Terminator - T3 01 - Rise of the Machines (20 page)

His chief engineer glanced at the others, and nodded. "Theoretically we could be under attack already, and we wouldn't know it."

"Who's doing this? A foreign power? Or is it some teenage hacker in his garage?"

Flickinger shook his head. He was at a loss. "We can't trace the virus. We can't pin it down."

"It's like nothing we've ever seen," Tobias added. "It keeps growing. Changing. Like it's got a mind of its own." Brewster moved to the glass wall of the Power Lab. A humanoid torso, its chest open to reveal a pair of power units and a maze of electronic circuitry and servos, was set up on a test stand. A white-coated lab tech was taking a reading on a frequency spectrum analyzer. Wires snaked from several pieces of test equipment to the cybernetic device.

To the technician doing his work this afternoon every-

thing was crystal clear. They all were on overtime, but sooner or later he would go home, perhaps to a wife and children. A cold beer, a shower, dinner, and afterward lovemaking. Brewster felt far removed from that sort of a simple existence. With each star that had been pinned on his shoulders, he'd taken a giant step away from any kind of a normal life.

"I don't understand," he said to his engineers. "This can't be happening."

Watching the lab tech work, Brewster wondered if he would trade with the man right now; even up, life-for-life. But he didn't have the answer. It wasn't that simple.

"Sir, the Pentagon's on the secure line," Flickinger said. "It's the chairman."

Brewster tore his eyes away from the lab tech, and nodded. "All right."

At the end of the corridor they went through double doors into the two-story open Computer Center that took up the entire end of the R&D wing. Dozens of technicians and operators, some of them military, some of them civilian, worked at computer consoles scattered throughout the big room. Many of them worked in open quad cubicles, while others worked in the Mainframe Control Center behind glass partitions. There were no windows in the room, only the louvers of large air-conditioning vents.

There was a hum of feverish activity here this afternoon that wasn't normal. Blinking warning lights, hurried telephone conversations as operators tried to reestablish communications, flashing computer screens, error mes-

sages all warning that the global net was in the process of totally collapsing.

Brewster strode directly over to one of the duty officer's positions, snatched the red secure phone, and punched the bunking encrypt light.

"Brewster," he barked. His engineers and several of the techs gathered around him to find out what was going on.

Admiral James F. Morrison, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was on the line. "We're hoping to hell you've got some kind of solution for us," he shouted. He was angrier than Brewster had ever heard him. And the admiral was well known for his short fuse.

"I know what you're looking for, sir, but Skynet is not ready for a system-wide connection," Brewster said.

Washington had been pressuring him to at least bring Skynet on-line. All the high-tech weapons and other toys could wait. But Skynet was ready now, at least it was in the estimation of a lot of congressional and Beltway insiders. And that included Admiral Morrison. Brewster was damned if he didn't and damned by a different but no less powerful contingent if he did.

"That's not what your civilian counterparts over there just told me," Morrison railed. "They're telling me that whiz-bang project I just spent fifteen billion dollars on can stop this damn virus."

"Sir, there are other steps that we should consider first
—
"

"Bob, I don't have time for that," Morrison countered.

"I've got nuke boats and silos, and I don't know what the hell messages this virus is sending them."

Brewster glanced at his people and shook his head. He was on the losing side of this argument.

"I understand there's a certain amount of performance anxiety over there, but your boys are saying that if we plug Skynet into all our systems, it'll squash this thing like a bug and give me back control of my military."

It had to be Shelby talking to the admiral. But Shelby was only a bean counter.

"Mr. Chairman, I need to be real clear about this," Brewster started. He would try one last time to get Morrison to slow down and think it out "If we uplink now, Skynet will be in control of the military."

"But you'll be in control of Skynet, right?" the admiral shot back.

"That's correct," Brewster answered cautiously.

"Then do it," Morrison ordered. "And, Bob? This thing works, you got all the funding you ever need."

"Yes, sir," Brewster said. He slowly replaced the red phone on its cradle.

He stood for a moment, thinking it out. The nets were all crashing, so uplinking to Skynet could in itself be problematic.

But, and this was a very large but in his mind, if they could uplink with Skynet, and the system took out the virus, could they just as easily shut it down?

Skynet was nothing short of tenacious, and ingenious. It had been designed to think for itself; to adapt to any and all threats against it.

Brewster wondered when all was said and done if Skynet would consider them a threat

He turned to his people. "Okay. Set it up," he ordered.

"Yes, General," Patricia Talbot replied. She was a CRS systems chief tech. A sharp woman.

She strode across the room to the Mainframe Control Center, issuing orders like a destroyer captain taking her ship into battle.

c.24

Mojave Desert

The big green highway sign said edwards afb. rosa-mond gate, 11 miles. A hundred yards later they passed a sign that said exit 6. Lancaster, quartz hill, i mile.

"Turn here," Kate told Terminator.

So far no one had come after them. The sky was clear of police helicopters, and traffic was very light on the interstate.

Kate had tried twice more to reach her father, with the same results as earlier. The cell phone networks were down. Even the radio didn't work, especially on FM, although she'd been able to pick up something that sounded like music in the very faint distance on AM.

Terminator got off the interstate and headed east across the desert. There were three ways onto Edwards: the Rosamond Gate off 1-14, the North Gate off Highway 58, and the South Gate at the southeastern extremity of Rogers Dry Lake.

The South Gate was the least used entrance for the air base itself, but was the primary entrance for the CRS Research & Development facility.

Edwards was a large place, more than five hundred square miles in which a lot of black projects, including CRS, had been and continued to be hidden from the public's view.

Kate had been out here only twice before; once at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for CRS. That was before she started college, and before her parents' divorce. There hadn't been many family members at the opening, and Kate remembered how proud she'd been of her father. He'd just received his second star, and to her he'd seemed to be twenty feet tall that day.

The second time she'd come out here was last year when she'd talked to her father about her engagement to Scott. Her mother had been all for the marriage, but she'd always been her daddy's girl, and she'd desperately wanted his approval.

Which he'd given. But she'd not seen him since, not once. They talked on the phone, but he was always too busy to come into L.A., even for a weekend.

She glanced back at Connor, who was still working on getting the explosives ready. By the looks of it he meant to destroy the entire complex. But he had no idea how big the place was.

When he'd started making suggestions how to get onto the base, Kate had cut him off. "I'll take care of that part," she told him.

He'd exchanged a glance with Terminator, but then nodded and went back to his work.

"About ten miles and there'll be a sign for Cyber Research," she told Terminator. She got up and went to

where Connor was stuffing bricks of C-4 into satchels, and sat down across from him.

There seemed to be weapons and ammunition, rockets, grenades, explosives everywhere. She shook her head. "This is so..." She was at a loss. "God, there isn't even a word for what this is."

"Yeah," Connor said. He fastened the flap of a satchel and set it aside. "Look, none of it's going to happen. We get to your dad, pull the plug on Skynet, and the bombs won't fall." He nodded toward Terminator, driving. "He won't have to kill me someday. He'll never even exist."

Terminator looked up at them in the interior mirror, but said nothing. The rolling desert hills were bleak, almost like a moonscape.

"And you and me," Connor said. "We can go our separate ways."

Kate was confused. She didn't know how to take what John was telling her. She looked out the window at the passing desert, her thoughts drifting back to when she was a kid. She had to smile.

She turned back to Connor. "You know Mike Kripke's basement? That was the first time I ever kissed a guy." "Really," Connor said, grinning. "Now that's weird." Kate returned his grin, and they both laughed a little. Terminator glanced at their reflection. "Your levity is good," he said solemnly. "It relieves tension and the fear of death."

Connor gave a derisive snort, shook his head, and sat back. The up mood had evaporated in an instant.

CRS

A pretty young first lieutenant whose name tag read Hastings got off an elevator one floor below the Computer Center and headed down the broad, well-lit corridor as if she were on a mission.

There was a sense of urgency throughout the complex. Worldwide communications were failing, military networks were crashing, and a lot of the people here whose job it was to see that such things did not happen were in a near panic.

Hastings was blond, slender, and attractive in her Air Force blue cotton blouse and dark blue skirt Halfway down the corridor she stopped at a door that was marked by a placard:

CRS

T-l STORAGE BAY 3

Please make sure T-l unit power charge

connection is complete and secure at

hook-up point for proper charge transference.

The corridor was empty of people for the moment. Hastings tried the door, but it was locked. She turned the handle past its stop, snapping the lock pins as if they were matchsticks.

Checking again to make sure she had not been ob-

served, she slipped into the large, dimly lit room and closed the door behind her.

Row upon row of large, plastic-shrouded figures were packed into the storage bay. T-X hesitated only a moment to study the sensor readouts in her head-up display, before she ripped the plastic off the first T-l robot and tossed it aside.

The index finger of her left hand morphed into a long, slender drill bit that she used to enter the warrior robot's tiny skull case.

A millisecond later her fingertip glowed blue with plasma energy and she transferred a stream of data into the T-l's processor.

Finished almost as quickly as she had begun, T-X withdrew her data probe and moved to the next robot in line.

Edwards South Gate

Both times Kate had been out here the CRS complex had come as something of a surprise to her. First there was nothing but desert; rolling sand hills, scrub brush, Joshua trees. Then, over the crest of a low hill the complex was suddenly spread out in the distance.

Protected by a double row of razor wire, the gate manned by serious-looking armed Air Force Security Police, the main Research & Development facility was housed in an ultramodern three-story glass and steel

building that bristled with satellite dishes, laser guidance transmission heads, and its own separate power station and air-conditioning plant.

Some distance behind the rambling building from which a dozen different wings branched in all directions was the antennae farm for worldwide communications and data links from the upper gigahertz frequency range all the way down to ELF
—
Extremely Low Frequencies
—
used for communications with submarines.

In the basement and subbasement levels were beehives of laboratories where sensitive experiments took place around the clock. Beneath the hangars and stretching in a huge circle nearly a half mile in diameter was a supercooled particle accelerator, the electromagnets of which in themselves constituted a radiation hazard when operating at full power.

An airstrip ran east and west with a modern control tower and several hangars and maintenance buildings nearby. Several military transport aircraft, a number of helicopters, and several small private aircraft were parked on the ramp or inside the hangars.

Terminator spotted the LAPD helicopter in front of one of the hangars.

"T-X is already here," he said.

Kate scrambled to the passenger seat as they started down the long hill to the gate, still a half mile away. "How do you know?" she demanded, her heart in her throat

"The police helicopter. N-one-zero-zero-nine. It was in the air near the cemetery." Terminator pointed to the chopper on the ramp.