Trial By Fire

shape, too.

The Terminator disappeared into the trees and bushes. Slowly, Barnes got to his feet, his 542 still pointed at the spot where the machine had vanished.

“What the hell?” he muttered under his breath.

“Agreed,” Preston said as he came up beside Barnes, sounding as disbelieving as Barnes felt. “I thought Terminators killed everyone they met.”

“That’s because you don’t understand Terminators.”

Barnes turned around. Shouting and speaking voices were sometimes very different, but he knew instantly that the man emerging cautiously from behind a tree was the one who’d been directing their fire. Or rather, their lack of fire.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“Remy Lajard,” the man replied, eyeing Barnes warily. “The question is, who are you?”

“His name’s Barnes,” Preston said. “The woman over there is Blair. They say they’re with the Resistance. What exactly is it I don’t understand about Terminators?”

“The fact that most of them are programmed for specific jobs,” Lajard said. His face and clothes were as rough and rustic as everyone else’s, but something about his tone reminded Barnes of a couple of his more annoying teachers back in pre-Judgment Day school. “It was clear that these two—these three, actually, counting the one Barnes destroyed—have a more important assignment than shooting back at people who are attacking them.”

“Maybe it’s clear now,” another man put in. This one seemed even scruffier than the rest of the group, as if looking like a mountain hermit was a badge of pride for him. “It sure as hell wasn’t clear when we first started shooting.”

“And as I tried to tell you at the time, Halverson, it wasn’t coming for us,” Lajard said. “It was clearly just trying to get across the river.”

“Clear to whom?” Williams asked as she came up to the rest of the group.

“Clear to anyone who was paying attention,” Lajard said, starting to sound annoyed. “You saw it yourself in that second T-700. Its gun hand was down, and it was looking at the riverbank, not us, as it crossed. It was obviously evaluating footing and route.”

“So what happened with the other one?” Barnes asked, jerking his head toward the spot where Williams had blown away the T-700’s gun. “Didn’t it get the message? It sure as hell was shooting at us.”

“It was just giving the other one cover fire,” Lajard retorted. “After you destroyed the first one, it needed to draw your attention long enough for its companion to get across.” He snorted. “You really think it would have missed everyone if it had actually been trying to kill us? You may not have seen what a G11’s caseless ammo can do—”

“Yeah, we’ve seen it plenty,” Barnes cut him off. “Fine, so it missed everyone. Why?”

“I just told you—”

“I think he means that if it was going to shoot to distract us anyway, why not shoot to kill?” Williams put in.

“And while you’re at it, why were you so hot on us not destroying them before they got away?” Barnes added.

Lajard took a deep breath.

“For the first,” he ground out, “I already said they’re obviously on some important mission, and Skynet is smart enough not to simply waste ammunition. As for the second, see part two of my answer to question one.”

“Oh, I see,” Williams said, an edge to her voice. “You just didn’t want us wasting ammo. Even though they were right there, in the open, where we could get them.”

“You shoot every bear you run across, whether it’s attacking you or not?” Lajard countered. “You’ll probably never even see those particular Terminators again.”

“Or we might,” Barnes said.

Lajard rolled his eyes. “If that happens, and if they shoot at you, you have my permission to blow them to scrap,” he said condescendingly. “Happy now?”

Barnes looked at Williams, caught the sour twist of her lip. Unfortunately, the man had a point. Several points, actually.

“So what kind of special mission could they be on?”

Lajard shook his head. “Haven’t a clue,” he conceded. “I don’t even know what a group of Terminators would want out here in the middle of nowhere.”

“Actually, Oxley and I were talking about that last night,” Preston said. “We were wondering if they might be after someone.”

“You mean someone like them?” Lajard asked, pointing at Barnes.

Barnes tightened his grip on his rifle. But Preston shook his head.

“Seems unlikely,” he said. “At least one of the T-700s was already in position by the ford last night, long before Barnes and Blair showed up.” He frowned suddenly at Barnes. “Unless there’s some reason Skynet might have known you were coming?”

“Not really,” Barnes said, throwing a quick warning glance at Williams. His original plan, once the Terminators had been dealt with, had been to ask Preston if he knew about any underground cables passing through or near the town.

Now, though, he was starting to think that might not be such a good idea. Hopefully, Williams would take the hint and keep her own mouth shut.

She did. Her forehead wrinkled briefly, but she kept quiet.

“Besides, their positioning clearly shows they were expecting their quarry to come from that side of the river,” Preston continued. “No idea who it might be, though.”

Halverson grunted. “Maybe they’ve taken over Buzby Jenkins’s old property,” he muttered. “Probably just don’t want us hunting on that side of the river.”

“Then why did they head upriver away from the ford just now?” Lajard asked. “Come on, Halverson—if you can’t be logical, at least try to be consistent.”

Halverson’s face darkened. “Look, professor—”

“I have a question,” Williams spoke up quickly. “Do you get a lot of Terminators out here?”

“I just said we didn’t,” Lajard said testily.

“Then how come you know so much about them?”

Barnes looked back at Lajard. That was a damn good question.

“Well?” he prompted.

Lajard’s lip twitched, some of his arrogance melting away.

“I have a certain familiarity with them,” he said evasively. “It comes of having—”

“It comes of him having worked for Skynet since Judgment Day,” Halverson said. “Just say it, Lajard.”

Barnes felt his face go rigid.

“You what?”

“It wasn’t all the time since Judgment Day,” Lajard said hastily, flinching back from Barnes’s glare. “And it wasn’t like I had a choice, either. None of us did.”

“None of us?” Barnes echoed. “How the hell many of you were there?”

Lajard sighed. “About a hundred in all,” he said. “If it makes you feel any better, I think the three of us were the only ones who made it out before the attack.”

“Out of where?” Barnes persisted. “Where were you? San Francisco?”

Lajard shook his head. “No, we were in the big research center in the desert southeast of here.”

Barnes felt his eyes narrow.

“Not a chance,” he said flatly. “No one made it out of there alive. Connor said so.”

It was Preston’s turn for widened eyes.