Disclaimer: I don't own anything, please don't sue me!

A/N: Marathon/Terminator crossover AU, so the characters might be a bit off.

August 29, 2881 AD
Pfhor home system

Rozinante was quiet, given that the battle to defeat the Pfhor Empire had ended six hours before and the only two beings on board were Durandal, the A.I. that controlled the ship, and the 10th Mjolnir Mark IV cyborg that was originally brought onboard the U.E.S.C. Marathon. Durandal's holographic avatar was a lime green disembodied male human head with animations of electron orbital shells in place of eyes. The cyborg was unable to remember his original name from before his death and eventual conversion into a Battleroid, but had taken to calling himself Dave Mustaine after the front man from a 20th century Earth band called Megadeth.

Durandal was running diagnostics and dispatching repair drones as needed while Dave was asleep, exhausted from blasting his way up and down Rozinante to keep Durandal's core unharmed. The Pfhor had tried teleporting in all over the ship, but the defense drones eliminated most of them. Where the drones had failed, Dave was sent in to clean up. The battle above the aliens' homeworld had lasted for two months, while the battle on board had been happening intermittently for six years, depending on what Durandal had stuck his non-existent nose into.

Dave was dreaming about Earth, looking peaceful in his long-deserved sleep. His dreams presented him with two female figures and one male, refueling at a gas station in the desert of Texas.

The woman was looking on, wondering about her teenage son and the girl with him, as if something about her was… inhuman. She was also wondering about how she was to keep at least her son alive given that the world was to end in exactly two months. Her reverie was interrupted when a tall, muscular American male approached the gas station they were at and looked over at the boy.

The girl saw him and immediately whipped out her Glock 19 handgun, opening fire only for the rounds to spark off his head. The man, now obviously a robot, walked up to the girl and viciously backhanded her into the storefront window.

"Cameron!" the boy yelled as the woman ordered him to run while she held it off. "Mom!" was all he had time to say before his mother, whom the robot's targeting system identified as Sarah Connor, was beheaded.

Cameron, who was also a robot, had recovered and threw the male robot into a gas pump, causing it to explode. She turned to the boy and told him, "Get me the toolbox!"

He moved to comply, but the robot, now with it's flesh burned off, lunged for him and grabbed his throat. In a purely machine voice it calmly stated, "I never dismissed you from class, John Connor." Suddenly, John remembered the alias this robot had used to try to murder him in school: Cromartie.

Cameron hit the robot over the head with a metal bar, causing it to release it's grip on John and focus on her. It uttered "Cameron Phillips, time for the scrap heap!" as it overpowered her and grabbed her gun.

John had hidden himself in a Dumpster along with an illegally overpowered taser in case Cromartie came after him again. He was focused on getting out of the situation alive and with Cameron, readying the taser in case the robot found him. He only had to wait thirty seconds before it did, ripping the lid off the Dumpster in the process. John struck first, jabbing the taser in it's left optic and thumbing the fire button. Cromartie stood still for a few seconds, then fell over, temporarily deactivated.

Cameron brought the toolbox and removed the processor core from the robot. Enraged, John took the chip, placed it on the concrete, and smashed it with the tire iron from their car.

John then turned to Sarah's headless body, saw her head two feet away, then collapsed to the ground and cried. First, the machines had killed his father. Then they had killed his uncle two years before, and now they had taken his mother. The only one he had left was Cameron, and even though she may have been built to kill him, there was no one he trusted more.

She walked up next to him and remorsefully said, "I'm sorry, John. I wish it didn't have to happen this way."

He rose and asked her, "What now?"

She hugged him and whispered, "I'll take care of you, John. I promise." It was only then that John noticed she was crying too. Then she heard what should have been sirens, but sounded more like an alarm.

Durandal was sweeping the system with his sensors when the transmission from Earth arrived. The defense forces around the planet had detected a temporal distortion in Jupiter's orbit, but on the other side of the Sun. He set a course for the anomaly, arriving 11 hours later. Dave was still asleep, so Durandal investigated the anomaly himself. He determined that the anomaly was a wormhole to Earth's orbit, but he couldn't determine the other side's timeframe. When he tried to move in closer, it pulled Rozinante right in, sending Durandal and Dave back several hundred years into the past.

Unknown timeframe
Aboard Rozinante

Durandal started a quick diagnostic routine, searching for damage to his ship. There was no damage, but Rozinante was without engines and headed straight for Luna. He engaged the impact alarm, or as Dave called it, the "Oh God, oh God, we're all gonna die" alarm.

The alarm shattered Dave's state of sleep, prompting him to get suited up and talk to Durandal. Dave asked him "What the Hell's going on?"

"Let's see, we were opposite Jupiter investigating an anomaly in 2881, and now the engines are shot and we'll be crashing into Luna in approximately five minutes."

"Great, so where do I go from here?" asked Dave.

"I'm teleporting you and a stash of weapons and ammo to Earth in two minutes. Make sure your helmet comlink is working, accessible computer terminals are scarce there right now."

Dave picked up his .44 Magnum pistol, his Fusion Pistol, 30 spare magazines and 20 spare batteries. He had just finished getting ready when he felt the familiar sensation of dematerializing onboard Rozinante and rematerialized on Earth.