Trial By Fire

And yet, amidst all that, she’d somehow also managed to develop a maturity far beyond her years. She had knowledge, but she also had wisdom. She had physical and mental toughness, but she also had compassion. She knew woodlore, but she also understood people.

Susan Valentine was a perfect case in point. An older woman, a brainy ex-scientist on top of that—on paper there was no way she and Hope should ever have been more than polite working companions. But Hope hadn’t settled for that. She’d taken Valentine under her wing, helping her work through the bewilderment and fear of her new environment, nurturing her like a mother helping her child through those first confusing and terrifying days at school.

Even more amazingly, Valentine had responded, not with the pride or resentment someone in her position might have gone with, but with gratitude and a deep respect for her young mentor’s patience. Somewhere along the way, somewhere in the short span of three months, the two of them had become friends.

Which was going to make it that much harder when Preston was forced to order Valentine to leave Baker’s Hollow.

He was taking off his gun belt, wondering if Hope might be sleeping deeply enough for him to carry her back to her room, when her eyes fluttered open.

“Hi,” she murmured sleepily.

“Hi,” he said. “Your bed just too warm and cozy tonight?”

“I heard you go out,” Hope said, pushing down the edge of the blanket and yawning widely. “Right after I heard the H-K pass by to the west. Did you see where it went?”

“Somewhere southeast, I think,” her father replied, stepping over to the small hurricane lamp on the table and lighting the wick. “I couldn’t tell for sure.” He hesitated, wondering if he should let her have one more night of peaceful sleep before he dropped the bombshell on her along with everyone else. But he needed to work through his options, and Hope was the only person whose advice he genuinely trusted.

“We did see something else, though,” he continued. “Just across the ford, apparently waiting for someone coming in from the west. Oxley says it’s a T-700 Terminator.”

In the soft lamplight he saw Hope’s face tense. Then, as he’d known she would, she put the shock behind her and nodded.

“Are we going to try to destroy it?” she asked.

Preston snorted. “Do I look crazy?” he countered as he sat down on the lumpy couch across from her. “Or do you know something about T-700s that I don’t?”

“There’s that weak spot on the base of the skull,” Hope reminded him, touching the spot on the back of her own head. “Connor talked about that in one of his broadcasts.”

“He was talking about T-600s, not T-700s,” Preston pointed out. “Skynet may have plugged that design loophole by now. Besides, as I recall, all you get by poking something sharp there is some temporary confusion. We need something that’ll actually kill it.”

“Okay, but if poking the spot causes trouble, maybe digging in deeper will hit something more vulnerable,” Hope suggested. “I was thinking one of Halverson’s carbon shafts with a broadhead at point-blank range.”

Preston pursed his lips. “No,” he said. “We’d want an aluminum shaft. Better electrical conduction.”

Hope’s face lit up. “So I can try it?”

“Whoa, girl,” Preston said, holding up a hand. “That’s not Plan A, B, or anywhere else in the alphabet. That’s an absolute last resort.”

Her face fell. “Oh.”

“What I want from you,” Preston continued, “is your thoughts of where you’d move everyone if we had to abandon the town.”

Her eyes were steady on his.

“You think we’re going to have to?”

“I don’t know,” Preston said, his eyes flicking around the room. It was an old house, the house he’d grown up in, and the hard years since Judgment Day hadn’t been very kind to it. But it was still weather-tight, and more comfortable than a lot of the other houses in town.

More than that, the house was his. His and Hope’s. It was their home, their sanctuary, and one of the few things left in their lives that still resonated with the memories of Hope’s mother. The thought of abandoning it, even in the face of a Terminator attack, grated more bitterly than anything else that had happened since her death.

“I’d rather not,” he said. “But if that Terminator decides to cross the river, we may have to.”

“Boy, that’s a tough one,” Hope murmured, her eyes taking on the faraway look that meant she was thinking hard. “We’d want to settle near one of the old upslope hunting cabins. That would at least give us a place to store whatever supplies we were able to bring.”

“But there wouldn’t be enough room for anything except supplies in any of the cabins,” Preston pointed out. “Especially since the biggest is the Glaumann place, which is a little too close to the river for comfort. At least, for now.”

“So we’d need tents,” Hope continued, still gazing into space. “Lots of them. And pallets and blankets.” Her eyes came back. “We haven’t got them,” she concluded quietly. “Not for eighty-seven people.”

Her father nodded. He’d already run through the same logic on the trip back from the river. “Which means we’d either have to split up the town among the various cabins, putting everyone inside that we could, or else throw together some kind of big group shelter.”

“If we’d have time for that,” Hope said doubtfully. “And any kind of building project would take people off hunting duty. We can’t afford to do that for more than a couple of days.”

“Agreed,” Preston said. Her conclusions were a vindication of his own thought processes, but that was pretty cold comfort. He would rather that she’d spotted something he’d missed. “Well, at least we know what we’re up against,” he said, forcing himself out of the couch. “You’d better get back to bed. It’s been a long day, and tomorrow will probably be worse.”

“Unless the Terminator attacks tonight,” Hope said soberly as she gathered her blanket together and levered herself out of the broken chair.

“In which case, we won’t have to do any planning at all tomorrow,” Preston said grimly. “And pleasant dreams to you, too.”

“All part of my daughterly duty,” Hope said, forcing a smile she clearly didn’t feel. “Don’t worry, Dad. We’ll get through this.”

“I know.” He wrapped his arms around her in a tight hug. She hugged him back, and for a moment hunger, cold, and even Terminators could almost be forgotten. Then, reluctantly, he let go and kissed her on the cheek. “Now off with you,” he said, patting her shoulder.

“Right.” She gave him a wry look. “Like I’m going to be able to sleep now.”

Back outside the demolished lab, Williams had set herself a thirty-meter perimeter while she was on watch. Out in the middle of nowhere, Barnes made his perimeter a full sixty meters. Just to prove he could do it. Also so he wouldn’t have to look at her slouched there asleep in the pilot’s seat while he plodded through the desert sand.

Because he knew full well what this was all about. She could deny it all she liked, but he knew better. This trip was Connor’s way of trying to nudge the two of them into making up.

Right. When hell froze over.

He glowered toward the Blackhawk. Unfortunately, much as he would like to think of Williams as stupid, he knew better. The girl was smart. Sometimes too smart for her own good, but still smart. Even if you had to hold your nose while you did it, she was usually worth listening to.

Especially since in this particular case Barnes knew down deep that she was right. Back at the lab, in the middle of the Terminator attack, it had taken him longer than he’d expected to locate and grab the minigun he’d spotted earlier that afternoon. The H-K had had plenty to time to get the range, and by all rights it should have blown the chopper into scrap.

Only it hadn’t. Dodging away from Barnes’s firing cone had been a reasonable thing for it to do. Trying to force the chopper down without destroying it hadn’t.

He scowled up at the night sky, sending a flood of cold air down the neck of his jacket. Could the H-K have been out of ammo? That might explain it. Maybe Skynet had decided that dropping the big machine on top of the