The Future War t2-3

by S. M. Stirling

  "Incidentally, it can imitate voices perfectly. Kurt Viemeister programmed it. You may not recognize the name, but he was a master of programming; he extrapolated from voice recognition to voice imitation, right down to characteristic phrasing. Wrote several illegal articles on the subject. I know they're illegal because I know he signed a secrecy contract with the government regarding his work. So if you've been getting messages from well-known people—the president, some admiral, whatever—that was Skynet."

  Chu nodded slowly, thinking about the strange way Admiral Read had been talking the last time they spoke, on the day the bombs came down. His eyes flashed to her. "Yet this is still not proof."

  "No," she said sadly. "The proof is that I'm not asking you to do anything illegal or against the interests of the United States.

  I'm asking you to place yourself, your crew, and your ship at the disposal of what we're calling the resistance."

  "Who exactly are you resisting?" Chu asked.

  "Skynet, the Luddites, and all too soon, whatever machinery Skynet will be producing in its automated factories."

  The captain studied her. She seemed quite sane, clear-eyed and intelligent. And given what he and his men had been through during the past weeks, her story held together amazingly well. Be honest, he thought, at least with yourself. Her story holds together better than anything you've thought of yourself.

  "I need to think about this, ma'am," he said aloud.

  "God, I would hope so," Sarah said. "While you're thinking about it, may I suggest you turn this baby around and head for Alaska. You'll find a friendly port there; they were hardly touched by the bombs."

  "And?"

  "And I would very much like to travel there with you."

  Chu tipped his head. "And?"

  She smiled at him. "And at the moment it's the headquarters for the resistance."

  "If we were to accept this proposal of yours," he said, "I assume I would be under your command."

  "You'd be under John Connor's command, my son. He's the only alternative to Skynet."

  "But for now we'd be under the commander in chief's mom's command, right?"

  "Mmm, right."

  "Just so I know where I stand, ma'am."

  ALASKA

  John moved his pointer over a topographical map as he outlined the plan of attack. Forty grim-faced men and women watched him, some taking notes; one woman looked both surprised and amused.

  He wasn't used to talking to large groups of people yet and still found his heart pounding whenever he faced an audience. It wasn't made easier by having his newly inducted girlfriend find the whole thing amusing.

  Cut her some slack, he told himself. She might just be nervous.

  Sometimes he found himself almost convulsed with inappropriate laughter when he was nervous. And the kind of attention these people gave him, the sheer focus they put into listening to his every word, was extremely nerve-racking.

  Especially for someone raised to avoid the limelight. Sometimes he felt naked up here.

  Ninel wrinkled her nose at him, and with an effort of will he ignored her. It was too soon to include her on this mission, he knew. But he wanted to convince her to spy on her Luddite friends for him and he didn't think she'd do that without some evidence that it was necessary.

  Or at the very least that my organization has a reason to exist and that I'm not a fascist asshole.

  John ceded the floor to the leader of the scouting party.

  "Trucks arrived and departed at four-hour intervals night and day," he said. "We have no way of knowing what was delivered or if the trucks left full or empty, as they were tied down all around or were actual eighteen-wheelers."

  There was a stir at that; the big transport trucks had been gone from the roads since Judgment Day.

  "We saw no humans in the vicinity. Nor did we find any sign of automated defenses, though we did find security cameras and microphones. Most were quite obvious. There were several tiers of laser traps around the immediate facility. Other than that, the area seemed clear."

  John had worried about that. It could be arrogance, on Skynet's part, ignorance, or a trap. And yet, trap or not, it had to be dealt with. He stood up as the scout finished. "Get some rest,"

  he ordered. "We move out at 0200." He nodded to them and left the dais, heading for Ninel. She rose, smiling, and came to him.

  "You almost made me break up, you little skunk," he murmured.

  "I can't help it," she said with a little shrug. "Extreme seriousness in other people has always given me the giggles."

  He smiled and shook his head. "You stay with me tomorrow."

  "I wondered what I was supposed to do," Ninel said.

  "Everyone else seemed to know exactly where they were supposed to be and what to do, but no one said anything to me. I was starting to think I was going to be left behind."

  He started walking toward his office. "The truth is you're not ready for a mission like this," he told her, smiling at her expression of surprise. "Not least because your attitude seems to be that we're all off our collective rockers. I need to show you that this is real," he explained, stopping to look down at her.

  "This is a real enemy we're fighting, one that wants us all dead."

  Ninel tightened her lips and looked down. "I just…"

  "I know," he said, smiling. "I needed proof myself once." He became solemn again. "Tomorrow you'll have yours."

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  DRIFTLESS AREA, NORTHEASTERN IOWA

  Now this, Tom Preston thought, is no goddamned fun at all.

  He bent, leaning on the hoe in his right hand, and pulled up the weed whose roots he'd loosened with the tool. Despite the unusually cold weather, the corn was coming up just fine; the problem was that weeds were doing just fine as well. This particular patch wasn't very large; a scraggly strip along a little brook that ran down the mostly wooded valley between two steep hills—this part of the state looked more like Appalachia than the prairies.

  It was only about a quarter of an acre, and carefully irregular so that it wouldn't show much from orbit, even on days without the current heavy gray cloud and occasional spatters of rain. The brook was running high not far off to his left, purling over abed of brown stones.'t

  He tossed the uprooted thistle onto the mulch—leaves, twigs, grass, reeds—that covered the ground between the knee-high plants and moved on to the next weed, hacking at the base of it with a force that hurt his gloved hands. The turned earth had a cool, yeasty smell, oddly like bread. Despite the cool temperature, he was sweating, and his back hurt. Could it have been only last year that farming meant sitting in lordly comfort in an air-conditioned tractor cab, spraying herbicides?

  He who does not work does not eat, he told himself.

  There were a dozen other people working in the same field, and many more fields like it scattered through the nearby hills—

  growing corn, potatoes, beets, all sorts of vegetables. They had come along more slowly than usual, but only by a couple of weeks. And they were a bit runty, but very welcome anyway.

  The hunting had been very good, with abundant deer and hare. They'd had to shoot a bear a few weeks ago. It had risen cranky from hibernation and had made clear its antipathy toward its new neighbors; besides, they needed its cave for storage.

  Tom Preston had liked the flavor of the meat, but he'd been in the minority. Most of their small community had found it too gamy and way too tough. There were still a lot of scavenged canned goods available for the picky, though, and his big gallon jars of multivitamins would keep deficiency diseases at bay for years, if need be.

  The community had grown over the past year to a village of more than a hundred people. Most of whom refused to understand why they should avoid being visible from orbit.

  Things had been so peaceful lately that Tom himself had begun to have doubts.

  So when some of the newcomers suggested a party to celebrate their survival, he was willing to go along, to a poin
t.

  "Fireworks?" Tom said. "You've got to be kidding!"

  "Why? What's wrong with fireworks? It's been wet enough that they shouldn't pose a fire hazard," one of the newcomers, Sam Varela, said.

  "Because it's a gigantic, 'We Are Here' sign," Tom said. "I, for one, don't want to end up in those relocation camps you people fled."

  The newcomers glared at him resentfully. "We have no reason to think they're still doing that," Sam said through his teeth.

  "We have less reason to think they're not," Tom snapped back.

  "They didn't set up those camps to leave them empty."

  "Going was voluntary," a woman pointed out.

  "So why are you here?" Preston challenged. "Why here? Why not stay in your homes?"

  "We're getting into some pretty deep issues here," his wife, Peggy, said with a frown at her husband. They'd discussed the newcomers in the privacy of their bedroom and his suspicion toward them worried her. "When what we came here to discuss was a picnic."

  "Maybe we should get into it," the woman said. "I'm tired of being treated like an interloper when all I want to do is get back to normal."

  "Things aren't going to go back to normal," Tom said. Didn't you notice a few little changes? Like the thermonuclear war?

  "Things are going to get a lot worse for a long time before we get anywhere close to normal. But one thing that will at least keep us safe is to avoid attracting attention."

  "Exactly whose attention are you afraid of?" Sam gave a light laugh and spread his hands. "The army? I'm telling you, they're too busy to go chasing down anyone who doesn't want their help.

  Who else is there?" He shrugged.

  Tom closed his eyes. Sometimes he wondered himself. John Connor had warned that there would be more problems with machines, but with no fuel or electricity, he honestly couldn't see how that could be. Humans, on the other hand…

  "I'm worried about gangs," Tom said. "I'm afraid that some group of lawless men will come along and take everything we've put together and kill our families." He stood up and started to pace. "These aren't civilized times," he continued. "We're not protected by multiple law enforcement organizations anymore.

  For the foreseeable future, our fate is in our own hands."

  "Oh," the woman said. "When you put it that way it makes perfect sense."

  "No fireworks," said Sam.

  Tom sat down and forced a smile, but this didn't feel like victory. Rather it felt like number four hundred of a million more arguments.

  I almost wish we'd be attacked so these people would realize what they're facing. Almost.

  * * *

  "Honey," Peggy said to him later in bed, "we're seventy-eight adults here and we're well armed. It's unlikely that we'll be faced by any gang more powerful than we are ourselves. Maybe we could loosen up a bit. Don't you think?"

  Tom reached out and drew her into his arms. "I was so afraid the day the bombs came down that I'd never see you and the kids again," he said into her sweet-smelling hair. Even now, with no shampoo available, he liked the way her hair smelled. God, but he loved her.

  Peggy hugged him tight. "I love you, too," she whispered. "I always did."

  "Tell you what," he said. "Let's be extra careful this year, until we've got our feet under us. Then we can talk about loosening up." He pulled back and looked down into her face, barely visible in the moonlight coming through the cabin window. Tom shook his head. "But I'm pretty certain that we're gonna have to build a stockade."

  She laughed and buried her head in. his shoulder, tickling him so that he laughed, too.

  "It's not funny," he said. "I'm serious."

  "You are never gonna sell them on that idea," she said. "I can just see their faces." And she laughed again.

  He smiled at her and held her close. But all the while he was thinking that a stockade was something they'd realize was necessary only after they needed it the most. He kissed his wife and prayed that she wouldn't have to suffer for its absence.

  SKYNET

  It watched the small settlement from the dark beneath the trees; linking with the Terminators' interfaces, Skynet saw the village from multiple angles. This settlement had been surprisingly well hidden for a long time. But the sheer size of the place in an area bereft of any other human activity had eventually brought it to the computer's never-resting attention.

  One hundred thirty-two humans, seventy-eight of them adults, no meat animals, lived together here. It was an almost pathologically tidy place; quite unnatural for humans. Their houses were small, built beneath, and with, the surrounding trees; often the lower limbs had been woven more tightly to provide a framework for thatched roofs, while the walls were saplings woven together and smeared with clay mixed with grass. Insubstantial for a permanent dwelling; winter weather would break them down in a short time.

  But in summer, if the weather was dry, they should be adequate shelter. Even if the weather was wet, however, they should burn well.

  Through a Terminator's sensors Skynet watched the brightly colored silhouettes of the humans through the thin walls of their dwellings. One by one, two by two, they reclined, and the heat images took on the signatures of humans at rest. Its Terminators waited silent and motionless as the moon rose and traversed the night sky.

  Many small improvements had made these Terminators more formidable killing machines than the first group, and their weapons were infinitely more powerful than the pellet weapons these humans had at their disposal. Still, Skynet had observed these subjects intensely and knew them to be well schooled in the use of the weapons they did have. This would be a true test, the first of a thousand thousand field terminations, until the final organic pest was hunted down.

  Unfortunately, that will require at least another century.

  As the last human sank into a dormant state, Skynet gave the signal to attack.

  * * *

  Peggy woke first. A light sleeper since the children were born, she heard a crackling sound and opened her eyes to the sight of flames.

  "Tom!" she shrieked, leaped from the bed, and ran down the loft stairs toward the already engulfed living room. The heat drove her back and she lay down on the floor to look over the edge of the platform. "Jason! Lisa!" she screamed.

  Then Tom was beside her. He looked over the edge and saw his children with their backs against the wall of the cabin, coughing, their eyes wild with fear. "Take Daddy's hand," he shouted over the roar of the flames. If he could just get them up here, they could go out the window, down the rope ladder.

  Lisa came toward him, but Jason held back, shaking his head frantically. The little girl reached up and Tom squirmed forward, putting slightly more than half his body over the edge. He could feel his hair start to sizzle. Peggy threw herself across his hips to hold him down, and when Lisa's head came over the edge of the platform, she reached forward and caught the girl's hair. Lisa was already screaming by then, so it made little difference in the volume of her distress, but still, her mother felt terrible.

  Once Lisa was safe and huddled against her mother, Tom dove over the edge a second time, reaching toward his son and encouraging, ordering, threatening him to come to Daddy.

  Suddenly his hair caught fire and Tom reared up in surprise and shock. Peggy caught up the small rag rug at the foot of the bed and threw it over his head.

  "I've gotta go down to him, Peg," Tom said. "He's too scared to move. Get Lisa out of here."

  She shook her head. "We've got time. You go get him; we'll lower the rope ladder. Then we'll all go." Because they sure weren't going out the front door.

  Tom did as she suggested, lowering himself from the platform, trying to ignore the fierce heat on his naked shoulders.

  He forced himself to move slowly for fear of panicking his son into doing something foolish. "C'mon, Jason," he said soothingly.

  "Take my hand and let's get out of here, okay?"

  The rope ladder came down from above and Jason dove toward it, eluding Tom's clutc
hing hand. Tom couldn't help laughing as he pursued the kid up the ladder. As soon as he reached the top, he grabbed it and dragged it over to the window, tossing it out with a clatter. Jason all but pushed him aside in his eagerness to be out of the flaming cabin and Tom let him go, laughing at his eagerness. His sister will never let him live this down.

  Jason was halfway down when a blaze of blue light shot through him, emerging in a yellow blossom of sparks. The boy fell backward, a startled expression on his young face. Tom was leaning out the window, frozen with shock, when Peggy yanked his shoulder. If not for the sudden move, the next flash of blue light would have taken off his head.

  "What's happening?" Peggy shouted over Lisa's terrified screaming.

  "The cellar!" Tom answered.

  His wife stared at the rising flames, then at her husband. It didn't look possible. She moved toward the window, but Tom grabbed her and dragged her toward the stairs.

  "Tom!" she shouted, objecting, but too frightened to be more coherent.

  "Jason's gone," he said tersely, feeling sick to his stomach.

  "Someone's firing at us. Cellar," he repeated.

  Peggy had gone limp. She still held their daughter, still stood, but for now at least, she might as well have been gone. The loft was full of smoke and the heat was becoming more dangerous.

  Tom grabbed a blanket off the bed and soaked it as well as he could with the contents of their washbowl. Then he wrapped it around them all, and with one arm around his wife's waist barreled down the stairs.

  The hatch to the cellar was under the stairs and so, for the moment, was partially sheltered from the scorching heat. Tom yanked it up, then forced his wife down the stairs before him, Pulling the hatch closed behind.

  Long ago he'd connected the cellar to a narrow rock cave that came out by the creek. Peggy knew about it and she'd hated it, seeing it as an example of his growing paranoia. The sight of the passage now snapped her out of her shock and she took a deep breath, turning to him with fear in her eyes.