Terminator Salvation - From the Ashes

down on the scene below her.

And the look in those eyes…

Behind Orozco, Tunney cleared his throat. “Chief Grimaldi,” he murmured, “meet Kate Connor.”

“There are two ways this can go, Chief Grimaldi,” Kate Connor called, her voice glacially calm.

“Your choice.”

Orozco looked back at Grimaldi. The other’s breath was starting to come in quick, shallow gusts, his gun still pointed at Orozco and Barnes.

His back to the corner…

“Be smart,” Orozco said quietly. “Put the guns down.”

Grimaldi’s gun didn’t waver. But if the chief was frozen in pride and fear and indecision, his cohorts weren’t. All three of them quickly squatted down and set their weapons on the floor.

Steeling himself, Orozco stepped forward into the bore of Grimaldi’s shotgun and gently but firmly took the weapon away from him. Turning around, lowering the muzzle to the ground, he offered it to Barnes.

To his surprise, Barnes waved it away.

“Keep it,” he said calmly. He flicked his hand again, and the knife vanished once more beneath his jacket.

So, too, did his death’s-head scowl.

“A lesson, you said,” Orozco said as he suddenly understood. “Only you weren’t the lesson. You were the distraction.”

“We all were,” Tunney put in as he came over and retrieved the weapons Grimaldi’s men had set on the floor. “First lesson of warfare: if you can get your opponent looking in the wrong direction, you’re halfway there.”

“And if you can talk your opponent into treason, that gets you the rest of the way?” Grimaldi bit out. He still looked a little shaken, but he was rapidly getting back on stride. “So, Sergeant. What did they pay you?”

Orozco stared at the man in disbelief.

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t play innocent with me,” Grimaldi said, raising his voice so that the entire confused crowd could hear. “You’re the one who handles the building’s security. Either you deliberately let them in, or else you screwed up in your duties. Which is it?”

Orozco was still trying to unfreeze his tongue when the crowd parted like the Red Sea and Kate Connor walked into the circle.

“You need to enlarge your thinking, Chief Grimaldi,” she said, her voice mildly reproving. “You also need to forget about finding someone to dump the blame on. Not everything is someone else’s fault.”

“Then how did you get in?” Grimaldi demanded.

Kate smiled. “So that you can plug up the hole?” She shrugged. “Fair enough. There’s an old underground drainage tunnel that runs past the northern edge of your building. My husband John found it. It’s outside where your outer wall used to be, but the debris blow-out covered one of the manhole covers so it’s not visible from the street or any of your windows. We got it unblocked and then came in through one of the broken windows that you didn’t bother to seal up, since the whole side was already blocked by a heavy wall of junk.”

Grimaldi’s lips compressed.

“Very clever,” he growled. “So now what? You kill me and take over?”

Kate sighed.

“This isn’t about you, Grimaldi,” she said. “We came in here for one reason: to recruit willing people into the war against Skynet. Some of your neighbors suggested that you might take exception to our efforts, so we decided extra caution might be in order. It appears we were right.”

“Yes, you’re very clever,” Grimaldi said. “So again: now what?”

“We take those who’ve decided to go with us and we leave.” Kate looked around the group.

“Anyone else?” she called.

The lobby remained silent.

“Looks like you’ve already got all the rash fools we had,” Grimaldi said bitterly. “So get out.”

He raised his voice. “And all the rest of you can get back to your jobs. The circus is over.”

A few of the residents glanced uncertainly at each other.

“You heard me,” Grimaldi snapped. “Back to your jobs. We work together, or we die together.”

Still silently, the crowd began to disperse. A minute later only Orozco, Grimaldi and his men, and the Resistance team and their four new recruits remained in the lobby.

Grimaldi’s eyes had never left Kate Connor since the residents began their exit, Orozco noted, and he could tell there was considerably more that the chief wanted to say. But as the last of his people disappeared down the hallways and up the staircase, he merely gave Kate a curt nod and strode off across the lobby toward his office. His men followed, trailing after him like sullen sheep.

“Keep an eye on the doors and staircases,” Barnes ordered as Tunney set aside the confiscated weapons and he and the others started collecting their own from the cache by the door.

“What about you, Sergeant?” Kate added.

Orozco frowned at her.

“What about me?”

“Are you coming with us?”

Orozco felt his lip twist.

“Is this standard Resistance procedure, Ms. Connor?” he asked. “You come into an area a few days ahead of the Terminators, and glean out all the best and the brightest?”

The lines in Kate’s face seemed to deepen.

“Would you rather we stayed away and let everyone die?” she countered.

“That depends,” Orozco said.

“On…?”

“On whether or not Chief Grimaldi’s right,” Orozco said bluntly. “On whether or not you’re the flame that draws the damn Terminator moths in the first place.”

Kate shook her head.

“You know better than that,” she said. “Skynet’s purpose is to destroy humanity. All of humanity. Yes, it keeps track of our activities, but hardly to the point of sending Terminators trailing along behind us to punish the locals for talking with us.”

Orozco felt his stomach tighten.

“I suppose not,” he conceded.

“I understand how you feel, though,” Kate added. “It would be easier to be able to blame someone for what was happening. If you could see some kind of direct cause-and-effect at work.

But that’s not how things are. Skynet’s not so much an opponent as it is a force of nature.”

“Like a hurricane,” Orozco said. “You don’t try to reason with a hurricane. You try to figure out where it’s going, and get out of its way.”

“Exactly,” Kate said, a sudden fierce edge to her voice. “Except that unlike a hurricane, Skynet can be defeated. And it will be, if enough people are willing to take a stand against it.”

“Which gets back to her question,” Barnes said. “You coming with us?”

For a long moment Orozco was tempted. Very tempted.

Grimaldi and his friends didn’t really appreciate all the work he had put into making the Ashes as safe as it was.

Nor did they have any understanding of the true situation they were in. In fact, they seemed to almost pride themselves on their ignorance of the danger Skynet posed. There would definitely be poetic justice in letting them find out the hard way.

But Grimaldi didn’t speak for everyone in the Ashes. And the rest of the people didn’t deserve to die just because the chief had a double helping of boneheadedness.

“You know I can’t do that,” he said.

“I suppose not,” Kate agreed, her voice heavy with regret. “But we needed to ask.”

She nodded at him, then gestured the others toward the archway.