The Future War

DRIFTLESS AREA, NORTHEASTERN IOWA

Now this, Tom Preston thought, is no goddamned fun at all.

He bent, leaning on the hoe in his right hand, and pulled up the weed whose roots he'd loosened with the tool. Despite the unusually cold weather, the corn was coming up just fine; the problem was that weeds were doing just fine as well. This particular patch wasn't very large; a scraggly strip along a little brook that ran down the mostly wooded valley between two steep hills—this part of the state looked more like Appalachia than the prairies.

It was only about a quarter of an acre, and carefully irregular so that it wouldn't show much from orbit, even on days without the current heavy gray cloud and occasional spatters of rain. The brook was running high not far off to his left, purling over abed of brown stones.'t

He tossed the uprooted thistle onto the mulch—leaves, twigs, grass, reeds—that covered the ground between the knee-high plants and moved on to the next weed, hacking at the base of it with a force that hurt his gloved hands. The turned earth had a cool, yeasty smell, oddly like bread. Despite the cool temperature, he was sweating, and his back hurt. Could it have been only last year that farming meant sitting in lordly comfort in an air-conditioned tractor cab, spraying herbicides?

He who does not work does not eat, he told himself.

There were a dozen other people working in the same field, and many more fields like it scattered through the nearby hills—

growing corn, potatoes, beets, all sorts of vegetables. They had come along more slowly than usual, but only by a couple of weeks. And they were a bit runty, but very welcome anyway.

The hunting had been very good, with abundant deer and hare. They'd had to shoot a bear a few weeks ago. It had risen cranky from hibernation and had made clear its antipathy toward its new neighbors; besides, they needed its cave for storage.

Tom Preston had liked the flavor of the meat, but he'd been in the minority. Most of their small community had found it too gamy and way too tough. There were still a lot of scavenged canned goods available for the picky, though, and his big gallon jars of multivitamins would keep deficiency diseases at bay for years, if need be.

The community had grown over the past year to a village of more than a hundred people. Most of whom refused to understand why they should avoid being visible from orbit.

Things had been so peaceful lately that Tom himself had begun to have doubts.

So when some of the newcomers suggested a party to celebrate their survival, he was willing to go along, to a point.

"Fireworks?" Tom said. "You've got to be kidding!"

"Why? What's wrong with fireworks? It's been wet enough that they shouldn't pose a fire hazard," one of the newcomers, Sam Varela, said.

"Because it's a gigantic, 'We Are Here' sign," Tom said. "I, for one, don't want to end up in those relocation camps you people fled."

The newcomers glared at him resentfully. "We have no reason to think they're still doing that," Sam said through his teeth.

"We have less reason to think they're not," Tom snapped back.

"They didn't set up those camps to leave them empty."

"Going was voluntary," a woman pointed out.

"So why are you here?" Preston challenged. "Why here? Why not stay in your homes?"

"We're getting into some pretty deep issues here," his wife, Peggy, said with a frown at her husband. They'd discussed the newcomers in the privacy of their bedroom and his suspicion toward them worried her. "When what we came here to discuss was a picnic."

"Maybe we should get into it," the woman said. "I'm tired of being treated like an interloper when all I want to do is get back to normal."

"Things aren't going to go back to normal," Tom said. Didn't you notice a few little changes? Like the thermonuclear war?

"Things are going to get a lot worse for a long time before we get anywhere close to normal. But one thing that will at least keep us safe is to avoid attracting attention."

"Exactly whose attention are you afraid of?" Sam gave a light laugh and spread his hands. "The army? I'm telling you, they're too busy to go chasing down anyone who doesn't want their help.

Who else is there?" He shrugged.

Tom closed his eyes. Sometimes he wondered himself. John Connor had warned that there would be more problems with machines, but with no fuel or electricity, he honestly couldn't see how that could be. Humans, on the other hand…

"I'm worried about gangs," Tom said. "I'm afraid that some group of lawless men will come along and take everything we've put together and kill our families." He stood up and started to pace. "These aren't civilized times," he continued. "We're not protected by multiple law enforcement organizations anymore.

For the foreseeable future, our fate is in our own hands."

"Oh," the woman said. "When you put it that way it makes perfect sense."

"No fireworks," said Sam.

Tom sat down and forced a smile, but this didn't feel like victory. Rather it felt like number four hundred of a million more arguments.

I almost wish we'd be attacked so these people would realize what they're facing. Almost.

* * *

"Honey," Peggy said to him later in bed, "we're seventy-eight adults here and we're well armed. It's unlikely that we'll be faced by any gang more powerful than we are ourselves. Maybe we could loosen up a bit. Don't you think?"

Tom reached out and drew her into his arms. "I was so afraid the day the bombs came down that I'd never see you and the kids again," he said into her sweet-smelling hair. Even now, with no shampoo available, he liked the way her hair smelled. God, but he loved her.

Peggy hugged him tight. "I love you, too," she whispered. "I always did."

"Tell you what," he said. "Let's be extra careful this year, until we've got our feet under us. Then we can talk about loosening up." He pulled back and looked down into her face, barely visible in the moonlight coming through the cabin window. Tom shook his head. "But I'm pretty certain that we're gonna have to build a stockade."

She laughed and buried her head in. his shoulder, tickling him so that he laughed, too.

"It's not funny," he said. "I'm serious."

"You are never gonna sell them on that idea," she said. "I can just see their faces." And she laughed again.

He smiled at her and held her close. But all the while he was thinking that a stockade was something they'd realize was necessary only after they needed it the most. He kissed his wife and prayed that she wouldn't have to suffer for its absence.

SKYNET

It watched the small settlement from the dark beneath the trees; linking with the Terminators' interfaces, Skynet saw the village from multiple angles. This settlement had been surprisingly well hidden for a long time. But the sheer size of the place in an area bereft of any other human activity had eventually brought it to the computer's never-resting attention.

One hundred thirty-two humans, seventy-eight of them adults, no meat animals, lived together here. It was an almost pathologically tidy place; quite unnatural for humans. Their houses were small, built beneath, and with, the surrounding trees; often the lower limbs had been woven more tightly to provide a framework for thatched roofs, while the walls were saplings woven together and smeared with clay mixed with grass. Insubstantial for a permanent dwelling; winter weather would break them down in a short time.

But in summer, if the weather was dry, they should be adequate shelter. Even if the weather was wet, however, they should burn well.

Through a Terminator's sensors Skynet watched the brightly colored silhouettes of the humans through the thin walls of their dwellings. One by one, two by two, they reclined, and the heat images took on the signatures of humans at rest. Its Terminators waited silent and motionless as the moon rose and traversed the night sky.

Many small improvements had made these Terminators more formidable killing machines than the first group, and their weapons were infinitely more powerful than the pellet weapons these humans had at their disposal. Still, Skynet had observed these subjects intensely and knew them to be well schooled in the use of the weapons they did have. This would be a true test, the first of a thousand thousand field terminations, until the final organic pest was hunted down.

Unfortunately, that will require at least another century.

As the last human sank into a dormant state, Skynet gave the signal to attack.

* * *

Peggy woke first. A light sleeper since the children were born, she heard a crackling sound and opened her eyes to the sight of flames.

"Tom!" she shrieked, leaped from the bed, and ran down the loft stairs toward the already engulfed living room. The heat drove her back and she lay down on the floor to look over the edge of the platform. "Jason! Lisa!" she screamed.

Then Tom was beside her. He looked over the edge and saw his children with their backs against the wall of the cabin, coughing, their eyes wild with fear. "Take Daddy's hand," he shouted over the roar of the flames. If he could just get them up here, they could go out the window, down the rope ladder.

Lisa came toward him, but Jason held back, shaking his head frantically. The little girl reached up and Tom squirmed forward, putting slightly more than half his body over the edge. He could feel his hair start to sizzle. Peggy threw herself across his hips to hold him down, and when Lisa's head came over the edge of the platform, she reached forward and caught the girl's hair. Lisa was already screaming by then, so it made little difference in the volume of her distress, but still, her mother felt terrible.

Once Lisa was safe and huddled against her mother, Tom dove over the edge a second time, reaching toward his son and encouraging, ordering, threatening him to come to Daddy.

Suddenly his hair caught fire and Tom reared up in surprise and shock. Peggy caught up the small rag rug at the foot of the bed and threw it over his head.

"I've gotta go down to him, Peg," Tom said. "He's too scared to move. Get Lisa out of here."

She shook her head. "We've got time. You go get him; we'll lower the rope ladder. Then we'll all go." Because they sure weren't going out the front door.

Tom did as she suggested, lowering himself from the platform, trying to ignore the fierce heat on his naked shoulders.

He forced himself to move slowly for fear of panicking his son into doing something foolish. "C'mon, Jason," he said soothingly.

"Take my hand and let's get out of here, okay?"

The rope ladder came down from above and Jason dove toward it, eluding Tom's clutching hand. Tom couldn't help laughing as he pursued the kid up the ladder. As soon as he reached the top, he grabbed it and dragged it over to the window, tossing it out with a clatter. Jason all but pushed him aside in his eagerness to be out of the flaming cabin and Tom let him go, laughing at his eagerness. His sister will never let him live this down.

Jason was halfway down when a blaze of blue light shot through him, emerging in a yellow blossom of sparks. The boy fell backward, a startled expression on his young face. Tom was leaning out the window, frozen with shock, when Peggy yanked his shoulder. If not for the sudden move, the next flash of blue light would have taken off his head.

"What's happening?" Peggy shouted over Lisa's terrified screaming.

"The cellar!" Tom answered.

His wife stared at the rising flames, then at her husband. It didn't look possible. She moved toward the window, but Tom grabbed her and dragged her toward the stairs.

"Tom!" she shouted, objecting, but too frightened to be more coherent.

"Jason's gone," he said tersely, feeling sick to his stomach.

"Someone's firing at us. Cellar," he repeated.

Peggy had gone limp. She still held their daughter, still stood, but for now at least, she might as well have been gone. The loft was full of smoke and the heat was becoming more dangerous.

Tom grabbed a blanket off the bed and soaked it as well as he could with the contents of their washbowl. Then he wrapped it around them all, and with one arm around his wife's waist barreled down the stairs.

The hatch to the cellar was under the stairs and so, for the moment, was partially sheltered from the scorching heat. Tom yanked it up, then forced his wife down the stairs before him, Pulling the hatch closed behind.

Long ago he'd connected the cellar to a narrow rock cave that came out by the creek. Peggy knew about it and she'd hated it, seeing it as an example of his growing paranoia. The sight of the passage now snapped her out of her shock and she took a deep breath, turning to him with fear in her eyes.

"Mom and Dad," she said. Then she faltered for a moment and Tom knew she was thinking of Jason.

"We need to get out of here first," he said, and gave her a gentle push.

He pulled the camouflaged, dirt-coated door closed behind them, hoping it wouldn't burn. Just inside, he pawed at the doorframe and found the flashlight he'd placed there. He shook it to charge the battery, then hastened Peggy down the passageway in the dim light.

The passage wasn't that long, really, about a hundred feet, but it had seemed the length of Route 66 before he'd been finished.

At the end, where he'd placed another hidden door, he'd also stowed some clothes and weapons, carefully wrapped in plastic to protect them. There was food here, too. He sat Peggy on one of the chests.

"Get dressed," Tom ordered, "and stand ready. I'm going to find out what's going on. I might end up sending some of the other women and children down here. Take care of them." He grabbed a shotgun and thumbed in rounds—solid shot, cylindrical rifled slugs.

Then he turned off the flashlight and placed it in his wife's hand. Feeling his way carefully, he opened the door into the natural cave.

When he reached the creek he squatted down and smeared some mud from the bank over his face and hands, then crept forward. Peering over the bank, he saw that the whole village was in flames. He could see forms moving about; by their postures he could tell they were armed. Then one stood before the flames of a burning house and he caught his breath, his eyes widening in horror.

Like something from a horror movie, it was skeletal. It turned its head slowly, like a gun turret searching for a target. Light gleamed from the metal dome of its skull and through the cage of its ribs; red light blazed from its eye sockets. Tom sank slowly, until he'd dropped onto his butt.

Shit! he thought.

Slowly he became aware that he was hearing screams. Tom squeezed his eyes tight shut, wishing he could do the same with his ears. Of course he heard screaming. They were trapped in burning buildings, and the only way out was certain death. If he hadn't provided a way out for himself and his family, he'd be screaming, too.

There was a sound off to his right. Not footsteps but the result of stealthy footsteps, crackling leaves and breaking twigs, unavoidable in the deep woods. Tom pressed himself deeper into the dirt of the bank and prayed, making all sorts of promises to God if He would only let him live. He pulled the rifle against his chest, up under his chin, waiting.

He had no idea how many of those things were up there trolling the village for survivors, but he knew one shot would have them all down here looking for him. That would draw them toward Peggy and Lisa, and he wouldn't let these things have them. They wouldn't take them like they'd taken his son. My boy

! he thought in anguish, and pushed the feeling away, forcing anger into its place, overriding the grief with fury. The machines would not succeed. He wouldn't let them.

The soft, methodical sound of footsteps came closer.

* * *

The Terminator scout came to the end of its designated watch zone and turned away. No humans appeared to have escaped the assault. The enemy had been caught completely unprepared. It appeared that there had been 100 percent enemy casualties.

It stopped every five feet to scan the woods all around, then proceeded on its way. No humans seemed to have escaped the assault.

Terminated, it transmitted to Skynet.

ALASKA

John Connor was worried.

I suspect that's going to be my natural state from here on out, he thought.

The PDA in his hand showed the terrain, his location, and the jump-off points of the other attack parties. The factory was located in a low wooded valley surrounded by spruce-clad hills…

And this is the first big operation I've personally commanded

, he thought nervously, looking around at the confident faces.

Maybe I am the Great Military Dickhead of Mom's dreams, but right now I feel more like a confidence man. Not that that's my only worry.

By the time they'd moved out, he hadn't heard from Tom Preston in Iowa. Unusual. Tom was one person who could be relied on to report regularly. He'd remarked once that having young children kept you awake and alert and therefore on time.

But not today.

Hope it's not an omen. Maybe that was an ill-omened thought. So far everything had gone extremely well. Almost suspiciously well. Could it really be that the computer was arrogant enough to not protect its most important assets?

Because there was, as yet, no sign that the resistance fighters had been seen. He couldn't help it; continuous good fortune raised his hackles.

Ninel was back with the various transports; also there was Ike, who'd arrived in Alaska yesterday. He appeared to like Ninel, but had looked askance at John when he found out she was going with them. It hadn't been necessary for him to comment; John knew the older man well enough to have gotten paragraphs of meaning out of that one look.

The two of them would come up to the factory once John was sure the place was secured. Although with Skynet, secured tended to be a relative term.

There was a fence around the installation and about twenty yards of cleared ground all around the inside. The building was a metal frame affair with steps leading up to a second level. From the blueprints there was a small office there. But most of the interior was pure machinery up to forty feet high. There were spotlights at each corner of the building and on each corner of the fence at the top of tall poles.

John crouched beside the crew with the TOW antitank missile. "Can you take out the antennae?" He gestured toward the dish atop the square building.

"Yes, sir," the gunner said, already looking through the eyepiece on the side of the long tube; shrubbery protected the emplacement and the tripod, but the thing had a ferocious back-blast and you needed a dozen men to move it. Apart from that, it was easy to use…

"Do it," John told him.

Thadump!

The rocket blasted out the front of the launch tube, and half a dozen of his resistance fighters went to work with shovels and curses, beating out the fire that the jet of flame to the rear had caused.

WHZZZZEEEEEEE… like the whistle of an angry young god; the rocket was a blur as it streaked out over half a thousand yards.

Seconds later the dish exploded in a satisfying flash of fire.

John grinned. Now Skynet couldn't contact its plant; they'd checked carefully for backup communications links. This really was going to be a piece of cake.

The first soldiers started moving out from the cover of the wood toward the fence. As soon as they were visible, a recorded voice rang out: "Halt! You are approaching a government installation. Trespassers will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. The nearest military facility has been notified of your presence and troops will be on the way momentarily. Go back.

Do not pass the fence or you will be fired upon."

Gun ports opened all over the surface of the building, indicating that trespassers would be riddled with bullets if they proceeded. The resistance soldiers hunkered down, waiting for John's signal. John himself was waiting for the small hydro generator to be blown. He suspected that it wouldn't affect the automated weapons; they had battery backup according to the plans Snog had found, but at least the factory would be shut down.

There was nothing to show that it had been rigged to blow itself up, but anything he could do to thwart such a plan would be a good thing. There was an explosion by the stream where the generator was located and John signaled the soldiers at the fence to set their charges. Once that was done, they retreated at a run.

Again John signaled and the charges blew the fence.

Sharpshooters began peppering the building, and in return the automated weapons fired into the woods. Blindly, for all the good they seemed to be doing…

Short-range weapons, he thought. Hmm. Yeah, light machine guns on hydraulic mounts, mostly, 5.56mm stuff.

Maybe Skynet's as short of everything as I am— it's trying to do a lot more at the same time, of course.

A man screamed and a corpsman came running, dragging him away from the area where he'd been hit, an area on which the building's weapons now concentrated fire. The corpsman himself shouted as he was clipped by a bullet.

This can't keep up, John thought. There's no battery in the world can keep this up. Besides, the damn things had to run out of ammo sometime.

Not that we're going to wait.

"Let them have it!" he snapped into the button microphone.

His snipers went methodically to work; they were using Barrett rifles, big thirty-pound things that fired .50 caliber armor-piercing ammunition. One by one the automated weapons pods went silent; a few went up in spectacular gang fires as hot metal punched into their ammunition drums.

"Forward," John said again.

This time far fewer weapons fired. He gritted his teeth as the casualty reports came in. Get used to it, GMD, he told himself.

Skynet would have killed them later anyway. We win, or everybody dies, it's that simple.

Eventually the fire was suppressed. He moved forward with his command party across the fence and up the exterior stairs.

"Have Ike take a look at that machinery," John said to a woman who'd accompanied him up the stairs. "We're gonna be taking this away from here." She gave him a dubious look, but hurried out. "And send Ninel Petrikoff up."

"Yes, sir," came back to him as the soldier clattered down the stairs.

John Connor took a deep breath and pushed open the door.

Anticlimax, he thought. There wasn't even a window looking out over the plant floor, just white particleboard walls and a set of terminals and flat-screen displays.

He sat down at a console and put Snog's disk into the reader.

And hit enter, which seemed as good a place to start as any.

* * *

Ninel entered the little control room cautiously, looking all around with wide eyes.

"It's all right," John said, and grinned when she jumped.

"Sorry."

"I didn't see you," she accused. She gave the computer a more matter-of-fact look and moved to stand beside him. "What are you doing?"

"Trying to figure out if the info in the computer is good. I probably should leave it to Snog. He'll kill me if I do something to screw it up."

Ninel frowned. " Snog?"

"I have no idea if he knows what it means, I never asked,"

John said. He rolled the chair down the console to a video screen.

"Look at this."

She went and stood looking over his shoulder at the monitor.

"What am I looking at?" Some kind of assembly line; that was obvious. It looked like it was manufacturing dress dummies.

"You've attacked a mannequin factory?" she asked in disbelief.

John snorted a laugh and turned to look at her. "Would all of us get together and train for months to attack a mannequin factory? Not to mention that such a place would be unlikely to be defended by machine guns or to be located in the wilds of Alaska."

With a huff of annoyance she put her hands in her pockets and frowned. "So, then what? What am I looking at?"

"They're robots," John said, watching her reaction. "They're called Terminators and they're designed to kill humans."

"What?" She narrowed her eyes and looked at him scornfully.

"Killer robots? Isn't that a little far-fetched?"

Okay, so it's not gonna be easy. He tapped a few keys and changed the view. Now the monitor showed a storage room with what looked like at least a hundred of the things standing in neat rows, gleaming and complete and utterly motionless, their eyes dark.

"Weird," she breathed from over his shoulder. "Do they work?"

"I have no intention of finding out," he said. "If they're already programmed, then they'll start killing the minute they're turned on."

"So who's making them?"

He turned the chair so that he was facing her. " Now is when it gets weird," John said. "The U.S. military developed a computer to run their war toys. It was, without question, the most advanced computer run by the most sophisticated software ever developed. And then it became sentient."

"How could you know that?" Her voice was both scornful and accusing.

I know because I pressed the button that made it so, he thought.

Aloud he said, "I have privileged information. It was my mother who first found out about Skynet. That's the computer's name, by the way. We've tried and tried again to prevent them from using it, but there was nothing we could do. They finished the damned thing, put it on-line, gave it complete control of our missile systems"—he waved a hand—"et cetera, and the next thing you know, Judgment Day."

"Huh," she said, eyes on the Terminators on the screen.

"They're not dress dummies, Ninel, honest."

She looked down at him, her eyes troubled, then away. He turned his chair and pushed himself back to the workstation he'd been using when she entered. Clearly, some people were just incredibly hard to convince.

* * *

Ninel glanced at John, a worried look on her face, then leaned forward, tapping keys to change the view in the storage area.

Behind the rows of robots were boxes, the kind of boxes that looked like they were designed to hold rifles or ammunition. She hissed thoughtfully and put her hands on her hips.

What was going on here? Weapons. This was some kind of weapons factory, probably something set up by the government, and now it was in the hands of John and his friends. These people didn't seem like murderers. Although one or two had come across as paramilitary, antigovernment nut jobs, not one of them had spoken about killing innocent civilians as though it was something they felt they had to do. In fact, she'd heard Luddites more inclined to say socially unacceptable things about killing people.

As she clicked the enter key, the view kept changing, from the storage area to the factory itself, to exterior shots. She paused to watch the wounded being treated by one of the corpsmen. Had these people attacked the transports she'd been sending into Canada? Not one had indicated in any way that they had done such a thing. Not that she supposed they would tell such a thing to a new recruit.

She glanced over at John intensely working the keyboard.

Since that one night they'd never shared that level of intimacy.

He'd made a point of talking to her, and others had noticed and commented on his attentions, but otherwise… Well, otherwise she'd kind of been twisting in the wind, wondering what she meant to him, if anything. Wondering, in fact, if he was capable of using sex to recruit followers. Because it had very quickly become apparent that this resistance thing was John Connor's property. The others looked at him like he was God or something.

Killer or savior? she wondered, glancing at him from the corner of her eye. Time to make up her mind. People that she trusted insisted that he was a mass murderer. And here he was attacking some kind of automated weapons factory. Why would a savior want a weapons factory? She hit enter two more times and thought, Time's up. Time to act.

Hands in her pockets, mouth dry, her heart beating in her throat, she walked back to where John was working. "What are you doing?" she asked, leaning forward.

He held up one hand. "Just a second," he said, preoccupied.

Ninel yanked the sap out of her pocket and smacked him across the back of the head. Goggle-eyed, swaying, he turned to look at her, his mouth open in astonishment. Terrified, she hit him again, this time on the side of the head, and John slid bonelessly out of the chair. She let out her breath in a gasp, reached toward him, then aborted the gesture. Turning, she rushed to the door and opened it.

Balewitch and Dog Soldier came barreling in, Dog with a soldier lying limply across his shoulders. Dog dropped him carelessly in a corner, and together with Balewitch advanced avidly on John as he lay helpless on the floor.

Ninel recognized the soldier as one who'd worked with her, and started toward him, to at least untangle his body from the heap he'd landed in.

"He's dead," Dog said over his shoulder. "No need to worry about him."

"Whaaat?" Ninel said, horrified.

"Uh, had to," Dog said, annoyed. "We're slightly outnumbered here, in case you didn't notice."

"Not for long," Balewitch muttered. She reached for the keyboard above John's head.

"He said there were robots," Ninel blurted as she watched Bale-witch type.

"Yeah," Dog said, nudging John with his toe.

"He said they were designed to kill people." She heard her own voice sounding wild and desperate and hated it, but something was going wrong here. "He said a computer called Skynet made them; he said Skynet caused Judgment Day."

"Well, duh," Dog said. He looked at her. "We could hardly let them fall into this guy's hands."

"What are you doing?" Ninel said, snatching the keyboard away from Balewitch.

"Give me that," the older woman said calmly.

"Tell me what you're doing!" Ninel insisted. She raised the keyboard as though she meant to smash it. "I mean it!"

Balewitch took a deep breath and huffed it out. "I'm activating those robots so that they can take care of these resistance types."

Ninel could feel herself going pale. "But they'll kill them."

"Ye»-ah," Balewitch said, smiling. "That's the idea, honey.

Just think of all those innocent, unarmed refugees if you think we're being too tough."

This didn't seem right, it didn't! Then it hit her. "How do you know how to wake them up?" she asked, her lips numb.

"Ron gave us the codes," Dog said. He moved a step closer to her.

"Back off!" she snarled. Furiously thinking, she waved the keyboard; its cord stretched tight in her hand and would go no farther. "I don't believe that Ron Labane would approve of killing people, even misguided people. He's always preached doing things the legal way. Always!"

Balewitch, clearly annoyed, moved slowly toward her, her hands outstretched for the keyboard. "Things are different now, honey. You know that. Give me the—"

"How would Ron know the codes?" Ninel shouted. "How would he know anything about a place like this? He hates the automated factories. No way would he know them well enough to run one!"

Dog laughed. "She's got you there, Bale."

"Oh, for cryin' out loud," Balewitch said in disgust. "Labane is dead."

"No!" Ninel shouted.

"Yes, he is," Dog said, coming another step closer. "I know because we killed him. I was there."

Ninel's breath froze in her throat, choking her. Dog launched himself forward to grasp the keyboard and she swung it like a bat, hitting him in the face. He backed off and Balewitch laughed at him.

"Jesus Christ." She sneered. "You don't believe in doing anything the easy way, do you?" She pulled a pistol from her pocket, a silencer disfiguring its barrel.

Ninel gasped and backed away, holding the keyboard in front of her like a shield.

Balewitch snapped the fingers of her other hand. "Gimme,"

she said. "And you'd better hope you didn't break it."

Holding the keyboard more tightly, Ninel blinked at her. Did the woman think she was just going to hand it over? "No," she said, her voice small but steady. "I'm not going to help the people who killed Ron Labane."

With a snarl Dog started forward again, but Balewitch put her arm up like a bar. "I don't want that keyboard damaged," she said to him. Then she glared at Ninel. "If this Skynet wants to kill the human race, well, three cheers for Skynet. The human race is nothing but vermin for the most part, and the rest are too stupid to know they're even alive.

"Look what's been done to this planet! It was beautiful once; now it's shit! Just shit! Everywhere you look. Humanity has to go, or nothing will survive." She spread her hands. "So. Are you gonna help, or do we kill you?"

Her eyes wide, Ninel just stared at her, mouth open. "Y-you're going to kill me anyway, aren't you?"

Dog's grin spread. "Yeah."

Balewitch shot him a look, then raised her gun. She tipped her head to the side like a shrug. "Well, we weren't going to right away. But…"

Ninel's eyes widened as John slowly rose behind her and she took a breath to scream. Something in her chest felt icy cold.

Then hot, and then there was nothing, nothing at all.

"Oh, good job, Bale. Right through the keyboard." Dog started forward.

"Couldn't let her scream," Balewitch muttered.

***

John felt the double vision vanish as he saw Ninel fall limp.

Again, he thought. Wendy, now her. Again.

The scream that bubbled out of his lips wasn't a giant no: that was in there, but most of it was raw rage and inconsolable grief, grief for an entire lifetime past and the one he saw stretching out ahead of him.

The knife tucked into his boot had a seven-inch blade; nothing fancy, just a sharp tapering steel wedge. His hand moved in a blurring arc; the woman who'd shot Ninel seemed to be turning in slow motion—unable to move more than a quarter of the way around before the blade bisected her kidney with a violence that punched the inside of his fist against the cloth of her jacket as it rammed home.

He moved with her, like a dancer—his left hand grasping her gun hand, turning her in a pirouette and throwing her forward at her companion. That one's eyes and mouth gaped in Os of surprise as he caught at the sprattling weight; the same motion pulled John's blade free. He flipped it to a reverse grip and punched it forward over the dying woman's shoulder, right into her friend's eye. Faster than the flicker of a frog's striking tongue, deep enough that the narrow shoulders at the hilt of the blade stuck on the bone of the socket.

"You're terminated, fucker," John wheezed, then ignored the falling mass. Neither of them were going to bother anyone, ever again.

Kneeling beside Ninel, he slowly reached toward her neck with two bloodstained fingers. No pulse. He hadn't expected there would be. He wiped his hand on his pants so he wouldn't stain her face and closed her eyes so that the whites no longer showed.

Then John took her in his arms—something in him sickening at the limpness of her body—and lifted her as he stood. He pushed his grief aside, putting himself outside the emotion.

Guess I'm not meant to have relationships, he thought. He opened the door and took her down to where the other casualties lay. This one they'd be leaving behind.