Terminator Salvation: Cold War

leftover from the early days of uranium mining, when the chemicals used to process the raw ore had turned the results yellow. The coarse powder filled the long cylindrical storage compartment that stretched into semi-darkness beyond the doorway. There was enough uranium in just this one car to power dozens of nuclear reactors—or Terminators.

Sitka dumped out her book bag and started shoveling the yellowcake into the pack with her bare hands. The radioactive powder was surprisingly light. Molly scooped up a few handfuls herself, then reconsidered. With their team scattered, and the Snowminators on the prowl, they weren’t going to be able to carry off enough ore to make a real difference. Better just to blow the whole load to kingdom come instead. She remembered all the oil they had cost Skynet back at the pipeline. This was the same kind of situation.

“That’s enough, packrat,” she said. “Get the explosives.”

If we can’t have the uranium, she vowed, neither can Skynet.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The Hunter-Killer was gaining on him again.

Geir reached the end of the ravine and was forced to abandon its sheltering walls. He pushed Thunderbird to its limit in a desperate attempt to keep out of range of the lethal pulse cannons. Flying at top speed—nearly 437 miles per hour—the plane raced toward the upper slopes of the Wrangell Mountains. Ascending above the tree line, it sped above majestic cliffs and glaciers, but Geir was in no position to admire the scenery. Not with a murderous flying machine on his tail.

Outgunned and way more fragile than the armored HK, he relied on speed and maneuverability to stay out of its sights. As agile as its equine namesake, the Mustang pulled out all the stops, banking and weaving, diving and climbing amidst the alpine peaks and canyons. A herd of caribou, dark shadows in the gloom, ran for safety as he buzzed too low over their snowy terrain. Geir worked up a sweat behind the controls, improvising wildly to keep the HK’s neural network from predicting his flight patterns. His hands were sweating beneath his gloves. His brain was spinning.

Okay, Svenson. How the hell are you going to get out of this one?

He just couldn’t shake the airborne predator. It kept after him like a bloodhound on the scent of a panicked fox. A blast from its plasma cannon incinerated one of the skis beneath the plane, throwing Thunderbird off balance. Geir frantically leveled off again, then climbed sharply upward toward the crest of Mount Wrangell. He glanced out of his left window to see nothing but a few scorched struts jutting out from beneath the fuselage on the left side. One entire ski was missing.

Landing the plane was going to be a bitch.

If I ever get the chance.

That was starting to look like an academic concern, but he still had one last trick up his sleeve, provided he could make it just a little further. He pulled back on the stick, climbing higher and higher toward the top of the enormous mountain, one of the largest in the territory. Just a few more minutes and, hopefully, the HK was in for a serious headache.

Mount Wrangell, which rose over 12,000 feet above the wilderness below, had been volcanically active even before Judgment Day. According to Doc Rathbone, its geothermal activity had been increasing steadily since the 1950s—long before Geir was born—and the thermonuclear blasts that had rocked Alaska had left it even more seismically restless. Plumes of hot steam, often visible from miles around, rose from numerous small craters rimming its central caldera, a feathery green in the light of the aurora. Frequent small eruptions and tremors shook the area. Geir had always made a point of not flying directly over it.

Until tonight.

He saw the main plumes jetting upward from the collapsed top of the mountain even before he got there. Geysers of churning white vapor blasted hundreds of feet into the air. Rising to 14,000 feet, he circled above the volcano. This was going to be a delicate balancing act. He had to stick close enough to the unstable caldera to— hopefully—mess up the HK’s heat-sensitive tracking devices, while keeping high enough to avoid being scalded by the sky-high bursts of steam. Being disintegrated by a plasma cannon would probably be a far less painful way to go.

The HK slowed as it approached the rim of the mountain. Its floodlights and lasers scanned the caldera. Geir guessed that it was evaluating the threat posed by the active volcano, and weighing that against its desire to terminate Thunderbird and its pilot.

He tried to read the machine’s mind.

Am I worth the risk or not?

The HK swiftly arrived at a compromise. An air-to-air missile dropped from its undercarriage onto a rail, then shot up past the crest of the mountain. The heat-seeking rocket locked onto the fighter circling above the volcano.

“Crap!”

Geir saw the missile coming. Risking getting hit by the steam, he dived toward the caldera 2,000 feet below. The missile reversed course and plunged after him. The smell of sulfur, rising from the fuming crater, filled Geir’s nose and throat. Not since Judgment Day had he been so close to hell.

This had better work.

Just as he’d prayed, the heat pouring off the volcano acted as a decoy, much more appealing to the missile than his own insignificant signature. It veered away from Thunderbird to strike one of the venting craters below. The explosion rattled the caldera like a tremor, causing its gray-black andesite walls to crumble inward. Billowing gouts of smoke and fire made it look as though the mountain was erupting for real. Shattered rock opened up fresh fumaroles at the base of the crater, unleashing even larger discharges of scalding vapor.

A sizzling pillar of steam shot up directly in Geir’s path, forcing him to bank hard to the right to keep from flying right through it. Yet another plume jetted past the plane’s tail, missing it by only a few feet. He suddenly found himself flying an obstacle course made up of fire, smoke, and steam. Two close calls in as many minutes convinced him that the airspace above Mount Wrangell had suddenly become way too hot to handle.

So he accelerated away from the volcano, abandoning whatever safety it had provided. The P-51 Mustang flew north over tracks of densely wooded forest. Frozen lakes and rivers gleamed like mirrors beneath him, reflecting the shifting colors of the aurora. Forgotten logging roads, on the verge of being reclaimed by the wilderness, connected ghost towns and campsites.

Can’t complain about the scenery, he thought. Despite Skynet’s best efforts, it was still beautiful country to live in. Or die in.

Not at all unexpectedly, the HK instantly noted his departure and resumed its pursuit. It circled past one side of the volcano—taking the long way around the unpredictable caldera—before picking up Thunderbird’s trail. Geir sweated in the cockpit, and not just because of the steam bath he had left behind.

He was running out of tricks.

He undid his seatbelt. A fully-packed and prepared parachute was strapped to his back, just in case he needed to make a hasty exit. It would kill him to abandon Thunderbird after all his work restoring it, but he wasn’t an old-time sea captain. He wasn’t going down with his ship—not if he could avoid it.

The HK grew larger and larger in his rear-view mirror. He looked ahead of him, seeing nothing but mile after mile of wintry wilderness with no place to hide. As if to emphasize his plight, a rattle in the plane’s engine gave new cause for concern. Thunderbird was showing her age.

Aren’t we all, he thought.

Then again, it was starting to look like getting older wasn’t exactly something he needed to worry about. Maybe arthritis and rheumatism weren’t on the cards.

He adjusted his parachute, getting ready to bail out before the inevitable plasma blast, when, to his surprise,