Terminator Salvation - From the Ashes

He hadn’t expected the fire from their two guns to stop the T-600s, and he had been right. But he had expected that the disruption in the machines’ balance would throw off their aim, and he was right again. The Terminators jerked from the multiple impacts as Connor’s and Bishop’s slugs slammed into them, the machines’ own fire going wild.

“Come on!” Connor shouted toward the two kids. “Come on— now!”

The older of the two, the teen, eased up onto his side and looked cautiously over the remains of the wall at the two T-600s. He looked back at Connor and Bishop, peered north along the street, then leaned over and said something to the child beside him.

The two gathered their feet beneath them and bounded up.

But to Connor’s surprise, instead of running for the bus they instead dashed straight across the street and disappeared behind some ruins on the northwest corner there.

“What in—?”

An instant later he got his answer as a hail of gunfire slammed into the bus from the north.

Instinctively, he dropped back down, Bishop hitting the ground a quarter second behind him.

“You all right?” he asked her.

She nodded, then jerked her head and gun around toward the rear of the vehicle. Connor swung his MP5 around as well—

Just as the Tantillo brothers dived in through the opening.

“Sorry we’re late,” Joey said, breathing hard as he gave each of the dead T-600s a quick look.

“They’d moved too far apart for the grenade to take them all out together. I had to drop the wall on them instead, but then we had to go blast each of them before they could dig themselves out. What did we miss?”

“Never mind what you missed,” Connor said. “What’s going on at the other end of the street?”

“More company,” Tony said, peering cautiously out the rear doors. “Probably not happy about losing their handy City Transit bunker here.” He rapped his knuckles on the side of their flimsy sanctuary.

Connor mouthed a curse. Which meant Barnes was still being blocked from going to Orozco’s assistance. He hadn’t expected Skynet to be able to get fresh Terminators into position that fast.

“Kate?” Connor called into his mike. “What’s your sitrep?”

“We can’t get across,” his wife’s voice came back tautly. “Not unless we can par-six it.”

“Not a chance,” Tony murmured, covering his own mike. “They’re standing right in the middle of the intersection. No way to sneak up on them without being spotted.”

And meanwhile, there were probably Terminators slaughtering their way through the Moldavia.

Connor looked around the bus, thinking hard. Barnes was pinned down; Connor’s team was pinned down; David and Tunney had their hands full dealing with the warehouse.

And then, Connor’s eyes fell on the miniguns still clutched in the T-600s’ hands.

“Hickabick?” he called into his mike. “Hickabick?”

“Hickabick,” Blair’s voice came back. “Sorry—been a little distracted.”

“No problem,” Connor said. “Where are you?”

“Off the course,” Blair replied. “Got invited to a game of Brooklyn tag.”

Which meant she was somewhere way south of the mission grid Connor had set up.

“I need you and your game here,” he said. “Tee two off Gulliver.”

There was a brief pause.

“Check,” Blair said. “You do realize the course is closed, right?”

“Understood,” Connor said. “Soonest.”

“Check,” Blair said again.

Connor looked over to see the rest of the squad eyeing him with varying degrees of bafflement.

“You thinking she can bluff them off the street?” Tony asked.

“Slipstream won’t take them out, will it?” Bishop offered doubtfully. “They’re supposed to be too heavy for that.”

“No, to both of you,” Connor said as he started climbing toward the top of the bus again. “Tony, Joey: you have two minutes to get those miniguns free and ready to fire. Bishop, up top with me—

we need to find out where those other two T-600s went.”

He reached the line of windows and eased his head up for a look. But for once, caution was unnecessary. The Terminators at the north end of the street were evidently saving their ammo to keep Kate and Barnes out of the Moldavia, and the machines that had been firing on the two kids had disappeared.

Disappeared back onto their tail, no doubt. But there was nothing Connor could do about that now. Turning toward the south, he looked upward.

Nothing.

He checked east and west, then south again. Still nothing.

Had Blair lost her macabre game of tag with that last remaining HK? Connor checked east and west again, and even north, just in case she had gotten disoriented.

And then, there they were: a pair of shadows framed between the city’s broken buildings to the south, heading toward them across the moonlit sky.

Abruptly, Connor tensed. Blair was coming toward him, all right, exactly as ordered. But she was coming in way too high for what he needed. He had to get her to drop to strafing level.

Only there wasn’t anything in the mission code for that.

Beside him, Tony popped his head out of the next window over.

“Got ’em,” he announced, tapping the muzzle of the minigun he was holding just out of sight.

“Still got plenty of ammo—they must have figured they were here for the long haul.” He peered up into the sky. “If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, aren’t they coming in too high?”

“Yes, they are,” Connor said through clenched teeth. There had to be a way for him to clue in Blair without tipping his hand to Skynet at the same time.

And then, he had an idea. A completely crazy idea.

“You and Joey get ready,” he told Tony. “You’re only going to get one shot at this.”

* * *

They had made it two blocks past the corner with the bus when Star suddenly grabbed Kyle’s arm and staggered to a halt.

“What’s wrong?” Kyle asked sharply as he grabbed her around her waist. “Were you shot? Are you hurt?”

She shook her head. Tired, she signed.

“Oh,” Kyle said, relief flooding into him. After all that shooting back there, he’d feared the worst. “Over here,” he said, leading her to an angled piece of broken concrete and helping her sit down. She was worn out, all right, her chest heaving as she gasped for breath, her face shiny with sweat, her legs trembling with fatigue. He should have noticed that earlier, he told himself guiltily.

Still, under the circumstances, there hadn’t been a lot he could have done differently.

Though he had the discomfiting sense that Star had a different opinion on that one. The look on her face was one he’d seen before.

“What?” Kyle asked warily.

Why didn’t we go with the people in the bus? she signed.

Kyle grimaced. What could he say? He’d seen the line of Terminators moving into the street to the north, clearly preparing to march on the people who’d blown up their buddies. The man and woman in the bus were as good as dead. If he and Star had joined them, they would have been dead, too.

No, he couldn’t tell her that. Not after those people had saved their lives.

“We need to get back to the Ashes,” he said instead. “Orozco needs our help, and the people on the bus had it under control. Besides, we don’t even know who they were.”

He really should have known that Star wouldn’t buy that one. We didn’t know Nguyen or Vuong, either, she reminded him pointedly. But we went with—

Abruptly, she broke off, her face going rigid.

Kyle froze, his eyes darting through the pale moonlight around them. Had the Terminators back there caught