Trial By Fire

watch.”

“Come on, Barnes, don’t do this,” Blair said, trying one last time. “Barnes, stop.”

“You want to stop me?” Barnes demanded, throwing his arms out to both sides.

Blair caught her breath, her pain and anger suddenly flaring up again. Barnes’s pose was an exact, deliberate parody of the way Marcus had been secured above the empty missile silo back at Connor’s base.

“You want to stop me?” Barnes repeated. “Shoot me.” He held the pose for another second, probably just to make sure she’d gotten the message. Then, dropping his arms again he picked up his rifle and stalked back toward the helo’s rear.

Blair ground her teeth, forcing her anger back down as unwanted tears suddenly began to flow. The man was, without a doubt and without serious competition, the biggest pain in the butt she’d ever known.

But he was one of Connor’s people. That meant he was also one of her people. And she was not going to let him spend the rest of his life brooding and hurting and avoiding her. Or worse, lashing out at her.

One way or another, she was going to crack that shell and find out what was bothering him. If only to prove to him that she was as loyal to Connor’s people as he was.

And also because her butt was on the line here too. Brooding, self-absorbed soldiers tended to get themselves and their teams killed.

Sniffing back the tears, she wiped her sleeve across her wet cheeks. Then, trying to ignore the pains in her injured leg and her aching soul, she folded her arms across her chest and settled down to sleep.

Kyle was sleeping soundly under the gently rippling barracks canopy when a sudden grip on his wrist snapped him fully awake.

He opened his eyes, squinting a little in the diffuse glow from the distant searchlights. Nine-year-old Star was sitting up beside him, her hand still gripping his wrist, her back unnaturally straight as she gazed out into the night.

There was no mistaking that look. Not from someone who’d lived as long with Star as Kyle had.

The Terminators were coming.

Quickly but gently twisting his arm free of her grip he half turned and reached for the rifle laying beside his sleeping mat. He got a grip on it—

“Easy,” a voice murmured in his ear.

Startled, Kyle craned his neck to look behind him. Joel Vincennes, one of Connor’s original Resistance team members, was crouched at his side, gazing out in the same direction that Star was.

“Terminators,” Kyle murmured urgently.

“I know.” Vincennes pointed past Star’s shoulder. “Eight T-700s, with a T-600 armed with a minigun at point.”

Kyle squinted into the darkness. He could see nothing out there but twisted metal and concrete, all of it covered by a layer of hazy smoke.

“You can see them?” he asked.

“No, but I can see that,” Vincennes said, pointing thirty degrees to the side.

Kyle frowned. Then he spotted it: a faint, hooded light pointed back toward them, flickering rapidly on and off.

“Morse code,” Vincennes identified it. “One of the things you’ll be learning later. There—between those two broken towers. There they are.”

Kyle nodded. He could see the line of Terminators now, metal skeletons striding toward the camp, their weapons held ready.

“Shouldn’t we be doing something?” he whispered, his hand tightening on his rifle.

“We are,” Vincennes said calmly. “Wait for it...”

And abruptly, the night erupted with the shattering noise and stuttering light show of the Resistance counterattack. From an arc around the approaching machines a dozen guns opened up, some of the flashes coming from small bunkers, others from behind piles of wreckage, still others from places where Kyle wouldn’t have thought a human being could actually lie concealed from view.

For perhaps half a second the Terminators staggered in the flood of lead slamming into them. Then they opened up with their own weapons, and the fury of the machineguns was punctuated by the shouts and cries of wounded men and women. From a sagging building fifty meters to the right of the battle another set of heavy machineguns joined in, and between bursts Kyle could hear the sound of engines revving up as one or more of the A-10s and Cobra attack helicopters prepared to take off. The Terminators’ assault was faltering, the machines stumbling and then collapsing as their limbs, torsos, and heads shattered under the withering fire.

“H-K!” Vincennes snapped, pointing to the left.

Kyle’s throat tightened as he spotted the two small red lights centered in the black shadow flying low across the night sky. Was Skynet hoping to slip in the H-K under cover of the battle noise?

If so, it was a futile hope. Even as the H-K snaked back and forth in an attempt to avoid fire, a small missile sputtered up from the ground, matching the incoming aircraft swerve for swerve. The missile’s exhaust trail intersected one end of the black shadow—

The exploding turbofan lit up the whole area, briefly illuminating the high clouds overhead. As the crippled aircraft slammed into the ground, Kyle saw the skull of the last of the approaching T-700s explode into metal fragments, and the headless Terminator collapse into the rubble around it. The T-600 held out the longest, standing almost defiantly among the shattered bodies of its companions, firing its minigun until it too finally dropped backward onto the ground.

The gunfire ceased, and the world once again fell silent.

“And that,” Vincennes said with grim satisfaction, “is that.” He clapped a hand on Kyle’s shoulder. “You and Star need to get back to sleep,” he added. “Morning comes early, and I believe you, Kyle, are scheduled for first- shift clean-up duty.” Straightening up, he headed across the shelter toward his own sleeping pad.

“Right,” Kyle murmured, frowning across the ground at the remains of the nine Terminators, the wreckage still visible in the light of the burning H-K. He looked at Star, found her gazing back at him with a troubled expression on her small face. “What do you think?” he asked.

Her hands moved in their private code. Too easy.

Kyle nodded. He’d been thinking the same thing.

“Any more of them out there?”

Star considered, then shook her head. A diversion? she suggested.

“Maybe,” Kyle said, looking around. “Maybe we nailed them faster than Skynet expected. Maybe before they could bring in the real attack.”

Star’s lips puckered. Too easy, she signed again.

“I know.” Kyle touched her shoulder. “But whatever it was about, we’re not going to figure it out tonight. Go back to sleep. If Skynet’s got anything else planned, Connor’s people will handle it.”

Star still looked troubled. But she nodded and lay back down on her mat.

Reluctantly, Kyle settled down beside her. Too easy, the words echoed through his mind. Too easy.

Eventually, he fell asleep.

Preston was careful to close the door quietly behind him when he got home. After his daughter’s long day hunting in the woods, the last thing he wanted to do was wake her up in the middle of the night.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The caution turned out to be a waste of effort. Hope was already in the living room, wedged into the half- broken recliner that she had always liked, her eyes closed, a blanket wrapped around her and tucked up under her chin.

For a long moment Preston gazed at his daughter, the usual kaleidoscope of thoughts and memories and regrets flashing through his mind. Hope was a child of the post-Judgment Day world, unschooled, uncivilized in the traditional sense of the word. Her knowledge and training were strictly limited to those skills needed for survival here in the wild.