because he was a loose cannon who tended to act without thinking. Sometimes in the heat of combat that was what you had to do, and Blair had certainly done her share of such flailing. But Barnes not only did way too much of it, in Blair’s opinion, but he also seemed perversely proud of his refusal to think things all the way through.
Besides that was the man himself. He was good to have on your side once the fighting began, but he had none of the idealistic courage that Blair could sense in both of the Connors, the commitment to the people whose lives had ended up in their hands. Barnes fought because he liked to fight, and because he hated Skynet.
Which wasn’t, for Blair, a particularly durable motivation for this kind of long-term war. As far as she could make out, Barnes didn’t particularly like people, had never gotten along with authority figures of any sort, and probably hadn’t been a particularly outstanding, citizen of the pre-judgment Day world. In fact, she could easily envision him running along these same streets, in this same darkness, carrying a flat-screen TV from a broken store window instead of the grenade launcher he was currently clutching to his chest.
But he was hound-dog loyal to John Connor, and Blair was one of Connor’s people, and for that reason alone she knew Barnes would get her to the hangar safely or die in the attempt. The big man might not be the best argument for saving humanity, but if humanity
Probably dying somewhere before it was all over.
Possibly while saving some flygirl’s butt.
The hangar was just ahead, a broken remnant of an old air-space museum whose roof had caved in so far that it was obviously no longer able to conceal anything bigger than a Piper Cub. Barnes lifted up a closed fist in warning as they approached, trotting to a crouching halt beside a mangled sign just outside the grounds.
Blair crouched down beside him, adjusting her grip on her Desert Eagle as she studied the open space that lay between them and the hangar. A handgun, even one this powerful, wouldn’t do much against T-600s except slow them down, and would be of even less use against a T-l, unless she got in a lucky shot. However, there were also human gangs still roaming the streets, scavenging for buried supplies or stealing from the people who’d gotten there first, and the Eagle’s .44 magnum rounds were more than adequate for opening their guts to the cool night air.
But either it was past the gangs’ bedtimes or else the ruckus a few blocks away had scared them back under their rocks. Nothing was moving out there, human or otherwise.
“Looks clear,” Barnes murmured. “You want me to walk you in?”
“You just stay here,” Blair murmured back. Did the man deliberately go out of his way to tick her off? Probably. “I’ll send the crew out to you.”
Barnes grunted. “Make it snappy.”
Blair took a deep breath, and headed toward the hangar, taking the open ground in as fast a sprint as she could without risking a broken ankle. She spun halfway around as she reached the building, landing her back against the wall beside the door as she gave the area one last quick look.
Still nothing.
Panting a little, she slipped inside and pulled the door closed behind her.
And jerked back as a bright light exploded in her face.
She had just enough time to slam her eyelids shut before the light disappeared.
“Sorry,” Yoshi’s voice came from behind the purple blob floating in front of her eyes. A hand reached out and took her arm. “Come on.”
“Where’s Wince?” Blair asked as she let Yoshi guide her across the broken floor.
“He and Inji are prepping your plane,” Yoshi said. “I’m assuming Connor wants us to blow this popsicle stand?”
“Yeah, that’s kind of a given,” Blair said. “Why, were you thinking of staying?”
“Not if everyone else goes,” Yoshi said, an odd wistfulness in his voice. “I just hate to see the place go, that’s all.”
Blair looked around. Actually, so did she. The purple blob was fading now, and behind it the familiar cramped area beneath the hangar’s crushed roof was coming into view.
Or rather, now that the false floor had been rolled aside, the uncramped area of the basement storage room, a sublevel that Skynet’s initial surveillance had missed. By removing the floor and installing a winch-equipped ramp, Connor’s people had turned an expanse of otherwise useless space into a very cozy spot for stashing the team’s two A-10 “Warthog” attack jets.
Blair ran a quick eye over her plane as she and Yoshi headed down the ramp. It was as banged-up as everything else in Connor’s meager arsenal, though the wild flying-shark paint job she’d adorned it with hid a lot of the damage. But to her, the nicks and bullet holes were nothing to be ashamed of. They were marks of honor, wounds suffered in the cause of humanity’s war for survival.
And scarred or otherwise, the plane was no more ready to give up the fight than Blair herself was. A pair of Sidewinder air-to-air missiles hung from two of the A-10’s four remaining under-wing pylons, while the seven-barrel GAU-8 Avenger Gatling gun nestled beneath its nose promised a hornets’ nest of 30mm explosive and armor- piercing rounds to any HK or T-l foolish enough to get in her way.
Her remaining two pylons, she noted, were sporting equipment nacelles, undoubtedly loaded with everything Wince and Inji could pry up and pack inside. That was going to play hell with the A-10’s balance and maneuverability, but Blair would just have to deal with it. It wasn’t like the two men could lug everything out on their backs. Not even with Barnes to help.
“Is everyone okay?” Wince’s disembodied voice drifted out from somewhere behind the two planes. “It sounded pretty nasty there for awhile.”
“It was,” Blair said, deciding there was no point in burdening him with the news of Piccerno’s death. He’d find out about that soon enough. “We need to get moving, too. If Skynet follows its usual post-raid pattern, the T-600s could be knocking on the door anytime now. We don’t want to be here when they do.”
“No argument there,” Wince agreed, coming into sight around the rear of the plane, his white hair glistening in the starlight that filtered through the cracks in the roof. “You probably saw the cargo pods we strapped on. You going to be okay with that?”
“I’ll be fine,” Blair assured him. “Barnes is waiting outside by the west sign. You and Inji grab whatever you’re carrying, and get going.”
“We’ll get the door first,” Wince said, looking around. “Inji?”
And then, abruptly, the cracks in the hangar roof blazed with light.
“Cover!” Blair snapped at Wince as she sprinted toward her plane.
“And get clear of the door!”
The words were barely out of her mouth when the silence of the night was shattered by the thunder of automatic weapons fire.
But not the drawn-out stutter of an HK’s miniguns. It was the slower, higher-pitched sound of a Galil assault rifle.
Like the one Barnes had been carrying over his shoulder.
Blair swore under her breath. Leave it to him to pick a one-man fight with a flying weapons platform.
“Forget the winch!” she shouted to Yoshi as she bounded up the ladder and dropped into her cockpit. “Blast and burn.”
“Right,” Yoshi called over the gunfire as he headed for his own plane. “You or me?”
“Me,” Blair shouted, punching for engine ignition. “Go as soon as it’s clear.” There was no time for her to do a proper flight checklist. She would just have to hope Wince and Inji had done the prep right.
They had. Even as she pulled the canopy closed she could feel the vibration of the twin GE
turbofans behind her coming to life. Flipping up the safety bar on her stick, she raised the muzzle of her GAU-8 to point at the center of the hangar door and squeezed the trigger.
A normal door would have simply disintegrated at the center of fire, leaving the bulk of it still sitting there, blocking the way. But this particular door had been carefully warped most of the way out of its guide rails and fasteners, and its center had been heavily reinforced with large pieces of superhard alloy, scavenged from wrecked HKs and T-4 tanks. The result was exactly as planned: even as the door’s center began to shred in the face of Blair’s onslaught, the sheer impact of two-pound shells striking it at a thousand meters per second blew the whole
