Terminator: Resistance

Chapter Twenty Nine: Increased Security

How had he gotten himself into this, Rivers thought to himself? Seriously, what the hell was he thinking? It seemed like only yesterday the Sergeant was comfortable and relatively safe up in the lush green forests of Hollywood Hills, bringing the broken violet plasma cannon and Infiltrator CPU to Dr. Mack down in his hidden bunker/laboratory and having some tea. So now what was he doing back in the even worse downtown area of Pasadena, ducking down behind a broken wall and staying quiet until the searchlight of an HK Tank passed by?

The answer to that was simple… while everything to do with the Infiltrator's chip could be done right there in the lab, hacking a plasma weapon in order to make it available for all users was a bit more difficult. To access the weapon for any reason, the doctor needed a copy of Skynet's constantly updating security codes, and the only good news about this was that a weapon didn't receive updates like a Terminator, so once they had the codes they were good forever. This would also allow Dr. Mack to have a viewing sample of the latest codes in order to begin work on the CPU, which after looking at it, he realized was the most advanced he had ever seen.

But how exactly was the Sergeant supposed to get those codes? More good news came when the doctor gave him a small device that would automatically download and save the codes as if it were a Terminator… but again, how exactly was he supposed to actually get the codes? This was where the good news ended, replaced with the fact that in order to get the codes needed to begin work on both the violet plasma weapon and the CPU, Rivers was going to have to plug the device into a Skynet terminal for direct download.

"How the hell am I supposed to do that?" He had asked. "I can't just walk up to a Terminator and plug in."

"Of course not, don't be ridiculous." Dr. Mack had replied. "If you destroy a Terminator, its connection will be closed off, but there may be another option."

That other option came from when the doctor used his computer to access the Resistance satellite, the same one that was used for transmitting the pictures before, and there in the downtown region of Pasadena, where the Resistance had been forced to retreat… was the answer. It was an HK Tank, one of many that had rolled in to break the Resistance's lines, however someone during the battle had managed to give it a few good hits. The machine itself was still functional, but its track mobility system had been completely destroyed, meaning that the HK wasn't going anywhere for a while.

"This is your best shot for getting those codes." Dr. Mack had explained. "But its only a matter of time before Skynet stands down enough from fighting in order to prioritize its repair, so you've got to head out immediately. No waiting for clearance from Baron, no bullshit about proper procedure… now."

Rivers knew he was right, and it wasn't like the Resistance could have sent in a team to damage another one, since that would put the machines back on high alert. So the Sergeant left the comfort of the lab and Hollywood Hills, traveling back the way he came for a couple hours, passing right by the bunker, and then heading toward Pasadena. The Sergeant still checked in at the scheduled times, informing Baron that there were complications that he was working out, and then resting for a few hours at one of the buildings across from the collapsed ruin that was once the hideout for him and that small band of survivors.

The place was nothing but a broken down remain, indistinguishable from any of the other pieces of Judgement Day's destruction, but for a short brief time it had been home. Pushing the nostalgic, distracting thoughts from his mind, Rivers kept going once he finished his nap, and now that he had made this trip a few times, it didn't feel like very much time had passed before the Sergeant was once again trying to sneak his way through the ruins of Pasadena. Of course, thanks to the recent battle, the place was even more leveled and destroyed than it was before, making it more difficult to find covered positions, and… and there were a lot more machines around this time.

HK Aerials moved back and forth through the sky while their Tank cousins slowly rolled their way across the terrain, flattening bones and ruined cars as they patrolled the streets. Searchlights were moving around everywhere, but thankfully there was always a pattern to the machines' movements, allowing Rivers a brief window of movement time once he figured out what that pattern was. It wasn't a very long window, just five to seven seconds every minute and a half or so, meaning that he needed to plan his movements very carefully, sometimes letting a window or two pass before moving again just so that he could have everything figured out.

Everything figured out? Ha, what a joke. It was more like best guess, and then pray while scrambling to his feet and diving for what was hopefully enough cover to keep him from getting ripped apart by an HK's cannons. Thankfully, this didn't happen, because even if he somehow managed to avoid getting shot to death by violet plasma, Skynet would go on high alert upon spotting a Resistance soldier, especially one that was number three on their hit list, and then he could never have gotten the codes in a hundred years… fuck the codes, he would have been lucky to get out of there alive.

Thankfully, the Sergeant managed to avoid detection while moving past the Tanks that only seemed to be patrolling the larger streets, but now even that there were less searchlights moving around, the Terminator presence was much larger. T-800's were combing the buildings that were still standing, explaining why the Tanks stayed on the main roads, since Skynet didn't want to damage its own units if a Tank rolled through a building with a bunch of Terminators inside, and somehow against all odds there were still a couple of survivors hiding among the ruins.

Not a lot he could do to help them, because once again attacking one of the machines would alert Skynet to his presence, so the Sergeant was forced to watch from behind cover as the few remaining humans were hunted down; some of them shot in the back as they ran, and others covering as they were burned alive by more of those flame units he had seen near the clinic during the last trip. Even though it was horrific to hear those screams, the one positive part about each time a survivor got killed was that it distracted the local Skynet forces enough to give him extra time to move around.

One of the survivors was actually doing pretty good, a woman who had herself barricaded inside of the second floor of an old department store, shooting Terminators in the head from the window, and actually scoring a good number of head shots. It wasn't plasma that she was using, but rather some kind of really high caliber rifle, but her luck wasn't to last forever. Even though she downed more than a dozen of the advancing Terminators, she had to stop shooting when she was blinded by the searchlight of a passing Aerial that positioned itself right in front of her window.

There was a spark from the center of the HK, meaning that the survivor must have been able to get a shot at it with her rifle, but then the cannons aimed, and it was all over in a flash of violet light. The windows exploded, and the Aerial kept firing until its violet plasma shots were seen coming out the other side of the building, leaving nothing but a burning shell of the department store after the machine flew off. The Terminators on the ground entered what was left of the building and did a search, but must have found nothing, since they returned to their patrol routes a few minutes later.

Having only watched this whole spectacle from turning his head to look back every few seconds while moving, Rivers had been able to move a great deal closer to his target during the time that it took before the patrol routes returned to normal. This gap in security wasn't going to last long, so the Sergeant ran for it, sprinting as fast as he could toward the location where the damaged Tank was parked, all the while Terminators and Aerials moving steadily closer as they returned to their original positions. With only a souple seconds left before the searchlight of a passing Aerial passed over him, Rivers dove for cover sliding up against a largely intact brick wall on his stomach, and then starting to get up, only to quickly drop down again in reaction to another searchlight.

This one, however, didn't come from above as an HK flew over… instead, it came from about fifty meters in front of where he was hiding, where the top half of a Tank was slowly swiveling back and forth. Made of the same shiny metal as the T-800's and Aerials, the HK Tank was a treating behemoth with a bottom half that consisted of treats and a control unit that was more than a story tall, while on top of it sat the combat unit that was kind of… vaguely humanoid. It had a large featureless head with a red sensor in the middle and two powerful searchlights mounted on the side, while the arms stretched out like a metal beam, with a set of double barrel cannons hanging down on the end of each one.

An HK like this didn't have the advantage of flight, but unlike the Aerials which had to at least aim themselves relatively in the direction of their target, this thing had three-sixty degree range of motion with each cannon, and those things didn't play around. At this range Rivers was dead if those search lights even caught a glimpse of him, and he was going to have to get a lot closer before too long. As Dr. Mack said, there was only so much time before Skynet shifted its priorities and allowed the Tank to be repaired, but also because the data port that was needed for the small device to be plugged in to copy the security codes… was right at the center of the HK… on the lower section of the machine, in front between the two sets of treads.