would not stop coming after them. Not until her entire chassis was destroyed.
If such a thing were possible.
'Looks like we lost her,' he said without much conviction. It was mostly wishful thinking on his part.
The road swept around the base of a steep, boulder-strewn, wooded hill. The embankment loomed close to the highway.
The T-X suddenly emerged from the woods at the top of the hill at a dead run and leaped out into space, landing with a tremendous bang on top of the hearse.
The roof was crushed inward almost to the level of the coffin by the impact of the T-X's 150-kilo mass. The back windows shattered into thousands of pieces, and the windshield starred but held in place.
Connor had just pulled an AK-47 assault rifle and a thirty-round box magazine out of the coffin. He barely managed to roll left and flatten himself on the floor before he was trapped by the collapsing roof.
The hearse swerved sharply left, nearly off the road and down into a ditch before Terminator was able to bring it under control.
Kate screamed in absolute terror, crouching as low as she could get in the front seat.
A high-pitched angry whine came from above the hearse, and suddenly the lower half of a circular saw cut through the roof in a shower of sparks.
Terminator hauled the hearse to the right, laying rubber on the highway as he slammed on the brakes.
He immediately jammed the gas pedal to the floor and swerved sharply left in an effort to dislodge the T-X from the roof.
But it did not work.
The T-X's left arm had morphed into a high-speed metal cutting saw that was opening a U-shaped flap in
the roof as easily as a razor blade through tissue paper.
'Do something!' Kate screeched in desperation.
Terminator ignored her. A map of the rural area was overlaid in his head-up display with a thermal imaging picture. The road they were on intersected with the highway in three hundred meters. Barreling down the highway from the west was the heat signature of what Terminator identified as an eighteen-wheeler.
His processors did the math, and he reduced his speed slightly to 71.3 miles per hour, which gave him the solution.
The saw retracted from the roof and the long, rectangular flap peeled open like the lid on a sardine can.
No longer hemmed in by the collapsed roof, Connor swung the AK-47 to bear on the T-X as he pulled the cocking slide back and flicked the safety catch forward.
He pulled the trigger, firing the 7.62mm rounds directly into her face, emptying the magazine in three seconds flat.
The T-X recoiled after each shot, but then came back to the opening and reached down to grab Connor, who scrambled a few inches forward just out of her grasp.
A semi's air horn suddenly blared right on top of them.
Terminator shoved Kate farther down in the seat as he hunched over, steering the hearse beneath the trailer just behind the turnbuckle with a last-moment burst of speed.
The roof and the T-X suddenly disappeared as the bottom of the semi trailer sheared off the top of the hearse
with a shriek of tearing, twisting metal, breaking plastic, and shattering glass.
Connor got a split-instant glimpse of the semi's rear wheels less than one foot from the side of the hearse when they were on the other side and clear on the empty highway.
A tremendous wind roared through the now open hearse. Connor sat up cautiously as they rounded a curve, the semi sliding sideways across the highway behind them.
Kate sat up too. Tentatively, as if she couldn't believe that they had come through the crash alive.
Terminator was impassive. They had merely completed another phase of his assignment
'We need a new vehicle,' he said to no one in particular.
Kate looked at Connor and he couldn't help but laugh with relief. She laughed too. This was insane. All of it. His entire life. This morning. This moment.
T-X sat up. She had landed at the side of the road fifty meters from the jackknifed semi.
Her diagnostic circuits registered some damage to her infiltration overlay, but only superficial damage to her battle chassis.
The most severe damage had been done to her plasma cannon by the small missile's explosive warhead that had made a perfectly timed hit.
Her flesh retracted from the mangled discharge head
of the cannon. She studied the damage for a few milliseconds, her diagnostic-repair processor immediately devising a solution.
With her free hand she artfully twisted and bent the various plasma magnetic containment conduits into a new, much smaller, cruder transmission head.
Only a fraction of her available power could be transmitted with the new arrangement, but the repaired weapon would still be formidable.
The trucker jumped down from his rig and took a few steps up the road toward T-X. He was dazed, and still uncertain of what had happened.
T-X glanced at him. He was typical of humans of his socio-economic class in this era: round shoulders, potbelly, wearing a red baseball cap, yellow checked shirt, and dark trousers and work boots. Probably not well educated.
The trailer bore the advertising legend for something called xenadrine efx, with the advice, experience the
POWER.
Ignoring him, T-X raised her jury-rigged weapon and fired a short plasma burst at the side of the hill. Grass and bushes went up in flames and a small area of gravel and rocks was instantly reduced to slag.
Out of the corner of her optical sensors she saw the truck driver turn and run away as fast as his bandy legs could take him.
She would not kill him. He was meaningless.
Her electronic emissions detectors picked up the transmissions from what she determined to be an LAPD
helicopter, flying at one hundred meters above the terrain, two kilometers away.
She adjusted her internal communications circuitry and made contact with the helicopter. 'Nancy-one-zero- zero-niner, LA. base,' she radioed. 'Copy?'
c,20
Angeles National Forest
Beneath the protection of a canopy of trees Connor stared at the empty, mostly cloudless sky.
There had been police activity all morning and into the afternoon. But it was coming up on two-thirty and he hadn't seen a spotter plane or helicopter in at least forty-five minutes.
Kate was still in a state of semishock. Other than drinking from the cool mountain stream, she hadn't spoken or moved to try to escape. Nothing.
The T-X was still out there, coming after them. If being crushed beneath a crane and fire truck hadn't destroyed her, then being struck by a semi truck had probably not even dented her armor.
Terminator had done something to the hearse's engine and he slammed the hood as Connor came over.
'It's been clear for almost an hour.'
Terminator didn't bother looking up at the sky. 'I am unable to fix this vehicle.'
'Will it run?' Conner asked.
'Yes. But not long.'
'Then let's find something eke and get as far away as we can,' Connor said.
They got back into the hearse and headed farther up into the mountains where within a couple of miles they passed twenty or twenty-five trout fishermen working the stream that was just off the road there. A registration table was set up under a bright red canopy.' The sign flapping in the light breeze read fifth annual angeles
