Terminator Salvation: Cold War

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“I will talk to Command,” he promised again. “But I can make no guarantees.” The transmission began to break up. He glanced off-screen. Some sort of siren blared in the background. “I’m afraid we must cut this visit short. We will speak again, though.” He saluted her from far away. “Take care, my friend, and stay warm up there.”

“You too.” Molly didn’t want Losenko to think that she blamed him for Ashdown’s pigheadedness, so she saluted him back. “Talk to you soon.”

The video window closed, leaving her without the answer she wanted—and no real expectation that it would be forthcoming.

“Fuck.” She slammed down the lid of the laptop with more force than was necessary. A phantom toe ached like hell, adding to her bad mood. Talk about a waste of time.

“Whoa there!” A gust of cold air invaded the shack as Geir came in from outdoors. He brushed the snow from his jacket and stomped his boots on the welcome mat. “Don’t be too hard on that thing. It’s not like we can get another one at Radio Shack.”

Molly watched with a twinge of irritation as he tracked wet slush into the room. He should have done a better job of brushing off outside. Then again, at least he’d gotten the satellite dish working on time. So she reeled it in.

“Good point.”

He nodded at the closed laptop.

“So how did your pow-wow with the bigwigs go?”

She snorted in disgust.

“How do you think?”

After fifteen years aboard the Wilmington, Losenko could have—and had— navigated its cramped corridors in the dark. He had almost forgotten the feel of grass or dirt beneath his feet, or what dry land looked like. The confined spaces of the sub, where nothing was ever more than a few meters in front of his eyes, had given him a bad case of myopia, impairing his ability to view things at a distance. He had become a true denizen of the deep, swimming silently beneath the waves to avoid the mechanized predators that were prowling the surface.

Sometimes he envied the vast open wilderness people like Molly Kookesh called home. For all its dangers and deprivations, at least she could see the sky more frequently than once in a while.

The Gorshkov had been roomy by comparison. He missed her, even after all of the intervening years.

He found Ashdown in the officers’ wardroom, which had long ago been converted into the Resistance’s command center. A conference table was piled high with read-outs and reports. Jury-rigged monitors and communications gear encrusted the bulkheads like barnacles. The flickering screens glowed like St. Elmo’s Fire. The patchwork appearance of the equipment, cobbled together as it was from whatever mismatched scraps of hardware they could procure, testified to the arduous conditions under which they had been forced to sail all this time. Unable to return to port for routine maintenance, the Wilmington often seemed as though it was held together by sweat, spit, and sheer cussedness.

Just like the rest of us, the Russian general mused.

“Losenko,” Ashdown greeted him curtly. They had known each other too long now to bother with pleasantries. As ever, the senior officer was poring over the latest reports from the front.

Losenko sometimes wondered if the other man ever slept. Time and trouble had aged the general beyond his years. His hairline had receded out of existence, leaving only a tonsure of graying brown fuzz around his balding dome. Sedentary living beneath the sea had thickened his waist. The onerous burden of command had etched deep lines into his face, which bore a perennial scowl. Gray hairs had also infiltrated his mustache and beard. A crescent-shaped scar near his left eye was a lasting souvenir of their narrow escape from the Galapagos, so many years ago. Rumpled green military fatigues showed signs of wear. Tarnished dog tags dangled around his neck.

“Good morning, General,” Losenko replied, and he gestured at the reports. “Good news or bad?”

“The usual mix of both,” Ashdown grumbled. “Here’s the most promising development.” He thrust a folder at Losenko. “General Olsen’s forces in California managed to knock down two enemy radar towers, in Riverside and Pasadena. That leaves just the one in Capistrano to cover that entire territory.” He snorted in satisfaction. “Let’s see the machines try to triangulate with just one tower. That should take some of the heat off our pilots for a while.”

Skynet would rebuild the towers soon enough, but Losenko had learned to savor any victory against the machines, no matter how temporary. He flipped through the folder. Aerial photos of the collapsed towers lifted his spirits.

“That is good news.”

“Damn right it is.” Ashdown took a swig of hot coffee to sustain his energy. He looked up from his work. “So how’s your new Eskimo girlfriend?”

Losenko objected to the general’s dismissive tone, and he made no secret of it.

“Kookesh and her Resistance cell are a significant asset.” In many ways, the combative young woman reminded him of Grushka, not to mention the late Corporal Ortega. “In fact, she has an ambitious operation in mind, one for which she is requesting back-up to carry out.”

“What kind of operation?” Ashdown asked dubiously.

Losenko outlined Kookesh’s plans regarding the uranium shipments.

“If she succeeded, she would do significant damage to Skynet’s supply lines and manufacturing abilities.”

“No dice.” Ashdown shook his head. “She’s got balls, I’ll give her that, but we can’t afford to waste time and resources on a sideshow. Not when we’ve got more important objectives to keep our eyes on.”

Losenko wasn’t surprised by the general’s response, but felt obliged to argue further on Kookesh’s behalf. He owed the scrappy Alaskan survivors that much. The mushroom clouds infested his dreams less often now, but they had never truly gone away. Small wonder he wanted to give the people of Alaska every chance to take back their land after enduring so much death and devastation.

“And what would those objectives be?” he countered.

Ashdown lowered his voice. He glanced around to ensure they were alone.

“We may have a lead on our magic bullet.”

Losenko knew exactly what he meant. A surge of excitement quickened his pulse. “The code?”

For months now, they had been pursuing unconfirmed reports that there was a secret code hidden in the shortwave transmitters the machines used to communicate with one another. A coded signal that allowed for direct control of their CPUs. In theory, that code could be used to shut down Skynet long enough to defeat the enemy once and for all—if such a signal truly existed.

“You bet.” Ashdown pulled a flash-drive unit from the pocket of his jacket. “An intelligence raid on an old Cyberdyne R&D lab uncovered evidence that their programmers really did build a backdoor into Skynet’s neural network, concealed under the primary shortwave channel. Now we just need to get our hands on that code, and we can end this war for good.”

He tucked the drive back into his pocket for safekeeping.

“That’s what we need to focus on, not some guerilla maneuvers way up in the frozen north.”

In his excitement over the code, Losenko had almost forgotten about Kookesh’s operation. He felt a twinge of guilt for allowing himself to be distracted.

“But surely we can spare something to offer them support?” he persisted. “Maybe a single Chinook or Blackhawk?”

“Forget it.” Ashdown wasn’t budging. “Look, Dmitri, I know the whole Alaska thing gets under your skin. And I don’t blame you for that.” It was unusual for him to allude to their mutual tragedy—they had not discussed Ashdown’s son since that tense encounter on Santa Cruz, fifteen years ago. “But this is no time to let your personal issues get in the way. Alaska isn’t where the action is, not in the long run.”

“That’s not what this is about,” Losenko insisted, although he wasn’t entirely sure that was true. “What about those rumors that Skynet is developing even more advanced models of Terminators?” The T-600s were bad