a mess, and the rear of the pet van was in complete disarray. She looked as if she'd been through the spin cycle of a washing machine.
'Drop dead, asshole,' she told him.
Terminator closed the window. 'I am unable to comply,' he said.
The Valley
Sirens converged, it seemed, from all over the city of Los Angeles on the mangled, burning wreckage of the National Rentals' Champion crane, the LAFD hook and ladder unit, and the LAPD squad car.
People were already gathering closer to the scene of the accident, drawn to the flames like moths.
Someone had to have been killed. No one could have survived. There was wreckage strewn along a five-block area. There had to be bodies, though a few of the spec-
tators had witnessed what they thought was a man leaping from the crane just before it crashed. But nobody was going to believe that.
A high-pitched whine came from deep inside the tangled mass of metal. People stepped back. There was no telling what dangerous chemicals were in there.
At the base of the fire truck's chassis a gap appeared that widened as if someone or something was opening a tent flap.
T-X, her left hand formed into a diamond-toothed metal saw, stepped out of the wreckage. She glanced with indifference at the small crowd, then walked away, her hand morphing back into human form, her skin and clothing in perfect condition. Not so much as a strand of hair out of place.
No one tried to stop her, or even talk to her.
Around the corner in the next block, she hot-wired a blue Saturn and headed back into the city. Her head-up display was overlaid with a street map on which was pinpointed the home address of Katherine Brewster.
c.16
The Foothills
The Toyota's temperature gauge hovered just below the red mark and the needle on the gas gauge bounced half- way between 1/4 and E.
Terminator's head-up display showed a map of the
countryside in the hills above Los Angeles. Most highways
eventually led over the mountains down into the Mojave
Desert. He had a destination, but there was little value in
[informing either John Connor or Katherine Brewster at
this time.
They would be told what they needed to know, when they needed to know it.
Something crashed in the back. Connor turned and looked through the dividing window. Kate was kicking at the back door, trying to force it off its hinges, or to break free whatever was holding it shut.
He'd almost forgotten about her. He turned back to Terminator. 'Get off the highway as soon as you can. We have to let her out'
Terminator glanced at him. 'Negative. Katherine Brewster must be protected.'
'Why??'
A curl of acrid smoke rose from Terminator's chest. He looked at it. His internal diagnostic programs had warned him that one of his fuel cells was going critical. But the rate of failure was evidently accelerating. 'I require a cutting tool,' he said.
Connor looked doubtfully at the smoke, but he handed Terminator his Gerber from his belt pouch. 'I thought I was the one they're after.'
Terminator opened the utility tool and studied the longest blade for a moment. 'You could not be located, so a T-X was sent back through time to eliminate others who could become enemies of Skynet. Your lieutenants.'
Connor glanced at Kate in the back. She was huddled now in the far corner by the door, her knees up to her chin, a sullen look on her round, pretty face.
'So, she's going to be in the resistance?' he started. But that didn't make any sense. Judgment Day had never come. 'But if?No, no.' He looked at Terminator, trying to gauge the cyborg's meaning by the look on his face. Which was futile.
Terminator waited patiently for Connor to work it out.
'You shouldn't even exist. We took out Cyberdyne over ten years ago.'
'Cyberdyne backed up its research data,' Terminator explained. 'They saved it off-site. When the company went bankrupt in 1993, Cyber Research Systems acquired the assets and developed the technology in secret.'
'But we stopped Judgment Day,' Connor insisted. He'd lived with that knowledge for the past twelve years.
'You only postponed it. Judgment Day is inevitable.'
Connor sat back, defeated. There was no defense against this kind of circular logic. As he'd been from the beginning, he was nothing more than a pawn between the machines and humans in some future war. And time travel made anything possible.
Or, perhaps, impossible.
'Take the wheel,' Terminator ordered.
Connor snapped out of his thoughts and he grabbed the steering wheel as Terminator, his foot still on the gas pedal, opened his jacket and lifted his T-shirt, totally indifferent to the fact that they were traveling sixty miles per hour down the highway.
The Toyota swerved to the right, nearly down into a ditch before Connor got it back up on the pavement and under control.
The flesh on the left side of Terminator's chest was charred black, an area about the size of a package of cigarettes completely burned away, exposing his metal chassis.
With the Gerber blade, Terminator cut a long curving incision around the burned skin and muscle. There was no blood, and Terminator felt no pain. The skin was dur-aplast, a form of pliant plastic.
Connor had seen this kind of weirdness before, but he was still amazed. 'What are you doing?'
'I am powered by two hydrogen fuel cells,' Termi-
nator said. He cut the flap of tissue free and casually tossed it out the door. 'The primary cell has been damaged by the plasma cannon.'
'Plasma cannon?' Connor said. The last time Skynet had sent a cyborg back to kill him, it hadn't been equipped with anything like that 'So this thing is worse than a T-1000?'
Terminator folded the knife blade and opened the prying tool that he used to release his chest plate. Next, he swung open a small panel that was just beneath the most severely burned area of flesh to expose complicated circuitry and a maze of mechanical works.
'That model was discontinued in 2029. The f-X is designed for extreme combat, driven by a plasma reactor and equipped with onboard weapons. It's a far more effective killing machine.'
He opened the Gerber's pliers and got to work inside his chest.
'Okay, so she's like a tank with liquid metal skin,' Connor said, and even he was having trouble believing what he was saying. 'She can't be melted down?'
Terminator shook his head. It was an oddly human gesture, out of place with his chest open exposing the electromechanical innards. 'The battle chassis is heavily armored, hardened to withstand external attack.'
Connor shrugged. 'You'll find a way to destroy her,' he said, because it was his only hope for survival.
'Unlikely,' Terminator replied, without looking up from his work. 'I am an obsolete design. The T-X is faster,
more powerful, more intelligent. Its arsenal includes nanotechnological transjectors.'
'Meaning?' Connor asked.
Terminator glanced at Connor. 'It can control other machines.'
Connor nodded after a moment. He'd seen her handiwork with the police cars and ambulances. 'Great,' he muttered.
Terminator had gotten down to the pair of fuel cells in his chest. One of them smoked and sizzled. It was leaking something that was starting to react, like an acid, with bis other circuitry, and a residual blue plasma energy still shifted and rippled like an aurora around the unit.
