by Timothy Zahn
Another burst of fire jerked the man’s body sideways, cutting off his screams forever.
And with that, the end had finally come. The Terminators would shoot everyone, Orozco knew, and then would systematically go around the room and put another couple of slugs into each of the bodies, just to make sure. After that they would probably go through the entire building on the off-chance that they’d somehow missed someone.
There was nothing Orozco could do to stop them. He couldn’t even get to his gun.
The tumult of screams and scattered return fire was fading away now, leaving only the bursts of minigun fire to intrude on the silence. Closing his eyes, wishing he could also close his ears, Orozco waited for death.
There were three entrances to the Ashes’ secret underground gasoline stash. Kyle took the closest, pushing Star in ahead of him and ducking in quickly behind her. He didn’t know whether the pursuing Terminator had been in position to see where they’d gone, but he had to assume it had.
They would have to work fast.
Star got the hidden door open in record time. Kyle slipped past her to the tank and twisted the tap all the way over, starting the gasoline spilling onto the ground.
Spilling way too slowly. Pulling out his knife, Kyle jabbed at the side of the tank, poking hole after hole in the tough fiberglass until the gasoline was flowing freely.
“Go out the second way, but stay out of sight,” he told Star, his eyes watering a little. The smell of the gasoline was overwhelming. “Wait for me just inside the exit.”
She nodded and disappeared out the door and up one of the sloping decoy tunnels. Sliding the bag Orozco had given him off his shoulder, Kyle held it under one of his knife slashes, letting it fill about a third of the way up with gasoline. Then he backed out of the room, carefully pouring a trail of gasoline as he went. He walked about halfway up the tunnel he’d sent Star to, then returned to the main chamber.
Dropping the bag in the steadily deepening pool, he headed up the third tunnel, the one facing the Ashes. He reached the entrance and carefully looked out.
And quickly ducked back in again as the two Terminators who’d been trying to flank them from the east spotted him.
At least, Kyle hoped they’d spotted him. Hurrying down the tunnel, making just enough noise to let them confirm where he’d gone, he splashed through the pool of gasoline and ran up the tunnel he and Star had entered by.
Again moving carefully, he looked out.
The single Terminator was actually farther back than the other two Terminators had been. But unlike them, it wasn’t just standing there trying to reacquire its target. It had already heard from the other two, and was striding toward Kyle at full Terminator speed. He held his position just long enough to make sure the machine had spotted the hidden entrance, then again ducked back inside.
Again he ran to the chamber and splashed through the pool of gasoline. But this time, he turned to the side and headed up the third tunnel, the one with the trail of gasoline soaking into the dirt and Star waiting for him at the far end. He reached the end of the trail, crouched down, and pulled out his lighter.
The wait wasn’t very long. Short enough, in fact, for him to realize just how close he’d cut this one. Less than fifteen seconds after he’d gotten the lighter into his hand, he felt the thud of heavy footsteps as the Terminators entered the hidden tunnels. Counting off the seconds, trying to visualize their progress, Kyle waited for just the right moment.
And as the first Terminator reached the chamber Kyle ignited the lighter, threw it onto the gasoline trail, and turned around for a mad dash to the end of the tunnel. He’d gotten maybe two steps when there was a deceptively soft whoosh from behind him—
And suddenly he was blown nearly off his feet as a shockwave of wind and fire slammed into his back.
Desperately, he tried to get his feet under him again. But the burning air was swirling like a dust storm all around him, twisting him around, keeping him off balance as he staggered his way onward.
He gasped in a breath of air that seemed to itself be on fire—
Behind him came a thunderous explosion, and the swirling air became a huge flaming hand that picked him up and threw him straight down the tunnel.
An instant later, the world went black.
Blair was still a kilometer out from the Moldavia when she began to see the individual muzzle flashes from the T-600s’ miniguns on the street half a block north of the besieged building.
There were a lot of flashes, too. Skynet was definitely turning up the heat down there. Either the civilians were trying to escape, or else Barnes had launched a sortie against the machines.
Either way, it was the sort of situation that begged for air support.
Only Blair was out of ammo, and everyone down there knew it. Including the man who’d given her the order to come back here in the first place.
Was Connor hoping the Terminators would raise their fire toward her A-10 as she overflew them, temporarily easing some of the pressure on the ground troops? If so, he was going to be disappointed. The T-600s didn’t need to shoot at her. Skynet’s last HK was still on her tail, and apparently had gotten a reload for its Gatlings while it was hiding out at Skynet’s Capistrano tower. So far its fire hadn’t connected with her in any serious way, but even Blair’s luck couldn’t hold out forever against this much firepower.
The radio crackled, and she cocked an ear, wondering if Connor had reconsidered and had new orders for her. And the voice that came through her headset was definitely John Connor’s.
But it was not the cool, calm set of new orders she had expected.
Connor was singing.
“Dum dum, dum dum de-da-dum,” he said, his voice falling and rising and falling again. “Coming for to carry me home. Dum dum, dum dum de-da-dum. Coming for to carry me home.”
Blair stared at the landscape stretched out in front of her. Had the man gone insane?
“Dum dum—” he launched into the song again.
Blair opened her mouth...
Closed it again. Men like Connor didn’t go insane. Not like this. Whatever he was doing, it was for a reason. Something about the song itself? The tune, or maybe the words that he wasn’t saying? She searched her memory, listening with half an ear, trying to chase down the song’s name.
And then, suddenly, it clicked.
It was an old, old song, one she could remember her mother singing to her as a lullaby on warm summer nights. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.
Swing low...
It still didn’t make sense. But at least now it was an order she could understand.
“Check,” she murmured, and shoved her stick forward.
She’d had a faint hope that the screaming power dive might take the pursuing HK by surprise. But no, the damn machine was sticking to her like one of Wince’s noxious glue concoctions.
Was Connor expecting her to do a sudden pull-up and try to smash the HK all over the landscape? It was worth a try, anyway. Waiting until the last second, Blair pulled out of her dive, leveling off at barely fifty meters above the street.
But again, her shadow matched the maneuver perfectly. Worse, with Blair’s maneuverability now constricted by the buildings rising up on both sides, the HK was taking the opportunity to pour some serious fire into her tail. Ahead, Blair could see the bus lying on its side in the middle of the street south of the Moldavia building—
She caught just a glimpse of the two miniguns opening up from atop the bus as she flashed past, their twin lines of destruction focused behind her.
The HK never had a chance. It tried to dodge, but the same canyon of buildings that was hemming in Blair was doing the same to it. The streams of lead caught the machine in its nose, belly, and turbofans, and as Blair watched in her mirrors the HK exploded in midair.
“Pull up!” Connor snapped.
That was an order Blair didn’t need to hear twice. She hauled back on her stick, pulling her fighter out of the path of the
flaming debris now arrowing toward the ground from behind her. She reached building-top height and turned west, looking down out of her cockpit in time to see what was left of the HK crash onto the street and sweep across the line of T-600s that had been firing at Barnes and the Moldavia.
“We have breach!” David’s voice came suddenly in Blair’s ear. “Repeat, we have breach. We’re going in—”
“Watch it!” Tunney’s voice cut him off. “T-1 on guard! Make that two T1s.”
“I got east,” David snapped over the crackle of machinegun fire. “Fire in the hole!”
“Fire in the hole!” Tunney echoed.
There was a violent thud in Blair’s ear, followed half a second later by a second one.
“T-1 neutralized,” David reported, his voice tight. “Two men down.”
“T-1 neutralized,” Tunney said. “No casualties. Moving in to assist.”
Blair swung her fighter around toward the warehouse. The wall she’d seen David’s people mining was all but gone, the roof sagging badly over neat stacks of equipment and on top of what was left of the two T-1 watchdogs that the C4 grenades had just finished off.
Blair sighed. “Damn,” she muttered under her breath.
She’d really wanted to be there to see that wall come down.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Well done, everyone,” Connor said into his mike, feeling the first trickle of hope he’d had all night. “David, set up a defensive line; Tunney, move in to support him. We’ll be heading in immediately as backstop. And remember, even T-600s who are low or out of ammo are nothing to be treated lightly.”
“Don’t worry about us,” David responded, his voice sounding grimly pleased. “I count at least twelve spare miniguns, plus four crates of ammo belts.” He paused. “I mean, damn, there’s a lot of stuff in here. Skynet was definitely planning a big night.”
“It was probably going to hit another neighborhood after it finished with this one,” Barnes said gruffly. “What about us, Connor?”
Connor grimaced. He knew what Kate and Barnes wanted to do. He also knew that it would probably be a heartbreaking waste of their time. The Terminators that had breached the Moldavia had had a lot of time in there. More than enough time to kill everyone in the building.
But the squad had come this far, and they’d put their lives on the line to do it. If there was anything that could be salvaged from the ruins across the street, they deserved the chance to try.
“Go ahead,” he told Barnes. “But tread lightly. Any Terminators still in there will probably be heading straight through you to try to get to the warehouse. Hickabick, do what you can to fly cover for everyone.”
“Check,” Blair’s voice came back. “Nice singing voice, by the way.”
Connor smiled tightly. “Thanks.”
And with that, it suddenly occurred to him that he finally had an answer to the question Kate had asked him in the middle of the night, just two days ago. The question born of fatigue and tension and momentary hopelessness.
Even in this dark and dismal world, there were still reasons for people to sing.
All at once, the firing stopped.
Orozco frowned, his view blocked by the body lying on top of him, trying to listen through his ringing ears. Surely the Terminators hadn’t stopped their attack already. Or had the battering of the gunfire—combined with his slow but steady loss of blood—merely made him deaf?
And then, as the ringing in his ears faded, he heard the thudding of heavy machine feet. He wasn’t deaf, and the Terminators were still here.
Only they seemed to be moving away from him.
Away from him?
It would be a risk, Orozco knew. Movement of any sort was pretty much a guaranteed way of attracting Terminator attention. But he needed to see what was happening out there. Gathering his last reserves of strength, he leaned his shoulder against the body lying on top of him and pushed.
For a moment nothing happened. Orozco kept at it, clenching his teeth against the throbbing pain in his arm, and suddenly the body rolled over onto its back.
He tensed. But no miniguns roared, and no slugs hammered into his body. Blinking the sweat and the other man’s blood from his eyes, he craned his neck and looked around him.
The Terminators were leaving. All of them, lumbering at full speed toward the archway.
They stepped beneath it—
The multiple explosions were actually quieter than Orozco had expected them to be. But the visuals were every bit as spectacular as he’d hoped. Just above the archway, the ten pipe bombs he’d drilled into the decorative facing went off simultaneously, lifting two floors’ worth of stone a foot straight up into the air. The facing reached the top of its rise and fell back down, the impact shattering the archway below it and dumping the entire mass of stone onto the Terminators.
Orozco squinted as a wave of dust blew threw the lobby, tasting the bitterness of this last twist of irony. He’d set up the booby trap to hopefully eliminate some of the attackers before they could get inside the building. Instead, they’d come in through the rear, and had missed the trap entirely.
Now when everyone was already dead and destroying the Terminators gained nothing for anyone, they had finally triggered the damn thing.
Just the same, he was glad he’d lived long enough to see it.
The roar of tumbling rock faded away, and with it the last sound Orozco knew he would ever hear.
Resting among the dead, he closed his eyes and prepared to join them.
***
The Terminators were coming.
Blair watched them as she circled as slowly as she could without stalling out. There were sixteen in all, marching in from the west and northwest, probably the last of the T-600s that had been on containment duty at that edge of the neighborhood. With the steadiness and determination of an incoming tide, they were converging on the warehouse.
And unlike the remnants of the earlier attack force, this group almost certainly was still heavily armed.
Blair shifted her attention to the warehouse itself. David and his team had unlimbered two of the spare miniguns, and Tunney’s team was busy uncrating extra ammo belts. It was shaping up to be quite a fight.
Though it could have been a lot worse, she knew. Between her own strafing run on the crowd behind the Moldavia, Connor’s and Barnes’s squads blowing away T-600s in job lots, and the entryway crash that Kate Connor had described—and which Blair again hadn’t seen, damn it—the Terminator count was way down from what Skynet had started with that evening.
The gasoline fire west of the Moldavia might have taken out a couple, too—one of Barnes’s team had reported spotting two T-600s in that area just before that particular balloon went up.
Still, there was no getting around the fact that there were sixteen fresh troops moving in.
So far none of them had tried taking a potshot at Blair’s A-10, but that might just be because Skynet wanted them saving their ammo for the main event.
She grimaced, wishing she had a few rounds left in her GAU-8. Just a few. A strafing run now with 30mm explosive shells would be so soul-satisfying.
“Incoming!” David’s voice snapped.
Blair jerked her head up, swearing at herself under her breath. So intent had she been on the approaching T-600s that she’d neglected her primary duty of watching the skies. She darted her eyes around the horizon.
And felt her blood freeze. Approaching rapidly from the north were no fewer than seven shadowy aircraft.
All of them bearing down on the warehouse.
“Oh, hell,” she murmured, automatically turning her fighter to intercept. Though what she could do against that many HKs, with an unarmed fighter—
“Hickabick, isn’t it?” an unfamiliar voice crackled suddenly in her ear.
Blair frowned. Since when did Skynet program its HKs with folksy voices?
“Hickabick here,” she acknowledged cautiously.
“Snarkster here,�
� the voice said. “Commander of Squadron Five. No offense, but you might want to pull up just a bit.”
Blair frowned even harder... and then, as she peered out at the approaching shadows, their shapes suddenly clarified. She saw the slender bodies, the side-mounted weapons pods, and the flickering of the rotating blades above them.
They weren’t Skynet’s Hunter-Killers. They were Resistance Apache combat helicopters.
“About time, Snarkster,” she chided, pulling up out of their way. “Got some targets for you about half a klick west.”
“Excellent,” Snarkster said grimly. “You just point ‘em out, step aside, and enjoy the show.”
Two minutes later, the sixteen T-600s had been turned into blazing mounds of scrap metal.
And Blair had very much enjoyed the show.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Kyle woke up to the very strange sensation of being hot and cold at the same time.
Carefully, he opened his eyes. He was lying on his side on the ground, his head propped up on Star’s lap. One of her hands was resting on his cheek, the other clutching his shoulder like she was afraid he was going to leave her.
“How long?” he asked, startled by the croaking sound of his own voice.
Half an hour, Star signed. Her expression, Kyle noted, was seriously worried. How do you feel?
“Cold,” Kyle told her. “And hot. What—?”
And then it all came flashing back to him. The fire and explosion he’d set off, the wall of flame that had thrown him clear out of the tunnel.
He reached a hand to his cheek. It was warm, but sunburn warm, not at all like skin that had been burned to a crisp. The image he’d had of being bathed in flame must not have been nearly as bad as it had seemed at the time.
His back, on the other hand.
He started to reach behind him, but stopped as Star caught his hand. Gone, she signed. Your jacket. Gone.
“Ah,” Kyle said. So that was where the cold part of the sensation was coming from. The wall of flame that had kicked him out of the tunnel had burned the jacket clean off his back.
