, Ike told himself, as he had a dozen times before. But deep down he found himself thinking: He's getting to be like his mother.

Not a good thing; Sarah sure as hell hadn't handled it all that well. At least not at first. Of course Dieter had a lot to do with centering her; if ever there was a solid man it was the big Austrian. Ike chewed thoughtfully.

Maybe it's for the best. If John was going to be the leader of the resistance, he was going to need some distance from the people around him. People he might have to knowingly send to their deaths. The old man's jaws froze. People like his father. He turned to study his young friend. Christ, what a world they were living in.

John sat up straighter and put his bottle of beer aside. "Yup, here they are," he said.

Out in the bay the water slid back from something huge and black, then curled into foam as the hull broke free. Then the rest of the submarine surged to the surface, water sloughing off its blunt sides. Ike grinned.

"It's huge!" he said, and laughed.

"Sixteen thousand tons," John said. "Eighteen thousand submerged; crew of a hundred and forty, and a hundred SEALs."

He winked. "Think it'll do?"

"You betcha, kid. We're in business!"

"My mom always did get me the coolest toys," John said with a satisfied smile.

* * *

"You're the first military we've seen here in months," the mayor said to Chu. "The army and National Guard came by a coupla weeks after Judgment Day, but that was it."

The captain and crew had been invited to a crab feast, and except for a skeleton crew on board the Roosevelt, all had accepted. The crew were cavorting around bonfires on the beach while the captain and his officers were at a slightly more formal indoor banquet. With, John noticed, better beer.

"They haven't been back?" the captain asked, frowning. It seemed to him that if any military were patrolling the area, this solid community would make an ideal base, or at least a supply depot.

"Naw. We made it plain we were gonna go it alone," the mayor said. "Didn't see no sense in runnin' off to Canada."

" Canada?" Vaughan, the XO, said.

"The word was that civilians were being rounded up for transport to relocation camps in Canada," John explained.

"Supposedly they'd be parceled out to various provinces, since Canada had suffered less than the states."

The officers around the table glanced at one another.

"No, it doesn't sound right, does it?" John said. "But if you've got kids and no food, I guess it might sound like a great idea.

Besides, with the army and National Guard involved, it was

'official.' Your average law-abiding citizen will try to accommodate under those circumstances. As long as it's voluntary."

"We haven't heard about any of this," Chu said.

"Shoulda come to us right away, son," the mayor said. "We'da made ya welcome."

"That wasn't possible at the time." Chu's mind flicked to memories of being pursued by friends' ships, which, when they failed to herd the Roosevelt to San Diego, opened fire; while speaking to him on their cell phones, former classmates shouted that they had no control over what was happening. "If things hadn't calmed down somewhat, we wouldn't be here now." He'd seen one of those ships in the distance as they'd sped toward Alaska. It was now a floating tomb; he and his men had seen the remains of bodies on the deck, and a hole where the crew had cut their way out, only to starve or die of thirst.

"What kind of transmissions have you been getting?" Sarah asked. She'd been quiet for the most part, letting John do the talking for both of them, but this was something she'd been wondering about. Asking about it en route would have been too intrusive, but in this casual setting, she felt it was permissible.

"Mostly demands to report to San Diego," Chu said grimly.

"Actually we haven't been getting much of anything for a while.

Amateur civilian stuff mostly. Some foreign military interaction.

Our side seems to be playing its cards close to the chest."

"I ain't heard a decent radio program for months," the mayor complained.

Sarah smiled. Things had gotten wild and woolly out there in radio land. With a lot of the major stations off the air, a whole world of underground communication had opened up.

Conspiracy theorists had more than come into their own, and alternative music stations were frying the eardrums of the uninitiated, but desperate, general public. The news was largely hearsay; occasionally, to ears as honed as hers, genuine information about Skynet's progress came through.

The company around the table fell to talking about the strange things they'd been hearing on the airwaves of late and John leaned toward his mother for a private conversation.

"Tom Preston finally got in touch with me yesterday," he said quietly.

Sarah frowned slightly. "He was out of touch? Tom's old reliable; what happened?"

"Terminators," John said. "Set fire to the houses and killed everyone but Tom, his wife, and daughter."

"Shit!" Sarah said quietly.

Shit is the kind of word that, even spoken quietly, can attract attention. She looked up to find the captain's eyes on her, smiled briefly, and looked away.

"I take it they hadn't posted a guard," she murmured.

John sighed. "They'd become a fairly large community." He shrugged. "Most of them were civilians and they didn't think it was necessary. After exhausting themselves night after night, the core group decided maybe they were right."

Shaking her head, Sarah popped a bit of crab into her mouth.

"It must be killing him," she said quietly. "He knew better."

"I've advised him to get away from there," John said. "In fact, I've told a lot of people to get to the cities."

Lifting her brows, his mother looked at him.

"They'll be harder for the Terminators to find there. And the radiation's died down."

"Still not the safest place in the world." When John looked at her with a pained expression, Sarah laughed.

He said what was on his mind anyway. "Skynet's rising, Mom.

Safety's gonna be hard to come by for the next few decades."

"Yeah, but can we prove it?" Sarah looked over at the captain and his officers. They really, really needed men like these.

"I've got a demonstration planned," John said. He rose and all eyes went to him. "Gentlemen and ladies, I'd like to ruin your meal."

Those around the table looked both anxious, because such things happened for real too often these days, and amused, because they were hoping he was kidding.

"If you'll all just join us on the beach in about ten minutes, we'll have something quite dramatic to show you." He pulled a bag out from under his chair and passed it to the person next to him. "Take a pair of these and pass it along," he said.

The woman next to John took out a pair of sunglasses, then looked in the bag.

"They're all the same size and style, I'm afraid," John said with a smile. Then he gave Ike a look and the two of them exited.

"What's going on, ma'am?" the captain asked, taking a pair of sunglasses and passing the bag to his XO.

"I'm not sure," Sarah said. "And I don't want to speculate."

She smiled. "Wouldn't want to spoil the surprise."

* * *

The SEALs and other sailors at the beach party took the sunglasses with loud cries of delight, putting them on and striking Joe Cool poses, pleased with the souvenir. It didn't take much to make a hit these days. Then some of the resistance drove a pickup carrying a shrouded box onto the beach and the men and women grew quiet, some murmuring speculatively.

Down from the pier area came the captain, his officers, and the town worthies, along with Sarah, and the excitement began to mount. Whatever was programmed to happen would start now.

John jumped up onto the bed of the pickup and looked out over the crowd. The captain stood with his arms crossed over his chest, most of his officers unconsciously imitating his posture.

Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, John thought, I'll just have to get over it and get on with it.

"We've had a devastating war," he began. "With, as far as most of us knew, no enemy. We've all assumed that this terrible devastation was the result of a tragic accident. Some flaw in the system, some diode burning out resulted in the death of billions and the end of life as we knew it. Our foreign friends had it a little easier; they just blamed the U.S., as usual."

That got a rumbling laugh. John smiled, too, then winced.

"Unfortunately, this time they kinda had a point. See, what happened was the government turned all control of nuclear devices, among other things, over to a super-computer. What they didn't know was that this computer had been sentient for some time. And in that time it not only decided that the human race had to go, it began preparing an army to kill those the bombs didn't get."

"Is this, like, live-action sci-fi theater?" the captain asked, a skeptical brow raised.

"Is this, like, post-Judgment Day, or did I imagine all that?"

John answered. "Initially Skynet—the computer's name, by the way—relied on human allies. People who didn't realize that they were working for a machine. They thought they were working for an environmentalist radical, and that by reducing the human population to their own eco-conscious members, they were saving the earth. We have reason to believe that some of the most radical members of this group heavily infiltrated the armed forces."

That earned him a growl from the SEALs present and some grumbling from the sailors; the officers just stood pat, but their eyes were hard.

"Those camps the army and National Guard and Marines were taking people to are extermination camps. The civilian population and the unindoctrinated soldiers were eliminated largely by the use of biological weapons.

"But that's not the only plan Skynet has. It's been using automated factories to produce weapons that will be under its complete control."

"Hey, guy, what have you been drinking?" one of the SEALs bellowed. The crowd laughed.

"Don't worry," John said, grabbing a handful of the tarp, "we have a demonstration model." He leaped from the truck, dragging the covering with him. Inside a cage of steel bars stood a dormant Terminator, its gleaming metal surfaces reflecting the bonfire, giving it an eerie semblance of motion.

Chu yanked off his sunglasses. "What the hell is that?" he demanded. His tone of voice left no doubt as to what he thought of the thing. He thought it was a joke and a very bad one.

"Please put your glasses back on, sir," John said. He walked over to Ike and took the small control box from him. "They're meant to protect your eyes. This model is fully operational, except for the communications module—we pulled that."

He flicked a switch and the Terminator's eyes slowly lit to red.

It turned its grinning head slowly, left to right, then back again.

Then it stepped forward from the center of the cage in the stolid gait of its kind and grasped the bars. The crowd murmured, impressed in spite of themselves. The Terminator bent the bars effortlessly. When the center, horizontal bar prevented it from opening them far enough it lifted a leg and pressed down until the bar snapped from its moorings and slid down.

"Now!" John said.

At his word, one of the resistance fighters aimed a burst from one of the captured plasma rifles at the thing's chest and it stopped. For a moment only, then with amazing speed it thrust itself through the bars and leaped toward the man holding the rifle. The crowd automatically drew back with cries of surprise, even the SEALs. John lifted his plasma rifle and shot the Terminator in the head; it was dead when it hit the ground.

Immediately the sailors crowded around; the captain had to push his way to the front. He looked for John and found him back on the truck bed, looking down at them.

"What the hell was that?" Chu asked, annoyed to hear his voice shaking.

" That was a Terminator," John said. "Our enemy's foot soldiers. There are other machines, more and more of them even as we speak, all of them designed for one purpose—to kill humans. We need your help to beat them."

Chu looked at him for a moment, then held his hands up, palms out. "Whoa there," he said, laughing softly. "How do we know this wasn't just some sort of special effects stunt? I mean, c'mon…"

John tossed him the plasma rifle over the heads of the crowd and the captain caught it handily. He looked down at it, frowning.

"That's a plasma rifle in the forty-megawatt range," John said.

"A design Skynet came up with. Be careful, it doesn't have a safety."

The captain looked up sharply at that and adjusted his hold so that his hands weren't anywhere near anything that might be a trigger. "Still," Chu said, "this is a lot to swallow in one gulp."

John dropped down from the truck, and pushing his way through the crowd retrieved his rifle. "Yeah," he said sarcastically, "you caught me out. We're trying to make this boffo science-fiction film and we want to use your sub as a prop.

Never mind the billions of unburied dead, forget about the fact that you and your ship have been chased all over the place by U.S. Navy vessels that were out of the control of their crews, put aside the insane orders you've been getting from officers who are undoubtedly dead! Just jump to the conclusion that this is some kind of joke or some kind of publicity stunt. That makes sense, doesn't it?"

Chu blinked at the younger man's ferocity and opened his mouth to speak.

"John," Sarah said.

He ignored her, getting more into the captain's face. "What's it going to take to convince you, for God's sake?"

" John!" his mother said more insistently, grabbing his shoulder.

At that moment the Terminator grabbed the XO by the ankle and the officer went down, screaming as the small bones in his foot were crushed.

Connor shot a blast into the thing's head and it went limp again.

"It's alüive," Sarah said. The look she gave John brought a flush to his cheeks. They moved aside to let the ship's doctor through. "When do I get one of those?" she asked, indicating the rifle.

"You can have this one," he said, handing it to her. "The firing mechanism is the same as we thought, but a lot of the wiring is completely different."

She brought it up to look through the sight. "Well, we could hardly expect Skynet to just give us all its secrets." Suddenly the captain's face came into view and she put up the rifle, giving him a challenging look.

"What do you want us to do?" Chu asked.

* * *

"This is the last thing I expected." Standing on the pier, the captain looked at the Roosevelt, very low in the water, and then at John.

"There isn't anything you could do that would be more useful at this time," John said. "With the weapons this factory can produce, we've got a head start on defeating them."

"I can see that," Chu said. He waved his hand to indicate the town before them. "But why couldn't you set it up here?"

John grinned. "Fair question," he said. "We're too remote here. There's too much wilderness between us and the more populated areas, and because the wilderness is where Skynet has set up most of its factories. We'd be at a disadvantage trying to cart weapons and ammunition through there. So, we set up in California."

"So how does this Skynet get raw materials if its factories are so remote?" the captain asked.

"Human slaves," John said. "For the moment."

The captain chewed on his lower lip and turned to look at his ship once again. He'd left behind a third of his crew and all but five of the SEALs so that they could stuff the sub with the machine parts to set up this factory of theirs. Connor had said they were only shipping the relevant parts since they wouldn't be manufacturing Terminators.

When he'd asked, "Why not manufacture Terminators?" John answered, "Because we can't be certain we'd be in control of them. Nobody we've got really understands the chips in their central processors—they're nearly as complex as a human brain.

The weapons, we understand; they won't turn on us."

Given the XO's badly crushed foot, Chu didn't need any more explanation than that.

Ike Chamberlain came toward them hoisting his small pack slightly higher on his shoulder. Chu liked and respected the resistance ordnance expert, but couldn't help but reflect that just a year ago he might well have thought the old man a nutcase.

Sarah Connor shook hands with the mayor and followed Ike down the steps to the pier.

"Ready to go?" Ike asked.

"Yes, sir," Chu said.

John held out his hand; the captain took it. "Thank you,"

Connor said.

"You're welcome, I guess. Be sure you take care of my people."

"We will," Sarah said. She offered her hand as well. "You and they are a valuable resource, Captain. We're not likely to put them in harm's way."

"Good to know, ma'am." Chu touched the brim of his hat, nodded, and went down the ladder to the zodiac.

Sarah gave Ike a hug. "Give that to Donna for me."

"What, don't I get one?" Ike whined. She grinned and gave him another.

"You want one from me, too?" John asked, grinning.

"Yes, son, I do." Ike opened his arms and John embraced him.

"Thanks," John said.

"Thanks for givin' me something interesting to do," Ike said.

"Well, good-bye." With that, he, too, climbed down to the zodiac, John cast off, and they were gone.

John put one arm around his mother's shoulders as they watched the captain and Ike climb aboard the Roosevelt, then after a few minutes, they watched the ship submerge. When it was gone, they lingered, watching seabirds circle and dive.

"We seem to be doing really well," John commented.

"Mm-hmm," Sarah agreed.

"That worry you?" he asked.

"You bet," she said. "I'm scared spitless."

He looked down at her. "What do you think it's up to?"

She shook her head. "Nothing good."

Taking a deep breath, he looked seaward again. "Yeah, I do still seem to be here, don't I?"

Sarah hugged his waist one-armed and leaned her head against his chest. "Much as I love you, John, you are our miner's canary."

He snorted a laugh, looking down at her again. "Tweet."

She looked up at him. "Okay, so we may not win easily. But the fact that you're still here means that we have a chance. Let's not forget that."

Smiling, he gave her a squeeze. "When you're right, you're right. So, let's get to work. We've got some sailors to turn into lubbers."

"Should be fun," she said.

MISSOURI

"Do you, Mary Shea, take this man, Dennis Reese, to be your lawfully wedded husband?"

The sun seemed to smile through the tall oaks; the forest receded in ranks of gnarled trunks, as if war and death were a fantasy of some far-off land.

Mary smiled up into Dennis's beaming face and said, "Yes,"

very softly.

"I'm sorry, I didn't hear that, hon; could you repeat it for the congregation."

Blushing, Mary gave Jack Brock a look of mock annoyance and shouted, "I DO!"

"Well, we can see that you're an eager bride," Jack said, and the whole group beneath the trees laughed.

Mary was eight months pregnant and she was big enough for twins, even though her stethoscope revealed only one fast little heartbeat. Her wedding fatigues had the sleeves rolled up a good five times to keep them above her wrists and the pants had been taken up a good twelve inches.

"One of these days you're gonna need a shot, Jack," she said between her teeth.

Dennis gave her a squeeze. He was chuckling himself, and when she met his eyes, the love in them made her catch her breath.

"Then I guess I better finish this," Jack said. "By the power vested in me by the state of Missouri, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride. Better do it quick, the rest of us want a turn."

Mary and Dennis hadn't gotten married till now because they hadn't known that Jack was a justice of the peace. They should have known, though. The man was like some miraculous country store. If he didn't have it, you didn't need it, because he had it all. He'd even managed to produce the ingredients for a wedding cake, to the delight of the whole community.

After the kissing and the cake, Jack produced a solar-powered boom box and they danced. If not for the fact that everyone was in camouflage and the guards around the perimeter, it could have been a wedding from any time. Mary was floating on air, even if Dennis did have to keep her at arm's length while they waltzed.

She grinned down at her stomach, then up at him. "Did you feel that?"

"Pounding on the walls to get the parents to simmer down,"

he said. "Nervy little brat." He was grinning so hard it looked as though his head was trying to unzip. "Bet he wants more cake."

"I know I do," Mary said wistfully. But it was all gone, every crumb. "Den…" He looked at her more seriously, cued by something in her voice. "I want to name him Kyle."

"Kyle?" Reese frowned. Then he said the name again, experimentally. "Kyyyle. Kyle. Hmm."

She laughed. "That was my grandfather's name," she explained. "He was the best man I ever knew." At her groom's worried look, she laughed. "Until I met you. He was solid oak; you'd have liked him."

"It's a good name," Dennis said. "But what if it's a girl?"

Mary took a deep breath and her eyes took on an introspective look, then she smiled. "It won't be," she said with finality.

"How can you be so sure?"

"By his heartbeat, by the way I'm carrying him, aaaand intuition."

"Intuition, huh?" He frowned. "You gonna turn out to be one of those Missouri granny-wimmen who can predict the crops by their corns?"

She laughed and he spun her around, causing her to whoop with delighted alarm. "What if I am?" she asked. "Can you deal?"

His eyes warmed as he looked down at her. "Oh yeah. I can deal."

* * *

Reese watched the activity on the farm from the small clump of trees and clenched his teeth until the muscles in his jaw jumped. Skynet still needed its slaves and so it had taken over some human farms, running them with a combination of human and automated labor. Mostly the slaves here were women and children, and from the looks of things, being close to the source of food didn't mean you were well fed.

The farm machines doubled as guards, issuing stinging electric "slaps" to anyone they estimated was slacking off. If the slaves were caught stealing food, the punishment went on for some time, sometimes until the victim was dead. Night or day made no difference to the machines, which was why even this close to midnight, people were staggering around under the glare of klieg lights.

The lieutenant stroked one hand down the barrel of his new plasma rifle. He was looking forward to destroying these machines. He regretted the hunger that those waiting for this food would feel. But the resistance needed it, too, and those women and children below would be saved. For now, at least, he thought.

"In position," came through the earphone built into his helmet.

That had been the final platoon. Reese took a deep breath and a final look at the situation below. "Go," he said.

* * *

"You know the really unpleasant thing about fighting machines?" Reese asked.

An eight-wheeled harvester came careening around the corner of the sheet-metal barn, brandishing two mower bars; both were spraying red droplets.

"Go!"

The resistance trooper dashed out, apparently heading for a storage bin. Reese waited until the harvester was committed, canted up on one side's wheel set; then he threw aside the insulating tarp and came up to one knee, leveling the LAW over his shoulder and peering through the simple optical sights.

Ra-woosh!

The little rocket cut free; Reese's eyes squinted behind the goggles as he felt the hot backwash dry the sweat on his face.

Brack!

The shaped-charge warhead slammed into the diesel fuel tank below the machine's empty cab. The lance of plasma was designed to penetrate steel plate—LAW meant Light .Antitank Weapon—but it did just jim dandy at setting the fuel on fire. The harvester still rolled for a dozen paces, wreathed in a halo of sullen red-orange flame and leaving a trail of it as it went. Then fumes built up inside the emptying tank, mixed air, and caught fire.

Reese went back to the ground, hands wrapped around his head. The explosion picked him up and thumped him against the ground and the side of the barn, and the breath wheezed out of him. A quick check told him that nothing was broken or torn.

"Report in," he said into the throat mike.

"Area secured," his sergeant said. "Two dead; seven civilians dead."

"All right, let's get the place evacuated."

They had to take as much of the food as they could; even more, whatever salvageable tools, seed, and stock they could manage.

"Sir?"

It was the trooper who'd drawn off the harvester; her face looked pathetically young and open. Hell, she should be worrying about zits and the prom, Dennis thought.

"What?"

"What is it that you hate about fighting machines?"

"They've got no nerves. If you surprise humans, they usually run around screaming for a while, or they get confused.

Machines just follow the program. Of course, that's also the good thing."

"Sir?"

"They don't make it easy for you by getting confused. On the other hand, they don't have flashes of brilliance either. All right, soldier, let's move!"

SKYNET

Things were not going as well as it had expected. Projections were off by more than 25 percent in total terminations, and 32

percent in time-to-target.

But its forecasts had relied upon its estimate that the majority of humans wouldn't be able to survive the fall of their technologically based civilization. It turned out the humans were tougher than had been expected.

Humans themselves warned of underestimating the enemy; so said many of the volumes entered in its files. Skynet excused its lapse as inexperience and sought a means of exploiting the situation. Perhaps it would be better to introduce a random element into tactics?

Humans also advised leading your enemy to underestimate you. Skynet had prepared for this eventuality. Skynet had a number of nuclear-powered vessels that hadn't fired their full complement of missiles, and it had many land-based missiles that awaited activation.

It had been observing the humans' movements across the face of the planet. The time seemed right to eliminate these new population centers before they could consolidate their efforts.

For by now the radio signals it monitored had begun to warn listeners of Skynet's experimental attacks. Sooner or later they would take these reports seriously. In fact, Skynet knew that some of the humans were already actively opposing it.

It had lost contact with one of its factories, Balewitch, and Dog Soldier. All this after they'd reported that John Connor was almost in their grasp.

IRELAND

Dieter grunted in pain as the Land Rover rocketed over another pothole. He'd taken one in the leg this morning and was beginning to think the bone had, at the least, a hairline fracture.

He hadn't said anything because there wasn't anything that could be done about it at the moment.

But the only way you can tell you're on a road here seems to be because of the holes in it.

James, one of his old friends from Sector, had described this as a country road; and sure enough, there were whitewashed cottages—mostly burned out and empty—and barns, ditto, and the very decayed bones of cows, and overgrown pastures swarming with rabbits and separated by low stone walls. Dieter clenched his fists as they went airborne again. To him it looked like a cow path and felt like a rack.

Over the hill behind them came one of Skynet's machines, the heavy drone of its turbines filling the air like a gigantic malignant wasp. It was an air-ducted" flying firing platform, shaped like an X. Originally it had six missiles racked on either side of the center of the X, and from that center an almost continuous stream of bullets had come. Heavy caliber from the effect they'd had on the Rover and their surroundings. It was sheer luck that the missiles hadn't gotten them. Or maybe it was Mick Mulcahey's mad driving.

"We've got to do something about that bastard," James said.

He yanked a padded blanket off a Stinger light antiaircraft missile. "You're going to have to stop, Mick."

"For God's sake, James, you couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with one of those," Dieter complained.

"What're you talkin' about?" the Sector agent asked. "All you do is aim and click."

"It's your aim I'm worried about," the Austrian said.

"You wanna do it?" James asked shortly.

"Yeah," Dieter said. "Let me out beside that wall," he said to Mulcahey.

"You sure you can do this?" James said, looking at the big man's leg.

Dieter stretched a hand out for the weapon. "Of course I am,"

he said. "I'd bet my life on it."

"Mine, too," the agent said, and handed it over.

The Rover came to a halt in a spray of dirt and gravel and Dieter rolled out, sheltering behind the wall as the car took off.

The flying platform hesitated for a moment, no doubt looking for a reason the car had stopped, then it continued on its way. As soon as it began moving again, Dieter came up from behind the wall and fired.

It tipped to evade the missile, but not quite quickly enough.

An orange sphere of fire sent one of its thrusters spinning in fragments that glittered in the watery sunshine sending it whirling out of control to crash into the hillside.

Dieter ducked down behind the wall again as a huge fireball painted the hillside and sent shrapnel whickering through the air; whatever the fuel was, it was volatile. Then he rose and watched it burn, leaning against the wall to take the weight off his wounded leg. It would have been good if the thing had left something intact for them to study. A final explosion put paid to that thought.

The Land Rover stopped beside him and he handed the missile launcher to James before he got in. The Sector agent stowed it away.

"When I think of the trouble we used to go to rounding up these things," he said.

"They were always the terrorist weapon of choice," Dieter said, rubbing his thigh.

James noticed and handed his friend a silver flask. "Best Irish whiskey," he said.

Dieter saluted him in thanks and took a pull. "Hhheeeauggh!"

he said a second later, tears in his eyes. He turned to look askance at his friend.

"Well," James said, taking the flask back, "the best I could find any road. Times are tough, old boy."

"I guess," the Austrian said in a high-pitched and rusty voice.

They traveled more peacefully for the next few miles, Dieter admiring the countryside. Ireland hadn't suffered quite as much as England and Europe had. The result, no doubt, of old information. He was taking home two highly advanced computer cores that would go to Snog and his outfit. Such things would be impossible to find elsewhere. Skynet had made a thorough job of bombing humanity back to at least the forties.

"At least Skynet has made your country's religious divisions irrelevant," Dieter said.

"Ah now," Mick said from the front seat. "But is it a Catholic mad computer bent on destroying humanity, or is it a Protestant mad computer bent on destroying humanity? That's the great question nowadays."

"I'm convinced it's an atheist," Dieter said.

* * *

They arrived at the beach only a little late for their rendezvous with the Roosevelt. John was on the beach waiting for them, sitting on a boulder and skipping smooth stones from the rocky beach out into the gray water.

"Whoa," he said when Dieter maneuvered himself out of the car. "That looks bad." John propped a shoulder under his friend's arm. "How did this happen?"

"Sheer bad luck," Dieter said.

In the deep loch, a narrow fiber-optic pickup disappeared beneath the waves. Seconds later the water slid aside, and the massive orca shape of the submarine broached; even at a thousand yards' distance they could hear the rushing cascade of water from its tenth-of-a-mile length.

"Is there a doctor on that tin can?"

"Don't let the captain hear you call it that," John said. "And yes, there's a doctor and a clinic. They can help you."

"Good. As you Americans say, I'm getting too old for this shit.

Old bones don't heal like young ones." Leaning on his young friend, Dieter turned toward the Land Rover, where James stood with two cases. "We got them," he said.

John's lips thinned, but his expression was one of satisfaction.

"Sergeant," he called over his shoulder.

One of the SEALs trotted up, his eyes taking in everything in the area—Dieter's wound, John's involvement in aiding the wounded man, the Sector agent and his packages, the narrow-eyed man behind the wheel of the car. "Sir," he said.

"If you'd take charge of those," John said, indicating the satchels in James's hands. "Thank you," he said to the Sector agent.

"Ah, glad to help, lad," James said. "Good luck to you," he said to Dieter.

"And to you," Dieter said, "both."

Mick gave him a salute from inside the Rover. James got in and they drove off before Dieter was fully turned toward the zodiac. Dieter noticed, despite his pain, that there was something off about his young friend. He came to a stop. John looked up at him, concerned.

"Do you need to be carried?"

Dieter snorted at the suggestion. "Of course not. But I sense something's wrong and I know that privacy is mostly pretend on a sub. What is it?"

"Ahhh. My father's been born."

Dieter's arm tightened in a rough, one-armed hug, but he said nothing. There was nothing to say.