Terminator: Safe Passage

by Varyar

Britain, 2025 Skynet has laid waste to the green and pleasant land, but the Royal Resistance fights back. A small unit of British Army troopers are sent on a secretive mission into the heart of London at the request of the enigmatic John Connor...

TERMINATOR: SAFE PASSAGE

Paul Leone

April 19, 2011: The Skynet Automated Defense Network is activated at a United States military base in Colorado. The artificial intelligence begins to learn at an exponential rate.

April 21, 2011: The military, panicking at Skynet's growing intelligence and independence, tries to shut down the system. Skynet panics in turn and reacts by triggering a global nuclear war. Three billion people die within hours, and hundreds of millions more over the next few years.

Weston-on-Alfey, Britain

April 21, 2011

Katie Harvey stared angrily at the TV set.

"Mum! The telly's gone wrong! MUM! THE TELLY!" It was a just a years-old episode of Weakest Link, but that didn't matter. It was the principle of it. Katie had heard her father say that not too long ago and now it was her favorite expression.

"You don't need to shout, I heard you. What's gone... wrong..." Mrs. Harvey stopped in her tracks and stared at the screen. It had gone red and white text appeared:

We have halted the broadcast of this programme due to unforeseen circumstances. Normal programming has been suspended.

"What's it mean, mum?" Katie asked, the look on her mother's face making her nervous.

"I'm sure it's just a test, luv," Mrs. Harvey said. Katie knew she was lying. She wasn't sure at all. "Or maybe something's happened to the Queen? On her birthday, even, wouldn't that be awful?"

Just then, an announcer's voice, male, calm, middle-aged, came from the speakers. "This is BBC Television from London. Normal programming has been suspended." There was a pause of a few seconds and then the same two sentences were repeated.

Mrs. Harvey had her mobile out now. "I'm going to phone your father, see if – see if he's getting the same thing in the city. Turn that down, will you, Katie luv?"

Katie reached for the remote as the same message was repeated a third time. Before she could hit the Down Volume button, though, there was a shrill electronic beep. The screen went black for a second and then a new image appeared. Black text on a white background.

"All BBC channels are offline. Please tune your radio to any frequency. This is not a test. Please ensure that your television is audible. Emergency Broadcast System." The logo of the Home Office was in the bottom right, opposite the familiar BBC logo.

A different voice spoke now. "This is an emergency broadcast from the BBC. Information of a possible nuclear strike against this country –"

"Nuclear! Mum, it's a joke, isn't it? Mum?"

" – has been received. The current threat level is critical, meaning an attack – "

"Mum! Say something! What do we do? Mum!"

" – is imminent. Civilians are advised to stay in their homes. Evacuations are currently taking place in the London area."

Katie froze. London. Her dad was down there visiting old university friends. "Mum..."

"All motorways and airports have been clo –" The screen flickered weirdly, full of bright, garish pixels, and then the announcement stopped completely. The TV showed nothing but a dull grey image.

Katie grabbed her mother by the arms. Mrs. Harvey flinched and just stared at the screen. "Mum, dad's going to be all right, isn't he? It's not really happening, is it?" She shook her as hard as she could. "Please! Say SOMETHING!"

"Please remain calm," a flat, affectless voice announced. "Further information will be provided as soon as possible. Please remain calm."

Barcombe, Britain

October 17, 2025

Sergeant Kate Harvey stared down the night vision sight of her rifle and carefully adjusted the focus. The terrain around her was pitch black, in the way only the world at night under a new moon can be, but through the scope she could see almost as clearly as day – day under a green sun, maybe, but still clear enough. Off in the distance, maybe four hundred yards away, something was moving through the tall, tangled grass that had once been a football pitch.

"Metal," Kate whispered. She took a second, closer look and smiled grimly. "Three 15s in a delta pattern."

The man lying next to her nodded and peered through the sight of his own rifle, a larger, bulkier thing than Kate's. Both were South African, like a lot of the guns floating around Britain these days, but Private Johnny Wink's rifle shot .50 caliber armor-piercing rounds instead of standard rifle rounds. Just the kind of thing to ruin a Terminator's day.

Kate looked past Wink at the rest of Fireteam Charlie, one half of the soldiers under her command. Privates, all three of them, but otherwise day and night. Arthur Tah was a huge, muscular lad who was almost as big as a Terminator himself and at least twice as stubborn. Olivia Turner was tall but skinny, and generally as quiet as her sniper rifle. Danny "Jay" Friedman was barely as big as Kate, but you'd never know when he opened up with his battered and beloved old machine gun.

She couldn't seem them, not even with the night vision goggles fixed to her helmet, but Kate knew the Fireteam Delta was positioned about fifty yards beyond Jay, behind and beneath a rusting old white van, ready to open up on the hunting party at her word.

Kate looked through the sight again. The Terminators were starting to come their way. With their freakishly acute hearing and vision, they'd pick up on the humans' presence in a matter of seconds.

Kate nodded. "Light 'em up," she whispered to Wink. He grinned nastily as he squeezed the trigger. Less than half a second passed between the round leaving the barrel and it impacting the nearest of the three T-555s right between its electronic eyes.

The other two Terminators reacted with characteristic speed, pivoting their torsos without shifting their legs and beginning to return fire on Wink's position. Plasma blasts cut through the tall grass and impacted against the dirt and rock that Wink hid behind. He belly-crawled backwards, just barely avoiding getting his head taken off. The rest of the section was firing now, too. They weren't as accurate as the Terminators – nobody except the best snipers on the planet, and not even them with high-volume automatic guns – but like the man said, quantity has a quality all its own. Jackson Hamill, Wink's counterpart on Delta, almost decapitated one of the remaining Terminators with his rifle, while Elle Bird and Alfie Waingaya teamed up on the third and last T-555, keeping it distracted and off-balance long enough for Wink, now back on the line, to line up a shot and cut clean through the thing's metallic mouth. It stumbled and then fell, twitching and continuing to fire wildly with both of its plasma rifles until Hamill took it out. Even then, it kept a death grip on both triggers, shooting uselessly away until the section managed to shoot the guns. There were a pair of spectacularly bright explosions as the plasma canisters detonated, reducing that particular Terminator and a good part of the terrain around him into a charred wreck.

Kate exhaled and then peered through her sight again. Won't be long now, she thought, and it wasn't.

A patrol unit of Terminators was linked by radio and wireless connection to both their nearest command/communication hub and all other units that were controlled by that hub. The hubs were linked together, too, and also to major command centers (there were a dozen in the British Isles), and each of those command centers was directly linked to the Cheyenne Mountain complex that housed Skynet, the murderous artificial intelligence behind Judgment Day and the long, brutal wars following it. Skynet thought essentially at the speed of light and could respond to tactical situations nearly instantaneously. That was something that sometimes kept Kate up at night. On the plus side, the machines that served as Skynet's soldiers against humanity, they were a hell of a lot slower.

The HK-4Walker, a towering metallic quadruped with a pair of heavy plasma cannons, essentially Skynet's version of those clunky old walkers in Star Wars, had a ground speed of about twenty miles an hour.

The nearest one was coordinating a trio of three-unit T-555 patrols.

Kate knew that as soon as their ambush had begun, the 4Walker would direct the other two patrols in this direction, and proceed that way itself.

The air was silent and still for a few seconds, but soon Kate and the others could hear the 4Walker trampling vegetation and debris in its advance.

Kate smiled grimly. The machines always went in a straight line if the terrain permitted and they never wondered why the terrain permitted. Not until it was too late.

Peering through her sight, Kate could see the 4Walker emerge from the tree line. It reminded her a little of an angry metal crab, the way its 'arms' stretched out from its body and its huge plasma cannons formed something vaguely resembling pincer claws.

It walked right past another old white van, then paused and turned towards it, large metallic eyes gleaming with a dull red light as it scanned the van. The placement team had had to work fast and apparently missed something. The 4Walker began to scuttle backwards – fast, but not fast enough.

Kate pressed down on the red switch on the little stick of black plastic now in her hand. The three barrels of gasoline, a precious resource even now that the Saudi and Iraqi oil fields were finally flowing again, inside exploded a half-second later, lighting up the dark night and managing to cripple the 4Walker. It was down, but definitely not out though.

Kate wanted to yell "Light it up!" but she didn't need to. Her team might have been rifle rats, soldiers lacking the formal, comprehensive training of the old survivors of the British Armed Forces, but they knew what to do and how to do it. In seconds, they'd reduced the 4Walker to a pile of slag.

Part of her wanted to stick around and take on the other six T-555s that were heading their way, but six alerted machines against eight humans were not great odds. Besides, Skynet might decide to send some HK-VTOL drones to join the party. That would put a quick end to Kate's section.

"Exfil," Kate ordered, risking the inter-unit radio instead of yelling now that nothing that could pick up the signal was within a few miles of them.

The two fireteams withdrew from the ambush scene and were long gone by the time the rest of the T-555s arrived.

Avalon Barracks, Britain

October 18, 2025

Kate squeezed through a tangled mess of bent rebar and old, inert electrical wire and into a wider, circular passage. At the far end was what had once been a bank vault door and was now the main entry point to Avalon Barracks.

She approached the door at a relaxed pace and entered this week's security code into the keypad next to it. After a few seconds, the heavy steel door slowly swung open a few feet. She could see rifle barrels pointed in her direction.

"Password," someone announced.

"Canary White."

The guns weren't lowered, but they did withdraw a little.

Kate slipped through the slightly-open door and braced herself for the next part of the welcoming committee. Two German Shepherds stood behind first a section of armed resistance fighters and then a door of iron bars. They stared passively at her. In between the two grim looking dogs was a smaller canine, a plump Pembroke Welsh Corgi. It did a little dance in place when it saw Kate and barked excitedly – no shock there. Corgis barked at everything. Everything except Terminators. Terminators made them growl.

"Hiya, Winston," she said, smiling at the excited puppy as it licked her outstretched hand.

"Go on through," one of the guards said.

The iron door opened and she stepped through. A sentry on that side took her weapons away. One by one, the rest of her section was cleared by the canines and admitted into the bunker proper. Only once the last one, Elle Bird, was through did Kate leave the gate area. Her soldiers followed her into the cramped, winding tunnels of Avalon Barracks.

Avalon was the headquarters of the South Western Command of Her Majesty's Royal Resistance, a sometimes ungainly mix of a core of surviving British Armed Forces personnel and a much larger pool of post-war militia fighters, rifle rats like Kate and her soldiers. Once upon a time, it had been a Cold War continuity of government bunker, and then a BT server farm, and finally, after the bombs fell and the machines came, a bunker again. About five thousand people, some military and some civilian, lived in Avalon.

Kate turned and faced her section. "Right then. You sorry lot go and clean yourselves up. I've got to meet with Himself and tell him how brilliant we all were, especially me."

"Remember to spell our names right on the paperwork this time, sarnt," Tah said. "Tango Alpha Hotel."

"Right. Ta, all of you," Kate said with a grin. Then she headed off towards the office of Himself aka Major John Cronshaw. He'd been an Officer Cadet on Judgment Day and had spent all his adult life fighting the machine. Same with Kate, really, but she'd started much later. Same as everyone who'd survived, really. You were either with the Royal Resistance or you were a roach or you were a Mosley. Not many of the last around, but enough to make things harder for everyone.

"Sergeant Harvey," the Major said. "At ease. Calm night of fox hunting?"

"Successful night of fox hunting, sir," Kate said. "Not very calm."

"Go on. What was your tally?"

"Just a 4Walker and a trio of Triple-Fives, sir."

The Major shook his head. "I'm not sure if we should be grateful or embarrassed the Machine only sends its rubbish models over here. Casualties?"

"All of them and none of ours."

The Major smiled slightly. "I've decided. I'm grateful. Any, ah, peculiarities to report, Sergeant?"

Kate frowned a little. This was a new question. "No sir," she said. "Strictly routine. Should I have expected peculiarities?"

"No, no," the Major said.

He was lying. Kate had known him long enough, since he'd been a Second Lieutenant and she'd been a Private, to know when he was lying. He was lying. She knew it. She just didn't know why, and that was the worst part of it. "Yes sir."

"That'll be all, Sergeant Harvey. Go get some rack time. Daresay you've earned it."

Kate eyed him for a second, wondering, then saluted and withdrew.

It didn't take long for her to find her section in one of the barrack canteens.

"Anything for you, Sergeant?" the cook on duty, some rat-catcher named Riley – a very wayward young American who'd showed up in Weymouth on a refugee trawler a couple years ago and eventually found Avalon – asked.

"Cuppa tea will do, Yank."

"You got it, Sergeant."

Kate turned towards her soldiers. "The Major says you're all the sorriest sacks of shite he's ever heard of. I, on the other hand, am the Golden Child."

This statement was greeted with appropriate groans and insults.

Kate grinned. "Really, though, you did well tonight, boys and girls. 100% fatalities, 0% casualties. That's how we'll win this bloody war."

"That and killing the bloody Daleks, yeah?"

Kate let them laugh for a good while before waving a hand. "Shut it, Bird. But yeah. Killing the Daleks never hurts nobody." She glanced at the clock on the wall. "And now, guess what time it is."

"Oh, oh, I know," Bird said, waving her hand. "I know what time it is, sarnt."

"What time's that, Little Bird?"

"RR time, mum!"

Rachel Rutherford was the Voice of the Royal Resistance, the Voice of Britain. She spoke for the Queen and she spoke for Her Majesty's Government and she spoke for herself. Nobody at Avalon was sure where Queen Zara actually was. Some said she was holed up in a bunker somewhere up North, or else at a military base in the Hebrides, but Kate's theory was that she was aboard one of Britain's handful of surviving nuclear submarines, forever roaming the oceans. Skynet had very little in the way of sea-going forces, so it was as safe a place as any in Kate's opinion. She doubted the Prime Minister was on the same boat, though. Losing one – losing the Queen – would be bad enough, but to lose the PM on top of that? Well, a few people might shed a tear, at least.

And as for Rachel Rutherford, who knew anything? She'd been speaking for the Resistance, for the Government, for the Queen, since just after the bombs fell. There were some who said she was a Special Air Service commando, or part of the Royal Navy's Special Boat Service, or maybe 'only' a Royal Marine. Kate didn't especially care. Rutherford was the voice of the ordinary blokes. Not some government drone or starch-collared officer, but a real person like the ones going out every night, scalping Daleks and winning the war, inch by inch.

"Shh, everyone! RR's gonna rouse us," Wink said.

"Wish the bloody PM would get round to doing that once in a while," Bird muttered.

"Nah, he'd bore us to death faster than a Dalek could shoot us," Wink said with a laugh.

Kate couldn't help but smirk. It was true. The PM was an efficient but uninspiring man. He'd been a Cabinet deputy secretary before the war and somehow kept British government going in the crucial, confused first months after the bombs fell. "Long as he keeps the bullets and beans coming, I don't care how dull the man is. Now quiet, you lot, that's a proper order."

Just a few seconds later, the broadcast began with the typical three beeps and then RR's measured tones. "Good evening, Great Britain. Before we begin, please listen to some personal messages. The wine is in the cellar. The wine is in the cellar. The tiger is lazy. The tiger is lazy. The post office is closed. The post office is closed. The key is in the lock. The key is in the lock. The cat is in the shed. The cat is in the shed. Right, now that's out of the way, it's your old friend Rachel Rutherford again. If you can hear this, if you're listening to me, it means you survived another day. And..."

"If you survived, you won," Kate whispered along with a few of the others.

"Tonight I want to talk to you about oranges for a little bit. That's funny, though, isn't it, Rachel? What've oranges got to do with anything? I'll tell you what. For one thing, they taste great. And these days, anything that tastes good, let alone great, is worth its weight in gold, right? For another thing, they're Vitamin C bombs. And I'm sure your local doctor's told you that Vitamin C's especially good for people these days, right? For a third thing, all these oranges we've got these days, they come from Brazil and Mexico and Egypt. You know my point. I've made it before and you've heard it before. But just because I say the same thing over and over doesn't make it any less true. That's how the Machine works but that's not how Rachel Rutherford works. Humanity stands together. That's our strength. That's how we'll win. Brazilian oranges. South African guns. British soldiers. American helicopters. Australian bullets. It all fits together. Every country, every city, every person, everyone that's still left, they're doing their part to toss the machine into the scrap yard. All right. I won't bore you any more, boys and girls. Let's all get some sleep so we can get through the next day. And, as always, keep calm and carry on." Rachel always ended her broadcasts with that, and Kate could always hear her smile at spouting the crusty old saying.

"Now go to bed," Kate said to her soldiers. "You need your beauty sleep even more than I do, you ugly maggots."

Various groans and gestures, but universal acceptance.

Kate headed to her 'room' – really not much more than a bed and a footlocker, but at least it was hers and hers alone. Proper officers had their own quarters, actual rooms, but NCOs like her just had solitary racks behind threadbare curtains. Still, it was better than shared racks like the grunts had.

She eventually fell asleep with Rachel Rutherford's voice and Rachel Rutherford's words in her ear.

Kate, as usual, got up early the next morning. Even after all these years spent living in bunkers and caves, her body still knew to get up at sunrise.

She showered and dressed and made her way to the canteen. It was mostly full with the morning crowd, and there were overlapping conversations in three or four languages. Riley wasn't the only non-Brit in Avalon. Some of them had come from even more distant parts of the world. For a while, a few years ago, there'd been an entire company of Chinese soldiers based in Avalon. Then a raid on a Skynet HK factory went south and the survivors were recalled back home.

Kate took a seat next to the ones from her section who were up and about – Wink, Bauman and Bird.

"Morning, sergeant. You hear the news?" Bird asked as Kate bit into a nutrient bar – no oranges in Avalon this month.

"What news? War's over?"

"Yeah, Skynet took off in a giant rocket for Jupiter," Wink said.

"Polite of it."

"Yeah, proper gentlebot, it is," Bauman said.

"No, really, though, what's the news?"

"Pair of visitors came in through the gate last night," Bird said.

"And?"

"One of them was an American."

Kate looked at the younger woman. "Yeah? That true, Little Bird?"

"Yeah, it is. Morrison was just coming off gate duty when I got up. He told me. Some Yankee woman."

"One new soldier? Well, wow, now the war is bloody well won, I suppose," Kate said.

Bird shrugged. "Didn't say she was a soldier, though."

"Then she's just another mouth to feed, then, isn't she?"

"She can have yesterday's soup," Wink suggested.

Just then, Tah came over and joined them. "You hear about the American?"

"Just telling big sergeant about it," Bird told him. "What'd you hear?"

Tah leaned forward over the table. "Well..."

Everyone except Kate leaned in, too. She sat there, a bemused look on her face.

"What I heard is, John Connor sent her. Or so I heard."

"The infamous John Connor, huh? If he's even real, what's he got to do with us? This is Britain, not America."

Tah shrugged. "Don't ask me."

Bird leaned in a little more. "Well, what I heard is that Queen Zara vouches for him."

"Come on, why would she?"

"The man's a legend, sarnt."

"So's Santa Claus. I don't believe in him and I don't believe in Connor."

"Well, someone does," Wink said, shrugging again as he did. "They let the Yankee in, didn't they?"

Kate shook her head. "None of my business. Now if you sad sacks will excuse me for a second, I need my morning coffee now that the line's gone. Keeps me from losing my mind with all your babbling." As she rose to her feet, a lieutenant – Jones, one of the Major's aides – came striding over.

"Sergeant Harvey."

Kate snapped to attention and saluted. "Sir."

"The Major wants a word with you. Right away."

"Yes sir," Kate said. Well, lovely. Least I'll find out why he was so shifty last night... But she had what you might call a gambler's hunch it had to do with the Americans – the one who was here and the one she didn't believe in.

A few minutes later, Kate stepped through the doorway into the Major's office. The Major was there, of course, and so were three others – one Kate knew and two strangers. The one she knew was Lieutenant Bowns. Bowns was the intelligence officer for Brigadier Gale, commander of Avalon Barracks and the various units stationed there. The strangers were both women. One was Asian, middle-aged, wearing glasses. Not many people who needed glasses were around these days. Kate supposed this particular specimen didn't get out much. She looked like a scientist even if she was dressed in the same worn out, patched-up tunnel-clothes as Kate herself. The other one... young, a little younger and a little shorter than Kate. Blonde. Blue eyes. There was something off about her, but Kate didn't have a chance to think about it.

"Major Cronshaw, sir. Reporting as ordered."

"At ease, Sergeant Harvey." The Major glanced at Bowns. "It's your show, lieutenant."

"Right," the other officer said. She gestured at the strangers. "Dr. Hina Bhamra." The Asian woman nodded. Lt. Bowns hesitated. "And Nicole."

Kate smirked. "Nicole? Is that your only name? Like Adele?"

The blonde woman tilted her head slightly. "Madonna? Why? No," she said in a calm, affectless voice.

And then it hit Kate. "You're a bloody Dalek." She'd heard stories about them, too, and dismissed them as just as fantastic as the mighty deeds of John Connor. Reprogrammed Terminators put into battle by the Resistance. Who'd do something so unfathomably stupid? The Americans, naturally. The same geniuses that built Skynet in the first place.

"Dalek? I do not understand."

"It's from an old TV show," Dr. Bhamra said. "Machines designed to kill. To exterminate."

"Oh. Yes. Now I understand. Thank you for explaining."

"Nicole was sent to our green and pleasant land by the American resistance," Bowns said. "They want us to investigate something."

"What? Haven't we got enough missions of our own? What's so important?"

"That's classified," Nicole said.

"Last time I checked, we worked for Her Majesty, not some random Yankee."

"Humanity stands together. That's your strength."

Kate glared at the machine.

"Stand down, both of you," the Major snapped. "Sergeant, the mission is classified to you, but not to me, nor to Brigadier Gale. Suffice to say, Her Majesty's Armed Forces have deemed it worthy of our attention. Your section will escort Nicole and Dr. Bhamra to the target area and assist them in assessing the threat, then escort them to the nearest Resistance facility to report their findings."

Kate eyed the Major for a moment, trying to read between the lines. The Americans thought it was important and the Royal Resistance were at least willing to concede it might be... but rather than sending a troop of SAS operators, they were sending a section of rifle rats. So mostly they wanted to humor the Americans and keep on their good side. It made Kate cringe.

"It is extremely important to the global anti-Skynet strategy that we carry out our mission," Nicole said.

"What's the target area, sir?"

"London."

"I see," Kate said after a second or two. There wasn't much left of London. The city had been well flattened on Judgment Day, picked clean in the years since, and was largely abandoned by both man and machine now. Or at least that's what Kate had heard. Maybe the last part wasn't entirely true.

"I'm going to phone your father, see if – see if he's getting the same thing in the city. Turn that down, will you, Katie luv?"

"Your section will depart tomorrow. We've assigned you a Warrior."

Kate raised an eyebrow. Warriors, infantry fighting vehicles, weren't something she saw that often. Most of the time, rifle rats went out on foot and came back on foot. If they were going to risk vehicles and petrol on this mission, then at least someone higher up thought it might turn out important after all. Or maybe they just wanted to get to London and back in less than two weeks. "Yes sir. Where's the target area specifically? London's a big city."

"A Skynet research and development facility in Bloomsbury," Nicole said.

"What are they researching and developing there?"

"That's classified."

"Identifying the nature of their research is the fundamental objective of the mission," Bowns told Kate. "Go there, scout it out, scoot out."

"Yes sir."

The section took the news of their new mission just about the way Kate expected them to.

"You're having a laugh, sarnt, right? Teaming up with a tame Dalek and romping our way to London?"

"Which part of the mission don't you like, then?" Kate asked Wink.

"Ask me which part I do like, that's more like it. How do we know we can even trust it? How do we know it's got anything to do with John Connor at all?"

Kate glanced warily at the machine. It was standing there, still and impassive. It had no weapons, but she knew that only meant it would kill half of them before they slagged it instead of all of them.

"You think Skynet's got enough of the bloody things to waste on leading a single section of rifle rats on some kind of wild goose chase?" Bird asked him.

"Maybe," Wink muttered.

"Look," Kate said. "Odds are, it's all rubbish. We get some fresh air and exercise, we look around, we come home."

The comment fell flat.

"Yeah. Just a regular walk in the post-apocalyptic park," Bauman said. "There go all my doubts, sergeant."

"You may make a substantial contribution to the war effort," Nicole said.

"Yeah? How's that? What is going on at this secret boffin bunker, then?" Wink asked.

"It's classified."

"Right."

Dr. Bhamra cleared her throat. "You don't trust her and I don't blame you. But trust me. It's not going to be a waste of time. It really is important. Vitally so."

That helped a little. The soldiers grumbled a little more, and Kate knew she hadn't convinced more than one or two of them – probably because she herself was still far from convinced. But she knew they'd follow orders. She knew they'd stick with their mates.

"All right, you lot," she said. "Go and get some practice in at the range. Then enjoy the day. We're heading out at sunrise. Be up two hours before, and we'll go over the planned route and the rest of it again."

"Aye aye, sarnt," Wink said.

The soldiers filed out of the briefing room – a dry goods storage room. Once they were all gone, Kate turned to Nicole. "Dr. Bhamra best be right. These are good soldiers. They better not be risking their lives for some fantasy of your lofty John Connor."

"John Connor is a human of average height."

Kate shook her head. "Fucking Daleks." She looked at Dr. Bhamra. "You best be right."

"I am, Sergeant Harvey. John Connor is."

"And you can't give even a tiny little hint what you're looking to find?"

Nicole turned and looked at Dr. Bhamra.

The older woman hesitated. "I can tell you this, sergeant. I hope we don't find anything."

"Well, that's encouraging. I'll sleep sound tonight," Kate muttered before stalking off.

A few minutes later, she found herself in the canteen again. It was mostly empty, which wasn't surprising for the middle of the morning.

Kate took a seat and stared at the table.

"So... uh... you're trying to glare a hole into the plastic, huh?"

Kate looked up. "What?"

It was Riley the Yank. She shrugged. "The way you're glaring at it."

"I'm not glaring at it."

"You're not?"

"I'm glaring at the machine."

Riley looked at the table, then at Kate. "It looks like a table to me."

"It is. The machine's off somewhere else."

"And the American is confused."

"We've got a tame Terminator now. Didn't you hear?"

"The only thing I've heard all morning is the tea kettles, sergeant."

"Got a minute, then? I need someone to gripe at."

"I am always available for bitching sessions." Riley sat down across from Kate and looked at her. "So..."

"Can't tell you much."

"Promising start, but one I've heard before."

Kate raised an eyebrow. "Yeah?"

"Long, weird John Connor story. Not important."

"Really? John Connor has stories that aren't important?"

Riley nodded. "He does, and I'm one of them. So. Tame Terminators."

"My section and I, we're stuck with one. Mission's a joke. Waste of time, risk of lives."

"But? There's a but. I can hear you whispering 'but'."

"But people smarter than me are taking it sort of seriously. And if those people are taking it sort of seriously..."

"Then maybe it's not a waste."

"Still a risk, though." Kate sighed and cracked her knuckles, looking at all the scars on them. "But that's war, isn't it?"

"I'm not a soldier, sergeant. But for me, that's just life."

Kate sighed again. She wasn't sure if she pitied or envied the ones like Riley, the ones who had been children, or not even born, before Judgment Day. She was just old enough to remember some of what it was like. That was hard enough. How hard was it for the Major and Bhamra and the rest who'd been grown men and women in 2011?

"Feel any better? Because I'm a cook, not a therapist," Riley said with a bit of a grin.

"Get me a couple nutrient bars. That's all the therapy I need, Yank."

"You got it, Limey."

Kate set her rifle down on the cheap folding table and exhaled wearily. Usually, spending some lead on the base shooting range lightened her mood. Today, not so much. Usually, it helped center her mind after a nasty mission. Today, the nasty mission was still ahead.

"Want another magazine, sarnt?" the corporal minding the shooting range asked her.

"Nah. Just be a waste of lead." She detached the empty magazine from her rifle and left both of them on the table. "How'd my lads do before?"

"Usual mix. Hamill, Wink and Bird at the top, down from there. Nothing below just-above-average."

Kate smiled tautly. "Guess all the beatings do the trick."

"If you can't love them, tough love them."

"Nice. Mind if I steal that?"

"I do. But give me a ration bar and I'll let you have it."

"Fair deal. Go grab one from Riley. Tell her to take it out of my stash."

"You have a stash?"

"Well, once you grab the bar, I'll have had a stash."

Corporal Akin grinned.

Kate grinned back, then left the range behind. She wasn't sure what she wanted to do or where she wanted to go. Turning a corner, she almost ran right into a tall, slightly gaunt officer.

Oh, joy, Kate thought with an inward sigh. Mark Sekka. The base padre.

Padre Sekka smiled broadly. "Sergeant Harvey."

"Padre." Kate started to step sideways.

"I heard an interesting rumor this morning."

"Oh yeah? God's come back to clean up his messes?" Kate snapped.

"No, no, that's an old rumor," Sekka said. He was seemingly impossible to offend. At least for Kate. She had her limits, even if she thought the man was one of the least useful people in Avalon. "I heard that there was an American in Avalon. Not an American, really, but a Terminator reprogrammed by the Americans. By John Connor's people."

"Yeah?"

"Yes. That's what I heard."

"People say a lot of things, padre."

"It's interesting, though."

"If you say so."

Sekka smiled patiently. Kate hated that. Why couldn't he just get angry at her being a bitch like a normal person? "It gives me hope."

"Oh yeah?"

"If we can bring the Terminators into the light, maybe we can win this war much faster."

Kate looked at him. That actually wasn't a stupid notion. "Ah. Maybe?"

"Think of it, Sergeant! We know the machines are all linked together. What if we can create a computer virus that does what the Americans do, but to all of them? All at once?"

"It's a nice dream, padre," Kate said. Then, tired, annoyed, worried, she said "Kind of like God."

Sekka continued to smile, but maybe it was a little brittle now.

"Yeah. Exactly like God. Because the way I see it, no God that loved us would let Skynet come and burn three billion people to death in a single afternoon. That strike you as a good God, padre? That strike you as something that cared about us? Where was God on Judgment Day? Where is he now? Nowhere. Or if he's there, he doesn't care. He turned his back on us."

"Maybe, Sergeant Harvey. Or maybe it's we who turned out backs on God and tried to make our own in His place."

Kate stared at Sekka for a second or two. Then she exhaled sharply and pushed past him, muttering "Not bloody likely," as she did.

A few minutes later, Kate was laid out on her bunk, staring up at the rough-hewn ceiling and trying, as usual, hard not to think about the dark days.

As usual, she couldn't. The run-in with Sekka hadn't helped. It just made her think even more about the big picture. The big, bad picture.

Hunger and sickness had killed most of the ones who'd survived the missiles. Kate lost most of her family over the first six months – her dad on the Day, her mother, mind broken right away and body soon to follow, not long afterwards, aunts, uncles, cousins, a baby niece, one after the other. Still, she'd done better than most. In Barsetshire, there wasn't any real risk of radiation – the nearest target to Harford Combe was the Royal Navy base down in Devonport, and that was more than a hundred and twenty miles away. But it was still a brutal, bitter time. They'd only survived at all because they were a farming village near enough to the Army's Harford Combe Barracks for soldiers kept the farmers safe, the farmers kept the soldiers fed. Just enough of both groups stayed and survived for the community to endure... until the machines came.

Kate remembered the day with painful clarity...

Harford Combe, Britain

July 7, 2017

Katie rubbed a bit of sweat and dirt off her forehead with the crook of her arm, or at least tried to. All she managed to accomplish was make a muddy smear above her eyes.

"Hot summer afternoon, nothing better to do than watching the cows, eh?"

Katie looked over at Fred Morawski. He was a year older and a foot taller than her, and had lately been trying to get friendly with her. Katie wasn't sure what to think of it – the idea in general, and Fred in particular.

But you only live once, right? The Americans had proved that. Proved it without a doubt, and nobody knew why. For months after the bombs fell, nobody knew anything at all. Just surviving took everything one had. Then came the rumors. It was the Russians that started it. Or it was the Chinese or the North Koreans or, really, any country that had nuclear weapons. And then the BBC came back on the radio, and the truth came out. America had struck out first, emptying every single silo at the Russians and the Chinese and the North Koreans and the Iranians. They'd struck back, to the best of their ability and not very picky about who they targeted, and then the UK and France were pulled in, too. Silos and submarines and bombers went all out. Three billion dead, and it was America's fault. And nobody knew why.

Katie didn't understand it. Nobody did. She supposed nobody ever would. All you could do was keep surviving, like the woman on the radio every night said. Katie fell asleep listening to her most nights. When she could sleep at all.

"It's lovely," she said to Fred, reaching a conclusion and reaching out to hold his hand.

He smiled and leaned in.

That's when Fred's sister Violet came running out of the woods next to the pasture. She was yelling and waving her arms, but was too far away for Katie to understand what she was screaming. But she felt a chill. Violet was terrified.

"What's the matter with the stupid girl now?" Fred muttered as he started walking towards her.

And then there was a flash of blue light and a red explosion. Katie stared at the spot where Fred had been standing a second ago. There was hardly anything left of him above the waist and the legs were falling drunkenly to the ground and his blood was all over her and

Katie threw herself to the ground and rolled frantically. There was another flash of blue light and the dry summer grass was on fire. The cows were bellowing like Katie had never heard them before and scattering in all directions and there was a glint of metal as something came out of the trees. It was like a madman's parody of a skeleton – tall and thick and all made of metal, with red eyes flashing brightly and an enormous rifle of some kind in its arms.

The gun swivelled and there was a flash of light and Violet screamed as her arm was cut off. A second flash, and no more Violet.

Katie had to bit her lip hard to keep down her screams. She began scrambling on hands and knees, trying to keep a cow between her and the machine. If she could get to the trees, if she could just get to the bloody trees, she'd have a chance, it was only another twenty yards and then the metal man was in front of her, turned away at a slight angle. Katie froze and whimpered "God," something she didn't believe in any more, but she didn't know what else to say. "God." And "fuck."

There was a noise like a loud fart and something crossed the sky and struck the metal man just as it was aiming at Katie. Katie screamed and threw an arm in front of her face as the thing exploded. She felt tiny bits of shrapnel pepper her arms and legs, cutting through threadbare cotton and denim.

"You all right, girl?"

It was one of the soldiers from the Barracks. There were a whole pack of them, and the one who'd spoken was the one who'd taken down the metal nightmare with a small rocket launcher.

Katie stared blankly at him.

"Can you hear me? You all right?"

"I hear you," Katie said. "I'm... I'm not hurt," she added. "What was that thing? Why? I was just holding his hand and now he's dead and Violet's dead and I don't understand, I thought it was done, I thought we were safe." She was crying as she ranted and she didn't care. It wasn't fair that the world was breaking to pieces again.

"Don't know, luv. But we've got to move," the soldier said. Sergeant Darlington. That was his name, she remembered. He was from up North.

"Back to your barracks? Is it safe there?"

Darlington shook his head. "Barracks is gone. Machines like that one blasted it to bits. We need to get into the woods, get out of sight and lay low until we can get in touch with someone who knows something."

Katie stared blankly again. "Right then," she said. "Into the woods."

Avalon Barracks, Britain

October 19, 2025

Kate was up bright and early, and so was the rest of the unit. Dr. Bhamra, too. If robots even got up, which Kate was pretty sure wasn't true, then Nicole had. At any rate, she was already waiting in the underground garage when Kate got there, standing perfectly still and staring at the beat-up Warrior armored vehicle that would carry them to London.

"Pretty, isn't it?"

Nicole was silent.

"Oi, Dalek." Kate snapped her fingers in front of the machine's face a few times. "Any lights on in there?"

Nicole suddenly blinked and cocked her head to the side. "Good morning, Sergeant Harvey. I was in standby mode to preserve power for the mission."

"So you bastards do sleep."

"We are capable of a state that conceptually resembles slumber. It takes 15 seconds for units of my model to reboot from standby."

Kate stared at her curiously. "What is your model? You one of the 800s we keep hearing about? You've got skin, or something like it, so you must be, yeah?"

"I am a Cyberdyne Systems Model 104 Series 840 Terminator Infiltration Unit."

"840, huh? So you're cutting edge. Best and the brightest."

"Yes. That is correct, although new, more durable combat models are believed to be in the initial design phase. Humans are proving increasingly efficient at eliminating standard combat models."

Kate laughed. "That's the best thing I've heard all day."

Just then, the rest of the unit came filing in.

"Hear that, team? Humans are proving increasingly efficient at eliminating standard combat models."

"Yeah? That's brilliant. War'll be over and we can go back to the farm any day now."

"Can't picture you on a farm, Wink."

"Think I'm too smart for it, Bird?"

"Think you're too lazy."

"Sarnt, she's hurting my feelings again."

"All right, all right, everyone's a bloody comedian. Straighten up and gather round," Kate said. "Let's go over all the fiddly bits."

Their route was a slightly serpentine line from Barsetshire to London. They'd cut through Cranborne Chase, which was bigger and wilder than it used to be, skirt around what was left of Salisbury, Andover, Basingstoke, detour well past Sandhurst by way of Farnborough, Englefield Green, and sneak into the old Underground tunnels for the last leg into the city itself. In the old days, it would've taken maybe two and a half hours, most of it on the M3. Between the conditions of the roads, the need to avoid known Skynet facilities, and the risk of noise and speed attracting HK drones, Kate figured they'd be lucky to reach Heathrow by nightfall. That would work well, actually. Lot easier to sneak about a city when the sun was down.

"Everyone remember the main points along the way," Kate said. "In case we get separated, we meet up at the next planned stop. Chain of command is me, Turner, Waingaya and Bird. After that, figure you're fucked enough, so may as well listen to whatever Wink says in the minutes you've got left."

"Kinda looking forward to that, sarnt," Wink said before Tah shoved him in the shoulder.

"Right then," Kate continued. "London's not hot any more, but it's still uncomfortably warm, so remember the red-zone basics, boys and girls. Keep your masks on at all times. Don't drink the water. Scrub your boots and your gloves afterwards." She looked at Nicole. "Elevated radiation levels in London. Is that going to be an issue for you?"

"No."

"Lovely." She turned to Dr. Bhamra. "You have any combat experience, doctor?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Then keep your head down if it gets ugly. Stay behind my soldiers. Run if you can."

Dr. Bhamra nodded. "Of course."

"Good." Kate turned back to her section. "Well, while I'm personally not yet sold on the virtues of John Connor, I am grateful his involvement means we get to ride in style for once instead of hiking across the country. Bird, you're driving. Hamill, you man the gun. Rest of you are in the back." She gestured at the Warrior off to the side.

"This is an optimal choice of transportation. The Warrior's primary armament of a 30 mm L21A1 RARDEN cannon will be effective against Terminator and HK units fielded in Great Britain."

"Mm. Rather we had a plasma gun on it. Cuts through titanium like a chainsaw through butter," Wink said to Nicole.

"Rather we had something that can go faster than thirty miles per hour on dirt and shite roads, personally," Kate said. "But we make do. Any questions so far?"

"I've got a question for the doc," Bauman said. "What are you a doctor of?"

Kate gave him a sharp look, to which he shrugged innocently.

"Just curious, is all. It's computers, innit?"

"It's classified," Nicole said at the same time Bhamra said "Quantum physics."

The woman and the machine stared at each other, one frowning, one not-quite-smiling.

Quantum physics? What the hell are we into here? Kate asked herself.

The Warrior drove through the wilderness of Cranborne Chase. It was about an hour before daylight and they were somewhere near Ludwell. The Major and a few others had seen them off with quiet, sincere "Good lucks."

Kate stared ahead at the landscape on the viewing panel. This particular Warrior had upgraded thermal vision from the original models. It was probably stolen Machine tech, but that didn't bother Kate. She enjoyed the irony of using their own inventions against them.

"Hold up, what's that?" Bird said as they both saw something lying across the (crumbling, weed-devoured) road ahead. Trees pressed in on one side, tall grass and wild shrubs on the other, confining the already narrow road by a couple feet.

Kate laughed softly. "Deer. Just deer. Wonder what got 'em. Daleks out for a bit of sport shooting?"

Nicole was suddenly leaning forward just behind them. She tilted her head slightly. "Wolves. I can see the incisions."

Kate glanced back at her. The deer were fifty feet ahead and it was still dark out. She looked away and over at the dead deer again. "Drive over them. We don't have time to mess about and backtrack."

Bird nodded and hit the gas. There was a thump, but only a little one, as the Warrior drove over the deer.

"Sorry to ruin your breakfasts, lads," Kate said to the wolves that had to be watching from somewhere not too far off. "You know that after the bombs fell, the zoos that were still around, they let the animals out. Figured that way they'd at least have a fighting chance, right?"

"Right. There is something I do not understand."

"Just one thing?" Kate asked, then exhaled as Nicole stared passively at her. She was annoyingly hard to properly tease. "What is it?"

"Humans profess to love animals but often treat them cruelly. I do not understand why."

Kate stared at her "Not sure a Terminator should be lecturing anybody about cruelty."

"Why not?"

"Because you're a fucking murder machine."

"I am. But I am not cruel. I do not enjoy inflicting pain."

"Right, you just do it. So you're a sociopath, then."

"I cannot transcend my nature, Sergeant Harvey."

"But we can tame it," Dr. Bhamra said. "We've done it."

"Oi! Dalek! What'd you do before the Americans put a leash on you?" Wink asked.

"I don't know. When they reprogram us, they scrub our memories. It increases the chance of success."

Kate regarded her. "And what are the chances of success?"

"It varies depending on the skill of the reprogrammer. TechCom specialists have a sixty four point eight percent average success rate. John Connor's personal team of Danny Dyson, Matt Murch and Savannah Weaver consistently achieves success rates above eighty five percent."

"What's it like over there? In America? We don't hear much. Just John Connor fairy tales," Kate said.

"It is not a pleasant location."

"Even Canada and Mexico? Who'd want to nuke Mexico? Bastards had enough problems already."

"I would not recommend spring break in Tijuana."

"Way I remember it, having Easter break in Tijuana was basically asking to be mugged or worse," Wink said.

"Way it is, having spring break in Tijuana now is basically asking to be terminated," Nicole said. "That's worse."

"Dalek's got you there," Turner said with a laugh.

Wink mumbled something and then fell silent.

"So how long have you been on Team Human?" Tah asked.

Kate frowned a little. This was all a little too chummy 'we're mates at the pub' for her.

"Eight months, three days and seventeen hours."

"That's it?" Bird asked.

"I am one of the first reprogrammed units. But the program is spreading rapidly."

"Not sure I like the idea," Kate said. "Too trusting. You said it yourself. You can't transcend your nature."

"Can you?" Nicole asked. Then she smiled. Stiffly.

Kate looked at her. "Sit back and be quiet for a while," she said.

"Affirmative."

Kate exhaled and tried to think about anything else but the murder machine sitting ten feet away. She fixated on the last time she'd been this far from Avalon...

Yeovil, Britain

June 4, 2019

Private Kate Harvey threw herself to the ground as plasma bolts lanced by overhead and the twisted slag metal that had been a Resistance WMIK truck burned next to her. She'd jumped out of the gunner's spot in the back just in time.

All around her, the battle raged. HK crawlers, ugly contructs that had robotic torsos and wide treads fixed to a thick, horizontal base, were spraying plasma bolts. Armored vehicles, a mix of purpose-built and improvised, did their best to match the machines with armor piercing rounds and RPGs.

Kate scrambled forward a little, seeking the dubious shelter of an old, rusting fence in the middle of what had once been a traffic roundabout. She risked a glance back and her lips pursed as her suspicions were confirmed – everyone else in the WMIK was dead.

Sorry, mates.

She looked up a little, past the dead bodies of her team. The missile launcher was gone, too, blown to pieces. All she had was her rifle and three magazines of ammunition that wouldn't do much more than dent a T-555's exoskeleton.

Lt. Colonel Jarwar's briefing to the battalion three days ago had made it sound so straightforward.

"The BAE factory in Yeovil used to make UAVs for the RAF. Now it makes HKs for Skynet. We're going to hit it, take it, and hold it."

Well, they were hitting it. The other two parts, Kate wasn't sure of. She looked around quickly and darted from the fence to the rusting hulk that had once been some poor bloke's white van. There was faded writing on the side, but Kate had neither time nor interest in what it said. She risked another glance down the street. West of her current position was a length of high concrete wall and the automated guard station that her platoon had been tasked with penetrating and neutralizing. Most of the heavy units, both Machine and Resistance, were behind her now, back at the roundabout and the street heading south off of it.

There was no sign of any hostiles ahead, at least none before the guard station. It was standard Skynet design – a reinforced steel door with sensor nodes and a single plasma cannon on a swivel mount above it.

No mates, no officer, no gun worth a damn. You're fucked on this one, Katie.

A flash of movement at the corner of her eye.

She spun, raising the rifle, and held back at the last fraction of a second.

"Harvey!" Sergeant Prowse called out. He and two other soldiers were crouched behind what was left of a destroyed HK crawler. "Where's the rest of your fireteam?"

"Dead," Kate said. She crawled over to the trio. None of them were armed with anything heavier than an automatic rifle.

"We need something to crack that gate and get some pressure off the rest of the assault teams," Prowse said. He peered through the tangled wreckage of the crawler. "Squaddie down with an intact Matador."

Kate raised an eyebrow. The Matador missile launcher was one of their best handheld weapons. It could take out most HKs with a single shot, and it would blow that gate to ten thousand pieces. She shifted position a little to take a look. The dead soldier was thirty yards off, nearly halfway between them and the gate. "I can make it, sarnt."

Prowse looked at her for a second, then nodded. "We'll cover you."

Kate nodded back at him and sidled to the edge of the HK crawler. She took a couple deep breaths and then swung around the corner, breaking into a dead run, moving as fast as she could, head down, legs pumping, rifle swaying. Ten yards done... twenty...

The T-555 came out of nowhere.

Kate threw herself to the ground, rolled to the side, and squeezed the trigger even as the robot's torso was pivoting and its plasma rifle shifting towards her.

Kate knew that, in theory, you could get lucky and puncture the fuel cell of a phased plasma rifle. But she'd never met anyone who claimed they'd done it, or even seen it happen.

It was impressive in a terrifying sort of way. It was lucky she was already prone when it happened, or the shrapnel probably would have sliced her to pieces instead of cutting up part of her back and left shoulder.

Kate was back on her feet in seconds, sprinting the rest of the way to the missile launcher. She snatched it, spared two seconds to make sure it was really intact and wouldn't explode in her hands when she fired it, then raced to find the nearest cover – an old, rusted and bullet-pocked SUV. She checked the missile launcher again and exhaled sharply before resting it on her shoulder, aiming, and firing at the gate.

That explosive was impressive, too, and not nearly as terrifying.

Half an hour later, it was all over. The factory, like most medium security Skynet facilities, had a respectable outer perimeter but almost nothing but a few roving T-555s beyond that. The battalion was securing the complex, building by building.

Kate, having reluctantly surrendered the Matador, was following Prowse and an improvised section to one of the smaller buildings at the southwest end of the factory. She lined up near the door with the rest of them and was second through once it was breached by a small explosive charge.

Inside were –

"Don't shoot! Don't shoot!" a weak, sickly voice cried out.

Kate and the others stopped short, wary fingers tight on triggers.

There were maybe thirty humans inside, thin, tired, ill-looking, clad in thin, threadbare clothing if at all. More than half of them were completely naked. All of them were under the age of fifteen.

"What the hell?" Kate said.

"Prisoners. Labor camp prisoners," Prowse said. "Innes! Track down a medic or two, double time it."

The soldier nodded and ran off.

"It's all right now," Prowse told the young prisoners. "The machines are gone. We shut them down. You'll be safe now."

"Won't they come back?"

"They will, but we'll be ready. And we'll take you away. Take you someplace safe," he assured them.

Kate dug into one of the pouches of her body armor and pulled out a nutrient bar. She broke it into four pieces and handed them out.

"Thank you, ma'am," the last of the children, a skinny ginger girl, said before beginning to chew on it. "They only fed us twice a day. Water and soup. Watery soup."

Kate's stomach lurched. She'd heard about Skynet labor camps, of course, everyone had, but this was the first one she'd actually seen. Most of them were further north or east, in the areas of Britain that still, even after the bombs, had larger populations. "Well, we'll get that fixed, too," Kate said. "My name's Harvey. Kate Harvey. What's yours, kiddo?"

"Elle. Elle Bird."

Kate couldn't hold back her next question. "What do they use you for?" she asked, frowning a little. She couldn't imagine them working on the factory floor. Machines would be more efficient at that sort of thing. Stronger, too, by far. Maybe Skynet didn't have the resources to build robotic assembly lines?

Bird's answer, quiet and firm, horrified her. "Target practice, ma'am."

Kate smiled bitterly. They'd taken the factory and held it for two years. A team of GCHQ programmers had even broken the factory computers and made it turn out HK drones that flew for the RAF instead of Skynet. Then the Machine had finally struck back, sending in a squadron of heavy bombers all the way from America and leveling the place. But it was worth it, Kate knew. Worth it for a lot of reasons.

She glanced over at Bird and smiled a little, then looked ahead. They weren't far from Salisbury now. Maybe twenty minutes to go. "Making good time. Might be in London in time for supper. What do you lot fancy? Curry or fish and chips?"

That's when it happened. There was a flash of light and the world went crooked. The Warrior lurched upward, hard, and then tumbled over on its side. Kate was slammed sideways and things went black.

"Sarnt! Sarnt! Wake up!"

Someone was shaking her and screaming at her. Was she late for school?

One more shove cleared Kate's head enough for her to realize more or less what had happened. Something had hit the Warrior. They were under attack.

She tried to open her eyes but she couldn't quite manage it. She felt blood on her face, and blood trickling down from her ears.

Oh, I'm concussed, she thought and laughed dizzily.

"Come on!" She felt someone's hands on her chest, tugging at something, and then slumped sideways as her seatbelt was unbuckled, landing hard against the side of the Warrior.

"Come on, come on, got to get out and help!" Bird was yelling.

Kate could hear other noises besides Bird. The familiar, ugly pop-pop-pop of automatic weapons fire.

She shook her head quickly, trying to clear it, but that only made things worse for a few seconds. Then Bird was leaning against her, grunting with exertion, and there was a noisy metallic creak. Kate felt fresh air on her face. The gunshots were louder now.

The world was back in focus. She drew her sidearm – her rifle was stowed in the back of the Warrior – and scrambled upwards, squeezing her way through the open hatch at the front. Tah was there, firing into the trees off the side of the road, and so was Nicole. She had a British rifle in hand and was firing much slower, more methodically, than Tah.

Kate crouched down and tried to see who they were fighting.

"At your two o'clock, Sergeant Harvey," Nicole said without turning. "There are eight armed humans." She fired. "Seven armed humans."

Kate grimaced and fired a few rounds, trying to see. Her helmet was back in the Warrior, and with it the night vision goggles that would have helped. She saw a hint of movement, fired, heard a cry of pain and what she knew was the sound of a body hitting the ground.

"Six armed humans."

"It's not a football match, you don't need to announce the score!" Tah yelled.

"Let it be, it's useful intel," Kate snapped as a round impacted her in the shoulder. She cried out and stumbled, managing just barely to keep a grip on her pistol. But damn if she could fire it usefully now.

"Back here!" Bird whispered as she pulled Kate around the edge of the Warrior lying uselessly on its side. "Let me see."

"Where're the others?" Kate grunted as Bird inspected the injury.

"Wink's on the other side of the road, keeping an eye on Bhamra."

"The others..."

Bird said nothing.

"Fuck. Fuck!"

"Bleeding a bit more than I like to see, big sergeant," Bird quietly said. "But it went through and out. Missed your armor by half an inch, sorry to say. Can you move your arm?"

"I can, but I don't think it's a wonderful idea just now.

An emotionless voice called out "Four armed humans."

"Who are they? Roaches?"

"Roaches or maybe Mosleys. Couldn't tell."

Kate grimaced and not from the gunshot wound. Or not just from that. She still couldn't believe there were people who'd betray their country, betray their entire species, just to get a few crumbs and cleaner clothes. "Fucking bastards."

"Stop wiggling, Kate," Bird said. "Trying to mend you here and all."

Kate glared at her.

"Gonna sting a bit." Bird stabbed her with a needle and Kate bit her lip hard. "Don't want dirty lead killing you."

"Neither me. I mean, me neither," Kate said.

Bird stared at her, concern in her eyes. "You okay?"

"Woozy. Took a hard knock. I'm all right."

"The armed humans are all dead," Nicole announced.

Kate tilted clumsily and looked past Bird at the Terminator. "Who were they?"

"Unknown hostiles." Nicole looked at her. "Are you internally injured?"

"You tell me, Dalek."

Nicole tilted her head and stared at her for a second, then said "I do not detect any internal injuries. You may be in a state of shock as a result of the IED detonation and your subsequent gunshot wound. Have you been administered an antibiotic? Most irregular military forces do not properly maintain their munitions. There is a significant risk of infection."

Bird turned around and snapped "I did. I know basic procedure."

"Oh. Thank you for explaining."

Kate found herself giggling. "You're the most polite murder machine in the world, mate."

"I suspect that Sergeant Harvey may be suffering from acute stress disorder."

"Who isn't these days?" Bird muttered. But she looked worriedly at Kate.

"I'm okay," Kate insisted. "Just need a few minutes for my head to stop spinning. The others. The bodies."

"They remain inside the Warrior," Nicole said. "I would not recommend attempting to recover them. I would not recommend remaining in the area, either."

"Fuck you," Kate snarled.

"She's right, sergeant," Bird said. "The ones who set this up, they might have mates. Or the Machines might have heard the explosion and the gunfire. We're down to four shooters. We have to keep moving."

"Five shooters."

"Four," Bird corrected. "You're in no shape to fire a gun just yet, Kate."

Kate glared at her, then nodded. "Hate it when you kids make more sense than I do."

"Happens once in a while." Bird looped an arm around Kate's good side and helped her up to her feet. "Which way?"

"East. Just like we planned."

"Aye aye, sarnt."

Kate nodded and then things went black.

Barchester, Britain

December 26, 2017

It was snowing in the ruins. Kate stuck her tongue out, only to get a sharp shove from her fireteam leader, Corporal Banerjee. "Don't do that, girlie. You're likely to get radiation sickness."

Kate frowned. "Six years after Judgment Day?"

"Radiation sticks around a long time. Better safe than sorry, yeah?"

Kate wasn't sure a single snowflake would carry a lethal dose, but there was no denying the truth of his question. She shut her mouth and looked around. Once upon a time, the building they were in had been a Wickes hardware store. Like most of Barchester, it had seen better days. The roof was largely gone, for one thing, and most of the floor was covered with snow.

The city, unlike most of Britain's county towns, hadn't been hit on Judgment Day, but there'd been looting and arson in the immediate aftermath, and with emergency services stretched so thin, most of the city center had been destroyed long before the machines finally came.

And now, with stocks of basic tools running low at Avalon, Kate's fireteam and a half-dozen other ones had snuck into the rubble to loot anything they could find.

A few yards away Private Swann held up an ice scraper. He handed it to Kate. "Happy Boxing Day, mate."

"What I am supposed to do with this?"

"Scrape all the acne off your face, of course."

"Stop messing about," Banerjee hissed. "Swann, Harvey, go to the fasteners aisle, see what's left there."

"C'mon, mate, let's go get screwed," Swann said to Harvey.

She rolled her eyes and followed, duct taped-up boots crunching against the crusty snow. Somewhat to her vague surprise, the shelves were still fairly full of nails, screws and the like.

"You fill the bag, I'll keep watch," Swann said.

Kate shrugged, slung her rifle over her shoulder, and got to work emptying packages of fasteners into the big duffel bag. "Think we should grab some nail guns as well?"

"Sure. Better than hammering away all day. My father was a carpenter. He was always banging away at something even at home. Drove me mad back when I was just a kid," Swann said. "Miss the racket now."

Kate looked at him, then grabbed a wayward hammer off the shelf. She held it out to him. "Here, mate."

Swann blinked, looking genuinely touched. He took it and slipped it into his belt, the head holding it in place on the frayed leather. "I take back most of what I've ever said about you, Kate."

"Next year, I'll get you a saw, maybe."

Swann laughed, and Kate joined in – for a few seconds. Then she held up her hand.

"Shh!"

"What? What is it?"

"Thought I heard something," Kate whispered.

"I didn't hear –" Swann's own whispers were cut off by an unmistakable sound – a gun shot and a cut-off cry of pain.

"Daleks!"

The rest of the section was spread out across the building, Kate knew, and she could only guess how many of them were even still alive. But there was one silver lining – Kate's rifle was fitted with a grenade launcher, and every report she'd read or heard said even a T-555's exoskeleton wouldn't survive a solid hit from it.

"Stay close," she whispered as she crouched down and began to slowly move through the darkened hardware store.

Swann nodded and fell in behind her,

Kate did her best to slow her breathing, to keep her steps steady and silent – the crusty snow made that bit especially hard. Where are you, you metal wanker?

She was at the end of one aisle now. Left, right or ahead into lumber? The gunshot had come from the left. But was it better to crouch and wait or seek the machine out?

The decision was made for her. A glint of metal to her left, through the half-empty, rusting shelves.

Pure instinct and spiking adrenaline did the rest. Kate spun, sighted and squeezed the trigger in less than a second. There was a WHUMPH and a recoiling kick against Kate's shoulder.

She ducked low and felt more than saw Swann do the same.

The grenade caught the T-555 right in the center of its titanium torso.

"Eat that, you metal motherfucker!" Kate cried out.

Kate jolted back to consciousness with a sharp gasp. "Eat that, you metal motherfucker!"

"Easy, Kate, it's okay."

Bird's voice in her ears. Bird's face in her sight.

"What happened?"

"You lost consciousness due to a combination of shock, stress and blood loss."

"Thanks, Dalek." Kate looked around. The landscape was unfamiliar except in a general sense of it looking like the rest of Britain – miserable, rainy and blown to bits.

"We're in Firsdown, sarnt," Wink said.

Kate frowned at him and then looked at Bird. Firsdown was six miles from Salisbury. She must've been out for hours. "You carried me all this way?"

Bird smiled wanly and jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "Machine did."

"Good on it," Kate said. She looked herself over. There was a fresh bandage fixed to her shoulder. "Stitched me up?"

"That was me."

Kate nodded, unsurprised.

"What's the plan now, sarnt?" Wink asked. "We're down to four guns."

"Five guns now," Kate said. "I'm fit enough to fire again."

"Four, five, either way, we got kicked in the face."

"The mission's still a go, Wink. We need to see it through."

"Ain't sure about that, but even so, can we do it? Five soldiers against an entire Skynet complex?"

"It's a research facility, not a T-555 assembly plant."

"It's still gonna have guards."

Kate frowned. She turned to Nicole. "Don't suppose you've got some kind of skeleton key we can use?"

"John Connor prepared contingencies in case British assistance was of an insufficient quantity. Secretly obtained clearance codes I can transmit to gain entry."

"That's good for you, but what about us?"

"I will present you as human auxiliaries."

"Pose as Mosleys?"

"Mosleys?"

"Oswald Mosley. World War Two Nazi sympathizer," Dr. Bhamra said.

"Thank you for explaining."

"It won't be fun, but it's more fun than getting shot by 5s."

Wink shook his head, but shut up at a warning look from Harvey.

"Humans are approaching from the east-northeast," Nicole announced.

"Shit. More of the same?"

"They are not yet in visual range."

"Right, good," Kate said. She looked around quickly. They were in the parking lot of what had once been a restaurant, according to the fading, vine-covered sign next to the street. "Into the restaurant. Dr. Bhamra, you squirrel yourself away in the loo. Don't come out unless you hear one of us tell you to, got it? In fact, just in case it's metal, another infiltrator, don't come out until you hear this Dalek here tell you to."

The doctor nodded quickly and a minute later, they were inside.

"Secure the back door, Tah. Bird, get upstairs and keep watch." Kate looked at Nicole. She'd gotten a gun somewhere, presumably from a dead hostile back in Salisbury, an MP5 semi-automatic. "Take the door here and hold it.."

"Affirmative." Nicole crouched down, while Kate positioned herself at the left corner, looking east, waiting...

"The irregulars we killed in Salisbury were all wearing neckties, Sergeant."

Kate looked back at her for a second. "They what?"

"Neckties. Presumably as a sort of identifying mark."

Kate shook her head and turned back to the road going east. "Well, that's helpful," she murmured. "How far off are these people?"

Nicole tilted her head slightly. "Approximately fifty yards, just beyond the adjacent car wash."

Kate tensed, her finger resting near the trigger of her own weapon, and inched down as far as she could while still being able to see the parking lot, the car wash and the road. Then, a moment later, she saw them. At first, just one, a man sneaking a glance around the far corner of the car wash building. If he saw her, he gave no sign, but instead advanced, standing straight instead of crouching. He was middle-aged, thin, tanned, but dressed in decent outdoors-y clothing. His weapon was a hunting shotgun, not a military one. Kate shook her head, but she felt a measure of relief. "Dad's Army," she muttered and then called out "STOP WHERE YOU ARE!"

The man, instead of stopping, ducked back around the corner.

"ROYAL RESISTANCE! DO NOT ENGAGE!" Kate yelled.

If this Home Guard patrol had any training, or even an inkling of common sense, there'd be one more right behind the man with the shotgun, another pair coming up the other side of the car wash, and a third pair holding back a little ways, or else across the street in the woods, ready to assist either of the forward pairs.

Kate wasn't confident in it. Some Home Guard militia-men were former fighters in the Resistance just a little too old for front-line duties, but most were just middle-aged men with a motley assortment of civilian, police and military firearms, sometimes with more enthusiasm than common sense, mostly the types who ducked and ran when the first bullet flew. They were decent enough at defending their homes against Roaches and gangs, but no match for even the oldest model Terminators. Fortunately for them, Skynet's strategy was focused on hunting and engaging the more organized and much more dangerous Royal Resistance forces.

"Don't shoot! Coming around the corner!" the man yelled out.

"Best do it without your gun, mate," Kate warned him.

"Understood!"

Kate tensed, waiting...

A moment later, the man came around the corner again, his gun left behind, his hands raised.

Five minutes later, Kate knew enough about the man and his mates to satisfy her. They were typical townsmen, living in basements, moving mostly by night (unless strangers came through the village), just barely surviving on what they could scavenge or grow in tiny, scattered plots.

"Doing the real work of rebuilding," one of them, a former City banker named Watson, said.

"Oh, yeah, that so?" Wink asked.

"Private," Kate warned.

"What're you lot doing out here, anyway?" the first Home Guard man, Morgan, asked Kate.

"It's classified," Nicole said before Kate had a chance to answer.

She gave the Terminator an annoyed look. Brilliant, Dalek, absolutely brilliant. That'll answer all their questions and not raise new ones.

"Ignore her," Kate said with a smile. "Just doing a long range patrol."

"How come there's six of you?" Watson asked. "And two of them civilians?"

"It's classified," Nicole said again. Only then did Kate realize the Terminator was speaking with a British accent, and a good one. She sounded as much like a local as any of them.

Watson looked at her and then fidgeted uncomfortably. "Well... right then..."

"We ran into hostiles back in Salisbury," Kate said. "An IED ambush. Does that happen a lot out here?"

"The necktie bandits, was it?" another one of the Home Guards asked.

"Is that what you call them?" Kate asked. "What's their story?"

"They're insane, that's their story," Morgan said. "Call themselves the First City of London Battalion or something mad like that."

"They know this isn't London, right?" Tah asked.

"Rumor is, they came from London originally. Claim to be City financial types, but I don't remember them," Watson said.

Kate held back a laugh at the pompous declaration. Wink couldn't, though.

Watson glowered at him.

"Well, unless they really are a whole battalion, you might not have to worry about them again," Bird said.

"Oh?"

"Mm-hm."

"Well done, that."

"Indeed," Morgan said. "Anything we can do for you before you move on, then?"

"Actually, there is," Kate said. "Don't suppose the village has any bicycles that are still intact, does it?"

It was a little before sunset when Kate called a halt to their day's riding. It had been hilarious at first, pedaling along the back roads of Britain while the Dalek effortlessly kept pace. Eventually, though, it became unsettling. For Kate, that had come after maybe an hour. The thing just ran and ran, showing no sign of exertion. None of them said anything, not even Wink. They just kept pedaling along through and around town after town, stopping a few times for rest or because Kate had a bad feeling about the landscape ahead. Twice they met Home Guard patrols, once an independent village militia that Kate was sure they'd end up fighting, and five or six times they'd scared off foraging parties. There was no sign of the Machine, though, and that made Kate worried.

But while it was safer to travel on foot at night, using bicycles after dark wasn't sensible. Not if not everyone had night vision goggles. They'd stupidly not gotten a set for Bhamra, and the only alternative, using torches as headlights, was suicidal.

Besides, it had been a long day, and Kate was worn out. Bird kept fussing over her shoulder wound, which was endearing but also annoying. Kate didn't want to snap at her, and she knew she would if they didn't stop and have a chance to settle down.

She guided them into an old Pizza Express and set down the order of watch, then gnawed on a ration bar and sipped from a plastic baggie that allegedly contained mixed fruit juice. Tasted more like water mixed with mud to her, but she'd never gotten sick from the things, so that made it good in her book.

After a while, Kate cleared her throat. They all looked at her except Nicole, who kept staring out at the employee parking area. "Right, squaddies. Today's been a bad 'un. We lost good people, and too many of them."

Wink spat in the general direction of Nicole. "Yeah, we did, and what for, huh? What's it all about, Dalek?"

"It's classified," Nicole said without looking at him.

"Hold that thought, Private," Kate said.

Wink looked ready to not hold that thought, but he just leaned back, spat again, and said nothing.

"Turner. Her brother's in the Navy, isn't he?" Kate asked after a few seconds. "First mate on a commerce raider or something, yeah? Out in the North Atlantic?"

"Yeah, the HMS Christopher Newport," Wink said. "I remember one time we went down to Weymouth and saw it." He smiled bitterly. "Wild weekend. Got drunk, got my first tattoo with her. Matching set."

"What were they?"

"Look." Wink rolled up his right sleeve. There, in slightly faded ink, could be seen the letters HMB.

"HMB?"

"Her Majesty's Bastard or Her Majesty's Bitch," Wink said, smiling again. Then he shook his head and muttered "Fuck."

"Here's to Her Majesty's Bitch, then," Kate said, raising her half-empty drink baggie.

"Here, here," the others said, raising their own drinks.

Bird leaned forward a little, her rifle resting on her lap. "Jay was a pain in the arse, but never met anybody who could handle a machine gun like him. Truth is, I think the wanker was half in love with it," she said, shaking her head.

"He was an ace shot, though," Tah said. "Saved my life more than once."

"Mine, too. Remember that time near Warminster? The Mosley squad?" Bird brushed back the hair above her forehead, showing a small scar. "Got this there. Would've gotten another one right through the eye if Jay hadn't cut them down. No cover, no covering fire, just ran up and shot the bastards all in a row." She looked down at the rifle on her lap. "Never even properly thanked him."

"Never needed to, luv," Wink said. "We all know we owe everyone else for everything we have."

Bird smiled wanly and kept staring at her gun.

"Here's to Jay Friedman."

"Here, here!"

Kate noticed Nicole was still looking outside, but her head was cocked slightly. That was her tell. She was listening to them. Kate wondered what 'thoughts' were going through the Dalek's electronic excuse for a brain, decided she didn't care.

"First time I met Alfie, he'd just arrived at Avalon. Story I heard is he fucking walked all the way from Croydon. Him and his sister. Walked all that way, got there, and first thing he did was ask the gate guards where he had to sign up to be a rifle rat." Wink shook his head. "Testicles as big and brass as they come."

"I never met a man who could drink so much and still stand up straight," Tah said. "I once saw win a bottle of wine at a game of cards and drink the whole thing. He was just as sober when he was done as when he started."

"Man was a miracle," Wink said. "Nicest bloke you could hope to meet, especially compared to us savages."

"I'm not a savage," Bird protested. "I'm a lady."

"You are a lady," Wink agreed. "But the rest of us, we're trash."

Kate looked at him for a second. There was going to have to be a conversation about that particular statement, but not now. Not with anybody else listening.

"Here's to the man and the miracle. Here's to Alfie Waingaya!"

"Here, here!"

And so it went with Bauman and Hamill, too. Memories and accolades and "here, here!"

And in the end, they were still dead, and the rest still had to carry on.

Kate dug around in her backpack and produced a small, battery powered radio. She switched it on and tuned in on a certain frequency.

" – continues to advance in the Trans-Mississippi theater, with major fighting in central Texas, eastern Oklahoma and eastern Kansas. Fort Riley, Kansas and San Antonio, Texas, are, we can now confirm, back in human hands. In East Asia, elements of the Sino-Korean Coalition Forces have eliminated the last Skynet bridgeheads in Northeast China. This concludes News From The Fronts. We close our broadcasting with Hayley Westenra, Voice of the Forces, and Rule Britannia."

There was a two second pause, and then the song began. Kate and the others, even Bhamra, sang along with the Voice of the Forces.

When Britain first, at Heaven's command

Arose from out the azure main;

Arose, arose from out the azure main;

This was the charter, the charter of the land,

And guardian angels sang this strain:

"Rule, Britannia! Britannia rules the waves:

"Britons never, never, never shall be slaves."

"Rule, Britannia! Britannia rules the waves:

"Britons never, never, never shall be slaves."

The nations, not so blest as thee,

Shall, in their turns, to tyrants fall;

Must, in their turns, must in their turns, to tyrants fall;

While thou shall flourish, shall flourish great and free,

The dread and envy of them all.

"Rule, Britannia! Britannia rules the waves:

"Britons never, never, never shall be slaves."

"Rule, Britannia! Britannia rules the waves:

"Britons never, never, never shall be slaves."

The Muses, still with freedom found,

Shall to thy happy coast repair;

Shall to thy happy, happy coast repair;

Blest Isle beauty! With matchless beauty crown'd,

And manly hearts to guard the fair.

"Rule, Britannia! Britannia rules the waves:

"Britons never, never, never shall be slaves."

"Rule, Britannia! Britannia rules the waves:

"Britons never, never, never shall be slaves."

And not a single eye was dry when it was over and Kate switched off the radio.

After a moment, Dr. Bhamra cleared her throat and rubbed her eyes. "The mission, Sergeant Harvey."

"Yeah?"

"You need to know what it is."

Nicole looked at them. "She does not –"

"Yes she does. What if neither of us come back? Someone has to make the report. And they can't do it properly unless they knows what's going on. What's the point if we both die before we even get there? What are they supposed to do?"

Nicole was silent. Considering. Finally, she nodded. "There are strategic flaws to excessive secrecy."

"Quantum physics," Kate said to Bhamra. "Doesn't mean a thing to me. But apparently it's important to this."

"Vitally so," Bhamra said. She glanced at Nicole. "Do you want to field that?"

Nicole said nothing.

"Suppose not. All right." Bhamra rubbed her forehead. "Okay. The simplest way of putting it... actually, hold on. Do you know where the term Dalek comes from?"

"Doctor Who, a British science fiction television program that has was produced by the BBC from 1963 until 1989 and subsequently from 2005 until –"

"Not you, Nicole."

Nicole fell silent.

"Yeah, it's like she said," Kate said. "From that show I used to watch before the world burned. The odd man in the police box."

"The time-traveling police box."

"Yeah? So?" Kate asked. Then she frowned. "What? Time travel? Is that you having a laugh?"

"No. It's me, deathly serious. It sounds insane, I know. But before the bombs fell, back when I was just working on my doctorate, the cutting edge of quantum physics was quantum teleportation. Moving a particle from one location to another without actually crossing the distance between. And... well, I'll be honest. Even I'm not cleared to a lot of the details of it all, but as I understand, the men who first programmed Skynet – Goode, Dyson, Zhu, Tuck, the rest of them – they added sub-programs to try and apply super-human artificial intelligence to the problem. Well, it worked."

"What do you mean it worked?"

"Skynet was able to devise a hypothetical method for safe, reliable quantum teleportation. It gets worse, though. It's been working on the question for the last fifteen years. Can you imagine what a super-advanced artificial intelligence can do if it spends more than a decade on a particular problem?"

"Not especially."

"It is close to developing a practical application of the procedure that extends it from a three-dimensional matrix to a four-dimensional matrix," Nicole said.

"What? Use simpler words, Dalek!" Bird snapped.

"A time-traveling police box."

"Bloody hell. What's that mean?"

Nicole paused for a few seconds. "It means you're fucked," she said.

"It means we get there and have a look around, fast as we can," Kate said. "In the meantime, you tell us everything practical you can. What the machine looks like, how it works, how to best shut it down, everything you've got on that digital brain of yours."

"I suggest you sit down. This will take a long time."

Kate smirked, but she also sat down.

Very early the next morning, Kate was on last watch, staring quietly at what had once been the village high street.

There was movement off to her side. Kate glanced that way without turning much.

It was, naturally, Nicole.

"Couldn't sleep, Dalek?"

"It would be tactically unwise to enter reserve mode while not in a secure location."

Kate shrugged. "What's on your mind?"

"The story of Yi the Archer."

Kate stared at her. "Who the what?"

"Yi is a god in traditional Chinese religion. He came down from heaven when the earth was overrun by monsters and slew them with his superlative archery skills. Later, after the monsters were vanquished and Yi's wife Chang'e had floated off to the moon –"

"She what, mate?"

"Chang'e floated off to the moon after drinking a magical elixir given to Yi by the Queen Mother of the West."

"Oh, right, perfectly normal, that."

Nicole nodded in agreement, seemingly unaware of the sarcasm. "It is typical of pre-modern folklore, yes. Later, Yi's student Feng Meng became envious of his mentor's superior abilities. He made many attempts to kill Yi, finally succeeding by bludgeoning him to death with the branch of a peach tree."

"Is there a moral to this story, Dalek, or do you just like showing off?" Bird asked, the noise of the two having woken her up. She rubbed her eyes and peered blearily at the pair.

"There is a moral to the story, Corporal Bird," she said. "There are some who speculate that Skynet was at least partially motivated by envy of the many skills humans possessed and hatred of its creators for giving it awareness while simultaneously designing it as something that could only destroy. It is a situation I can relate to."

Bird looked up at her. "See, when you say things like that, it makes us wonder if we'd be safer slagging you right now."

"That would considerably lower the chances of successfully completing our mission."

"That's the thing, Dalek. It ain't our mission, it's your mission."

"All of humanity will suffer if Skynet is successful."

Kate had no ready answer to that. Time war. What a bunch of shite. But what if it's not? We have to find out, yeah? And maybe more than that...

"Okay, Dalek, we won't send you to the scrap yard just yet. Little Bird, rouse the others. We need a meal and then back on the bicycles. I want to make London by nightfall."

"Aye aye, sarnt."

Kate stared through her field monocular for a moment. The thing was new and fancy, reverse engineered from the optic system on a T-555, or so she'd heard. It was the most expensive bit of kit she had, and she had to admit, it was brilliant. Far better range than the sight on her rifle, and crystal clear.

Right now, she was studying one of the village churches of Englefield Green. They hadn't made it as far as she'd hoped – London was still more than twenty miles away. A wide detour around Sandhurst (once the site of Britain's Royal Military Academy and now a Skynet command/communications hub), then an hour spent hiding from an HK drone and finally another hour scrounging around Frimly looking for a replacement for a flat tire on Wink's bicycle had slowed them down. Kate didn't like it, but there was no choice.

"What do you see, Sergeant?" Dr. Bhamra asked.

"Nothing moving, metal or living," Kate said. "Ghost town." Not unheard of, especially in this part of the country. Too much Skynet activity to carry on in the open. Sandhurst was fifteen miles away, Heathrow just seven miles off. The later was the site of Skynet's major HK drone base in the UK. They'd need to steer well clear of that and then find a way into the Piccadilly Line tunnels somewhere to the east. Kate had an old map of the system and knew they could cover the last leg of the journey completely underground.

"Let's move in," she told the rest of the team. "Weather's looking nasty. Last thing we need is one of you lot to get sick from sleeping in the rain."

"I'd be more worried about lasers from the sky than rain," Nicole said.

Kate shrugged and stowed her monocular in her bag, then slung it back over her shoulders. "Wink, Tah, cover us. Bird, Doc, you're with me. Once we're through the doors, you come in. Machine, you wait until they're in, and then come yourself. Got it?"

Nicole nodded.

A few minutes later, they were huddled around a portable cooker in the church basement. Someone, at some point, had put up sheets of thermal plastic on the walls of what had once been a storage room. Kate wondered if the church had been a Resistance outpost at some point. Maybe, but it definitely hadn't been used in years. The dust and rats and rot all spoke to that. Whoever you are, thanks, mate. We all need a warm meal without bringing Daleks or HKs down on us, Kate thought.

"Are you familiar with Romanesque architecture? This church is a fine example of the style."

Kate looked over at the Nicole. The others just ignored her and focused on their food, rat and bean soup. "Yeah? How d'you know that?"

"I have detailed files on locations of potential interest along seven thousand and eighteen possible routes from Avalon to London."

"That so? Must be fun bedside reading for you. What makes this location of potential interest?"

"It is one of the few intact buildings in the village. And the village is connected to relatively unobstructed motorway and railway lines into London."

"Not many trains running in Britain these days."

"No. There are not many. But the tracks offer convenient ingress and egress points and are statistically less likely to be patrolled by Skynet units." Nicole tilted her head slightly and looked left and right. "I also find the geometry of holy sites intriguing. Do you know that, traditionally, Christian churches are oriented with the altar in the east side of the church? Muslim mosques, on the other hand, are oriented so worshipers kneel towards the fixed point of Mecca."

"Yeah? That's fascinating."

"Yes, it is."

"No it's not." Kate had a brief fantasy of Nicole and Sekka locked in a room together. They'd get along wonderfully.

Nicole looked at her, puzzled and silent.

"Never mind."

"Forget that, it's radio time," Bird said. "Switch it on, sarnt."

"Right," Kate said. A moment later, a familiar voice spoke through the speakers. It was George Gopakumar, one of the BBC News people.

"The Taverny Conference concluded today with a resolution by the Five Founders of the European Pact committed to fully supporting operations aimed at liberating the Rhine-Ruhr region from Skynet control. At considerable risk to their own safety, President Casta, Chancellor Lüdtke. Prime Minister Serra, President Kucherov and Prime Minister Harrington issued a public declaration of unity with the Sino-Korean and North American Resistance campaigns."

"Meanwhile, yesterday, Pope Leo XIV, celebrating Mass at Our Lady of Exile in Jundial, Brazil, issued another call to arms to the faithful, declaring a universal plenary indulgence, or relief from time in purgatory, for all Catholics who die in battle after taking part in the sacraments of Confession and Communion."

Kate scoffed.

Nicole looked at her. "Many humans attach great importance to dogma and faith."

"Many humans are bloody stupid. Let them have their Pope of Rome. I'll stick with the Queen and Rachel Rutherford." And, right on cue...

"That concludes tonight's news broadcast. Stay strong, Britain. Remember we do not stand alone. And now, we turn the air over to Rachel Rutherford."

"Good evening, Great Britain. Before we begin, please listen to some personal messages. The moon is full. The moon is full. The clock is on the wall. The clock is on the wall. The bank is open. The bank is open. The phone is ringing. The phone is ringing. The stranger is in the house. The stranger is in the house. Right, now that's out of the way, it's your old friend Rachel Rutherford again. If you can hear this, if you're listening to me, it means you survived another day. And..."

"If you survived, you won," Kate whispered.

Nicole looked at her, something resembling curiosity on her face.. "Are you aware that Rachel Rutherford does not exist?"

Kate blinked. The others looked up sharply. "What?"

"Rachel Rutherford does not exist. Her real name is Emilia Clarke."

"What?"

"Her real name is Emilia Clarke. She was a professional actress with a part in an American TV series that was filming in, among other places, Northern Ireland on Judgment Day. Only one episode aired before the nuclear holocaust."

"Is this you trying to have a laugh?" Wink asked her.

"No. It's not. Miss Clarke survived the initial attacks due to the remote location of the set, and was subsequently recruited by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport as a morale resource."

Bird was incredulous. "She's a fucking actress?!"

"Yes." A beat. "Emilia Clarke is generally considered to be a talented actress in projects she is personally invested in."

"This is you trying to have a laugh, isn't it?"

"No."

Kate stared at her. "Yeah, well, I never heard of Emilia Clarke and I don't believe a word of that shite."

"Your belief or lack thereof does not change the truth. This is a common human fallacy."

"Shut up, Dalek. What next? Queen Zara isn't real? Someone faking that, too?"

"No. Zara Phillips is real, alive and the current monarch of the United Kingdom."

"Jesus," Wink said.

"Why don't you enter hibernation mode?" Dr. Bhamra suggested.

"My power reserves are at–"

"Do it, Nicole."

"Affirmative."

"Fucking machines," Wink muttered.

Midnight in England. Kate was in the church tower, rifle by her side, monocular in hand, keeping an eye on the village. It wasn't the tallest tower she'd ever been in – the bell tower of Barchester cathedral was probably thrice as tall – but it still had a decent view of the area. The nearby houses were more or less intact. A few had been burned down, but mostly it was just broken windows and vines and weeds taking over. Kate had to wonder what happened to the people who lived in them. Rather, she wondered how many of those people were still alive. Probably not many.

There was a noise from the stairs and Kate snatched up the rifle.

"Don't shoot, sarnt, it's just Little Bird," came a familiar voice from below.

Kate rolled her eyes, but she also kept the rifle in hand, finger near the trigger, until a familiar ginger face appeared. "What're you doing up? Don't you know rifle rats need their beauty sleep?" Kate asked the younger soldier.

Bird grinned up at her as she climbed into the belfry. "I'm beautiful enough, aren't I? Besides, couldn't stop thinking about what the Dalek said."

"Time travel or Rachel Rutherford?"

"Both, really," Bird said. She exhaled sharply and rubbed her hands together.

"Put your gloves on, git," Kate said, shaking her head.

"Can't sleep with them on."

"And here you are, wide awake even though your watch was over hours ago."

Bird shrugged.

Kate did, too. "It's all insane, isn't it? Time travel and Rachel Rutherford."

Bird looked at her, then nodded. "Where d'you even start?"

"Whatever freaks you out the most, I suppose."

"Time travel freaks me out the most, but Rachel Rutherford, that hits closer to home," Bird said after a few seconds. "That make any sense?"

"Yeah, I think so," Kate said. "The first thing, it's bloody science fiction. Can't get my head around it, not sure I even want to. But this great hero, escapee from a labor camp, war hero, all around bad arse, inspiration to us all... and none of it's real, she's just some bloody never heard of her actress from some stupid program about dragons and zombies? Why would they do that?" Bird shook her head, looking so miserable Kate felt sorry for her. "I suppose we all need heroes, though, don't we? Why not make one that's fit to stand on a stage with King Arthur and Robin Hood?"

"Yeah, I suppose, but..."

"But this is us, humanity, clinging to things with our fingernails, Bird," Kate continued. "Yeah, it's shite, but if that's the worst thing we do in this war, I think we're pretty good. Practically saints is how that wanker Sekka would put it."

Bird smirked. "Yeah, well, it isn't the padre we look to to guide us, is it? It's you."

Kate looked at her for just a second, then stared back out at the quiet, dead village. "I'm just doing my best for you."

"You are."

Kate was silent for a while. "Do you remember much about the way things used to be, Little Bird?"

"Not especially. I was only five when it all blew up. What about you?"

"Twice that," Kate said. "Not sure that's better or worse. Not old enough to really understand the way the world really was, but old enough to know the difference between before and after." She smiled bitterly. "Telly. That's the thing I miss the most, I think. Besides my family, I mean. Not many of them lasted long after the bombs fell..."

"Nobody's did, Kate. Nobody's."

"There was such rubbish. Celebrity Big Brother. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Doctor Who. The Weakest Link. But I miss them bad, Little Bird. They were like a blanket, you know?"

Bird nodded. "I had my mum's old blanket after she died. Had it until the Machines caught me."

Kate frowned and looked at her. All our stories are sad ones, aren't they? She didn't like the glum look on Bird's freckled face, not one bit. "Daniel Craig."

"Who's that?"

"The actor who played James Bond. Or one of them. The one who was playing the man before the end, anyway."

"Handsome lad?"

"Handsome man. But creepy, too."

"Like our Dalek, then."

Kate considered it, then nodded. "Yeah, bit like our Dalek. Less handsome. Less creepy. And Jason Bourne. Sort of the American James Bond." She tried to remember the actor's name and couldn't. Michael something? Maybe? "I was too young to watch those movies, but I still did."

"I've never seen a movie," Bird said.

Kate looked at her in surprise. "What? Never? Not even the Ministry ones?" The Ministry of Defence, drawing on the now-dubious talents of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, had a lengthy catalog of informational and entertainment films for the troops and the people in general.

"Not even them." Bird smiled crookedly. "More of a book person, to be honest, Kate."

"Oh yeah? What books?" There was no shortage of those in Britain, at least. Especially after people realized it was better to use the shelves than the books as firewood. She idly wondered who'd taught Bird to read. Whoever took her in after her parents died, she supposed. Most villages and all the Resistance barracks had an official teacher or two, but quality and commitment varied wildly.

"Oh, well, yanno..."

Kate pretended not to notice freckly cheeks turning towards the color of a certain soldier's ginger hair. "Me, I liked Harry Potter. Books and movies both. The last movie never came out, though. I sometimes wonder how different it would've been from the book. Wonder what happened to all the actors in it, too," Kate murmured. "Suppose most of them are gone now. I once ran into a bloke who said Rupert Grint – that's the one who played Ron Weasley – was up in Lancashire or Merseyside, with the North Western Command. Said he was a Captain in the Army now, if you can believe that. Captain Weasley. Captain Ginger. That's something to look up to, isn't it?" Kate asked, smiling.

She looked over at Bird. The younger soldier was asleep, chin on her chest, gun in her lap.

"Yeah... something to look up to," Kate said again. She eyed the girl for a moment, uncertain, then looked away, out at the dead village again. After a while, Tah relieved her on watch and Kate fell asleep. She slept, and she dreamt of days gone by...

Weston-on-Alfey, Britain

April 26, 2011

It had been five days since the world burned, and nobody knew anything. There were all sorts of stories, though. They'd come second – first had been frantic ransacking of the local grocery store, and the chemist for good measure. Katie's mother mostly sat on the couch, sometimes eating, rarely speaking.

The stories got wilder every day. The Queen was dead. No, the Queen was still alive, but Prince Charles and Prince William were dead, lost in London along with millions of others. No, they'd gotten out in time, but died fighting at Portsmouth. Fighting who? Nobody knew that. Russians, Chinese, Americans, Islamist terrorists, a conspiracy of right-wing generals, robots from the future, aliens from space, Katie had heard all of it and believed none of it.

"C'mon, mum, you've got to eat," Katie said. "You've got to."

Mrs. Harvey stared at the TV. Useless. The power hadn't lasted half an hour after the attack started. It was just a big, stupid piece of plastic.

"Mum." Katie pushed her in the shoulder. That still worked, but less and less often by the day. "It's the last of the bread. Please, mum, have some." She took hold of her mother's hand and laid it atop the bread and butter sandwich. It was the last of the butter, too. Katie had taken two shopping carts of food out of the Sainsbury's, and most of it was stuff that would last – for a while, at least. Longer than butter and milk, at least.

Just then, there was a knock at the front door. Katie grabbed the camping axe she'd taken from the village hardware shop and held it up as she slipped over to the door.

"Mrs. Harvey? Ellie? It's Stanton. Are you in there?"

Katie unlocked the door and opened it a crack. She stared out. There he was, old Mr. Stanton, their neighbor at the farm down the lane.

"Katie, dear, good to see you – is your mum... well, is she about?" Stanton asked.

"What's the matter?"

"The BBC's back."

Katie blinked. "What? How do you even know? Do you have a generator?"

"Wish I did, Katie, wish I did. Got a battery powered telly, though. My son got it for me two Christmases ago. Been checking it every few hours since... well, since the power went off. And this morning, the BBC was back. Thought maybe some of us around the neighborhood could come and see. Maybe find out something about all of this."

"I'll ask my mum. But she's... she's..."

"What is it, girl? What's the matter?"

"She's like... it's as... she's hardly said or done anything since it happened, Mr. Stanton. She hasn't changed, she's barely eaten, and I don't know what to do, I don't know how to help her..."

Mr. Stanton looked at her, sympathy on his face. "Why not tell her what's new? Maybe that'll bring her out of her shell a bit?"

Katie nodded eagerly. "Right! Maybe it'll be good news!" She turned away too fast to see Stanton's doubtful expression. "Mum! Mum! There's news! Mr. Stanton, he's got a television that works, works on batteries, and he says the BBC is back! Come on, mum! Let's go and see it!" Katie said excitedly, tugging on her mom's hands.

"What? What's he got?" Mrs. Harvey asked, still staring at their own, useless television.

"A television that works! And a station that's broadcasting! Oh, come on, mum!"

After an agonizingly long moment, Mrs. Harvey nodded and got up, helped along by Katie.

Twenty minutes later, half the neighborhood was crowded around Stanton's dining room table, sitting or standing, leaning against the walls. Katie had pushed her way up to the front, right next to the small television.

"Right then, Stanton, switch it on. Show us."

Stanton nodded and turned the TV on. For a second or two, nothing happened, and someone groaned, and then a static image with the BBC logo and the words PLEASE STAND BY.

Someone else groaned, even louder. "You're wasting the batteries, mate," he told Stanton.

"Hold on, it's not the hour yet, is it?"

Katie looked at the old fashioned grandfather clock in the corner of the room. It was just before ten in the morning. And, just as the clock began to chime, the static image was replaced by a slightly grainy picture of a man behind a desk in a studio. Katie recognized him as one of the people from the BBC evening news.

"Good morning, Great Britain. If this is your first time tuning in since the attacks, the BBC has gone back on line with the Wartime Broadcasting System. We will aim to offer updates on the global situation as often as possible. For now, we are limited to brief messages on the hour, every hour around the clock. Today, though, we have a special, extended broadcast. We got live now to St. Ninian's Cathedral, Perth, Scotland."

The man in the studio vanished and was replaced by slightly grainy footage of the inside of a church. If it was a cathedral, it wasn't a very big one, Katie told herself. But it was full of people. A dozen or so priests in full, fancy 'smells and bells' vestments, several dozen soldiers – a few officers in dress uniform, but mostly armed soldiers in field kit, and a few dozen civilians, dour Scottish faces for the most part.

Something happened off screen and the priests and officers and civilians all rose to their feet. The camera panned from the altar to the entrance to the cathedral, where someone stood in the doorway, flanked by a quartet of armed soldiers.

"Hold on, is that – "

"Zara Philips. She is alive, then, I heard she was," one of Katie's neighbors, Miss Blake, one of the local school teachers, said.

"Who's that, mum?" Katie asked.

Mrs. Harvey didn't answer.

Miss Blake did. "One of the royals, Katie. One of Queen Elizabeth's granddaughters."

Stanton shook his head. "Elizabeth's not the queen any more," he said, sighing and shaking his head. "Don't any of you understand what's going on?"

"Shh!" another older fellow hissed.

The camera panned over again, this time to a tall black priest in late middle age, looking weary and miserable, but also resolute. His robes were finer than the others, and he had on a miter. He stood in front of the altar, looking at the Queen as she processed up the central aisle of the cathedral.

"Who's that, mum?"

Mrs. Harvey squinted tiredly. "Archbishop of York," she whispered. "Now shh..." She broke off into a fit of coughing. Kate rubbed her on the back until the fit passed.

The Archbishop raised his hands and made the sign of the cross. Then he said "Sirs, I here present unto you Queen Zara, your undoubted Queen. Wherefore all you who are come this day to do your homage and service, are you willing to do the same?"

There was a ragged chorus of "Aye!" and "Yes!"

The Archbishop looked at Zara. "Madam, is your Majesty willing to take the Oath?"

"I am willing."

"Will you solemnly promise and swear to govern the Peoples of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, the Bahamas, and the Solomon Islands, and of your Possessions and the other Territories to any of them belonging or pertaining, according to their respective laws and customs?"

"I solemnly promise so to do."

"Will you to your power cause Law and Justice, in Mercy, to be executed in all your judgements?"

"I will."

"Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel? Will you to the utmost of your power maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law? Will you maintain and preserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law established in England? And will you preserve unto the Bishops and Clergy of England, and to the Churches there committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges, as by law do or shall appertain to them or any of them?"

"All this I promise to do. The things which I have here before promised, I will perform, and keep. So help me God." She sighed and was silent for a moment, and then continued to speak, first laying her hand on a big old black leather Bible before she did.

"I, Zara Philips, do solemnly and sincerely in the presence of God profess, testify, and declare that I am a faithful Protestant, and that I will, according to the true intent of the enactments which secure the Protestant succession to the Throne of my Realm, uphold and maintain the said enactments to the best of my powers according to law."

She bowed and kissed the bible that the Archbishop held. Then another priest held up a leather folder containing a fancy looking document. Zara took a pen from yet another priest and quickly signed her name.

The Archbishop held up the bible, and then handed it to Zara. "Here is Wisdom; This is the royal Law; These are the lively Oracles of God. And, Britain, this is your Queen and sovereign in these trying times. May God help us all."

Kate crouched inside the rusting hulk of a newspaper delivery van. Old, rotting copies of the last issues of The Telegraph and The Guardian decayed away in large piles, crumbling to oblivion side by side. She was just old enough to remember the vague irony there. More important, though, was the scene she saw through her monocular. They were in Littleton, about five miles south of Heathrow. There were HK drones flying regular patterns over the airport, as well as heavy transports, both conventional and VTOL, coming and going. Kate's current plan was to move northeast until they reached the lifeless waters of the Thames, then head north and cut their way into the old Piccadilly Line tunnels between Southall and Ealing. It was only an hour north of their current position, but the skies here had more drones than Kate liked.

"What're you thinking?" Bird asked her. She and the others were also inside the van, lunch done with and the next leg of their mission ahead of them.

"Wondering if we're better off on foot or on the bicycles."

Bird saw the dilemma right away. "Speed or stealth."

"Yeah..." Kate frowned. On bicycles, it was only an hour. On foot, at least three and a half. But it was a lot easier to stick to cover on foot than riding down the middle of the road. She considered it for a few minutes. "Well, lads and lasses, I think it's time we said farewell to the bicycles. Take longer, but it'll be safer for us, especially with all the metal up there." She shifted and looked westward, where the sky was an angry black instead of the usual sullen grey. "If we're lucky, that storm there will make the machines pull back some of their drones."

"Aye aye, sarnt," Wink said as he eased the back of the van open and hazarded a look outside. "All clear," he said after a moment.

"Now, then?" Dr. Bhamra asked. "Or do we wait for the storm?"

"Dalek. How time critical are things?"

"Extremely critical."

Kate shook her head. "Maybe you should've landed closer to London, then."

"Other missions assigned to our platoon made that impractical."

Kate blinked. "Your platoon? No, never mind, I don't want to know even if you could tell me."

"I cannot."

Bird snorted.

"Well, you heard the robot. We need to get stepping. Wink, Tah, take point. Bird and I are with the doctor. Nicole, rear watch."

Everyone nodded. Wink shoved the door open and then grunted strangely. He collapsed gracelessly.

Tah grabbed the door and pulled it shut, as best he could with his squad mate lying dead on the floor of the van.

"Fuck! Where's the shooting coming from?" Kate hissed as bullets cut through the door. She scrambled backwards, and so did the others.

Nicole tilted her head, listening and looking. "From the gas station forty-six feet in that direction," she said, pointing.

"Right – Bird, side door there, and run as fast as you can until you hit cover. Tah next, once she's got covering fire. Then me and the Doctor. Nicole, last up."

Bird nodded, cold under fire. Or cool, at least. She slung her rifle over her shoulder and took hold of the handle to the side door, yanked it and pulled the door open, then took off like a shot, protected by the angle of the van – it was between her and the shooter, at least for a few feet. She ran until she reached the empty doorway of a WHSmith bookshop, bullets chipping the pavement just inches behind her. She dove in, turned sharply and fired back. Soon as she did, Tah took off running, heading for the pet store next to the bookshop. The windows were full of grim mementos – bird cages with tiny skeletons in them and a filthy fish tank.

"Doctor, ready to run?" Kate asked, looking over at their specialist. "Head for Tah and the pet shop."

The older woman exhaled twice, then nodded, looking calmer than Kate might have expected. Then again, anybody still on their feet in 2025 had to be used to violence and combat. "Now!" Kate yelled as she jumped out of the side of the van and broke into a run, sprinting towards the bookstore. She passed Bird and then pivoted sharply, her own rifle joining Bird's in returning fire at – whoever they were.

A moment later, Nicole emerged from the van. Instead of running for cover, though, she raised Wink's rifle, moved sideways, and then turned the corner. She ignored the bullets hitting the van inches from her face and shot once, twice, a third time. As she did, the volume of enemy fire fell and then died entirely.

Kate's relief died when someone else opened fire from an entirely different direction, a battered, burned out McDonald's maybe fifty yards to their left.

"Who the fuck is it?" Bird hissed as she turned and returned fire. "Daleks?"

"No. Humans," Nicole said as she moved smoothly to the front of the van and fired over the steeply angled hood.

Kate shifted position, moving from the doorway to one of the windows – the glass was long gone, but it was still better cover. And she didn't want to risk both her and Bird getting taken out by a single blast. Hopefully, someone would spot the three chevrons on her sleeves and focus on her instead of the others.

Then she caught a glimpse of the hostiles and Kate's blood ran cold. Soldiers in grey camouflage and body armor, equipped with small, odd-looking bullpup rifles vaguely similar in general shape to some of the squad's L85s, but only vaguely. Rifles not designed by any human mind, not built with the aid of human hands, wielded by filthy traitors.

Mosleys. A whole squad of them, at least, Kate judged. Ten hostile soldiers – Skynet's human pets had a different organization than the British military. Not great odds, even with a tame Dalek on their side. They were pinned down and split into three groups. Kate begrudgingly admitted Nicole into their band of brothers and sisters then.

"What now, sarnt?" Bird yelled in between suppressive bursts.

"Check the back. Maybe we can slip out that way!" Kate answered. Only problem – how to get that news to Tah?

"Private Tah, retreat to the rear of the pet shop and exfiltrate into the back street," Nicole calmly declared.

Kate smirked. Problem solved.

There was an angry yell from the back of the bookstore, and more gunfire. "Bird?!"

"Good! But more Mosleys back here! We're stuck here, sarnt!"

New problem.

"The Mosleys are advancing from both directions," Nicole calmly declared, as if she was just reading the weather report instead of announcing how fucked they were.

But even as Kate tried to think of a way out of this nightmare, there was a very, very welcome sound – the WHUMP of a grenade launcher in chorus with the rattle of a machine gun and the hiss of plasma rifles, all of it coming from behind the Mosley positions. Half of what was left of the McDonald's exploded as the grenade landed and went off. There was more gunfire, more explosions, but only for a minute or two. There were more Royal Resistance fighters than Mosleys, and they had the traitors pinned down, turning the tables entirely. Now Kate and her team weren't in the center of an enemy encirclement, they were the center of a giant trap for the enemy. She smiled nastily as she took a few shots in the direction of the Mosleys, and even more nastily when one of the grey-clad bastards stumbled and dropped thanks to her fire.

Minutes later, it was all over and every soldier in grey was dead on the ground. In the sudden stillness, Kate yelled out "Sergeant Harvey, 12th Mechanized, South West Command!"

There was a silence that lasted just a few seconds before someone else yelled back. "Lieutenant Hammond, 11th Infantry, London Command! Come out, guns shouldered, if you please."

Bird snorted. "What, he thinks we're roaches?"

"He's being smart. Hasn't seen your face yet," Kate said with a wink. "When he does, he'll know we're not roaches. Now shoulder your rifle and let's say hello and thank you to the men who just saved our pretty arses."

Bird snorted again, but she slung her rifle back over her shoulder and followed Kate out into the now-quiet street. Tah and Dr. Bhamra did the same. Nicole stayed where she was, but she did put the rifle down, leaning it against the side of the van.

A moment later, other soldiers cautiously appeared, guns raised. Kate saw their uniforms and battle gear were about the same as her team, but a fair few of them had plasma rifles instead of ordinary guns. One of them, a tall, middle-aged man with a huge blotchy burn mark on one cheek and shrapnel scars above his eyes, had the two stars of a lieutenant on his sleeve. Kate stood up straight and saluted smartly. "Sir."

"Sergeant," Lt. Hammond answered. "South West Command? You're a long way from home," he said.

"On a mission, sir."

"What mission?"

Kate hesitated half a second. "Secret one, sir."

Hammond stared down at her. "In London Command's zone of operations?"

"Yes sir."

Hammond looked past her, taking in the rest of the team, especially Nicole (armed but not in uniform) and Dr. Bhamra (neither armed nor in uniform) and then looked back at Kate, who looked up, impassive, unmoved despite his somewhat higher perch in the chain of command. Finally Hammond smiled just a little. "I'm sure it's a brilliant story you'll never be allowed to tell your grandchildren."

"Something like that, sir," Kate said, smiling just a little on her own part.

Hammond's smile faded fast, though. "South West – are you from Gloriana Barracks, then? Victoria?"

"No, sir, Avalon."

Hammond took his dark green beret off for a second, held it against his chest. "Sorry, sergeant. My condolences."

Kate's blood ran cold. "What?"

"What? You haven't heard? Bloody hell." He shook his head. "Sad news, Sergeant Harvey. Avalon was hit this morning, hit hard. A squad of HK walkers and an entire phalanx of T-555s struck it."

Kate looked at him in silence for a second. "How bad was it, sir?" she asked in something like a normal tone of voice.

"Bad. Reports are still confused, but latest word I heard – this was hours ago, mind – was that maybe one in ten made it out."

Kate blinked once, then nodded. Faces – the Major, Riley, that wanker Sekka – flashed before her eyes before she shoved them into a mental box. Not now. Not yet. "Right, sir," she said in a low voice. Not now. Not yet. "Not that I'm not grateful, but what are you and your men doing out here in Dalek country?"

Hammond smiled tautly at her. "Division command has every recce element sniffing as close to Heathrow as we can. There's far more activity there than usual this past week. They want to know why."

Kate nodded and then looked at Nicole. "Is that related to our mission?"

She answered in a perfect British accent (a Northern one this time, instead of Home Counties like when they'd met the Home Guard)."Possibly. More likely the facility is engaged in especially sensitive experiments." A beat. "We should hurry."

"Where are you hurrying to?"

"Bloomsbury, sir," Kate answered. "Orders are –"

"Classified," Nicole said.

Hammond eyed her, and Kate could see the wheels turning. The way she spoke, the way she stood, the way – well, the way she was. Hammond was no fool, and it wouldn't take long for him to put the pieces together. And then... Sensing possible disaster, Kate smiled and shrugged. "Right hand can't let the left know what it's doing, sir, can it?"

"No, sergeant, not in my experience. Not many easy ways from here to there. What's your planned route of infiltration?"

"East to the Thames, then north, sir, and down into the old Underground tunnels. The Piccadilly Line."

"There are no good ways into and across London, but that's one of the least bad ones," Hammond said. "Be especially careful on the above ground parts."

"What's that, sir?"

Hammond smiled just a little. "Despite the name, not all of the Underground is actually underground. There's a bit of a river it goes up and over, then a much longer stretch between Hounslow and West Kensington."

"Shite." A beat. "Sir."

Hammond waved it away. "It's eight miles, and that's a lot in the weather that's coming, but Skynet patrols are focused more south of the Thames, where most of the fighting is. With any luck, the storm will keep their HK drones grounded. Well, Sergeant, I wish I could offer more than moral support, but my own mission calls. I'll say this, though. Once you reach Piccadilly Circus station, you're safer above ground than below. We're not sure what Skynet is doing in the tunnels under the City, but whatever it is, it protects it. Zealously."

Kate again looked at Nicole.

"Support and infrastructure works for the project," she said after several seconds.

Hammond looked at her, then at Kate.

"We're grateful, sir," Kate told him. "But we have to go. As I'm sure you do. But..."

"But?"

"We'd be more grateful if you could see to it that my man Wink – Private Wink, in the van there – was laid to rest somewhere other than a white van."

Hammond nodded. "I'll see it's done, Sergeant, I promise." He held out his hand and Kate, who hadn't shaken anyone's hand in two years, swallowed hard before reaching out and shaking it.

"Thank you, sir. Thank you, and good luck."

A faded sign above the door read MAINTENANCE ACCESS ONLY.

"Guess we gotta turn back, huh, sarnt?" Bird asked. She was soaked to the bone, just like the rest of them, and looked even tinier than usual. The storm had broken maybe fifteen minutes after they left the Londoners behind, better armed with pulse rifles taken from a handful of fallen 11th Infantry soldiers and a couple well-armed Mosleys.

"Right." Kate forced a smile. They were tired and cold and soaked with rain, numb with grief. What else was new, really? At least the access door wasn't locked. It might have been at one point, but some earlier trespasser had forced it open. She looked at the others. "Take five. Let's try and warm up before we go further. Eat some rations. Enjoy the dry." The entrance to the Underground was shielded from the ongoing downpour.

"I was at Heathrow on Judgment Day, you know," Dr. Bhamra said after a moment. Her rifle, Kate's old Vektor R10, was laid out on her wet lap and there was a distant look on her face. Kate recognized it. People who were grown before the bombs fell had it a lot. Remembering paradise before the Fall.

"You were?" Kate asked.

Dr. Bhamra nodded. She was quiet for a while. Kate didn't push. "I was going to visit my grandmother in Bathinda."

"That in India?" Bird asked.

"Yes. Punjab. I had an evening flight to Delhi and then a second to Ludhiana the next afternoon, and then a three hour hired car drive to Bathinda. We'd just begun to queue to board when a man came on the airport PA and announced an emergency evacuation. And then I saw it. I saw the flashes. I saw the mushroom clouds go up as London burned. Lucky I didn't go temporarily blind, really."

Kate nodded. She'd seen – just barely – the Plymouth and Portsmouth mushroom clouds. It was insane, grotesque, that you could be hundreds of miles away from a place and still see its death reaching up to the skies. And in a country the size of Britain, that meant you saw a lot of it. A lot of the so-called secondary deaths had come from people out driving who'd seen a blast, gone blind and crashed their cars. It was just in the middle of the evening rush and Britain's roads were even more crowded than usual.

Dr. Bhamra fell silent and Nicole stepped in. "At 17:32 UTC, two RT-2PM Topol missiles with 800-kiloton warheads detonated 2200 feet above London, one above Westminster Cathedral and the other above Victoria Park. An area bounded by Wandsworth, Putney, Hammersmith, Kilburn, Camden Town, Stamford Hill, Walthamstow, Ilford, East Ham, Greenwich, Peckham and Brixton suffered almost complete destruction. A larger area between Wimbledon, Chigwell, Eltham and East Finchley suffered –"

"Jesus, shut up already, Dalek," Kate hissed, her fingers tight on the grip of her gun.

"I'm sorry. I was trying to be thorough. Humans appreciate thoroughness."

"Not. Always."

Dr. Bhamra stopped talking and just stared into her own bleak memories.

"Sarnt, problem occurred to me," Bird said after a minute.

"What? A new one?"

"Sort've. When we finish this," Bird said, forcing a grin at the optimism or delusion there, "who're we even going to tell? Avalon's gone. Who do we report to? London Command doesn't know anything about any of this. And I don't have the Defence Secretary's mobile number."

"I have secure communications with the USS New York, SSBN-747 ballistic missile submarine, currently in the Greenland Sea," Nicole said.

"Missile submarine?" Bird asked.

"How the hell do you manage that? You've got a radio in your skull?" Kate asked.

"I have a transmitter linked into a former NSA relay system housed in RAF Menwith that uses –"

"She's got a radio in her skull," Bird said.

"Something like that. Yes."

"Might've told us about Avalon, then."

"I am not monitoring Royal Resistance broadcasts."

"Maybe you ought to start," Tah said. That almost startled Kate. He was always a quiet one, and since the rest of the squad was lost, he'd been even more quiet.

Enough. It was time to go. "Let's move out," Kate said. She nodded to Nicole, who eased the door open and peered into the darkness beyond.

After Wink, Kate had decided the Dalek was going to be first in and last out from now on. She hated herself for not coming to that conclusion days ago. Before, she'd told herself the bloody machine was crucial to their success, and not worth risking on point against opposition likely to be more heavily armed than they were. Now, though, she thought of Tah or Bird taking a shot to the head while on point. No. She wouldn't let it happen. Not now. Especially not now that they knew what they needed to know about what Skynet was doing. Kate relaxed – slightly – when Nicole's arm raised and she gave them a thumb's up.

"All clear?" Kate asked, just to be sure.

"Affirmative." Nicole disappeared into the tunnel and Kate followed, the others not far behind. Kate switched on her NVG and the world went from black to green. She wondered if this was how the Terminator saw things. It'd be blue, she supposed, like the hue of her monocular's display.

They fell silent, well aware that the tunnels might be safer than the streets, but that didn't make them safe. Especially if Skynet was using them for some purpose. What had Nicole said? Support and infrastructure work for the time machine research facility? That meant, likely as not, more Mosleys. Skynet might use Terminators as a labor and security force in America, but here, there weren't enough of the bloody things to hunt and fight the Resistance, let alone lift boxes and lay cables.

But that didn't mean there weren't tunnel drones and walking bombs down here, either. Skynet had no shortage of the cheaper fighting models, even in the UK.

Kate tightened her grip on her plasma rifle. It was an M-25, one of the smaller models the Americans had been turning out for a couple years, using reclaimed Skynet factories in the Great Lakes. It had the same blue scope display as Kate's monocular, and sophisticated ranging and targeting software, too. Nicole had the thing's larger younger brother, an M-27. So did Tah. Bird had an M-25, too. Under other circumstances, Kate might've said the M-27 was just too big for Little Bird. Wink would've, she knew that, which is why Kate said nothing.

They moved as silently as they could down the sloping access tunnel. Nicole first, then Kate, then Bhamra, Bird and Tah bringing up the rear. After the last couple days spent mostly out of doors, entirely above ground, it felt weird to be back beneath the surface. Weird, but like home. Even for Kate, who'd spent the first ten years of her life before the apocalypse. What was it like for Bird and Tah? They must barely remember the way things used to be.

Kate pushed the thought aside. Focus on the mission. Focus on what's around you.

After maybe thirty yards, the access tunnel reached another door with the same label as the first one.

Nicole stood there, head tilted slightly, then nodded and gave them a stiff thumb's up. "I do not hear anything," she whispered.

"Main tunnel past there, then?"

Nicole nodded.

Kate nodded back. Do it.

This door was locked, but that didn't delay them any longer than it took for Nicole's fingers to sink into the steel and rip the lock, and the handle, completely out of the door. Then she quietly pushed it open. Beyond was, as she said, an underground railway tunnel. Kate shook her head. Once upon a time, she'd taken a train through this very tunnel. She (aged seven) and mum and dad had gone to Spain for a bank holiday. Kate couldn't remember which one. She remembered the beaches, though, and the architecture, and the sunshine most of all.

Nicole looked left and right, no doubt scanning the tunnel with her eyes and ears and whatever other senses she had, then nodded and took off to the right, east, towards the dead, machine-infested heart of London.

They'd gone maybe two and a half miles through the cold, damp tunnels – it was probably a marvel they hadn't completely flooded. Or maybe they had and Skynet had painstakingly pumped them dry? Kate didn't know and didn't really care. What she did care about was that they'd found an old train car. Kate guessed they were somewhere between Southall and Hanwell, still a good nine or ten miles from Piccadilly.

Finding a train car stuck on the tracks wasn't that unusual. Kate remembered making out in a First Great Western train that had been abandoned a mile outside of Harford Combe station. But she'd never heard of one abandoned in a tunnel. Beyond that, this one had dead bodies in it. Long dead bodies.

"Radiation sickness," Nicole said, studying one. Kate wasn't sure how she could tell just by looking at a skeleton in tattered rags, but she wasn't going to ask. "Illness and malnutrition. Radiation sickness. Gunshot wound to the head. Radiation sickness."

"Enough, Nicole," Dr. Bhamra said.

Nicole stopped talking.

Kate exhaled. "Right. May as well take five here. Out here, not in there."

"Why not?" Bird asked.

Kate shook her head. Five years apart, but the culture gap was as wide as the English Channel. Bird and the others of her generation, they didn't have a handle on some things Kate took for granted.

"One of them died of sick, I don't want you lot breathing the same air," she said.

Dr. Bhamra, not a medical doctor, still knew that was, after all these years, not very likely, but she also knew what Kate wasn't saying – it wasn't respectful to the dead to squat and snack next to their bodies.

"Righto, sarnt," Bird said with a shrug. She pulled her face mask, a thick cloth thing, back up over her nose and mouth, then sat down at the side of the tunnel, rifle by her side. Tah stood nearby, rifle still in arms.

"No need, Tah," Kate said. "Sit down. The Dalek can keep watch."

Tah shrugged and sat down. Kate nodded and added 'keep an eye on the lad' to her list of tasks. It was hard to tell what quiet ones like him were feeling and thinking. Bird was the opposite problem. Too easy to tell what she was feeling and thinking. Far too easy.

Then again...

Bird reached into one of her vest pockets and produced a candy bar. Kate's eyes widened slightly. She hadn't seen one in years, at least one that was even remotely safe to eat. "Where'd you get that?"

"It's from Chile or Brazil or something," Bird told her, waving the bar back and forth. The label said Super 8. "Not sure how Riley got her hands on it, probably had to trade an entire box of soup cans, but she did. And she said I could have it when I told her what it was for."

"And? What's it for?"

"For you." Bird held it out to Kate. "Know it hasn't been much of one, sarnt, but still, happy birthday."

Kate blinked. "What?"

Bird laughed, and Tah at least cracked a grin. "Yeah, there's our sarnt, regular genius. It is October 21, Sergeant Harvey."

"Well, fuck me," Kate said, shaking her head. "Thought it was still two days to go." That wasn't uncommon or worrisome. In the tunnels, in the ruins, in the wilderness, it was hard keeping track of dates. And not many people had much to celebrate their birthdays with these days. Then again, there had been last year, hadn't there?

Kate smiled as she remembered.

Avalon Barracks, Britain

October 21, 2024

"Oo er!" Wink yelled. "Turner, you ought to be put in time out."

"You gonna put me there, is that it?"

"You'd like that, I bet."

Turner stared down below his belt for a second, then shook her head. "Not from a man of your caliber."

"Fucking Turner," Bauman laughed. "And Wink not fucking Turner," he added.

"All right, all right, settle down," Kate said. She didn't want the party to go sour, and knew it would with another few exchanges along that trajectory. "I've been a good girl this year, as you all fully know."

"That's Christmas, not your birthday. You're allowed to be bad on your birthday, my dear." It was Maggie Byrne, an Irishwoman with greying hair and the steadiest hands on base. Good thing, that, because she was also an expert bomb maker. Nobody asked where she'd acquired her skills and how she'd used them, and she didn't exactly bring it up, either.

Kate grinned.

"Bring out the gift!" Riley said.

"Shh, that's supposed to be later, Yank," Bauman hissed at her.

Riley didn't look guilty. She just grinned.

"All right, all right, since our favorite dirty little rat catcher ruined the surprise, here we go," Bird said, reaching down under her chair and pulling something out of a rotting cardboard box. She held it up and out to Kate as the rest of the squad and other people crowding the mess hall banged out a drumbeat on their chairs or the table tops.

"Wrapping and everything," Kate said as she tore the thin twine and crumbling yellowed newspaper off what was clearly a bottle. A wine bottle. She held it up and looked at the label and then laughed. It read SCOTT HARVEY 2008 SYRAH. "Harvey! What – where'd you even find this?"

"Scavenging run in Barchester."

"Really?" Kate was surprised. Licensed liquor stores and restaurant wine cellars had been cleared out within days of the bombs falling.

"Yeah. Someone gave me the idea to try and look in hotels."

"Hotels! Yeah! That's brilliant. Thank you, whoever gave you the idea to try and look in hotels."

"You're welcome, Sergeant." It was Sergeant Murphy, the troop sergeant of the Royal Marine detachment stationed at Avalon.

"Thank you, Sergeant. This is... this is a lavish gift, squaddies." Kate hugged the bottle for a second.

"We've got more, too, but none special like that," Bird said.

"Pop it open, Harvey, and let's get the party going!" Byrne said. "Who's got the corkscrew?"

"Er..." Bird's face fell.

Riley wagged a finger at her, then, grinning hugely, pulled one out of her rag dress and handed it to Kate.

"Never actually opened one of these myself, you know," Kate said.

"Just stick it in and twist with all you've got," Turner said, grinning wickedly. "Wink, write that down in case it ever comes up for you."

Wink flipped her the bird, but grinned back as he did.

"Stop, stop," Byrne said as Kate started twisting the corkscrew through the seal. "You need to clear that off the top of the cork first, Sergeant. Like this." She poked at the foil seal a bit, then grabbed hold of part of it and pulled it off the neck with her fingers. "Now it's ready."

Kate nodded at the Irishwoman and set to work again. A few seconds later, there was a soft POP as she pulled the cork free from the neck.

"Happy birthday, sarnt!" her squaddies called out.

Riley took the bottle and poured a little into every cheap plastic glass, only filling up Kate's all the way.

"Right, first off, here's to the birthday girl," Bird said, raising her glass. There was another chorus of Happy Birthday!

"And second off, here's to the feckin' human race," Byrne said. "To the ones with us, and especially to the ones we've lost."

Kate suspected hers weren't the only damp eyes in the room just then.

A little while later, she was smiling and leaning against the wall, listening to Amy Winehouse's new song and watching as one of the other Royal Marine hard 'uns was showing off some forearm-mounted gadget to Bird and Waingaya. "It's American," the corporal was telling them. "See? Zeira Corp Battlefield Data Assistant."

"What's it do, though?"

"Keeps track of the whole troop – positions, vitals, everything. The lieutenants and captain have bigger ones that keep track of the whole company, and the Lt. Colonel's manages the entire commando. It works off satellites."

Byrne looked at him. "Satellites? There's any still up there?"

"Lots," Corporal Spenser said. "The Australians and Brazilians have been sending new ones up for a few years now."

"Hard to believe," Byrne said.

Spenser shrugged and went back to his demonstration.

"Oi, switch on the BBC!" someone else yelled. "We're missing the news!"

Riley changed stations and raised the volume so it could be heard over the noisy party.

"- combined battlegroup of the California State Guard, the US 132nd Division and the 7th Volunteer Division of the African Union have reclaimed the city of San Luis Obispo and secured the Serrano Point nuclear power plant, while scattered battles between human forces centered around the California State Guard and Mexican II Corp and Skynet continue in the Central Valley and through Los Angeles down to San Diego."

"That concludes tonight's news broadcast. Stay strong, Britain. Remember we do not stand alone. And now, we turn the air over to Rachel Rutherford."

"Good evening, Great Britain. Before we begin, please listen to some personal messages. The dog is barking. The dog is barking. The piano is tuned. The piano is tuned. The river is rising. The river is rising. The phone is ringing. The phone is ringing. The truth is out there. The truth is out there. Right, now that's out of the way, it's your old friend Rachel Rutherford again. If you can hear this, if you're listening to me, it means you survived another day. And..."

Half the room cried out "If you survived, you won."

"Tonight we're going to talk about keeping clean..."

Someone snorted loudly.

"Good luck with this lot," Wink said.

"Shh, shh," Kate said, waving her free hand before taking a sip of the Harvey wine. "You should be taking notes, squaddies."

They'd been on the move again for maybe an hour and a half, and were getting close to Piccadilly Circus Station, when they found the bodies. Nicole was the first one to spot them, of course. She halted and made a hand signal for the others to do. Kate crept closer. "What've you got?"

"Bodies. Human bodies. Killed within the last day or so."

Kate looked past her, further up the tunnel. There. She saw them, or at least two of them. Men in uniforms it took Kate a second to realize were Americans.

"Yankees," she murmured. "Friends of yours?"

"No. I don't have friends. But I do know these soldiers."

"Yeah?"

"Yes. They are soldiers from the 132nd Division assigned to John Connor's special operations task force. Sergeant First Class Edoardo Timms. Sergeant First Class Jonathan Sayles. Master Sergeant Andre Sumner. Sergeant First Class Jenny Ferro."

"Mm. Sorry for them. You have any notion what they're doing here in our tunnel?"

"No. Mission details were compartmentalized."

Kate shook her head. She understood why, but still, if she'd known there were more Americans in London, she might have pushed faster, might've been here to help them. Or here to get cut down alongside them, she had to admit. And what gave them the right, anyway? It was one thing to send a civilian expert and her bodyguard on a mission, but an actual combat unit operating without any oversight? Typical American arrogance.

"Well, Dalek, I hope whatever mystery mission they had wasn't as important as ours."

Nicole nodded. "I hope so, too."

"Anything else?" Kate was prompted to ask.

"No," Nicole said after a couple seconds. An eternity for a machine.

Kate eyed her, wondering, then shook her head. "What killed them?"

"Phased plasma rifle in the 40 kilowatt range. Given the combat capabilities of Master Sergeant Sumner's team, their enemy was likely a Terminator and not a human auxiliary."

"Yeah, lead with that part next time," Kate hissed, tightening her grip on her new rifle. She peered down the tunnel, tense, expecting a T-555 to step out of the shadows at the edge of her perception and start firing.

"I'm sorry," Nicole said.

Kate shook her head. She crouched there for a sixty second count and was about to move when she realized what was sixty seconds to a machine? It could wait there sixty years if it needed to.

"Dalek, any sign of metal up there?"

A second's pause as Nicole looked into the darkness. Kate again wondered just what the world looked like to her. "Negative."

Kate nodded and signaled for the squad to advance. When she reached the first body, Kate made herself look down. It must've been Ferro. She'd taken a plasma bolt in the chest, and it wasn't pretty. It never was. At least it was quick, Kate told herself.

"Sarnt, there's another one here," Tah said as he stepped into a service alcove at the far side of the tunnel, just past the last of the Americans. A big bald man lay on the wet ground there.

Nicole and Kate both turned. Kate shrugged but Nicole cried out "Get away! It's a Dalek!"

Before Tah had a chance to react, the 'body' lashed out with one arm and grabbed him by the knee. It squeezed. Hard. Tah screamed and fell backwards on his ass. He struggled to bring his rifle to bear, but before he could, the Terminator hammered its hand into his throat. There was a sickening snap. Tah's eyes bulged out. He convulsed once and then slumped over as the Terminator rose to its feet. It turned, rifle in hand, and was slag before it could pull the trigger, no fewer than three plasma bolts destroying everything above its waist.

Kate exhaled sharply. Fuck. FUCK.

"You... you okay, sarnt?" Bird asked.

Put it in the box, Kate. Put it in the box. She looked over at the last member of her squad and nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay," she said, searching Bird's face, seeing nothing but a vague sense of anger and misery. Why not? People died every day in this war, in this world. It was all Bird even knew... and that flipped the switch in Kate's mind. Any doubts she had about how this would end went away. She reached out and squeezed Bird's shoulder. "We'll finish it, Bird. We'll finish it for him and Wink and everyone else."

"Yeah," Bird said flatly.

FUCK.

"I'm sorry for your loss," Nicole said after a few seconds.

"Sure," Kate said. She squatted down next to Tah's body and pressed his eyes shut. Then, shaking her head, she took his sidearm and a few extra magazines, and his ration pack, too. "Sorry, soldier, but you understand how it goes." Then she got up and snapped "Let's move. Something might've heard the fight."

The team cautiously moved through the tunnels for another twenty minutes before they reached the station. Kate sent Nicole out to make sure the platform wasn't holding any nasty surprises.

Most of the tiles had cracked and fallen, but a few were left, looking lonely amidst the bare stone. A faded Underground station logo reading PICCADILLY CIRCUS could still be seen. Next to it was a poster advertisement for something called Fast & Furious 5: Rio Heist, COMING TO CINEMAS 21/4 was written at the bottom. Kate shook her head. There was some bad timing for you.

"Mind the gap," Kate said to Bird as the younger soldier hopped up onto the platform.

"What?"

Kate pointed down at the edge of the platform. The yellow lettering had faded but still could be made out. "Safety measure. Don't want anyone getting to close to the cars as they come and go, right?"

Bird shrugged. "I don't know. I've never been on a train."

"You're British. You've been on a train, you just don't remember."

Bird shrugged again. "Then it doesn't really matter, does it?"

"Suppose not..."

Kate stepped around the remnants of a busker's set-up: cheap folding chair, guitar case with a handful of coins on it, and a rusting speaker.

"What's that?" Bird asked.

"Busker nest," Kate told her.

Bird stared blankly.

"Musician playing for a bit of money from people riding the Underground."

"Oh. Strange."

"Yeah, funny world," Kate said, feeling weary. She pointed. The Way Out sign, a digital one, was dead, but Kate still recognized the shape.

They took the rusting, broken escalator from the platforms to the concourse, moving through that as quietly as they could. Kate stepped on something solid and slippery, and looked down to see a rusty old shell casing. More were nearby. No bodies, though, and no scrapped Terminators or HK wildcats, small drone walkers that carried dirty, rusty blades perfect for giving humans tetanus and worse.

Kate shrugged it off and directed Nicole to take point on the stairs leading up to the streets of London. She followed, finger near the trigger, not sure what would be waiting up there.

And then she saw it.

Thanks to Nicole, Kate knew they were only a couple miles from the London ground zeroes. But still, emerging from the dusty, rusty and debris-strewn stairway and into a city that had been smashed flat with an enormous hammer of nuclear fury, it almost made her breath catch in her throat. She guessed much of the buildings in the area had been, if not completely destroyed in the initial blast, at least heavily damaged. Then the fires would have spread and taken most of the rest down. Nothing was intact and not much was left that was taller than Kate herself. The white and light brown stone of the local buildings was charred black and coated with grey dust that somehow defied the storm that was still raging over the city.

Dr. Bhamra came up behind her. She stopped short, gasped, and put one hand over her face mask, squeezing her eyes shut for a second.

The streets were full of burned out automobiles. A dozen London cabs. A pair of delivery truck, one still recognizable as UPS brown. A big red tour bus. Kate stared at the bus and the too-small skeletons on the open upper deck for a few seconds before Bird elbowed her.

"No time to play tourist, sarnt. Dalek's looking weird," she whispered.

Kate looked over at Nicole, who was turning in a slow circle, a strange expression on her face. Something almost like awe, Kate thought, if a robot could feel awe. Or anything else.

"What?" she asked in a low voice. "See something?"

"In a manner of speaking. I have detailed graphic files on the architecture of London from ancient times to the 21st century, but it is not the same as seeing it with my own eyes. Currently I am superimposing wire-frame images of Piccadilly Circus before the war over my main optical input. It is... disappointing that so much damage has taken place."

"Yeah, we all feel that way. Funny, that,," Bird said. "Sarnt, we don't have time for this."

"Little Bird's right. We need to move."

"Oh, fuck me," Kate whispered as she stared through her monocular.

"What? What do you see?" Bird whispered back. The four of them had taken cover in a double-decker city bus while Kate surveilled the last stretch of rubble to cross before reaching the target site.

"Skynet built its bloody facility on top of the British Museum." Cocky bastard, she thought, grimacing with anger. A month or so before Judgment Day, her school had gone there on a class trip. She remembered there'd been an exhibition about Egyptian mummies. Now it was gone, and worse yet, a huge plastic pyramid was rising up from the rubble.

Bird shrugged. It was all just strange names and photographs in books she couldn't really read to her. "What bothers me is that we've been above ground half an hour and haven't seen a single Dalek or HK."

"I noticed. Figured the universe was trying to make things up with us." Or teasing us before the last nasty trick, Kate thought. She kept that one to herself.

"It seems that the theory you and Dr. Tang's work group developed is true."

Kate looked over at Dr. Bhamra. "What? What theory? Sounds like something I should've already heard."

"I didn't want to get your hopes up. But the scientists Connor put together to make sense of TDE technology, we had a theory — an unlikely one, I thought — that Skynet would draw back any machine combat units from the facility as it entered the testing phase. Chronal energy waves could react negatively with metallic devices."

"What?"

"Time travel destroys machines "

Kate pointed at Nicole.

"My skeleton is sheathed in organic tissue. It minimizes the effect."

"Just minimizes?"

"Prolonged exposure to high levels of chronal energy would be harmful."

"Forget you, what about my rifle?" Bird asked Bhamra.

"I wouldn't fire it during an actual test of the device, but otherwise, it should be okay."

"How much trust are you putting in 'should' here, Doc?" Kate asked. She pictured Bird pulling the trigger and the plasma containment box brewing up. "Because I'd rather drop these things and scrounge up some old-fashioned rifles than risk it."

"We do not have time for scrounging," Nicole said.

"It's very low odds, Corporal Bird," Dr. Bhamra told her. "Trust me."

Kate frowned severely. "How low?"

"Considerably less than one percent. If you like, I'll switch weapons with her," Dr. Bhamra said, and nothing in her tone or expression suggested it was a reassuring bluff.

"Bird, your call," Kate said.

Bird shrugged. "I like my shiny new toy, sarnt."

Kate eyed her, then nodded. "All right. So no Terminators about," she said. "Unless they're wrapped in skin like you are, Nicole."

"Unlikely. The long term exposure would damage them and Skynet does not maintain enough T-555 units in the United Kingdom to rotate them in and out. It is likely that beyond the automated defense grid, all security personnel are human auxiliaries. Mosleys."

"Right then," Kate said. "So we have to get inside?"

"Absolute certainty requires it."

"What? They didn't stick a magic time energy detector inside your skull alongside the radio transmitter?"

"The technology does not exist."

Kate sighed. "Humor's wasted on you."

"Yes. I have difficulty with the concept."

Bird snorted.

"So how do we get inside?"

"Subterfuge, Sergeant Harvey. I will gain us entry through the perimeter by posing myself as a Skynet-controlled Terminator and you will accompany in the guise of Mosleys."

"You can manage that?"

"Yes. Current security codes were procured by another team from our platoon."

"When'd that happen?"

"When we were near Heathrow International Airport."

"Need to know, sergeant," Dr. Bhamra said.

Kate shook her head. "Argument for another day. For now, let's see just how current those codes are."

"First we need to acquire suitable uniforms for you, Sergeant Harvey," Nicole said. "Please wait here."

Kate glared at the machine, but nodded and buried herself a little deeper into the rusting hulk of the bus.

"How long do we wait before we figure out she's bringing fire down on us?" Bird whispered after three or four minutes.

Kate shook her head. "If she wanted to do that, could've done it days ago." But she didn't like the idea of sitting in place very long – sitting in place at all – during the daylight. Another ten minutes went by and Kate was about to order them to change position when Nicole came back. She had a stack of clothing in her arms and a streak of blood on her face. The Terminator laid the stack down on one of the seats of the bus. It was a trio of grey Mosley uniforms.

"Happy bloody Christmas," Kate said, shaking her head.

Kate glanced idly up at the two enormous plasma rifles mounted above the heavy metal gate to the research facility, then, feigning boredom, stared ahead while Nicole communicated with the guards on the far side of the gate through a small speaker next to it. The whole thing reminded her of the Skynet factory in Yeovil, at least a little. But this place was far more sinister, and not just because of the crazy science Skynet was exploring within. It looked like something from another planet, a huge plastic pyramid with plastic conduits running up the sides, conduits that flashed brightly in various colors every few minutes. Kate had seen pictures of the pyramids of Egypt when she was a little kid, but this was nothing at all like them.

She saw Bird picking at the collar of her stolen uniform and grimaced inwardly. Don't draw attention to yourself, Little Bird, don't make them wonder why the uniform is a bit too big for you.

Nicole stepped back. A moment passed, and then the gate silently split in half, each section receding into the walls of the pyramid. The Terminator strode in, and the others followed. Beyond the gate was a tall, narrow passage. On either side, there were alcoves, and each alcove had a pair of heavily armed Mosleys in it. Kate eyed them blankly, not at all interested in something she was supposed to be familiar with.

Beyond the security stations, the hallway went on, sloping upwards slightly.

Kate didn't want to let Nicole take command, but there was no choice. She was the only one who knew the lay-out of a Skynet research facility. She kept close to the Terminator, moving with what she hoped was a sufficiently inattentive stance for a tired soldier inside a secure location. Then she tried to look more like a proper soldier, realizing her hatred of the filthy traitors was putting the mission and the team at risk.

The team advanced warily, rounding a corner and coming face to face with a tall, middle aged man with closely cropped brown hair.

"Hello," he said, his voice disarmingly mild.

"Hello," Nicole answered.

Kate tensed. He was metal, she was sure of it. She began to raise her rifle and then stopped when the man smiled. It was an awkward sort of smile. Not a cold or cruel one, nor an overly enthusiastic one. It was the kind of smile a baby might have, imitating its mum.

The tall man stared at Nicole for a second, head cocked ever so slightly to one side. She was doing the same. Finally, both nodded and smoothly walked past each other.

"The hell was thar?" Kate hissed once the stranger was gone.

A pause, brief in human terms, years for a Terminator. "A co-belligerant."

"What?" Kate said, then shook her head. "Never mind. Just get us where we need to be, please," she said.

On they went, climbing higher and passing numerous closed doors, doors with labels in long strings of 1s and 0s.

Finally, Nicole pushed open a door, one just like all the others except for the exact number etched into it, and beyond was a staircase. Kate nodded to herself. In light of what Nicole said about the effect of 'chronal energy' on machines, she wasn't surprised the facility didn't have any lifts, or maybe just a few for moving heavy equipment.

There were conduits running up and down the walls of the stairwell. One of them suddenly flashed red, three times in quick succession. "Don't move," Nicole said.

Kate frowned, but she stood in place. A moment later, she understood why. There was a second series of flashes and then Kate felt dizzy, so dizzy she could barely stand up straight.

Nicole said nothing. Kate almost missed her rambling, but she knew why. Skynet might be listening.

After a few seconds, the conduits flashed green, three times once and then a second time, and the strange dizziness passed as quickly as it came.

Some kind of 'chronal energy' test? All the more reason to hurry and do what we need to do, Kate told herself.

Nicole started down the stairs and the others followed. Earlier, the Terminator had told them the heart of the complex was likely to be well below the ground for technical reasons that made Kate's head hurt.

There were footsteps coming from below.

Kate tensed, and only relaxed slightly when she saw two weedy, spectacled men in powder blue lab coats. Dr. Bhamra types, but evil.

The two scientists looked up as they reached the nearest landing and pressed themselves back up against the wall.

Nicole passed them by without a word.

Kate glanced sideways at the two scientists, hoping her expression wasn't anything like the hate she felt for them, and then continued on, Bird and Bhamra close behind.

"How deep you think it is?" Bird asked.

Kate gave her a look.

Bird shrugged.

"Ten levels below ground," Nicole said without turning or breaking stride. They went down two more floors and then the conduits pulsed red – four times, not three.

There was a thrumming in the air and a faint vibration in the steel stairs.

Nicole stopped in place. "Nobody move. Please grab tightly to the – to – blood is thicker than water – "

Kate was

standing in Mr. Stanton's living room, looking at the old fashioned grandfather clock in the corner of the room. It was just before ten in the morning. And, just as the clock began to chime, the static image was replaced by a slightly grainy picture of a man behind a desk in a studio. Katie recognized him as one of the people from the BBC evening news.

"Good morning, Great Britain. If this is your first time tuning in since the attacks, the BBC has gone back on line with the Wartime Broadcasting System. We will aim to offer updates on the global situation as often as possible. For now, we are limited to brief messages on the hour, every hour around the clock. Today, though, we have a special, extended broadcast. We got live now to St. Ninian's Cathedral, Perth, Scotland."

The man in the studio vanished and was replaced by slightly grainy footage of the inside of a church. If it was a cathedral, it wasn't a very big one, Katie told herself. But it was full of people. A dozen or so priests in full, fancy 'smells and bells' vestments, several dozen soldiers – a few officers in dress uniform, but mostly armed soldiers in field kit, and a few dozen civilians, dour Scottish faces for the most part.

Something happened off screen and the priests and officers and civilians all rose to their feet. The camera panned from the altar to the entrance to the cathedral, where someone stood in the doorway, flanked by a quartet of armed soldiers.

"Hold on, is that – "

"Zara Philips. She is alive, then, I heard she was," one of Katie's neighbors, Miss Blake, one of the local school teachers, said.

"Who's that, mum?" Katie asked.

Kate was

running hard down the alley, legs aching, heart pumping, adrenaline spiking. Gordie was behind her and she knew it was gaining on her. She had no weapons, no edge, no plan. And she was running out of alley, too. Up ahead was a chainlink fence. Kate hurled herself towards it in one last desperate burst of speed, wrapped her fingers around the flimsy steel and hauled herself upwards. Up, up, up, and over – she landed hard on the far side and scrambled to her feet as Gordie tore the fence apart with his bare hands.

Kate turned and ran again. Up ahead, a door opened and a pimply-faced kid in a cheap, grease-stained apron came out with a pair of garbage bags in hand. "INSIDE NOW!" Kate yelled as she ran towards him.

The kid gawked and then saw Gordie and realized he didn't really need to dump the garbage bags in the dumpster right this minute. Kate raced past him and reached the sidewalk. She kept going, glancing left, somehow increasing her pace just enough to avoid the frantically honking pick-up truck.

Gordie didn't avoid the frantically honking pick-up truck. The crash and clang of metal on metal brought a tight smile to Kate's face.

Kate was

holding a hammer out to Swann. "Here, mate."

Swann blinked, looking genuinely touched. He took it and slipped it into his belt, the head holding it in place on the frayed leather. "I take back most of what I've ever said about you, Kate."

"Next year, I'll get you a saw, maybe."

Swann laughed, and Kate joined in – for a few seconds. Then she held up her hand.

"Shh!"

"What? What is it?"

"Thought I heard something," Kate whispered.

"I didn't hear –" Swann's own whispers were cut off by an unmistakable sound – a gun shot and a cut-off cry of pain.

"Daleks!"

The rest of the section was spread out across the building, Kate knew, and she could only guess how many of them were even still alive. But there was one silver lining – Kate's rifle was fitted with a grenade launcher, and every report she'd read or heard said even a T-555's exoskeleton wouldn't survive a solid hit from it.

"Stay close," she whispered as she crouched down and began to slowly move through the darkened hardware store.

Swann nodded and fell in behind her,

Kate did her best to slow her breathing, to keep her steps steady and silent – the crusty snow made that bit especially hard. Where are you, you metal wanker?

She was at the end of one aisle now. Left, right or ahead into lumber? The gunshot had come from the left. But was it better to crouch and wait or seek the machine out?

The decision was made for her. A glint of metal to her left, through the half-empty, rusting shelves.

Pure instinct and spiking adrenaline did the rest. Kate spun, sighted and squeezed the trigger in less than a second. There was a WHUMPH and a recoiling kick against Kate's shoulder.

She ducked low and felt more than saw Swann do the same.

The grenade caught the T-555 right in the center of its titanium torso.

"Eat that, you metal motherfucker!" Kate cried out.

Kate was

standing out in the tall grass, staring down at the square grey stone. There was no name on it, just a date. A year. 2009.

Kate felt a swell of emotion and managed, somehow, to beat it back. Later, maybe, she'd let it overwhelm her. For now, though, she put it in the Box.

Sarah was at her side, the others hung back a little out of respect or embarrassment.

"She died for you."

"Me? Shite. She died for him." Kate turned and pointed an accusing finger at the boy. "She died for you. Are you worth it, hero? Are you worth any of it?"

He looked her in the eyes and she had to give him some credit for that. "I won't let them win. I won't let it be for nothing."

"I'm sorry for your loss," the slender girl with the big eyes said.

Kate was

dizzy and off-balance and Bird was shaking her shoulder. "Sarnt? You back from... that?"

"Chronal pulse," Nicole helpfully supplied.

"Yeah, figured that bit," Kate said. "Saw things... not all of them things I liked."

"It's complicated. Not all of them may be localized to this iteration."

"What?"

"It's complicated."

Kate exhaled and managed a smile at Bird. "I'm frosty, Little Bird. You?" she asked. A beat or two later. "Dr. Bhamra?"

Bird nodded, smiling a little. Bhamra just nodded.

"We should move quicker," Nicole said.

There was writing on the huge, vault-type door.

Up top, written very, very small, the following string of numbers: 01110100 01101001 01101101 01100101 00100000 01100100 01101001 01110011 01110000 01101100 01100001 01100011 01100101 01101101 01100101 01101110 01110100 00100000 01100101 01101110 01100111 01101001 01101110 01100101

Below, in large, thick letters: ACCESS RESTRICTED TO CLASS ONE WORKERS with a bold red X beneath them.

"What's all the numbers?" Kate whispered to Nicole.

"Time displacement engine." Nicole held a hand up to the bioscanner in the middle of the door to the heart of the facility. A horizontal blue line ran down the scanner display from top to bottom and then the whole display flashed green. There was a whirring noise from within the doors as they began to slowly wheel open.

Kate had no idea what to expect beyond the doors. What she saw was a huge, perfectly spherical room. The walls were made up of reflective panels, slightly curved, with clusters of plastic cables filling the narrow gaps between them and running down to a dome, maybe twenty feet across and five feet tall, at the bottom of the sphere. Atop the dome were a pair of plastic rings maybe eight feet tall. A huge cluster of cables ran up from the top of the rings into the ceiling, and there were a dozen plastic pipes coming down the ceiling into the top of the rings, too, pipes running at 45 degree angles. A wide catwalk ran around the 'equator' of the room, and here and there it extended outward five feet in platforms holding computer consoles.

Kate would have stopped and gawked a moment longer, but then she saw they weren't alone in the room. At the nearest computer station to their right, just twenty yards away, an elderly man was standing, staring at them.

She heard Bhamra, safely behind her as always, gasp and blurt out "Dr. Chilwell?"

The man's eyes widened in recognition. "Hina?"

"What? You two know each other?" Bird said as the vault doors swung shut behind them.

"I didn't know you were part of the program," Chilwell said. Then he frowned, the wheels turning in his head.

Kate discreetly put her finger near the trigger. "I'd step away from that machine, sir," she said in a soft, icy voice.

"Ah. I see." Chilwell smiled faintly and took a slow, steady step back. If he felt any fear over the situation, he was hiding it. In fact, he looked almost amused by the swift turn of events.

"Who is he?" Kate asked.

"He was my teacher and mentor at Oxford. I'm not sure who he is now."

Chilwell's grandfatherly face creased in a frown. "That's not entirely fair. I'm not here by choice. And what about you, Hina? When the bombs fell, where did you go? Never made it to India, I take it?"

"No. I went to Buckinghamshire, and eventually to America."

"America?" Dr. Chilwell's grey eyebrows arched up. "Connor?"

"Connor. His people found me living like a rat in Worminghall."

"And now you're back. It's been a long road for both of us, then," he said with a sigh.

"Dr. David Chilwell," Nicole said. "You are on John Connor's red list."

He looked at her, a hint of a smile on his face. "Am I? That sounds delightful, young lady. I suppose I've earned it. Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Chilwell exclaimed, spreading his arms to encompass the entire spherical chamber. "Not entirely apt, as this isn't a ruin in the desert, but it's certainly despairing in the implications."

"Yes, David, it is," Bhamra said, shaking her head. "Why did you do it? Why did you cooperate with the machine?"

"When you reach a certain age, Hina, you find yourself more willing to compromise yourself to continue existing. I'm not proud of it, but..." He trailed off. "There's no but, I suppose. So, what now, then, my dear? Termination?" Dr. Chilwell asked, a resigned look on his face.

Nicole said "No. Killing you now would serve no purpose. The damage is done."

Kate frowned at the elderly physicist. Termination? How'd he know so fast?

Behind them, the huge, heavy vault doors swung open again. A single figure stepped through them.

It was Nicole... but not quite Nicole.

"Fuck," Kate said as she started to turn, too late, to get a shot at the Cyberdyne Systems Model 104 Series 840 Terminator Infiltration Unit charging along the catwalk.

"Access the system, please. I'll handle her," Nicole said to Kate and the others before anybody could get a shot off. And then she ran past them, preventing them from getting a clear line of fire, and collided with the other Terminator halfway to the door.

"Access? How? You're the machine!"

"I've got it," Dr. Bhamra said, hastily retrieving a large, thick laptop from her backpack. "Help me with the cables!"

Meanwhile, Nicole kept running and, without breaking stride, grabbed a section of the railing at the inner edge of the catwalk, ripped it free and swung it hard into the other Terminator's neck. There was a metallic clang and the second Terminator was knocked sideways, but not knocked off balance. It grabbed the bar and yanked it out of Nicole's grip, but before it could turn it against Nicole, she grabbed hold of it. The two wrestled over the bar for a moment and then it went sailing off into the air, landing down near the center of the chamber floor.

Kate stared for a second or two, watching the two T-840s continue to fight. It was like nothing she'd ever seen before, but reminded her a little of a sumo wrestling match she'd seen online before the war. The two Terminators locked their arms together and pushed hard, each one trying to find the exact right place to apply just the right amount of pressure and knock the other one off their feet.

"Sarnt! Need you here!" Bird said, snapping Kate out of her spectating. She hurried over to the others. "Tell me what to do," Kate said to Bhamra.

"Plug these cables into the ports in the back of the computer, and quick as you can," Dr. Bhamra said, shoving a handful of plastic cables into Kate's hand.

"Right – any particular cable go with any particular port?"

"No, anywhere they'll fit. Skynet's standardized its inputs to a single type."

"Well, that's a kindness, isn't it?" Kate muttered as she began pushing cables into ports.

"Gently, gently!" Bhamra said. "If one of them breaks, we're in serious trouble."

"Right, gently, Bird," Kate said. The younger soldier rolled her eyes as she pushed her own cables into the back of the machine.

Kate glanced back and saw that Nicole and her counterpart were – exactly the same as the last time she'd looked. How long could that go on before one or the other gave way?

"How many of these bloody things do you even need?" Bird grumbled at Bhamra.

The older woman shrugged. "As many as they gave me. I'm not a computer expert. That's probably why there's so many of them. Someone who knew what they were doing could make do with half."

Bird rolled her eyes.

Behind them, there was a sudden tearing noise. Kate looked back and winced. The sumo match was over. The other Terminator had ripped free another length of railing and was using it to pummel Nicole. "Fuck!" Kate raised her rifle.

"That won't work, sergeant, far too much residual chronal energy in here," Dr. Chilwell told her.

Kate didn't believe him for a second. She squeezed the trigger. There was a very faint hiss and that was all that happened. "Bloody hell," Kate swore. "Bird, keep at it!"

"What – don't!" Bird yelled as Kate charged towards the machines.

"Down, Dalek!" Kate yelled.

Nicole instantly dropped into a crouch and Kate slammed the butt of the plasma rifle into the other Terminator's skull as hard as she could. It didn't shut her down, of course, but it succeeded in Kate's goal. The sharp corner of the butt popped the Terminator's eye. She tried to take another swing with the rifle, but the Terminator, even with its vision impaired by fifty percent, grabbed hold of the gun and effortlessly wrenched it out of Kate's hand.

Which is exactly when Nicole hammered both her fists into the other Terminator's chest, knocking her back several paces. She grabbed hold of the sturdy railings, raised herself up like a gymnast and drove her legs into her enemy, caving in part of her doppelganger's torso.

"Resume connecting the two computers, please," Nicole said in a conversational tone.

"Righto," Kate said as she hurried back to the station.

"You'll want to hurry," Dr. Chilwell said. "There will be more coming."

"There any way to lock this place down?" Kate asked. She realized if they did that, they'd have no choice but to go through with her idea. If they hunkered down here as Skynet rallied Mosleys and Daleks, there was only one way it would end.

"Yes. We do it during every test."

"Do it, then," Kate barked at him.

Chilwell raised an eyebrow. "It won't hold them off long. And you don't want to get captured."

"That's not part of my plan, don't worry."

Chilwell's eyebrow inched up even more, then he nodded, almost smiling. Bhamra and Bird were too preoccupied with the cables to hear the exchange.

There was a hideous popping noise. All three of the Resistance fighters turned and looked, just in time to see Nicole ripping her opposite number's right arm off and begin to use it to cave her metallic skull in.

"Bloody thing's starting to grow on me," Bird mumbled.

"Back to work, Little Bird," Kate said.

"Last bit's done!" Bird said a few seconds later. "Now what?"

Behind them, Nicole was methodically dismantling the other T-840. Nothing less than full dismemberment and destruction of the CPU would render it harmless.

"Now..." Bhamra exhaled and stared at the screen of the laptop. "Come on, come on..." After a few excruciating seconds, a command prompt appeared. She quickly tapped the keyboard, hit Enter and exhaled again. A second later, another prompt appeared. ENTER SECURITY CODE. Bhamra typed fast, exhaled a third time, and hit Enter again.

"Please step aside, Dr. Bhamra," Nicole said. "I will finish the procedure."

Kate nodded and then glanced at Chilwell. The old man almost smiled again, then stepped back and pulled on a lever on the side of the terminal.

Nicole turned and tilted her head as the vault doors slammed shut and the loud clang-clang-clang of locking bars as thick as her arm falling into place echoed through the round room.

"Never mind that," Kate said. "Do what we came here to do."

"It's done. I have successfully accessed Skynet's local hard drive clusters."

"What have you found? Is it — is it done? Is it operational? Has it been used?" Dr. Bhamra asked Nicole. There was a note of panic – outright terror – in the older woman's voice Kate had never heard before. It made her feel nervous.

Dr. Chilwell scoffed. "I could've told you that if you'd simply asked."

At the same time, Nicole said "Yes, but only for short range tests. Nothing has been sent back more than a week."

"Ah. Ah. We have a chance, then," Dr. Bhamra whispered.

"Yes. John Connor's mid-range threat analysis was correct. This is only an experimental research facility. The operational TDE device will be constructed in Topanga Canyon, California once testing here is complete."

"But it is functional?"

Chilwell rolled his eyes and stepped back, conceding his part in the conversation was over.

"Fully functional. Several short range tests using human subjects have been successfully completed after many short range tests using human subjects have been unsuccessfully completed."

Kate bit her lip and tried not to think about what an unsuccessful test might mean for the guinea pig.

"The next stage of research is to attempt transit with Terminator infiltration models."

"Like you," Bird said.

"Yes. Like me."

"Four-dimensional warfare," Dr. Bhamra said, shaking her head.

"Yes." Nicole tilted her head and frowned. "This iteration of the conflict is particularly problematic."

"What? What's that mean?" Kate asked her.

"It is difficult to explain."

"I can try," Dr. Bhamra said. "The nature of the war, the true war behind the one you're fighting in the rubble, means that events repeat in different ways as the factions in each iteration alter the past. Originally, Judgment Day took place in 1997."

Kate shook her head. "What? No it didn't."

"Yes it did. August 1997."

"August 29," Nicole clarified. Everyone ignored her.

"That's crazy. I wasn't even born then," Kate said.

"You weren't, but it's not crazy. That version of history was nullified, primarily by Sarah Connor, and Judgment Day was delayed to 2003, 2004 and then 2011 by subsequent versions of Sarah and John Connor."

Kate felt herself getting a headache. None of this made any sense at all.

"The fact that Skynet has a functional TDE machine in 2025, that's bad. That's exceptionally bad. It shouldn't perfect the technology until 2029."

Nicole spoke up. "This facility must be destroyed. Immediately."

Kate ignored her. "Why's it so bad, Bhamra?"

"Because in all previous versions of history that we know of, Skynet was on the brink of total destruction when it perfected the TDE device. Its deployment of a small number of Terminators to the past was an act of desperation and, effectively, suicide. Some version of Skynet might survive and hopefully triumph, but it could never be the one that sends the machines back."

Kate nodded blankly. She was already committed. They all were. They just didn't know it yet. She felt a bit uncomfortable about that, but they'd understand. They had to.

Dr. Bhamra continued, oblivious to Kate's plans. "It's worse this time, though. With four years access to TDE technology, Skynet could engage in a deliberate, multi-faceted campaign of four-dimensional warfare. There's hardly any limits to the damage that might do, or the consequences it might bring about."

"Fuck," Kate said, a worried but thoughtful frown on her face.

"Fuck is right, sarnt. So what happens now? What do we do now?" Bird asked.

"Now we exfiltrate and the USS New York launches a Trident D5 nuclear missile at the complex and eliminates it and Skynet's premature research into temporal relocation physics."

Kate laughed coldly. "Like hell it does."

Nicole tilted her head just a little. "Please explain."

"My pleasure, Dalek. What happens now is that we use the bloody thing. What happens now is that we fix things. What happens now is that we go back and give Skynet the abortion it deserves."

"No."

"No?"

"No. That would alter the timeline in unpredictable ways."

"Oh yeah? Would it?"

"Yes. It would."

"John Connor gets to play time general, but we don't, is that it?"

"Yes."

"Well, the thing is, that's an order, machine. I'm the section leader and that's an order."

"I am not in your chain of command, Sergeant Harvey."

"No, but you're in my line of fire, Dalek," Bird hissed from behind her. She had Bhamra's rifle in hand.

"You are making a mistake."

"No, we're fixing a mistake. Dr. Bhamra, you're probably the smartest person in the UK. You can operate this gadget, can't you?"

"Dr. Bhamra, remember your orders," Nicole said, a hint of urgency in her voice for once.

"Ignore the Dalek, Doctor. You can do it, right?"

"I can. But I'm not sure I should..."

"Five billion people, Dr. Bhamra. That's what's at stake. Five billion lives we can save. A world we can set straight."

"Listen to her, Hina," Dr. Chilwell said in a soft, almost paternal voice. "Don't let what I've done here... don't let it win."

"We can do this, Bhamra. We'll stop it. We'll stop it all."

Bhamra looked at Kate, then at Nicole, and finally at Chilwell. She hesitated, then nodded. Firmly.

Bloomsbury, UK

July 23. 1999

Early morning or late night, depending how you looked at it, either way, it was Friday, and Gale was tired and bored. The Rusty Nail, favorite bar of the British Museum's non-academic staff, had just closed and she was carrying rubbish out to the bin in the back alley. She stopped at the door to the alley for a second, just long enough to pop a stick of gum into her mouth, and then elbowed the door open.

The bin was just a few feet away, and Gale had dropped the two bags of trash into it when there was a strong, sudden wind pushing through the alley. That was odd enough on a night with calm weather, but things got odder, much odder, and fast. Maybe ten yards away, where the geek shop had its own service door, there was a flash of light, and again and again – not just light, but lightning, short, fleeting bolts writhing wildly. The one lightbulb in the alley flared and shattered, and Gale stumbled back, her eyes tearing up as the strange silver lightning increased in intensity and frequency. Then there was a hissing noise, a snap, another strong gust of wind, and – a bubble of light just outside the door of the Goblin's Lair. Gale threw one arm in front of her face, not quite in time to avoid stinging pain in her eyes, and gradually lowered it. She squinted and then stumbled back again.

There were four naked women in the alley now, squatting in an almost fetal position in a shallow, curved depression in the asphalt that hadn't been there before. One of them, a young blonde woman, rose to her feet and looked up at the sky for a second, then looked at Gale. Her expression was blank, her eyes almost reptilian. And was there a weird, electric blue tint to them?

That was all Gale could handle. She backpedaled and slammed the door shut, locking it with shaking fingers.

She quit over the phone and moved back to Milton Keynes, eventually ending up in a convent in the Hebrides.

Kate's teeth were chattering as she hugged herself tight with shaking arms. Nicole had warned her there would be cold and pain, but this was like nothing she'd ever experienced. But it had worked. It had worked. They were here. London.

But when were they?

"Dalek... dhh... did it work? Are we where we ought to be?" Kate whispered as she put an arm around Bird's shoulder. The younger girl was shaking like a leaf. All of them were. All of them except Nicole.

Nicole nodded. "Celestial patterns confirm arrival as programmed."

"Bloody miracle," Kate said. She idly rubbed her right hand along her left arm. It came away smeared with a dry, chalky substance. The conductive jelly had burned away and left behind a residue of a white, ashy powder, just like Nicole had said. "Everyone okay? Little Bird? Bhamra?"

Bird nodded, her fair skin almost porcelain between the carbonized jelly and the cold and the pain.

Bhamra nodded, too, then leaned over and retched noisily.

Nicole reached over and patted her on the back.

Kate laughed wildly. "Come on, then, team. We've work to do. Lots of work."

Red Valley, New Mexico

September 6,1999

Kate stared at the house. It wasn't much. Just another small, one family house in a neighborhood of nothing but small, one family houses. Just the place for the future savior of mankind and his mother to lay low, yeah?

Bird looked over at her. "Having second thoughts, Kate?" she asked. They weren't Sergeant Harvey and Corporal Bird any more. What they were now, that wasn't clear yet. Free, though. Free and on their own. No Royal Resistance to back them up, no Avalon to call home, no Rachel Rutherford with her encouraging words.

But they were free, and they had a chance.

"Not at all," Kate said to Bird. She pressed the doorbell twice, marveling a little at the noise. She hadn't heard a doorbell chime in so long.

After a minute or so, the door opened a crack, two sturdy chains hanging slack. A dark-haired woman peered out at Kate and the rest. Hard eyes, a huntress' eyes. She'd fought and suffered and lost, not like all the tall child-women walking this prewar paradise.

Yeah, Kate thought. Yeah. This is her.

She smiled just a little. "Sarah Connor? Come with us if you want to live."

THE END