Rising Storm t2-2

by S. M. Stirling

  I may be wrong, but I don't believe it's legal for a private citizen to own a number of these." He looked at the gunrunner. "Could I be mistaken?"

  Luke nudged his partner and widened his eyes at him. Waylon frowned and nudged him back, hard enough to almost knock him off his feet. "They're props,"

  he said. "We needed something to lure him out here where he couldn't hurt anybody."

  Von Rossbach and all the men in black looked at him for a moment, then Sully turned to the big Austrian and they both grinned.

  "That's not bad," Sully said, turning back to Bridges. "But you didn't let me finish. See, this money isn't just a reward. It's a bribe to keep your mouth shut.

  You talk to anybody about what's happened here tonight, and you and your buddies are going to be spending a very long time in a very high-security prison." He looked each of the three men in the eyes. "Am I understood?"

  The gunrunners nodded and shuffled, muttering unhappy agreement.

  "Good!" Sully said happily. "Then you can go!"

  The three men looked at him uncertainly for a moment, not moving.

  "GO!" Sully bellowed, and slammed the trunk.

  Suddenly he spun around and fell to the ground.

  "Hit the dirt!" Dieter yelled, throwing himself down.

  He rolled toward the car and hugged the side, looking into the darkness. Around him men in black leapt aside, disappearing as if by magic. Waylon, Luke, and Luis huddled at the back of the car as Bridges dug out his keys and unlocked the trunk.

  "Let me out of these!" Dieter demanded.

  Luke looked at Waylon, who hesitated, then nodded. Luke slipped forward, digging in his pocket for his key ring. He unlocked the cuffs and Dieter chaffed

  his wrists, giving the other man a hostile glance.

  "Friends of yours?" he asked, gesturing toward the darkness.

  Luke shook his head, then said "no" softly. "We didn't tell anybody about this.

  Didn't want to give anybody else a cut."

  Von Rossbach grunted. "You'd better give me a gun, then," he said, and began to work his way to the back of the car.

  The Infiltrator's permission to kill had been acted upon instantly, much to Alissa's dismay. Only one of the Terminators was in position; the others were still on the way. Her own fault, she realized, she should have phrased the order differently. More firepower would have made all the difference.

  Only one human was down and Alissa, looking on remotely, was appalled.

  Everything in her own experience and even in Serena's—up until the end, that is

  —had led her to believe that humans were easy prey. It was only when the Connors were involved that things became difficult.

  Therefore, the Connors, one or both, were present. In which case there was no need to capture von Rossbach. Which should make things easier.

  Even so the humans had reacted much more quickly than expected. The fault, of course, was that never in their brief existence had these Terminators faced humans who had been trained to kill and to respond to threat. Nor had she for that matter, a fact that suddenly frightened her. *Terminate all humans present,*

  she ordered. *Let none escape.*

  John led the two commandos over the gentle rise just in time to see another black-clad man below them spin and fall. Instinctively he fell to the ground; his captors followed suit.

  "Roger that," one of them said softly. "I can't see anyone."

  Neither could John, but he was betting that the shooter had been in front of the man shot and he watched that side of the landscape, frustrated by the almost total darkness. He glanced back at the gully; only the civilians, if you could count Dieter as such, were huddled around the car, looking around anxiously. John assumed that meant there'd been no more shooting.

  Heck, John thought, this is the great Southwest. It might have been some fool out shooting bottles and cans a mile away.

  He turned toward his escorts and instinctively signed Quiet! Someone's coming!

  —indicating the direction by pointing with two fingers. The men lowered their nightscopes and looked. One man! one of them signaled.

  John could barely make him out; then off in the distance he saw another hint of movement. Hardly even movement; shadows among shadows, a clatter of a small rocks, shapes trotting forward. Somewhere a coyote howled, distant and as cold as the stars winking into sight in the darkening sky.

  They're not exactly sneaking around out there, he thought. Then the hair stood up on the back of his neck. My God. It's them. Terminators. There was no mistaking that straight-forward walk that disregarded terrain and bullets equally.

  How many of them are there? Three at least, he answered himself, counting the shooter. He alerted the commandos, pointing off toward the one he'd spotted. He

  could no longer see it; the desert was becoming as black as pitch.

  Clearly these Terminators weren't in position yet and John wondered why the attack had gone forward without them.

  Time seemed to crawl by as the four Terminators closed in on the gully. Alissa had read of this phenomenon, but this was the first time she'd experienced it. She pouted unhappily even as she felt her emotions becoming more and more muted due to the rebalancing of her brain chemistry that her computer was arranging.

  Knowing there were armed humans lurking in the dark, she'd ordered the Terminators to approach stealthily. To them that seemed to mean slow down.

  For this she was not to blame. Their programming was designed to deal with a different war. Clearly this was something that she and her sister would have to look into.

  She frowned impatiently, switching her viewpoint back to the first Terminator on the scene. The humans in the gully had taken refuge behind the car. The man who'd been shot was no longer in evidence. When queried, the Terminator confirmed that he'd been dragged behind the car by von Rossbach and one of the others.

  Alissa regretted that the Terminator didn't have a rocket launcher; one shell and problem solved. One of those approaching did have one. But they'd slowed yet again in the interests of silence, so she'd have to wait for the satisfaction of seeing her enemy blown to pieces. She wanted to tell them to get it over with, but held back. She'd already been too impulsive tonight; there was no sense in giving herself more cause for dissatisfaction.

  And on the other hand, despite her suspicions, there had been no sign of the Connors. Perhaps she should amend her orders. Well, she'd consider it.

  The Sector commandos had counted four men approaching and reported their positions to their fellows. All remained silent in the gully and John surmised that someone had jumped the gun and now was holding back, waiting for reinforcements. That wasn't like a Terminator. Their method was to go for their target. Undirected, the shooter would have been down in that gully exchanging fire ten minutes ago.

  Which means, he thought, that we've got another… Serena Burns on our hands, for want of a better name. Another of Skynet's little surprises. Maybe she's less experienced. Then he thought irreverently, There are always two, a master and an apprentice…

  He watched the gully for movement, trusting the commandos to watch the approaching Terminators. He wanted badly to warn them what to expect, but knew better; he'd been here before. They'd find out soon enough; let them keep their innocence awhile longer. Perhaps, though…

  "These guys are going to be very hard to stop," John said. "Real hard. Sort of like armored-car hard. You won't believe me now, but keep it in mind."

  The black-clad gunmen gave skeptical grunts; John shrugged and looked back to the gully. He wondered why the five men huddled behind the dubious protection of the car didn't retreat to the rocks? At least rocks didn't explode when a rocket hit them.

  Dieter van Rossbach had seen a lot of wounds. Sully didn't have a sucking chest

  puncture, but it was bad, bleeding freely, and might be worse inside. He packed it with bandages from the pouches on the Sector agent's harness, tightened the straps to hold pressure on it, and stabb
ed a hypo of painkiller from the field medical kit through the cloth of his uniform and into his arm.

  All that I can do, he thought, and looked at the two arms dealers. "You're going to contribute some equipment to this, ratfuck," he said, keeping the explanation on a level he estimated their shock-numbed brains could handle. "Do you have any night-sight gear?"

  Waylon swallowed as Dieter slipped the trunk open. "Yeah," he said. "In the red plastic box by the spare."

  Dieter grunted satisfaction as he slipped the goggles over his head and switched them on. The world sprang back into clear vision, in shades of green and silver; not as good as full light, but fighting Terminators when they could see and you couldn't wasn't his idea of fun. The two arms dealers watched with awe as he loaded up from the rest of their samples; four LAWs across his back—those were collapsible one-shot rockets—a heavy Barrett .50 rifle in his arms, and a slung grenade launcher with a bandolier of 40mm shells. He picked out a few extras—thermite grenades, explosives…

  "I suggest you arm yourselves," he said to the two gaping would-be merchants of death. "Things are going to get a bit excessive."

  "Use your shotgun, use your shotgun!" John yelled, fighting back a surge of panic.

  One of the Sector agents was staring incredulously as a Terminator sat up, its

  belly chewed to fragments of flesh held together by blood-sodden cloth. The pistol in its hand came around again, and John winced as the back of the agent's head blew out in a shower of bone fragments and brains. The other black-clad man obeyed, unlimbering the longer weapon from his back and firing as fast as he could rack the slide of the battle shotgun. The dull massive thudump-thudump-thudump split a night full of screams and shots, a huge bottle-shaped flare of gases lancing out with every round. The gun was loaded with rifled slugs—

  heavy grooved cylinders of lead, meant for smashing open locks or other demolition work. The massive frame of the Terminator lurched back as each round struck its torso; with the last it toppled backward like a cut-down tree, striking the ground hard enough that John could feel the earth shake beneath him.

  "Grenade!" he yelled.

  The Sector agent reacted with automatic obedience to something in John's voice, something that struck too deep to remember that he was a teenager or had been a prisoner less than a minute before. John leapt to his feet with a scrambling gracefulness, snatched the smooth egg-shaped mass out of the man's hand.

  "Illuminating!" the agent warned.

  "All the better," John called back, pulling the pin as he ran and letting the spoon clatter off into the night.

  Ought to take him at least fifteen seconds to reboot, he thought— he'd listened carefully as "Uncle Bob" explained the weaknesses of the T-101 class. Sure enough, the massive limbs were just starting to stir as John reached the recumbent form, jammed the grenade into a hole blasted by one of the rifled slugs, jumped, and slammed his heel down on it to drive it deep into the

  Terminator's bulky form.

  That gave him footing for a backward leap. He blessed the endless hours of practice Sarah had put him through, practice in every form of martial art she could find and gymnastics as well. That let him back-flip back to where the surviving Sector agent waited, staring incredulously as his hands automatically reloaded the shotgun.

  "You stuffed a grenade into his—"

  Several things happened simultaneously then. The Terminator came to one knee, arm extended to aim its pistol. The thermite grenade exploded in the same instant, a brilliant flash of fire and white light; John squinted as he forced himself to feel across the head of the dead man an arm's length away. The head shot hadn't wrecked the man's goggles, and John slipped them over his head after wiping off the worst of the clotted matter on a clump of grass.

  "Thank God," he muttered—there was part of the enemy's advantage gone.

  He scooped up his rifle; it was an ordinary hunting model, bolt action, but the rounds inside were hard-points with much more penetrating power.

  "You stuffed a grenade right into that guy's chest," the Sector agent said.

  "Yeah, except it isn't a guy. You know any guys who can take fifty rounds of 5.45 and then six rifled slugs and get up again?" John asked.

  He was impressed at the speed with which the Sector agent rallied. "No," he said, shaking his head. "Either I'm crazy—

  "Or I'm right," John said. "C'mon."

  The night-sight goggles didn't show contrast very well; when they leopard-crawled to where the Terminator lay smoking, the vision was more than enough to show the warped metal "bones" protruding through the false flesh. The Sector agent gave a grunt of horrified nausea as the head turned and a face half stripped of skin snapped at him. John pulled another grenade—one of the dead agent's—

  and judged his time carefully. The next snap closed on the butt of his rifle, and he jammed the grenade in after it. Terminators didn't spit very well…

  "Fire in the hole!" he barked, and rolled away.

  This time the Terminator didn't get up. The problem was that it was only one of them, and—

  John threw himself convulsively backward. A hand like an ax slashed into the hard clay where he'd just been lying, burying itself wrist-deep. That gave him just enough time to bring his rifle up and fire as the T-101 wrenched itself free and turned toward him. The round struck with unintentional precision in the right knee joint, and the machine fell. When it tried to rise again the limb was locked; it lurched forward more slowly, eyes riveted on the priority target.

  Terminators were like that; one-track metal minds. The Sector agent rose to his knees behind it and fired his shotgun again and again, a rippling blast of fire that outlined the hulking figure of the murder machine against the night like a strobing flashbulb. It toppled forward again, landing with an earthquake clamor.

  John scooted backward on his rear, firing as fast as he could work the bolt of his rifle. Rounds punched into the thing's arms and shoulders, but its eyes flickered

  and began to focus again…

  The Sector agent was a man of resources. He came running up behind the prone machine and imitated John's tactic, buried the grenade with a stamping kick and then hurtled across the reviving killer. He grabbed the younger man by the collar of his jacket, half dragging them back to the lip of the gully.

  "Down!" he shouted. "Whatever it is, it's got a thermite grenade up its—"

  Badoom!

  Another sheet of white flame, and the forward half of the Terminator's torso shot by them, tumbling down into the gully and grabbing at loose rocks and shallow-rooted bushes in an attempt to stop the slide. A huge slab of rock came free under its impact, followed it down, bounced, and landed atop it with a precision no intelligence could have produced. Sparks sizzled out from beneath it, and the outstretched hands clenched, quivered, went limp.

  "This isn't happening," the Sector agent repeated to himself as he reloaded. "This isn't happening."

  "Unfortunately it is," John whispered—and then cursed himself. Terminators had very sensitive auditory pickups, and they'd be looking for his voiceprint.

  Dieter laid Sully down behind a boulder, one of many dotting the sandy floor of the arroyo, then continued crawling. The Sector agents seemed to be fully engaged now; there were firefights going on around half the rim of the gully, the muzzle flashes giving the hole cut in the desert floor a weird flickering illumination, like an old-time silent movie. And if his hunch was right…

  The distance was a good twenty yards, but he could see the resemblance between the hulking figure that strode down the slope toward the arms dealers' car. It even moved a little like him, if you imagined Dieter von Rossbach as one of Romero's living dead. He got a whiff as it passed; if Romero had had scent sprays for one of his brain-eater flics, that was the perfume they'd have used.

  Uncertain voices cried out from behind the car, then screams of terror and the flicker of two assault rifles being fired on full rock-and-roll auto. That made Waylon and Luke worse shots than
they'd have been naturally, and only half a dozen rounds struck the machine. It lurched, staggered, came on inexorably, pistol extended and cracking out one shot after another. Someone else—Luis, probably—was firing more steadily, and making better practice, until he stopped a round.

  Definitely Luis, Dieter thought; the voice screaming for its mother was in Spanish. The Terminator walked slowly forward, and its gun cracked three more times—making sure of the targets and making sure of its identification.

  That gave Dieter time enough to extend the fiberglass casing of a LAW and flip up the simple post-and-ring sight. "Big mistake," he muttered, and squeezed the trigger.

  There was little recoil. The blare of the rocket motor lancing out behind him was a different matter, igniting weeds and sagebrush and pointing to him with a finger of fire. He threw the empty launcher aside and dove for cover, with rounds chewing up the dirt at his feet.

  Another finger of fire drove toward the Terminator. It had just enough time to turn and meet the 66mm shaped-charge warhead with its face. The cone-shaped

  tube of explosive within detonated, turning its copper liner into a pencil of white-hot metal traveling at thousands of feet per second. The finger of incandescence was designed to punch through a tank's armor; the tungsten-titanium-steel alloy of the Terminator's skull was tough, but not that tough. The flame lance pierced it the long way, scrambling the delicate components of its CPU and memory systems into molten silicon as it went. The machine fell backward across the bodies of its victims.

  Dieter broke open the action of his grenade launcher, slipping in one of the fat shells and scanning around the edges of the gully. John should be—

  He blinked behind the night-sight goggles as the front half of a Terminator shot over the lip of the arroyo, trailing fire. It tumbled down the steep slope, bringing down a minor avalanche of stones with it— including a boulder the size of a small car that fell free of the clay and landed on the machine's torso and skull with a clang audible even through the sounds of combat.