Terminator Salvation: Trial by Fire

by Timothy Zahn

  Only that was impossible. He’d seen Marcus Wright die himself, and it hadn’t been at the hands of anyone named Jik.

  “When and where’d this happen?”

  “Back in the forest, a couple of days ago,” Jik told him. “Why? Was it a pet or something?”

  Barnes looked at Williams. She was looking back at him, her face gone suddenly pale.

  “It wasn’t Marcus,” she breathed. “My God. There were two of them?”

  “What do you mean, two of them?” Jik demanded.

  “She means the one you killed wasn’t the one we called Marcus,” Barnes told him. He eased his head to the side, just far enough to see Jik out of the corner of his eye. The man was a little taller and thinner than Barnes, with sunken cheeks, unkempt brown hair, and a scraggly beard.

  And he was indeed hefting a Terminator G11.

  “Look, can we maybe point the gun somewhere else—?” Barnes began.

  And then, right at the edge of Barnes’s vision, the dark metal skull and glowing red eyes of a T-700 appeared from behind a tree.

  “Behind you!” Barnes snapped, leaping to his feet and spinning his 542 around toward the Terminator. He caught a glimpse of Jik raising his own weapon—

  Barnes’s rifle was barely halfway to target when a burst of fire from the G11 blasted in his ear. Reflexively, he winced back, his body tensing in anticipation of pain from torn muscle and shattered bone.

  But the impact and pain didn’t come... and it was only as Barnes took a second look at Jik’s face that he realized the man’s eyes weren’t focused on him and Williams. He was looking at something beyond them, over their shoulders.

  Oh, hell.

  And then, the barrel of Barnes’s assault rifle arrived on target, and there was no more time for thought or worry or wondering how close the Terminator was that was coming up behind him. He squeezed the trigger, firing a round into the T-700’s torso that staggered the machine back. A quick flick of his thumb shifted the weapon to three-shot mode, and he fired again. The multiple rounds slammed into the metal chest, this time nearly knocking the T-700 off its feet. Williams was shouting something as Barnes fired another burst, her words lost in the racket of his own fire and the chatter from Jik’s weapon. A third burst from the 542 spun the T-700 halfway around, and Barnes finally had enough breathing space to throw a quick look behind him.

  The second Terminator hadn’t been hiding behind a tree like the one Barnes was shooting at. From its current position at the edge of the gorge, he concluded it had been waiting out of sight below ground level, probably hanging onto the nearly sheer side of the drop-off to the river. It had no doubt climbed up the bank while the three of them were talking, concealing itself in the tall grasses that lined both sides of the gorge.

  Only now, the steady hammering from Jik’s G11 was threatening to knock it back over the edge and into the rushing water ten meters below.

  But only until Jik’s gun ran dry. The instant that happened, the machine would get its balance back, and the beleaguered humans would be caught in the middle of a pincer.

  Unless Barnes could take out his target first.

  He turned back around, to find that Williams had left her position and was heading off in a curved path toward Barnes’s target.

  Barnes fired again, staggering the Terminator with another three-shot burst. It was essentially the same tactic they’d used back at the ford, with Barnes covering Williams while she got close enough to use her shotgun to its best advantage.

  On the plus side, this time the Terminator didn’t have a weapon of its own. On the minus side, there wasn’t a nice convenient river separating them.

  Which meant that if Williams got too close the Terminator could simply reach out and snap her neck.

  Barnes flipped his rifle back to single-shot, spacing out his blasts, keeping the machine off-balance while he waited for Williams to get in range.

  And then, Jik’s chattering gun went silent.

  Cursing, Barnes threw another look over his shoulder. With the hail of lead no longer battering it, the other T-700 steadied itself and straightened back to its full height. Its eyes seemed to take them all in...

  “Williams!” Barnes snapped.

  “I know!” Williams shouted back. There was the boom of a shotgun— “Go—I’ve got this one.”

  Barnes spun around, swinging the 542 toward his new target. The T-700 was already on the move, striding through the grass and dead leaves toward them.

  And then, as Barnes lined up his sights on the Terminator’s torso, the machine gave a sudden jerk, its stride faltering, its body and limbs weaving around as if it was drunk.

  And as it turned its head to the side Barnes saw that an arrow had unexpectedly sprouted in the back of the machine’s neck.

  Dead center in the Terminator’s partially exposed motor cortex.

  Behind Barnes, Jik’s machinegun opened fire again with a new magazine.

  “No!” Barnes shouted to him, jabbing a finger back toward Blair’s target. “I’ve got this one.”

  He glanced back long enough to confirm that Jik had understood. Then, breaking into a full-bore sprint, he charged straight toward the staggering Terminator.

  Painfully aware of the terrible risk he was taking.

  With that arrow buried in its motor cortex, the T-700’s tracking and balance systems were temporarily shot to hell. But the control chip was already rerouting its systems around the damage, and if the machine recovered before Barnes reached it, he would be in the worst and possibly the very last fight of his life.

  The T-700 was groping for the arrow now. The skeletal hand found it, snapped off half of the shaft.

  And leaping into the air, Barnes rotated his body ninety degrees forward and slammed feet-first into the Terminator’s torso.

  The machine fell backward, slamming onto its back with enough impact to drive what was left of the arrow even farther into its skull. Barnes jumped back to his feet, lined up his 542 on the metal forehead, and fired.

  The Terminator jerked as the bullet slammed into the thick alloy. Barnes fired again and again, each round bending or breaking another section of metal.

  On his fourth shot, the glowing eyes finally faded into the darkness of death.

  For another couple of seconds Barnes stared down at the dead Terminator, his throbbing ears vaguely aware of the gunfire still going on behind him. He’d already seen Terminators play possum once on this trip, and he had no interest in being suckered a second time.

  But the eyes stayed dark. Breathing heavily, he lifted his gaze to the far side of the gorge.

  Preston and his daughter were standing there, Preston with his rifle ready, Hope with another arrow in her bowstring. Preston gestured toward the Terminator lying in the grass, and Barnes gave him a thumbs up.

  And then, the gunfire behind him stopped.

  He turned. Williams and Jik were standing more or less where he’d left them, only with Williams now peering over what seemed to be a ridge or bump in the ground.

  “You get it?” he called.

  “No,” Williams replied. “It fell into the ravine.”

  Barnes frowned. There was a ravine back there? He hadn’t even noticed it through all the trees and brush.

  “Can you see it?”

  Williams looked back and forth, then shook her head.

  “No.”

  “What’s the terrain like?”

  “Very steep,” Jik responded, “with bushes, trees, and dead logs. We’d need a belaying rope to get down there.”

  Barnes pursed his lips. In general, it was a bad idea to leave a Terminator alive and loose if there was any chance at all of killing it.

  But heading into unfamiliar territory after one while tied to the end of a rope was even more dangerous.

  “Skip it,” he called. “Time to head back.”

  He turned to Preston and Hope.

  “Thanks for the assist,” he shouted over the gorge.

  �
��No problem,” Preston called back. “What do you want us to do?”

  “Go back to town, I guess.” Barnes jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward Jik. “This the guy you were expecting?”

  “Not really sure who I was expecting,” Preston admitted. “But he’ll probably do.”

  “What about the T-700?” Hope asked, pointing toward the dead Terminator at Barnes’s feet.

  “I need to make sure it can’t be used for spare parts,” Barnes told her. “We’ll meet you back in town.”

  Preston nodded. “Watch yourselves.” Touching his daughter’s arm, he headed away from the gorge along a narrow path. A few seconds later, they were out of sight.

  “We’re worried about spare parts?” Williams asked, coming up behind him. With the adrenaline rush of the battle over, he noticed, she was limping badly on her injured leg.

  “The T-700 you dumped into the ravine was the one whose hand you wrecked when you blew up its gun, right?” Barnes asked.

  Williams’s lips puckered.

  “Right,” she said. “Good point.”

  Barnes grunted and took aim at one of the Terminator’s shoulder joints.

  “Stand back.”

  A minute later Barnes had blown all four limbs off the dead Terminator. The right arm required a second try when it fell close enough to the torso after being disconnected that the T-700’s automatic electromagnetic recoupling lock was able to draw it back into place. Another shot to the stubborn joint, followed by a quick kick to move the arm out of range, did the trick.

  He and Williams were collecting the severed limbs when Jik arrived, coiling a length of fragile-looking rope over his shoulder as he walked.

  “Was that Danny Preston?” he asked, peering across the river.

  “You know him?” Barnes asked.

  “I spent a few summers here with an uncle.” Jik nodded toward the bridge. “In fact, Danny and I were the ones who built that thing.”

  “Really?” Barnes said. “He didn’t seem to recognize you.”

  “I doubt he does,” Jik said. “It’s been forty years, and they’ve been kinder to him than they have to me.” He nudged the T-700’s torso with his toe. “They don’t look so tough when you chop off all their limbs, do they? Except those teeth. I always wondered why Skynet bothered putting teeth on its Terminators.”

  “It’s psychology,” Williams told him. “It makes their heads look more like human skulls. Awakens those deep, dark fears we all have locked inside us.”

  “Like Terminators really need more of that than they already have,” Barnes said. He lifted one of the severed Terminator arms and wiggled it in front of Jik. “See this? Watch.”

  He lowered the shoulder part of the limb and touched it to his leg.

  “See there?” he asked, pulling the metal limb away and then swinging it past Williams’s leg. “See? The electromagnet doesn’t stick.”

  “Were you expecting it to?” Jik asked, frowning.

  “You were,” Barnes countered. “Remember? You were talking about cutting us open to see if we were Terminator hybrids.” Turning, he tossed the arm over the edge of the gorge into the river below and reached for the next one. “Just wanted to show you that we aren’t.”

  “Ah,” Jik said. “Thank you. Though, I was already pretty well convinced. Someone with a Skynet chip in his head should have been able to quote the last Connor broadcast verbatim.” He nodded down at the partially disassembled Terminator. “Besides, you’d hardly have helped me destroy my attackers if you were on their side. A house divided against itself, and all that.”

  “Yeah.” Barnes picked up the final leg and tossed it over the edge. “Let’s get out of here.” He glanced at Williams.

  And paused for a longer look. She was staring down at the limbless Terminator, a sudden tightness to her throat.

  “What’s the matter?” Barnes asked. “Leg bothering you?”

  “Terminator hybrids,” she said, her voice as rigid as her throat. “You just called them Terminator hybrids.”

  “So?” Barnes asked. “That’s what they are, aren’t they?

  “T-600 is short for Terminator six hundred,” Williams said, her eyes still on the machine. “T-700 means Terminator seven hundred. Right?”

  “Yeah,” Barnes said, frowning. Why was she lecturing him on the obvious? “So?”

  She looked up at him.

  “In that same format, a Terminator hybrid would be T-Hybrid, or just T-H.”

  Barnes looked at Jik, who looked as lost as Barnes felt.

  “Meaning what?” Barnes asked.

  “Meaning that in Greek,” Williams said, “T-H is the letter theta.”

  And like a sudden kick in the gut, Barnes got it.

  “The Theta Project,” he breathed.

  “What’s a Theta Project?” Jik asked.

  “Something a bunch of damn traitors are going to have to do some explaining about,” Barnes told him darkly. “Come on. And keep an eye out for that other T-700.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  For Kyle, the first hour was the hardest.

  It wasn’t just the darkness. Darkness was a familiar part of the post-Judgment Day world, and like everyone else he’d learned how to adapt and adjust. Not knowing where they were going, or even if the passageway beneath the Terminators’ tunnel would lead anywhere at all, was also not a big deal. Uncertainty was as much a part of life as darkness.

  What set Kyle’s skin crawling was the periodic rhythmic thumping overhead as the lines of T-700s first marched to the face of the excavation to collect rubble, then headed back again with their fresh burdens to wherever they had found to dump them.

  Those were the hard moments. Because those were the moments when a careless move on Kyle’s or Callahan’s or Zac’s part—a slip of a foot, an accidental dislodging of one of the jagged pieces of concrete or metal they were crawling over—would alert the Terminators to the human intruders.

  And once the machines knew where they were, they would be dead. All of them.

  Just like Yarrow.

  Kyle thought a lot about Yarrow as they traveled. He thought some about the man’s last big mistake, the mistake that had trapped Kyle and the others down here.

  But everyone made mistakes. Mostly, what Kyle thought about was the way Yarrow had done what he could to atone for his error by sending the others to safety.

  He also found himself wondering how exactly Yarrow had died.

  Kyle hadn’t heard any sounds as the T-700s had reached him. Maybe Yarrow hadn’t had time, or maybe the rolling echo of his last gunshots had covered up whatever screams or moans of agony he’d made before the end. Kyle hoped it had been quick, that the Terminators had simply broken his neck or hammer-crushed his chest or done something that would let their victim die quickly.

  But all he actually knew was that the death had involved blood. A lot of blood.

  He also knew that if the Terminators found him, he would probably die in very much the same way.

  It wasn’t Kyle’s own death that worried him. He’d learned long ago not to focus on that, because it did nothing but freeze his will and paralyze any chance of thinking his way out of a bad situation.

  But all the mental discipline in the world couldn’t stop him from worrying about Star.

  What would happen to her if he died down here?

  It was a question that had forced itself on him many, many times. At the moment, settled as she was into John Connor’s Resistance force, her chances of survival were better than at most of the times in their past together. Certainly better than any place she’d been since they left the Moldering Lost Ashes building.

  But things changed. People changed. Connor might be taking a personal interest in the two of them now, though why he would even care about a couple of inexperienced kids Kyle couldn’t guess.

  But the Resistance leader had a million other things clamoring for his attention. Sooner or later, he would forget about them.

  And even
if he didn’t, could anyone else ever understand Star, or give her the attention and care she needed? Kyle was the only one who shared their private history. The only one who understood her brand of sign language, appreciated the way she thought and felt, and knew where she hurt.

  If he died down here, she would die too. Maybe not tomorrow or the next day, but sooner or later she would give up and die.

  But Kyle didn’t make that last, fatal mistake as the T-700s passed back and forth overhead. Neither did Callahan or Zac. And as the pathway they were following angled off from directly beneath the Terminators’ tunnel the footsteps became more and more distant until they finally faded away completely.

  Which didn’t mean the going became any easier. Far from it. The explosion that had leveled Skynet Central had sent underground shock waves across the entire San Francisco peninsula. Everything that had been part of that grand complex had been reduced to a tangled mess of shattered concrete and bent or broken support girders. Callahan, who had taken point, was picking his way through the rubble by touch alone, sometimes finding passages barely wide enough to squeeze through, sometimes finding routes that led in the wrong direction. Occasionally he hit a dead end that required them to back up and try again.

  Once, they came upon an actual almost untouched room, with slightly buckled walls, a ceiling they could stand upright beneath, and a floor that they could really and truly walk on. It was such a relief to be able to move around like humans instead of moles that they nearly missed the fact that the floor was only half there.

  Zac nearly died with that discovery—fortunately Kyle was close enough to grab his arm before he went over the edge. After that, they went back to crawling, no matter how safe the landscape seemed to be.

  They’d been going for a couple of hours, and the rumbling in Kyle’s empty stomach had become an almost continuous growl, when Callahan called a halt.

  “How are you doing?” he murmured as they hunched together in the darkness.

  Kyle shivered. How was he doing? He was cold, hungry, thirsty, and scared. His hands were raw and blistered, with a hundred tiny cuts from the rough concrete and shards of metal that lay along their path. His knees were agony, and he could feel the wetness of blood oozing into his pant legs as he crawled along. He had fresh bruises on his elbows and head where he’d missed some protruding obstacle with his groping hands as he crawled. The image of Yarrow’s dead body continued to hover in front of his face in the darkness. So did Star’s face. How was he doing?