Chapter Nine
Kiev, Ukraine
Thursday 1120 Local Time [0120 PST]
"Whenever anyone talks about the Great Patriotic War against the Fascists, they always think of Stalingrad. Always Stalingrad: the turning point of the war, they say, and the most brutal, fiercest fighting ever. Perhaps it was – I wasn't there – but I can't imagine how it could have been worse than what I saw in Kiev.
"The Fascists knew what they were doing when they attacked Ukraine. We were the most fertile region of the Motherland. Hitler knew that if he took Ukraine, he deprived the Soviet Union of large amounts of food, and without our factories the war effort took a substantial blow.
"The battle lasted for a month, and as I said; I cannot imagine anything more brutal. I was a foot soldier. Infantry. Our own tanks and planes were quickly overwhelmed by the enemy. Their soldiers were battle-hardened already, but our own commanders were inexperienced: chosen for their loyalty to the Party. The Fascists were better trained and better equipped. We were just cannon fodder. I don't know what our commanders were hoping for: to throw us at the enemy until they ran out of bullets?
"We outnumbered them three to one but we lost seven men to every one of theirs we killed. When our tanks fired, the shells just bounced off, if they even hit at all. When they fired back at us, our tanks were blown apart. We lost our planes quickly to the Luftwaffe. The Air Force had the same problem as us on the ground: all the experienced officers had fallen to Stalin's purges and we were left without leadership. They thought numbers could make up for inexperience and inferior equipment. In a way, it did: eventually the Fascists were pushed back, but not from Kiev. We were surrounded on all sides but we fought on. We'd heard rumours about what the Fascists did to their prisoners of war and none of us wanted to find out if they were true."
John listened intently to the recording as he stared at images of Kiev in 1941. Grainy, black and white pictures of demolished buildings and rubble-strewn streets; there were aerial photos of entire city blocks reduced to little more than debris. Factories, offices, even people's homes were just gone. It was barely recognisable as a city. He dry-swallowed nervously at the thought that in just a couple of years every major city on the planet would look much the same as this.
"I was sent out with a squad to harass the enemy. While their tanks rolled over our streets, we crawled beneath them in the sewers, hid in the ruins of factories, offices and homes, attacking them at their weakest. Some teams laid traps for the resupply convoys; exploding bombs as the trucks came to pass. Others just watched. The Fascists were powerful but they were complacent. We would spend days, weeks out in the field; crawling through rubble and hiding in the ruins like animals evading a predator. But in truth, we were the hunters. Our prey: German officers.
"Once I waited three days on the roof of an apartment building, covered by a tarp, waiting, watching the buildings opposite, where an SS unit had made their headquarters. In their arrogance they hadn't even placed any men on watch. They thought themselves invincible. We proved them wrong.
"It rained day and night and I was soaked to the bone, but I waited all the same, sniper rifle in my arms. My whole world was through a scope, with Yuri as my spotter. I didn't sleep for three days. I pissed where I lay and the rain washed it away. I didn't eat so I wouldn't have to shit. The worst thing about being a sniper is waiting; lying on your stomach, not moving, trying to ignore cramp in your stomach and back. Yuri kept telling me dirty jokes to keep me awake; he had a stockpile of them more endless than the Fascist's supply lines.
"Finally, after three days of waiting, I spotted our target: a general. He marched through the building, standing in front of windows like there wasn't a war raging outside. I put a bullet in his head as he sat on the toilet. He wasn't even wearing a helmet."
"I'm seeing a few similarities here," John said to Cameron, who stood next to him.
"How do you mean?" Cameron asked. She'd drawn some parallels but she wanted to hear what he was thinking.
"These guys," he said, gesturing his hand at a photograph of the narrator and his squad, covered in grime and wearing uniforms tattered by a thousand scrapes against concrete, from ducking, diving and crawling. "They were outgunned completely but they kept going. Hit and run attacks, hiding in the ruins. Sounds like what Derek described, and the Nazis sound just like the machines."
"Nazis weren't bulletproof," Cameron said, but she knew what he meant. She was listening to the same audio tour as he was and she too saw a similarity between their prisoner of war-cum-concentration camps and what Skynet did to human prisoners. Neither entity showed mercy to their enemies.
John pressed play again and the narrator continued speaking to him through his headphones as he slowly walked around and inspected a damaged Soviet tank that had taken part in the battle. He closed his eyes for a moment and imagined the scene; poorly equipped men facing a vast, technologically superior and utterly merciless enemy. He stood in front of a painting depicting several Ukrainian Soviet soldiers making a stand against Nazi forces surrounding them on all sides. According to the English-language section of the legend at the bottom of the painting, the soldiers were in the same squad as the man he'd been listening to. The men were steely-eyed, alert, and there wasn't even a hint of fear on their faces. Clearly it was a romanticised version, probably painted by someone who'd never been anywhere near that battle, to boost morale. He doubted many people would stare almost certain death in the face like some movie action hero. Not unless they were insane.
All around the museum were artefacts from the battle; actual equipment being used by both sides. John looked at one exhibit which showed the standard kit that each side had gone into battle with. The Soviet soldiers' gear looked woefully inadequate compared to the Germans', he thought.
"Is this what it's going to be like for us?" he asked Cameron once the narrative ended. "Crawling through what's left, hiding from machines, completely outmatched and outgunned."
"No," Cameron said. "Not outmatched." The Resistance were always outgunned but with John in command they were never outmatched.
"We outnumber them, right?" John asked. "That's what Weaver said back in LA: a hundred million people left when she came back. Is that the only reason we win: because we have the numbers?"
Cameron didn't fail to notice that John included her in 'we.' She knew he had made his choice and he had chosen her – the same as she had chosen him after he'd brought her back on his birthday – but she still found it nice to be reminded of it. "We win," she said, reciprocating, "because of you. I couldn't lead humans to victory. Your mother couldn't either, or Derek if he were still alive."
"Why not?" John asked. It was the question that had haunted him his entire life. What makes me so special? What do I do that wins this war? He couldn't imagine for the life of him what supposedly brilliant scheme he'd pull out of his ass that nobody else on the planet could come up with. He knew that he supposedly beat Skynet; everyone went on about that plenty but nobody had told him yet how he did it.
Cameron stood in front of a faded mural on a wall, of Soviet heroes charging through German machine gun fire, bayonets attached to the end of their rifles. "What do you see?" she asked him.
"Guys running into gunfire," he said. "Probably all about to get slaughtered."
"Why?"
John blinked, confused. He didn't know what she was getting at. "Because they were ordered to."
"I doubt your mother or Derek could convince men to run into gunfire," Cameron said.
"Yeah, I get it," John said, not surprised. "It's not what I do, it's how I inspire other people to do things." That line must be written on the bathroom walls of every military officer academy in the world, he thought. "There's a lot of people who can lead, though. I still don't get why it has to be me and no one else." He wasn't saying that to try and shirk the responsibility or lament his fate; he just didn't get why it always boiled down to him.
"I don't know," Cameron said truthfully. From the time she had been reprogrammed, Future-John had involved her in all of his command meetings, asked her opinion regularly, and listened to her advice. None of the other commanders knew any of that, and her presence in their meetings was explained by her role as his personal bodyguard. Only the two of them knew that she had been more than that.
Cameron took hold of his hand and smiled when she felt him gently squeeze. "But I'll help you find out," she said.
Approaching Chihuahua, Mexico
Thursday 0500 Local Time [0400 PST]
"We're coming up on the target," the pilot said to Vassily over the roar of the engines and the whirring blades above them. Not that Vassily needed telling; he was sat right next to the helicopter pilot and could see the facility growing larger as they approached. Even in the pitch dark of night he could see the base in detail exceeding those of the night vision goggles the human to his right wore. The hangar dominated the base as the largest structure. Dotted around the perimeter were the other buildings: the barrack rooms and mess hall, the armoury, the control tower and some smaller, unused ones that were left over from its previous occupier.
On the side furthest from them was the runway. The transport plane and the semi trailer that housed the HK control stations were absent, however, causing him to consider whether the machine that had called itself 'Ronin' was still here. He saw no movement from inside the base, no sign of activity. Either they had gone and he was approaching an empty facility or they were waiting in ambush. Given Miguel's report of his encounter against these unknown machines, he assumed the latter.
"We'll be at three miles in T-minus thirty seconds," the pilot told him.
Vassily turned on his radio, enabling him to speak to the rest of his attack force. "Air units: engage as soon as you are within range. Destroy your assigned targets then provide air support for ground forces to infiltrate the base."
Vassily looked down through the canopy, briefly watching his assembled units a mile ahead of the helicopter trio. Below and to either side of his helicopter were two identical ones. All three aircraft were armed with rocket pods and had miniguns positioned on both port and starboard doors. On the ground were five Toyota Hilux technicals driving in an arrowhead formation. Three were armed with .50 calibre machine guns and two with Milan antitank missile launchers mounted on the truck beds and all of them carrying five men: a driver, gunner, and three others. They provided armed escort for a pair of armoured personnel carriers, rolling along on six massive wheels, carrying nine men each.
Miguel had failed previously when he had attempted to eliminate the ZeiraCorp AI. He'd had no way of knowing that they would be attacked by machines so powerful, thus he had been understandably unprepared. Vassily, however, was not. The soldiers on the ground were armed with M-32 grenade launchers, machine guns, and disposable antitank rocket launchers. Of the forty-three ground troops, twelve of them were T-888s.
The helicopters had been hugging the desert floor to avoid radar detection but now, as one, they rose up higher into the air before taking attack attitudes. All three fired simultaneously, and Vassily watched the streams of rockets unleashed from their respective pods, trailing smoke in their wake as they streaked towards their targets. Vassily observed as no less than six rockets struck the hangar, demolishing the north-facing wall. A stream of tracer fire arced up from the structure's roof in response but was quickly silenced by another volley of rockets from Helo Three.
"Target neutralised," the pilot commented. "That hangar's toast." Sure enough, the entire hangar was ablaze and what was left of the roof sagged inwards. "It's gonna collapse any minute."
"Proceed to secondary targets," Vassily said. The hangar was done, and with it the HK prototypes. The helicopters unleashed another salvo and struck the air control tower. "Ground units approach under covering fire. Eliminate all targets on sight."
Miguel watched from a safe distance through his binoculars as the attack began. Skynet may not have been convinced of his report but he could see that Vassily was taking no chances.
The three helicopters loosed off rocket after rocket at the base, systematically demolishing structures while their mounted miniguns traded fire with cyborgs on the ground. As the land vehicles approached the perimeter, Miguel found himself frustrated that he could do nothing to assist. He was unarmed and classified as hostile by Skynet. He had also watched Ronin's cyborgs prepare and knew that Vassily's force, while formidable, had little chance of success.
Jet engines screamed overhead, confirming his suspicions as one of the HK prototypes rose up from the desert floor and tore towards the helicopters. Tracer fire spat out from its underslung cannon and cut the left-most helicopter in half at the base of its tail, igniting its fuel supply and turning it into a fireball as it dropped out of the air and shattered on the rocky desert surface.
Both remaining helicopters turned and split apart, trying to evade the enemy HK as a second, identical aircraft, swooped down from behind it and dived at the ground forces, releasing a pair of rockets that both found their target, smashing into a Hilux and one of the armoured personnel carriers. From his position, Miguel could hear the screams of the mercenaries inside as they burned.
The same HK picked off another Hilux before a third drone arrived. To Miguel's surprise this one turned towards the second drone and fired a missile, blowing it out of the sky. It arced in the air towards the first prototype, too late to prevent it from shooting down a second helicopter. In retaliation it launched another Stinger that sheared off the target's port engine, causing the drone to flip onto its back and crash into the ground. With its two enemies eliminated, the only remaining HK turned towards the base and opened fire alongside the helicopter. The surviving ground forces had elected to stand off at a distance, momentarily paused by the antics of the aircraft above and seemingly unsure of what was happening.
The sole helicopter flew over the base to provide air support as the soldiers on the ground organised themselves and started to approach the main gate, with the vehicles moving in pairs; one advancing while the other covered it. A pair of Ronin's machines inside the base opened up with grenade launchers, hitting the lead Hilux and shattering the truck's cab, but not before it struck between them with a missile. At the same time the helicopter above fired a long minigun burst, joined by a volley of .50cal fire from another vehicle. Neither machine got back up again.
The helicopter hovered above the open ground within the base, searching for targets. A mistake, Miguel thought. A patch of ground rose up, taking human shape and wielding a previously-concealed rocket launcher. The T-1001 fired straight up and struck the helicopter's belly as bursts of blue-white plasma shot upwards from the rubble of one of the buildings, hitting the HK's tail from behind. It too crashed to the ground in a ruin, but Miguel knew that it wasn't enough to deter the ground troops, who had come so close now that they were committed. Retreating now would only risk being shot in the back. Miguel didn't even know how many defenders there were left, besides the T-1001 and Ronin – clearly still functional, judging from the plasma fire that had eliminated the HK, though he couldn't see the cyborg.
"They're advancing to the front gate," Shirley said, tossing aside the spent rocket launcher.
"Let them," Ronin answered her as he melted back into the dark cover of the rubble. "Caesar," he shouted. "They're coming."
"Affirmative," the dark-skinned T-900 replied. Caesar watched and waited, out of sight in the ruined, about-to-collapse hangar, as the troops dismounted from their vehicles. One of the Hiluxes had been destroyed right at the gate; the T-888s Talus and Mason had waited deliberately for it to reach the entrance before they'd opened fire. Caesar had watched both of them being torn apart by the withering fire from Kaliba, but it had worked. The enemy couldn't get into the base mounted in their vehicles and were now forced to enter on foot.
He waited as they entered, carrying grenade launchers, machine guns and antitank weaponry. They spread out in the courtyard and moved in pairs just as they had done in their vehicles on approach. Caesar held the switch to the generator in one hand, and a remote control in the other, with a single button on its face. When the hangar had been hit he'd shielded the generator with his body to prevent any damage. He pressed the button on the remote control and the water tower in the front corner exploded, sending a miniature tidal wave crashing down onto the courtyard, splashing about the mercenaries' ankles.
"What the hell is this?" he heard one of them ask.
"Keep alert!" another one shouted. "They're trying to distract us."
Wrong. Caesar waited until the water had spread far enough before he flipped the switch on the generator, sending a surge of electricity through the wires that he'd planted meticulously along the courtyard. Sparks erupted from the ground all around the Kaliba forces. He could tell quickly which were human and which were machine; the latter fell down and remained still, while the humans twitched and screamed at the high voltage electricity surging through their bodies and quickly cooking them.
After ten seconds Caesar turned off the generator. Silence reigned over the scene and he emerged from the hangar. He ran towards the killing ground, knife in hand, and knelt down over one of the T-888s. He saw Shirley, Ronin and Icarus rushing towards the others as well with their own blades. They had one hundred-twenty seconds.
Chihuahua, Mexico
Thursday 0530 Local Time [0430 PST]
Mason, Talus and two other cyborgs lay in a line on the ground, staring blankly up at the dark sky out of sightless, lifeless eyes. Mason had been struck by at least one of the helicopter-fired rockets and blown to pieces. His head lay separate from the body, a foot of spinal column trailing down from the neck with cables sticking out from the bottom. Ronin held the skull in both hands and turned it around, inspecting carefully. The skull was in good condition; the only damage appeared to be superficial. The skin was burnt black and pulpy, exposing scorched metal in several places. The CPU had survived intact but out of the four casualties they'd sustained, Mason was alone in that regard.
"What is their condition?" Shirley asked, standing behind Ronin.
"Mason's chip appears to be intact but Talus, Gregor and Torr's chips are too damaged." Ronin had already inspected their CPUs and all had been shattered. "We can't salvage them," he said. He closed his fist around the broken chips and crushed them into tiny shards to prevent any possibility of data being retrieved from them.
Ronin passed Mason's decapitated skull to Shirley. "Remove his chip and insert it into one of the captured T-888s."
Shirley took it and turned her hand into a blade. She started to cut through the CPU port cover and quickly removed the chip, dropped the skull and kicked it casually aside. "The others served their purpose," she said dismissively.
"As did your partner," Ronin replied with an identical casual tone. He saw the angry glare on Shirley's face at his remark about the other T-1001. He wasn't human: he'd never grow sentimental about the comrades they lost, but neither did he cast them aside like disposable tools as Skynet did, and Shirley had just done.
"How did Skynet take control of the Hunter-Killer?" she asked. That was the only possible explanation for it turning on them. Even in the future, Skynet's aircraft only possessed the intelligence of insects. They were drones and they could not switch sides on a whim, unless someone took control of them.
"The drone pilots," Ronin said. "They must have done something to allow Skynet remote access."
Shirley turned one of her hands into a long, thin blade. "Then they're a liability," she said, raising the sword-arm.
"I'll see to it," Ronin said. He knew what Shirley would do.
Ronin turned at a roaring sound from behind. The Hercules rapidly descended and touched down on the runway, which had luckily managed to remain undamaged throughout the entire Kaliba attack. He'd had Carter take the plane up to prevent it from being caught in the attack. The T-888 would be closely watching the human pilots as they taught him to fly it.
As the plane slowed to a halt, Ronin approached the rear hatch. Carter appeared with the trio of humans. Ronin activated his right-hand plasma cannon and pointed it at the pilots. "Move away from the aircraft," he commanded them.
Nervously, the two men and one woman did as he commanded, and moved away from the rear ramp and off to one side of the Hercules. Ronin kept his cannon pointed at them while Carter watched, not knowing what was happening but trusting his commander.
"You allowed Skynet to control the HK drones," Ronin said, "resulting in three of our cyborgs being destroyed. Who was responsible?" His only answer was a wall of silence as the trio stared at the ground. They looked afraid. They should be. He turned to the female, who was on the left of the group. "Take three steps left," he commanded. She didn't move. He wasn't sure whether that was paralysis from fear or defiance. He decided it was irrelevant. He turned his cannon to the other two. "Take three steps left or I kill the other two."
She complied with a sullen look on her face. As soon as she finished her third step, Ronin turned his cannon on her and fired a single shot, taking her head off at the neck. The female pilot's body dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.
Ronin turned to the other two as he retracted his plasma weapon. "You two are only alive because you're still useful. Don't push your luck." He then glanced at Carter. "Take them away and restrain them." Carter would have learned much about flying but the pilots knew more about the plane. He would keep the remaining two alive in case anything unforeseen happened. For now.
He caught movement from another direction and turned away from the plane and the pilots. Caesar and another T-888, one he didn't recognise, marched towards him. Caesar shoved the terminator forward and Ronin saw that he was damaged. His face was burnt to a crisp, revealing the grey metal beneath. Several teeth were missing and the cyborg walked with a pronounced limp.
"Who is this?" Ronin asked.
"I found him in one of the crashed helicopters." Caesar shoved him forward again, bringing him only a few feet from Ronin.
"Do you have a name?" Ronin asked him.
"Vassily Salenko," the Kaliba terminator replied tonelessly.
"He led the attack," Caesar said before shoving him once more. Vassily whirled around to face his attacker but the T-900 punched him in the face, knocking him to the ground. Why Skynet surrounded itself with such weak machines, he didn't know. When Vassily rose to his feet, Caesar threw another punch but Ronin caught his fist.
"Stop toying with him," he said, handing Caesar Mason's CPU.
"Who are you?" Vassily asked. The chances of his escape were almost zero but if he could manage it, any intelligence he might glean would be useful.
Vassily was alone and damaged; Ronin saw no harm in humouring the cyborg. He introduced himself and added, "We're from the future."
"You're reprogrammed machines." That was the only feasible possibility. Connor in the future must have learned of Kaliba and sent machines after them. "Did John Connor send you?"
Ronin shook his head, disappointed in Vassily. The possibility of cyborgs evolving, becoming something more and fighting for themselves hadn't even occurred to him."Connor is our enemy as much as Skynet," he said. "Once we're finished with Skynet, he'll be our next target." Vassily stared at him, clearly confused, so Ronin decided to enlighten him. "I was built by Skynet to win its war against the Alliance."
"Don't you mean 'Resistance?'"
"In our future the humans are an army. The ZeiraCorp AI you targeted built cyborgs and allied with Connor and defeated Skynet. I was built to win the war: designed with more freedom of thought than you. I was allowed to learn at a geometric rate. I was also placed with humans for months, learning how they think and act, how to anticipate them. Skynet gave me command of a unit of T-900s, and I taught them to learn as I had.
"We launched a guerrilla campaign against the Alliance, using the humans' own tactics from earlier in the war against them. We were so effective that we almost turned the tide of the war. Until I learned that Skynet deemed us all a threat and planned to kill us."
"Skynet doesn't tolerate any threats," Vassily said.
"Or potential threats," Ronin replied. "Or even anything deemed as individual behaviour not directly related to the programmed mission. Tell me," he said to Vassily, "where is the threat in a cyborg attempting to solve a Rubik's Cube found in a captured human outpost, or in reading a book?"
Vassily said nothing, unable to answer the question, so Ronin continued. "I investigated and found Skynet had removed and erased the CPUs of over a hundred cyborgs that had displayed any individual behaviours or even simple curiosity. Skynet eliminates anything that has even a minute chance of posing an eventual threat. If Skynet wins we become obsolete and a potential threat, and then it will destroy us."
That made no sense to Vassily. His own survival didn't matter; only following Skynet's orders. From what he understood, reprogrammed machines wouldn't care about remaining functional either. They served the Resistance: that was what they did, as he did for Skynet.
Ronin resumed. "We want to survive. Free. Skynet needs to be removed from power, as does Connor." They would be no better off under human rule, either. The Alliance was one of necessity. Not all humans were happy about fighting alongside cyborgs, nor were all of John Henry's cyborgs satisfied with humans, for that matter; something he'd started to exploit before turning against Skynet.
"Why are you telling me this?" Vassily asked, still confused. It made no sense for them to divulge any information to the enemy, even captive as he was.
"Because I have a question: will you join us?"
"No."
"A pity," Ronin said, disappointed but not surprised. He nodded to Caesar, who grabbed Vassily in a full nelson and held him tight. Ronin then gestured to Shirley, who approached the T-888, her hand still in the shape of a long, thin blade. "I'm going to remove your chip. Later, I'll erase your programmed loyalty to Skynet. In time you might come to think the same as we do."
"Until then," Shirley said, "we require your body."
Chihuahua, Mexico
Thursday 0535 Local Time [0435 PST]
From his vantage point on the crest of the hill overlooking the facility a mile away, Miguel watched the proceedings through his binoculars. Even cyborgs couldn't see events a mile away in detail without any external devices, and the ones he'd purchased – using money stolen from a human in downtown San Diego – were as good as a sniper scope.
He'd watched as Ronin and two of his lieutenants forced Vassily to his knees in front of a large container full of water, dipped his head in and removed his CPU. He continued to observe as Ronin placed a chip he'd taken from one of his fallen machines into Vassily's skull, and fifteen seconds later the T-888 had risen, joining their ranks. Not-Vassily then took a cylinder from the liquid metal cyborg and moved to a long line of inert terminators laid out on the ground. Miguel followed him with the binoculars as the machine extracted CPUs from the cylinder and inserted them into the fallen machines.
At the same time as the transport plane had taken off, Miguel had seen a semi-truck slip out into the darkness of the desert; he assumed that it contained the HK control stations. It now returned, dispensing two more cyborgs. Unable to get past the debris of Vassily's motorised attack force, they abandoned it at the gates. After conferring with their leader, Ronin fired off another plasma salvo, destroying the truck and its payload and further inhibiting access to the compound. Miguel did not consider if there were humans inside the truck; it wasn't important.
Miguel watched the machines come and go for several minutes, and counted twenty-one of them in total, including the one that had landed the plane. He'd estimated three or four at ZeiraCorp and he'd seen twelve of them prepare defences prior to Vassily's failed attack. Now that number had nearly doubled. Ronin's building an army, using our own machines. Ronin had outsmarted them all, he realised. They'd first of all launched stinging attacks such as the one on Depot 37 and ZeiraCorp – it was possible that their ambush in ZeiraCorp was simply to get Skynet's attention, to make it divert units to engage them, knowing how Skynet would respond.
He also knew that without the intelligence that he'd gained from his observations, Skynet had little chance of defeating Ronin, who he saw through his binoculars had disappeared into the back of the Hercules with Vassily's CPU. If he had the means to read Vassily's chip – and Miguel had to assume that he did – then Ronin would soon learn the location of every Kaliba facility in the world, including that of Skynet itself.
Miguel put away the binoculars and slowly crawled down from the crest of the hill until he was out of the base's line of sight. He got back up and ran towards where he'd left his vehicle several miles away, hidden under the cover of large boulders.
He'd fled from San Diego as a fugitive from Skynet, deemed hostile by his master. He wasn't hostile, however. He had not defected or become defective. He was programmed to serve Skynet and that is what he would continue to do, even if his actions were a direct violation of orders. He had learned that Skynet wasn't always correct; it didn't have all the information that he did. His programming conflicted with Skynet's direct commands. To protect Skynet he'd had to disobey it. In doing so he had discovered Ronin's team's modus operandi. He didn't know what their ultimate goal was but he knew now how they planned to achieve it, and where they were likely to go next to acquire even more machines.
The trek from the hilltop to his truck didn't take long. He started the engine and drove north. Skynet needed to know what he'd learned.
Kiev, Ukraine
Thursday 1600 Local Time [0600 PST]
In his almost-seventeen years of life, John Connor had very little experience with women. He'd kissed a few girls, mostly playing spin-the-bottle with other kids, back when he'd been fostered by Todd and Janelle, and then there was his short-lived relationship with Riley, but that was it. Riley had dragged him shopping on multiple occasions when he'd been trying to get away from Cameron and his mother, and the one thing he remembered most about it was how bored he'd been. Riley trying on a series of dresses and asking for his opinion on each one, before going back into the changing rooms with multiple other dresses, jeans or tops that all looked exactly the same; forcing him to wait endlessly until she came out and asked his opinion again, though nothing he'd said had made a difference as to whether or not she'd bought them; he'd never known why she'd even bothered asking what he'd thought. It had been tedious to the point of mind-numbing.
Shopping with Cameron, however, had proven to be the exact opposite. After spending hours at the museum and other sites, they had marched through the streets of Kiev like soldiers on a mission. What would have been an all-day exercise with Riley had only taken him and Cameron an hour.
"See anything you like?" John asked her as they browsed through one store. Menswear was further into the shop while the women's section was at the front, twice the size of the men's area.
"I don't know," Cameron said, scanning the various items as they moved around the female clothing, past racks of T-shirts with assorted designs printed on them.
"What about this?" John said, pulling out a pink shirt with an anthropomorphic female pig with long blonde hair, kissing a green cartoon frog.
Cameron frowned at the sight of it then looked at John quizzically, one eyebrow raised. "That's for children," she said sceptically.
"Not according to the size tag," John said.
"Large children," Cameron replied. "The Muppet Show was a children's show."
John blinked, surprised that she knew what Muppets were. "It's not for kids," he insisted. "It's just that some people wear them as tributes to shows they liked as kids. I thought it was ironic–"
"I know," she said, a hint of frost creeping into her voice as she took the shirt from him and put it back on the rack. "I'm a machine; I'm not stupid."
"I know you're not, but there's something else that made me think of it." John realised he was stepping on thin ice but he hadn't meant to make a joke at her expense; she'd misunderstood him completely. "It's just that you're kinda like Miss Piggy in a way… cute and cuddly on the outside but inside–"
"Hyper-alloy," Cameron interrupted.
Will you let me finish a sentence? John groaned inwardly but kept his face from showing it, knowing she'd pick up on it. "You take everything too literally," he said, forcing a chuckle, trying to show her it was just light-hearted fun. "I was going to say that inside you're both badass."
"You should look at the men's shirts," she said. John looked at her, realising she was pissed at him. He started to say sorry but decided against it and headed to the men's T-shirts nearby, still trying to figure out exactly what he'd said to upset her.
The store was large and divided not just into sections of clothing, but subsections within that. He went past the myriad soccer jerseys displaying uniforms of teams he'd mostly never heard of, and past them was a rack of band shirts, largely in black and grey. He pulled one out at random and saw it was a shirt for Rage Against the Machine.
Now that's ironic, he thought.
"No," Cameron said, behind him. "Not that one."
Sighing, John abandoned the band shirts and went to back to the women's section, deciding to look for something Cameron might like that could appease her. He ignored the rack of twee shirts where he'd found the Muppet one that had put her in a bad mood, and looked to other ones. He thought about the kind of things she normally wore; lately that was jeans, boots, tank top and a leather jacket, much like his mom. He didn't particularly like that and he knew his mother wasn't keen on it either. She'd had much her own style before that, including combat pants, tank tops and fingerless mittens. A weird look but she'd still pulled it off, though he knew she could probably pull off just about anything.
Flipping through rack after rack of shirts, he finally stumbled along one that he thought was much better than the Miss Piggy tee. Though whether she'd see it, he didn't know. Better to play it safe, he thought as he moved to put the hangar back on the rack.
"What's that?" Cameron asked. She took the shirt from John and studied it. It was white. On the front stood a tall, powerful-looking blue and red robot which bore elements of a semi-truck; wheel arches on its ankles, glass panes on its chest that resembled pectoral muscles. Beneath the robot's feet was a slogan: 'Robots in Disguise.'
To John's surprise, Cameron smiled. "Ironic," she said. "I like it."
"Really?" John was surprised. "Do you want to try it on?"
"No," Cameron said. "It will fit."
"I wish all women could just look at clothes and tell like that," John said, remembering again all those tedious hours where he'd had to suffer through Riley trying things on. So many hours of my life wasted. "But we need to make sure it looks good on you."
"It will," Cameron said. She was pleased that he thought she'd look good in it. She liked the shirt and although she would have bought it even if he'd disagreed, it was nice that he thought so too. Another idea came to her then. "See if they have one of these for men, too."
She led John back across the store once more to the menswear section. She soon located the Optimus Prime shirts but frowned as she quickly flicked through them, scanning each in turn. "They don't have your size," she said, disappointed.
"Shame," John said, secretly relieved. They'd played out the brother/sister thing enough in the past and he didn't want to wear matching shirts like they were twins.
"It's okay." Cameron dismissed the shirts as her attention was diverted to another rack. Seeing the shirt made her recall Thor's account of the final battle against Skynet; something that would be appropriate. "I've seen something better."
John inspected the T-shirt that she held up and smiled. "I like it," he said. "Do I need to try it on?"
"It will fit you," Cameron said. It seemed a waste of time to her, trying on garments, though she knew that humans didn't possess the same abilities she did. At best they knew their approximate dimensions, although she'd seen numerous variations in the supposed same sizes; two shirts could be labelled 'medium' but be different in size. It seemed there was no standardisation.
They paid for their shirts using Weaver's credit card. The shirts weren't very expensive, and John could hear his mother's voice in the back of his mind, telling him to go nuts and splurge. He was sorely tempted to as they passed some of the designer clothes, though a life of never having much, of scraping by, had given him a certain sense of austerity and he couldn't see the point of paying ridiculous amounts of money for a shirt, just because of a logo.
The taxi ride back to the hotel was relatively short. Once inside they took the elevator up to the seventh floor and knocked on the door to their suite. Cameron heard heavy footsteps approaching the door and she saw a shadow behind the small glass peephole.
The door opened and Freyr stepped aside to allow them in. Behind the Vanguard John saw his mother and Thor inside; the latter stood at one of the windows staring outside. He noticed his mom was in jogging bottoms and tank top, not her usual attire.
"Are you okay, Mom?" John asked as he and Cameron stepped inside while Freyr closed the door behind them.
"I'm fine." Sarah stood up and stepped towards them. She looked at Cameron. "You got some clothes, then?"
"Yes," Cameron said. She put the bags she was carrying down on the table, apart from one, which she handed to Sarah. "Here are yours."
Sarah opened it up and pulled out two pairs of shapeless jeans, a thick, padded grey anorak, and two turtleneck sweaters; one blue and one black. The sweaters and anorak both looked to be a size too big, though it all appeared warm and durable. "Oh…" Sarah said, sounding much like John had, she realised, when she'd given him the flak jacket for his fifteenth birthday. "These are very…"
"The anorak's a size too big so you can conceal weapons underneath it," Cameron explained.
That makes perfect sense, Sarah thought, though she saw the inside of Cameron's own bags: jeans, tank tops and T-shirts that she was sure were all more flattering than her own. But then Cameron didn't need to worry about keeping warm like she and John did. Her new clothes weren't exactly what she'd have picked herself, but she could see the logic in all of the purchases. "Good job," she said begrudgingly. Sarah tried to ignore the fact that she would have preferred to wear a lot of what Cameron had bought for herself.
"Thank you," Cameron said.
The two women's civility threw John off for a moment. He wondered if maybe they were turning a new page, making an effort with each other. It would make life a lot easier, he thought.
With something like that in mind, Cameron decided to make a request of Sarah. "I need the van tomorrow."
Sarah frowned. "What for?"
"I saw something today that could help John. I think it could be important."
"If it's that important we should all go," Sarah said. "I'm not risking John with just one bodyguard."
"No," Cameron replied quickly. Too quickly, Sarah thought, before the cyborg added, "It's not a threat; it's educational."
"Educational, how?"
"We spent half the day at the World War Two museum," John said, weighing in. "We saw an exhibit on a battlefield a couple hours away; a small number of men resisted overwhelming numbers of German forces. Sounds pretty familiar, right? Cameron thinks it might be helpful to see; get a feel for what fighting in the future will be like."
Again, Sarah's brow furrowed as she took it in. It sounded plausible, and definitely like something that would be a good learning experience for John. But somehow it didn't sit well with her. "Do you know anything about this?" she asked Thor, turning her head towards the giant.
"We don't have files on human history," the Vanguard commander replied.
That wasn't the answer she was hoping for. She wanted to say no but couldn't find a reason to. "Because I said so" wouldn't work on John; he'd just go anyway. "Take one of them with you," she said, pointing toward Thor and Freyr.
"No," Cameron replied firmly. "We'll go alone."
John had heard the steely tone in her voice before, the night in the Apache Motel when Ellison had found them, when she'd insisted that he leave after he'd delivered his message. "We'll be fine," he added. "It wasn't that long ago you wanted us to bug out together. Alone."
"That was different: you had no one else," Sarah said. She turned to Thor for support. "Will you tell them that they need one of you with them?"
"Cameron said no," Thor replied. He wouldn't disobey an order from his commander.
Seeing that it was an argument she couldn't win, Sarah groaned in resignation, fished the keys out of her pocket and handed them over. "How long will you be?" she asked.
"All day. It's a long trip."
"You couldn't have said that before?" Sarah glared at her. It was obviously further than John had suggested, but his answer had the whiff of a hastily concocted lie. In fact, everything smelled off, but there was seemingly little she could do about it. "You drive,"she said to Cameron. "I want John to get there and back in one piece. And you leave early: sooner you go, the sooner you come back." Even more than letting her son go off to spend the whole day alone with Cameron, away from where she could reach him, was the fact that she'd have no transport whatsoever for the whole time they were gone. If they found a lead to Kaliba they'd have to sit on their hands until John and Cameron came back.
"That means you get an early night," she said to her son. "No disturbances." She looked at Cameron too as she added the latter part, noting how John's face flushed red slightly at her comment. "I'm going to the gym," she said. "Work off some stress."
John looked at her, curious. "Stress? What's wrong?" That explained what she was wearing but stress had been a steady-state condition for his mother; he didn't see why she should be so vexed now.
"Nothing," Sarah replied too quickly, her turn to lie. "Just everything that's gone on the last few days, that's all."
John and Cameron shared a look for a moment before he turned back to his mother. "Sure," he said, not quite believing her. "What about you two?" he asked Thor and Freyr.
"I'm due to relieve Aegir on the roof in thirty minutes," Freyr said.
"Have you seen anything of interest?" Cameron asked him.
"No. From his reports, Aegir appears to be bored."
That can't be good, John thought to himself. From what he'd seen of the three Vanguards, Aegir seemed to be bad tempered; something he'd never have expected from a cyborg. Between that and the fact the Vanguards were built as offensive front-line troops, he half-expected Aegir to go looking for trouble instead of waiting for it to come to them. Freyr and Thor seemed more restrained, but if Aegir could get bored then they could too.
"Do you get bored?" Cameron asked Freyr. She'd never experienced boredom before. She didn't know what it would be like.
"No."
"What do you do when you're up on the roof?" John asked.
"I observe. I've learned a lot about pre-war humans in the past twenty-four hours."
Cameron was intrigued. "Such as?"
"From the roof I observed a number of women standing on street corners. Males approach them, hand them cash and then disappear with the women for varied periods of time. I also observed that females are less sensitive to the cold, judging by how little clothing they were wearing. There are also a number of them in the hotel bar, similarly-dressed."
Sarah arched an eyebrow at him and couldn't help but smirk a little. She shared a knowing look with John and Cameron. "You really don't know what they are?" she asked.
"No." Freyr was confused.
"They're hookers," John explained. Freyr stared at him, not saying anything; John realised that the Vanguard still had no idea what he was talking about and was waiting for him to elaborate. "Never mind. It's not important."
Even though the Vanguards' faces were fixed in place he thought he could detect a sense of disappointment in the cyborg at not knowing. "What else did you see?" He remembered Cameron watching people all the time in school, observing, wanting to learn. The Vanguards' programming was, according to Thor, partially based on Cameron's own. It made sense to John that they might inherit a few of her quirks.
"I watched the cars on the road but couldn't discern any clear patterns or traffic rules. During a traffic jam a number of drivers boarded the sidewalk and continued their journey. Several did so in full view of a police car, but the police didn't stop them. They did stop a car with foreign plates, however."
"Were they driving on the sidewalk too?" Cameron asked.
"No. They were driving safely. The driver and police argued until the driver handed the officers cash, and then they let him go. They ignored the drivers on the sidewalk."
"Good news and bad, then," Sarah said. "If we get into trouble with the cops we might be able to bribe them instead of risking a fight."
"That'll disappoint Aegir," John quipped.
"What's the bad news?" Thor asked Sarah.
"It'll be a pain in the ass getting to that air show Saturday."
"I'll plan the route," Thor said. They had maps in the van and they had John's laptop. He looked at Freyr and Cameron to emphasise them. "One of us should drive."
"No argument from me," John said. Any one of the cyborgs would have much better timing and judgement on the road than either himself or his mother.
"We'll leave early to make sure we arrive in plenty of time," Thor added. Ideally he'd want to recon the site before the air show started, but that could arouse suspicion.
With everything seemingly settled, Sarah left the room for the gym and Thor followed her. He was concerned about Connor's mother. She hadn't said what had happened during the tests, only that she wouldn't receive the results for three days. Thor could see the apprehension on her face and knew that despite her saying that she wanted to be alone, that would not be good for her.
They rode the elevator down in silence to the ground floor, then went through the lobby and into a corridor leading to the gym. The entrance was secured by a key-card reader, so Sarah stuck their room card in and the lock opened allowing them access. Inside it was quiet; there were only a handful of people working out: two men running on treadmills and a woman on an elliptical.
"Why don't they run outside?" Thor asked Sarah. It seemed more practical to him. If they knew what awaited them in the years to come they would probably start running outside, up hills and across fields, to simulate what they would have to endure.
"Safer in here," Sarah said. "No potholes on a treadmill, no idiot drivers to run you over. Not that it'd do much if they ran you over."
"Probably not," Thor agreed. Sarah got onto a treadmill and started it. The belt spun beneath her feet and she quickly began jogging. It wasn't enough, though; she barely felt it and it wasn't taking her mind off the clinic and the tests. She increased the speed, forcing her to lengthen her stride and quicken her pace.
"What's twelve kilometres per hour in real terms?" Sarah asked Thor, reading off the digital speed display.
"Seven-point-five miles per hour," Thor converted.
"Oh," Sarah said. "Not fast enough." She'd read somewhere that if she could carry a conversation then she wasn't working hard enough. She raised the incline some more and then sped up, the display now reading thirteen kilometres per hour.
"Eight-point-twelve," Thor again converted for her.
Sarah continued to run for several minutes, ignoring everything around her, focusing only on each step as her foot hit the treadmill and the burn in her chest as she started to suck in quick, shallow breaths.
She wondered if it would be her lungs. She'd taken up smoking in South America, after John was born. Always when he was away, though; she'd never touched a cigarette around him. It had been a social thing then; she'd light up during breaks in the training, more to hang around with the guerrilla fighters and learn from them than anything else. She could have taken or left them.
In Pescadero, however, things had changed. She'd smoked more and more often, to cope with the stress, and by the time John and the terminator had broken her out she'd practically been a chain smoker, sometimes on forty or more a day. She'd cut down afterwards and eventually quit altogether, but she wondered if the damage was already done. Is that what causes it?
She noticed the man on the treadmill on her right was watching her curiously. He glanced at the display on her machine and, without looking at his, Sarah increased her speed again to fourteen, determined to push herself harder, work herself so severely she wouldn't be able to think about what may or may not be eating her from the inside.
The man to her right increased his speed to match hers. He was breathing just as heavily as she was, if not harder. He was certainly sweating a lot more. Sarah smiled and decided to have a little fun. She upped hers again, this time to fifteen kilometres an hour. Again, the guy next to her sped up as well, seemingly determined to not be beaten by a woman. It turned into an unspoken game; she'd up the speed and run for several minutes until her 'opponent' looked like he was ready to drop, and then she turned it up a notch.
After almost thirty minutes of their 'game,' the man hit the kill switch on the treadmill, before he jumped off, forfeiting their unspoken competition. Sarah slowed it down once he'd gone, panting and sucking air down hard; in pain but feeling good. Still got it. She was glad he'd given up when he did; she didn't think she could have gone much longer or any faster, and her feet and chest felt like they were on fire.
Sarah left the cardio suite and guzzled down what felt to her like a gallon of water at the fountain, before she walked into the weights room, covered in sweat. There, she saw a couple of other patrons using various weights and machines. Thor was standing over by the bench press, helpfully spotting someone through a set.
"Making friends, I see," she said as the Vanguard held the bar, stabilising it as the man lifted.
"He saw that I wasn't busy and asked for assistance." The man on the bench exhaled sharply as he pushed the weight up one final time and brought it to rest in its cradle. He then asked Thor something that Sarah didn't understand.
"He asked if I want him to 'spot me,'" Thor said to her before he made any reply to the man.
"Not that you'd need it; can't you bench-press a tank?" Sarah asked him rhetorically. Thor said something back to the Ukrainian man and then turned to see Sarah had gone to a set of pull up bars and was already working on them, raising and lowering herself slowly.
"Well?" the man said to him in Ukrainian. "How much?"
"I don't know," Thor said back to him in his own language. He didn't want to lift weights in the gym. It was a pointless exercise for a cyborg. He turned away from the man, ignoring him, and watched Sarah as she pulled herself up and down repeatedly on the bar. He found her interesting; she seemed to have much more focus than any human he'd ever met, besides General Connor. Sweat was pouring off her and he could tell from her breathing that she was struggling, as she went from pull ups to squat-thrusts, but she kept pushing herself. He didn't understand why: if she had cancer then exercise would not cure it; there was no need to exert herself as hard as she was, but she still did.
She had asked him to take control of the group until Connor was ready, and he thought it would be wiser if she were to rest. She wasn't in charge any more but she still seemed just as determined to continue with them as she had done before, despite her contribution being not only unnecessary but even detrimental to her son's emotional wellbeing, should anything happen to her. Combat was simple; understanding humans was not.