T2 - 02 - The New John Connor Chronicles - An Evil Hour

by Russell Blackford

  “Certainly."

  "Then we will go."

  She took the Black Hawk into the air and flew it across the city toward the fighting, hoping she was not too late. The endos were converging on the humans' position from several directions; about half of them were escorting a ground H-K, which was spitting bolts of laser light from its turrets, absorbing the counterfire from the humans. It was time to hit back hard. The machines did not expect an attack from the air. At Jade's command, Arnaud fired three armor-piercing Hellfire missiles at their target; they blasted toward it at 950 mph. The ground H-K never had a chance.

  Jade circled, then swept back to deliver four more missiles into the ranks of the endoskeletons. With the aerial H-Ks gone, Skynet's forces in the city were no match for a weapons platform like this. She climbed out of range of the answering fire from their laser rifles. Some of the endos were too close to the humans' positions for Arnaud to target them directly, but Jade assessed that about twenty had been destroyed by that salvo of missiles, quite enough to turn the tide.

  One more strike. Arnaud launched two more missiles at another group of five endos which were still well distant from the humans. This was surgical work, quickly cutting away some of the evil in this world. That much accomplished, Jade found a sufficiently flat space, half a mile from the battlefield. The copter's huge rotors lifted dust and stones as she landed it.

  "Do you know the way to the factory that we want? Skynet's factory?"

  Arnaud nodded quickly.

  "Stay here, then. We're going to need you." |

  Her cut and bruised feet had already recovered. Despite her exertion since arriving here, she had plenty of energy left. She found a laser rifle, then sprinted back to the humans. The Black Hawk bristled with two mini-guns, one mounted at the window on each side. Its hold contained stores of ammunition and explosives. Among them were more Hellfire missiles, a spare set of sixteen.

  Their next target was Skynet.

  Jade's air strike had greatly reduced the odds, but the last endos kept coming, and it was hard to take them out cleanly. John got the idea of it from watching the more experienced fighters like Escandell and Tenez, both of whom fought like demons. He aimed from cover behind a six-wheeled armored vehicle, choosing an endo fifty yards away; he fired an impact grenade from the M-203 launcher mounted on his rifle. It scored a glancing hit, and the grenade exploded, blasting the endo off its feet, but that didn't totally stop it.

  Some mechanism in its legs had been damaged and it struggled to find its feet, then came toward him again, with an ungainly limping walk. It raised its laser rifle and fired in his direction, pinning him down, but he heard the sound of a phased-plasma firing mechanism, and someone returned fire at the endo. It turned to its new enemy, tracing their location with pinpoint precision, shooting off bolt after bolt of coherent light. John had four grenades left. He loaded one more in his launcher, leaned out from his cover point to aim... and squeezed the trigger. The impact grenade struck directly, blasting the endo in two at the waist. It dragged itself forward, but it was no threat to any able-bodied soldier. Concentrated laser fire from several directions finished it off.

  Sarah ran from a point of cover over on his right to join him. "We got that evil sucker, John." He realized that she had drawn its fire after the first grenade, then been one of the ones to finish it off.

  "Hey, Mom... yeah, we blew it away."

  Dangerous though they were, the endos were now doomed. In this kind of firefight, exchanging shots at a distance with explosive and phased-plasma weapons, their resilience gave them little edge over the humans. Though they'd converged from all sides, surrounding the Resistance fighters, their numbers were now thinned to about ten, no longer enough to pose a serious threat, though enough to wreak enormous damage if they got closer. At close range, they would gain a huge advantage. You couldn't fight them hand-to-hand or with ordinary firearms.

  Anton seemed to be everywhere in the battle, relying on his speed as well as strength, rushing from point to point in an accelerated blur. He was only one man, but he was inspiring them. If they all held together, they could win this battle.

  Behind him, John heard a scream and turned to see a Resistance soldier struck through the chest and shoulder by a laser bolt, as she stood to fire from behind an ok: rusted vehicle. Within the same second, another boh took her, and her whole body seemed to light up like a flare. Two endos approached from that direction, their skulls swiveling, firing off shot after shot. One second later, they killed two more human soldiers. John turned his head in dismay: so many had to die.

  "Get down!" Anton shouted. "Right down!" John and | Sarah rolled beneath the armored vehicle, seeing what Anton was doing. He twisted the ignition mechanism on a phased-plasma grenade, tossing it with all his strength toward the two endos. It exploded in an orange fireball, taking out both machines. As John rolled out from under cover, he saw Anton still standing, despite the shock wave. John tried to count how many endos were left. He couldn't spot them all, but it must be just six or eight. But people were being killed, too. They would win this battle, yet how many soldiers would be left to fight the next one?

  Someone was running toward them, firing with a laser rifle, hitting an endo neatly in its skull with several shots fired at high speed. It had to be Jade—they'd had messages from her, via Anton, and from her driver. As she ran, endos returned fire at her, and four soldiers who'd been pinned down fired in their direction. One of them was Big John, who'd sheltered behind a ten-foot-high block of twisted metal wreckage. Jade threw herself at the ground and scurried for cover.

  "Jade needs our help," Anton said.

  Big John ran over to them. "What's happening?"

  Anton looked him up and down, gripped him by the shoulder. "Come with us. This is your chance to end it forever."

  Jade reached them, as Anton shouted directions, point-ing to John and Sarah, "You come, and you." He called to Tenez to join their team. Jade flung herself to the ground, skidding on her stomach, oblivious to what damage it might do to her body.

  Escandell saw what was happening. He shouted something from his position in the back of his modified pickup. Whatever it was, he seemed to be waving them on. He returned to firing a mounted anti-aircraft gun, coking satisfied at how the battle had gone. Soon it would be over.

  Sarah crawled into the front of the armored car, slid over to the driver's side, and took the wheel. There was still a key in the ignition. John followed Sarah, while Big John climbed in the back, followed by Anton and Tenez. lade got to her feet, fired two shots at an endo approaching from behind their cover, then squeezed in last as Sarah accelerated out of there. Laser bolts strobed past on either side of them, as she found a gap in the en-dos' thinned ranks. She wrestled with the heavy wheel, the car skidding and scraping on dust and debris.

  "Straight ahead now," Jade said.

  "Yes," Sarah said. "I can see it."

  In a minute, they reached the Black Hawk. Sarah slammed the brakes, and the car stopped with a jolt jade was out of there first, sprinting the last yards to the helicopter. She climbed into the pilot's seat, and got the chopper started, as the rest of them scrabbled after her.

  Arnauld greeted them in Spanish. "It's forty miles north of here. A big factory for machines. I can show you the way."

  "I've waited decades for this moment," Big John said.

  In another minute, they were airborne, leaving the battle behind, headed for the mountains. Flying in darkness, into unknown territory.

  NORTH OF MADRID

  They tracked close to the ground as they approached Skynet's factory, flying across high, rocky terrain with no lights or radio contact. Within twenty minutes, Jade had found her target. The factory was built into a mountain, but not deep underground like Skynet's headquarters in Colorado. Skynet had no reason to think that they knew its location. All the prospects were good.

  They kept their distance, keeping out of range of laser fire. Seven Hellfire missiles remain
ed. It was time to spend them wisely.

  The factory covered acres, with a block-shaped building jutting out of the mountain. A road led up to it with an entrance protected by a high fence with guard towers. She could see endoskeletons, moving about like ants, guarding the facility, and an aerial H-K rose from a flat expanse of ground to meet them.

  Sarah and Anton had taken positions behind the Black Hawk's mini-guns. John and Xavier Tenez sat on the floor further back in the chopper, ready to fight when they landed. John found an ammunition box with half a dozen phased-plasma thermal grenades. He stuffed three of the cylindrical canisters—all that would fit—down the front of his shirt.

  Big John locked one of their missiles onto a guard-tower where several endos milled about. He launched the missile, then Jade climbed away from the aerial H-K that was coming after them. Laser cannon fire stabbed up at them from the ground, but at this range the armored Black Hawk withstood it. The missile struck, lighting up the mountainside with a sudden flash.

  But the aerial H-K came after them, firing its laser cannons. Several bolts hit them, burning holes in the side of the Black Hawk. Jade held their position, and Anton got a clear shot with his mini-gun. He fired, sending hundreds of rounds per minute into the enemy machine.

  From the pilot's seat, Jade called out, "We have to go down now. We are too damaged to fly."

  Anton kept firing, then called out in his loud, accented voice. "Hey, bullseye!"

  As the Black Hawk rocked from side to side, John rushed to the side door—the H-K dropped below them, seeming to struggle for altitude, its engines damaged. It was clearly not designed to attack an enemy at higher altitude; no laser fire came their way.

  "We've got to finish it off," John said.

  Big John strode to the door in two steps, steady on his feet, even as the chopper began to vibrate. "Fire in the hole," he said, as he armed his RPG tube; John and the others hit the floor as he fired, leaning away from the back blast. There was an explosion, and the light of a fireball through the Black Hawk's door.

  "It's going down," Anton said.

  From up in front, Jade called out, "We have rotor damage. We cannot fly much longer. We must use the last missiles. Right now!"

  Jade and Big John found targets for the other six missiles, hitting guardtowers, a group of endos, a point on the facade of the factory where the laser cannon fire had come from. Seconds later, the explosions were satisfying, but more laser fire came from below.

  "I see four endoskeletons down there," Jade said. "They are armed with laser rifles. We will have to land among them." She was aiming for the point where the H-K had taken off; John could see that it was their best landing zone.

  Anton and Sarah blazed away with their mini-guns, trying to suppress the endos as they landed. "Got one,” Sarah said. "Eat this, suckers." The sound of the rotors changed; Jade had cut the power to them.

  They hit the ground with a hard jolt, but squarely on their landing wheels, and Anton rushed out the left-hand door, firing at the nearest endo. He had a laser rifle in one fist, in the other a phased-plasma grenade. One bolt of laser light drilled the endo in a glowing red "eye." Two shots destroyed its CPU. The rest of them followed Anton, overwhelming the last two endos with their numbers—Sarah took one out with a clean head shot. Tenez shot out the other's eyes, but a shot from the endo pierced his abdomen, and he cried out in extreme pain. He fell violently to the ground, like he'd been thrown down, and cursed in Spanish, writhing on the ground.

  "Someone look after him," Big John said. Jade and Arnaud had left the cockpit, and Arnaud rushed to help Tenez.

  There was now a huge gap in the facade of Skynet's factory, the metal supports grotesquely twisted, the base of the building a pile of shattered, fallen masonry. Two humanoid figures appeared there, firing laser rifles. The figures were silvery, unclothed, sexless beings, moving with an uncanny lightness of step. Without hesitation, John fired an impact grenade into the nearest one's body.

  "Polyalloy Terminators," Jade said.

  John already knew that: They were T-1000s.

  The grenade's explosion threw the Terminator off its feet and distorted its body in a bizarre shape, one arm growing long and thin from shoulder to elbow. Sarah fired at its laser rifle as it lay on the ground, melting the mechanism. Anton, Jade, and Big John all fired together at the second T-1000, but it caught Anton with a laser bolt that penetrated his arm near the elbow. He cried out and fell back against the side of the Black Hawk. The others continued to burn the T-1000 with laser light as it sprinted at them. It slowed under the burning light, and a laser bolt destroyed its rifle, but its momentum carried it close to Jade. The T-1000's arm became a long sword-like blade which stabbed at Jade with frightening speed, piercing her through the body above her kidney, even as she flinched aside.

  Jade fell down, rolling away from more attacks, allowing Sarah a clear shot at the Terminator. She fired laser bolt after laser bolt into it at point-blank range, forcing it back, vaporizing metal from its surface with each hit that she scored. She advanced on it now, her took intense, angry, determined. Jade found her feet, troubled over in pain, but still alive; the Specialists were very hard to kill.

  Big John still had one rocket-propelled grenade. He loaded his RPG tube, and fired into the body of the other T-1000 as it stood, fully recovered, to attack them. The grenade penetrated the Terminator's stomach, then exploded. The T-1000 splashed out into a freeform shape, like an inkblot, and seemed to have trouble reforming.

  John saw to Anton. The big man was still alive; he was no longer even showing pain. John had seen before how tough he was, when they'd fought the T-XA in Mexico City and Los Angeles. He looked in no condition to fight on, but he said, "There's work to do."

  Tenez was no longer moving. Another good man had died. With the Frenchman, Arnaud, John lifted the body into the rear of the damaged Black Hawk. "You radio for help," John said to Arnaud. "We'll need it to get out of here." He just hoped that the Nicolas Escandell and his people had finished their job back in Madrid.

  They had to end it now. Jade joined in firing again and again at "Sarah's" T-1000, gradually burning it away. Whatever pain she was in from the wound she'd suffered, her face showed only an intense determination to destroy the shapeshifting Terminator. She and Sarah were defeating it. John raced toward the building. The other T-1000 had almost reformed, but its metal was still soft as he passed it. He rammed a phased-plasma grenade deep into its body, then threw himself amongst the rubble at the front of the factory. He didn't look back to see the effect on the T-1000. He figured even that would not destroy it, but it might slow it down for some minutes.

  When he picked his way through the rubble into the factory, it was like Level H, back at Skynet's Colorado headquarters: Another huge expanse of concrete with strange machines and equipment. The devastation went for twenty yards into the complex, but most of it was intact beyond that point. Against the furthest wall was a cubical structure that John recognized as a time vault. There were production lines and arrays of ectogenetic pods. He heard a whirring sound ahead, some kind of machinery, and scrambled for cover an instant before two laser bolts struck where he'd been standing.

  He peered over a huge chunk of fallen masonry, and saw two gunpods that had telescoped out of the wall near the time vault. He tossed a phased-plasma grenade as far as he could—in the direction of the machinery at the far end of the floor. As it seemed to float through the air, one gunpod swiveled and sent an unerring bolt of light to shoot it out of the air. The cylindrical canister exploded with an impressive sound and flash of fire, but, when John dared look again, he seemed to have done no damage.

  Footsteps behind him. He turned to see Big John, armed with his laser rifle. "We're pinned here," John said. "We need to take out those gunpods."

  But Big John—General Connor—looked over the floor carefully, checking every inch through his nightvi-sions. He peered at the far wall, with banks of armored machinery. "I don't think so," h
e said. "Not this way. Let's hope Skynet is in there. We have to destroy its hardware."

  "But how, with those T-l000s around?"

  More footsteps. One of the Terminators ran toward them, still not fully reformed, one arm hanging down like it was broken. John fired on auto as Big John shot laser bolts into it—the grim-faced general had all Sarah's intensity. Together, they drove the liquid metal nightmare back. Its arm reformed, but it couldn't get at them against the fury of metal and burning energy. They circled past the Terminator, as John ran out of ammo for the M-16. Big John sprinted ahead. Jade and Sarah continued to fire on the other T-1000, which seemed to be shrinking down slowly as its liquid metal burned away.

  Despite his bad arm, Anton was working: He'd loaded four hundred-pound Hellfire missiles onto one of the Black Hawk's underwing pods. Big John saw it, too. He ran straight for the Black Hawk. Anton had himself a gunner.

  John found his last phased-plasma grenade, and threw it back at the rubble in front of the factory. It cleared some debris, and knocked "John's" T-1000 off its feet—but the shockwave hurled John forward. He landed hard on the rocky ground, jarring his right shoulder. He scrabbled to his feet, but when he tried to move his arm, it was agony. He ran forward, staggering with exhaustion, and tripped on a knob of rock. The fall knocked the wind from his lungs, and another spear of excruciating pain went through him from his injured shoulder.

  As Big John leapt into the Black Hawk's rear hold, Anton took the pilot's seat in the cockpit with Arnaud. He started up the chopper, and the main rotor began to turn, making a cruel sound of metal rubbing against metal. The rotor shaft and blades were at funny angles, and John wondered how much longer they could work. But they were still producing lift. The Black Hawk rose slowly. For a moment, John lost hope. He looked back to see the T-1000 loping toward him from the front of the building.