Which she would do to the last drop of blood in her body. She would not fail.
Serena opened her eyes and watched the two Terminators work. We will not fail.
In the end, a day later, she decided to include the younger-looking Five. Serena gave him a haircut so distracting she was certain no adult human would be able to take their eyes off of it long enough to notice its resemblance to the others. It was an upright Mohawk roach dyed brilliant scarlet with green bars, and tattoos on the shaved sides of his head. A pair of tiny round sunglasses that made its face look wider completed the illusion.
The humans in the Sacramento facility might not like its looks, but since she’d sent it, they’d just have to rise above their feelings. One corner of her mouth lifted in satisfaction at the thought.
She ordered it to slouch and it looked like it was melting, its shoulders collapsing onto its pelvis in a move that even a human contortionist couldn’t manage.
“Like this,” the T-950 said, throwing out a hip and dropping one shoulder.
It imitated her perfectly.
“Now walk like this.” Serena moved her shoulders as she walked, pushing her pelvis just slightly forward of them in a sort of James Dean dawdle. She looked astonishingly masculine. The Terminator duplicated her swagger.
She had him walk for her, adding little bits of business and then subtracting most of them. The others she left to themselves. “All right,” the 1-950 said, not satisfied, but resigned. She’d done all she could for now. “Get dressed. We leave in ten minutes.”
CYBERDYNE SYSTEMS: THE PRESENT
“Jordan?” Serena’s voice came smooth as ice cream from his intercom.
“Yes, Serena,” he answered, laying down the report he’d been reading.
“Could you come to my office, please? I think I have something for you.”
“On my way,” he answered.
Jordan stood and slipped his arms into his suit jacket. When his boss said she thought she had something, she probably did.
He still couldn’t get over how incredibly good her sources were. He’d taken a sneak peek at her personnel records and her work experience sure didn’t explain it. If it was life experience that gave her the edge, she must have been one wild kid; because she was a lot younger than he was and his own sources were fewer and far less trustworthy.
Of course she was also damned smart. You could almost feel her mind going in a dozen different directions when you were with her. It was disconcerting. And she had a knowing air about her, as though she found the scientists she was guarding rather quaint as they groped their way toward things she already knew.
He nodded to Mrs. Duprey, whom he had discovered was yet another of Burns’s infallible sources. She smiled at him as he tapped the door and entered to Serena’s “Come in.”
“Hello, Jordan,” she said, smiling.
Three men seated on the couch rose as one. He glanced at them, then Serena called his attention back to herself.
“I need you to take a short trip for us,” she said, her eyes bright with excitement.
“There have been indications that the Connors are planning an attack on the Sacramento facility.”
Jordan went still.
“Sacramento,” he said after a moment. “Why Sacramento?”
Burns shrugged one shoulder.
“Apparently someone told them about it.” She smiled. “Or maybe because Sacramento’s a civilian facility. Who knows?”
Jordan’s mind flew to Tarissa. Had she been in touch with the Connors? Could it have been her? It could well have been if she’d had the information. And it was perfectly possible that she did.
“When do I leave?” he asked.
“Now,” Serena said with a smile. “I’ve arranged for accommodation for you in the Holiday Inn there.” Her lips quirked and she said, “It’s not luxury, but then, it is Sacramento.”
He grinned in response.
“I’m also lending you some manpower.” Serena gestured toward the three tall
men standing in front of her couch. “Tom Gallagher, Dick Lewis, and Bob Harris.”
The men nodded together, so Jordan couldn’t tell who belonged to which name.
He guessed they probably went left to right. As he looked at them he couldn’t help but think of the ancient clay warriors who guarded the tomb of China’s first emperor. The same bodies, lined up in the same postures, with different heads attached.
“Do you need to go home and pack a bag?” Serena asked.
“No,” Jordan said. “I’ve got some things in my office.”
It was an old habit he’d developed in the Bureau and it had saved him a lot of time and trouble over the years. He’d decided to continue it here until he knew just what this job entailed.
“Good,” she said.
She handed him a folder, which on examination proved to contain addresses and phone numbers for the hotel and storage site as well as directions to both places.
“Let me know when you arrive,” she said. She touched him lightly on the arm. “I wish I could tell you more than ‘I think they’re coming,’ but right now that’s all I’ve got. If anything else comes down the pipe I’ll call you immediately.”
“Okay,” he said. He looked at the three men. “I guess you guys ride with me.”
They nodded in unison. He smiled, a little nervously. These guys are weird, he
thought. Formidable enough, certainly—they bulged with muscle, and they moved well despite their massive size—but weird. And they were all ironed, with shoulder holsters under a baggy sweatsuit jacket, a suit, and a leather affair with chains.
Stop echoing each other’s movements, Serena sent. Remember you’re supposed to be individuals. She almost sighed in exasperation as their heads turned toward her as one.
“Okay, guys, good luck,” she said aloud.
The T-950 shut the door behind her minions with something like resignation. It was pretty much out of her hands now; what would be, would be. I guess I’ll have to be grateful that Dyson can’t suspect them of being Terminators—
because Terminators don’t exist.
She smiled. Being a figment of a deranged imagination made it so much easier to hide. Humans censored their own perceptions for you.
They didn’t talk. Jordan had tried a few questions to loosen things up and they had answered, but as tersely as possible. They weren’t even personal questions for cryin’ out loud.
They were so quiet that he could almost forget they were there. Except for the way they moved their heads in constant overlapping arcs. They looked like a trio of lighthouses inexplicably built on the same promontory. Their bodies were so still that they might have been paralyzed from the neck down; no scratches, no twitches, no shifting. After a short while their constant head motion combined with their dead silence began to wear on him.
“Are you even breathing?” he said to the one beside him. Bob, he thought.
Seven consulted a subroutine in charge of imitating respiratory function. It appeared to be working at optimum; visual observation confirmed the monitor data.
“Yes,” it said.
Jordan glanced at him. fuck yes? he thought. What was their damn problem?
Were they having a fight or something? Was this some sort of group sulk he’d walked into? Okay, that’s about enough of this shit!
“Look,” he said aloud, and three heads turned, three pairs of eyes aimed at him like howitzers. Jordan’s mouth twitched and he frowned. Man! These boys have some attitude! “I don’t know if Ms. Burns briefed you on Sarah Connor, so I don’t know if you’re aware of what a tough, well-trained customer she is.”
“We know about Sarah Connor,” Bob said.
“Good!” Jordan said. Cause I sure as hell wouldn’t want to bore you gentlemen by repeating anything you’ve already heard! “But you see, the problem is, I don’t know what you know and I don’t know anything about you three guys. And since we might be facing some pretty dicey situatio
ns together, I’d like to know a little bit about you. Okay?”
Bob looked at him. Jordan glanced in the rearview mirror. Tom and Dick looked at him. Nobody spoke.
“Don’t all jump in at once,” he said sarcastically. “Would anybody like to tell me how long you’ve been with Cyberdyne, or what your training is, or why I should have you as my backup team?”
“I have a headache,” they all said at once. Then they returned to their lighthouse imitation. As one.
Then it hit him. Burns had introduced them as Tom, Dick, and… Harris. Was that some sort of joke? Had she hired some kind of freelance hit squad to take out the Connors? Could she be a sociopath? he wondered.
Not good, he thought. Not good at all. He could be wrong, he could be making mountains out of molehills, but these men were not normal. He knew nothing about them except their names and the fact that they were carrying Cyberdyne rent-a-cop ID and had licenses for the guns—Israeli Desert Eagle .50-calibers, at that, hand cannon. Usually he despised anyone who carried the things; the engineering was excellent—the Israelis were the world’s best practical weaponeers—but the caliber was to big for accuracy, the sort of gun macho blowhards with little tiny dicks bought because they thought it made them bad.
These gorillas looked as if they could actually shoot the damned things.
ROY’S DINER, JUST OUTSIDE SACRAMENTO: THE PRESENT
“Hey, something occurred to me,” John said, pushing aside the second-rate huevos rancheros.
Dieter and his mother had been ignoring each other studiously; John hid his smile at the obvious electricity between them. About time Mom found someone, he thought. I’ve got a good feeling about this guy. If a human could be Uncle
Bob, Dieter would be it. They probably thought it was a Big Secret, even from each other. From the smile on her tired face, even the waitress here was picking it up.
Now they looked at him. He unfolded his laptop, fingers flicking over the keyboard and trackpad, then swiveled it around.
“You know, one thing always bothered me. About this time-travel shit, the war against the machines, all that stuff.”
” One thing?” Dieter said, raising an eyebrow.
“Well, a lot of stuff. But one thing that my… dad… told Mom. You know, those plasma weapons he wished he had? The ones that fried Terminators good?”
Sarah nodded, a brief flicker of sadness moving like a wave across the tight-held tension of her face at the mention of Kyle. “Yes?” she said.
“Well, when did they get invented? Like, originally Judgment Day was supposed to have happened by now.”
Dieter frowned. “I hadn’t thought,” he said. “I just assumed that the future would have more formidable weaponry.”
“Maybe Skynet invented them?” Sarah said, stirring the remains of her limp bacon around the plate with her fork.
“Maybe,” John said. “But it’s awfully advanced stuff, even so. Look at what I downloaded from the Terminator’s memory—here’s a schematic for a…” he
pointed to the text below the diagram: ” ‘Phased plasma rifle in the forty-kilowatt range.’ Energy storage cell, perfect dielectric—this is a Buck Rogers in the 25th century ain’t-no-doubt-‘bout-it blaster, man.”
“Yes?” Dieter said.
“Well, it occurs to me—this information traveled back from the future, right?
And we figure some sort of super-Terminator is watching over the… heck, the birth of Skynet at Cyberdyne, right?”
The older heads nodded. “So,” John went on triumphantly, taking a bite out of a piece of leathery toast spread with pseudo butter. “I figure the information came back with the Terminators. Like, nobody invented it; it’s in Skynet’s memory because Skynet-in-the-future sent it back, and Skynet-in-the-future has it ‘cause it was there because—”
“My head hurts,” Sarah said plaintively. “I need more coffee.”
They fell silent as the waitress came over with a pot in each hand, regular and decaf.
“Time to go,” John said at last. “Let’s get radical.”
SACRAMENTO: THE PRESENT
“Advanced Technology Systems,” John said. “Or butt-ugly Bauhaus Office Building.”
Dieter snorted. “Would you prefer fake gingerbread?” he asked softly. Then, his
voice all business: “Go.”
Sarah Connor crossed the street, looking as casual as a woman carrying a raincoat in a California summer could look. The bored rent-a-cop sitting at the semicircular security desk in the faux-marble lobby looked up politely as she approached.
The smile turned gelid as her combat shotgun came out from under the coat.
“Hands where I can see them. Scoot back—yeah, right back from the alarm pedal you were about to step on, asshole. Do it now!”
She sat on the curved surface of the desktop and swung her legs to the other side, then held the shotgun one-handed as she pulled a roll of heavy duct tape out of the pocket of her khaki hiking pants.
“Lie down,” she said as she stripped a length off with her teeth. “Time for a nap.”
“Convenient,” Dieter von Rossbach said as he put the bolt cutters against the pipe-enclosed conduit that ran down the aluminum siding of the building facing the alleyway.
“Welcome to California, where everything’s aboveboard,” John said. He turned his head as a shower of sparks spat out of the severed cables. Inside, the building would be dark except for a few emergency lights… and the phones would be cut off, and the datalink to the computers that handled Cyberdyne’s storage. Not that it would matter much. There wasn’t supposed to be anybody in the building this early except for the security staff.
“Go,” he said, clipping the leads from his laptop’s (highly modified) modem onto
the bare wires of the exposed telephone line.
His fingers danced over the keyboard, dumping Cyberdyne’s security codes and a set of very pointed commands into the machine’s idiot-savant brain.
Dieter picked up the heavy duffel bag and slung it over his back, reached up, and began to haul his massive body up the pipe conduit hand over hand. At the second floor he swung out and kicked at a window. It was tough glass, and not meant to be opened; the impact thudded back into his torso, with a twinge that reminded him he’d never see forty again. A second kick, and the window frame and the shattered glass it had held punched into the corridor. Dieter swung through, the Heckler & Koch submachine gun in his massive fist probing about as if it were a toy pistol.
“Clear,” he said, looking down at John.
The boy—young man, he reminded himself, remembering the Terminator on the plane—grinned up and gave him a thumbs-up.
“We’ve got to get into the office,” John said. “There’s a physical barrier, like I thought. But it should be pretty straightforward from there.”
“All right,” Dieter said, lowering a rope.
It’s a good thing the Connor’s aren’t really terrorists. They’d have given the Sector a run for its money.
John swarmed up with a loose-limbed gracefulness. He handed Dieter the laptop, which he shoved into the knapsack slung across his shoulder and chest, and they
moved down the corridor cautiously.
“Front’s secured,” Sarah Connor called from the stairwell. “We’ll cover John from both ends of the corridor while he works on the lock.”
John grinned again as he worked on the e-lock of a steel-slab door labeled ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY SYSTEMS.
“Insert stolen identity card here, trigger subroutine… there we go!”
Dieter had never seen a man move as fast as John did, when the door swung open and a massive figure who might have been Dieter—Dieter with a bald head and a Fu Manchu mustache—stepped through.
The younger Connor dove aside, his hand coming up with a weapon like a stubby shotgun; the Austrian knew it was a grenade launcher. It flashed with a hollow tchooonk!, but not before the big automatic in the Terminator’s hand barked. The leopard gr
ace of John’s leap turned into a crumpled fall, one hand going to his side.
Things happened very rapidly after that. Dieter flung himself backward, emptying the full thirty-five-round clip of his machine pistol into the Terminator’s chest and stomach. It staggered, turned, fired. The bullet struck close enough to Dieter’s head to send chips of wallboard flying into his eyes; he rolled backward, blinking and shaking his head frantically as he slapped another magazine into the weapon, Sarah’s shotgun boomed behind him…
And two more Terminators came out of the office, guns extended, taking the heavy recoil of the .50-caliber automatics as if they were children’s water pistols.
All three turned toward John. Dieter braced himself to hurl his own body between the young man and death, to give him a few seconds’ armor. Behind him he heard Sarah’s incredulous scream.
Another man came out of the office, a tall slim black man with a Clock in his hand. “Are you insane?” he shouted at the Terminator in the lead, forcing himself between the killer machine and the wounded human. “Get them!” he snapped. “I’ll look after the prisoner. Now!”
He bent over John. The Terminators… froze. Motionless, their eyes on the black man, their guns halted in mid-arc.
A lifetime of confronting merciless necessity—and making the decisions he had to, had trained Dieter as much as the academies and courses. He dove from the concealing shelter of the office doorway and into the stairwell, scooping Sarah up as he passed and plunged downward to the lobby.
Dieter dragged her to the car and pushed her into the passenger seat. He pulled the seat belt across her body and strapped her in, then slammed the door and ran around to the driver’s side.
Sarah closed her eyes and clung to the armrests, breathing through her teeth in harsh, tearing gasps as she tried to get her sobbing under control. Her throat felt as though she’d swallowed a sharp stone and after a moment she could neither indulge in the relief of weeping nor stop the pain.
When she opened her eyes she could see clearly, no tears obscured the road from view. Sarah concentrated on her breathing, on calming herself, on tearing her
mind away from the awful repeated image of her son falling and the blood… On to the next thing, she ordered herself. What comes next?
Infiltrator t2-1 Page 44
