Terminator Salvation - From the Ashes

uselessly hammered a third burst of fire into the concrete wall.

“That was close,” Kyle muttered, breathing heavily as he eased back to the doorway for a look.

The Terminator was still coming, of course. If there was one thing about Terminators, it was that they didn’t give up.

He stepped back out of the doorway and looked around. He and Orozco had checked out this place a few months ago, hoping to increase their farming area. But the structure had turned out to be too dangerous, with the flooring in particular badly decayed in far too many places.

One of the worst of those places was right here on the first floor.

He returned to where Star was huddled against a sagging wall, wheezing a little as she panted, an uneasy look on her face as she glanced around. She’d stepped though one of the floor’s weak spots on that last visit, and would probably have fallen all the way to the sub-basement if Orozco hadn’t grabbed her arm in time to pull her out.

“Come on,” Kyle whispered, taking her hand. “Don’t worry—I remember where the safe paths are.”

Star looked doubtful, but she nevertheless allowed Kyle to help her to her feet and lead the way around flaking concrete pillars and decaying wooden walls.

The building’s wide central corridor was just as Kyle remembered it: a single two-foot-wide line of solid tile running above an under-floor girder, with five feet on either side of equally solid-looking tiling that rested on utterly rotten joists and floorboards. Kyle led Star along the safe path to the far end of the corridor and settled her behind a rusting stove.

“Stay here,” he told her, taking the shotgun and handing her the rifle. Grabbing a length of half-shredded copper tubing that lay partly buried in dust beside the stove, he returned to the corridor.

He walked back to the middle of the central path and poked a couple of holes into the flooring, one on either side, with his knife. Bending the tubing into a U-shape, he pushed the ends into the holes he’d made, turning it into a sort of copper rainbow and what had to be the world’s most obvious tripwire. He returned to the corridor’s far end and then worked his way through the row of half-shattered rooms flanking the corridor until he’d reached a spot directly across from the tubing.

Settling himself near a large hole that looked out into the corridor, he pressed his eye against a much smaller hole and waited.

He had barely gotten in position when the Terminator appeared.

For a long moment the machine stood motionless at the end of the corridor, its head panning back and forth as its blazing red eyes assessed the situation. Kyle watched, wondering whether the machine might just walk carelessly ahead onto the rotten floor and end the problem right there.

But no such luck. Either the Terminator had sensors that warned it of the floor’s hazards, or else the presence and positioning of the copper tubing in the middle of the floor was enough of a clue for it to come to the logical conclusion. With one final sweep of its head, it stepped forward onto the safe path. The tiles creaked ominously under its weight, but held. Holding its minigun ready, the machine started forward.

Keep going, Kyle urged it silently, fingering his shotgun as he watched it picking its way carefully along. It reached the tubing—

And stopped.

Kyle held his breath, knowing there were two ways it might choose to deal with the obstacle facing it. The most obvious would be for it to merely reach down and pluck the tubing out of the floor. In that case, Kyle and Star were in big trouble.

But the machine—and the Skynet computer that controlled it—had no way of knowing how long the tubing had been there. For all Skynet knew, it might have been there for hours or days, connected to some immensely clever, immensely destructive booby trap.

Which left option number two…and as Kyle watched, the Terminator lifted one foot high and started to carefully step over the tubing.

It was in mid-step, its entire weight balanced on a single foot, when Kyle lined up his shotgun with the hole in the wall and fired two shots squarely into the machine’s massive torso.

The Terminator reacted instantly, dropping its airborne foot back to the floor in an attempt to reestablish its balance. Unfortunately for it, the only floor within reach was useless for the purpose.

With a loud snapping of broken wood and tile, the Terminator crashed through the floor and vanished from sight.

Kyle retraced his steps as quickly as he safely could, to find that Star had abandoned her refuge by the stove and was standing at the end of the corridor, peering at the huge hole in the floor.

Is it dead? she signed.

Her answer was a burst of machinegun fire from the subbasement below them.

“Not unless there are miniguns in hell,” Kyle said grimly, grabbing her arm and pulling her out of the line of fire. “Let’s get out of here.”

And go back to the Ashes? she signed, looking closely at him.

Kyle grimaced. He’d hoped the run-in with Fido might have changed her mind, that she would realize how useless they would be in a straight-up fight and let him take her away from the death and hell their neighborhood had become.

But if the look on her face was anything to go by, she was more determined than ever.

Star’s instincts regarding Terminators had never been wrong yet. He would just have to trust that she was right this time, too.

“Sure,” he said, taking the rifle from her and slinging the shotgun over his shoulder. “Let’s go.”

“Tee two: first swing double eagle.” Barnes’ voice crackled through Connor’s earphone. “Teeing up for swing two.”

The earphone went silent, and Connor took a careful breath. So Skynet’s first assault on the Moldavia had been beaten back, and Barnes’ team was getting ready for the Terminators to try again. That was good.

But all the preliminary success in the world couldn’t help soothe the churning in his gut.

One of Barnes’ team had gotten hit…and Barnes had called both Pavlova and Kate in to help him.

Which implied that Kate had been right there with them, despite Connor’s specific instruction that she was to stay in the temp base.

The question was why the hell had she been there?

But he couldn’t ask her that question. Even if it hadn’t been vital that he and the others lurking near the staging area maintain radio silence, he couldn’t put a question like that on an open channel.

Because he knew full well why she’d sneaked off and joined Barnes’ squad. He’d seen the expression on her face when she realized he was letting Leon and Carol Iliaki go into danger together while Kate herself had to stay behind.

The children of the Moldavia, and her need to prove herself a worthy leader, had apparently been stronger than the constraints of obedience to her commander. And husband.

He took a deep breath, forcing his anger away. There was a time for emotion, and the middle of combat wasn’t it.

But assuming they all survived the next few hours, he and Kate were going to have a long, serious talk.

“Movement,” McFarland murmured from beside him. “East door.”

Connor peered between the broken boards that shielded his squad’s position, gazing across the patch of open ground at the sagging warehouse. The east door, which had been shut a minute ago, was now open. A moment later, two T-600s strode out into the moonlight, heading southeast at full speed across the open area.

Connor watched as they headed toward the protective mounds of rubble ringing the warehouse, feeling an unpleasant tingle of suspicion. The Terminators weren’t heading anywhere near his squad, and were showing no indication that they were even paying attention to anything in this direction. But there was always the chance that Skynet was playing it cute, that the T-600s were planning to climb over the rubble, circle south, and come up on them from behind.

Bishop was the squad member currently farthest to the rear. Connor caught her eye and nodded his head behind her. She nodded an acknowledgment and silently slipped away to play scout and rear guard.