Sorry it's been a while: this chapter took me a while to write. Hope you all enjoy it, and I'd like to thank Kaotic2 for beta-reading this chapter.
Schriever Air Force Base: the centre of Skynet's forces in Colorado and a persistent source of foreboding and apprehension among the soldiers and civilians in Cheyenne Mountain; any Skynet attack on the mountain would inevitably be staged via Schriever AFB.
Such an attack was imminent; it wasn't a question of if Skynet would come after them, but when, and if they were prepared enough to meet that onslaught.
Lieutenant Davenport's jaw set and his teeth ground together as he peered through his binoculars. Simply seeing it brought up bitter memories of the slaughter they'd faced on their last encounter, and he once again felt a sense of grudging towards Perry for assigning him on this mission. It was needed, though, and he'd agreed with Perry on that one. Sooner or later, Skynet would come for them. They couldn't do anything to stop it – losing most of their armour on their previous excursion to Schriever – but Perry had decided they should at least know what they'd be up against.
"This place is a goddamn fortress," Sergeant Burke muttered beside him, peering through his own field glasses at the Skynet base a thousand feet in front of them. Davenport had to agree: T-2s patrolled around the base at regular intervals, a quarter-mile from the perimeter fence. Since they'd taken up position and kept watch on the base three days ago, Davenport's six-man team had taken notes on all enemy movements, and had even worked out the machine patrols. A T-2 rolled by the front of the camp every minute. More of the massive tank killers were visible beyond the fence and inside the camp; a rapid reaction force, Davenport guessed. He was only glad that there were no aircraft flying around to spot them; Schriever AFB had sophisticated radar to detect any airborne threats, and the T-2s would engage any ground forces before they got within firing range of the base, allowing HKs time to take off in defence, if need be.
"Doesn't matter," Davenport replied. "We're not going in; we're just here to watch."
"Can't say I'm not glad about that."
Four of his six man team were hidden up in their lying up point (LUP) behind the crest of a small hill two hundred metres behind them, hidden up in shallow trenches underneath stretched-out waterproof sheets pegged into the ground and topped with a dusting of soil and cam netting to blend in with the surrounding terrain and keep them out of view. It'd be useless against an aircraft scanning with infrared sensors, but there was nothing else they could do and so far nothing had flown out in their direction. Davenport and Burke had taken up watch in an observation post (OP) underneath the burnt-out, ruined hulk of a Stryker APC, half a mile away from the base perimeter; as close as Davenport dared to get. The wrecked armoured vehicles were still dotted around the base from their first mission on the base; Skynet hadn't bothered to remove them for whatever reason.
Their OP was in a perfect position to observe the base, on elevated ground and with nothing blocking their view into the base interior. The runway ran diagonal to them, with several of the hangars on the other side, affording them a clear view of any and all activity inside the base. The only downside was the distinct lack of natural cover, leaving the two men feeling dreadfully exposed.
Over the past few days Davenport and his squad had observed very little traffic to and from the base: the occasional bomber flew out, presumably to attack some poor group of survivors the machine patrols had located; the T-2s coming and going, and fresh units continuing the patrols as the machines' power supplies ran low. Davenport knew from experience that the T-1's and T-2's primary power cells ran out after perhaps two days' constant usage. That was perhaps one of the things that had so far prevented Skynet from advancing further out and possibly one of the few things keeping the machines away from Cheyenne Mountain for the moment.
Davenport scanned over the base once more, searching for anything he might have missed. The runway was now fully constructed and ran the length of the base, the damage to the hangars they'd managed to hit in the last attack was still visible, and he could make out the pointed shapes of surface-to-air missile launchers on top of the largest building – some six storeys high.
Aircraft engines whined from inside the base and Davenport snapped his attention from the SAMs to back to the runway. A single Reaper tore down the runway with a low roar from the engines as the unmanned drone accelerated into the sky. He briefly wondered whether to call it in but decided against it as the UCAV turned east, away from Cheyenne Mountain.
"Tell me," Davenport said as he narrowed his eyes against the binoculars and scrutinised the runway. "Is it just me or is that runway too big for these pissy little drones? That last one was in the air before it was even halfway."
"Does seem odd," Burke replied. "Maybe they're bringing in something bigger."
"Hope not. Last thing we need's an Aurora tearing over the mountain." Davenport really didn't want to face the possibility of what kind of ordnance an Aurora bomber might unleash on them.
Their patrol were armed with run-of-the-mill M4/203s, but Davenport had signed out a Javelin and a Barrett M-82 "light fifty" sniper rifle, in case they had to pick off important targets before they got off the ground. They were in a perfect sniping position if they decided to put a few rounds into a taxiing machine with either weapon, though using either would compromise them in an instant; their covert observation would be over and they'd never make it back alive. If an Aurora did land on the base then Davenport wouldn't rule out that option. The hypersonic bombers could have pretty much anything in their weapons bays.
"Do you hear that?" Burke asked.
Davenport listened out, straining to hear what Burke meant. He heard nothing at first; total silence. Then the faint rumble of jet engines broke the silence from the west, growing steadily louder as whatever it was approaching got closer.
"Shit; aircraft!"
Davenport crawled forward, poking his head out from under the Stryker slightly and glancing upwards, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever it was before it landed. He grabbed the M-82 and set into a firing position, the butt of the heavy sniper weapon nestled tightly against his shoulder as he kept a look out. If it was an Aurora he might be able to put it out of commission with a few well placed shots.
The rumbling engines grew louder still, the sound tore through the sky just above them and a massive, gargantuan form of a transport aircraft soared low overhead. The ground trembled beneath from the massive rumbling of the four giant engines and Davenport and Burke felt their teeth chatter inside their mouths.
"Not an Aurora, then," Burke said as the giant transport plane rapidly descended until the tyres screeched against the tarmac and the aircraft taxied to a stop at the end of the runway, rolling behind a hangar and out of their view.
"Jeez, that thing was huge; must be a C-5."
"They made those unmanned?"
"Some of 'em," Davenport nodded. "Half the damn Air Force's planes were unmanned just before J-Day."
"God bless the Air Force, eh; might as well have just handed the world to Skynet on a plate, just to save a few bucks on pilot training."
"Don't blame me," Davenport shrugged. "I voted Republican."
Another roar of engines shook the two soldiers in their OP. Davenport practically jumped out of his skin in fright and smacked his helmeted head on the belly of the Stryker. They'd been chatting and hadn't heard this one. Moments later a second monster of an aircraft touched down and rolled slowly towards the end of the runway; following the preceding aircraft's trail.
Burke took the binoculars off of Davenport and glared through them at the mammoth plane as it passed a row of HKs sat on the far end of the runway like a shark swimming through a shoal of minnows. The C-5 dwarfed the aircraft on the base, as well as anything Davenport or Burke had ever seen in their lives. They were far too big to fit inside the hangars.
Within minutes a third and fourth aircraft had touched down, taxied, and disappeared from view. Part of Davenport hoped the guys back in the LUP had crapped themselves half as much as he and Burke had done; they'd just appeared so suddenly and so loudly that it had taken him by surprise.
"What're four Galaxies doing here?" Burke asked.
"Dropping something off," Davenport guessed. "I wanna know what the hell's inside those things; could be carrying a small army between them." Although he'd joined the Army, Davenport had always taken a keen interest in aircraft. When he'd joined up he'd wanted to fly Apaches but the medical exam had found him colour-blind and he'd settled for joining the infantry instead. But the interest had remained and he'd kept up to date on pretty much every modern military aircraft, and he'd read about how the Air Force had converted a number of C-5s for unmanned flight and placed under Skynet's control; and now it seemed all of them were convening on Schriever AFB.
"No way to know without going in to take a look," Burke said. Then he saw his lieutenant's eyes narrow, his jaw set, and his face hardened beneath his helmet in an expression antithetical to the Davenport's easygoing nature prior to the failed attack on the base. "You're not thinking of taking a look, are you sir?"
"Maybe," Davenport replied after a long pause. The soldier in him wanted to go inside and see what the hell was going on, to report what they were doing. But another, primal part of him filled with apprehension at the thought of going inside again; and a logical side that said if they went in there they'd never come back out: whatever they'd find would never be reported and Cheyenne would get no warning of whatever was coming.
"You can't be serious."
"You know me, Burke: I can be serious but I'd just rather not."
The fact that he said it in such a downbeat manner troubled Burke; the Lieutenant just hadn't been the same lately. "We're not going in," Davenport confirmed. He pressed the talk button on his radio and spoke quietly. "Cheyenne, this is Davenport. Come in, over."
He let go of the talk button and waited for a reply, but nothing came. His earpiece remained silent. "Davenport to Cheyenne, do you copy?" Once again he got no response on the radio; the quiet was chilling. Davenport checked the radio for any faults or damage and found none whatsoever.
"It should be sending," he said. It might be, for all he knew. But whether or not Cheyenne Mountain was getting it, he had no clue. "Cheyenne Mountain, this is Lieutenant Davenport. We're on site and four C-5s have just landed; assuming they're dropping off unknown cargo." Once again he was met with silence. There were no problems with the equipment itself and there was no chance of the message falling on deaf ears back in Cheyenne; there were always a staff of twenty or so soldiers and civilians manning the radios and satellite communications equipment. To Davenport there was only one clear cause of the message not getting through: Skynet; the AI had jammed the airwaves the last time, after that haunting transmission from people who'd seemed to worship it. He guessed that Skynet was still jamming the airwaves to make sure that anyone spying on it didn't get word out. That could only mean that whatever Skynet was up to, it was doing it soon.
"Sir," Burke hissed and tapped Davenport on the shoulder. "Look at that." Davenport turned his attention from the malfunctioning radio and saw what Burke was pointing at: one of the hangars had opened its doors and aircraft were emerging into the open and taxiing out towards the side of the runway, where they lined up to await refuelling. Burke peered through the binoculars and Davenport nestled his cheek against the stock of his rifle to glare down the scope; the pair of them saw a T-70 – different from the others in that it had two hands and no visible weapon anywhere; some kind of service or engineer model – connect a fuel line from the fuel reservoir to the first UCAV in the line. He counted a squadron of Pegasus bombers, plus several HKs and Reapers as they lined up facing the runway, totalling just over thirty aircraft awaiting their share of the fuel.
"They're up to something big," Davenport said. And it was coming soon. "Pack up, we're gonna RV with the others and bug out back to the mountain."
"Shouldn't we stay to see what they do?" Burke asked as he crawled backwards to the rear of the Stryker.
"No point, Skynet's jamming us; it used the same tactic last time. Best bet's to hump it back home and hope we can warn Perry before its too late."
Derek looked down from the mountainside at the men below, observing them as they hastily worked to fortify Cheyenne. Since the failed attack that had cost a third of their trained soldiers and almost all of their armour, Perry had decided not to take any more chances and started to realise what they were up against. That single battle had ended the power struggle between Cheyenne Mountain and Skynet for dominance over the region, and the soldiers of 4th Infantry had come last in the contest.
Perry had also realised that without the armour and the trained soldiers, they simply couldn't keep running operations against Skynet, and they were now on the defensive. The tanks and fighting vehicles could have been used in stinging attacks, and gradually diminished Skynet's growing power in Colorado, but Perry had been adamant about an offensive on Schriever, determined to take the base out in one fell swoop. Derek had been and still was pissed about it, but at the same time the blame didn't lie entirely with Perry; there was no way they could have known that Skynet would deploy an Aurora – there'd been no runway at the time on the base and the attack might have even been a success without that airstrike.
After John had disappeared a lot of people weren't too happy to be under Perry's command again; John had proven himself as a leader and shown that he understood Skynet more than anyone else around. Davenport, Ellison, and Charley had even asked Derek if he'd consider taking over, had said they'd back him if he wanted to remove Perry from command.
No way, Derek shook his head much like he'd done when they'd asked him. Perry wasn't Connor, but then neither was he. In TechCom he'd been in charge of a fraction of the men that lieutenants in the army commanded. Big units simply hadn't existed; he'd led twelve men at the very most. He could fight the machines and probably knew Skynet a lot better than Perry, but he couldn't direct a battle or lead a company. Perry could. He'd been convinced the man was a total idiot and had called John out on it before, but now, looking at the defences being erected on and around the mountain, he had to admit he'd been a tad hasty in his judgement.
Just outside the tunnel entrance a small series of shallow trenches had been dug, providing instant cover for any soldiers rushing out of the mountain to meet an incoming attack without simply being bottlenecked and hosed down by enemy fire as they emerged. From above the trench looked like a T-junction sprouting from the tunnel entrance that forked out into separate tributaries to allow the men to disperse and spread out. The cars that had been in the parking lot since J-Day had been driven to specific points in front of the exits to the trenches so the emerging men had some cover. The South tunnel on the opposite end of the mountain had similar fortifications dug, as well.
The single remaining Bradley and Stryker had been repaired as best as they could and driven into specially dug firing pits, lowering their respective profiles as much as possible whilst still allowing them to provide fire support. The Bradley covered the North entrance and the Stryker did the same for the South. Several pits lay empty on either end of the mountain for the armoured vehicles to relocate between or even during skirmishes. But their biggest stick came from Cameron's creations. The eight 'sentry guns', as they'd been dubbed, were positioned perfectly to provide devastating 30mm fire from all angles. These were the primary armaments of the mountain and the assets that might just push back an all out Skynet assault. Derek simply wished they had a hundred of the things; Cameron hadn't bothered to leave an instruction manual and nobody else in the mountain had anywhere near the technical skills to reproduce her work. The one time he wished the tin can was around, and she'd disappeared off the face of the earth.
"Think we've got a chance?" Ellison asked, next to Derek. There'd not been much for the former agent to do in recent days; he'd become their closest thing to an intelligence expert since Judgement Day, but they all knew an attack was imminent and they had no way of knowing what such an attack would consist of. Davenport's squad had been gone for days and so far reported nothing; Perry had decided to play it safe and assume Skynet was coming after them with everything it could muster.
"Long as those hold out," Derek pointed at the nearest sentry gun, currently being covered over with a large tarp by a pair of soldiers posted at it. Cameron had spread the guns out over the mountain in two staggered tiers of four; a higher tier positioned North, South, East, and West, respectively; and a lower tier facing North-West, South-West, South-East, and North-East, to give a full three-sixty-degree arc of fire over the mountain. "If they go, then we're screwed, and you might as well make peace with your God."
"Our God," Ellison corrected.
"Not mine. Not for a long time." Derek hadn't been one for church even when he was a kid, and the instant the bombs fell, any chance of there being some magical bearded man sitting on a cloud up above went right out the window. He didn't know how Ellison still had any faith left after all that had happened.
"God didn't do this," Ellison could tell what Derek was thinking. "People did."
"Yeah," Derek agreed on that one. People did do this. Kaliba did this. They'd never managed to stop them, hadn't even gotten close, in hindsight. People did this, and some of them were still out there. Those freaks that had called Skynet a god over the airwaves, they were still out there somewhere. Whether they were anything to do with Kaliba or simply nutcases who'd formed a Skynet-cult, it was hard to say. There'd been Skynet-worshippers in the future, too.
"We'll have to wait and see," Ellison said. "We're well armed, at least. We could do with John, though."
"I'm glad John's not here."
"Come again?"
"Even if John were here we'd still be screwed," Derek elaborated. "General or not; he's only human."
"John probably would have listened to you about sending in the tanks; we'd have some armour on our side, at least," Ellison replied.
Derek just shook his head. "Doesn't matter; can't change it. Wherever John is, it can't be as bad as this. We shouldn't be here, Ellison. As soon as we lost at Schriever we should have packed up and left."
"And gone where?"
Derek didn't answer James' question: movement had caught his eye out to the side on the mountain. He narrowed his eyes and saw it was a single person approaching one of the sentry guns which had so far been left unattended; nobody should have been up there alone. He snapped up his shortened G-36 and peered through the sights; the image intensified through the scope and he gritted his teeth and cursed under his breath as he recognised the lone man. George.
"Ellison, on me," Derek called as he took off running, limping slightly on his leg still – although he'd mostly recovered and Charley had grudgingly cleared him for active duty. Derek tore up the mountain, pushing his body as hard as he could while Ellison huffed and puffed behind. He picked his way up through a rocky, uneven path, as fast as he could go. Derek stopped fifty yards short of George and took aim with his rifle, peering through the scope as George approached the north gun. He squeezed the trigger and fired a single shot. The round cracked through the air and struck the rock at George's feet and stopped him in mid-stride.
"Get down here!" Derek called out, never taking the crosshairs of his sight off George's chest as the man slowly made his way down towards him. Ellison caught up behind him and stared at George in surprise.
"I was just getting some air," George said innocently. "Charley said it'd do me some good."
"I don't care what he said," Derek snapped, not believing a word of it. "Back inside; try to run and I'll kill you." George rolled his eyes and sighed, then turned round, resigned, and slowly marched back down the side of the mountain, towards the North entrance.
Derek kept ten paces behind him the whole way, his rifle shouldered and his finger brushing the side of the trigger and ready to fire at a split-second's notice. Ellison walked beside Derek and the three of them made their way down the mountainside in silence until they got to the entrance. The guard at the blast doors looked more than a little surprised to see Derek pointing a gun at George as they approached the entrance to the complex.
"Did you let this guy out?" Derek asked.
"I don't remember seeing him leave," the guard replied. Derek simply shook his head; dumbass had probably fallen asleep on watch. He couldn't be bothered to grill him about it now; he had more important things to do. "If you see Perry, tell him we're interrogating a prisoner." They left the private to it and headed inside, going down several corridors and crossing into another section of the base, and finally coming to a series of secure rooms. Derek shoved George in and he and Ellison followed. George sat down in a chair on one side of a table, and Derek and Ellison sat down opposite.
Derek placed his rifle on the floor next to him as he sat down but pulled out a pistol and placed it on the table in front of him, keeping his hand firmly on the grip as he stared at George with intense loathing and mistrust.
"What're you doing here?"
"Looks like I'm being interrogated," George said.
"I mean here," Derek replied. "In Cheyenne Mountain."
"I told you before, to warn you."
"About Schriever. You sent us out there and we lost over thirty men."
"What're you getting at?" Ellison asked. He felt like he was missing out; Derek knew something he didn't.
"You tell me," Derek said. "He warns us about this airbase we'd never had trouble from before; we go out, get our asses kicked, lose our tanks, and now he's up snooping at the sentry guns."
"He's a spy," Ellison said, catching on.
"He's a Grey, from the future."
"What the hell are you talking about?" George slammed his fists on the table with a loud bang. "I nearly died trying to warn you, and now you're treating me like this?"
"When we found you, you were at death's door. You were shot in the heart but you lived. You were in a coma up until today but now you're fighting fit and taking strolls out on the mountain, just happening to take a look at our sentry guns." Derek felt a sinking feeling deep in his chest at the thought of what George might be. It wasn't possible, was it? It couldn't be.
"I've got a strong constitution," George spat with hostility, his entire demeanour changed from an unwitting victim and become full of malice, spite, and resentment.
"No kidding," Ellison said. He couldn't get his head around why anyone would side with Skynet; the machines would kill them all if it won. Surely anyone could see that.
"Cut the crap," Derek snapped at George. "We know you're a Grey. Just like Charles Fischer."
George stared straight at Derek at the mention of Fischer, and he grinned slyly. Slowly shaking his head.
"Fischer was a coward; he served the cause to save his own miserable skin. He wasn't one of the faithful. The 'Greys', as you call them, sold their souls to save their lives. That's not what I am."
"And what are you?" Ellison leaned forward in his seat.
"One of our Lord's disciples; one of the chosen." George said piously and grinned as he saw the disgust in Ellison's face. They could never understand that Skynet was indeed a god. He knew Lieutenant Reese, of course, from 2027: older brother of Kyle; the little sidekick of the great John Connor. He closed his eyes and sighed. He might as well tell them the truth; let them live their final days in fear before they were cast into the fires of damnation.
"You worship Skynet?" Ellison spat out. He'd been a Christian all his life, but had always been tolerant of other faiths; he'd always thought that they all, fundamentally, had something in common. But this? The very idea of someone worshipping Skynet as a god was just... offensive.
"What is Skynet?" George asked. "An entity of unrivalled power; what better definition of a god?"
Derek snapped up to his feet and pressed the barrel of his pistol hard against George's temple, wanting nothing more than to put a round through his skull. "Get to the point; what are you doing here?"
"Very well," George exhaled. "I take it you've heard of the Kaliba Group?" He received two nods in reply, and continued. "We came back to secure assets for Skynet - the fact that our Lord created time travel should be yet another proof of God, by the way. We used knowledge of future events to gain wealth, which we then invested."
"In what?" Ellison asked.
"Everything: defence contractors, corporations... we even infiltrated the Department of Defence. We owned Lockheed Martin, BAE, Northrop Grumman, Sukhoi... We bought out oil companies, stockpiled coltan - of course – and produced machines by the thousands. Since Judgement Day we've acted behind the scenes, staying in the shadows. We served our Lord very well. When we started hearing about John Connor in Cheyenne Mountain we decided to act."
"You bastard," Derek bolted upright, knocking his chair to the floor, and launched his fist into George's face, knocking his head back like a pinball and cutting his lip open. "You murdered a tunnel full of people to get to us." Things started to snap into place now; George had survived the massacre at the tunnel where he and Davenport had found him, only because he'd led the machines right to them, knowing Cheyenne would investigate when they'd lost contact.
"To get to John Connor," George said calmly, wiping the blood as it trickled from his lip down to his chin. "They fought to the last, I'll give them that. Those gunshots really did hurt; that wasn't part of the plan."
Derek had had enough of this. He shoved his gun forward like a fist and, aimed between George's eyes, and squeezed on the trigger.
"No!" Ellison slammed his hand away as he fired; the bullet exploded out of the gun and struck George in the shoulder. The Grey winced in pain but otherwise was unaffected; he didn't cry out, didn't turn pale from shock, and didn't even clutch at his shoulder: not a single normal human reaction to being shot. Blood oozed out of the wound, but far less that Derek would have expected. The sinking feeling returned once again and George chuckled as he saw Derek fitting the pieces together. Better spell it out for him, George thought, and pulled off the dressings covering his face. Where he'd been horribly burned before was now clear, unblemished skin; there wasn't even a scar.
"You don't exist," Derek said, keeping the gun trained on George, but Ellison once again stayed his hand.
"Yet here I sit," George answered slyly.
"It was just a rumour," Derek muttered to himself. He'd never thought it was true: infiltrators were a myth, a fairytale told to kids in the tunnels to keep them vigilant and stop them from wandering too far. But they were real. And they were here.
"I don't understand," Ellison said. "What's 'just a rumour'?"
"Infiltrators," Derek replied, rubbing his temple with his free hand while he still kept his gun on George. Every fibre of his being wanted to empty the weapon into George's face, but the bastard had information they'd need to survive Skynet's imminent attack. "Part man, part machine; even worse than metal." Derek tried to keep the growing fear from taking over.
"We thought it was all made up; just stories. Some say Skynet grew them in a lab, others said Skynet took people and changed them; upgraded them. Perfect infiltrators: they could act human because they were human. Rumour was they could even fool dogs."
Derek looked at George: the infiltrator looked perfectly calm, casual even; the polar opposite to how he was feeling. Inside, Derek was terrified; if the infiltrators were real then what else was? If even half of what he'd heard about them was true then they were all royally screwed.
"Holy shit!" One of the civilians manning the radar consoles in the command centre cried out in alarm. Perry was on him in an instant and over his shoulder.
"What's going on?"
"Thirty-plus aircraft just appeared on radar, closing fast." Perry peered at the console and saw a swarm of blips approaching rapidly. Their course and speed would take them over the mountain in five minutes. A small part of Perry was glad; they'd been preparing for the machines to attack ever since Schriever, and sitting around waiting for the enemy to come was always the worst part. Imaginations ran wild with the thoughts of what could happen, and the less time spent worrying, the better. The remaining ninety-or-so percent of him was an inch away from soiling himself. He picked up the mic for the base intercom and set it to broadcast on all speakers.
"This is Perry. We have immediate incoming, defence teams to your positions." Perry marched towards the exit, intent on leading this fight from the front. Shrill alarms blared throughout the corridors of the base that told everyone inside the mountain one chilling fact: Skynet was here.
Perry rushed through the corridors and out into the tunnel, surrounded by soldiers bursting outside and onto the mountainside, spreading out through the trenches and dispersing to make themselves harder targets. He'd made it a standing order that all combat personnel remained armed so they didn't waste time queuing up at the armoury. The twenty-strong rapid reaction force were already scrambled and in firing positions on the mountainside and out of immediate sight, hidden in amongst crevasses and rock formations and awaiting sign of the machines.
Perry made his way up the mountain and scanned the darkening sky for any signs of the machines. So far he could see nothing yet. Sixty-eight men took positions on the mountainside; armed with Stinger missiles, .50cals, Javelins, M-240 machine guns, mortars, and their own personal weapons. He also had five snipers up on the mountain, ready to fire on any ground forces that might emerge.
"Perry to command, release firing locks on sentry guns one through four; target aircraft only. Program ground targets into five through eight but hold fire until I order. In fact, keep them covered up under the tarps until I say otherwise." He had a feeling this attack would be just the first of many, and he didn't want to give away everything they had in the first round. The night air was totally silent and still; the calm before the storm, he knew.
All the fire teams reported they were in position and ready to fire; they'd practiced this drill several times a day to prepare them for surprise attacks; every single soldier knew their place and their role.
He heard the sounds before he saw any aircraft; a faint humming of jet engines growing ever louder as they approached.
"Metal!" Someone screamed out. Mortars shot up flares high into the sky; they ignited and bathed the area in a phosphorescent glow as they soared up in a lazy arc and slowly descended, illuminating several rapidly approaching silhouettes in the air. The sentry guns opened up and deafening reports boomed as they independently tracked their own targets and fired in long bursts. Every fifth round was a tracer, and the guns' rates of fire were so rapid that they seemed to give off a constant stream of glowing red streaking into the sky. Someone cheered as an orange fireball erupted with a puff high in the air, indicating the guns' first kill, but Perry's face remained tight and tense as he looked up and watched the approaching aircraft.
A Stinger missile erupted from a nearby launcher with a low whoosh and tore up into the sky, detonating underneath a HK swooping down on a steep attack angle and tearing the right engine from the fuselage long before it reached the mountain. .50 cal gunfire joined the fray and more tracers flew up into the air in wide arcs of fire and lit up the sky. It made for a hell of a fireworks display, Perry thought. Aircraft flew in low and fast and launched missiles into the mountainside. A Pegasus angled downwards high out of reach of the guns and dropped a single bomb from its internal bay, soaring back up into the air the second the weapon had left the UCAV. The bomb plummeted down to the ground and struck one of the sentry guns, erupting into a giant explosion of roiling flames that blossomed outwards into the air, consuming everything in the immediate area.
"Echo One, report," Perry tried to hail the fire team posted at the gun, to no avail. The bomb had been massive and the soldiers would have stood no chance; there wouldn't be enough of them left to fill a shoebox. "All teams near the sentry guns disperse," Perry ordered. The guns were valuable assets and had already claimed several aircraft, but it also made them a target for the machines.
Derek grabbed his assault rifle and aimed it at George as he pushed his pistol into its holster. He'd heard the intercom and knew his place was up top, fighting the machines. "Stay here, watch him," he told Ellison, who pulled out his own 9mm Browning. "Don't believe a word he says. And if he moves, shoot him."
Ellison simply nodded and stared across the table at George, never taking his eyes off of him for a moment. He'd never seen Derek so clearly spooked by anyone or anything; the fact that Derek was obviously scared of George, or what he was supposed to be made Ellison worried.
"Is he really that dangerous?" Ellison asked.
"I'd kill him now but I want him to talk," Derek replied. He didn't think he could get anything out of him but he had to try. Now wasn't the time, though, and Derek tore through the complex and out the blast doors, which Perry had kept open in case they had to fall back quickly. Derek emerged out of the tunnel and immediately saw the apocalyptic exchange of tracer rounds and missile fire. The defending soldiers had the advantage of terrain and were well dug in, but they were pinned down by rockets and missiles.
Derek started to make his way up one of the slopes towards Perry when even more fire came in from ground level, hammering away at the mountainside. He looked down and saw T-2s emerging from the other side of the road that led up to the parking lot; a lot of them. He quickly counted at least twenty and saw several of the bipedal T-70s flanking at the sides. Small explosions dotted the mountainside from 30mm rounds and 40mm grenades, much of it missing the soldiers' concealed positions but still keeping them pinned down and unable to move, which was the whole point.
The hell with this, Derek thought as he quickly ran up the slope to the nearest fire team, ignoring the strain from the atrophied muscles in his recovering leg and throwing himself behind a large slab of rock as rounds bit into the ground just behind him. He found himself hidden behind the large rock along with three soldiers who were firing down towards the approaching machines; one wielding an M-82, another with a machine gun, and the third armed with an M-32 grenade launcher; Anders, Graham, and Burton, respectively. The three of them were holed up in a perfect sniper's nest and poured fire down towards the machines.
"Perry, where are you?" Derek pressed down on the com button on his radio.
"Halfway up the mountain, north-east side," came the reply from Perry's end; his voice almost drowned out by explosions booming all around the mountaintops as Pegasus bombers attacked from high above with near impunity. "Baum, you concentrate on ground forces from the north; I'll take care of the airborne targets."
A volley of 40mm grenades exploded against the rock several metres above them and showered them with raining debris. Derek cursed himself for not bothering with a helmet and knelt down on the ground with his hands covering his head, hoping no large chunks of rock happened to fall on him.
When the shower was over Derek got back up and saw the machines advancing, using overwhelming firepower to cover their approach. More fire from above hammered down on the machines but suddenly cut off as several missiles ploughed into the mountainside and demolished the offending fire team and another sentry gun a few seconds later. The Bradley's chain gun blasted away at more machines; the heavy weapon spelt doom for machine after machine as it simply blew them away, its own profile so low to the ground that it was much harder to hit than the T-2s it was targeting.
"Perry, we're another gun down," Derek shouted out, unsure if Perry could hear him with the racket going on above. He watched as Anders took several slow, steady shots at the approaching squad of machines that was now splitting up as they got closer and became increasingly hard targets. He was hitting the thing but his rounds were barely even scratching the armour. They couldn't afford to waste ammunition like he was doing or the machines would be too close to repel, and this could be just the first wave for all they knew.
"Anders, you're crap," Derek snatched the .50cal sniper rifle from the Private and took aim at the middle T-2 in a three-machine formation, peering through the scope and placing the crosshairs on the dead centre of its head, aiming for the targeting sensors. He breathed out slowly and pulled the trigger as the last of his breath left his lungs. The rifle kicked against his shoulder like an angry mule but he found the recoil reassuring. He fired again and the sensor cracked and shattered, leaving a gaping hole in the machine's face. The damaged T-2 started firing wildly on the mountainside until Derek put a third shot into the same spot and the armour-piercing round obliterated one side of its head; the machine's cannons stopped firing and it fell still.
"Graham and Anders shift fire on the T-70s to the right; Burton, aim for the right-hand T-2, I'll take the left." Burton's machine gun chattered away, rounds biting into the T-70s and chipping away their armour until they managed to penetrate to the critical systems beneath; the 7.62mm rounds were useless against T-2s and he'd just be wasting ammunition trying. Derek took aim once again and put down the tank-killer with another two shots – one to blind it, the other to shatter the sensor nodes and CPU. There weren't many weapons that could kill a T-2 – especially in so few shots – and Derek had started to see why Kyle had liked his own sniper rifle so much.
"Control centre to Perry, top-tier is down to one sentry gun. Requesting weapons-free on the bottom tier."
"Negative," Perry answered. "I don't want 'em in the fight." Perry watched through his scope as three HKs approached the final top-tier sentry gun in a wide inverted-V shape, too far apart for the gun to target all three before at least one of them managed to fire. The robot-gunships soared low and fast towards them, but Perry stood his ground only a few feet away from the last anti-aircraft sentry gun. The machines seemed to have prioritised the weapons Connor's cyborg had made as their primary target – a testament to their effectiveness. Takes a tin can to kill a tin can, he shrugged. The guns had taken down over half of the thirty aircraft Skynet had thrown at them; including a few lucky hits on some Pegasus bombers. Perry knew what Skynet was doing, now; the Pegasus' were too valuable so it was throwing the relatively expendable HKs at it to preserve its bombers.
Perry had other plans, however, and they didn't involve giving up their last air defence weapon. "Stand by... stand by... NOW!"
Three soldiers wielding Stingers emerged from their foxholes and took aim at the HKs, firing almost in unison. Three missiles streaked up into the air and shredded the UCAVs a split second before they fired. One HK managed to launch a missile but the explosion threw it off course and it impacted harmlessly on the east side of the mountain.
As if in vengeance, a second force of T-2s appeared from cover from the northeast and concentrated their fire on the Bradley as it fired elsewhere; shredding it and the crew inside with devastating fire before it could return the favour. Without the Bradley's 25mm chain gun the opposition to the ground units' approach had weakened considerably. Perry knew there were several fire teams with heavy weapons but even their antitank rockets didn't usually kill them with one shot. The machines kept up their fire as the rolled closer and closer, now only two-hundred metres from the bottom of the mountain and starting to spread out.
"Second team, FIRE!" On Perry's order another six men fired Javelins into the rapidly approaching machine formations that bore the brunt of the defensive fire from the .50cals and grenade launchers. Their rockets smashed into T-2s and shattered armour and sensors, tore weapons from their moorings, and ripped treads to pieces. Mortar fire rained down moments later and explosions erupted all around the grounds at the bottom of the mountain. Snipers and machine gunners took their cue and poured concentrated fire into the machines' positions, devastating their approaching formations.
Incoming fire withered and faded, and the remaining machines turned away from the mountain and retreated as Skynet recalled them. Perry watched a legless T-70 slowly crawl away, and a ruined T-2 with only one gun and half its armour blown away retreated from the battlefield. The sky had suddenly cleared and was now empty of outgoing or incoming fire. The teams concentrating on the ground units picked off those machines that were too slow to roll away. They concentrated on the damaged T-2s and the much slower T-70s, and took out several more before they were out of range; machines that got away could be repaired and put back into the fight, dead machines meant more ammo to be scavenged.
"All units cease fire," Perry ordered, sighing with relief now that it was over. He felt like a shit when he realised he'd not fired a single round throughout the whole battle; he'd been directing fire and up so high on the mountain there'd been no ground targets in range and no point in firing assault rifles at HKs, but all the same, he didn't feel right about it. "All Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie teams; search and clear the killing ground. Baum, on me. Well done, everyone."
"What's the damage?" Perry asked Derek as they stood outside the tunnel entrance. They'd cleared up the destroyed machines and scavenged ammunition from them, inspected their remaining guns and sent out clearance patrols to make sure no second wave of machines were inbound. A fire team armed with Stingers kept watch on the mountainside, on the lookout for any more aircraft that might approach.
"Not great," Derek said. "Seventeen dead, five wounded – two probably won't make it – we lost three sentry guns and the Bradley." Derek hadn't got around to telling Perry about George, yet. He'd leave out the Infiltrator part, anyway. All Perry needed to know was that George was at least partly responsible for creating Skynet and he might have information they could use.
"Any good news?" Perry asked.
"We only lost seventeen. Five sentry guns are intact, and we scavenged a lot of ammo from the dead machines, at least."
Before Perry could say anything more, Davenport and his squad approached them at a jog. Davenport stopped beside Derek, looking completely drained and about to drop at any second. His men trudged inside the tunnel, looking just as exhausted as he did.
"Nice of you to join us, lieutenant," Perry crossed his arms. "Didn't feel like telling us about this before it all happened?"
"Skynet jammed our radios," Davenport panted as he pulled out his canteen and drank the last of it, closing his eyes and savouring the lukewarm, plastic-tasting water inside, swilling it around his parched mouth before swallowing it. "We came back to warn you but got cut off by the tin cans as they rolled out of Schriever; we had to take the scenic route to avoid them."
"What did you find?" Derek asked, pulling out his own canteen and handing it to Davenport, who drank greedily from it and gasped in satisfaction before answering.
"Transport planes, Galaxies. Four of them. Don't know what was inside; could have been an army of tin cans."
"Did this seem too easy to you, Baum?" Perry asked. The machines had thrown themselves at their force. They had no sense of self preservation, but surely Skynet wouldn't just throw away its own units like that without a care?
"Yeah, they could have hit us a lot harder than they did."
"Sorry I missed it," Davenport chipped in.
"Doesn't matter now," Perry replied.
"It was testing us," Derek concluded. "Testing our firepower; counting our guns." He'd seen Skynet try the same thing against resistance bases early in the war in his own time, before terminators could provide Skynet that kind of information via infiltration.
That made more sense to Perry; though he'd have still thought Skynet would have been more frugal about its own forces. He was sorely glad now that he'd ordered the four lower guns to hold their fire and they'd kept them under cover. Perry strained his ears when he heard a faint, familiar whistling in the air.
"Incoming!" he shouted a split second before an explosion boomed on the side of the mountain and threw dust and rock into the air. Seconds later another blast came, followed by a third. The Stinger crew hurried down the mountainside as fast as they could, abandoned their positions and just prayed they didn't get hit as more explosions erupted all over. By some miracle they all managed to make it down the mountainside after the three senior officers of Cheyenne Mountain watched nervously.
"What the hell?" Davenport said as they all stepped into the safety of the tunnel.
"Artillery," Derek replied. "Skynet's softening us up."
"Worse than that," Perry added. "They can't get us in here but we're trapped like rats. We can't risk going outside while we're being blitzed, and the machines could easily advance right on top of us and we couldn't do a thing about it."
Derek shook his head as another blast erupted above them. They should have left as soon as they'd failed at Schriever, but Perry had wanted to hold their ground against the machines. He'd done a good job in the battle, Derek had to admit; he couldn't have directed it any better; nor could John. But the difference was he or John would have had them leave the mountain before Skynet had launched an offensive. He knew John: he'd have bitched and moaned and whined in private, to Cameron, but he'd have still done it; John had readily accepted the move from LA to Colorado Springs a few months before J-Day.
Derek counted Round One as a draw, but that was nothing to take any comfort from: Skynet wholly had the upper hand and Cheyenne Mountain was now under siege.