Trial By Fire

modest degree of civilization here in the mountains.

Preston couldn’t let that happen. No matter what it cost.

“So what’s your idea?” he asked, the words stinging in his throat.

“We take the damn thing out,” Halverson said flatly. “Right now.”

Preston winced. He’d been afraid that was where he was going.

“We can’t do that,” he said as calmly as he could. “At the moment it’s not coming after us. We attack it, and that’ll change.”

“Not if we kill it,” Halverson said. “Come on, Preston—I’ve killed full-grown grizzlies. How tough can a Terminator be?”

“For starters, your bear’s vitals weren’t encased in solid metal,” Preston pointed out, striving to maintain his calmness. Arguing with Halverson was an absolutely guaranteed way to solidify the man’s position. “Even if you found a way through that, Skynet’s not going to just sit back and watch you do it.”

“Ah,” Halverson said with the self-satisfied air of someone who’s been hoping for precisely that question. “It may in fact do exactly that. I talked with Lajard this morning. He says that with the San Francisco hub gone, the nearest Skynet long-range transmitter is on the east coast. If he’s right, it can only punch a signal through this far at night.”

“Unless Skynet has some kind of relay system between the east coast and here that it can use,” Preston warned. “Through smaller stations or even H-Ks.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Halverson said. “Lajard says multiple relays are too vulnerable to interception and signal something-or-other—signal degradation, I think it was. Anything big, including large downloads or major changes in mission profile, has to come directly from a Skynet hub.”

“Interesting theory, anyway,” Preston said. And obviously in Lajard’s exact words, too. Halverson’s vocabulary wasn’t nearly that extensive.

“It’s more than just a theory,” Halverson growled. “The point is that if this Terminator is at the river to catch someone coming in from the west, and we hit it during the day, Skynet won’t be able to send any new instructions about fighting back. Not until it’s too late.”

“Of course, that assumes T-700s don’t already come with a built-in set of contingency orders,” Preston pointed out. “Something as simple, say, as killing any human it comes across.”

“Well, we’ll just have to take our chances, won’t we?” Halverson said impatiently. “That machine has got to go, and we haven’t got time for a long debate. I say we hit it.”

“And if I say we don’t?” Preston asked, trying one last time.

“Then you’d better hope your daughter feels up to hunting enough to feed sixty or seventy people a day,” Halverson said. “I’ve got Ned going around collecting and checking all the large-caliber rifles in town. You can come with us, or we can do it by ourselves.”

Preston shook his head. This was madness. But he was mayor, and if he didn’t show up he might as well hand over the last scraps of his authority right now.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll meet you at Ned’s in fifteen minutes.”

“Good,” the other said with the grim-edged satisfaction he always showed when he got his way. “Bring plenty of ammo.” Striding past Preston, he opened the door and headed back out into the early-morning chill.

Preston waited until he’d closed the door behind him.

“You heard?” he asked.

“Yes,” Hope said, stepping into view from the hallway. Her face was pale. “Dad, you can’t let him do this. You can’t do this.”

“You feel up to hunting for seventy people?” Preston asked sourly as he headed for the closet where his Ruger 99/44 hunting rifle was stored. “Because unless you do, I don’t see anything we can do but go along with him.”

“And get everyone in town killed?” Hope countered. “We’d do better to let me take over the hunting.”

“Which would just be a slower form of death,” Preston said gently. “You’re good, Hope, but not that good.”

Hope wrinkled her nose in frustration.

“You still don’t have to go along with him,” she insisted. “Maybe if he fell flat on his face a few times people would stop listening to him.”

“I’d like nothing better than to watch him eat dirt,” Preston said as he pulled out the rifle and the box of shells. “Unfortunately, in this case, if he fails we end up with a Terminator walking through town. I’ll try one last time to talk them out of it—” he grimaced “—and if I can’t, then we really have no choice but to hit the thing just as hard and as fast as we can.”

“I suppose,” Hope said, still not sounding convinced. “Let me go get my bow and quiver.”

“Yes, do that,” Preston said. “But you’ll be heading the opposite direction. I want you and Susan to pick one of the clearings near Crescent Rock and start your hunt.”

Hope’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you just said we need everyone to hit the Terminator.”

“Everyone who has a gun,” Preston corrected. “Which you don’t. More importantly, whatever happens with the machine, some of us will still have to eat tonight.”

“Dad—”

“It’s not negotiable, Hope,” Preston said quietly. “And I’ve got enough fights on my hands right now. I really can’t handle another one.”

She sighed, then nodded. “Okay, I just... okay. If that’s what you want.”

“It is,” Preston assured her, giving her a quick hug. “And don’t come back to town. If things go all right, someone will come and get you. If no one’s there within two hours after the shooting stops, head over to Skink Pond. I’ll catch up with you there.”

“Okay.” Hope took a deep breath. “I love you, Dad.”

“Love you, Hope.” Releasing her from the hug, he caught her hand and squeezed it. “I’ll see you soon. Be careful, and don’t worry.”

* * *

The sky was lightening to the east when Blair was startled awake by a slap on her shoulder and a gruff order to get moving. By the time the sun appeared over the horizon, she had the Blackhawk fifty meters above the smoldering Skynet lab, ready to follow the mysterious cable.

At first, it was easy. As she’d already noted, the explosion had sent shock waves through both the ground and the cable, periodically kinking the latter hard enough to shove loops of it to the surface. With the slanting sunlight exaggerating every bump and dip, Blair could usually see five or six of the humps at any given time.

But as the sun rose, and as the distance from the lab increased, the humps grew progressively smaller and less obvious. Finally, somewhere around the twenty-kilometer mark, they disappeared completely.

“Now what?” Barnes asked.

Blair gazed out the window, squinting against the windstorm beating across her face and wishing for the umpteenth time that the Blackhawk’s storage lockers had included some goggles. The desert had given way to a sort of tentative grassland, with forested foothills and mountains directly ahead.

“I think we should keep going,” she said. “So far, the cable’s been running pretty straight along this vector. Let’s assume it continues that way, and see what we run into.”

Barnes grunted. “Not easy to keep a cable running straight through the middle of a forest.”

“True,” Blair said. “But if anyone could have done it— or have wanted to do it—it would be Skynet.”

For a moment Barnes was silent. Blair kept her eyes forward, wincing in anticipation of his inevitable outburst.

She could hardly blame him. He’d kept his side of the bargain she’d forced on him, and had let her drag them out here trying to follow the cable. Now that the trail had petered out, he would be perfectly justified in insisting she drop the whole thing and head back to San Francisco.

And when he did, she was going to have to argue with him. Because the more they’d traveled along the cable’s path, and the more she’d seen how much effort Skynet had put into it, the more she was convinced it was something they needed to check out.

But Barnes wouldn’t see it that way. He’d already been saddled with her longer than he’d expected, and way