Terminator Salvation: Cold War (37 page)

The HK’s advanced neural network processed the data in an instant. It swiftly assessed the value of terminating the fleeing aircraft versus the need to defend the crashed train. It was a simple calculation. The primitive aircraft and its pilot posed a minimal threat. Its primary imperative was to safeguard the uranium required by Skynet for future operations.

PURSUIT OF ENEMY AIRCRAFT: CANCELLED.

It switched off its targeting lasers and reversed course.

Geir watched the HK zoom away. An overwhelming sense of relief was swiftly followed by the terrifying realization that he knew exactly where it was going.

After Molly and the others.

He glanced at his watch.
11:10.
No way could the train robbers have made off with the uranium by now. They’d be sitting ducks for the HK’s plasma cannons.

There was only one thing to do.

Crap,
he thought.
I must be out of my mind....

He turned around and chased after the Hunter-Killer. Throwing caution to the north wind, he ignored the worrisome rattle coming from the Mustang’s failing engine and came up behind the HK, catching up with it before it even got back to the volcano. He switched on his landing lights, strobes, and nav lights in order to reclaim the machine’s attention. He activated the control panel’s built-in CD player and turned the volume up to the max. Wagner’s
Die Walkure
rocked the cockpit. The stirring music fitted his mood. His inner Viking surfaced.

“Don’t you turn your back on me,” he muttered over the blaring music. “We’re not done yet.”

He opened fire with the Gatling gun.

But still the HK ignored him, its cybernetic mind on more important matters.
Thunderbird
dipped beneath it, firing up at its vulnerable turbofans, while zig-zagging back and forth to evade the rear-mounted guns and cannons. The plane darted in and out, stinging and retreating like an angry wasp. Geir yanked the control stick back and forth, relying on his wits and reflexes, like a teenager fighting the toughest level of a particularly challenging computer game.

Only this game was for his own life, and the lives of the people he loved.

That gives me the edge,
he thought.
It has to!

A lucky shot sparked off the spinning blades of the HK’s starboard turbofan. It barely scratched the engine, but it did what it was supposed to: convince the machine that the annoying fighter plane constituted a legitimate threat, one that needed to be dealt with.

The machine rotated to face
Thunderbird.
Blinding floodlights bathed the interior of the plane’s cockpit with a harsh white radiance.

But Geir wasn’t ready to go into the light just yet.
Thunderbird
looped upward to get away. Steam hissed from its overhead engines. Plasma blasts seared the air behind it. The Mustang fled again for its life, but Geir knew it wasn’t going to get far.

End of the line,
he realized. He popped the canopy, which went flying off into the sky. A freezing gust of wind invaded the cockpit. He heard the HK swooping in for the kill.

‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ hit its crescendo.

“
Geronimo!”

Pushing against the gale, he threw the plane into a roll, flinging himself from the cockpit. At the last minute, his boot got stuck between the seat and the rail, but the fierce slipstream tore him loose. Gravity seized him and he plummeted toward the snowbound wilderness thousands of feet below. Freefall sent his heart racing. His aviator’s jacket, helmet, and scarf provided scant protection from the frigid wind that was biting into his bones. Forests, lakes, and mountains seemed to lunge toward him at a breath-stealing clip. It was a risky jump. There was a good chance that he’d break his neck or end up impaled on a treetop.

Not that he’d had much choice.

Above him, a plasma blast finally blew
Thunderbird
apart. A boom worthy of its name momentarily drowned out the wind rushing past as he fell. Chunks of burning debris rained down from the sky, chasing after the falling pilot, who raced them to the ground below. A pang stabbed him in the heart as the venerable fighter plane was lost forever. Unlike the fabled phoenix,
Thunderbird
would not be reborn from its ashes.

He held his breath, waiting to see if the HK would come after him next, but apparently the tiny figure had proved beneath its notice. Turning on its axis, it headed south once more—toward Molly and the bridge. He could only hope that he had delayed it long enough to make a difference. His fellow Resistance fighters were on their own now.

Give ‘em hell, chief.

All sense of falling vanished as he reached terminal velocity, roughly 120 miles per hour. He fought to maintain a stable arch position, his belly parallel to the earth, but vicious winter winds buffeted him, making it all but impossible to control his descent. He felt like a leaf being tossed about by a hurricane—or maybe an out-of- control Aerostat with a defective gyro.

Estimating his rate of fall, he waited until the HK was entirely out of sight.

Then he pulled the ripcord.

Even though he was expecting it, the chute’s deployment was a jolt. The canopy billowed above him, yanking him upward. His gloved hands tugged on the risers. He peered downward, trying to spot a safe drop zone somewhere in the forbidding wilderness. A homing beacon attached to the chute would help Molly and the others find him if he ended up breaking his leg or something, assuming he didn’t freeze to death first. Or get eaten by wolves.

Ebony shadows cloaked the forest, hiding its secrets. He searched in vain for an open clearing or meadow. A lake or pond even, if the ice wasn’t too thin. If his canopy got fouled in the upper branches of a tree, he was in for a beating, but maybe he wouldn’t smack into anything too hard.

I can do this,
he thought.
If I can survive fifteen years of Terminators, I’m not going to let a rough landing do me in. I still have a chance.

The flaming debris caught up with him. Red-hot shards of metal tore through the nylon canopy, shredding it to ribbons. A jagged fragment, twisted and charred beyond recognition, struck him in the leg. It burned and cut at the same time, digging deep into the muscle. He let out an agonized howl even as his controlled descent turned into a sheer terror dive.

This isn’t good.

Geir’s life passed before his eyes. He remembered fishing and hunting with his folks, back before Judgment Day. His father teaching him how to fly and—more importantly—how to land. Breaking out of that Skynet prison camp years ago. Hanging out with Doc and Sitka and the rest of the Resistance. Scoping out the Skynet Express. Ducking enemy fire as the Terminators chased them across the snow. Making love to Molly in their cabin in the hills....

Thirty-five years,
he thought.
Fifteen after Judgment Day.
He had lasted a whole lot longer than most of the world. Not a bad score.

The trees rushed up to meet him.

Molly finished rigging the explosives. Blocks of C-4, mined from her own backpack, were placed and wired all around the cramped service vestibule. She wasn’t the demolitions ace Tammi was, but she knew how to blow things up. Once triggered, the plastic explosives would tear the train apart from the inside out, scattering the precious uranium all over the Alaskan countryside. It would be lost to Skynet forever.

Works for me.

She connected the last wire and took a second to inspect her handiwork. Everything appeared in order. She tucked the detonator into her pocket. Turning to check on Sitka, she found the girl staring mournfully at Doc Rathbone’s body.

“Don’t look at it,” Molly advised her. “Don’t think about it now.”

Sitka wiped a tear from her eye. A backpack full of yellowcake rested on her shoulders.

“Should have paid more attention to his stories.”

“You listened to them. You know you did.”

Taking Sitka’s hand, she guided the girl away from the body toward the breach in the outer wall. Molly didn’t hear any snowmachines nearby. Now might be their only chance to get away.

She crept up to the gap, and raised a finger to her lips.

“Fast but quiet, you got that?”

Sitka nodded.

Before they could sneak out of the car, however, a harsh white light flooded the chamber from above. The light invaded the railcar through the cleft in the ceiling. The roar of powerful engines rattled the wreckage. Molly recognized the distinctive thrum of an HK’s turbofans.

Fuck! It’s back!

She tried not to think about what this meant for Geir. Chances were, the Hunter-Killer was responding to a distress signal from the train or the Aerostats. It had probably just given up on the fighter plane. That had to be it.

Sitka wasn’t so sure.

“Geir?”

“He’s fine,” Molly insisted. She forced herself to focus on their own predicament instead. How the hell were they supposed to get away, with that Hunter-Killer hovering right over their heads? She doubted that it would blast the uranium stores, for fear of destroying the valuable ore, but she and Sitka would be sitting ducks the moment they stepped outside the train.

They were trapped... again.

Molly fingered the detonator in her pocket. If she had to, she’d set off the charges with both of them inside.

If we have to die, we’ll go out with a bang.

Her biggest regret was that Sitka would never live to see a world free of the machines.

“This it?” the girl asked. She looked back at the C-4 rigged all around the railcar. She knew what their options were. “Game over?”

“Maybe,” Molly admitted.

They needed a miracle.

The A-10 Thunderbolt, with boxy, ungainly contours that had gained it the affectionate nickname “Warthog,” controlled like a dream. The single-seat jet fighter zoomed above the sprawling Alaskan wilderness. In the cockpit, Alexei Ivanov was impressed by the aircraft’s abilities.

There was something to be said, he mused, for soaring high above the Earth instead of being stuck in a smelly underwater tube hundreds of feet beneath the sea. Despite the urgency of his mission, he savored the privacy of the cockpit. After spending so much of his adult life crammed aboard boats with more than a hundred other sweaty bodies, it was good to be flying solo at last. Who could have suspected that—late in life—he would discover that he was a pilot at heart?

The A-10 had departed Canada the moment he got Losenko’s signal. The jet’s colorful decor attested to the defiant spirit of the Resistance. Painted flames and lightning-bolts adorned its wings and fins. A porcine snout and tusks embellished its nose. Stenciled silver Terminators, lined up along the plane’s side, recorded its kill count. Ivanov hoped to rack up a few more kills before the night was over. His trigger finger was itchy.

To hell with the Americans,
he thought.
Just give me a chance to trash some more machines.

He had been destroying Terminators for fifteen years now. It never seemed to be enough.

Pushing the Warthog to nearly 400 kilometers per hour, he reached the battlefield in less than forty-five minutes. His eyes quickly took in the scene. The shattered bridge. The derailed train at the bottom of the gorge. Dead bodies strewn across the snowy hills and riverbank. A Hunter-Killer hovering above the carnage, searching for fresh targets. From the look of things, the Resistance cell had already been slaughtered.

He caught brief glimpses of motion as unmanned snowmachines chased the survivors through the surrounding woodlands. He wondered if Dmitri’s new friend, the Eskimo woman, was still alive. Ivanov had never dealt with Kookesh directly, but he knew Losenko thought highly of her. Admiring the destruction of the bridge, and the crumpled Terminator train lying in ruins, he could see why.

Not bad... for an American.
Then again, she was a native of this land, so she likely held a few grudges of her own.

He didn’t wait for the HK to come after him. Swooping down from the sky, he fired the Warthog’s formidable Avenger anti-tank cannon. The aircraft was literally built around the Gatling-style rotary cannon, making it a flying gun. A burst of depleted uranium slugs strafed the enemy aircraft, scoring its armored carapace. For the moment, Ivanov avoided hitting any vital systems. He didn’t want to bring down the massive HK on top of any survivors who might be sheltering in the wreckage below.

A wry smile lifted his lips. He snorted derisively at his own restraint.

Since when did he worry about Yankee casualties?

The HK didn’t take his assault lying down. Abandoning its search for Earthbound saboteurs, the Terminator shot skyward on its impellers. It fired back with its plasma cannons, narrowly missing the swiftly moving fighter. A small flock of Aerostats joined the dogfight, trailing after the HK like baby birds. Ivanov paid them little heed. The unarmed surveillance drones were hardly worth killing.

The HK was another story....

He pulled back on his stick. The Warthog climbed to get out of range of the machine’s weapons, then circled back to confront the enemy. Besides its central gun, the A-10 was also armed with two Sidewinder air-to-air missiles. He locked the HK in his sights and unleashed the first one. The missile rocketed toward its target.

Just like firing a torpedo,
he thought.

Maybe this would be a short battle after all.

Such hopes were dashed when the HK blasted the oncoming missile with its plasma cannon. The Sidewinder exploded in midair, halfway between the two aircraft, too far away to do any damage.

Ivanov cursed under his breath. The shock wave jolted his plane. He dodged flying debris. Acrid black smoke obscured his view of the aurora overhead.

One missile... wasted!

Aerostats swarmed the Warthog, getting in his way. They threw themselves against his windscreen, bouncing harmlessly off the bulletproof plexiglass. He blew them apart with his gun, expending precious ammo. He scowled at the loss. The A-10 carried nearly 1200 rounds of ammo, but at seventy rounds a second that went pretty fast. At this rate, his gun would be empty in no time.