doing nothing other than superficial damage to his main systems.
The hearse was beginning to take fire, some of the windows blowing out, bullets slapping against the sheet metal like hammer taps in a tinsmith's shop.
The lid of the coffin opened, and Connor, who'd been jammed inside with the weapons, rolled out, keeping below the level of the windows.
'Get us out of here!' he shouted.
The engine caught. 'We must reacquire Katherine Brewster,' Terminator said. He swiveled his head and did a quick scan of the cemetery with his sensors.
'Why?' Connor demanded. 'What makes her so goddamn important?'
'Through her you make contact with the remnants of the U.S. military and learn to fight Skynet, forming the core of the resistance,' Terminator said.
They were taking a lot of heavy fire, but Terminator acquired two moving targets. One of them was a 96.55534 percent probable match to Katherine Brewster. He slammed the hearse into low and peeled out.
'Later, your children become important when?' Terminator continued as if nothing else were happening.
'Whoa,' Connor stopped him. 'What?'
'She is your wife,' Terminator said, matter-of-factly.
think the cops stood a chance against that?thing. Not after what she'd seen it do.
A dark blue Chevy sedan came roaring up the road and through the broken gate into the cemetery. Someone was slumped in the front seat.
Kate pulled up short as the car screeched to a halt fifty feet away. The back door popped open and Scott jumped out.
Instant relief poured over her like ice water on a blistering hot day. She couldn't believe it. Scott. Here.
'Scott,' she cried, starting for him. 'Thank God!'
T-X moved toward Kate, morphing, as he seemed to glide over the grass, back into the persona of Nancy Nebel in the rust-colored Gucci leather suit.
Her right arm was changing into the plasma weapon, and Kate stopped in midstride.
This was the same monster from the pet clinic. The one who had killed Betsy. The one who had nearly killed them all.
'No?' Kate moaned, stepping back Was there no end to this insanity?
T-X raised her plasma weapon, the blue glow sur-rounding her arm as the unit came to a full charge.
Silberman had disappeared, and the shooting was still going on behind her. Kate had no one to turn to. She didn't
c.19
Valley of Peace Cemetery
'Give me an RPG,' Terminator ordered.
'You said you can't kill anybody,' Connor argued.
'John. The RPG. Now.'
Connor had spotted the heavier Russian-made RPG-7 Rocket Propelled Grenade Launchers in the coffin. He'd practiced with them in Baja a couple of years before his mother had died. One of her biker friends had come up from Honduras or someplace like that with a bunch of shit.
He dug one of the weapons out of the coffin, loaded the 85mm shell, and slapped it into Terminator's outstretched right hand.
The rocket, which carried a five-pound HEAT warhead, could penetrate a foot of armored steel plate. The Russians had built them to bust tanks. Terrorists used them to stop cops.
Connor was trying to figure out what Terminator wanted to shoot at. He suddenly spotted Kate standing alone, her hand up, as if she were trying to ward off an attack.
Then he saw the T-X, her right arm engulfed in a blue glow, pointing the plasma cannon directly at Kate. 'It's Kate,' he shouted.
Driving with his left hand, Terminator rested the tube of the RPG on the windowsill across his chest. He uncaged the firing circuit and without hesitation pulled the trigger.
The shell was ejected from the tube, and about fifteen feet out its rocket motor ignited, propelling it almost instantly the last few meters to the T-X's right arm just as the plasma cannon was firing.
A sharp, bright explosion engulfed the T-X's weapon arm, staggering her backward a few feet. A split second later the misfiring cannon erupted in a huge blue flash-bang that hurled the cyborg off her feet, sending her flying twenty meters onto her back.
Terminator veered the hearse sharply to the right, just missing a row of headstones, and slid to a stop next to an openmouthed Kate, who seemed to be rooted to the ground where she stood.
Connor reached over and opened the passenger door. 'Get in,' he shouted to her.
She didn't move. The cops were charging toward them, guns drawn, but the firing had stopped for the moment. But only for the moment.
'Do you want to live?' Connor shouted. 'Come on!'
Kate looked over to where the T-X had already gotten
to her feet The cyborg's weapon was a mangled ruin, but
she ripped off the tip of the cannon and the artificial skin
began to form over the machinery. She was damaged but not out of commission.
T-X looked up, and started for the hearse.
Move or die, the thought was like a high-power bolt of electricity to Kate's brain. She jumped into the hearse and pulled the door shut.
Terminator slammed the gas pedal to the floor and the hearse shot across the cemetery, spewing grass and dirt from its back wheels.
He glanced in the rearview mirror as the T-X picked up speed, crashing through gravestones as if they were not there.
But she was not gaining on the hearse. The dispersal of the plasma energy had apparently caused an overload in her power circuits. But that reduced capacity would not last for long. Terminator had been programmed with what few specs the resistance had managed to gather. Among them was the T-X model's ability to recharge its own power cells. The tiny fusion generator in its chest cavity took a finite amount of time to replace such a large loss of power, but the recharge time was very short.
Measured not in minutes, but in seconds.
Terminator hauled the hearse around a mausoleum, bumped up onto the driveway, and shot through the gate back to the blacsktopped highway.
The T-X was no longer visible in the rearview mirror.
'What the hell was that thing?' Kate demanded. She was all out of breath. 'Why is it after me? What did I do?'
'It's what you're going to do,' Connor said from the back. He pulled out another RPG rocket in case the T-X caught up with them. 'You're important in the future. We both are.'
Terminator headed to the highway that led away from LA. and back out onto the desert.
There was almost no traffic, only an occasional fanner in his pickup or delivery truck, and a tractor pulling a flat wagon on car tires loaded with hay.
There would almost certainly be police units, but for the moment the only thing that Terminator's sensors were picking up was a helicopter. Judging by its attempt at radio communications it was probably a police chopper outbound from Los Angeles.
Kate looked nervously from Terminator to Connor, fear and uncertainty in her eyes. 'It was Scott,' she said. 'How could it be Scott?'
'Your fiance?' Connor asked.
Kate nodded, Unable to speak.
'The T-X is polymimetic, able to take the form of anything it touches,' Terminator told her with no hint of emotion. 'Your fiance is dead.'
Kate's complexion paled. She looked like a ghost.
Connor had to wince at Terminator's lack of tact, but he kept his eyes on the road behind them. The T-X
