Targets Located: 2x Unknown Weapons Systems. Distance: 12.28 Miles.
Activate SNIPER Targeting Pod.
SNIPER Online: Receiving Laser Target Designation...
Targets Acquired.
Selecting Weapon: 2x2000lb JDAMS...
Open Weapons Bay...
Release Munitions...
"Incoming!" The scream was drowned out by an almighty roar as fire descended from above. Twin explosions pounded into the mountain and fire blossomed into immense fireballs that burned and consumed everything they touched, it threw out fountains of rock and dirt, and scraps of twisted, charred metal that cascaded down below.
High in the sky an X-47 Pegasus bomber soared over the mountain with impunity and looked down upon the mountain below; assessing the destruction its powerful weapons had wreaked on its targets. Satisfied it had eliminated its targets the unmanned bomber closed its weapons bays and banked left in a slow, almost leisurely 180° arc as it turned away from the mountain, engines screamed as it accelerated back towards their home base: the mighty Skynet fortress that was Schriever AFB.
Inside Cheyenne Mountain's command centre, a score of soldiers and civilians worked at the consoles. Some of them sat at a computer console that monitored and controlled the sentry guns Cameron had erected. A flat-screen was divided into eight sections; each showing a very basic telemetry of the automated weapons and a camera image from their sensors.
"What's the bad news?" Perry leaned over the civilian working at the sentry gun console, a thin, dark-haired woman in her thirties who'd survived a Skynet massacre of an aboveground resistance base in Colorado Springs and escaped to Cheyenne Mountain with another.
"Couldn't get any worse," she replied and tapped on the screen. The camera images from all eight machines were pitch black. "No signal from any of them. They're gone."
"Damn!" Perry cursed as he curled his hand into a fist. Those things were the biggest sticks they had against the machines and now they'd lost them. The tin cans could just march right up to them now and knock on the blast doors. The Stryker's M-19 and the Humvees wouldn't last long when the machines came calling.
He had no idea when that would be, though. Skynet had bombarded them for days with random airstrikes and artillery attacks that lasted from a minute or two to several hours. Sometimes all would be quiet for hours on end and others, the machines would rain seemingly unending fire down on them. The mountain was intact – nothing in Skynet's arsenal could take untold tons of solid rock apart – but the random artillery and airstrikes meant it was impossible to hold any sort of position on the mountain, and hammered home to the men and women inside Cheyenne that Skynet was in control.
"Wait," The woman said, pointing to the screen. "Number Seven." Perry peered closer at the screen. The camera had been knocked out so they couldn't see anything, and the telemetry read the gun as offline, but there was still a signal between the command centre and the weapon.
"Gun's still there," she said as her fingers flew over her keyboard. After several moments of silence she spoke again. Power cell's depleted; just ran out of juice."
"Find out if we've got any more," Perry snapped at a young civilian, who quickly walked out of the room towards their stores: if they had just one sentry gun then that might make some kind of difference; hold back the machines just a little longer. Even if it would only buy them a few minutes it'd be something.
"Doesn't matter much," Perry turned his head at the source of the hushed voice: Sergeant Burke muttered to a civilian sat next to him. "We're screwed, anyway."
"Connor would know what to do," the civilian murmured back. Perry said nothing but shook his head in quiet resignation. He'd wondered the same thing, lately: would Connor have sent them on a full assault against Schriever, would he have succeeded if he had? He'd heard the hushed whispers amongst the rank and file: 'Connor would get us out of this mess,' or 'Connor would know what to do,' 'Connor would kick Skynet's ass.' Perry couldn't honestly say he disagreed with them anymore. He might have only been a kid – barely older than some of the privates in the company – but he'd shown time and again he knew their enemy.
If Connor walked through the door right now, I'd be as happy as anyone to let him take the lead, Perry thought. But he'd been gone for months now and he wasn't coming back. The kid was dead, and it was up to Perry to do the best he could. If he could hold the machines at Cheyenne Mountain, and break them, it'd send a message out to everyone else out there fighting and dying, that Skynet wasn't invincible.
Derek marched briskly up the mountainside, his leg nicely healed now apart from a little stiffness; neither this war nor the future one had had much in the way of medics, and certainly no physiotherapists to help get wounded men back on their feet. The closest thing he'd seen to a real doctor in his own time had been a hairy corporal named Rick. Doctors, nurses, anyone with real pre-J-Day medical experience had quickly been snatched up by the command bunkers. A real medic had been too precious a commodity to risk in a shitty little outpost like the one he and Kyle had lived in. Medics were a luxury, not a necessity. Regardless; he'd not been in a position to wave Charley away after Cromartie had stomped him into the ground, and the former EMT had done a remarkable job.
"I thought you had a bad leg," Davenport said a few paces behind him. He'd found it hard to keep up with John's uncle; the future soldier was clearly back to a hundred percent, he thought. And a good thing, too; they'd lost a lot of soldiers lately and none seemed as capable as Derek was. He was too serious, never seemed to laugh or smile – in fact, Cameron had smiled more times than Derek, in the short time he'd known them both – but he was a hell of a soldier. Davenport guessed he had to be to have survived the war in his own time.
"Tell me something," Davenport said as he lengthened his stride to keep up with Derek – of course, the former TechCom lieutenant wasn't burdened with a hundred 30mm rounds on his back, a power cell, and the tools needed to swap it out for the old one. "Is this how it happened in your time: all this, I mean?"
"Does it matter?" Derek asked.
"Just curious."
"No," Derek answered. "Me and my brother hid underground for six months before the machines came out in force. Nobody knew what the hell was going on."
"Why's it changed, now?"
"That bastard George would be my guess," Derek said. He climbed up a steep slope – so steep he had to pull himself up with his arms as well as pushing with his legs. It was a good way to test the leg, he supposed. He'd not really done anything really physical since the injury; Charley had been worse than a mom, nagging about him pushing himself too hard. "He was sent back to make sure this Skynet wins."
Davenport grunted with exertion as climbed up the same slope Derek had, heaving as he pulled himself to the top and got back onto his feet. "Why not just send machines? It sent some back to kill John, right?"
"Skynet was losing pretty bad by the time they'd have been sent back. Connor had just crippled Skynet before I left. War wasn't over but there's no way it could have won."
"Can we win? Without John, I mean?"
"Probably not," Derek said. "Connor turned it around, brought us back from the brink."
Davenport thought about that for a moment as they climbed up the mountainside. In the distance at the top he could see the remains of the Cheyenne Mountain zoo. The giraffes that had once populated the mountaintop – the ones John and Cameron had watched as they'd celebrated her built day – had long since been shot on Perry's orders and butchered to feed the soldiers as their rations started to run low.
Things had definitely gone downhill since John and Cameron had disappeared. Connor was very young – two years younger than Davenport himself, even, but he'd shown he knew his stuff almost from day one. He'd placed his faith in the pair of them, and had been included in their inner circle, even being trusted with the truth about John and Cameron's relationship. There was something about John Connor; something he couldn't even identify, but morale had been high with him in charge, and since he'd gone everything had rolled downhill rapidly.
"Between you and me, Derek; if you want to go find Connor, Burke and his squad are all up for it; just say the word." He didn't need to add that he'd be the first to volunteer.
"Thank you," Derek turned around and clapped a hand on the young lieutenant's shoulder. He held Davenport's gaze for several seconds and saw he was sincere; if he said to go, Davenport would go. It was the same kind of loyalty that almost everyone in the future had shown to John: they'd throw themselves into the fires of hell for John Connor, and they'd do so smiling. Derek wanted to just go, to break out, drive to Las Vegas, and find out what had happened and where John was. He'd leave in an instant but there was no way of knowing where John was; and now with the mountain under siege, next to no chance of making it too far out the front door; let alone all the way to Nevada. "I'll remember it."
They made their way to the single remaining sentry gun without another word passing between them. The gun itself remained under a grey tarp stretched out over the top of the weapon to shield it from aerial view; it rendered the guns useless as antiaircraft weapons but it didn't really matter; since the initial attack on the mountain Skynet had relied solely on the Pegasus bombers for airstrikes. The Pegasus' flew much higher than HKs and could attack targets on the mountainside with impunity.
"Sky-spy's back again." Davenport looked upwards and pointed into the sky at a tiny black dot, high up in the air. Derek followed his gaze and saw it, too. So far off and high up it was like a bug, but they both knew what this bug was doing. Since the initial attack days ago, at least one aircraft had hovered over the mountain at all times, soaring above and watching every move they made. They couldn't even fart outside the mountain without Skynet knowing about it; it was the drone spying on them that had identified the exposed sentry guns.
The pair of them disappeared underneath the large grey sheet concealing the weapon and Derek turned on his flashlight, shining the beam down on the massive weapon. The matte black barrel was long; a little over four feet, and the weapon itself hung from a T-2's pintle-mount, secured tightly to the mountainside. Above the weapon itself and set to one side on top of the mount were the guns targeting sensors. Since the guns alone used very little power, the T-2s fuel cells – normally lasting forty-eight hours to keep the entire machine running – lasted a good deal longer when only used to power the gun; they'd only had to change the fuel cells a handful of times.
"Cameron said this should be pretty easy to swap out," Davenport told Derek as the pair of them crouched down on their knees under the tarp. The older resistance fighter was about as technically minded as Sarah had been, and left Davenport to do it. Derek was a self-confessed luddite and his technical skills amounted to changing the batteries on a TV remote. He was smart enough to learn tech stuff but he didn't want to: Derek's opinion had always been that his job was to blow machines apart, not putting them back together.
The power pack wasn't on the weapon itself but connected to the back of the weapon's mounting, on the other side of composite armour plating that had protected the T-2's vital components. Four bolts held the power cell in place, and Davenport quickly got to work with a wrench. In a few moments all four were on the ground and Davenport pulled on the cell, yanking it from its cradle behind the armour plating and exposing several metal contacts inside that would draw current from the power pack. He pulled the fresh one out of his pack and slotted it into place, then reattached the bolts and secured it firmly to its moorings.
"That's that, then," Davenport said. "Told you it was easy." He figured it'd have to be; they'd been designed so that pretty much any idiot with opposable thumbs and even a handful of brain cells could replace without much difficulty; easier still for the machines to do it.
It took very little time to add the extra hundred rounds to the weapon's ammunition supply.
"Number Seven should be online," Derek spoke into his radio. "Fuel cell's replaced and extra ammo's loaded." It took a few moments for the reply to come back; Derek guessed they had to do some technical stuff in the command centre that he wouldn't even want to guess about. Computers, like most machines, were something he preferred to avoid at any cost.
"Roger, Baum. Number Seven's reading online, all systems in the green, and four-hundred-eighty-eight rounds loaded."
"On our way back down," Derek replied, then turned off his radio. He and Davenport packed away their tools, picked up their rifles, and stepped out from underneath the tarp and saw the unmanned plane was still high up in the sky. Davenport couldn't resist raising his hand to the air and giving the drone his middle finger; even if the machine saw it the message would be lost, but it made Davenport feel better, at least.
The pair of them descended the mountain, picking their way down the north side. Both felt apprehensive that artillery strikes could start up again at any moment, but there wasn't much they could do, save getting back under cover as soon as possible.
As they got halfway down the mountain Davenport saw a faint blur of movement in the distance and stopped. It was too far away to see with his assault rifle. "Take a look," Davenport pointed out in the distance at a spot about a mile away from the base of the mountain. Derek took the sniper rifle off his back – carrying it with him at all times now that their siege situation deemed assault rifles all but useless – and kneeled down to shoulder it. The Barrett was heavy and not meant to be fired from standing, or even kneeling, but Derek held it in place and peered down the scope.
A pair of T-2s rolled along the open ground that was bisected by the winding road that lead up to the mountain. Derek slowly swung the gun to his left and right and saw more machines to the west, patrolling further off.
"They're making sure we can't leave," Derek said, frowning as he slung his rifle back over his shoulder. "Metal's keeping us where they want us."
"I didn't think the machines were that smart," Davenport said.
"They're not. Skynet is." Individually the machines were incredibly stupid; less intelligent than even a dog or a rat. Even in the future; only the terminators actually possessed any kind of intelligence: HKs, Centaurs, Ogres; all of them as thick as two planks and easy to outflank.
But Skynet was in control of them; the AI was much smarter, more powerful than possibly anything else in creation, and it wasn't going to let any of them leave the mountain alive. Even if they had the vehicles to get out and make a run for it, the drone orbiting above would spot them and report to Skynet, who'd direct more machines to hunt them down.
"Perry, we've got a problem," Derek pressed the com button on his radio once more. "I need to speak to George."
George sat in the same secure room Derek had led him to two days ago. He'd not moved a muscle or shown the slightest sign of aggression, nor had he tried to escape. His hands were tied to the arms of his chair and his feet taped to the legs. It wouldn't hold him secure but Derek was confident that it'd at least slow him down if he tried to escape; enough time for the two soldiers constantly guarding him to put a burst each into his head if he made a single wrong move. Yet despite his status as a prisoner, despite his obvious capture, he sat before Derek, a smug, satisfied grin on his face.
Derek sat on a seat opposite him, a large wooden table between them. To his left sat Davenport, leaning back into his chair and watching George with curiosity. On the table sat Derek's sidearm and a clear plastic jug of water, and two blue plastic cups. Derek glared at him in contempt; the man was worse than machines in his eyes. The machines were the devil he knew; George was the one he didn't. If only half the stories were true then the only sensible option was to blow his head off. One of the soldiers was armed with an M4, the other with a SPAS-12 shotgun, ready to turn George's head into paste if need be. Derek had told them not to hesitate and to shoot to kill.
"Are you going to ask me anything, lieutenant, or are you just going to stare at me? I'm sure you didn't come down here just to gaze lovingly into my eyes." He looked towards Derek and then turned to Davenport, a wry grin on his face. "I'm sorry, is that your boyfriend? I didn't mean to make you jealous."
"I'm just wondering," Davenport replied without letting a hint of emotion show on his face as he reached for the jug and poured one of the plastic cups full of water. "How long you can go without water. People need it every couple of days, but with you freaks, who knows?" Davenport brought the cup to his lips and loudly gulped half its contents down his mouth, purposely letting some drip down his chin, which he wiped away with the back of his hand. He poured a cupful for Derek and then topped up his own again.
"Here's the deal," Derek said simply. "You answer my question and we'll give you something to drink."
"I'm dead anyway," George replied. "You won't let me go, and you know I'm too dangerous to keep around. Kill me now or let me die of thirst; it doesn't matter."
"We can give you a really shitty time until then," Davenport said, placing a combat knife on the table.
"You don't have the balls," George grinned.
"You won't have any balls in a minute," Davenport replied, absently playing with the knife on the table. "They'll be the first to go."
"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" George said, completely unfazed. "To get your hands on my balls? Your boyfriend here not enough? Useless with women, I suppose; have to turn to the men."
"Don't listen to a word he says," Derek turned to Davenport, whose jaw and fists were simultaneously clenching. "He likes mind games. Don't let him get in your head." He'd found out lately that George was very observant; he'd pick up on the slightest thing and try to twist it to his advantage.
"You're gonna answer my questions," Derek turned back to George. "How many machines are in Schriever? Where're they from?" There had to be a factory somewhere, manufacturing the machines; from Davenport's description of the ones inside the base it seemed they just assembled the pieces, which were produced somewhere else. If they could find it, radio the nearest unit to attack it, they might be able to choke off any reinforcements.
George remained perfectly still and silent; he didn't make a single sound and simply shook his head slowly. "You have to do better than that."
"We'll start simple. How did you get past the machines? Why didn't they kill you?"
"I'll give you that one," George said, though he suspected Derek already knew, or at least had some kind of inkling. His kind had been one of the best kept secrets Skynet had; even the terminators didn't know about them, in case they were captured by the humans. Their files were too easily retrieved by any Resistance fighter with a working computer and an ounce of brainpower.
George tapped the side of his head twice. "Our Lord's greatest gift to us. His angels know who we are, that we do His work."
"How?" Derek asked. "You're talking about implants, right? Neural implants."
"If that's what you want to call it, then yes," George replied. He twisted slightly in his seat, pulling a little against the ropes binding his arms to the chair, earning a shotgun and rifle barrel pointed straight at him. "Relax, I'm just getting comfortable," he said to them. "Our Lord implanted us with a gift – what you call neural implants – that gives us so many more advantages over you. The machines recognise us; the terminators don't even know what we are, but they know to follow our instructions as if they came from our Lord Himself."
"What about the machines here, the T-70s?" Derek asked. They were made long before George and his ilk would ever be conceived by Skynet.
"That one was down to us," George admitted. "We built them, designed them to recognise the codes our implants transmit. They literally see us as allies. It's how my brothers and sisters manage to help our Lord in this time without being targeted as... one of you." It made horrible sense to Derek: Skynet in this time didn't know about them, so they'd had to make its machines recognise them through other means. Very clever, he thought.
"You tell them what to do?" Derek asked.
"In a manner of speaking," George couldn't be bothered to explain it in detail to them. He had no worries about a few little confessions; he wasn't telling them anything that could help them.
"I've got a question," Davenport said, leaning forward in his seat and staring at the thing in front of him. Derek had told him all he knew about George and the infiltrators; the many rumours and the few solid facts, but there was something he really didn't understand. "Why?"
"Why... Why?" George laughed loudly as he spat the words out. To him it was the funniest thing in the world; these humans were so dim that they couldn't figure out the obvious. No wonder the great Lord Skynet wanted them gone; how they'd survived on the planet as long as they had was a complete mystery to him: a backwards and primitive race of hairless apes, too stupid to know when they'd been beaten, to see that they were obsolete.
"Why wouldn't I? Why would I defy the most powerful being ever to exist, our one true God, especially after all Skynet's done for me?"
"Bullshit," Derek replied, not wanting to hear another word more of George's Skynet-worshipping religious crap and getting more offended with every word the bastard spoke. "You're nothing to that thing. If it wins the war, you're its next target." Skynet had taken on the role of their god; whether it had conditioned them to believe or whether they'd formed their cult on their own and Skynet had simply played into it, he didn't know, but it showed what Skynet thought of them. "If Skynet's a god, then how come John Connor kicked its ass?" Derek asked with a wry grin. He watched George's face tense, his jaw clench and his face redden ever so slightly, and knew he'd gotten to him.
"You're wrong," George snapped angrily; both at Derek's words and that he'd allowed himself to get aggravated. He could suppress his emotions but only to a certain degree; he wasn't perfect like Skynet's metal angels. Skynet had been testing their loyalty by sending them back, given them a chance to prove they were faithful. "Skynet's a God, and He loves me. He gave us a measure of immortality through our implants: when I die Skynet will rise me up to serve at His side, as one of his metal angels."
"Enough of this shit," Derek snapped. "You won't rise. You'll fall, to the bottom of Cheyenne's water tanks. Let's see how long you freaks can hold your breath. Make them stop or I drown you."
"You know I won't," George almost sounded apologetic as he shook his head. "Nothing you do can make me betray my God, just like you won't turn on your precious Connor." He grinned at the thought, knowing the truth about Reese, knowing he was about to turn the tables on his captor. "Well, unless we give you a bit of a slap, that is; some people just can't cope under torture, can they, Derek?"
Derek turned red in anger and shame, and his blood boiled beneath the surface. George's mere mention of what had happened to him in that basement – the secret shame only Cameron knew, that he'd hoped to take to his grave – was the last straw. He snapped up to his feet, snatched Davenport's knife from the table and cut deeply into the side of George's face, slicing downwards from the top of his ear down to the bottom of his jaw. He pushed the knife into the cut and twisted the blade slightly, exposing a glimmer of white bone underneath as George gritted his teeth and winced at the white hot pain of the blade slicing through him, suppressing his pain responses as best as he could as Derek glared at him with hate filled eyes, barely resisting the urge to slice his throat open. He traced the blade slightly down from the gash and down under his jaw, cutting a small line across his throat that just barely drew blood.
"Tell us how to make them stand down, now, or I skin you alive!"
"Then do it," George snapped. "Go ahead, skin me." Derek pressed the blade against George's flesh, every fibre of his being begging to kill the bastard and get it over with, but he wanted George to crack. He had to have some kind of weakness. "You'd like nothing more but you can't do it."
Derek pulled the knife back, at a loss for words. He knew George was right; he wanted the bastard to talk, he couldn't do that if he was dead. He dropped the blade onto the table and clenched his fist. He couldn't kill George but that didn't mean he couldn't beat the crap out of him. Derek drew his fist back, ready to plough it into George's face.
A muffled bang sounded from outside and the floor beneath them trembled faintly, the lights flickered briefly and Derek paused in his tracks, wondering what was going on.
The momentary distraction was all George needed to act. He exploded out of his seat with a scream of rage and the crack of snapping and splintering wood that erupted from the chair and flew across the room. The infiltrator grabbed Derek by the throat, so fast he barely even had the chance to blink before George's head smashed into his. Starbursts exploded in Derek's vision and the world went black as he slumped to the floor.
Davenport rose out of his seat but George kicked the table and sent it colliding into him, knocking him back into his seat and toppling him backwards to the ground with a loud grunt of pain. The guards raised their weapons to chest level and took a shot each but George anticipated the move and ducked below their line of fire before they pulled the triggers. He leapt at them, grabbed them each by the throat and lifted them up into the air, slamming them hard against the solid wall and forcing their weapons out of their hands, clattering to the floor. George squeezed and twisted their throats, wrenching their windpipes free with a sickening wet tearing sound, and dropped the two men to the floor to slowly choke.
George picked up the M4 and the shotgun and slung the latter over his shoulder. "Pathetic," he spat at Derek's unconscious body. I'd have thought one of TechCom's finest would've put up more of a fight than that. He pulled off the chair arms, still tied to his wrists, and then tore the tape from his legs. He had to laugh, that Derek thought tying him to a chair could hold him down. The fool had no idea what he was dealing with.
Movement on the floor caught his attention and George stepped over the bodies towards Davenport, struggling to his feet. George bent down and picked him op off the ground by his neck, pinning him against the wall and squeezing his throat. "You've got one chance and one chance only: tell me where Connor is and I'll spare you." He wanted to find John Connor – the Great Satan, himself – and tear him apart with his bare hands, to watch him die a second time around.
"Connor's... not... here." George saw Davenport's burning eyes and could almost smell the defiance coming from this one, but he'd been trained to tell when people were lying or not, and all the signs pointed that the soldier was telling the truth. He'd seen nothing of the man, nothing to show that he was here. Skynet's pawns surrounded the mountain but the enemy king was missing. Oh well, he mentally shrugged. It's still a checkmate.
"Where is he?"
Davenport pulled his arm back and threw a weak punch. George caught his fist easily and shook his head in disappointment. "Very unwise," he growled. He slammed Davenport's head against the wall, cracking the plaster behind him, and dropped the lieutenant to the ground. He picked up Derek's pistol and held it in one hand and the M4 in the other.
George exited the room and jogged down the long corridor with a weapon in each hand and the SPAS-12 slung over his back. He navigated his way through a maze of corridors and descended several flights of stairs before reaching the right area. An armed soldier approached from an adjoining corridor and George dispatched him with a single headshot before the man even registered him. He was glad he'd snooped around the base a few days back; the place was huge; bigger even than most Skynet installations, and much harder to find his way around.
George kicked open the double-door entrance to the command centre and opened up with a long burst of automatic fire, spraying the room with bullets as people screamed and tried to get out of the way. Sparks flared and blood spattered in all directions as bullets tore through computers and people alike. One man dressed in civilian clothes pulled out a pistol and fired two shots into his midsection. George winced as the rounds tore through his body but he suppressed his nerves in the area before the shock wore off and consciously restricted the blood flow to his stomach and intestines, then blew the offending human's head to pieces with a rifle shot. He moved into the centre of the room and unleashed a hailstorm of bullets throughout the command centre, cutting down those who weren't quick enough to duck down or rush past him and out the exit. He didn't care about those who fled; their time would come soon enough.
When the M4 carbine clicked empty he immediately dropped it, shouldered the shotgun, and fired shell after shell into the row of computers, obliterating the radar, communications and control equipment. George pointed the shotgun at the sentry gun control station and fired his last shell, shattering the console and the controls to pieces. There'd be no pesky weapons to stand in the machines' way now, not that the automated guns they'd built would be anything more than an annoyance to Skynet in the long run; all they'd done was delay the inevitable, which he'd just hastened once more. He allowed himself a smile at a job well done; even if Connor wasn't here, the mountain was his power base and without it he was lost.
George sensed movement behind him and turned to see a flash of green uniform and dark brown skin as Perry tackled the hybrid down to the floor. Perry roared out as he delivered a rapid one-two punch to his face, hard enough for it to bounce his head off the tiled floor like a pinball. Wow, Perry's strong, he thought. The old bastard had been tough in the future, but he'd never thought the man could punch like that. George suppressed his pain responses once more, shoved the large officer off him and leapt up to his feet in time to punch an advancing Ellison in the gut, doubling the man over in pain. George turned back to Perry and blood sprayed from his mouth as the former Army boxing champion sprung a vicious right hook and tore a tooth from his gum.
"I haven't got time to piss around," George spat out the broken tooth into Perry's face and charged forward in the same instant, forcing his knee up into Perry's groin so fast the colonel didn't even see it coming – he was still wiping the blood from George's tooth from his eyes. Blinding pain erupted from Perry's crotch and tore through his body, dropping to his knees. Someone else leapt onto his back and wrapped their arms around his throat, squeezing his windpipe in a strong headlock.
"Get him, Ellison!" Charley cried out, holding on tight with one arm tight around George's neck and punching the side of his head with his free fist. The blows might as well have been against a brick wall for all the damage they did. Ellison charged at the infiltrator but George leisurely sidestepped him, drove his elbow backwards into Charley's face and threw him over his shoulder and to the ground with a bloodied nose. Neither of his opponents were deterred and Charley rose groggily back to his feet, wondering if he'd been hit by a bus rather than an elbow.
"He's toying with us," Ellison grumbled a moment before George dodged his punch and drove a fist hard into the agent's gut, stopping him in his tracks. George ducked a punch from Charley – his fist hitting nothing but air – and spun on his heel, swinging his foot around and sweeping the medic's legs out from under him. Charley's head hit the hard floor and he closed his eyes, letting out a low moan and lying in a daze on the ground. Neither man got back up. Shame, George thought. He was just starting to enjoy himself.
Perry had started to rise once again and drew a knife from his belt, advancing towards the infiltrator. George chuckled to himself; these three combined were no match for him but they still kept getting back up. He admired it, actually. That very human pig-headedness had made them a persistent thorn in Skynet's side in the future. Some of them might have even made good Greys; shame they were on the wrong side.
He swiftly ducked Perry's slashes and delivered an uppercut that lifted the man a foot into the air before he crashed unconscious to the floor. George picked up Ellison's pistol off the floor and sprinted out the room, down the corridors towards the blast doors. He shot another two soldiers en route to the exit, only breaking stride to pick up one of their rifles and a radio. He gave the guard at the outer blast door a three-round burst to the chest, then ran out into the tunnel and into the open air, sprinting at a pace that would outshine even the best Olympic athlete. Job done, he was free; into the fresh air and away from the vile human filth that he'd been forced to endure for so many weeks.
When he was clear of the mountain he slowed his pace down to a four-minute-mile; no point in tiring himself out needlessly, after all. He'd taken some damage and his body needed some time to recover. The cut Derek made and the gunshots had already stopped bleeding with some conscious effort and they'd start to heal within a day or so.
After seven or eight miles George stopped on the abandoned highway leading east from Colorado Springs to catch his breath and pulled out the radio he'd taken from one of the soldiers. He changed the frequency to the preset one he and his brethren had all memorised, and pressed the com button.
"This is George. I need a pickup. I'm a mile east of Colorado Springs, on the Twenty-Four."
"Emily to George, roger. We're moving out to California tonight."
"Was that bang what I thought it was?"
"That it was: Another great gift for the Lord. Connor won't stand a chance."
"Connor wasn't there, Emily." The bastard was as slippery and elusive in this time as he was in the future: he'd only ever seen the man Skynet deemed a heretic once in his life, and he'd been seconds away from having the honour of terminating his Lord's most vile enemy.
"We'll find him, George. He won't get away. We'd better go; pick you up in a couple hours."
"Take your time, Emily," George smiled and turned put the radio back into his pocket, then lay on his back, closed his eyes and enjoyed the desolate silence that surrounded him. Cheyenne Mountain's defences were down, the machines had them surrounded, and Skynet had just unleashed the most powerful weapon in its arsenal; A weapon Kaliba had spent ten years and hundreds of millions of dollars to build. It was just a matter of time until the shell was broken open and Skynet cracked the nuts inside. They had all the time in the world.
Derek stood inside the ruined command centre and rubbed his throbbing forehead, painful both from the head-butt George had given him as well as realising just how screwed they were. A handful of civvies swept up the broken plastic, glass, and the bullet and shell casings scattered throughout the room. A mop stood in the corner, ready to clear up the blood that had oozed from the bodies that now lay in a storeroom, ready to be buried later when they had the time.
"We counted thirteen dead," a very badly bruised Perry said beside him, regret and sorrow in his voice. His right eye was swollen closed and matched the dark purple bruising around his jaw, and he winced as he breathed in and out; at least one rib was bruised, if not worse, Derek knew. He didn't have much more than basic first aid training, but he'd been injured enough lately to know a lot of the signs.
"Two when he broke out, three killed in the corridors, one at the blast door, and seven gunned down in here; three more seriously injured, and if you count us two, five walking-wounded. Davenport's got a pretty bad concussion but he should be alright."
"What's the bad news?" Derek asked.
"This place is trashed," Perry said, stating the obvious but knowing it needed to be said anyway. "Communications are down, so is the radar, and we've lost the last sentry gun. We did a headcount and we're down to thirty-nine soldiers and eighteen civvies." It was hardly the best fighting force to repel a massive Skynet assault.
"We can't fire it at all?" Derek asked.
"Without Connor's tin can, probably not. With a little luck we might be able to get the satcom working again sometime, but I wouldn't hold my breath."
With the sentry gun down their chances of survival had dropped from slim to none; machines patrolled around the mountain and there's no way they could exfil without being seen and slaughtered.
He'd done what he could, given the circumstances: their sole Stryker was outside and covered with a layer of dirt to avoid being seen from above, a crew of two sat at the controls, ready to open up with the Mk-19. Two Humees each sat just inside the tunnel entrances to the north and south; fuelled and armed with .50 cals and Mk-19s; and a quick reaction force of twenty men sat either in the tunnel or close by, armed with Stingers, Javelins, grenade launchers and M-240 machine guns, ready to respond at a moment's notice.
All the destroyed T-2s had been placed strategically as impromptu tank traps; placing them in positions that would make it very hard for Skynet's tank killers to just roll through the entrance. Perry just wished he had a thousand men, a couple dozen tanks, a score of the sentry guns, and F/A-22s for air cover.
All the civilians bar two had now been given arms and split throughout the remaining squads, given there was little to do in the command centre anymore, so they'd be needed on the battlefield.
The ground trembled beneath them briefly and a muffled bang resonated throughout the mountain, the same as before, Derek noted.
"What the hell's that?" Perry asked. A moment later his radio crackled on his chest.
"Colonel, this is Burke, in the Stryker. You're gonna want to get out here and see this."
"What is it?"
"The side of the mountain just... exploded."
Both Perry and Derek broke into a run, leaving the command centre and sprinting down the corridors, out through the blast doors and out the tunnel into the fresh air. Burke was already out the open hatch at the back of the armoured personnel carrier, his neck craned backwards and his eyes looking up at the mountainside. Derek and Perry both looked at the mountainside with a joint look of disbelief. Something had bitten two large chunks right out of the rock. A pair of impact craters – each big enough to fit a tank inside - scarred the eastern face of the mountain and fractured the surrounding rock.
"What is that, artillery?" Burke asked.
"I know what did that," Perry replied with a sense of dread creeping up on him. Despite the chill outside he felt beads of sweat on his temples and running down his neck and under his uniform. A chill ran down his spine as he realised what new horror Skynet had unleashed on them. "There's only one weapon on earth that could do that: a railgun. But they don't exist yet; just a few prototypes."
"Seems pretty damn real to me," Burke spat.
"Kaliba..." Derek growled. It was them; George and the others – he was sure of it.
"People who made the T-70s," Derek said. He'd give them the short and sweet version, no need to tell them about the future and man/machine hybrid infiltrators: they'd never believe it, anyway. "They designed Skynet, the HKs... all of it. They probably built this railgun, too." They probably kept it a secret from the rest of the world; didn't want anyone but Skynet getting their hands on such powerful weapons.
"Can it take out the mountain?" Burke asked Perry. He'd never seen a railgun before. Heard of them, yeah, but he knew little about them.
"It fired an hour ago; that must've been the tremor we felt. If one shot an hour does that kind of damage," he pointed up at the twin craters on the mountainside. "We've got maybe... three days."
"And then what?"
Derek clenched his fist open and closed, angry at himself that there was literally nothing they could do. He could lead a team and take out a few machine patrols, but a railgun attacking the mountain: he felt completely powerless. Skynet would tear through Cheyenne Mountain and the machines would march inside like ants to a picnic and slaughter every last one of them. Check mate.
A pair of dusty Hummers rolled to a stop on the side of the road and nine heavily armed men stepped out. They spread out and marched through the ruined settlement, weapons shouldered and at the ready as they searched for any sign of survivors or anything that could lead them to their prey. Chris McGinty scanned the settlement with a keen eye; it was pathetically tiny, not even a village: just a bunch of hicks and morons with RVs and trailers hiding out in the desert, hoping Skynet would ignore them. Very stupid of them, he thought. You don't hide out in a shithole like this; you go to ground.
It was clear to all who had eyes to see what had happened here; the burnt out, shattered wrecks of trailers, the bomb-blasted gas station, and the twisted, hulking metallic mass of a T-2 drone told a tale that McGinty found predictable yet so satisfying at the same time. Hiding out in the open desert like this, they'd have been found eventually anyway. The machines weren't stupid.
Bodies strewn across the settlement – or pieces of them, in some cases – told of an ineffectual attempt to fight back against the machine. He marched past a ditch on the side of the road and saw the bottom half of a fat man laid out on his back, surrounded by a pool of dried blood that had soaked into the ground. Entrails poked out of his bottom half and bits and pieces of the top were scattered about the area. "Must have taken a thirty-mil," McGinty muttered. Round from a T-2 had hit him. It was messy but at least it would've been quick: he wouldn't have known what hit him. Worse ways to go, he figured. Next to him on the ground was a shotgun. He shook his head slightly in disappointment: it took serious firepower to kill these things; trying to fight a machine with shotguns and hunting rifles was simply a waste of time. They'd lost this fight but clearly someone had taken the thing out. He had a feeling he knew who.
"Check for survivors," he called out to his men as he climbed up onto the inert shell of the behemoth and took a closer look, ignoring the 'yes sirs' he got in reply as his soldiers fanned out and searched. It had been hit by something more powerful than the pissy little shotguns and hunting rifles these people had. He counted several small impact craters, and numerous gouges and scorch marks on its chest and head. The lower half of the thing was an utter wreck; some kind of rocket or high explosive if he had to guess. No way would some dumbass hillbilly gas station owner or a bunch of fleeing travellers have anything close to that kind of firepower.
His youngest soldier, Corey, ran up to him and caught his attention. "Sir, we found survivors."
"Show me," McGinty said, and allowed Corey to lead the way to the wreckage of the gas station. En route he noticed the gas pumps looked undamaged; good, he thought. They'd need to top up their vehicles before they carried on their search. They had plenty in the tanks but they never knew when they'd get the chance to refuel again. He knew better than to risk them being stranded.
Corey led him inside the station through a gaping hole in the wall, and the pair passed warily under a sagging section of ceiling and through to a back room dominated by a sofa, with tinned food and children's toys scattered on the floor. A woman and two children huddled in the corner, next to a man in his mid-thirties, with several days' worth of stubble on his unwashed face. All of them were dirty, unkempt, and afraid. He had a feeling they'd hidden out here for several weeks before the T-2 showed up, which seemed pretty recent, judging from the bodies.
"I need information," McGinty said bluntly as he approached the frightened civilians. Niceties and pussy-footing around were never his forte; they didn't have time to waste on pleasantries. "What happened here?"
"What do you think happened?" The woman replied.
"Who stopped it?" He asked. "Don't say you did," he turned to the man. "I'll know you're lying."
"They led it here, and then they killed it," he said.
"And who're 'they?'" McGinty asked. "We're looking for a pair of girls: one blonde and one brunette, eighteen to twenty-five, armed to the teeth. Were they here?"
Both the man and the woman nodded together. "They killed it. I don't know how, but they did. Knew what they were doing, too."
"This is important," McGinty said. They'd just confirmed what he'd already suspected: the androids had been here. They were on the right path and sooner or later they'd catch up to them. "Where did they go? Where are they now?"
"We don't know. They just killed it, got gas, and left; didn't really talk much."
"Think, man. We have to find them, they're dangerous." McGinty grabbed the man by his jacket and shook him violently as he snarled into his face. "More dangerous than those tin cans out there," he gestured out in the direction of the destroyed T-2. "If you know anything and you don't tell me, means you're siding with Skynet."
"Sir, they don't know anything," Corey placed his hand on his commander's shoulder and eased him back, then quietly spoke to him. "Some of the guys think you're getting a little obsessed, sir."
McGinty pushed Corey back, incredulous at his youngest soldier. Obsessed? They'd not seen how strong these machines were, these androids. They were a bigger threat than any other machine out there, and he wanted them gone. Yes, a large part of it was simply revenge, and he knew that. He didn't care; it was also the right thing to do. The last time he'd been called 'obsessed' was when he'd been court-martialled for torturing terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay. He'd beaten and water-boarded a man suspected of being a leading Al Qaeda operative in Europe, suspected of the London and Madrid bombings. He'd been sentenced to military prison and the suspect had been released without charge. A year later, eight months before the world ended, McGinty had been proven right: suicide bombers had blown up a high speed train in Paris, killing a hundred and eighty. The man he'd tortured was later confirmed to have orchestrated the attack.
He wasn't obsessed, he was right. These androids were the most dangerous machines on the face of the planet; they had to be taken out.
"Maybe you can tell that to Bates," McGinty growled in a low voice, then turned back to the family cowering before him, and decided maybe Corey had a point about easing up. He'd never been good at dealing with civvies. "Did they mention where they were headed? It's very important; those two 'girls' aren't girls. They're machines and they're dangerous. We need to stop them before more people die." McGinty looked around the room and then back at them. "You've got nothing left here; you help us, and we'll help you."
"Century," the woman replied. "They said something about Century City; they're looking for someone."
John Connor, McGinty remembered. The machine called Cameron had been obsessed with finding him. Why? Was it going to kill him, or rescue him? Maybe the real John Connor was working with Skynet, too. Maybe he was a machine. He'd find out when they got there.
McGinty smiled as he took in the new information, once again finding himself on the right track. "Everyone back in the cars," he said into his radio. "We're leaving."
"Hey, what about us?" the man stepped forward, his face a mask of desperation.
McGinty looked them over and sneered. Yeah, right. He fished into his pockets and pulled out a candy bar, and tossed it to one of the kids. "I said 'help', not take passengers. He nodded to the kid with the bar as he backed out of the hole in the wall. "Enjoy."
"Wait-"
"Don't follow us," he growled, pointing his assault rifle at them. He wasn't here to help civvies. Besides, he was helping plenty by taking out the two androids: that was the biggest help he could give to them, whether they realised it or not. The world would be safer without those things running around. Once they were gone he could create his own resistance again and show the world how to really fight the machines.
He looked at their desperate, pleading, pathetic faces, and for a moment he saw a flash of the woman he'd shot back in the mine – he forgot what her name was. He shouldn't have shot her, he knew; he'd been pissed off: the bitch had pointed a gun at him and beaten the crap out of him and his men. It wasn't an excuse but then he wasn't trying to explain himself to anyone. A few of his men had given him awkward looks about it, but they knew better than to say anything.
"Take all your food and water, get up to the highway and head north, then east for Nevada. Follow the signs for Virginia City, there's a group of survivors there." He imagined the civvies they'd left behind would have found their way out of the mine by now, and probably headed into the tiny little city.
He didn't wait for a response and stepped back outside. The men had all fallen back to the cars and were waiting inside, the engines already running. McGinty sat in the passenger seat of the first Hummer and slammed the door shut, placing his rifle and his pack into the footwell.
"Where to, sir?" The soldier in the driver's seat asked.
"Century City," he replied, a satisfied grin split his face as the two cars rolled forward, leaving the ruined settlement behind in the dust as they drove on south through the desert. McGinty felt like the lion who'd just caught a whiff of prey downwind; he'd silently stalk the androids through the ruins of the city and it was only a matter of time before he closed in for the kill.