C.11

August 2029

Hornet Compound

Kate and John huddled, waiting back where the exhaust fan was housed. Each held one of Kate’s rocket-propelled grenades.

“Prescott seems to be a good kid,” John said.

“Uh-huh.” Kate’s voice was choppy, battered by its proximity to the whirling fan blades. “Kind of single-minded, like Kyle Reese.”

“True. I hate to see that sort of … you know, simplicity in people. They’re all stripped down to the bare minimum they need to be in order to stay alive. That’s not exactly what I think of as humanity. Though in Kyle’s case, it was a big relief to me.”

“How so?” Kate knew, as a few of John’s advisers did, that Kyle had been John’s own father. Sent back in time to save Sarah Connor from the first Terminator dispatched by Skynet, he had fallen in love with Sarah, had become her lover in the brief few days before his own death.

Well, that wasn’t exactly true. He’d been in love with Sarah since long before he’d met her, since he’d first heard stories of her from John.

“When he was training with the Hell-Hounds, working with them on field tactics,” John said, “I was kind of worried that he’d get interested in Kyla.”

“Oh, ick.”

“Well, I figured out pretty quickly that I didn’t have to worry. He was so fixated on my mother, there was really no chance he’d pursue Kyla.”

“John, this family is such a mess. Now I wish you hadn’t told me that.”

He chuckled. “Just because my father is of the same generation as our children? You have problems with that?”

“I hate time paradoxes.” There was no humor in her voice now; she might have been expressing her feelings for Terminators or Skynet. “When Skynet falls, I want you to outlaw them.”

“The instant Skynet falls, I resign. You’ll have to persuade the next military despot in charge.”

“I bet I can.”

“I bet you can, too.”

There was gunfire from down the slope. The two of them scrambled up to the air shaft’s terminus.

Far below, they could see streams of tracers arcing up toward the Hunter-Killer. That machine was no longer hovering; it had lost some altitude and was cruising in toward Prescott’s position. As they watched, something ignited on the HK’s surface and flashed like a line of redness toward Prescott.

The missile detonated, throwing red-orange fire and black smoke in all directions from the point of impact. John winced. Prescott was supposed to be using his superior knowledge of the terrain to keep from getting killed.

He had. Tracers once again rose from Prescott’s position, and John could hear, over the chattering of the distant AK-47, some ringing and clanking sounds as bullets found their mark against the HK’s hull.

The aerial vehicle drifted closer to Prescott’s position. Kate came ready with her rocket-propelled grenade and John followed suit.

“Range is good,” she said.

“Take your shot.”

She did, and the air was suddenly warmed as the compact missile leaped from her shoulder.

The HK tilted, angling to sideslip, but the warhead hit it anyway. The HK disappeared in a bright flash, then reappeared, several yards away in the direction it had been tilting toward. Flames and smoke rose from it, especially from its port outboard engine, one of the ducted jets that kept it flying.

John took his shot, calculating where the HK would be if it continued its current course for another second. His warhead hit the HK somewhere in the middle and there was a second bright flash; then the remains of the HK, in two flaming pieces, crashed down on the mountain slope.

John dug his field phone out and powered it up. He heard a hiss, but no radio traffic. That wasn’t unexpected; few, if any, of Hornet Compound’s residents would be aboveground now. He pressed the mike button. “Prescott, you okay?”

“Light shrapnel, sir. Shall I rejoin you?”

“No, stay there. Doctor yourself up and we’ll be down when the rest of our party gets here.”

“Yes, sir.”

*   *   *

Ginger growled again, joined by Ripper this time. Kyla prepared herself for a second shot.

This time, she saw two red eyes moving in unison. It was an assault robot that had never worn humanlike skin. Both sets of optics were visible to her.

She fired and was rewarded with the kick to her shoulder, the ringing of the robot’s body as it hit the tunnel floor. She chambered another round.

The dogs weren’t through growling. But now, whatever was coming opened fire well before it came into view.

The sudden noise was horrific, like an unshielded V-8 engine, and sparks began to light up all over the wall and floor to Kyla’s right. She knew the sound, a .50-caliber machine gun, and it was joined by a similar, shriller roar—a chain gun. The second weapon, if it was loaded according to normal Skynet dictates, was firing depleted uranium rounds.

The dogs howled. The sparks on the floor and wall jumped out in ever-greater numbers. Kyla swore. There were at least two robots up there, advancing toward her, firing fully automatic weapons. She rose in a single motion, yanking her sniper rifle up with her. “Run,” she said, and suited action to words, scooting back along as close to the stone wall as she could bear, hoping as hard as she could that neither she nor the dogs was hit by one of the thousands of ricochets now filling the tunnel.

*   *   *

The two T-800s marched down the tunnel side-by-side, each firing in sustained bursts, each reloading while the other was still firing. They passed the bodies of two of their fellows.

Each of these Terminators had started with the same face as the one that had been sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor, as those that had been sent back to save John Connor, the face of Sergeant Candy. Now one of them, dressed in ancient overalls and flannel shirt, carrying the chain gun, had lost half that face; where flesh had been there was now only gleaming silvery skull. The other retained most of the features, wore Resistance-style camouflage, and carried the .50-caliber machine gun.

They tracked the heat trace of their quarry, saw that trace move into a side tunnel. They exchanged no visible signals, but the one in overalls turned at a military-precise right angle into the tunnel, following the heat trace, while the other continued down the main tunnel.

Before long the second Terminator came to a broader space that intersected with two side tunnels and a broad vertical shaft. No humans were in sight, but there were several fading heat traces. It leaned out over the shaft.

Below, not more than thirty feet down, was an elevator apparatus. In it were a dozen humans. The T-800 took a moment to assess the engineering virtues and deficits of the elevator. It seemed to be of all-metal construction and had an open top; it was broad enough to carry dozens of humans or a few ore-hauling mine cars.

The T-800 stepped out over the lip and plunged toward the elevator car. One of the humans within the car saw its fall; she screamed a nonverbal warning to her fellows.

The Terminator crashed down onto the metal floor of the car, denting but not buckling it, and came upright. As humans surged away from it, mindlessly seeking escape in directions that offered none, the Terminator methodically sprayed .50-caliber fire in an arc around the elevator’s interior, exterminating each of the humans.

All but one. An immature male human, an adolescent, according to the T-800’s analytical routines, demonstrating more survival characteristics than its fellows, had climbed up the side of the elevator and now clung to a metal rung stapled into the shaft’s side. It looked down on the Terminator from an altitude of thirty feet. The Terminator calculated that its facial expression, including wide-open eyes, dilation of the pupils, contraction of the facial muscles, indicated a combination of fear, shock, and anger.

The Terminator elevated its barrel and shot the human, then watched dispassionately as the body fell and crashed atop those of its fellows. Then the robot waited with machine patience for the elevator to descend to wherever it had been going.

June, Present Day

Ávila Property

Daniel moved around in Danny’s bedroom, wonderstruck. Taken individually, there was nothing remarkable about any of the objects here; there were books, articles of clothing, a notebook computer, computer games in colorful boxes, bedclothes. But they were a part of him, a part that had been lost—lost for good, he had thought.

He could feel two sets of sensations—the coolness of the wood on his bare feet, and more distantly, the discomfort of someone’s shoulder tucked up against his armpit, the feeling of being hauled along like a burlap bag full of oranges. He tried to tune out Mike’s repeated imprecations that he had to wake up. One or the other of him was now experiencing a headache, he wasn’t sure which.

There was a small framed photograph on the chest of drawers. He snatched it up and held it under the light.

Faces he didn’t recognize—faces he almost recognized. A middle-aged man and woman in back, three young men in front, all Latinos, all smiling. That had to be Mama and Papa; the older boys had to be Alex and Lon.

But he still couldn’t remember them, not quite. He now had access to Danny’s room, but not to his memories. Frustrated, he set the picture back on the chest of drawers.

He stiffened, struck by an idea. Was there any reason why he had to keep reaching back to the Danny of a particular year, progressing each time a little bit into that Danny’s future? Maybe if he tried hard enough, tried a different way, he could go back further, visit Danny’s mind when his father and Alex had still been alive. Maybe he could get to know everyone again, if only briefly.

Furthermore, maybe Danny kept a diary or a journal. If he could persuade his younger self to create another time capsule, to put into it his scrapbooks and thoughts and memories, perhaps he could have them again in the future. He cursed himself for not thinking of this before.

We’ve left the main shaft, headed toward an escape tunnel. But there are Terminators in the complex.

“Just a moment, just a moment, I’m looking for paper.” He knew his voice must sound irritable. His headache was growing in intensity.

Daniel, they’re here. Mike’s voice was a wail.

Then pain hit him, a blow like a bullet to the head. Daniel jerked, his body no longer in control. He twisted on the way to the floor, saw his own face in the mirror, saw agonized old eyes in a young face … and then darkness crashed down on him.

*   *   *

Mike put her hands around Daniel’s neck and shook him. “Daniel, you have to wake up.”

Her son Mark, tucked under Daniel’s arm and propping the man up, said, “Mama, that’s not helping.” He continued at a slow walk up the slope of Tunnel 10. Daniel was half-walking, supporting some of his own weight, but not enough of it, and Mike’s efforts to wake him were shaking Mark off-balance.

Mike didn’t respond to Mark, but did stop shaking Daniel. “We’ve left the main shaft, headed toward an escape tunnel. But there are Terminators in the complex.”

“Just a moment, just a moment,” Daniel mumbled. “I’m looking for paper.”

Men and women were racing past them, headed to the evacuation tunnels.

There’d been new digging in this mine ever since it had been occupied as a Resistance habitat. Some of the miners were still looking for gold—though gold was of little use in their barter-based economy, manufacturing still needed the precious metal, especially in the making of circuitry. But most of the miners chipping away at the tunnels these days were digging escape routes. Four of these tunnels now led from some of the mine’s shallower levels, such as Tunnel 10, and the inhabitants outpacing Mark, Mike, and Daniel were headed toward one of the exit points.

There was a bang from behind them. A woman just passing them catapulted forward as if someone had kicked her spine with inhuman strength. She rolled to a stop, face-up, a look of pain and shock already fading from her features; her eyes remained open.

Mike spun to look back. There, up the slope, was a dark silhouette surrounding a short gout of yellow flame—a machine gun firing down at them. “Daniel,” Mike wailed, “they’re here—”

Daniel jerked upright, coming off Mark’s supporting arm, his back arching. He made a sound, something like a moan, and pitched forward again. Only Mark’s grip on him kept him from hitting the mine-car rails on the tunnel floor. Fear froze Mike’s stomach and heart solid.

He’d been hit, he had to have been hit. In the darkness, she could not see where he’d been wounded. Mark ducked under him, stood up with the man over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. “Thirty more yards,” he grunted, “to a hardpoint. Get them ready. Run.”

Mike froze for an instant, unwilling to leave her son, to leave Daniel, with a Terminator hot on their tail, but she knew he was right. She spun and fled. Slowed as she was by carrying both her field pack and Mark’s, she still outraced her son and the tremendous load he was carrying.

There were more fleeing Hornet Compound residents ahead of her, but they weren’t her concern. She measured off roughly twenty-five yards as she ran, then began shouting, “Hardpoint! Hardpoint, where are you?”

What looked like the boarded-off entrance into a small side tunnel swung partway open. She ducked into the blackness beyond it. “Herrera, Senior Staff,” she said—gasped, rather.

“Sato, Chris, Sergeant.” The speaker made a little noise as he slid back into his firing seat.

“There’s a Terminator coming, but the first big man you see and the bigger man he’s carrying are human.”

“I read you.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

“AK-47 on the table behind you if you want to play.”

Her eyes adjusting to the comparative gloom of the hardpoint station, Mike could now make out the small window Sergeant Sato was using to monitor the tunnel. She did not look away from it as she groped behind her, locating the table and the assault rifle on it by touch. There were other things on the table, extra ammunition clips; she grabbed and pocketed those as well.

There was gunfire from the tunnel. She prayed that it wasn’t coming anywhere near Mark or Daniel, but could not bear to close her eyes in her prayer.

Then something moved past Sato’s window at a trot—Mark, Daniel still across his back. Mark’s face was rigid, set in an expression she had never seen him wear, an expression that said he was going to get to his destination or die, that he would crush under his feet anything that got in front of him. It was the face of Mark the Hell-Hound, Mark the full-grown man who had been shot, who had killed, not Mark her son, and it added to her misery. She never wanted to see anyone she loved wear an expression like that.

Sergeant Sato whispered, “This side toward enemy.”

“What?”

She saw his silhouette raise a fist holding a switch. A big man moved into view outside Sato’s window and turned toward Sato and Mike. Mike saw his face—the same one worn by the two Terminators she’d helped send into the past.

Sato’s thumb came down on the switch. Mike’s ears were battered by a concussion that staggered her. The Terminator disappeared in the flash of light that accompanied the blast.

Sato crashed out through the hardpoint’s access door, bringing up his assault rifle and firing. Mike joined him a second later, carefully aiming the unfamiliar AK-47 at the large man slumped against the far tunnel wall.

The Terminator had been hit by something ferocious. Most of its shirt and jacket had been torn away and its torso chassis was perforated; Mike counted six holes there. She poured ammunition from her assault rifle into it as Sato concentrated his own fire on the Terminator’s head.

As their first clips of thirty-two rounds ran dry, they swapped in new clips and took stock of their situation. The Terminator wasn’t moving.

“What the hell was that?” Mike asked.

“Buried in the wall, a claymore mine,” Sato said. He was of Asian descent, compactly built, maybe thirty years of age. “An explosive charge behind a package of metal ball bearings. Pretty damned grisly when it hits meat. Cover me, please.” He fished an object that looked like a small food can with a handle out of a vest pocket. Moving with the decisive speed of a professional soldier, he leaped to kneel beside the Terminator, jammed the object into one of the holes in its chest, and jumped back. His arm extended, he moved Mike back behind the hardpoint door.

The Terminator didn’t move. The device exploded, jerking the robot’s body into a convincing simulation of a man experiencing a seizure. Then the Terminator lay still again, smoke now rising from it.

“Back on station for me,” Sato said, “unless you need me.”

Mike shook her head. “Can I keep the rifle?”

“Anything for senior staff.”

“There are probably more Terminators coming.”

“I have more surprises for them.” Sato entered the hardpoint and shut the door behind him. His next words were muffled: “Death to the toasters.”

“Death to the toasters.” Mike ran after her son.

*   *   *

The beating sound from the exhaust fan covered up lesser noises, so Kate and John were unaware that Kyla had reached them until the fan clanked and then swung open. She crawled out, her rifle in its case across her back, her dogs swarming around her, whining and worried.

John grabbed his daughter, helped her toward the tunnel exit. Kyla was panting too heavily to want to talk, so he asked her nothing. Then he felt the warm liquid trickling down her side. “Oh, Jesus, Kyla, are you all right?”

“Caught a ricochet along my ribs,” Kyla said, her voice a gasp. “Not too bad. Mom, see to Ripper, he was hit, too. Daddy, there’s a T-800 coming up behind me, maybe a minute back.”

Kate pulled the exhaust fan frame shut again, then moved to the tunnel exit. Once she was a step or two outside, in the open air and moonlight, she called, “Ripper, c’mere.”

The big bullmastiff mutt trotted up to her, short tail wagging, moving easily. She ran her hands over the dog’s fur, found a patch of blood along his flank. Careful not to hurt him more than she had to, she probed around the injury, speaking soothing words when he whined, but John could tell her motions were mostly by rote; she kept her eyes on him, on his similar actions as he gauged the severity of the wound to his daughter.

“She’s right. It’s not bad,” John said, and breathed a sigh of relief. “How’s Ripper?”

“A graze. I’ll patch him up. He’s not badly hurt.”

“Daddy, the T-800—”

“Right, right.” John looked around, took an instant assessment of their location, their resources. “Kyla, situate Ginger and Ripper right above the exhaust tunnel exit…”

*   *   *

Mike caught up to her son at the end of the escape tunnel. Here, wood-and-rebar barriers held a shallow layer of earth at bay. Men and women were cutting through leather restraints that held the barrier upright.

Mark had turned Daniel over to Lake and a medical technician. They were quickly rigging a litter from boards pulled from the walls, blankets from their packs. Mark smiled with relief as his mother arrived, hugged her, and took his pack from her.

“How’s Daniel?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Lake’s being less than communicative, but her grunts and cursing don’t make it sound good. But he hasn’t been shot. No holes, no blood, no foul.”

“I can’t believe you carried him that far, that fast.”

Mark shrugged. “My father was a big, strong guy. He gave me big, strong guy genes.” He cast a worried eye toward Daniel as he shrugged on his pack.

There was another explosion from up the tunnel. Even at this distance, Mike thought that it was more ferocious than the claymore going off. The tunnel vibrated beneath her feet; dust and dirt cascaded down into everyone’s hair. The overhead lights went out.

But no one shrieked. These weren’t subway passengers caught by a power outage. It was possible that everyone here had been in a worse situation at some point in the past.

“They’ve blown the tunnel,” Mark said. “It’ll keep the Terminators out until they can dig through or figure out that they need to search around. And we’ll be gone by then.”

“Ready to go,” someone, a man, called from ahead. “Everybody, the stuff that’s going to spill in here is fine-ground quartz dust. You don’t want to breathe it in. Once upon a time, it was treated with cyanide, and though the cyanide is mostly gone now, it’s not worth taking chances. Wrap something around your mouth and nose to keep it out. If you’ve got goggles for your eyes, put them on.”

Most of those present began to wrap scarves or spare clothes from their packs around their faces. Lake placed a surgical mask over Daniel’s face, handed out more to her stretcher-bearers, to Mark and Mike.

After a few moments, the voice from the front of the crowd shouted, “Can we go?”

“You and Lake are ranking officers here now,” Mark whispered.

“Do it,” Mike shouted.

There was a creak, then the sound of several hundred pounds of loose material spilling into the tunnel. A pale cloud of dust washed across them. As it faded, Mike began to see moonlit sky and stars through the hole the collapse had made. A ramp of white sand, some of it still pouring into the tunnel from the edges of the collapse, would lead them out.

“Move out,” Mike said, this time at a much lower tone. No one shouted in the open.

The several dozen survivors emerged into a narrow cleft in the earth, at the very edge of one of the tailings pits. Mark gave his mother a quick smile, then moved up to the head of the column to do what he did best. Mike stayed toward the center of the column, with Lake and the two men handling Daniel’s litter. Moving as silently as they could, as swiftly as they dared, they emerged into the open and headed toward their designated muster point.