Trial By Fire ts-4 Read online

  “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.”

  The fireball that had consumed Skynet Central had barely faded away when Connor ordered his Resistance team in for search and clean-up duty. In the middle of all that barely controlled chaos, Star had been scooped up by the mess tent people and assigned to dishwashing duty.

  That job had lasted exactly two hours, the length of time it had taken Kyle to find someone to listen as he described Star’s skill at disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling firearms. The woman had taken Star to the armorer station for a test, and fifteen minutes later the mess people were back to looking for a new dishwasher.

  This morning the armorers were as busy as always, stripping, cleaning, and repairing the group’s impressive array of firearms. Kyle got Star settled behind her usual table and helped her get all her cleaning fluids and cloths arrayed in their proper places around her work area. He collected four backpacks and then, just because he didn’t feel right without it, also picked up a sawed-off shotgun. Slinging the weapon over his shoulder, he headed for the south checkpoint.

  Callahan and Zac were waiting when Kyle arrived, along with a smallish man Kyle didn’t recognize.

  “You Reese?” the man asked as Kyle came up.

  “Yes, sir,” Kyle said. “Sorry if I’m late.”

  The man grunted. “Bill Yarrow. Pass out the bags, and let’s get started.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kyle said again, eyeing Zac as he handed each of them a backpack. He hadn’t seen the thirteen-year-old since the day Zac and the others had walked out of the Moldavia Building. But the months he’d spent with Connor since then had clearly been good for the kid. Like Callahan, Zac was harder, leaner, and more muscular than he’d been back then. Better fed, too.

  “First pass will be to pick up the live ammo,” Yarrow said as he looped his backpack over one shoulder. “If we’ve still got space, we’ll go back and collect as much empty brass as we can carry. Clear?”

  There were three murmured assents.

  “Good,” Yarrow said briskly. “Let’s go.”

  “For me, it happened two years after Judgment Day,” Susan said, shifting uncomfortably in one of the plain wooden chairs that Hope had brought in from the kitchen to help accommodate the unexpected crowd currently standing and sitting around their living room. “There were half a dozen of the big walkers, the ones I found out later were T-400s, plus a couple of T-1 tanks that had come along for support. I was living in a sort of group house—it was the only building in our neighborhood that hadn’t fallen down or been scavenged for lumber.”

  Hope threw a surreptitious look across the room. Blair was listening closely to Susan’s story, just as she had Oxley’s and Lajard’s, an intense but otherwise neutral expression on her face. Barnes was listening just as closely, but his expression was one of outright suspicion.

  And every so often he turned that suspicious look toward Hope and her father.

  “At first I thought they were going to kill us,” Susan continued. “I’d heard the rumors that they were doing that in some of the other neighborhoods. But they didn’t. They just walked up to the house, and one of them put a radio up against the door so that I could hear there was someone trying to talk to me.”

  “That someone being me,” Lajard put in. “As I said, I’d been with Skynet for a year at that point. We needed a good metallurgist, I’d found Susan in what was le
ft of the university database, and sent a team out to get her.” He looked over at Barnes. “And for the record, the term Terminator originally meant that their job was to terminate the chaos and crime that had become endemic across the world since the war.”

  “The war that Skynet started,” Barnes growled.

  Lajard shook his head. “I’m not convinced of that.”

  “I don’t give a damn whether you are or not,” Barnes said flatly. “I was one of the people the Terminators were hunting. I saw what they did.”

  “And I say that all of that happened later, after the gangs ramped up and started terrorizing the rest of the populace,” Lajard countered, just as firmly. “Maybe Skynet just got tired of trigger-happy vigilantes wrecking its machines. Machines that were only trying to protect people.”

  “What about the prisoners in Skynet Central?” Barnes countered. “Or the ones in that underground facility, the place you claim you were working in? Connor said they were living in cages while Skynet did experiments on them.”

  “I never saw anything like that,” Lajard insisted. “Maybe Connor misinterpreted what he saw. Maybe they were refugees that Skynet had taken in.”

  Hope sighed. It was an argument that had been going on ever since the three scientists first arrived in town three months ago. Despite all the stories and rumors that had filtered into Baker’s Hollow over the years, Lajard stubbornly refused to believe that Skynet was actively and deliberately slaughtering the scattered remnants of humanity. He insisted that, even now, Terminator killings were either gang-related, self-defense, or rare and atypical accidents. In his view, all the anti-Skynet bias was propaganda driven by lies from dangerous malcontents like John Connor.

  Susan and Oxley weren’t as dogmatic in their support as Lajard was. Susan, in particular, seemed to straddle the line. On one hand, she agreed that she and the other humans working in Skynet’s underground lab had been treated quite well. On the other hand, though, she’d seen the Terminators react instantly and strongly to anything they perceived as a threat. For her, the question seemed to boil down to what exactly Skynet considered a threat these days.

  Most of the townspeople, with no direct knowledge either way, generally ignored the question. Whatever was happening in the world beyond Baker’s Hollow seemed distant and academic.

  Only it wasn’t. Not anymore.

  Hope’s father was clearly thinking along the same lines.

  “Whatever Skynet’s original plan might once have been is irrelevant,” he said. “The question is what it’s doing now. More specifically, what it’s doing here in Baker’s Hollow.”

  “The Terminators are here to kill,” Barnes growled. “Wherever they go, they’re always there to kill.”

  “That’s paranoid nonsense,” Lajard scoffed. “As long as it doesn’t perceive us as a threat, we’ll be fine.”

  “What kind of non-threat do you want us to be?” Barnes demanded. “You mean like we just sit back and watch while it tracks down and kills whoever is out there?”

  There was an uncomfortable shuffling of feet from the crowd. Hope looked around, studying the various faces, trying to gauge their moods. Those who’d seen the Terminators in action clearly weren’t thrilled at the thought of going up against them again. But they weren’t any happier with the idea of simply abandoning whoever was out there.

  “Who says they’re planning to kill him?” Lajard countered. “Maybe it’s a search and rescue operation. You don’t have any proof they’re trying to kill anyone.”

  Barnes snorted. “They have guns, right?”

  “So did the T-700s who were with us before our accident,” Lajard said. “So do you. So do half the people in town. In case you hadn’t heard, there are big, hungry predators prowling around out here.”

  “Sure are,” Barnes said. “And the worst of them are made of metal—”

  “Tell us about the accident,” Blair cut in.

  “There’s really not much to tell,” Susan said. “We were working at the lab on something called the Theta Project. We’d developed a new type of hip and lower spine system—new materials as well as new stance-maintenance software—and we needed to field-test it. The biggest question was how it would do on steep terrain, so the three of us and the prototype were loaded aboard a transport and flown up into the mountains about twenty miles northwest of here. We’d landed and gotten out, and the T-700s were starting to unload our equipment, when an avalanche came down and buried everything.”

  “We escaped most of it,” Oxley added. “But we didn’t have a radio we could use to call for help. Or any food or shelter, either. We hung around the site for a couple of days, but no one came.”

  “Eventually, we realized we were going to have to get back on our own,” Susan said. “We started hiking back down the mountains, but it was deep forest, and we didn’t have any maps. We got lost.”

  “Seriously lost,” Oxley agreed. “We were on pretty much our last legs when Susan spotted some smoke rising from a mountainside in the distance. We changed course and headed that direction.”

  “They nearly didn’t make it, either,” Preston put in. “One of our hunting parties ran across them thrashing weakly through a row of thorn bushes. All three were suffering from exposure and malnutrition.”

  “Most of that last part is a blur,” Susan admitted, a flicker of memory crossing her face. “At least, for me. I think it was a week before any of us could even get out of bed.”

  “Bottom line is that we owe these people our lives,” Lajard said firmly. “We’re not going to repay them by bringing destruction down around their heads.” He eyed Barnes warningly. “Or by letting anyone else do it, either.”

  “Fine,” Barnes said calmly. “We got the message. Nice meeting you all.” He stood up and headed for the door. “Come on, Williams.”

  “Wait a minute,” Preston said, jumping to his feet. “Where are you going?”

  “We’re leaving,” Barnes said. “You heard Lajard. He says we’re putting you at risk.”

  “Lajard doesn’t speak for the town,” Halverson spoke up brusquely, throwing a hard look at Lajard as he stepped away from the wall into Barnes’s path. “Anyway, we’re not sending you on your way until you’ve had some food and rest. We owe you that much.”

  “He’s right,” Preston seconded. “Let me show you to our rooms while Hope and I get something together for you to eat.”

  “My place is more comfortable,” Halverson said. “And Ginny’s already got food ready.”

  “They’ll be fine here,” Preston said, locking eyes with Halverson. “It won’t take long.”

  “They’re coming to my place,” Halverson said in the voice he always used when he’d made up his mind about something. He gestured to Barnes. “Come on—it’s a few houses down.”

  “Mayor?” Blair asked.

  Hope looked at her father, noting the familiar tension in his jaw. But he merely nodded.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Go ahead.”

  “Fine,” Barnes said, eyeing Preston closely as he gestured to Blair. “We’ll grab our stuff and be right with you.”

  They headed out, Halverson striding along in the lead. With the meeting clearly over, the rest of the crowd began to file out behind them. A minute later, Hope and her father were alone.

  “That might not have been a good idea,” Hope said hesitantly.

  “You mean letting Halverson push me around in front of everyone?” Preston responded, his voice tight as he crossed to the window and peered out. “That happens all the time.”

  “I was thinking Barnes and Blair might rather have stayed here with us,” Hope said.

  “They’ll get over it,” Preston said, still gazing out the window. “As for Halverson, for once he did exactly what I was hoping he’d do.”

  Hope frowned. “You wanted them to go with him?”

  “What I wanted was to be left alone for a couple of hours.” Preston left the window and headed to the corner where
he’d propped his rifle. “You remember that bridge I told you about a long time ago, the one that one of the summer kids and I built over the river?”

  Hope had to search her memory.

  “The one you made out of rope and a bunch of boards you swiped from the Pennering building site?”

  “That’s the one,” Preston said, nodding. “I think whoever’s out there has crossed that bridge.”

  “How would he know it was there?”

  “Only two ways I can think of,” Preston said. “Either he happened on it by accident, or else he’s the one who helped me build it.”

  “Whoa,” Hope said, feeling her eyes widen. “You mean some kid who visited here thirty years ago is back? That’s really... unlikely.”

  “Unlikely as in the scratch end of zero,” Preston agreed. “I know. And for the record, it was closer to forty years ago. But I can’t think of any other reason why those two T-700s would suddenly decide to head up opposite sides of the riverbank. Whoever they’re hunting must have gotten across the river, and that’s the only other place for miles where that’s possible.”

  “That assumes the bridge is still there, of course,” Hope warned. “Rope bridges and mountain winters don’t exactly go together.”

  “Which is why I want to go up there and take a look,” Preston said. He checked his rifle’s magazine, then headed for the door.

  “What if the Terminators are waiting?” Hope asked, scooping up her bow and quiver and hurrying to catch up.

  “They won’t be,” Preston assured her. “The bridge comes off a narrow path at the bottom of a steep defile. Even if the machines know where it is, they’re not going to be able to get down there without dumping themselves into the river. Best they can do is look down on it from above, and even that’s iffy.” He stopped, eyeing her as she came up beside him. “Where exactly do you think you’re going?”

  “With you,” she said. “First thing you taught me was that the forest can be dangerous, and that you don’t go out there alone.”