Terminator - T3 01 - Rise of the Machines (22 page)

Kate screamed.

At that moment Terminator fired the first 40mm grenade, hitting T-X squarely in the chest with a tremendous explosion that shoved her back several steps, almost off her feet.

But she recovered, and had taken a step forward when Terminator fired a second grenade at her, which hit her chest again, shoving her backward.

Not waiting for her to recover, Terminator fired again as he moved toward her. Each time she was pushed back several feet by the force of the blast. And each time before she could regain her forward momentum from the attack, Terminator fired again.

With the last grenade T-X was pushed back into the

broad louvers over the main ventilation shaft that shattered from her weight She disappeared through the opening.

Alarms were ringing, sirens shrieking as technicians continued to get out of the Computer Center as fast as they could move.

Kate raced to her father's side. He was spitting up blood, and obviously was in great pain. He could not talk above a whisper as Kate set to work checking the extent of his wounds.

"Katie, thank God. I thought
—
"

"Don't talk, Daddy," she said. She opened his blood-soaked blouse and shirt Black fluid leaked out of one of his belly wounds. He had to be taken to a hospital soon or he would die.

Terminator walked over to the busted open ventilator shaft and looked inside. It ran straight down for a couple of stories, ending at the shattered blades of a large fan.

Terminator turned to Connor and Kate. "She'll be back," he told them.

Connor nodded grimly. He hunched down beside Kate and her father. "We have to shut down Skynet," he told the general. "Where's the system core, somewhere in this building?"

Brewster had trouble digesting what the young man was telling him. It wasn't possible. "Who are you?" he whispered, the words gurgling in his throat "You can't know about that"

Connor grabbed his shoulder. "Cut the top-secret shit!"

Kate batted his hand away. "Stop," she screamed. "You're hurting him!"

Connor turned on her. "If he can't tell us what we need to know, we're all dead." He grabbed a handful of Brewster's uniform blouse. "Where is it? How can you shut it down?"

"Skynet," Brewster mumbled breathlessly. "It's fighting the virus."

Connor took a breath. His eyes never left the General's. "You don't understand, do you? Skynet is the virus," Connor shouted over the noise of the alarms and sirens. "It's the reason everything's falling apart."

This was even more impossible to believe than anything else. "No, that can't be true," Brewster croaked. "I just gave the command to... link to all secure military systems."

Terminator came over, reloading the grenade launcher. He'd retrieved the AK-47 and he slapped a magazine into its receiver.

"Skynet has become self-aware," he said. "In one hour it will initiate a massive nuclear attack on its enemy."

Brewster looked up. He knew this man. "What enemy?" he whispered urgently. He had to know what was happening.

"Us," Connor said with bitter finality.

There was automatic weapons fire from somewhere in the distance, but still within the building. Whatever kind of a weapon was being used, it sounded extremely fast and powerful.

People started to scream, desperate sounds rising out of the stairwells from the floor below.

Kate looked up. "Oh, God
—
"

"It's the machines," Connor said. "They're starting to take over."

Brewster reached up and grasped Connor's arm, finally realizing that this was no nightmare. The young man was right.

"My private office," he said with great difficulty. "On this floor. We have to get there. The access codes, they're in the safe."

Between Connor and Kate they managed to get the general to his feet.

Terminator led the way as advance guard, his AK-47 and Mk-19 up and at the ready.

CRS

Brewster directed them toward the corridor to the right that led, he said, to his office and the offices of the principal engineers and administrators.

The entire building was in a panic now. They could hear gunfire from every direction, some of which was the sharper sounds of the Ml6s the Air Force security troops carried.

But the guards were outclassed by the chainguns the robots were equipped with.

Just as they were leaving the Computer Center, they looked back in time to see the main elevator doors opening. A group of eight or ten technicians sprang up from behind consoles meaning to scramble aboard the elevator and get away.

But a T-l robot, massive on its twin treads, its red optical sensors in the tiny cranial case ominous, its bulk almost completely filling the elevator car, immediately opened fire with its twin chainguns. The depleted uranium slugs tore into the people, ripping their bodies

apart, blood and shattered bones flying outward like geysers.

Terminator stepped around the corner and had started down the corridor, his weapons at the ready.

Connor and Kate half carried, half dragged the general out of the Computer Center, moving as quickly as they could.

Kate's heart pounded nearly out of her chest as they held up at a corner. Terminator took a quick look, then stepped out across the empty corridor.

"What was that?" Kate asked.

Terminator glanced back at her. "A T-l, first generation terminator. Primitive targeting system, heat and motion sensitive."

Brewster suddenly struggled to get his balance. To stand on his own two feet. "You're Sergeant Candy," he blurted.

Terminator took a quick look up the still empty corridor, then turned back. Brewster's eyes widened. A small section of Terminator's metal cranial case was exposed.

"Negative," Terminator answered.

"Jesus
—
where did you come from?"

"I was built here," Terminator said.

A sudden burst of chaingun fire in the vicinity of the conference room to their left sent them hurrying down the corridor.

They could hear more screams now, and crashing sounds; shrieking metal, breaking glass, sporadic return fire from the Air Force security people.

Brewster could not understand how Skynet had taken

over the entire system so quickly, but he was even more confused about the T-l robots. Someone had reprogram-med them, or at the very least was controlling their actions.

But how? And why? What was the purpose behind all this? There had to be reasons.

Ultimately, however, all of this was his fault. He had been the driving force behind integrating CRS research and development results in the military structure.

Skynet and its control of all U.S. forces and weapons systems had been his passion from the beginning.

He had earned his first star when he had straightened out the mess left by the destruction and bankruptcy of the old Cyberdyne company. His second star came when this CRS facility was opened six years ago. And his third star was added six months ago when the major work on Skynet had been completed.

He was tired. He wanted to lie down and go to sleep. He missed Kate's mother, and he missed a normal life that he'd never had.

He turned and looked at his daughter, a wave of love welling up inside of him.

"Kate, I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so sorry."

"Sssh, it's not your fault," she told him. Her face was screwed up in fear and worry.

"It is. I opened Pandora's box," Brewster said. He glanced at Connor. "You did the right thing, Katie."

"What?" She was having a hard time focusing on what he was trying to tell her, while still maintaining the pace behind Terminator.

"Your fiance," Brewster said. "He's a good man."

Connor gave Kate a brief smile. Brewster could see that they were a team. It was a good sign.

Terminator pulled up short at another intersecting corridor and immediately stepped back. He motioned for them to keep quiet and then laid his weapons on the floor.

Brewster looked over at the glass partition to one of the offices. He could see the hazy reflection of a T-1 robot at the end of the intersecting corridor.

It remained there, motionless. Its sensors were trained down the corridor in their direction. It might have heard or detected something, but it wasn't certain.

Terminator was seeing the same reflection.

A second T-1 robot trundled around the corner and stopped next to the first unit.

Terminator motioned for Connor, Kate, and her father to keep very still, then he reached up and silently removed a foam-core panel from the false ceiling. Above, in the four-foot crawl space, were the hangers for the ceiling tiles and channels, the lights and the wiring for the closed circuit security cameras at every intersection, and the electronic and optic fiber runs in sheet-metal ducts.

Terminator pulled himself up into the crawl space with impossible ease, and then, moving hand over hand along the cable runs, disappeared into the darkness.

He was one of the advanced cyborg warrior robots modeled after Sergeant Candy. Brewster was certain of it. But what was so confusing to him was that the Sergeant

Candy terminator model wasn't operational yet.

Where did this one come from?

Kate and Connor spotted the reflection in the glass partition. They stood stock still as one of the T-1 robots moved a few feet up the corridor.

It was obvious that the machine sensed something. Possibly their heat signatures from around the corner.

It moved forward a couple more feet.

Connor started to pull Kate and her father back, when a ceiling panel directly behind the second T-1 burst open and Terminator dropped out of the crawl space like a Special Forces paratrooper landing in enemy-held territory.

Both T-1 robots immediately swiveled toward the movement, bringing their weapons to bear.

Keeping one step behind the second T-1, Terminator wrenched its cranial case off its blunt torso, then grabbed the barrel of the unit's chaingun as it started to fire.

The first T-1 opened fire down the corridor, but Terminator used the second unit as a shield, forcing its shorted chaingun to bear on the first robot, firing at its cranial case where its CPU was located, and at the center of its torso where its power units were shielded.

The first T-1 fell silent, its red optical sensor winking out, the muzzles of its chainguns drooping toward the floor, a second before the unit Terminator was manipulating stopped functioning.

Both T-ls were badly shot up, and would not soon be brought back into service. Terminator cocked his head

for a moment, his sensors alert for the close proximity of any other T-X controlled weapon. But his head-up display was dear,.

He went back to where Connor and Kate and her father were waiting around the corner. He retrieved his weapons and they went the rest of the way to the general's office.

Brewster's secretary was gone as was everyone else in this wing. Kate and Connor helped him into his office where they eased him into a red leather club chair, across from a built-in sectional couch that was curved like a banquette. The walls were richly paneled in cherry wood, and across from a large, busy desk was a full bar set up on a built-in buffet. The American and Command flags were displayed along with pictures of WWII fighters and bombers. Large windows overlooked the tarmac and hangars.

Connor found the safe, and he looked back to Brew-ster for the combination.

"Thirty-two left," Brewster started.

Terminator brushed Connor aside and simply ripped the door off the safe, dropping it on the carpeted floor with a heavy thud.

Kate was looking out the window at the carnage going on below, tears in her eyes, her lips quivering. This was what hell had to be like.

Several T-l robots like the one in the elevator and the

two they'd encountered in the corridor were on the flight line, shooting indiscriminately, killing or destroying everyone and everything they encountered. Bodies littered the ramp. Trucks and cars and aircraft were on fire, and smoke poured from some building in the distance.

"They're killing everyone," she cried. "Why?"

"To destroy any possible threat to Skynet," Terminator told her.

Connor pulled papers, envelopes, and folders out of the safe, tossing them aside. "Where are the codes?"

"Red envelope," Brewster croaked.

Connor found a large red envelope and pulled it out of the safe. He held it up so Brewster could see. "These'll shut everything down?"

Brewster remembered when Kate was born. They'd been stationed at Ramstein in Germany, and he'd raced up to the Army medical center at Vogelweh just in time.

She was so incredibly beautiful and so incredibly helpless and dependent.

"Take care of my daughter," he cried.

Kate was right there at his side. "Daddy!"

The room was getting dark. It was becoming hard to focus on anything. He felt a deepening flutter in his chest that frightened him. "Crystal Peak," he muttered. "You have to get to Crystal Peak."