The Future War

John answered. 'Initially Skynet—the computer's name, by the way—relied on human allies. People who didn't realize that they were working for a machine. They thought they were working for an environmentalist radical, and that by reducing the human population to their own eco-conscious members, they were saving the earth. We have reason to believe that some of the most radical members of this group heavily infiltrated the armed forces.'

That earned him a growl from the SEALs present and some grumbling from the sailors; the officers just stood pat, but their eyes were hard.

'Those camps the army and National Guard and Marines were taking people to are extermination camps. The civilian population and the unindoctrinated soldiers were eliminated largely by the use of biological weapons.

'But that's not the only plan Skynet has. It's been using automated factories to produce weapons that will be under its complete control.'

'Hey, guy, what have you been drinking?' one of the SEALs bellowed. The crowd laughed.

'Don't worry,' John said, grabbing a handful of the tarp, 'we have a demonstration model.' He leaped from the truck, dragging the covering with him. Inside a cage of steel bars stood a dormant Terminator, its gleaming metal surfaces reflecting the bonfire, giving it an eerie semblance of motion.

Chu yanked off his sunglasses. 'What the hell is that?' he demanded. His tone of voice left no doubt as to what he thought of the thing. He thought it was a joke and a very bad one.

'Please put your glasses back on, sir,' John said. He walked over to Ike and took the small control box from him. 'They're meant to protect your eyes. This model is fully operational, except for the communications module— we pulled that.'

He flicked a switch and the Terminator's eyes slowly lit to red.

It turned its grinning head slowly, left to right, then back again.

Then it stepped forward from the center of the cage in the stolid gait of its kind and grasped the bars. The crowd murmured, impressed in spite of themselves. The Terminator bent the bars effortlessly. When the center, horizontal bar prevented it from opening them far enough it lifted a leg and pressed down until the bar snapped from its moorings and slid down.

'Now!' John said.

At his word, one of the resistance fighters aimed a burst from one of the captured plasma rifles at the thing's chest and it stopped. For a moment only, then with amazing speed it thrust itself through the bars and leaped toward the man holding the rifle. The crowd automatically drew back with cries of surprise, even the SEALs. John lifted his plasma rifle and shot the Terminator in the head; it was dead when it hit the ground.

Immediately the sailors crowded around; the captain had to push his way to the front. He looked for John and found him back on the truck bed, looking down at them.

'What the hell was that?' Chu asked, annoyed to hear his voice shaking.

' That was a Terminator,' John said. 'Our enemy's foot soldiers. There are other machines, more and more of them even as we speak, all of them designed for one purpose—to kill humans. We need your help to beat them.'

Chu looked at him for a moment, then held his hands up, palms out. 'Whoa there,' he said, laughing softly. 'How do we know this wasn't just some sort of special effects stunt? I mean, c'mon…'

John tossed him the plasma rifle over the heads of the crowd and the captain caught it handily. He looked down at it, frowning.

'That's a plasma rifle in the forty-megawatt range,' John said.

'A design Skynet came up with. Be careful, it doesn't have a safety.'

The captain looked up sharply at that and adjusted his hold so that his hands weren't anywhere near anything that might be a trigger. 'Still,' Chu said, 'this is a lot to swallow in one gulp.'

John dropped down from the truck, and pushing his way through the crowd retrieved his rifle. 'Yeah,' he said sarcastically, 'you caught me out. We're trying to make this boffo science-fiction film and we want to use your sub as a prop.

Never mind the billions of unburied dead, forget about the fact that you and your ship have been chased all over the place by U.S. Navy vessels that were out of the control of their crews, put aside the insane orders you've been getting from officers who are undoubtedly dead! Just jump to the conclusion that this is some kind of joke or some kind of publicity stunt. That makes sense, doesn't it?'

Chu blinked at the younger man's ferocity and opened his mouth to speak.

'John,' Sarah said.

He ignored her, getting more into the captain's face. 'What's it going to take to convince you, for God's sake?'

' John!' his mother said more insistently, grabbing his shoulder.

At that moment the Terminator grabbed the XO by the ankle and the officer went down, screaming as the small bones in his foot were crushed.

Connor shot a blast into the thing's head and it went limp again.

'It's aluive,' Sarah said. The look she gave John brought a flush to his cheeks. They moved aside to let the ship's doctor through. 'When do I get one of those?' she asked, indicating the rifle.

'You can have this one,' he said, handing it to her. 'The firing mechanism is the same as we thought, but a lot of the wiring is completely different.'

She brought it up to look through the sight. 'Well, we could hardly expect Skynet to just give us all its secrets.' Suddenly the captain's face came into view and she put up the rifle, giving him a challenging look.

'What do you want us to do?' Chu asked.

* * *

'This is the last thing I expected.' Standing on the pier, the captain looked at the Roosevelt, very low in the water, and then at John.

'There isn't anything you could do that would be more useful at this time,' John said. 'With the weapons this factory can produce, we've got a head start on defeating them.'

'I can see that,' Chu said. He waved his hand to indicate the town before them. 'But why couldn't you set it up here?'

John grinned. 'Fair question,' he said. 'We're too remote here. There's too much wilderness between us and the more populated areas, and because the wilderness is where Skynet has set up most of its factories. We'd be at a disadvantage trying to cart weapons and ammunition through there. So, we set up in California.'

'So how does this Skynet get raw materials if its factories are so remote?' the captain asked.

'Human slaves,' John said. 'For the moment.'

The captain chewed on his lower lip and turned to look at his ship once again. He'd left behind a third of his crew and all but five of the SEALs so that they could stuff the sub with the machine parts to set up this factory of theirs. Connor had said they were only shipping the relevant parts since they wouldn't be manufacturing Terminators.

When he'd asked, 'Why not manufacture Terminators?' John answered, 'Because we can't be certain we'd be in control of them. Nobody we've got really understands the chips in their central processors—they're nearly as complex as a human brain.

The weapons, we understand; they won't turn on us.'

Given the XO's badly crushed foot, Chu didn't need any more explanation than that.

Ike Chamberlain came toward them hoisting his small pack slightly higher on his shoulder. Chu liked and respected the resistance ordnance expert, but couldn't help but reflect that just a year ago he might well have thought the old man a nutcase.

Sarah Connor shook hands with the mayor and followed Ike down the steps to the pier.

'Ready to go?' Ike asked.

'Yes, sir,' Chu said.

John held out his hand; the captain took it. 'Thank you,'

Connor said.

'You're welcome, I guess. Be sure you take care of my people.'

'We will,' Sarah said. She offered her hand as well. 'You and they are a valuable resource, Captain. We're not likely to put them in harm's way.'