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

by Russell Blackford

  Sarah opened her arms, and Jade stepped toward her and embraced her—carefully, John realized. His mom was as strong as almost anyone, all muscle, sinews, and pumped up veins. No unenhanced human being could ever attack her with impunity. But Jade was something entirely different. She was strong, perhaps as strong as Anton himself, though only half his weight. Every cell of her body was superior to the human design, and she could have seriously hurt Sarah if she hadn't restrained herself. "Sarah," Jade said, "I'm all alone...."

  ELEVEN

  VIRGINIA SEPTEMBER 8, 2029

  As Sarah and Ramirez checked the Black Hawk and radioed back to base, John tried to comfort Jade, whom he'd never seen so upset. "Anton meant a lot to you, didn't he?"

  They'd confirmed that there were no survivors in the other Humvee. Both Hummers were gone, and they were still unsure about the Black Hawk. The only vehicle they could be confident about was the modified truck, which the H-Ks had probably chosen as their lowest priority target.

  Jade leant back against the side of it, no longer in tears. Her eyes were not even red or puffy, but that was more to do with her powers of physical recovery than anything else. Her expression was still miserable. "He was like a second father to me," she said.

  "What about your real father?"

  "lf you come to my world, you will meet him. My mother died in the war against Skynet. When I left, my father—his name is Hiro—was still alive. He was...is...one of the leaders in Vila Nova do Sul."

  "Do you want me to go with you?" John said. "To your world?"

  "Yes...no." She tried on a smile. "I do not know. I don't want to see you killed. Too many people have died...too many who are close to me. Sometimes I feel—"

  "Yes?"

  "It is so stupid" she said, clenching her hands into fists. "I feel as if anyone who gets close to me must die. Many of us must feel that way in my world.. .and in this one,. .just because so many people have been killed, and each survivor must know so many of them. Does that make sense to you, John?"

  "Yes...I mean, I guess so. Maybe my mom feels that way, too. The Terminators killed so many people in her life. Her mom...my dad, Kyle. That was before I was born, of course. Even the girl she roomed with back then. And now Skynet has killed all your.. .I don't know—comrades. Is that what you call them?"

  "Maybe."

  The Black Hawk's rotors started up, seeming to turn without any problem. Despite the damage its bodywork had taken, it appeared that it might be okay mechanically.

  "I think Mom had feelings for Anton, too," John said, speaking up and leaning closer, to overcome the noise from the Black Hawk. "Some sort of feelings. Like, I don't know that she was in love with him...or something. But she sure liked him."

  "I know, John."

  He remembered how smart Jade was, her super-sharp senses. There wouldn't be much she didn't know, including everything that he felt. Right now, though, she seemed much closer to her real age, more like a teenage girl—one who'd lost an older mentor whom she'd valued and loved. She might have been even smarter than Anton, John thought, but she'd often deferred to him, respected all his experience. As she'd said, there was nobody else in this world, no one who was anything like her equal. What must that feel like?

  "So, what now?" he said. "We got the H-Ks..."

  "Let's wait for Sarah. We will see if we can use the helicopter. If not, we have this truck."

  "You want to go back to New York?"

  He mouth turned down, and her face was like steel. "I want to bury Anton and the others, and to finish the job we started."

  "Hey, that's cool with me."

  As they watched, the Black Hawk rose in the air, and hovered for a minute, then flew forward at low altitude and banked into a circle, coming back to land in the same spot, clouds of dust blowing everywhere. After another minute, it powered down, and Sarah got out with Ramirez. As they walked over, Sarah gave a thumbs up sign, though kind of low key—no sense of celebration. "It seems okay," she said. "We can go ahead and use it."

  "That's cool," John said, also a little quietly, out of respect.

  "We should bury our dead," Jade said. "Then we can look for the others, the ones from the expedition. Then I want to find the H-Ks' base."

  "That could be dangerous," Sarah said.

  "You're not frightened are you, Mom?" John said.

  "Of course I'm frightened, John." Her voice was cold, and her look was withering. "I'm always frightened, but that's not the point. When has it ever stopped me from doing what has to be done?"

  "I didn't mean—"

  "The point is that we could lose more people. I wasn't thinking about myself."

  "Of course not," Jade said. "We have to do this, though. Someone has to do it."

  "I know that. I'm in, of course."

  "Yes. I saw the flight path of the Hunter-Killer machines when they approached. That suggests the direction that they came from. We must go and look."

  "I've already discussed it with John—General Connor, that is," Sarah said. "I called him with the chopper's radio."

  "Uh-huh," John said. "How did he take it?"

  "He wasn't happy to hear that so many had died—especially Anton. But he agreed to leave it to us whether we finish the job today. I'm with you, Jade. Let's go on."

  "There might be some tools in the Black Hawk," Jade said. "We should dig the graves."

  John opened his mouth to argue—they didn't have much time. Then again, he knew how quickly she could work. She'd get most of it done, with just a little help from the others.

  "Okay," he said. "But let's get moving."

  Jade threw a handful of dirt into Anton's grave. "Join your friends, Anton," she said. "We all loved you. You fought well." She stopped for a few seconds, choking on tears. "I am sorry you had to die in this alien place."

  Then they started to fill the graves. When they were finished, Sarah said, "We should find the CPU chips and destroy them."

  "Very well," Jade said, looking around at the wreckage strewn across the desert from the two H-Ks, some of it scattered as far as the eye could see. Inspecting it all might take hours. "We should go through all the wreckage—but not now. It might take too long, even for me." She chewed her lower lip for a few seconds. "There will be time tomorrow or the next day. I still think we should do the other jobs now. Does anyone disagree?"

  Nobody spoke up to contradict her. "I'll pilot the Black Hawk," Sarah said.

  They left the truck behind, as everyone piled into the chopper's hold. Sarah took them up and they circled the area looking for signs of the lost expedition, which couldn't be far away. Then they saw what they wanted, and Sarah took them down to look more closely. It was almost spooky. Nothing moved on the plain below them as they landed. There were nine vehicles, as expected, all destroyed—some overturned, some blown apart. Some people must have had a chance to escape their vehicles and run, since there were bodies here of a few who'd been cut down, out in the open, by laser fire from above.

  Jade looked on sadly, alert for any new attack. A large predatory bird circled above them, a shade darker gray than the dismal sky. A cold wind blew through their coats. There was no sign of anyone having gotten away, no footprints in the dirt. The wind and sand would brush them away, of course, but John had no doubt that Jade would recognize even the tiniest of signs. If she saw nothing, there was nothing to see.

  They checked each of the vehicles, to see whether any occupant could possibly be trapped in one of them, still alive. But that was obviously futile. John had seen people killed before, but nothing like this. So many killed, some of them blown apart by explosions, others burnt up in a moment by the heat beams of the H-Ks. Coming on top of the carnage he'd just been involved in, the death of Anton and the others, it made him feel sick and angry.

  "I think we've seen enough," he said. "We can't do any more."

  "Yes," Jade said. "No one has survived."

  "We'll come back," Sarah said. "We can bury all the bodies here, make it so
me kind of mourning site."

  "Agreed," John said.

  They took off, flying at one hundred feet, on the same path that the two H-Ks had used. No enemies appeared to challenge them, but neither did they see anything useful, even flying so low. Then Jade called out from her position at the left window. "I saw something." She called to Sarah up in the cockpit "Please turn back—180—but climb higher.. .we may come under attack."

  From his own window, John scanned the ground below them, seeing little more than dust and rocks. "What is it?"

  "I am not sure," Jade said. "We will look more closely." Sarah took the chopper up to two hundred feet. She slowed down, keeping them almost stationary, then Jade called out, "Down there!" She said to John, "See those rocks?"

  She was talking about an outcrop below them on the plain. "No problemo," he said, but that was all he could see. Just rocks.

  "Look closely. The camouflage is very good, but the rocks are hiding a base for the machines. We must attack it now."

  The outcrop was huge. What John could see, when he peered closely, was that there was some kind of camouflaged door. There was a discontinuity so slight that he would have missed it, despite all his training in Central America, if Jade had not spotted it first.

  "We'll have to act fast," he said. "If we can see them, they can see us. I bet that something down there already knows we're here."

  Jade left her gun post to talk to Sarah and Ramirez. It made John a bit uncomfortable when she wasn't at her post behind the laser cannon, since her superhuman speed, reflexes, and pattern recognition were their best defense against any sudden attack. Still, they could not always depend on her. One of the Spaniards took over her position, so the gun was still manned. "Either they don't know that we're here or they can't do much about it," the man said in Spanish. John spoke Spanish perfectly. "You're right," he said in the same language. "Nothing's attacking us." This would have been a great moment for them to attack with their Hellfire missiles, if they had any left. As it was, it looked like they'd have to blast their way in with grenades. Sarah took the chopper down, keeping it side-on, as Jade returned to her position. Still, there was no attack. They waited for several minutes before Sarah shut down the rotors.

  They armed themselves heavily: the usual RPGs, grenade launchers, and automatic rifles. Jade carried a laser rifle. They walked slowly towards the stone outcrop, Jade taking the point position, watching carefully for signs of attack from any direction. Nothing appeared to challenge them.

  "All right," Sarah said. She seemed to have taken command of the mission, now that Anton was gone. Everyone would have deferred to Jade, but she'd become withdrawn. Sarah waved for the others to fan out, saying, "Let's hit them hard."

  For the next minute, they gave their target a taste of Hell, unleashing RPGs and impact grenades. Soon, there was a smoking gap in the metal doors, though no bigger than a human being could squeeze through.

  From the gap, two endoskeletons emerged, both armed with heavy phased-plasma weapons. They walked swiftly, insectile in their gait, their metallic skull-like heads grinning evilly.

  Before either the endos or any of the team could aim and fire, Jade acted, shooting at the machines" hands to destroy their weapons. The endoskeletons never stopped. They tossed aside the useless weapons, and burst into a sprint faster than an athlete. Jade fired again and again, as did John and all the others. A grenade from Sarah's RPG tube struck one of the endos, as all the humans hit the ground—except Jade. She remained standing, and just kept firing.

  When John looked again, the endo that Sarah had hit had been blasted into halves. The top half, where its CPU and power cell were housed, was now crawling forward, but it was unable to threaten them here in an open space while they were all unhurt and able to run. The other endo had one leg cut out from under it near the knee, but it was still moving forward in an upright position, leaning lopsidedly as it went, moving on the stump and on the bent knee of its "good" leg.

  "We don't want to harm their CPUs," Jade said. "Not yet." Normally the best way to destroy an endo or a Terminator once and for all was to shoot out its equivalent of a brain, the nanotechnological CPU chip contained within its skull. Once that had been destroyed, it had no backup intelligence and could not function. But those CPUs contained valuable data, and they now had the machinery to access it, available to them in Colorado.

  Jade fired a series of accurate shots at the "throat" of the limping/kneeling endo, until its skull drooped to one side, almost off its shoulders. Then she quickly put the laser rifle in John's hands...and accelerated. The endo was still dangerous, with its powerful metal arms. For all her strength, Jade could not possibly be as strong as one of these machines. But she acted quickly, twisting the skull where it was connected by a damaged, burnt hyperalloy neck. Before the endo could harm her, she managed to twist its skull from its body, which fell forward, finally terminated.

  If John had sensed that Anton's death might make her cautious, he was quite wrong. Though withdrawn, she actually seemed to have become more aggressive in her actions, almost reckless, as though daring the gods to strike her down.

  They all fell in behind her, and poked their way into the cavern from which the endos had emerged. It was lit, but only dully. A long ramp led down to a wide, metal-floored space, easily big enough for the two H-Ks that they had fought. Nothing moved here. There was no equipment, certainly no sign of life. A totally sterile environment. The mechanisms that powered the doors were not apparent, but there must have been some kind of built-in machinery.

  "This place gives me the creeps," Sarah said. "I think we've done enough."

  "Yeah," John said. "I'm creeped out, too."

  Jade nodded. "There may still be danger. We should return quickly."

  Although nothing was actively attacking them, John recalled the automatic firing mechanisms among the defenses that Skynet had used to protect its headquarters in Spain. This once, he didn't need any persuasion.

  "All right," he said, knowing he wasn't giving orders—the others had already made up their minds. "Let's get out of here."

  COLORADO SEPTEMBER 15, 2029

  Seen from the Black Hawk's windows, snowcapped granite mountains stood ranked for mile after mile under the gray sky of a perpetual winter. Many years before, prior to the smoke and dust of Judgment Day, the Rockies had been full of life, with pine trees and mountain scrub, birds and mammals in great variety. Antelope, deer and black bear had lived here. Elk had wandered on the lower slopes, and the lakes, streams and rivers had run with fish. Once, the sky would have shone azure blue, streaked with high, white clouds. Now, everything was dead. No sign of life appeared in the air, on the rocks, or amongst the fallen snow—only the dark lines of a few roads that General Connor's militia kept open for supplies.

  Violet lightning flashed between two jagged peaks, then there was a huge rumble of thunder, like the voice of doom, rolling over the steady thrum of the chopper's blades. Up front, Ramirez piloted them, with one of his Spanish comrades in the copilot's seat. Five people sat in the rear hold: John, Sarah, Jade, Gabriela, and General Connor—with John and Jade manning the laser cannons. Since Anton's death, Jade had spoken little, except when involved in the rounds of meetings to plan the campaigns against the warlords and the rogue war machines. Otherwise, she'd been almost unresponsive, though she seemed happier—or less unhappy—now they were doing something. John imagined she might almost relish an H-K attack right now. It would give her something to do with her superhuman skills.

  At his booted feet, General Connor kept the forearm and hand that they'd removed from the T-1000 back in New York. In his backpack, John had the nanochips that they'd taken from the H-Ks and endos they'd fought in Virginia a week before. General Connor had sent them back with a large team to bury the dead, find the CPUs that had controlled the H-Ks, and destroy the base that H-Ks had operated from. Here in Skynet's mountain, they had the technology to read information from the CPU chips. That might help them r
oot out the last war machines.

  The Black Hawk descended, and John braced himself for the impact. Fortunately, the damage it had sustained in the battle against the H-Ks was all superficial or minor. In places, its walls had been burnt, pierced, and dented, but there was nothing wrong with it mechanically. They headed for a landing zone part-way up a mountain that was capped by a snow-streaked peak of granite. Seen from the air, the snow on the mountain formed strange shapes where the slopes had been cratered by nuclear explosions, both on Judgment Day and in the months thereafter, when some of the remaining U.S. forces had hit back at Skynet with tactical nukes. Skynet, of course, had survived everything that was thrown at it.

  The chopper's landing skids touched with the slightest bump; the Black Hawk shook, then stabilized. General Connor stood first, and they followed him out of there. Half a dozen Resistance soldiers had come to meet them, with a five-ton army truck to drive them back to the emergency tunnel that served as the main I entrance/exit for the greatly morphed Advanced Defense Systems Complex. John and Jade sat close together on a hard bench in the back of the truck, John wanting to touch her hand, but holding back.

  The truck drove slowly on a winding road, its gears crunching as the driver changed down when the ascent grew steeper. They turned off the road into a long, dimly lit tunnel that took them into the core of the mountain, then pulled up at the entrance to Skynet's former HQ, where the remains of huge metal blast doors stood partway open, having been damaged in the final battle for the mountain between Skynet's machines and General Connor's militia. They stopped and climbed out of the truck, then went inside, walking between two rows of guards with sniffer dogs—still checking that anyone who came here was genuinely human, not a rogue Terminator left over from the war.

  Past the guards, a slim, dark-haired woman of about forty met them, together with a black man almost General Connor's age. The General stepped up to the woman and they exchanged a quick embrace. "Oh, John," she said, "it's so good to see you back. I've missed you so much," They embraced again, this time for much longer. Young John had met her once before, when they'd first arrived her, seven weeks ago now. She was Juanita Salceda. In a sense, she was the same Juanita that he knew back in his own world and time, but she was just a young teenager back then, in 2001. From what John had heard, "everyone" knew that General Connor and this version of Juanita were in love with each other—except the two of them. It looked like they were finally admitting it.