S. M. Stirling - Terminator 1 - T2 Infiltrator

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T2 Infiltrator by S.M.

Stirling

PROLOGUE

A MOTEL, LOS ANGELES: 1995

Tarissa Dyson sat silent and motionless in the motel room's uncomfortable chair

and watched her children sleep. Blythe and Danny lay totally abandoned to it,

like puppies collapsed after a long, hard romp, dark lashes still against soft,

plump cheeks. They had wanted so desperately to stay awake for their father's

return, had fought so valiantly to keep their eyes open.

She felt a twinge of regret for not keeping them awake. But their constant refrain

of "Where's Daddy?" and "When's he coming back?" had strained her nerves to

the snapping point. She'd rather feel guilty for letting them get some much-

needed rest than for yelling at them when they were already so frightened and

stressed.

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She tried to steer her mind away from what had frightened them. Frightened

them and terrified me, she admitted to herself. The brutal image of the

Terminator peeling the flesh off the metal skeleton of its forearm flashed

unbidden into her mind's eye. That memory was like probing a broken tooth with

your tongue, at once painful and irresistible.

They were in a little motel off the interstate, clean but shabby, showing bare

spots in the tired carpet and worn patches on the arms of the sofa, smelling

slightly of disinfectant soap.

The Terminator had said that the T-1000 would probably go to their home,

extract information from whomever it found there, and then terminate them.

Terminate them. What a sterile way to put it.

So Sarah Connor had chosen this place from the phone book. They would meet

here after the mission, she'd said. Mission—another word that distanced people

from what they were doing.

Only the destruction of Miles's dreams.

Images crowded into her mind: Miles pressed against his file cabinet, terror on

his face as shots destroyed the room, glass shattering and paper turned to confetti

swirling around him.

"Take Danny and go! Run! Just run!" he'd shouted.

She'd grabbed their son and dragged him toward the front of the house. Then

Miles broke from his office, running toward them. A bullet struck him; she could

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still see the arc of blood as he fell. Tarissa swallowed hard. Then her son had

slipped from her grasp and thrown himself over his father's prone body.

"Don't you hurt ray daddy!" he shouted.

She looked at her son, awed by the courage in that small package. Tarissa put her

hand down on the bed beside him, fearful that touching him might wake him.

She sighed. If what they'd told her was true, then the loss of Miles's dreams was

a small price to pay to ensure that their son and daughter would live to have

dreams of their own one day.

The endless sound of cars shushing by might have been lulling… had there been

any possibility that she could sleep. Tarissa sighed again and squeezed her eyes

shut, whispering a brief prayer for Miles's safe return.

Danny started snoring and she looked at him. The corners of her full lips wanted

to lift in affectionate amusement, but she lacked the physical strength, even for

such a little thing.

Call, she thought passionately. Call!

She'd never been good at waiting; that was why she was so punctual herself.

Miles was less so, and had often teased her out of her irritation over his tardiness

by asserting that opposites attract. He'd slide his arms around her, his beautiful

dark eyes smiling… Tarissa shook her head.

But this wasn't just waiting. This was slow torture.

Call!

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With another sigh she rubbed her face, then got up from the ugly chair to pace

the little room. It was taking so long. Too long? Who could say? How long did

"missions" take anyway?

Miles, Miles, come home to me! Please, please, please…

She looked at the TV and then at Danny and Blythe. If she kept the volume

down it probably wouldn't bother them, and there might be something… Tarissa

sat on the end of the bed and tapped the remote. Sound blared from the TV and

she groped frantically for the mute button. Her heart pounding, she turned

guiltily to Danny and Blythe. The little guy turned over and uttered a muffled

protest, but didn't wake up. Blythe didn't even stir.

What kind of jerk leaves the volume on max? Tarissa thought, then answered

herself: The type who thinks that sort of thing is funny.

When she looked back the screen had cleared and there was Cyberdyne

Corporation… on fire. There were shattered police cars everywhere and the

strobing lights of dozens of ambulances. It was a disaster, a war zone. She

watched bodies being carried out on stretchers and she forgot to breathe.

"Miles," she whispered, and her heart shriveled with horror.

The phone rang and she dived for it.

"Yes?" she said, amazed at how calm she sounded. Danny and Blythe slept on.

"Tarissa?" It was John Connor's voice. The voice of a smart-ass ten-year-old,

mature beyond his years.

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"Where's Miles?" she asked. She heard John take a breath, and froze, screaming

silently. Miles should be on the phone, not John. John's just a kid. Don't blow up

at him. Suddenly she felt very distant, as though she'd been cut free from her

feelings. John hadn't answered yet and the pause was getting painfully long.

"He's… gone," she said, sparing the boy.

"He saved you tonight," John said firmly. "He saved Danny and Blythe and

millions of other people. You know that. You've got to remember that," his voice

pleaded.

"I know," she agreed, then choked. With a hard swallow she steadied herself and

asked, "Where's your mother?"

"She's been hurt," John answered. "She'd needs a transfusion, but that's'out, for

obvious reasons. She'll be all right, I think. Mom's tough."

Yes, she was, and terrifying—maybe because she was visibly hanging on by a

thread. Tarissa would never forget the sight of her standing over Miles,

trembling and cursing, her finger tightening on the trigger. But Sarah Connor

had lived alone with this slowly approaching horror for years and had still

soldiered on. She was tough all right.

And so are you, kid, Tarissa thought with amazement. So much was riding on

this boy's slender shoulders. She remembered the way he'd calmed his mother.

"Where's the Terminator?" she asked. With the massive… being beside him,

John should be able to take on anything. She became aware of another too-long

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pause.

"We had to destroy him," John said rapidly. "He said so… he said so himself. He

climbed into the… he did it, with Mom's help, himself. We couldn't risk

someone getting hold of his microprocessor."

Oh my God, Tarissa thought. "No, I guess not," she managed to say numbly.

"Besides, the T-1000 damaged him so badly, he couldn't pass for human

anymore." John sounded almost distracted, as though more important things

were happening around him and his attention was divided.

You poor kid, she thought. Poor Terminator as well. Poor Miles. My poor love.

"Then you didn't really have a choice." At least I suppose so. What do I know?

I'm new to all this. The image of the Terminator's flesh-stripped arm, of the

intricate, exposed mechanism of it, made her squeeze her eyes shut. She didn't

want her imagination to supply her with anything more. "Good luck," she said.

"And to you," he answered.

Tarissa hung up the phone. She couldn't say thank you, even though she knew

that Miles's sacrifice had just saved the world. She couldn't bring herself to thank

one of the people who'd brought him to it.

Tarissa pushed herself up from the bed and stumbled to the window.

Pressing her hand hard against her mouth, she kept as quiet as possible so as not

to disturb her sleeping children. A great fire made of pain and rage and fear

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swelled in her chest and sobs like a series of blows racked her.

After a few minutes the worst was over and she leaned panting against the

window frame, feeling sick. Tarissa could feel the world crumble to broken ice

as she stared at the dingy parking lot through her tears. How was she going to

tell her children that their father was never coming home?

ALTADENA, CA: 1995

John paid the clerk with some of his stolen cash. Easy money, he thought: it was

only two days since he and his best friend had ripped off that hapless whoever-it-

was, hacking his PIN number at the ATM machine. It seemed like a lifetime.

Then everything had seemed to be going in a straight line toward a future as

miserable as the present. Now? It was all different.

Poor Todd and Janelle, his court-appointed foster parents, were dead. Now

they'd be dicks forever. His mother wasn't a psycho, she was a hero, and his life

had been saved repeatedly by a Terminator.

If he didn't feel so rotten He'd think he was dreaming this. He felt numb and

tense at the same time, wired and exhausted. Every motion he made seemed

remote, like the gestures of a puppet. His mother looked like hell and her

wounds didn't seem to want to stop bleeding, and though he cared—a lot—that

also felt distant somehow.

John came back to the car, pulled a jar of orange juice out of the plastic bag,

uncapped it, and handed it to his mother.

"I wanted coffee," she said. Sarah's hand was shaking as she took the drink from

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him.

"You coulda used their coffee to seal tire leaks, Mom." He looked at her,

worried, as he worked the cap off a bottle of aspirin. "Anyway, isn't sugar

supposed to be good for you if you're hurt or something?"

Sarah took four aspirin and a swig of orange juice.

"Yeah," she said, closing her eyes and leaning her head back against the seat.

"Glucose. Energy."

The car they'd stolen was a well-used Chrysler, nondescript and fortunately full

of gas. It ran well, too. They were already fifty miles from Cyberdyne.

"I got some bandages, too," John said, offering her a look into the bag.

Sarah opened her eyes slowly; it was a struggle. Despite her pain she wanted

desperately to sleep. Bad idea, she told herself. She couldn't leave John alone.

Her full lips jerked in an almost smile. He was something special, but he was

still only ten years old.

"There used to be a doctor who didn't ask questions," she said vaguely. With an

effort, wincing, she sat up straighter. That was better. "Where are we?" she asked.

"Altadena," he answered.

Sarah seemed to come out of a fog she'd been sinking into, shifting again into a

still more upright position.

"All right," she said. "I know where we are. Let's go. Get on the highway, John,

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head north."

"Can this guy give you a transfusion?" he asked, slipping into the driver's seat.

She shook her head. "But he can stop the bleeding."

John started the car and drove. They didn't speak for a long time, but he didn't

notice as he concentrated on driving and on not thinking. Suddenly alarmed, he

glanced over at his mother, afraid she might have finally fallen unconscious.

He caught the gleam of her eyes as she looked at him, and was reassured.

"It's going to be all right," she said, a world of satisfaction in her voice. "We

stopped them. We stopped Skynet, Judgment Day, all of it."

John glanced at her again and saw tears glisten in her eyes. His throat tightened

in sympathy.

"What will we do now?" he asked. His voice sounded weak in his own ears.

"Head to South America, I think," Sarah told him. "We'll make a nice, peaceful

life for ourselves and die in obscurity many, many years from now."

"Heh," he said, hardly daring to believe it was really over. "Sounds good."

"It does," she said. "It does."

CYBERDYNE SYSTEMS CORPORATION PARKING LOT: 1995

Paul Warren and Roger Colvin, respectively president and CEO of Cyberdyne

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Systems, stood together in the cold predawn darkness and watched their

company headquarters burn.

"Dyson!" Warren exclaimed. "Dyson, of all people."

"Goddamn Luddites," Colvin growled. "The bastards are everywhere." He

crushed the empty coffee cup he was holding and threw it away in disgust. "Did

he leave a note, anything to explain why he did this?"

Warren shook his head.

"The cops said that his house was shot up. His computer and all his records were

trashed or burned. They said his wife and kids were missing."

Colvin looked at him quickly.

"Do you think he killed them?"

"If he did he hid the bodies." Warren looked at his boss. "There was a lot of

blood. It doesn't look good."

Colvin ran his hands through his thinning brown hair.

"Guys kill their wives and kids all the time," the CEO said in frustration. "But

they don't blow up the company they work for! Why the hell would he do this?"

"There's a good chance that terrorists forced him to it," a friendly-sounding voice

said from behind them.

The two executives turned to find themselves under the regard of a middle-aged

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