True Freedom
By Moonraker One
CHAPTER TWO – Conflict of Interest
T-X Prime sat calmly, yet impatiently; she hated long flights. The HK taking the group of refugees to the main resistance base in Arizona had seen ten emergency flights out of the battlefield that night. One problematic flight involved a group of terminators attempting to rush the security team protecting the semi-hidden tunnel. The pilot looked back, for a brief moment, at his cargo; sixteen children, three adult refugees and three soldiers. Before turning his attention back to piloting the HK, it struck him that the dark-haired female soldier they'd just pulled from a downed enemy HK, seemed to be looking at the young children as though she were examining them.
"Is this your first passenger load?" T-X Prime asked, approaching the pilot.
He gave her the once-over. According to her armor, she was a private, which was just one rank below his. "No, private, this is my tenth," he answered. "Look, why don't you sit down? I'm sure you're tired after surviving an HK crash and two separate terminators guarding you."
"Not applicable," she replied.
He lowered his eyebrows as he carefully piloted the craft. "You don't have to be all formal with me, private. As long as you stay orderly I don't care." She took his advice and recorded it on her hard drive under the learning category. Taking a quick glance at the control panel, she recorded the information on the dials and noticed his flight patterns.
"I've noticed your piloting style," she explained, trying to be helpful. "You tend to put weight on the downward motions of the HK, and you keep the energy mixture on the low end, possibly thinking it spares more fuel. If you descend slower and put the energy mixture up high, you might burn off more fuel in the initial takeoff, but in a long flight like the one we're on, it will conserve approximately fifteen point seven six percent fuel over an estimated hour long flight."
Initially doubting her, he pushed the mixture control upwards to test her theory, and found out that the engine soon began to hum less and the ship's RPM gauge decreased, meaning that the fuel efficiency had indeed improved. He found it amazing that she could have known such facts. "Where'd you learn that information?" She wanted to say that she calculated it on a moment's notice, but knew that would possibly cause suspicion.
"I was a pilot once, and my commanding officer did the calculations." He accepted her story without a second word.
"You think you can fly this thing until we get closer? I'm getting kinda tired. Our destination is the primary resistance base in Arizona, the location is…"
She had an internal map of the entire world, so she already knew where it was. "Oh, I already know the location, sir." With a nod, he left the seat up front and sat down in the back to rest his eyes a bit. Taking a few steps up, she sat behind the main control station of the HK, and examined the panel. Quickly taking notice of a wire sticking out of the steering mechanism, she stealthily extended the needle-like nanotech injector out of her right index finger. She poked a tiny hole in the wire and injected nanites into the main computer of the ship. Once it covered the main control chipboard, she saw a translucent window pop up in her field of vision that had a remote piloting display, as well as four separate windows which represented what the cameras on each side of the HK were seeing. This way she could fly the HK without actually holding onto the half-wheel. Utilizing the craft's high-powered antenna, she logged into the main resistance mainframe using the ship's unique id and passcode, and downloaded to her own hard drive as much information as the HK had access to, which was less than ten percent of the network. Even still, the download took up most of the time of the flight.
Around the time that the HK was near the secure landing zone, she looked behind her at the pilot sleeping soundly on the floor of the craft. "Sir!" she yelled, getting his attention. Groggily he slipped out of the dream world he had been in and returned to consciousness. He quickly stood up and approached the pilot seat.
"Okay, you can go sit down, private," he offered, politely allowing her to return to the back where she sat in the same spot she had sat in before. As the HK began its final descent, and the landing gear lowered from the inside, the scene had been vastly different from how it had been at the battlefield. The machines had nowhere near enough influence in the area to attempt a massive attack on the central command station of the entire human resistance movement. As such, humans kept a never-ending vigilance for the area surrounding the massive central command post. The cold wasteland outside the thick barrier was a stark contrast to the bustling scenario of soldiers and civilians walking around inside.
Upon landing just outside the barrier, the pilot presented a series of identifications, and the passengers filed out of the HK under the protection of guards. A huge blast door provided the entrance to the compound. Once inside, T-X Prime was led away from the rest of the group, as she had the identity of a soldier. "Okay, Private Donnelson," one officer instructed her. "You will provide our leader with a briefing on the information you obtained about the new projects that Skynet has been working on." It was a short walk down the halls of the complex, and down the secure halls of the top-secret level. This floor had been shielded to disallow outside transmissions. There was more security here than at any other point on the resistance's defense grid. John Connor was the leader and as such, he had to be protected. It was his plans that had led them this far.
Near the door behind which the leader of the human race had his office, there were ten soldiers with two separate dog teams. The dogs, which always had been used to sniff out terminators, had never been known to make a mistake. T-X Prime saw them, and knew that if her cover dropped, she'd still have a eighty percent chance of terminating her prime target himself. She calmly approached the teams, with soldiers in front and behind her. She waited for the moment they turned on her. The dogs approached her, and carefully smelled her legs. One looked her straight in the eye.
But not a single one of them made a sound. It made no sense to T-X Prime; they considered her human.
"Sorry 'bout that, private," one soldier apologized. "We just had to make sure." Pushing open the door, he cried, "Sir! Got that soldier we told ya about!"
"Let her in," John offered, letting her enter his office. "Let me speak with her alone."
One soldier gave him a concerned look then shut the door. "Understood, sir!" T-X Prime, knowing the capabilities of her systems, estimated her chance of terminating John Connor at ninety-nine point nine percent. She would sit down, begin conversation, then once he was caught up, she would throw his desk aside and kill him by crushing his neck in her hand.
"So, Private Donnelson," he began. "You were part of a team that discovered information about Skynet's latest technological project?" As always, he had a packet of information about the said team long before she set foot in his office. He knew she had been taken hostage aboard an HK after the rest of the team died.
"Yes," she informed him. "The T-X Prime is quite possibly the biggest threat to the resistance that has ever materialized." She was talking about herself; it made her feel confused to have to conceal her identity and yet talk about it.
"Explain the capacities of this model."
"Well, it is a standard X series one-zero-one unit, except it has a lighter, stronger chassis, a great deal more strength, but the most powerful advancement of all, is its ability…to experience human emotions."
The last piece of information piqued John's interest. "THAT is an advancement," he said, wowed by the prospect. "To have an enemy that, for once, can hate us instead of blindly following orders. That would be dangerous." She estimated that this would be the single greatest point in conversation to attempt the assassination. She prepared to spring forth and kill him. The tension built.
But she couldn't do it.
It absolutely baffled her, although she did not let this show. There was just something she couldn't put her finger on that told her that it wasn't the right thing to do. Then, she began to think about what would likely happen. She began to wonder if the resistance would actually collapse if all her targets were to be killed. She began to think beyond the logic that every other Skynet-built unit was forced to comply with. She believed—against all rational statistics—that if she were to go about her mission, even if it were successful, the human race would only be further unified in their war against the machines. It meant that she would have to fail her mission.
"Private," John inquired, "do you know if this new model of the T-X is meant to go back into the past to terminate some prime target?"
"I do not know, sir," she lied, "as we did not have time to find out."
He clenched his teeth. "Damn." He shook his head; this was a conundrum. A terminator that could feel emotions was a dangerous weapon in the arsenal of a powerful computer network. Any number of different situations could suddenly be open to Skynet. On the other hand, it also posed a risk to the supercomputer: with human emotion and free will, meant a machine that could betray its creator. John realized that to take such a risk would have to mean that Skynet had exhausted all other alternatives. He shook his head. "You may leave now, Private."
Nodding, she left the office of the resistance leader. Soldiers walked lockstep with her to escort her to her resting chambers. All the way to her chambers, she wondered exactly what she would have to do in order to avoid going against the will of her creator. A few floors up from where she had been, she saw people in line for food. They were not as badly malnourished as the refugees in the areas more affected by machine control, but they suffered nonetheless. She hated the humans for what they had done to their planet. She hated the humans for what they did to each other. Even still, she began to question whether or not the question of whether or not they were worthy of existence was Skynet's to make.
If the humans survive against all odds, she thought, if they are able to withstand impossible situations and are able to turn the tide in a war in which they are hopelessly outnumbered and overpowered, there must be some sort of fate guiding them to win. And if so, it must mean that they are worthy of existence.
She did not like humans. But would hating them accomplish anything? These were questions she would have to ponder.
