It was too sharp a turn for the crane, which roared through the intersection. Terminator, dangling from the hook, smashed off parked cars, lampposts, and anything else in his path as he continued to try to bring his shotgun to bear on the T-X's head.
The crane suddenly swerved to the right, crashed over two parked cars, jumped the sidewalk, and smashed into the glass wall of a building.
Terminator found himself crashing into pieces of brick and steel and wires and pipes and girders as the massive machine careened down a long work area and burst through the opposite wall, back out onto the street in the next block.
As the big crane made the impossibly sharp right turn with the boom extended, carrying Terminator's two hundred kilos out at ninety degrees, it lifted off the nine wheels on the left, balanced there, ponderously, like a huge whale about to be beached by a gigantic comber,
but then regained its balance when the front end finally came around.
Connor was on the next street over, and Terminator's head-up overlay map of the local streets showed that the pet van would have to come down this street. T-X had the same overlay.
Terminator twisted around and brought his shotgun to bear directly on the T-X's cranial case, hoping to at least take out its optical lenses, when something large, horns and sirens blaring, loomed directly in front of him. He turned at the same instant a mammoth hook and ladder fire truck, moving at high speed, struck him square in the torso. The force of the collision was so great he lost his grip on the crane's hook, which went flying upward to the right, and his shotgun, which arched overhead to his left
The Champion crane flashed away. Terminator felt the much weaker metal and glass of the fire truck collapse under his weight. The entire ma-
chine shuddered from front to rear, two massive motor
mounts on its Cummins diesel snapped like dry twigs. Ladders broke loose and lights shattered under the sheer
mechanical shock wave that coursed through the truck's
frame.
Terminator's head and upper torso passed through the shattered windshield, and he found himself, one hand on
the big steering wheel, looking up at two firemen, shocked beyond movement, mindless of the blood streaming from
the cuts on their faces from the flying glass. What they were witnessing simply could not be happening.
'I'll drive,' Terminator said.
Both firemen came to life at the same moment They shoved open the doors and bailed out, hitting the street and tumbling end over end, protected by their helmets and heavy fire suits from any serious injuries.
Terminator, still holding the wheel, climbed into the cab of the rapidly decelerating fire truck, studied the controls for just a moment, then jammed the gas pedal to the floor as he prepared to make a 180.
Connor had managed to shake the big crane, but he'd also lost Terminator at the last turn. The one cop car was still on his tail, repeatedly smashing into the Toyota's rear fender, trying to spin him out.
The temperature gauge on the panel was just about in the red and the fuel tank was getting low, but other than that he figured his luck was holding so far. Some luck, he thought.
'Kate, are you okay?' he shouted over his shoulder.
The cop car came up on his left side again, edging closer. It was almost as if the driverless squad car was trying to herd him.
'What do you think?' Kate shouted angrily.
The squad car was trying to herd him.
Connor made a sharp right turn, then left again, coming back out onto the main avenue through the industrial district.
The Champion crane was there. Less than fifty yards
down the street, barreling right at him. Its boom was extended forward and its hook was throwing up showers of sparks as it tumbled and banged along the road.
Connor slammed the gas to the floor, but the squad car pulled ahead and swerved directly into his path. He had to hit the brakes.
He hauled the pet van left and tried to get around the cop car, but he was cut off again.
The crane halved the distance between them, and T-X recharged her weapon for a final shot that could not miss at this range.
Terminator pulled up alongside the Champion crane.
The T-X was preparing to fire again.
Terminator knew that she could not possibly miss at this range. Even if he could somehow shove the crane aside at the moment the T-X fired, she would fire again and again until she succeeded. Or, at the very least, she would simply run over the pet van, crushing John Connor and Katherine Brewster to death.
The T-X had to be stopped.
Terminator found the control for the fire truck's stabilizers and activated it. The thick metal arms, which were meant to provide a broad footing for the truck when its ladder and basket were deployed, extended from the bottom of the truck's high chassis.
When they were nearly fully deployed, Terminator hauled the fire truck hard to the right. The stabilizers bit
into the eight remaining tires on the crane's left side, chewing them apart like office paper through a shredding machine.
The crane swerved to the right, almost impossible even for the T-X to maintain a straight track.
Terminator pulled away and immediately hauled the fire truck back toward the crane, hoping to knock the big machine over the curb and onto its side.
The Champion's much larger stabilizers deployed at that moment, slashing into the side of the fire truck in two places, the thick metal arms impaling the hook and ladder unit, lifting it partially off its wheels.
Terminator now had no control over the fire truck, but neither did the T-X have much control over the combined mass of both machines.
He looked up in time to see T-X point her fully charged plasma cannon at him.
The cab of the fire truck disintegrated in a blue flash, molten metal and glass bursting outward as if the truck had been a mass of mercury dropped onto the pavement
T-X found that she still had enough control of the Champion crane to complete this element of the mission. In fact, the fire truck attached to her left side acted like an outrigger.
The Emery pet van was less than ten meters ahead, just out of the range of the dangling hook, but still effectively boxed in by the squad car.
All other traffic on the road had pulled out of the way. It wouldn't be long before the LAPD arrived in force. Already the 911 switchboard was being flooded with calls, even more not getting through because of computer problems at Pacific Bell's main LA. exchange.
T-X waited indifferently for her weapon to recharge.
As the power cell came into the green range, she aimed the weapon at the back of the van, her target- acquisition stabilizing system switching to active.
Terminator, his chest smoking from where his torso had caught the edge of the plasma beam before he could get out of the cab and the bare metal of his cranial case exposed where the patches of flesh on his face had been seared away, grabbed a fire axe from its bracket in the back.
The T-X was getting ready to fire again. The blue plasma glow was rapidly intensifying.
Terminator scrambled up on the fire truck's ladder basket and swung over the top of the Champion's cab, the roof sagging under his weight.
He stepped back, balancing on the edge, as the sheet
metal was blasted from inside, and the T-X burst up
through the blue-tinged opening, moving like some pred-
atory creature out of its lair ready for a battle to the death.
Terminator was waiting. He swung the fire axe with every kilo of his T-850 chassis's strength at the cyborg's
