c.16
Had she been capable of excitement, the T-X would certainly be feeling it now. She was only a few hundred yards behind the next vehicle in line, and it was a Humvee, the precise sort of vehicle John Connor was known to favor. Every minute that passed she gained at what she believed to be an inconspicuous rate on her quarry. This vehicle would probably be able to outpace a Humvee if her quarry decided to make a run for it. Things were going well.
Then her optical sensors picked up a new infrared source. A small flare of heat was now visible on the road ahead of her quarry and was closing range fast.
Probabilities popped up on her main screen. The probabilities that this was a member of the convoy traversing its length to report on the general condition of all vehicles, or that it was a Skynet unit that had detected the convoy, were approximately equal. The T-X increased her rate of speed. Either way, a conflict would be precipitated within the next few seconds.
The new heat source resolved itself into the image of a human on a motorcycle, reducing to almost nil the likelihood that this was another Skynet unit.
The motorcycle passed the Humvee, approaching at a rate of speed inconsistent with a mere patrol or courier mission.
As the T-X’s optical analysis routines determined that the motorcycle’s operator was a known individual, Paul Keeley, he raised his weapon, a standard Resistance-issue plasma rifle, and opened fire.
The T-X put the dune buggy into evasive maneuvers, erratic back-and-forth movements designed to throw off the aim of an attacker. Her precise choice of maneuvers was based on firing behavior observed in humans in similar circumstances, on the tactics they would employ to hit a rapidly dodging ground vehicle.
Her evasions did not work. Plasma blasts struck the windshield in front of her and the roll bar above and behind her, nearly causing her to lose control. Another struck the road immediately in front of the dune buggy, sending up superheated gobbets of pavement into the engine compartment. The engine immediately began whining. The T-X calculated from the noise that a belt had loosened or fallen free. This did not augur well for the continued survival of this machine.
As her optics cleared, Paul roared past her on the motorcycle. She did not attempt to maneuver into his path. Such a collision would further damage her conveyance.
Her tactical programming informed her that she had not fared well in terms of combat efficiency. She had probably overestimated his combat skills; the wide, erratic way he sprayed the plasma bursts was not as easy to anticipate as the tighter, more controlled assault from a human veteran, hence the damage her vehicle had sustained. And had she readied one of her internal weapons, she could have eliminated this intruder as he passed. She dismissed the analysis. She could remove Paul from the picture and still retain him as a Skynet asset with almost no effort.
She wrested the dune buggy back into line, aiming it at the tail end of the Avenger ahead, and accelerated.
* * *
As the plasma fire began behind the Avenger, Glitch checked both the side-view and rearview mirrors. “Illumination of the pursuing vehicle’s passenger compartment indicates that it is being operated by a T-X,” he said.
John swore to himself. The events that had preceded this attack began to click into place in his mind. It was completely unlikely that a second T-X had reached this scene, so somehow the T-X they had captured had escaped her confinement. And somehow Paul had detected the escape and given chase.
Glitch shoved the driver’s-side door open and braced it with his foot, then reached up to clamp a hand on the vehicle’s roof. “Someone else should drive,” he said. He stood up and heaved himself onto the roof.
Tom Carter, his face a comic mask of surprise, grabbed the steering wheel. Despite his effort, the Humvee swerved to the left. He was able to yank it back in line along the center stripe of the road, and John could hear Glitch sliding around on the roof.
Carter swore to himself and slammed the driver’s-side door shut. “Speed and efficiency are one thing. Behavior that gets us killed is another thing entirely.”
Kate, her head half out through her window, called, “You’re right, it’s complete foul-up. Talk to the programmer.”
“Oh, ha-ha.”
John reached up for his lapel mic, but his radio buzzed before he even touched it. “Command, this is Fishhook-Seven. Emergency.”
Fishhook-7 was the Avenger. John keyed his microphone. “Seven, this is Command.”
“We’ve just come across Corporal Larson. He’s badly hurt. He says his vehicle is down and the package is loose.”
“We just got some of that information ourselves, Seven.” John did some rapid calculations. The truck the T-X was in was Fishhook-6. Its personnel were likely to be dead, but there was some faint chance some of them, and some of the other Scalpers in Fishhook-5, had survived. “Command to convoy, command to convoy. All vehicles numbered five and higher are to turn back and switch to the first alternate route to destination. Personnel who are extravehicular should go to ground and make your way by best means available to the nearest habitat you can reach. Vehicles one through three, be aware, command is being pursued by the package and about to come under fire.”
Which was a conservative way to express their situation.
* * *
Paul downshifted rapidly, got the dirt bike turned around, and accelerated in the dune buggy’s wake.
Then he heard Eliza’s voice, her tones soft and caressing: Paul, it’s time to go to sleep. Sleep, Paul.
He closed his eyes.
He felt the handlebars vibrate in his hand as he hit a patch of rough road. That snapped his eyes back open again. He found himself drifting toward road’s edge. He leaned the other way, straightened out.
No, Paul. It’s better to sleep now.
His eyes closed again, but he forced them open. It was like trying to stay awake at the end of a late-night shift when the body knew what was best but the mind was unwilling.
Well, his mind was in charge. He gritted his teeth and continued accelerating.
The next time Eliza’s words came, his eyes didn’t even begin to close.
Finally he knew what was happening. It was his implant. It was indeed an interpreter of sensory stimuli. While he floated in his sensory-deprivation tank, it would tell him what he was feeling, experiencing.
What he hadn’t known, what he hadn’t guessed was that it was also a more ordinary radio transceiver. Eliza could communicate with it directly—once they were both close enough, since both of them had had their long-range antennas clipped. She could even broadcast data to supercede what his senses were actually observing. His eyes had seen the Sarah Connor face, his implant had superimposed Eliza’s face, and the two images had duked it out, causing his vision to blur.
Nor had he realized that he had been programmed for certain types of behavior. To fall asleep on command. To flush his short-term memory when obliged to.
Knowing what had happened made it better. He concentrated on the physical sensations he was feeling, the vibration of the handlebars in his hand, the bike between his legs.
He roared up behind the dune buggy and opened fire once more.
* * *
The T-X reconfigured her hand into her most formidable weapon: her plasma cannon.
This was not the comparatively weak plasma weapon used by the Resistance and by Skynet’s own assault troops. The cannon she carried could destroy a small building or the most formidable armored vehicle with a single shot. A good shot was certain to eradicate a T-600 Terminator and would cripple or destroy later models as well.
Through the hole where her windshield had been, she aimed the weapon at the Hummer ahead. Atop the vehicle, a man—no, a T-850—was struggling to brace himself and bring his own weapon, a carbine, into play.
The T-X heard plasma gunfire from behind. Simultaneously, the dune buggy’s rear end slewed to the right. She fired as it happened, and her pulse blast went high, far to the left of the Humvee.
With her right hand configured as a cannon, she had only her left to control the dune buggy, and this time it wasn’t enough. She tried to turn into the skid but the world tilted up toward her. Suddenly her surroundings were a blur of sky and pavement, of mountainside and loose rock.
Patiently, she waited for the inconvenient ride to end.
* * *
Glitch leaned down to peer through the driver’s-side window. “Scalpers-Two is rolling,” he said. “Suggest we proceed in our current direction at full speed.”
“Thanks,” Carter said. “I’d never have figured that out by myself.”
“You are welcome. Tell me more about your thinking processes.”
* * *
The dune buggy’s mad roll took it leftward, toward the mountain slope. Paul angled around it to the right, blasted past the moving obstacle, and roared on another hundred yards in the Humvee’s wake. Then he downshifted, slowed, and turned to look.
The dune buggy was a burning ruin.
Eliza climbed out of it, seemingly undamaged. Her right hand was gone, replaced by spiky, angular apparati with blue energy crackling around the tips. Paul did not find this view at all comforting.
She looked at him, then began running toward him.
Slowly, carefully, he braced the plasma rifle on the handlebars, leaned down to sight along its barrel, and fired.
His plasma burst caught her in the thighs and knees. She went down hard, skidding half a dozen yards in his directions. Now she was only eighty yards away.
She stood. She seemed a little the worse for wear. There were small craters in her thighs, and one knee was blackened, with a flap of what looked like skin hanging loosely from it. But her face was impassive. You’ve proven your point, Paul. You’re a formidable fighter. I’m impressed.
“That’s an emotion you’re incapable of,” he shouted.
As an emotion, yes. As an objective analysis, it is valid. Having proven your point, you should have nothing left to prove. I invite you to return to us.
“Does the offer come with a bubble bath?”
She stood silent for a moment. I don’t know what that is.
“Then I’ll have to decline.”
She charged him again. He fired a second time, his burst catching her in the torso, in the gut.
Eliza twisted and went down, again skidding for yards from the sheer momentum of her run. Now she was fifty yards from him.
Then she stood up. Her body was decorated with plasma damage. He could see portions of her endoskeleton. No more blue light danced around on her arm. Her hand slowly returned to its human form.
Another few times and I’ll destroy her.
The humor of it took him as hard as a blow to the gut. He bent over, laughing.
What is funny?
“What you just tried to do. Maybe I’m stupid, Eliza, but I’m not that stupid.”
She frowned, a very human expression of confusion, and took a step forward. I don’t understand.
“Sure you do. You have the Terminator world’s best internal systems. Somehow, they’re not repairing the damage I’m doing to you … and yet your clothes aren’t being torn to pieces by all the pavement surfing you’re doing. Because your autofixing routines are automatically repairing your fake clothing except where my so-called battle damage is. You’re trying to fake me out—”
She charged again.
He pointed the barrel of his plasma rifle down, at the motorcycle’s gas tank.
Eliza stopped.
“As I was saying, you’re trying to convince me that you’re picking up a lot of damage. But that’s not the truth. You’d let me think that I shot you to pieces, and you’d ‘die’ almost within arm’s reach. Then you’d get up, finish me off, and use this dirt bike to catch up to the convoy. Because you can’t do it on foot. This dirt bike is your only chance.”
Now she spoke aloud. “If you damage the machine, I promise I will kill you. I will pull your arms and legs off. I will tourniquet the stumps. You will die in as much pain and misery as your species can endure. But if you give me the machine, I swear I will not harm you. I will give you one day’s head start. You can find your way to a human nest. You can survive.”
“No, thanks.”
“If you turn and flee, I can shoot you down before you get out of range. Your only options become to destroy the machine and die or give me the machine and live. Don’t you want to live?”
“Sure I do. But I want something else more.”
“What?”
“To beat you. For what you’ve done to me. Every second we wait here, that convoy gets farther and farther away. You’ll never catch up to it. When you finally give up trying to figure out how to get this dirt bike and you jump me, I blow it up and you lose. Get it?”
“I get it,” she said.
Then her face deformed, her head snapping back as though it had been struck by the baseball bat of the gods. Paul saw a crater erupt in the liquid metal of her skin, revealing the case of the endoskeleton skull beneath. She staggered backward.
Then Paul heard the crack of a rifle in the distance.
He turned, and it seemed impossibly slow to him. Almost a half-mile away, a bright yellow because of its engine heat, was the front end of an SUV, stationary on the road. Behind the open passenger-side door stood a human figure.
He couldn’t make out details at this range, but the figure’s posture changed, arms lowering, cradling a long pipelike object—
Kyla and her sniper rifle.
There was a clang as Eliza’s body hit the pavement. Paul spared her a look. The liquid metal was taking shape again over her skull, restoring her face to its impassive original beauty. Her eyes were blank, her head turning back and forth as though she were sightless.
Rebooting.
He didn’t think Kyla’s rifle could destroy the T-X, but it could delay her. He spun the bike’s rear end around and accelerated toward the SUV.
He was halfway to it when he saw Kyla aim again, bracing her weapon in the passenger door window. Paul leaned to the left, hugging the mountain slope.
Kyla fired. Paul saw a flare of whiteness from her rifle barrel and heard a ripping noise as the bullet passed close to his ear. Ahead, Kyla leaped into the passenger seat and the SUV, lumbering, turned around.
Paul flashed past the slower-moving vehicle at full speed. He caught a glimpse of Mark Herrera in the driver’s seat. Then he was far ahead of it. The SUV accelerated in his wake.