Trial By Fire

“You mean that line angling across there?” Zac asked, his pointing finger tracing out the path.

“Looks like a crack to me,” Callahan agreed. “But if you think the Terminators will notice the gap getting bigger, they’ll really notice if a quarter of the path they’re walking on disappears.”

“Right, but only if we’re the ones who bring it down,” Kyle said. “What if we just deepen the crack enough so that the next batch of T-700s breaks through? Maybe Skynet will assume it had too much stress and gave way by itself.”

“Of course, if it doesn’t assume that, we’ll have a whole mess of Terminators down here hunting us,” Callahan pointed out. “But it’s worth a try.”

He looked upward again.

“You’re not going to be able to reach the crack from the slope. I guess that means you’ll be standing on our shoulders.”

“Hang on a second,” Kyle said, looking behind them. “I think I saw a door frame back there.”

“Yeah,” Zac said. “It was... there it is, over there.”

The frame was partially buried in concrete chips, but it took only a little effort for the three of them to dig it out. A minute after that, they had it in place beneath the ceiling crack, lying on its long side.

“Perfect,” Callahan said, testing its balance. “Wide enough to stand on, and all you two have to do is brace it to keep it from falling over. Okay, hold it steady.”

“Shouldn’t we wait until the Terminators have made their next round?” Zac suggested. “We don’t want you making scraping noises while they’re on their way in.”

“Right,” Callahan said reluctantly, sitting down beside the frame. “I just hope we can get this done before they blast through into the camp.”

“We will,” Kyle said firmly. “We have to.”

It took an hour for the people of Baker’s Hollow to gather the equipment Jik had asked for, and to then make the necessary modifications for what he had in mind. During that time Halverson’s runners brought in three reports from the men tailing the T-700 on the east bank of the river, which seemed to be tracing out a sentry line half a mile north of town that ran from the river to a couple of miles east.

The obvious inference was that the Terminator was guarding something. But neither Preston nor Halverson could think of anything up there that Skynet might be hiding, unless it thought Jik was still out there and was searching for him.

Finally, with the equipment prepped and their ambush positions chosen, they were ready.

Jik had already decided to lean the main, riskier attack. With Halverson and several of the others, he headed north to intercept the Terminator on their side of the river. Preston and the rest went to reinforce the guard at the ford, and to prepare for the moment when the other T-700 returned and tried to cross the river.

And as Jik and Halverson headed toward the spot they had chosen for their ambush, Jik found himself thinking about Barnes and Williams. Thinking, and wondering.

Mercenaries or paramilitary gang members he could understand. They might have spotted Baker’s Hollow and come in to scope out its resources for theft or barter. Con artists he could similarly understand, though how a pair of scammers could have gotten hold of a working helicopter he couldn’t guess. Still, in either scenario it would make sense for them to come in masquerading as Resistance fighters.

But in neither scenario was there any reason why they would be so stupid as to claim Jik was a fraud.

It made no sense. Even if Jik had been a fraud, why would they open themselves up to suspicion and the risk of serious consequences, consequences that had now in fact rained down on them? Why not keep quiet, pretend to be from a distant Resistance unit which had never had any direct contact with Jik, and try to get through the rest of their agenda before anyone figured out who they really were?

There was more depth to this thing than Jik had yet been able to sort out. But he would sort it out.

In the meantime, there were Terminators to be dealt with.

They reached the ambush point to find a man and woman waiting for them, the woman crouched beside a tree, the man pacing nervously back and forth.

“About time,” the latter said as Jik and the others came up. “This is the path Singer says it’s been walking.” He gestured, indicating a roughly east-west direction.

“But it doesn’t trace out exactly the same path each time,” Jik said, eyeing the tall grass that covered most of the ground area between the trees. “Otherwise it would have worn a more well-defined furrow.”

“That’s right,” the woman confirmed. “Will that be a problem?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Jik said. “How soon before it comes back this way?”

“Probably ten minutes,” the man said. “At least ten. Maybe fifteen.”

“Ten should be plenty,” Jik said, gesturing to the men lugging the equipment. “Let’s get to work.”

Eight minutes later, they were ready. Three minutes after that, Jik felt the first subtle vibrations through the ground as the T-700 approached.

“Get ready,” he murmured to the others.

And then, there it was, pushing aside low-hanging branches and wading through knee-high grass as it walked its solitary sentry path. Its G11 submachinegun was held ready, its metallic skull and glowing eyes swept methodically back and forth.

Jik crouched a little lower behind his tree, one hand gripping each of the two long ropes he and the others had strung around two other trees, watching the Terminator closely as he tried to track its precise path.

“Needs to go a little north,” Halverson murmured from beside him.

Jik nodded and pulled gently but firmly on the rope in his left hand. Twenty meters in front of the approaching Terminator the grasses shifted slightly, the subtle movement camouflaged by their general wind-induced sway. Jik eyed the T-700’s path and gave the rope another few centimeters’ worth of last-minute tweaking. The machine continued forward...

With a startlingly loud crack, the Terminator’s right foot hit and triggered the bear trap Jik had maneuvered into its path. The machine came to a sudden, awkward halt, its momentum forcing it to take one final step forward with its left leg. There was a second crack as the second bear trap snapped shut around its other leg—

“Now!” Jik shouted. Letting go of the rope in his left hand, he shifted both hands to the one in his right and pulled. All around him, the other men and women leaped into position from the bushes, grass and trees, some hauling on Jik’s rope, others joining with Halverson in pulling on the other one.

Terminators were incredibly strong machines. But their servomotor musculature hadn’t been designed with this sort of movement in mind. The T-700’s legs were yanked apart, pulled in opposite directions into a gymnast’s splits by the two bear traps now clinging to its lower legs.

And with its balance base suddenly gone, it toppled forward to land on its gun and its outstretched arms.

“Belay!” Jik shouted. Not waiting for the others to secure the thick ropes, he snatched up his borrowed G11 and braced the barrel against the side of the tree. He would have just one shot at this.

The Terminator shifted position, leaving its left hand on the ground and bringing up the G11 in its right. It aimed the weapon down and to its right, targeting the bear trap and attached rope.

And with his own gun on full automatic, Jik fired everything he had into the magazine on the Terminator’s weapon.

Sometimes, he knew, a sustained blast into that much caseless ammunition would cause a spontaneous cascading that would cook off the close-packed rounds. That would create a multiple explosion that would wreck the weapon and usually the hand or entire arm of the Terminator holding it.

In this case, Jik wasn’t that lucky. But he was lucky enough. The G11 broke apart in the T-700’s hand, its firing mechanism shattered and useless.

And with its gun gone and its legs still being held, the machine was helpless.

Halverson was already on his way, running across the grass with Barnes’s SIG 542 gripped in his hands. Dropping the empty G11, Jik grabbed the Mossberg shotgun they’d also taken from the visitors and sprinted after him.

He caught up with Halverson twenty meters from the Terminator, which was now trying unsuccessfully to reach the traps pinning its legs.