Terminator Salvation: Trial by Fire (12 page)

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.

“That was
Connor’s
group that blew up the lab?”

“Connor’s group attacked it,” Barnes said. “Skynet blew it up.” His eyes flicked across the other men and women grouped silently around them. “You said there were three of you. Who are the other two?”

There was a brief pause.

“I’m one of them,” a woman’s voice came from behind him.

Barnes turned. It was Susan Valentine, the woman who’d been on backstop duty when Preston’s kid had tried to get the drop on him and Williams.

“Who else?”

“Nate Oxley’s the third,” Preston said. “And Lajard’s right. The people who were working there didn’t have a choice.”

“There’s always a choice,” Barnes growled.

“Right—we could have let the Terminators kill us,” Lajard retorted.

Barnes shrugged. “Like I said. There’s always a choice.”

“Look—”

“How about we hear the whole story?” Williams suggested. Her voice was carefully neutral, Barnes noted, but he could see his same suspicions lurking behind her eyes.

Because people under Skynet’s control didn’t walk away from that. They just didn’t.

“Certainly,” Preston agreed. “But we’ll have to go back to town if you want all three of them—Oxley’s helping Doc Meade set up an emergency trauma center.” He looked at the pile of broken Terminator pieces still visible above the river water. “In case we needed it.”

“Yeah, well, we still might,” Halverson growled. “Somebody needs to stay here and guard the ford. And we ought to track those Terminators, too, and figure out where they’re going.” He looked pointedly at Lajard. “You know. In case they decide to come back.”

“I was just going to suggest that,” Preston agreed. “Chris, Pepper, you two stay here. Trounce—”

“Trounce, you stay here with Chris and Pepper,” Halverson interrupted. “Ned, Singer—you two are on chaser duty. Find the machine that’s on this side of the river and keep it in sight.”

“But don’t get too close,” Lajard added. “And
don’t
shoot at it.”

“Not unless it shoots first,” one of the men said grimly. Hefting his rifle, he headed off along the riverbank, another man following close behind.

Barnes looked back at Preston. There was a fresh tightness at the edges of the man’s mouth as he watched the two men disappear into the woods. But he merely turned back to Barnes and gestured.

“Shall we?” he invited. Without waiting for a reply, he started back down the trail toward town, his daughter Hope beside him.

Picking up his minigun, Barnes dropped into step behind them. The rest of the crowd shambled their way into the procession behind him.

He’d made it out of sight of the river when Williams wandered casually up alongside him.

“What do you think?” she murmured.

“I don’t know,” Barnes muttered back. “But I don’t like it.”

“Me, neither,” Williams agreed. “I’ve never seen a machine deliberately shoot to miss.”

“Or just walk off when one of its buddies gets its gun and half its hand blown off.”

“Or leave any wreckage behind,” Williams added. “Especially with so many of them lying around in pieces in San Francisco.” She hissed between her teeth. “What the hell have we gotten ourselves into here?”

“Damn good question,” Barnes agreed. “Let’s see if Preston can give us a damn good answer to go with it.”

There was a long line of people waiting at the mess tent when Kyle and Star arrived for breakfast a little after dawn. Most of them were members of the Resistance, men and women Kyle had already met or at least recognized.

But a number of them were strangers, more of the seemingly endless supply of tired and hungry civilians who’d been cautiously emerging from the hills and woods around San Francisco ever since Connor and the others had set up their temporary camp here.

They reminded Kyle of the people he’d left behind in Los Angeles. People who’d been there, just like they were here, mainly because there was nowhere else to go.

He could feel their eyes on him as he and Star walked past to the front of the line. He didn’t like doing that, but he didn’t really have a choice. Vincennes and some of the other men and women were already seated at one of the tables, and they were watching him and Star. Vincennes had made it clear that Resistance people on duty had first claim to whatever food was available.

Fortunately, none of the civilians said anything. Maybe they knew the rule, too.

Still, orders or not, Kyle could see that the mess servers were doing their best to stretch their supplies as much as possible. The small tin dishes they handed him and Star were less than a third full.

Which was all right with Kyle. He could still feel the civilians’ eyes on him, and he was willing to make do with a little less.

By the time they reached Vincennes’s table, the other Resistance men had finished their own meager breakfasts and headed out, leaving Vincennes alone.

“Morning, Reese; Star,” the older man greeted them.

“Hello,” Kyle said for both of them. Star didn’t say anything—Star never said anything. But Vincennes knew that. “Are we late?” he added, looking at Vincennes’s empty dish.

“No, not at all,” Vincennes assured him. “Doesn’t matter anyway. You’ve been pulled off hunting and paired with Callahan for special scavenger duty. You know Rob Callahan, right?”

“Yes, sir,” Kyle said, a sudden lump forming in his throat. “We lived together in Los Angeles.”

A flicker of something crossed Vincennes’s face.

“Oh—right. The Moldavia Building.”

“Yes, sir,” Kyle said again, looking sideways at Star. She was gazing down at her tray, her eyes staring at and through the food there. Probably thinking, just as he was, about that one, terrible day.

The day when Kate Connor had come calling at their colony of refugees in the former Moldavia Los Angeles building. The day that Rob Callahan, Zac Steiner, and Leon and Carol Iliaki had all answered Kate’s call for Resistance recruits. The day that Kyle and Star had also left, sent off by their friend, mentor, and protector Sergeant Justo Orozco.

The day the Terminators had come and killed everyone who was left.

“Sorry,” Vincennes said quietly. “Sorry, Star. I didn’t mean to bring up memories. It’s just—” He nodded toward the line of refugees. “We’ve gotten so many new people over the past week that I sometimes lose track of where they all came from.”

“It’s okay,” Kyle said. “What are we scavenging?”

“The debris from last night’s Terminator attack,” Vincennes replied, looking relieved to be back on less painful ground. “We had a team out early this morning making sure they were all dead, and they reported a lot of ammo the machines hadn’t had a chance to use. Bill Yarrow and Zac Steiner are going out to collect everything they can find, and I want you and Callahan out there with them.”

“Okay,” Kyle said, pleased they were trusting him with that kind of job. Ammo was always in short supply, and the Resistance needed every bit of it they could get. “You want us to scavenge the guns, too?”

“No,” Vincennes said. “The team said it was all G11s, plus the minigun the T-600 was carrying, and they’re all way too heavy for you to lug back on foot. You see something that’s still in decent shape, tag it and we’ll send a jeep to collect it later. Your job is just to get the ammo.”

He gestured toward the armorers’ station that was Star’s current assignment.

“Pick up some backpacks when you drop off Star. Yarrow, Steiner, and Callahan will be meeting you at the south checkpoint, and you can head out together.”

“Should we take any weapons?” Kyle asked.

Vincennes shook his head.

“Grab a shotgun if it makes you feel safer, but you’re well within the daytime perimeter, and that area’s already been swept. You’ll have plenty of weight to carry on your way back as it is.”

“Yes, sir,” Kyle said.

Vincennes’s eyes drifted over Kyle’s shoulder to the line of hungry refugees.

“And while you’re out there, keep an eye out for anything that might mark a food depot.”

Star pressed against Kyle’s side, and even through all his layers of clothing he could feel the shiver that ran through her small body. Both of them had vivid memories of being herded together in this place with the rest of Skynet’s human captives.

“Skynet wasn’t feeding anyone very much,” he muttered.

“No, but it was giving them
something
,” Vincennes said. “Whatever the machines had stashed away, we want it.”

“Understood,” Kyle said, pushing back the memories.

Vincennes dug into his pocket and pulled out a folded slip of paper.

“Yarrow has the whistle for your team, but he’ll need the code for that part of camp—I forgot to give it to him. It’s a little different from the one the hunter teams use, so have him check it before he whistles anything.”

Kyle took the paper. He didn’t mind the whistle code nearly as much as some of the others. Barnes, for one, made no secret of his disgust with it. But even Kyle was starting to question its efficiency.

“Any idea when the radios will be up and running again?”

“About two minutes after we find out where the damn interference is coming from,” Vincennes said sourly. “And don’t bother volunteering to blow it up when we find it. I’ve already got a waiting list.”

Star tugged at Kyle’s sleeve, and he looked down.
What
does the noise machine look like?
she signed.

“It’s probably not an actual machine,” Vincennes said when Kyle had translated the question. “More likely just a high-voltage short-circuit that’s creating big, noisy sparks. Probably some big underground motor that was damaged enough to leak current but still has enough connection to a power supply that it hasn’t run dry yet.”

Star tugged at Kyle’s sleeve again.
Maybe it’s not an accident
, she signed.
Maybe the machines are trying to keep John Connor quiet
.

“Could the interference be deliberate?” Kyle asked Vincennes. “Star thinks Skynet may be trying to keep Connor’s broadcasts from getting out.”

“Oh, Skynet wants to stop his broadcasts, all right,” Vincennes agreed. “You can bet a week’s meals on that one. But you can’t do that by flooding the airwaves with interference at the source. Your jamming needs to be at the receiver’s end, not the transmitter’s. Or so the tech guys tell me.”

He looked out at the devastated landscape around them.

“No,” he went on. “As soon as Connor feels well enough to start broadcasting again, he will. Nothing Skynet does has ever stopped him before. It’s not going to stop him now.”

“I hope you’re right,” Kyle said, thinking back to that single broadcast that he, Star, and Marcus had heard back in Los Angeles. “The people out there need to hear him.”

“They will,” Vincennes promised. “Very soon.” He gestured at Kyle’s half-empty plate. “Eat up, and get to work. Connor’s not so weak that he can’t still kick your butt halfway to L.A. if he catches you loafing.”