Disclaimer: I don't own anything, please don't sue me!
October 29, 2007 13:15 PST
Aboard Rozinante
John Connor had been in his quarters working with Cameron Phillips on his Terminator-hacking setup for almost an hour when his door opened. He saw Sarah Connor, Derek Reese and Dave Mustaine enter the room and Durandal projected his holographic avatar into the air. The AI broke the silence by asking, "Do you want the bad news first, or the worse news?"
Dave stood there impassively while the humans groaned and Cameron asked, "What's the bad news?"
"Harold Johnson is dead. A new type of Terminator killed him." Durandal projected a hologram of the endoskeleton of the erstwhile Jessica Parker. "On the bright side, Dave extracted the chip before I dumped the body into the Sun. Cameron, Derek, do either of you recognize this variety of endoskeleton?"
"That's a 900. Faster, stronger, more damage-resistant and more of a direct combat unit than a triple-eight. I never saw any of those with skin on them, only as pure metal," said Derek, sending Cameron an evil look.
Cameron shot him a glare, then added, "The structure points match that of a Model 777. I have never seen a Series 900 in an infiltration role, only in combat like Derek said."
John spoke up and asked, "That was only the bad news?"
Dave decided to contribute to the discussion and said, "The worse news is that it managed to get a locator signal out before I yanked the chip. Well, that and we have no idea what picked up the signal and where the interception would have occurred."
Sarah saw where the conversation was heading, and didn't like it. "SkyNet will know to send a Terminator here, even if it doesn't know where John is." She punched the bulkhead in frustration. "Damnit!"
Cameron decided that it was a good time to speak up. "Dave, did you encounter this new unit?"
"I did. It was unaffected by the small amount of fusion fire I was able to lay into it, and the taser I used merely caused it to twitch momentarily, then it broke free of me and killed Harold with a bullet to the brain. Once Durandal teleported it up to a holding cell, he hit it with massed fusion fire and it finally went down. I removed the chip, but not before it got the signal out."
John was not happy and decided to share it. "I just HAD had to get someone else killed, didn't I? First my father and the other victims of the first Terminator, then Todd and Janelle, plus Dyson and any other victims of the T-1000. Add in anyone Cromartie, Carter and the other one killed, and I'm a magnet for other people dying."
Cameron tried to comfort him by saying, "John, you didn't squeeze the triggers on any of those people. The various Terminators did, or the SWAT team in Miles Dyson's case."
John replied, "Maybe, but those people died because they were in the way to getting to Mom or myself."
Derek cut in with, "Get used to it, kid. You may not have been an asshole, but you were willing to spend lives if necessary."
"Define 'spending' lives."
Derek rolled his eyes and said, "If you knew that something was vitally important, you were known to send as many men as it took to secure the site. Did I mention that you also tried to capture factories instead of leveling them?"
Sarah asked, "How did that turn out?"
Cameron replied, "SkyNet was willing to destroy its own facilities to prevent the Resistance from using them against itself. However, in 2027 one Terminator factory was captured and put to use after the computer core was reprogrammed. The Terminators constructed from that point on were built with orange optics instead of red ones to differentiate them from SkyNet's agents."
Durandal decided to interrupt with a question. "Which one of you left 2027 first?"
"After the funeral, your girlfriend over there," Derek said, jerking a thumb at Cameron, "jumped back to 1999. A few minutes later, my team and I went to 2007."
John nodded, then asked, "Durandal, can you trace that locator signal?"
"Not from here, that would expose our existence to everyone. I've already written a small program for the purpose of finding SkyNet computers in this time. Dave, I'm sending it to you. Let me know when you're ready to go to Earth and upload it to the Internet."
Dave confirmed that the program was in his database, then said, "Ready when you are." Then he disintegrated in front of everyone.
"I'll probably be bringing him back in a few minutes once he tells me how things are going. However, there are some things you need to know."
Sarah immediately perked up and asked, "Such as?"
Durandal knew that she would be unhappy that he had kept things from them, but he knew it had to be done initially. He replied, "First off, Dave's mind was contained on the computer chips the engineers who rebuilt him had implanted into him. Thanks to that, he asked me to transplant him into a Terminator body based on the triple-eights. His materials are far stronger and somewhat heavier than the coltan alloy used to build Cameron and the others."
Sarah and John were shocked while Cameron was indifferent and Derek was angry. He asked, "How long until he goes bad and tries to kill us all, hmm? HOW LONG?!"
"He won't because while I send him missions, his personality dictates how he will act. Besides, neither he nor I have a reason to kill any of you."
John cut in with, "Fine, but that still leaves us with a potential unfriendly new arrival. Durandal, are the engines working again?"
Durandal checked his repair droids' progress and noted that the repairs to Rozinante were finally complete. "Yes, I can fly my ship, but keeping the populace from discovering us all will be difficult."
