Terminator Salvation - From the Ashes

Orozco looked away, his mind flicking back to the dark thought of a couple of days ago. The thought that the truly chosen ones of Judgment Day had been those who’d been granted a quick death.

“We’ll be going to the Promised Land soon enough,” he agreed quietly. “I’d be honored to have you along for the journey.”

“I’ll be there,” Sibanda said, his voice calm and assured. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go begin my preparations.”

He turned and walked off across the lobby.

“So will we,” Orozco murmured after him.

Because he, for one, had no intention of going to this particular Promised Land without a fight.

He slapped the backs of his fingertips against Wadleigh’s chest.

“Break time’s over. Let’s get to work.”

The gunfire in the Death’s-Head compound seemed to go on and on, punctuated by the occasional thunder of explosions and the whoosh and reflected glare of more of the gang’s napalm firebombs.

One of them hit the ground close enough to Kyle and Star’s sideways car that the fire blazed through both the windshield and rear window openings, heating the roof three feet in front of them hot enough to glow a dull red.

There were probably screams and curses amid all the commotion, too. Fortunately, perhaps, the hammering of the gunfire drowned out all such sounds of human agony.

But in the end, neither the gang’s weapons nor their stubbornness did them any good. One by one, the guns fell silent, and the running footsteps came to a halt, and silence again descended on the world.

Slowly, Kyle eased his eye back to the rip in the jacket that still covered their faces. Very little of the compound was visible through the open windshield of their sanctuary car, but even that was enough to turn his stomach. There were dead bodies everywhere, some of them mostly whole, some looking like they’d been ripped apart where they stood.

He was still gazing at the carnage when one of the Terminators stepped into his field of view.

The machine was a mess. Its skin and clothing had been almost entirely burned away, exposing not only its entire metal body but also dozens of small dents and blackened scorch marks. It was limping badly, hardly able to walk, its right leg bending oddly with each step. Its left leg wasn’t much better, and its entire right arm up to the elbow was a twisted mass of torn metal.

The Death’s-Heads might have lost the battle, but they’d given a good account of themselves along the way.

Kyle felt a stirring inside him. With its weapon gone, and with that limp, this was one Terminator that wasn’t going to be chasing down anyone any time soon. This might be his and Star’s one chance to make a run for it.

He was still trying to decide whether or not they should try when three more Terminators strode into view. Two of them were in the same shape as the first one, nothing but skinless machines with broken leg servos and mangled right arms.

But the fourth Terminator stood in sharp contrast to its fellow machines. It still had most of its skin and clothing, with no perceptible limp and all its limbs intact. More importantly, it still had its minigun.

Kyle grimaced. It was just as well that he and Star hadn’t tried to run.

Star touched his arm. Carefully, Kyle turned his head beneath the jacket to look at her. What’s happening? she signed, her face drawn and anxious.

They’re still there, he signed back.

Her lip twitched. So we stay here?

For the moment, Kyle signed, trying to smile reassuringly. Don’t worry, we’ll get away soon enough. Just be patient.

He turned back to the Terminators. The three damaged ones had opened up a pack of tools they must have found somewhere in the compound, and in complete and eerie silence each was starting repair work on itself.

Kyle felt his lip twist. What, were you expecting them to sing? he told himself sarcastically. Of course they were fixing themselves in silence. They were machines, not living beings.

More to the point, they were machines that could be damaged—and even destroyed.

And that was what Kyle needed to focus on. Not on all the dead bodies lying on the ground out there, but on the fact that the Terminators themselves could be killed.

No battle plan, Orozco had once told Kyle, ever survives contact with the enemy. That being said, though, a plan is always the place to start.

Reaching beneath the jacket to take Star’s hand, Kyle settled down to watch the Terminators making their repairs, and began working out his plan.

CHAPTER

THIRTEEN

Dusk had faded to full night when Orozco finally heard the distant sound of minigun fire.

He stood up from the fountain rim where he and Wadleigh’s fire team had been sitting and crossed to the archway. The Terminator fire was coming in short bursts, he noted grimly, the rhythm that would typically be used to clean out a house after a successful breach. So far he hadn’t heard any answering fire, but maybe that was just being swallowed up by the louder sounds of the miniguns.

Or maybe all the victims were dying before they had a chance to shoot back.

There was a movement at the corner of his eye, and he turned to see Grimaldi come up beside him.

“So it’s started,” the chief said quietly.

Orozco nodded. “So it would seem.”

“Yes.” Grimaldi paused as another burst of minigun fire split the night, this group coming from a different direction. “So you were right.”

“Yes,” Orozco said flatly. “I was.”

“So that’s it,” Grimaldi said, an agonized ache in his voice. “We’re all dead. Because of me.”

Orozco looked at him. The chief was staring out the archway, his face drawn, his eyes wet with tears of regret or anger or frustration. And for a long moment Orozco wanted to tell the other that, yes, this was all his fault.

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t kick a man who was watching his world-view crumbling right in front of him. “We’re not dead yet,” he said instead. “If you’re finally ready to help, you could go check on the fire teams on the balcony. Make sure they’re ready.”

Visibly, Grimaldi pulled himself back together. “Yes, I can do that,” he said. “Do you want me to go look at the loading dock area, too?”

“Sure,” Orozco said. There wasn’t much to do back there that hadn’t already been done, but he could understand Grimaldi’s sudden burning desire to do something. “Then come back here and I’ll set you up with one of the flanks. Any more of your allies sitting it out?”

Grimaldi winced at the word allies. “Probably,” he admitted. “I don’t know how good most of them will be in a fight, though.”

“Trust me, there’ll be plenty of work for them to do,” Orozco assured him. “We need people to carry ammo, patrol the inside perimeter, carry messages, move and assist the wounded, build and repair barricades and fire stations, and eventually move the dead.”

A muscle in Grimaldi’s cheek twitched. “You want all the children here, too?”

“Anyone who can help, yes,” Orozco said. “No one gets a free pass tonight.”

“I understand,” Grimaldi said. “I’ll go get them.”

He moved away.

Orozco watched him go, then turned back to the darkened street outside the archway. Listening hard to the minigun fire, he tried to estimate the position of each of the groups of Terminators. And to estimate when one of those groups would arrive at the Ashes.