Trial By Fire

“Barnes!” she yelled.

His response was exactly what she expected: no startled words, no useless questions, just a pair of bursts from one of the Blackhawk’s two door-mounted M240 machine guns. The two Terminator segments nearest the helo blew into shards that went flying across the sand.

“Move it, Williams!” he shouted.

Another broken T-700 had crawled nearly to grabbing range. Blair considered shooting it, decided she had better things to do with her time and ammo, and took off instead in a dead run toward Barnes and the Blackhawk.

She damn near didn’t make it. There were a half dozen more Terminators between her and the helo, none of which had betrayed its functionality by moving, all of which now lunged up and tried to grab her as she raced past. One of them had managed to collect a pair of broken leg segments along with an arm and was able to rise to something resembling a kneeling position and actually throw itself toward her.

A shot from Blair’s gun staggered it back. Before it could regain its balance another burst from Barnes’s M240 blew it to pieces.

Ten seconds later, Blair was inside the Blackhawk.

“Strap in!” she snapped, ignoring her throbbing leg as she dropped into the pilot’s seat and keyed for quick- start.

“Just get us in the air,” Barnes snapped back, firing two more bursts. “I think I heard an H-K before all this hell broke loose.”

“You did, and it’s headed this way,” Blair confirmed, running her eyes over the gauges. To her left, a misshapen Terminator hand suddenly appeared, clawing for a grip on the edge of the door opening as a pair of glowing eyes lifted into sight. Snatching out her gun, Blair gave a quick cross-body shot that knocked the machine back into the sand. “Here we go,” she said, dropping the gun onto her lap and grabbing the stick and throttle as the rotors began to turn. “Strap in—I don’t want you falling out.”

“Forget that!” Barnes shouted. He fired another burst, then leaned in toward Blair and pointed out the windshield’s right-hand section. “That way—a hundred fifty meters. Go!”

“What?” Blair asked, frowning as she peered out the windshield. There was nothing anywhere in that direction but more desert and more crawling Terminator segments. “Why?”

But Barnes was already back at the door, firing more bursts at the metallic bodies still trying to overrun them.

“Barnes, we have to run,” Blair shouted over the noise. “I’m not sure we can get away as it is.”

“A hundred fifty meters,” Barnes insisted. “Do it.”

Swearing under her breath, Blair fed power to the engines and leaped the helo into the air. Swiveling its nose, she headed in the direction Barnes had indicated.

“Behind you!”

Blair spun around. Another T-700 segment was hanging off the helo’s portside door-jamb with one hand while it other clawed for purchase on the deck itself with the other. Blair snatched up her gun, but before she could bring it to bear Barnes took a couple of rapid steps across the cabin and kicked hard at the arm gripping the door. The impact dislodged its grip, and the Terminator disappeared into the night.

“There,” Barnes called over the engine noise, pointing out the windshield. “Another twenty meters, then put ‘er down.”

Blair nodded and threw a quick look to her left. She could see a faint red glow in the distance now, the telltale lights of a rapidly approaching H-K.

“Barnes—”

“That little mound,” he cut her off, pointing again. “Put us down next to it.”

Blair grimaced. The H-K was coming in fast, and even in the air the Blackhawk would be a painfully easy target. On the ground, it would be a sitting duck.

But it was already too late for them to get a real head start. Whatever Barnes had up his sleeve, Blair could only hope it was good. Braking beside the mound, she dropped the helo onto the ground.

It hit with a crunch of metal from beneath the wheels that made her wince. Barnes was already moving, dropping out the side door and disappearing to the helo’s rear. A few seconds later he reappeared and climbed back inside.

With a Terminator minigun cradled in his arms, the ammo belt triple looped over his arm and disappearing out the door behind him.

“Go!” he ordered, dumping the gun onto the deck and yanking hard on the ammo belt’s trailing end. It came free, and Barnes grabbed for the safety harness by the M240. “Go!”

Blair pulled on the throttle and once again took the Blackhawk into the air. She should have known Barnes would have taken note of where all the abandoned miniguns and other weapons were while the two of them were out searching for his brother.

But even with their newly acquired firepower, this was going to be seriously problematic. Fleetingly, Blair wished she was back in her preferred A-10 fighter, or that the Blackhawk at least had a couple of pylon-mounted Hydra 70 missile clusters.

But she wasn’t, and it didn’t, and they would have to make do with what they had. Climbing as fast as the Blackhawk could manage, she looked back toward the incoming H-K.

Only to find that it wasn’t there.

“Where’d it go?” she shouted, looking frantically around. It couldn’t have overflown them already—it hadn’t been that close. “Barnes?”

“There—left,” he shouted back.

Blair looked out the portside door. There it was, all right, speeding toward them with its searchlights off and its turbofans angled for maximum forward velocity. It must have swung around to that side while the helo was on the ground and she was distracted by Barnes’s weapons hunt.

Only that didn’t make any tactical sense. Why waste time circling around to a new vector when it could have maintained its course and charged straight down the Blackhawk’s throat?

Unless one of the broken Terminators down there had spotted Barnes loading his new minigun into the helo’s starboard door and Skynet had brought the H-K around to keep it away from that side.

If so, the time the H-K had lost in that maneuver might just be the breathing space they needed. Blair twisted the stick around, sending the Blackhawk into a tight turn. If she could get Barnes and his minigun into range before the H-K could line up a clear shot...

The helo had barely started into its turn when a burst from the H-K’s Gatling guns disintegrated the windshield in front of her.

She twisted her face away from the flurry of flying glass, reflexively twisting the stick to spin the cockpit away from the incoming fire. She heard a shout from beside her, but with the wind suddenly roaring in her ears she couldn’t tell whether it was a shout of pain, anger, or encouragement. She blinked something out of her eyes— sweat or blood, she wasn’t sure which—and kicked the engines to full speed.

The enemy had gotten in the first punch, and her job now was to get away, get out of its crosshairs, and buy herself enough time to regroup. At least this was one of the older H-K models, still packing Gatling guns instead of the new plasma weapons some of the Skynet Central defenders had been armed with. Small favors.

Abruptly, the Blackhawk bucked, dropping like a rock, as if Blair had suddenly flown it into a downdraft. She fought the controls, trying to get the aircraft back in hand.

It was only then that she noticed that the wind was not only blowing in at her through the disintegrated windshield but was blowing down on her as well.

She looked up, squinting against the blast. The H-K had taken position directly above them, flying with its underside bare meters from the Blackhawk’s main rotor.

Instead of simply blasting them out of the air, like H-Ks usually did, the damn thing was trying to force them down.

Twisting the stick, Blair tried jinking to the left. But at these speeds the Blackhawk wasn’t nearly as responsive as an A-10 would have been, and the H-K easily matched the maneuver. She jinked the other direction, dropping her nose a few degrees to give herself some extra speed. Once again, the H-K stayed right there with