Klaatu Barada Nikto
A Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles
Fanfic
By Pjazz
2008
1
Cameron's systems came fitfully back online, glitches producing small bursts of static in her artificial machine mind. The explosion had caused a catastrophic system failure. Her CPU shut down automatically and emergency rebooted as it was designed to do. Her visual display was a sea of red warning icons, all blinking ominously.
Warning : Mobility 60 percent degradation.
Warning : Multiple outer dermal layer breach
Warning : Thermal overload 90 percent and rising
This last one caught her attention.
Her right arm was on fire, from the wrist to the shoulder.
She pushed herself out of the burning jeep, her internal gyro gimbals struggling to keep her from falling. Three human figures were running towards her. Combat graphics flickered into primary mode.
Facial Mapping : John Connor, Sarah Connor, Derek Reese.
Status : Allies
Combat command : Override
John Connor reached Cameron first and threw his jacket over her burning right arm, dousing the flames. Sarah Connor scanned the empty street.
"Who ever did this it looks like they're long gone. Probably assumed we're all dead. But the cops can't find us here. Not with the weapons we have stashed. Derek, get the Mercedes. Can she walk, John? We need to move. Now."
"Can you walk?"
"Yes."
"Good. Hold on to me."
The Mercedes AMG reversed toward them at speed, fishtailed round with smoke pouring from the tyres. John and Sarah bundled Cameron in the rear and slammed the doors.
"Go! Go!"
"Where to?"
"I'll give you directions on the way. Just get us out of here."
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The safe house was situated in the light industrial units flanking the busy freeway. Sarah had scouted it as a possible safe refuge within days of their arrival. It was smart tactics to be prepared for the worst. A large prefabricated building it had once housed a small toy manufacturing company that had gone bankrupt trying to compete with the Chinese. It stood derelict and abandoned.An ideal bolthole.
Cameron stood in the centre of the empty warehouse. Her smouldering clothes stripped away down to her underwear. The flourescent overhead lights revealed the extent of the damage.
It was bad.
Most of the living tissue on her left arm had been seared away by the fire, revealing the chromed gears and levers of her right forearm mechanism. But far worse was her shoulder which had completely ablated away. You could clearly see the silvery coltan armour with the working ball and socket joint beneath. The metal was slimy and oozed with her artificial blood. Elsewhere the damage was mostly cuts and grazes; myriad abrasions some of which gleamed under the lights with the underlying chassis metal showing through the dermal layer.
"Are you in any pain?" John asked her.
"No."
"Of course she's not in pain, " Derek Reese scoffed. "Her kind don't feel pain they only inflict it. Isn't that right?"
"Yes."
"Try showing a little compassion. She's on our side."
"Compassion? For that? Hell will freeze over before that happens. I've seen her kind massacre entire platoons without a shred of mercy. Fine men too. Your men. Under your command."
John didn't bother replying. It was an argument he was accustomed to from Derek Reese, the brother of his father, Kyle Reese.
"Can you repair yourself?" Sarah Connor asked. Her indifference to the terminator's plight was only slightly less pronounced than Derek's. She regarded Cameron as an asset. A disposable one if necessary, useful though she was at shadowing her son and keeping him safe. Ultimately only a few altered lines of binary code buried deep in her memory cortex made her any different from those who wished them harm.
"Yes. If I crank the juice."
"Crank the juice?"
"I will need to boost my CPU output beyond its design parameters. There is a 15.577percent chance my internal fuel cells will rupture and cause an explosion."
"Aww, too bad," Derek sneered. "But it's a risk I'm prepared to take."
Sarah Connor's cellphone chirruped. She glanced at the display. "Damn. It's Charley. I'd better take this."
She walked to a corner of the warehouse to give herself some privacy. Derek Reese watched with a mixture of irritation and jealousy. He hated to be out of the information loop, especially when Sarah's ex-fiancee was involved.
If he's so special how come he's not here by your side? The way my brother Kyle was. The way I am right now.
"I guess we're gonna be here awhile," he said gruffly. ""I'm gonna take a look around outside."
Cameron sat on some discarded wooden pallets. John carefully tended her wounds, cutting away the charred remnants of flesh. What blood there was coagulated quickly. The smell reminded him of deep fried calamari. Squid. He decided not to mention this.
"It could have been worse."
" My right arm is malfunctioning. Please bring me the toolbox."
Cameron selected a soldering iron and a sharp knife. She made adjustments to the long coltan rods that filled her forearm cavity. Satisfied, she flexed her hand. It moved normally.
"Better. How is my shoulder?"
John examined the exposed ball and socket joint, glistening wetly under the flourescent lights.
"Put it this way. No off the shoulder prom dress for you."
"Prom?"
"You agreed to go to the prom with Morris."
"Oh." Cameron was silent for a moment. Then: "I revolt you."
"What? No, you don't revolt me. This isn't your fault."
"But you can't pretend anymore."
"Pretend what?"
"That I'm something I'm not. You can see the scary robot underneath."
""I've always known you were a-- What you are."
"Why didn't you ask me to the prom?"
"Because I'm supposed to be your brother. That's not how it works."
"My plastic underwear fastenings have melted and are fused to my skin. Please cut them free."
"You want me to slice your bra off? What's the matter with you? What are you playing at? Huh? Is this all some elaborate truth or dare? Here." John pulled his sweatshirt over his head. "Put this on. Cover yourself up. I'm done with you."
"Yes. You're done with me."
Derek Reese returned. " I found this outside. What people throw away, huh?" He held aloft a large axe, swung it above his head and brought it down all in one swift motion. The axe head embedded itself in the wooden pallet Cameron sat on.
"Christ, man! Careful with that thing.You nearly hit her."
"No. If I wanted to hit her she'd know about it."
"Yes. And so would you."
Derek's eyes narrowed. "Is that a threat? Because one day you'll push me too far, and then we'll see."
"Yes. Then we'll see."
Sarah rejoined them, oblivious to the rising tensions.
"Charley has news. Agent Ellison had a showdown with Cromartie this afternoon. A dozen FBI agents are dead. Ellison survived. The place is swarming with Feds."
"What about Cromartie?"
"Got away. But he's exposed now. In the wind. He can't use his phony FBI credentials to track us."
"He will regroup. Reassess his options," Cameron said. "Most likely he will target Charley Dixon. He is the one solid lead to you. Cromartie will torture information from him then kill him. It is what I would do."
"Then he needs to be warned."
"Hey, he's a big boy. He can handle himself, " Derek said dismissively.
Sarah rounded on him. "Charley isn't a soldier. He's a medic. He saves peoples lives. He saved yours. Or have you forgotten already?"
Derek Reese grimaced and turned away. Sarah Connor was proving every bit as feisty as her reputation.
"So what do we do now?"
"We lay low. Sargission thinks we're dead. Good. Let him. Dead people aren't a threat. You two will go back to school. There's no reason to think he'll go snooping there."
"What about the turk?"
"We find it. And destroy it. Once and for all."
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2
High school. Math class. Two dozen students sit attentive yet aware the clock is ticking down to the lunch bell. Mr Hurd, the maths teacher, stands at the chalkboard. He is old, his white hair giving him a distinguished professorial air. A fixture at this school since before his pupils were born, his tweed jacket has leather patches on the elbows. A pair of spectacles dangle on a thin chain round his neck.
"Now, can anyone tell me the square root of 93?"
One solitary hand is raised.
"Yes, Miss Baum?"
"The square root of 93 is 9.6436507."
"Correct. To seven decimal places, no less. Well done, Miss Baum."
Cameron accepts the praise without expression. The cuts and abrasions from the the explosion have mostly healed. An LA Dodgers sweatshirt covers her still raw shoulder wound. A longer skirt than normal conceals the deeper cuts on her legs. She has a doctor's note, forged by John, that excuses her from phys ed.
"Moving along. Can anyone tell me the square root of 135?"
Again only Cameron's arm is raised.
"Anyone apart from Miss Baum? No?"
Mr Hurd sighed with exasperation. This year's intake was quite the most ignorant of basic math techniques since he'd begun teaching back in the Nixon era. He blamed modern technology. The ubiquity of calculators costing a few dollars from Wal-Mart. Why learn an increasingly arcane skill when you could Google the answer to every concievable question.
Apart from the extraordinary Cameron Baum, he thought. She is a prodigy. He had only taught one student with an inkling of her abilities before. An asian boy back in the 80s. He had gone on to crunch numbers for NASA.
There was commotion in the back row of seats. The usual suspects. The football players. The jocks in their stretched out letterman jackets and barely contained insubordination. Brutes. Probably all on steroids.
"Mr Boyd. You find maths equations amusing?"
"No. Yes. I mean, no, sir."
"Make up your mind, Mr Boyd. Which is it?"
"Well, it's kinda dumb, yeah? I mean, what use is a square root gonna be in real life? What's the point? Like, duh, use a calculator, dude."
"An intriguing argument, dude. Do you really mean to trust all life's problems to a machine?"
"Well... yeah."
A ripple of laughter circled the room. It was obviously a popular opinion. Oh man! Trust Big Bubba to yank Mr Hurd's chain.
But John Connor wasn't laughing. See if you still think that way after Judgement Day, jackass. When the machines you prize so highly start murdering you and everyone you care about.
The lunch bell sounded. Chairs scraped in unison as the students rose to leave.
"All of you, study pages 43 to 54. No excuses."
The students filed out.
"Not you, Miss Baum Stay behind please."
Cameron stopped and retraced her steps. She and John exchanged looks. But there was nothing he could do. He followed the rest out into the corridor.
Mr Hurd busied himself sorting papers into a leather briefcase. Cameron observed him carefully. She hoped she didn't have to kill him. Mr Hurd was good with numbers. He would've made a good cyborg.
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John Connor sat at a cafeteria table, barely registering Morris talking about the latest music tracks he'd downloaded or the names of the bands playing the local neighbourhood. He was concerned by Cameron's absence and what it implied.
"Hey, bro, here she comes now."
She weaved between the crowded tables and sat down with them.
"Yo, Cameron. High five!" Morris offered up the flat of his palm. Cameron hesitated. A cultural diagnostic went primary.
Gesture : Human greeting ritual
Response : Immediate. Tactile
Execute
Cameron slapped Morris's upturned palm. Hard. He snatched his hand away and shook it vigorously.
"Man, that smarts like a sonofabitch!"
Assessment : Disproportunate tactile force causes physical distress
Positive/Negative : Insufficient data
File experience for future reference
"What did Mr Hurd want?" John asked her.
"If I had picked a college. He said I should aim high. He knows the right people. He can insert words in their ears."
"What did you say?"
"That I would discuss it with Mom."
John relaxed. It would've been just like Cameron to blurt out Judgement day was less than 4 years away and college campuses would soon be radioactive slag.
"Sounds like the old goat is sweet on you," Morris suggested, still rubbing his bruised hand. "Trying to pimp you out to his buddies at CalTech or Princeton. Hey - you suppose they have all night keggers at Princeton?"
"What is a kegger?"
"And Mr Hurd's all right? He's not... John trailed off meaningfully."
"He is alive and functioning normally."
Good to know.
"Hey, there's a paintball tournament out in the valley this weekend. Bunch of us are hooking up. You wanna come?"
"Dude, you don't want to take my sister paintballing. Trust me. She's - uh - super competitive."
She'll massacre you all.
"Plus I think Mom's got some chores for us to do."
"I have a dead body to dispose of, " Cameron explained blithely. "The Mercedes owner. He is starting to putrify."
Morris stared at her. Then his face split into a huge grin. "You almost had me going there! Dude, she is so wicked out there! I am totally psyched taking you to the prom. You picked out a dress yet?"
"Nothing off the shoulder."
"Oh. Well, your perogative. Hey, there's a drive- in movie theater out in Reseda having a sci fi retrospective. They're showing 'The Day the Earth Stood Still.' Y'know, with the big kickass robot?"
Cameron looked at him. "Big kickass robots are tight."
Morris grinned. "Yeah. Klaatu barada nikto."
"What?"
"Line from the movie. This big kickass robot - Gort - is about to trash the world when someone says klaatu barada nikto. Means 'Big kickass robot, don't harm mankind.' And he doesn't! How cool is that?"
"Klaatu barada nikto," Cameron tried the phrase out. "That's tight."
"So you'll come?"
"Yes. I want to see the big kickass robot not trash the world."
Morris grinned with satisfaction. The prom. And a date. With Cameron. Man, life was sweet.
"Hey, dude," he said to John. "You asked anyone to the prom yet? Like maybe Cheri Weston?"
"She's just my chem partner. I barely know her."
He looked over to where Cherie Weston was sitting with three other girls, none of whom he recognised. They chatted away while Cherie concentrated on reading a textbook. John liked the way she hooked stray strands of hair behind her ear with a flick of her pinkie. It was the cutest thing. Presently the other girls stood up and left. John waited to see if they were simply getting fresh sodas, then got up himself.
"Nut up, dude. She's a fox. Ask her out," Morris advised.
" I'll just check she's got the latest chem notes."
Cameron watched as he approached Cherie's table. The smiles of welcome. Sitting opposite, their hands within touching distance, staring into her eyes.
"That smarts like a sonofabitch," she said.
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3
The safe house had undergone a rapid transformation. A quarter of a million dollars in cash earmarked to purchase the turk bought plenty of home comforts. The place was the size of a football field so it would never be cosy, but chairs, tables, cot beds, a refridgerator, laptop computers and - Derek Reese's personal favourite - a barcalounger with massage facilty gave it a homely feel.
There was tension in the air. The aftermath of a huge row between Derek and Sarah. It was Derek's turn for the food run, but instead he'd visited the scene of the Cromartie showdown. The place still sealed tight by armed feds he'd learnt nothing they didn't already know. And he'd exposed himself to unnecessary risk. A food mart was one thing; a crime scene thick with cops when you were a wanted felon quite another. Sarah had torn him a new one and he'd responded in kind. An uneasy silence ensued. A truce. Breathing space.
The argument hadn't improved Sarah's mood. She'd spent a stressful afternoon persuading Charley Dixon to abandon his home and take his wife into hiding, all because she had put him in harms way. Charley had wanted to join her but she'd nixed that idea. Alone might've been acceptable; Charley Dixon was smart, resourceful and John liked him very much. But his wife? How did that conversation go exactly?
Hi, I'm your husband's crazy ex. A cyborg from the future wants to kill you. Oh and the world ends in 4 years so you might want to rethink your pension plans.
No. Charley was better off keeping his distance. Through a friend he'd rented a villa at Zuma Beach and the Dixon's were in transit. They'd be safe there.
Zuma Beach.
The very name seemed from a different world. As a teenager she'd hung out at Zuma. Barbecues on the beach. Scoping out the surfer dudes with bodies as hard and streamlined as their boards. Making out in the sand dunes. Skinnydipping to banish hangovers. Would she still be that person if Kyle Reese hadn't changed her life? Those days her only dream was to save enough waitressing tips to trade the scooter for some real wheels. A classic Mustang. With chrome fins. Maybe a BORN2RUN plate.
Is a dream a lie if it don't come true?
Or is it something worse?
A Springsteen lyric. Anaheim Indoor Arena '88. Part of an ecstatic audience. Tickets courtesy of an older boy who treated her roughly but had money and his own apartment. Joshua? Josh? Jason? She couldn't remember. Lost in the past. Another world. Another person.
Only Cameron was immune from the emotional fallout. She stood sentinel at the doorway, watching for signs of activity in the dark and deserted industrial estate. There were none. The recession was biting hard. The nearest occupied warehouse was a half mile distant. Koreans. Importing some sort of exotic shellfish. Derek and John had scouted it. Heavy duty refrigeration units running night and day. The smell appalling. Even homeless vagrants gave this place a miss. Truly, they were off the radar.
"Nothing." John looked up from his laptop computer. "This guy Sargissian? Either it's an alias or he covers his tracks very thoroughly."
"Aren't you the one always telling me you can find anything and anyone on the web?" Sarah reminded her son.
"Not this guy. He's more elusive than Waldo."
Sarah leant over and pressed some keys. A window popped up. A jpeg image of a girl. Very pretty. Photographed staring off into the distance.
"Who's this?"
"No one." John snapped the laptop shut. He'd taken the picture with his cellphone then uploaded it. Dumb move.
"Is she your girlfriend?"
"No."
"Don't be embarrassed. What's her name?"
"Cherie Weston. My chem partner."
"She's very pretty."
"Cherie Weston is a fox," Cameron declared from the doorway. "John would like to ask her to the prom but he is too afraid she will say no."
"John Connor afraid? Of a girl? Hah!" Derek Reese snorted. "The first time I met you you were surrounded by women. Hands off, soldier, I was told; for the chief's personal use only."
Sarah folded her arms across her chest. "Really? I'm glad I managed to instill such a deep and abiding respect for women into my only son."
John reddened. Oh great. So I'm a womanising jerk in the future? What next - I sing and dance?
"Take my advice," Derek said stretching out on the lounger. "Tell this girl what you want. Don't take no for an answer. Women respect a firm hand."
"We do, do we? Why don't you take that firm hand of yours and start making us some dinner."
"Morris is taking me to the prom, " Cameron announced. "Not John. It doesn't work that way. He is supposed to be my brother."
"What?" Derek came off the barcalounger as if electrocuted. "Is this some kind of sick joke? Her? She gets to go to the prom? A machine?"
"Relax, man. It's no big deal."
"Me and my brother Kyle didn't go to our prom. Know why? Her kind had blown up the world. Our highschool was an emergency evac centre. No band played Amore. No girls in pretty dresses. No boys in rented tuxedos. No making out behind the bleachers. Just blood and vomit and fear. Mind numbing dread that the hunter killers would detect our infra red and send in an execution squad."
Derek's vehemence, his raw emotional distress stunned Sarah and John to silence. But not Cameron.
"You can still go to the prom. Take Mom. Your brother is dead. He doesn't count."
"WHAT DID YOU SAY, YOU METAL BITCH?"
Derek charged at her before anyone else could react. His forward momentum propelling her backwards. A combat program went primary. Cameron pivoted and used Derek's own kinetic energy to fling him sprawling across the concrete floor. The axe he'd found earlier was in touching distance. He picked it up and jumped to his feet. Pure rage fueled his attack. She disrespected my brother. She is going to pay. He swung the axe.
thunk!!
The axe head buried itself in Cameron's left shoulder. The armour held. Barely. The blade was dulled from age and neglect. Any sharper and it would've cleaved the cyborg in two.
Cameron yanked the axe free and hurled it the length of the warehouse, out of harms way.
"Stop it! The pair of you!"
But matters had gone beyond that. The simmering antagonism between them was out in the open now. Stark and unflinching. A malevolent genie released from its bottle.
Derek Reese leapt on the terminator's back, savagely twisting her head from side to side. But instant death for a human was mere irritation to a machine. She shrugged him off. He clattered against a stack of wooden pallets, smashing them.He broke off a piece of wooden slat, a row of rusty nails in the end. He slashed the cyborg's skull, the nails gouging deep tracks in her forehead and cheekbone. The flesh hung in ragged strips showing the metal skull plate beneath. An inch more and he would've taken her eye out. Good.
Cameron grabbed the weapon as he tried the same tactic again and tore it from his grasp. Unbalanced he fell. She snapped the wood in half, tossing it away. Up on his feet he charged again. Cameron met him head on. She thrust out her arms. Derek slammed into the wall, breath knocked out of him. And she was onto him now, relentless, hands reaching up to his neck and squeezing. She observed dispassionately the human's face turning puce as his pulse slackened.
"That's enough," Sarah Connor pressed the barrel of a sawn-off shotgun against the side of the terminator's skull. "Let him go or else I'll frag your silicon brain to hell."
Cameron slowly released her grip. Derek slumped over, coughed several times and spat up blood. Then he stood and threw a powerful right uppercut that snapped her head back. Servos whined to absorb the impact. He made to grab Sarah's weapon. She pulled it away.
"Let me finish it!"
"No. That's enough. John, take him outside."
"Mom, it's not her fault. She--"
"Outside, John. Now!"
Once they were alone Sarah again extended the shotgun tilting Cameron's head over at an angle.
"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't pull the trigger."
"I will not beg for my existence."
"Bad answer. Is your reprogramming still good? Or did the explosion mess with it somehow?"
"The binary code is uncorrupted. I have not gone bad."
"Then why were you about to kill him?"
"No. My CPU would have sent an abort signal before his expiration point."
"Didn't look that way to me."
"It is the truth."
"Truth. Lies. I don't think you know the difference. Or perhaps you just don't care."
"Derek Reese--"
"Oh I know. He rubs you the wrong way. I get it. Join the club. But if anyone here's going to bring him to heel, it's gonna be me. Not you. Understand?"
"Yes."
"One more thing. This Morris, the kid taking you to the prom. When he tries for second base - and he will, trust me, I've dated a time or two myself - you're not going to kill him. Or harm a hair on his head. Are we clear?"
"Yes."
Sarah Connor lowered her weapon and walked away. Cameron watched as she went outside.
"Klaatu barada nikto," she whispered.
THE END
According to Wikipedia the translation of klaatu barada nikto is- robot, don't harm mankind/humanity. Strange but true. And it fits nicely.
The Springsteen lyric is from 'The River'. Album download of same name.
The maths teacher Mr Hurd? Nod to Gale Anne Hurd, co-producer of T1.
Do I mean third base not second base? No idea. Cricket fan myself. We prefer to bowl a maiden over(!)
Thanks for reading. Check out my other T:SCC fanfics Cameron versus Dodgeball and Black Widow Rising.
Reviews welcome.
PJ