Terminator Salvation - From the Ashes

and then it was time to flinch.

But not the kind of flinch she would normally do in this situation. Not her usual tight evasive turn to left or right. Doing the same thing over and over against Skynet was a guaranteed way of getting yourself killed. Instead, she jammed the stick forward, dropping her nose and throwing her A-10 into a power dive toward the streets below.

She was instantly vindicated as the two HKs split formation, twisting to right and left as they shot past overhead. Had she turned in either of those directions, she would have ended the evening inside a massive fireball.

Which might still happen. For the second time in three days, the dark streets were rushing up at an ungodly speed. Gotta stop doing this, she told herself firmly as she hauled back on the stick, twisting her fighter up again just in time to avoid splatting herself all over the landscape. Setting her teeth as her plane switched from power dive to power climb, she waited to the near-stall moment and rolled over into her signature Immelmann turn.

She leveled off, eased back on the throttle, and searched the sky fix her opponents.

She’d half expected the HKs to try to take advantage of her vulnerability during the dive by turning around and attacking. Instead, the two aircraft were speeding away from her at full speed, curving around toward the northeast and continuing to angle apart to keep her from taking both of them in a single one-two shot.

In the absence of a one-two shot, a one-one shot would do just as well. Lining up her nose with the HK on the right, she keyed for the GAU-8 and squeezed the trigger.

Wince had been concerned that his upgraded system would jam. Blair hadn’t had any such doubts, and as usual she’d been right. The Avenger roared to life with all its throaty glory, spitting a river of 30mm destruction at the enemy aircraft. The river reached the HK, and in the fiery light of the machine’s explosion Blair continued her turn and nailed the second one as well.

The two groups of flaming debris rained down on the long-suffering city. Blair put her A-10 into another curve back around toward the west. There was a third bonfire on the ground in the distance over there, where Yoshi had apparently taken out the first of his two targets, and Blair could see the faint flickers of gunfire flashing back and forth as he engaged the second. Beyond the dogfight, the two remaining HKs were still gliding over the staging area neighborhood, playing spotter duty for the mass slaughter going on in the streets below.

She gave the sky a quick scan, and then a more careful look. Far to the south, faintly silhouetted against the moonlit clouds, were two more HKs, probably part of Skynet’s Capistrano radar tower defense. Either the neighborhood slated for tonight’s destruction was a particularly important one, or else the computer figured it could afford to spend a few HKs for the chance to take out a couple of Resistance A-10s.

Blair smiled tightly. If burning through HKs was Skynet’s plan for the night, she would be more than happy to accommodate it.

Turning her A-10 onto an intercept vector with the newcomers, she headed in.

The Terminators who had destroyed the Death’s-Head compound were finally on the move.

Though not very well, or very quickly, Kyle noted. Even after a couple of hours’ of running repairs, the three skinless machines were still limping badly as they headed toward the gap in the north barrier where he and Star had entered the compound earlier. Limping badly enough, in fact, that the three machines were actually shuffling along together as a group, with the two outer ones supporting the third. Their red eyes glowed bright in the moonlight, the faint sheen from their metal bodies looking strangely like human sweat.

But if those three no longer posed a serious threat, the fourth Terminator most certainly did. It walked a few paces behind them, matching their speed but with no trace of their limping. Its own eyes swept the compound alertly as it herded the damaged machines toward the gap, its minigun poised and ready.

Kyle tensed, holding himself as still as he could. If any one of the four Terminators happened to look into the cars they were passing…

But none of them did. One by one, they maneuvered through the gap and disappeared into the night.

Kyle took a deep breath, feeling the tension running out of him like rainwater off a collector gutter.

“They’re gone,” he whispered to Star.

There was a pause, and then she tugged gently on his sleeve and started signing.

“Wait a second,” Kyle said, pulling the jacket away from their faces so that he could see her better in the dim light. The full chill of the night air struck him like a slap across the face. “What did you say?”

Where did they go? Star signed.

“I don’t know,” Kyle said. “They’re gone. Isn’t that enough?”

And right on cue came another burst of minigun fire, from somewhere west or northwest of them.

Somewhere in the general direction of Moldering Lost Ashes.

Kyle listened to the gunfire, his throat tightening. His people were under attack, people who had taken him and Star in when they didn’t have anywhere else to go. And Orozco was there, too, who’d been their teacher, their guardian, and their friend.

But there was nothing he could do to help them. Besides, he’d promised Orozco he would stay away from the place.

And he had a responsibility already. A responsibility named Star.

“Come on,” he said. He eased himself up out of his sitting position, wincing at the sudden twinges of pain in muscles that had been too still for too long. Getting a grip on the edge of the windshield frame, he pulled himself out of the car.

From inside, only the very edges of the compound had been visible. From outside, though, the full extent of the carnage could be seen. Kyle stared at the bodies littering the street, his stomach churning, a small part of his stunned mind grateful that the darkness hid most of the details.

He turned back as Star emerged from the car.

“Over here,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders and turning her away from the bodies and toward the gap between the cars. “We need to make sure Fido’s still with the broken ones.”

She frowned up at him. Fido?

“The Terminator who chased us after they killed Vuong and the others,” Kyle explained, grimacing at the memory. The traders had made their own promise to Orozco, a promise to protect him and Star. And had been murdered for their efforts. “It’s just something to call it.”

What does it mean?

“I don’t know,” Kyle said. “I heard once that it was a name people used to call dogs. Family dogs,” he added as her eyes widened. “Not the wild ones.” Stepping to the edge of the gap, he looked carefully out.

The damaged Terminators hadn’t made it very far. They were not quite a block away, plodding along together like gangers drunk on homemade wine. Fido was still walking behind them, its head turning back and forth. Probably looking for fresh targets, now that Skynet’s killing spree had begun.

Star caught his arm. Where are we going?

“Somewhere away from here,” he told her, giving Fido one last look and then stepping back into shelter around the front of the car. “We’ll head east, the direction we were going when…you know.”

What about Orozco and the people at the Ashes?

Kyle grimaced. Star had that look about her, the one that said she was about to go all stubborn on him. “There’s nothing we can do to help them,” he told her firmly. “Besides, Orozco told us not to come back.”

The look darkened a little more. We can’t just leave them.

“Orozco told us not to come back,” Kyle repeated, starting to get angry.

We can’t just leave them, Star signed again, and crossed her arms across her chest.

Kyle clenched his teeth hard enough to hurt. Couldn’t she see he was trying to help her?

And then he took a closer look at her face. Behind the angry defiance he could see the trembling lower lip and the tears in her eyes.

He sighed. She knew what he was trying to do, all right. But running away…she wouldn’t be able to live with herself afterward.

Actually, come to think of it, Kyle wasn’t sure he could, either.