Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

C.26

Brewster directed them toward the corridor to the right that led, he said, to his office and the offices of the principal engineers and administrators.

The entire building was in a panic now. They could hear gunfire from every direction, some of which was the sharper sounds of the Ml6s the Air Force security troops carried.

But the guards were outclassed by the chainguns the robots were equipped with.

Just as they were leaving the Computer Center, they looked back in time to see the main elevator doors opening. A group of eight or ten technicians sprang up from behind consoles meaning to scramble aboard the elevator and get away.

But a T-l robot, massive on its twin treads, its red optical sensors in the tiny cranial case ominous, its bulk almost completely filling the elevator car, immediately opened fire with its twin chainguns. The depleted uranium slugs tore into the people, ripping their bodies apart, blood and shattered bones flying outward like geysers.

Terminator stepped around the corner and had started down the corridor, his weapons at the ready.

Connor and Kate half carried, half dragged the general out of the Computer Center, moving as quickly as they could.

Kate's heart pounded nearly out of her chest as they held up at a corner. Terminator took a quick look, then stepped out across the empty corridor.

"What was that?" Kate asked.

Terminator glanced back at her. "A T-l, first generation terminator. Primitive targeting system, heat and motion sensitive."

Brewster suddenly struggled to get his balance. To stand on his own two feet. "You're Sergeant Candy," he blurted.

Terminator took a quick look up the still empty corridor, then turned back. Brewster's eyes widened. A small section of Terminator's metal cranial case was exposed.

"Negative," Terminator answered.

"Jesus — where did you come from?"

"I was built here," Terminator said.

A sudden burst of chaingun fire in the vicinity of the conference room to their left sent them hurrying down the corridor.

They could hear more screams now, and crashing sounds; shrieking metal, breaking glass, sporadic return fire from the Air Force security people.

Brewster could not understand how Skynet had taken over the entire system so quickly, but he was even more confused about the T-l robots. Someone had reprogram-med them, or at the very least was controlling their actions.

But how? And why? What was the purpose behind all this? There had to be reasons.

Ultimately, however, all of this was his fault. He had been the driving force behind integrating CRS research and development results in the military structure.

Skynet and its control of all U.S. forces and weapons systems had been his passion from the beginning.

He had earned his first star when he had straightened out the mess left by the destruction and bankruptcy of the old Cyberdyne company. His second star came when this CRS facility was opened six years ago. And his third star was added six months ago when the major work on Skynet had been completed.

He was tired. He wanted to lie down and go to sleep. He missed Kate's mother, and he missed a normal life that he'd never had.

He turned and looked at his daughter, a wave of love welling up inside of him.

"Kate, I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so sorry."

"Sssh, it's not your fault," she told him. Her face was screwed up in fear and worry.

"It is. I opened Pandora's box," Brewster said. He glanced at Connor. "You did the right thing, Katie."

"What?" She was having a hard time focusing on what he was trying to tell her, while still maintaining the pace behind Terminator.

"Your fiance," Brewster said. "He's a good man."

Connor gave Kate a brief smile. Brewster could see that they were a team. It was a good sign.

Terminator pulled up short at another intersecting corridor and immediately stepped back. He motioned for them to keep quiet and then laid his weapons on the floor.

Brewster looked over at the glass partition to one of the offices. He could see the hazy reflection of a T-1 robot at the end of the intersecting corridor.

It remained there, motionless. Its sensors were trained down the corridor in their direction. It might have heard or detected something, but it wasn't certain.

Terminator was seeing the same reflection.

A second T-1 robot trundled around the corner and stopped next to the first unit.

Terminator motioned for Connor, Kate, and her father to keep very still, then he reached up and silently removed a foam-core panel from the false ceiling. Above, in the four-foot crawl space, were the hangers for the ceiling tiles and channels, the lights and the wiring for the closed circuit security cameras at every intersection, and the electronic and optic fiber runs in sheet-metal ducts.

Terminator pulled himself up into the crawl space with impossible ease, and then, moving hand over hand along the cable runs, disappeared into the darkness.

He was one of the advanced cyborg warrior robots modeled after Sergeant Candy. Brewster was certain of it. But what was so confusing to him was that the Sergeant

Candy terminator model wasn't operational yet.

Where did this one come from?

Kate and Connor spotted the reflection in the glass partition. They stood stock still as one of the T-1 robots moved a few feet up the corridor.

It was obvious that the machine sensed something. Possibly their heat signatures from around the corner.

It moved forward a couple more feet.

Connor started to pull Kate and her father back, when a ceiling panel directly behind the second T-1 burst open and Terminator dropped out of the crawl space like a Special Forces paratrooper landing in enemy-held territory.

Both T-1 robots immediately swiveled toward the movement, bringing their weapons to bear.

Keeping one step behind the second T-1, Terminator wrenched its cranial case off its blunt torso, then grabbed the barrel of the unit's chaingun as it started to fire.

The first T-1 opened fire down the corridor, but Terminator used the second unit as a shield, forcing its shorted chaingun to bear on the first robot, firing at its cranial case where its CPU was located, and at the center of its torso where its power units were shielded.

The first T-1 fell silent, its red optical sensor winking out, the muzzles of its chainguns drooping toward the floor, a second before the unit Terminator was manipulating stopped functioning.

Both T-ls were badly shot up, and would not soon be brought back into service. Terminator cocked his head for a moment, his sensors alert for the close proximity of any other T-X controlled weapon. But his head-up display was dear.

He went back to where Connor and Kate and her father were waiting around the corner. He retrieved his weapons and they went the rest of the way to the general's office.

Brewster's secretary was gone as was everyone else in this wing. Kate and Connor helped him into his office where they eased him into a red leather club chair, across from a built-in sectional couch that was curved like a banquette. The walls were richly paneled in cherry wood, and across from a large, busy desk was a full bar set up on a built-in buffet. The American and Command flags were displayed along with pictures of WWII fighters and bombers. Large windows overlooked the tarmac and hangars.

Connor found the safe, and he looked back to Brew-ster for the combination.

"Thirty-two left," Brewster started.

Terminator brushed Connor aside and simply ripped the door off the safe, dropping it on the carpeted floor with a heavy thud.

Kate was looking out the window at the carnage going on below, tears in her eyes, her lips quivering. This was what hell had to be like.

Several T-l robots like the one in the elevator and the two they'd encountered in the corridor were on the flight line, shooting indiscriminately, killing or destroying everyone and everything they encountered. Bodies littered the ramp. Trucks and cars and aircraft were on fire, and smoke poured from some building in the distance.

"They're killing everyone," she cried. "Why?"

"To destroy any possible threat to Skynet," Terminator told her.

Connor pulled papers, envelopes, and folders out of the safe, tossing them aside. "Where are the codes?"

"Red envelope," Brewster croaked.

Connor found a large red envelope and pulled it out of the safe. He held it up so Brewster could see. "These'll shut everything down?"

Brewster remembered when Kate was born. They'd been stationed at Ramstein in Germany, and he'd raced up to the Army medical center at Vogelweh just in time.

She was so incredibly beautiful and so incredibly helpless and dependent.

"Take care of my daughter," he cried.

Kate was right there at his side. "Daddy!"

The room was getting dark. It was becoming hard to focus on anything. He felt a deepening flutter in his chest that frightened him. "Crystal Peak," he muttered. "You have to get to Crystal Peak."

"What's he saying?" Connor asked.

"Crystal Peak," Terminator said. "It's a hardened facility in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, fifty-two miles northeast. Bearing zero-one-five degrees."

"That's the system core?" Connor asked the general.

"It's your only chance," Brewster said, his voice now barely a whisper.

"Daddy," Kate pleaded. "Stay with me."

Brewster slumped back, his eyes blank, his eyelids fluttering.

The carnage on the tarmac was nearly complete. Only a few humans were left alive, and the T-l units were on them the moment they emerged from the building. Bodies littered the ramp.

"We need to get to a plane," Connor said. But he knew that there was no way they could make it across to the hangars in the open. He stuffed the red envelope into his knapsack

They needed another route. Some way out of the main building and across to where the planes were parked without crossing the ramp.

Connor went to the general's desk and searched for something, anything that might help them. A map, a building plan, anything.

His eyes lit on a book marked EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE LOCATOR. He opened it to a foldout diagram of the CRS facility that showed the main R&D building plus the power station, air-conditioning plant, hangars, tower, and all the interconnecting corridors on each level.

"Okay," Connor said, racing through the diagram. "This looks like a passageway." It was marked on the third sublevel.

Terminator was at his shoulder. "The particle accelerator."

"It runs under the airfield," Connor said, trying to make sense of what he was looking at. "There's an emergency exit here," he said, stabbing a blunt finger at a spot on the diagram. "Right by this hangar. We can follow it out."

The general took a last quiet breath and his heart stopped. Kate grabbed his uniform blouse and tried to shake him awake. But he was dead, and she knew that there was nothing she could do to bring him back. It was too late.

A Hunter-Killer aerial weapons system suddenly appeared outside the window, its rocket pods trained directly at them.

Terminator raised his AK-47. "Get down," he ordered, and opened fire.

At that moment an air-to-air missile shot from the H-K's rail, trailing a long sharp tail of fire as it came directly at the broken-out window.