Terminator Salvation Page 17

  Wright was standing directly over him, the gun still clutched in his right hand. Reflexively, Barnes’s eyes dropped to the pistol as he considered his options.

  ***

  With a single backhanded slap that bordered on the contemptuous, Wright knocked him out.

  He didn’t even marvel that he was able to lift and straighten the heavy motorcycle with one hand. Throwing his right leg over the seat, he straddled the big bike and gave the ignition a try. To his relief it started right up. Not every machine, he reflected, was the enemy. That thought reminded him that he might be the enemy, and he quickly put it out of his mind.

  Shots rang out and slugs began to rip into the ground around him.

  What he wanted as much as anything else was time to examine himself, and time seemed to be the one thing he was not going to be allowed. With soldiers advancing behind him and still dynamic minefields remaining off to his left and right, the only possible escape route lay directly ahead.

  That meant jumping a high berm that stood between his present location and the far side of the river. Gunning the cycle’s engine, he spewed dirt in his wake as he roared toward the high hillock. Tires dug into the soil as the bike accelerated, hit the take-off point he had chosen, and soared into the air.

  He almost made it.

  The resultant wipe-out would have killed an ordinary human. It would have mangled most man-sized machines. Marcus Wright, however, was neither. Rising from where he had stopped bouncing, he started toward where the motorcycle had landed and now lay spinning its rear wheel. He had only taken a few steps in its direction when it disintegrated under the impact of a napalm shell. Flaming jellied gasoline engulfed everything within a significant radius of the strike site. The bike was gone, as were the bushes and smaller trees unlucky enough to have been within the target zone.

  Emerging blackened and scarred from the intense flames, his clothing mostly gone, Wright sprinted for the taller trees that lined the riverbank.

  Above and behind him, Connor stared at the impossible survivor as the figure dashed for the cottonwoods that lined the river’s edge. Grimly, he eased forward on the controls, sending the chopper in pursuit. Behind him, soldiers crouched at both open doors were firing at the target.

  “We’ve got him,” he exclaimed into the radio’s microphone. “He’s between outer perimeter markers forty-six and forty-nine, trying to dodge fire. Converge on the river. If we don’t take him down before he reaches it, we’ll trap him in the water.”

  Other explosives and shells joined additional napalm in erupting all around Wright. They jolted him, occasionally slowed him, often enveloped him—but they did not stop him. He reached the river.

  Moving far faster than Wright, Connor’s ’copter now hovered just above the water, its searchlight scanning the surface, hunting for him. One of the gunners tossed out a flare, further illuminating the scene.

  Something bubbled within the river, as if the water was being brought suddenly to a boil. Then the surface erupted.

  There were at least a dozen Hydrobots. Segmented like worms, wholly serpentine in shape, eyeless but equipped with a host of other sensors, they exploded out of the water to clamp razor-lined metal jaws on the underside of the low-flying chopper. Though barely four feet in length, the weight of their numbers caused the helicopter to skew wildly to one side.

  Screaming, one of the gunners fell out of the open door on his side while his counterpart scrambled to maintain a grip and footing inside the sharply slanting cabin.

  Connor could not help. With the hydraulics already damaged by the initial attack from below, it was all he could do to maintain minimal stability and stay airborne. Meanwhile several of the rapacious steel serpents had chewed their way into the main cabin where they were wreaking havoc on anything within reach of their whirring jaws.

  Frantic kicking and firing didn’t save the surviving gunner. As his desperate shots spanged harmless off the armored intruders, one bit through his right leg. Blood spurted in all directions. A sharp crunching sound filled the cabin as metal teeth began to munch their way through bone.

  In the water below, the soldier who had been dumped out of the helicopter barely managed to fight his way to the surface before he was pulled under, eyes wide and shrieking as he was sliced up from beneath.

  When the last of the chopper’s hydraulic fluid ran out, control was lost completely. As it lurched toward the dark surface below, Connor half jumped and was half tossed from the mortally crippled machine. Slowing blades barely missing him, the ’copter crashed into the shallows that fronted the riverbank.

  Gasping for air, he floundered in the water a moment before realizing that it was barely hip-deep where he had landed. Drawing his pistol, he struggled shoreward. The ground underfoot was a maddening composite of sand and mud that did everything it could to slow his progress. Somewhere behind him the Hydrobots were butchering the last remaining soldier.

  Then they found him.

  Even in the dim light it was hard to miss their gleaming, reflective, deadly surfaces. One after another took a slug from his oversized pistol and went down, writhing and convulsing in a horrible approximation of real life. A stride at a time, he battled his way toward the shore.

  At last the muck underfoot gave way to more stable gravel and rock. Water drained from his legs as he staggered out onto dry land. Designed to operate and survive in water, the limbless Hydrobots could not follow. But they could still fling themselves high out of the shallows. One did, aiming to lock its cutting jaws on his skull. Detecting its prodigious leap out of the corner of an eye, Connor whirled, trained his lethal pistol on it, and fired. Nothing.

  Dry round.

  Instinctively, he brought one arm up in a desperate attempt to ward off the attack as he struggled to eject the bad round and chamber another shell. The Hydrobot plunged toward him—but metal never met flesh. Hands snatched the writhing machine out of the air and as easily as they would break open a chicken leg, snapped it in half. Spasming independently, both sections were thrown back into the river. Connor did not linger on their sinking shapes. Instead, he straight away trained the muzzle of his weapon on the man who had saved him.

  Correction, he told himself. On the thing that had saved him.

  His clothing and skin largely gone, not even breathing hard from his flight from the base, Marcus Wright stared back at Connor. In the shallows, a mass of Hydrobots had gathered. But none attempted a repeat of the aerial assault on the human. A gasping Connor used his free hand to gesture in their direction.

  “Look at them. They’re not attacking. Not attacking me because you just indicated how you want them to behave. Not attacking you because they know what you are. Even if you don’t.”

  Wright replied without rancor, indicating the pistol gripped tightly in Connor’s fist.

  “Guess that means that gun isn’t going to do you much good, even if it’s still functional. No gun’s going to stop me.”

  Connor studied the powerful figure confronting him, letting his gaze rove over the remarkable amalgamation of the metallic and the organic. Napalm having burned away much of the carefully nurtured epidermal layer, the details of the unparalleled fusion were more visible than ever.

  “Nobody’s shot you in the heart,” he wheezed. “I see that thing’s beating a mile a minute. I’d bet that it’s been modified, adapted, and juiced just like the rest of your ‘human’ components, but it still looks like there’s enough of the original left to respond badly to a heavy slug.”

  The observation gave Wright pause. Then he nodded.

  “That seems pretty close to the mark.” He straightened. “Do it then. Kill me.”

  Still shaky from the crash and the frantic flight from the Hydrobots, a panting Connor struggled to fix his aim. His finger began to contract on the trigger.

  Wright did not look away, showed not the slightest sign of fear. That was hardly surprising, Connor told himself. Fear was something the creature’s adaptive program
ming could doubtless cope with easily.

  “Kyle Reese is alive.”

  Connor tried not to react to the claim, but exhausted and exposed as he was, this time he could not keep his expression from giving his feelings away. His finger eased off the trigger.

  “How can you be sure?” Connor spoke guardedly. Though his finger had eased off the trigger, he did not lower the pistol.

  “I told you before, but you wouldn’t listen. He and a little girl who befriended me were part of a group taken captive by the machines. Along with the others, they’re probably both inside Skynet Central by now. I want to get them out. That’s the reason I came with Blair Williams to your base, even though you refuse to believe me. I still want to get them out.” Eyes that were at least part human burned into Connor’s. “I think you’d like to get them out, too.”

  Here was something upon which they could agree.

  “Of course I want to get them out,” Connor said.

  Wright nodded. “In order to get them out, you first have to get in. And I’m the only one who can get you in.”

  Connor shook his head doubtfully.

  “Get into Skynet Central? How?”

  Wright approached with deliberation. Connor raised his gun. He could see the beating, modified, augmented heart clearly now. The new, improved model, he thought wildly to himself. If he shot Wright and the—man—went down, and they tried to fix him up, would he more properly be a candidate for surgery—or a tune-up? And what, really, was the difference between the two, anyway? Flesh and blood, machine and hydraulics, weren’t they all machines by any other name? Was what really mattered attitude and outlook, not construction and fabric?

  Confused, tired, worried about Kyle—if not himself, he slowly lowered the muzzle of the heavy pistol until it was pointed at the ground.

  “Even assuming that you’re telling the truth, why should I trust you?”

  “Two reasons,” Wright shot back. “One, I need to find out who did this to me. And two—so do you.”

  With the river full of murderous Hydrobots behind, the sound of gunfire and barking of search dogs rising steadily in front, Connor found himself marooned in a quandary. He had a decision to make, perhaps the most crucial of his life, and no time in which to analyze it closely. But then, he had not become such a successful Resistance fighter because he was indecisive. His response was a mix of defiance and pleading.

  “You get me in. I’ll be on the bridge—it’s an unobstructed shot from there to Skynet Central and we should be able to communicate freely. You find Kyle Reese for me.” Digging through his pockets, he located a communicator. After a quick check revealed that its batteries were good, he tossed it to the singular figure looming opposite him.

  Wright snatched it out of the air without even looking in its direction.

  “No problem. They think I’m one of them.”

  Though the night was warm, Connor felt a chill. Was he in the process of making the greatest mistake of his life? Maybe this thing’s mind was as clever as its engineering.

  But if it was all deception, to what end? When first introduced to the creature that called itself Marcus Wright, Connor and his advisors had been convinced that it represented a wickedly clever attempt to breach base security in order to kill him. Now that it stood free, functioning, and unimpeded barely a yard away and could kill him easily with a single blow, it spoke instead of trying to rescue Kyle. Marcus Wright was as full of surprises as he was contradictions.

  Had he not said as much himself?

  Connor gestured toward the river and the now quiescent Hydrobots.

  “You said they think you’re one of them. Are you?”

  It was a question Wright had been asking himself ever since his intermingled insides had been revealed. It was the question above all questions that he needed answered. And naturally, it was the one question to which he could not assign an explanation. Spreading his arms wide, exposing as much of himself as possible to the man standing warily before him, he admitted the only truth he knew.

  “I don’t know.”

  Moving past Connor, keeping his hands at his sides, he started backing into the river. Raised again, the muzzle of Connor’s pistol never left him, not even when Wright’s head disappeared beneath the rippling surface. He continued to stare at the spot where Wright had vanished until movement on the far side of the river drew his attention. Emerging after a span of time spent underwater far longer than any human could hold his breath, Wright turned, waved once, and vanished into the brush on the far side. He had crossed the river not by swimming—perhaps he was too heavy—but by walking across the bottom.

  Holstering his weapon, a contemplative Connor let his gaze linger a long time on the spot where Wright had disappeared, half certain he had just made the biggest mistake of his existence. Then he turned and started walking in the direction of the base. He had barely made it back into the woods when shapes rose sharply from the bush to confront him and he found himself staring down the barrels of three rifles.

  “Halt and identify yourself!” the noncom in charge barked.

  “John Connor.” What a pity, he mused halfheartedly, that he could not be someone else.

  But he knew he was John Connor. In that respect if no other, at least, he had the advantage over the poor creature called Marcus Wright.

  Lowering their weapons the soldiers hastened to gather around him, flanking him as they resumed walking toward the nearest base entrance. Their relief was palpable when they were able to identify him visually.

  “Sir? Are you all right, sir?” one of them asked.

  Connor nodded. “A little bruised, nothing serious. Chopper went down.” He gestured back the way he had come. “We were too low, searching. Hydrobots got us. I was the only one to make it to shore.”

  The noncom’s lips tightened, comprehending. He glanced in the direction of the riverbank that was falling farther behind them with every step.

  “Sir, any sign of him?”

  Connor halted, turned, and looked back. Some sections of the river were still visible in the dim light. Of Wright there was no sign. No sign, in fact, that anything had ever been amiss along this winding stretch of dark water. Increasing his pace, he shook his head.

  “No sign, soldier. Nothing to be done about it now. I guess he got away.”

  The base brig was neither fancy nor extensive. It did not need to be either, since the great majority of its residents were transient. By far the most common reasons for temporary internment were the need to get some secured sleep as a result of an excess of drinking, to cool down from fighting with fellow soldiers, or to allow disputed gambling debts to be settled from adjoining cells.

  Blair Williams’s case was very different.

  For one thing, unlike the usual tenant she had not been left alone to stew in her own perfidy. A round-the-clock armed sentry had been posted outside her cell. She did not try to engage the rotating guards in conversation and they showed no inclination to want to talk to her. They had no idea what she was in for. It was none of their business. Within the constricted confines of the base it was an unspoken rule that you did not pry into the affairs of those around you lest one day the tables be turned.

  Of the two men who were now standing outside the holding area, one had every intention of disregarding that rule. Vociferously.

  As soon as the officer who had escorted him to the rearmost cell turned and departed, Williams sat up on the edge of her cot and regarded her visitor.

  “Connor....” Solemnity quickly gave way to casual curiosity. “What brings you down to this humble abode?” She gestured at the enclosing walls. “It seems I’ve been reassigned.”

  Her visitor had no time for small talk, or for jokes. Whatever he had on his mind, he was not in the mood for delay.

  “Why’d you do it?”

  Williams blinked back at him, her reply leavened with innocence.

  “Do what?”

  “Let Marcus go. Why would you break him o
ut? He’s a machine. Just one more thread in Skynet’s web. I don’t get it.”

  She had no intention of letting Connor lord it over her, even if she was a prisoner. Rising, she moved toward him. He did not back away. John Connor did not back away from anything, least of all a renegade—and possibly deranged—attack pilot.

  “You say he’s part of Skynet’s planning. Not to me he isn’t. He’s—something else. Something we don’t understand, sure. But I saw a man. Not a machine. A person struggling with the same things we struggle with every day, John. Our own humanity. He’s a man trapped inside of a machine.” She shook her head sorrowfully. “I don’t know how it was done or for what reason, but he’s not a tool of Skynet. I don’t know how to explain it, but he’s—independent.” She met his unwavering stare without flinching. “Why d’you ask? Does it matter? You’ve already formed your opinion, haven’t you?”

  Her interrogator did not reply. Sunk deep in thought, Connor was quiet for a long time. Then he looked up at her, and spoke.

  “How’s the leg?

  She winced.

  “Hurts.”

  There was another long moment of silence. Then he motioned to the soldier on guard.

  “Let her go.”

  The man hesitated. “Sir? Orders were to....”

  “Let her go. On my order. I’ll take full responsibility.”

  With a shrug, the soldier stepped aside. Of the very few people on the base whose commands were to be complied with implicitly, John Connor was foremost.

  Williams watched Connor depart. He was clearly lost in thought. While she did not want to disturb him, it would have been nice to know why he had summarily ordered her released. Among the few words they had exchanged, what had convinced him to change his mind about her?