Infiltrator

weaponry.'

'Maybe Skynet invented them?' Sarah said, stirring the remains of her limp bacon around the plate with her fork.

'Maybe,' John said. 'But it's awfully advanced stuff, even so. Look at what I downloaded from the Terminator's memory—here's a schematic for a…' he

pointed to the text below the diagram: ' 'Phased plasma rifle in the forty-kilowatt range.' Energy storage cell, perfect dielectric—this is a Buck Rogers in the 25th century ain't-no-doubt-'bout-it blaster, man.'

'Yes?' Dieter said.

'Well, it occurs to me—this information traveled back from the future, right?

And we figure some sort of super-Terminator is watching over the… heck, the birth of Skynet at Cyberdyne, right?'

The older heads nodded. 'So,' John went on triumphantly, taking a bite out of a piece of leathery toast spread with pseudo butter. 'I figure the information came back with the Terminators. Like, nobody invented it; it's in Skynet's memory because Skynet-in-the-future sent it back, and Skynet-in-the-future has it 'cause it was there because—'

'My head hurts,' Sarah said plaintively. 'I need more coffee.'

They fell silent as the waitress came over with a pot in each hand, regular and decaf.

'Time to go,' John said at last. 'Let's get radical.'

SACRAMENTO: THE PRESENT

'Advanced Technology Systems,' John said. 'Or butt-ugly Bauhaus Office Building.'

Dieter snorted. 'Would you prefer fake gingerbread?' he asked softly. Then, his

voice all business: 'Go.'

Sarah Connor crossed the street, looking as casual as a woman carrying a raincoat in a California summer could look. The bored rent-a-cop sitting at the semicircular security desk in the faux-marble lobby looked up politely as she approached.

The smile turned gelid as her combat shotgun came out from under the coat.

'Hands where I can see them. Scoot back—yeah, right back from the alarm pedal you were about to step on, asshole. Do it now!'

She sat on the curved surface of the desktop and swung her legs to the other side, then held the shotgun one-handed as she pulled a roll of heavy duct tape out of the pocket of her khaki hiking pants.

'Lie down,' she said as she stripped a length off with her teeth. 'Time for a nap.'

'Convenient,' Dieter von Rossbach said as he put the bolt cutters against the pipe-enclosed conduit that ran down the aluminum siding of the building facing the alleyway.

'Welcome to California, where everything's aboveboard,' John said. He turned his head as a shower of sparks spat out of the severed cables. Inside, the building would be dark except for a few emergency lights… and the phones would be cut off, and the datalink to the computers that handled Cyberdyne's storage. Not that it would matter much. There wasn't supposed to be anybody in the building this early except for the security staff.

'Go,' he said, clipping the leads from his laptop's (highly modified) modem onto

the bare wires of the exposed telephone line.

His fingers danced over the keyboard, dumping Cyberdyne's security codes and a set of very pointed commands into the machine's idiot-savant brain.

Dieter picked up the heavy duffel bag and slung it over his back, reached up, and began to haul his massive body up the pipe conduit hand over hand. At the second floor he swung out and kicked at a window. It was tough glass, and not meant to be opened; the impact thudded back into his torso, with a twinge that reminded him he'd never see forty again. A second kick, and the window frame and the shattered glass it had held punched into the corridor. Dieter swung through, the Heckler & Koch submachine gun in his massive fist probing about as if it were a toy pistol.

'Clear,' he said, looking down at John.

The boy—young man, he reminded himself, remembering the Terminator on the plane—grinned up and gave him a thumbs-up.

'We've got to get into the office,' John said. 'There's a physical barrier, like I thought. But it should be pretty straightforward from there.'

'All right,' Dieter said, lowering a rope.

It's a good thing the Connor's aren't really terrorists. They'd have given the Sector a run for its money.

John swarmed up with a loose-limbed gracefulness. He handed Dieter the laptop, which he shoved into the knapsack slung across his shoulder and chest, and they

moved down the corridor cautiously.

'Front's secured,' Sarah Connor called from the stairwell. 'We'll cover John from both ends of the corridor while he works on the lock.'

John grinned again as he worked on the e-lock of a steel-slab door labeled ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY SYSTEMS.

'Insert stolen identity card here, trigger subroutine… there we go!'

Dieter had never seen a man move as fast as John did, when the door swung open and a massive figure who might have been Dieter—Dieter with a bald head and a Fu Manchu mustache—stepped through.

The younger Connor dove aside, his hand coming up with a weapon like a stubby shotgun; the Austrian knew it was a grenade launcher. It flashed with a hollow tchooonk!, but not before the big automatic in the Terminator's hand barked. The leopard grace of John's leap turned into a crumpled fall, one hand going to his side.

Things happened very rapidly after that. Dieter flung himself backward, emptying the full thirty-five-round clip of his machine pistol into the Terminator's chest and stomach. It staggered, turned, fired. The bullet struck close enough to Dieter's head to send chips of wallboard flying into his eyes; he rolled backward, blinking and shaking his head frantically as he slapped another magazine into the weapon, Sarah's shotgun boomed behind him…

And two more Terminators came out of the office, guns extended, taking the heavy recoil of the .50-caliber automatics as if they were children's water pistols.

All three turned toward John. Dieter braced himself to hurl his own body between the young man and death, to give him a few seconds' armor. Behind him he heard Sarah's incredulous scream.

Another man came out of the office, a tall slim black man with a Clock in his hand. 'Are you insane?' he shouted at the Terminator in the lead, forcing himself between the killer machine and the wounded human. 'Get them!' he snapped. 'I'll look after the prisoner. Now!'

He bent over John. The Terminators… froze. Motionless, their eyes on the black man, their guns halted in mid-arc.

A lifetime of confronting merciless necessity—and making the decisions he had to, had trained Dieter as much as the academies and courses. He dove from the concealing shelter of the office doorway and into the stairwell, scooping Sarah up as he passed and plunged downward to the lobby.

Dieter dragged her to the car and pushed her into the passenger seat. He pulled the seat belt across her body and strapped her in, then slammed the door and ran around to the driver's side.

Sarah closed her eyes and clung to the armrests, breathing through her teeth in harsh, tearing gasps as she tried to get her sobbing under control. Her throat felt as though she'd swallowed a sharp stone and after a moment she could neither indulge in the relief of weeping nor stop the pain.

When she opened her eyes she could see clearly, no tears obscured the road from view. Sarah concentrated on her breathing, on calming herself, on tearing her

mind away from the awful repeated image of her son falling and the blood… On to the next thing, she ordered herself. What comes next?

'We have to destroy Cyberdyne's main facility, now!'' she said to Dieter. Her voice was thick, and tense, but under the circumstances it sounded amazingly calm.

Von Rossbach's jaw worked. It would almost have felt better to have her throwing accusations at him. He