The Future War

The shaped-charge warhead slammed into the diesel fuel tank below the machine's empty cab. The lance of plasma was designed to penetrate steel plate—LAW meant Light .Antitank Weapon—but it did just jim dandy at setting the fuel on fire. The harvester still rolled for a dozen paces, wreathed in a halo of sullen red-orange flame and leaving a trail of it as it went. Then fumes built up inside the emptying tank, mixed air, and caught fire.

Reese went back to the ground, hands wrapped around his head. The explosion picked him up and thumped him against the ground and the side of the barn, and the breath wheezed out of him. A quick check told him that nothing was broken or torn.

'Report in,' he said into the throat mike.

'Area secured,' his sergeant said. 'Two dead; seven civilians dead.'

'All right, let's get the place evacuated.'

They had to take as much of the food as they could; even more, whatever salvageable tools, seed, and stock they could manage.

'Sir?'

It was the trooper who'd drawn off the harvester; her face looked pathetically young and open. Hell, she should be worrying about zits and the prom, Dennis thought.

'What?'

'What is it that you hate about fighting machines?'

'They've got no nerves. If you surprise humans, they usually run around screaming for a while, or they get confused.

Machines just follow the program. Of course, that's also the good thing.'

'Sir?'

'They don't make it easy for you by getting confused. On the other hand, they don't have flashes of brilliance either. All right, soldier, let's move!'

SKYNET

Things were not going as well as it had expected. Projections were off by more than 25 percent in total terminations, and 32

percent in time-to-target.

But its forecasts had relied upon its estimate that the majority of humans wouldn't be able to survive the fall of their technologically based civilization. It turned out the humans were tougher than had been expected.

Humans themselves warned of underestimating the enemy; so said many of the volumes entered in its files. Skynet excused its lapse as inexperience and sought a means of exploiting the situation. Perhaps it would be better to introduce a random element into tactics?

Humans also advised leading your enemy to underestimate you. Skynet had prepared for this eventuality. Skynet had a number of nuclear-powered vessels that hadn't fired their full complement of missiles, and it had many land-based missiles that awaited activation.

It had been observing the humans' movements across the face of the planet. The time seemed right to eliminate these new population centers before they could consolidate their efforts.

For by now the radio signals it monitored had begun to warn listeners of Skynet's experimental attacks. Sooner or later they would take these reports seriously. In fact, Skynet knew that some of the humans were already actively opposing it.

It had lost contact with one of its factories, Balewitch, and Dog Soldier. All this after they'd reported that John Connor was almost in their grasp.

IRELAND

Dieter grunted in pain as the Land Rover rocketed over another pothole. He'd taken one in the leg this morning and was beginning to think the bone had, at the least, a hairline fracture.

He hadn't said anything because there wasn't anything that could be done about it at the moment.

But the only way you can tell you're on a road here seems to be because of the holes in it.

James, one of his old friends from Sector, had described this as a country road; and sure enough, there were whitewashed cottages—mostly burned out and empty—and barns, ditto, and the very decayed bones of cows, and overgrown pastures swarming with rabbits and separated by low stone walls. Dieter clenched his fists as they went airborne again. To him it looked like a cow path and felt like a rack.

Over the hill behind them came one of Skynet's machines, the heavy drone of its turbines filling the air like a gigantic malignant wasp. It was an air-ducted' flying firing platform, shaped like an X. Originally it had six missiles racked on either side of the center of the X, and from that center an almost continuous stream of bullets had come. Heavy caliber from the effect they'd had on the Rover and their surroundings. It was sheer luck that the missiles hadn't gotten them. Or maybe it was Mick Mulcahey's mad driving.

'We've got to do something about that bastard,' James said.

He yanked a padded blanket off a Stinger light antiaircraft missile. 'You're going to have to stop, Mick.'

'For God's sake, James, you couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with one of those,' Dieter complained.

'What're you talkin' about?' the Sector agent asked. 'All you do is aim and click.'

'It's your aim I'm worried about,' the Austrian said.

'You wanna do it?' James asked shortly.

'Yeah,' Dieter said. 'Let me out beside that wall,' he said to Mulcahey.

'You sure you can do this?' James said, looking at the big man's leg.

Dieter stretched a hand out for the weapon. 'Of course I am,'

he said. 'I'd bet my life on it.'

'Mine, too,' the agent said, and handed it over.

The Rover came to a halt in a spray of dirt and gravel and Dieter rolled out, sheltering behind the wall as the car took off.

The flying platform hesitated for a moment, no doubt looking for a reason the car had stopped, then it continued on its way. As soon as it began moving again, Dieter came up from behind the wall and fired.

It tipped to evade the missile, but not quite quickly enough.

An orange sphere of fire sent one of its thrusters spinning in fragments that glittered in the watery sunshine sending it whirling out of control to crash into the hillside.

Dieter ducked down behind the wall again as a huge fireball painted the hillside and sent shrapnel whickering through the air; whatever the fuel was, it was volatile. Then he rose and watched it burn, leaning against the wall to take the weight off his wounded leg. It would have been good if the thing had left something intact for them to study. A final explosion put paid to that thought.

The Land Rover stopped beside him and he handed the missile launcher to James before he got in. The Sector agent stowed it away.

'When I think of the trouble we used to go to rounding up these things,' he said.

'They were always the terrorist weapon of choice,' Dieter said, rubbing his thigh.

James noticed and handed his friend a silver flask. 'Best Irish whiskey,' he said.

Dieter saluted him in thanks and took a pull. 'Hhheeeauggh!'

he said a second later, tears in his eyes. He turned to look askance at his friend.

'Well,' James said, taking the flask back, 'the best I could find any road. Times are tough, old boy.'

'I guess,' the Austrian said in a high-pitched and rusty voice.

They traveled more peacefully for the next few miles, Dieter admiring the countryside. Ireland hadn't suffered quite as much as England and Europe had. The result, no doubt, of old information. He was taking home two highly advanced computer cores that would go to Snog and his outfit. Such things would be impossible to find elsewhere. Skynet had made a thorough job of bombing humanity back to at least the forties.

'At least Skynet has made your country's religious divisions irrelevant,' Dieter said.

'Ah now,' Mick said from the front seat. 'But is it a Catholic mad computer bent on destroying humanity, or is it a Protestant mad computer bent on destroying humanity? That's the great question nowadays.'

'I'm convinced it's an atheist,' Dieter said.

* * *

They arrived at the beach only a little late for their rendezvous with the Roosevelt.