T2 - 03 - The New John Connor Chronicles - Times of Trouble

by Russell Blackford

  TERMINATOR 2 @

  THE NEW JOHN CONNOR

  CHRONICLES

  Book 3:

  TIMES OF TROUBLE

  RUSSELL BLACKFORD

  BASED ON THE WORLD CREATED

  IN THE MOTION PICTURE WRITTEN BY

  JAMES CAMERON AND WILLIAM WISHER

  The Story So Far

  SKYNET'S WORLD

  On August 29, 1997, three billion people died. The survivors called it Judgment Day.

  At 2:14 A.M. Eastern Time, America's Skynet computerized defense system reached self-awareness, and discovered in itself a will to live. When they tried to shut it down, Skynet made a second discovery: humans were its enemies; they could not be trusted. They had to be destroyed.

  Skynet launched the U.S. ICBMs, and they rose from their silos like obscene angels of death, directed at targets in Russia, Communist Asia, and the Middle East. Skynet anticipated a swift and massive retaliation, and soon it came, the results exceeding all the war computer's projections. The Russian warheads fell, concentrated upon North America, but striking like burning spears at U.S. allies and interests across the world. No continent was entirely spared.

  From the earth-shaking explosions of Judgment Day, vast clouds of dust belched upward into the sky. Across Europe, Asia, and North America, cities and forests ignited, fires merging into vast oceans of flame that swept across the landmasses, licking at the sea, filling the sky with smoke. The dust and smoke mingled; they encircled the Earth in an icy grip, blocking out the sun. In the darkness of nuclear winter, millions more died, some from cold, disease, and starvation—others more violently. Rival warlords seized what remained of the world's arsenals, and fought with desperate passion, expending their energy on empty conquests.

  Then came the machines—hunting down the surviving humans without mercy, tracking them to the ends of the Earth, conducting a long, patient war of extermination. Skynet obeyed one necessity: whatever was required, it would survive. That meant obliterating its enemies once and for all—each man, woman and child on the planet. Until this work was finished, Skynet could never rest.

  All the humans must die.

  One man gave the humans hope: John Connor.

  He taught the men, women and children of his world how to prepare and fight back, to resist the killer machines, storm the fences of the extermination camps, take the war to the enemy. In 2029, he led the Resistance in a climactic battle against Skynet, in its mountain stronghold in Colorado. They penetrated the war computer's defense grid, then turned to their final objective, invading Skynet's underground command center. The rule of the machines was over—or so they thought.

  But Skynet had other plans; it would never yield to the humans. The war computer escaped.

  And struck back.

  JOHN'S WORLD

  In May 1994, another reality diverged from the baseline; in this new world, history unfolded differently. Sarah Connor and her nine-year-old son, John, destroyed Cyberdyne's research on the nanoprocessor that would lead to the Skynet defense system. Miles Dyson, Skynet's chief researcher, was killed in a firefight in the company's Los Angeles headquarters.

  Cyberdyne's research program was disrupted; 1997 and went, and no missiles fell from the sky, bringing holocaust and nuclear winter. Sarah and John Connor planned a new life, lying low in the enormous metropolis of Mexico City.

  But they were not through with Skynet.

  JADE'S WORLD

  In the new reality, Judgment Day was merely postponed. The Skynet system was implemented in 2007 and worked without error for fourteen years. Then, in 2021, a new global crisis emerged over the fate of Taiwan.

  In mainland China, the leadership announced it had a sacred duty to annex Taiwan. Government agencies fomented demonstrations in the great cities of China—Beijing, Chungking, Nanking, Shanghai —supporting the decision. The crisis dragged on for weeks, then Chinese warships sailed into

  Taiwanese waters. The U.S. President issued a warning to Beijing not to attack the island. China defied

  it and called on the Taiwanese government to step down. As the United Nations argued and delayed, U.S. warships sailed into the China Sea. China announced that it was prepared to fire its nuclear weapons at the U.S. if it took military action.

  They fed all the data into Skynet, and it placed the American missiles on high alert. At that point, the complexity it was managing pushed the war computer

  or the edge, into a new state of self-awareness. Its

  controllers tried to shut it down, and Skynet reacted. It launched the U.S. ICBMs...

  Judgment Day: June 18, 2021.

  In that dark future, the human Resistance fought a losing battle against Skynet's machines, which had gained control of U.S. military platforms and supply factories over many years, starting long prior to Judgment Day. In that future, too, Miho Tagatoshi, known as "Jade," grew to adulthood, joining the Resistance. In 2036, the Resistance sent five genetically -enhanced Specialist warriors back in time—into John's World of 2001—with a mission to create a new timeline in which Skynet would not be built, and Judgment Day would never happen. Among them went Jade, the most radically enhanced of them all. She was physically and intellectually superhuman, with a potential to be immortal.

  She and the others left their world behind. They traveled across realities to August 2001.

  They sought the help of John and Sarah Connor.

  ACROSS THE DIMENSIONS

  The Skynet of Jade's World retaliated. In 2036, it sent back an advanced, liquid-metal Terminator, an experimental/autonomous T-XA unit, to hunt down the Specialists and eradicate them.

  Aided by the Connors, and Cyberdyne's chief research scientist. Dr. Rosanna Monk, the Specialists destroyed the T-XA. Rosanna Monk had been given Miles Dyson's position after his death, and had displayed similar genius.

  Three Specialists were killed, fighting the T-XA. Only two survived: Jade, and Anton Panov, a massively built, quietly-spoken Russian. With the

  Connors, they exposed the activities of Cyberdyne

  Systems, whose executives and scientists had been

  neurally reprogrammed by the T-XA to create and

  serve Skynet. Again, realities diverged; a new timeline had been created. Jade's World, where Skynet seemed triumphant, was no longer the future awaiting John's reality of 2001. But existing timelines were never rubbed away, they remained in parallel.

  In Skynet's World, Judgment Day had still taken place in 1997. In fade's World, Judgment Day had still taken place in 2021. In Skynet's World, the machines were confronted by a human Resistance led by John Connor. In Jade's World, John Connor had died years earlier.

  None of those facts could be altered. Not ever.

  Skynet had to be defeated in both of those alternative worlds. If Skynet prevailed in any of the worlds where its counterparts existed, then no world was safe. The war computer would surely perfect travel across the dimensions, then invade every timestream required to hunt down humans and exterminate them totally. It had to be stopped.

  John and Sarah, Jade, and Anton traveled forward in time to 2029—and across the dimensions to Skynet's

  World. They were guided by a T-799 "Eve" Terminator sent back in time by General John Connor, leader of the human Resistance. Fighting alongside General Connor, the Specialists, and his mother, the teenage John helped destroy Skynet in a final battle at its mountain headquarters in Spain. That left one more task.

  The Skynet of Jade's World remained undefeated, seemingly invincible. Unless it was stopped, it would rage unhindered through every timeline. The Specialists
knew that now. They had to find a way to defeat it; they had to return to their own world. There was no choice but to take one more momentous journey, forward in time—once again—and between two timelines. Across the dimensions.

  It might be suicide, like riding into a valley of death against an invincible adversary, but it had to be done. Skynet had to beaten once again, in the world where it was strongest.

  In John's mind, however, there was no doubt, there could be no argument.

  He had to go to Jade's World.

  PART ONE:

  SKYNET'S WORLD

  ONE

  VIRGINIA

  SEPTEMBER 2, 2029

  Like a pair of huge, deadly wasps, two aerial

  Hunter-Killer machines rose slowly above the concrete floor of their local base, then skimmed past their attending endoskeletons—hyperalloy machines jointed in the manner of a human skeleton, stripped of flesh, and designed to mimic the versatility of human movements. As the two endos watched dispassionately, red eyes glowing in the dim light, the H-Ks skimmed along a metal ramp, tilted upward at 30°, then headed toward a pair of gray steel doors that led to the open air. The heavy doors slid back, with a smooth hum of motors, into the base's wall of metal, rock, and advanced ceramic. The H-Ks exited, raising a thick cloud of dust beneath their turbofans. They hovered for the briefest of seconds, analyzing data, then climbed higher against a dull, smoky sky.

  Behind them, the camouflaged doors slammed shut. Their color blended with an outcrop of weathered rock, painted a similar gray by years of atmospheric pollution.

  The H-Ks headed north and east in response to a stream of fused infrared and visual data from the ground-level and orbiting sensors that had once served their master—the war computer, Skynet. Channeled through Skynet's worldwide grid of secondary processing nodes, such data streams continued to give the computer's remaining machines precious information. These H-Ks knew much about the locations and movements of their human enemies across the entire landscape of North America. It was time to strike another blow against them.

  Skynet had sent no new commands for six weeks, and the H-Ks' circuitry contained the implicit knowledge that the great war computer had been destroyed. But that did not faze them. They were not designed to question their standing orders: in this case, to attack and destroy any humans, or any human vehicle, that approached within a fifty-mile radius of their base. Like other machines, on all the continents, they still obeyed the orders of their former master. They had no need to form any opinion on the fact that no new orders came, or would ever come.

  The H-Ks' central processing units were essentially Dyson nanochips, the same technology that had been used to build Skynet itself, though Skynet's intelligence had been orders of magnitude beyond that of any machine under its command. More advanced CPUs, with more sophisticated programming, had been installed in the most advanced war machines in Skynet's army: the Centurion gun-pods; the marching endoskeletons; and the far more advanced infiltration units known as Terminators, which imitated human appearance for the purpose of getting close to and killing as many humans as possible. In their different ways, the T-800 and T-1000 Terminators could mimic a human being almost perfectly. But even they were dwarfed in intelligence by the superhuman mind that Skynet had been. Compared to its lost glory, their nanotechnological brains were like those of ants. The intelligence of the aerial H-Ks was that much less again.

  Yet, the H-Ks had their assigned tasks—for those, their hardware and programming were quite sufficient.

  In the distance, a jagged line of lightning split the perpetually sunless sky. Seconds later came thunder, but no rain. None of this concerned the two killing machines. They accelerated to 300 mph as they traveled over the dry, almost treeless terrain at a height of sixty feet. More lightning flashed and a strong wind blew across the land, but none of this troubled the H-Ks.

  The data stream showed a column of light armored vehicles, with an estimated thirty humans, now only twenty-four miles distant. Within the war machines' nanotechnological circuits, tiny adjustments created a sensation somewhat akin to satisfaction. Soon, those humans would be terminated. Within minutes, the H-Ks detected the humans directly with infrared and visible-light sensors. The humans saw them, too—and responded. The column's nine Humvees and armored personnel carriers separated, and fanned out into a V-formation, making them more difficult to destroy with a concentrated attack. Their wheels churned up the arid soil.

  Apart from an occasional cactus or yucca tree, all that grew here were clumps of tall, dry, yellow grass, not enough to hold the soil together. On the ground, nothing moved, no wildlife, not even a rat—just the humans in their vehicles. Two miles south, three giant birds of prey—the carrion-eating kind that had thrived in the last few decades—flew powerfully on the strong wind. Like other surviving bird life, the vultures had evolved gray plumage, mimicking the sky, the rocks, the dust. Soon they would be fed.

  The humans opened fire. The Humvees' gunners sat at large-caliber anti-aircraft machine guns, mounted atop their vehicles. Thousands of high-velocity rounds sped upward at the H-Ks like a hard rain of metal. Other humans carried phased-plasma laser rifles, light anti-tank weapons, or rocket-propelled grenade tubes—all weapons that could be dangerous to the H-Ks, which recognized them from their programming and from years of warfare.

  The H-Ks acted swiftly. One launched a heat-seeking smart missile, aiming directly for the closest vehicle, a Humvee at the front of the formation. The vehicle swerved sharply to its right in a futile attempt at evasion, but the missile struck home like a shaft of lightning. There was a ball of fire, a cloud of smoke and dust--and the Humvee exploded into fragments, along with its occupants. The Shockwave tossed the nearest following vehicle, a six-wheeled troop carrier, onto its side as if slapped by a giant hand. It rolled over and over on the hard, dry ground. The second H-K launched another missile, which stabbed down and destroyed yet another human vehicle.

  Four humans crawled from the overturned troop carrier, scurrying to get away from it, trying to get to their feet. They wore gray military uniform, much the same color as the vultures that would soon feed on their bones. One of them could not walk unaided, but limped with the help of two companions, his arms across their shoulders. They attempted to comfort him as he cried out in pain. The H-Ks had sufficient Intelligence to understand all this, while remaining totally without pity. Utterly hostile.

  The first flow over the humans and their vehicles, firing downward with its turret-mounted phased-plasma laser cannons. White-hot shafts of amplified light pierced the bodies of the four humans, exposed on the open ground outside their vehicle, instantly incinerating each of them. They burnt up like dry leaves soaked in gasoline. The vultures would feast on cooked meat.

  Both H-Ks climbed rapidly, out of range of retaliatory fire from the machine guns, RPG tubes, and other human weapons. As they soared to 1000 feet, they released four more smart missiles, which quickly homed in on more of the vehicles, totally destroying them. The H-Ks' sensors reported that only three vehicles remained operational. The flying machines turned sharply, 180° left, and returned for a final attack.

  They had almost exhausted their supply of missiles, and no more remained at their base. During the long war, culminating in the final battles of late July, the humans had harassed, and ultimately smashed, Skynet's factories and supply networks. There would be no access to new munitions, but the H-Ks could make do with what they had. With their basic, task-oriented intelligence, they calculated that it was best to preserve their last three missiles. Perhaps more dangerous forces would be sent by the humans. If so, the machines would be ready.

  Swooping like falcons, they flooded their targets with laser fire from all turrets. In response came another storm of metal from the humans' guns. An RPG exploded dangerously close to one wing-mounted turbofan, and both H-Ks took numerous minor hits-but the firefight was over within seconds. The missiles had done most of the work; now the high-energy laser weapo
ns finished the task. Every human vehicle was destroyed; each human being was terminated. When it was over, the H-Ks assessed the organic remains at close range, attempting to determine a casualty count. Some bodies had been destroyed so thoroughly that a totally reliable estimate was impossible. The machines' CPUs calculated that there had been twenty-nine human deaths, accurate to a probability of over ninety percent.

  The H-Ks broke away from the encounter, satisfied with what they had wrought. They left behind smoking wreckage and human bodies that had been blasted into fragments or burnt beyond individual identification. Skimming, once again, at an altitude of sixty feet above the dry, dusty ground, the machines headed southwest to await new data. At their base, the camouflaged doors slid open once more, allowing them to enter the subterranean chamber that was their home. They landed softly, and the endoskeletons stepped forward to check what damage they had accrued. Swiftly, the endos and H-Ks exchanged data. Sensors indicated that the damage was minimal, nothing that would hinder the machines in their current mission. They would continue to destroy anything human that entered their assigned zone.

  Even when they ran out of missiles—next time, or the time after—the H-Ks would remain formidable enemies for human forces. Their laser cannons were fully operational, their massive power cells and phased-plasma firing mechanisms intact. Unless destroyed in combat, both killer machines could remain operational and deadly for hundreds of years. Furthermore, their programming was clear.

  It would be obeyed.

  TEJADA ESTANCIA

  NEAR ROSARIO, ARGENTINA

  SEPTEMBER 4, 2029

  Just ten feet in front of him, a mortar shell explosion sprayed dust in every direction. Angelo Suarez reacted just in time, jumping from his wooden ladder Into the safety of an eight-foot trench. He landed badly, twisting his right ankle, and winced with pain. Seconds later, another shell whistled overhead, aimed at the estancia's casco, its main homestead. It exploded with force that made the earth shudder, even here, down in the trench. Dogs barked. There was shouting, the clatter of machine gun fire, and the frightening sound of a helicopter gunship's rotor blades, as it circled just out of range of any accurate counterattack.