Skynet was going to assure world peace. No national leader in his or her right mind would dare attack when such an efficient, emotionless, capable system stood watch, unblinking twenty-four/seven.
Attack the U.S. or one of her allies and die. Simple. All the power of the mightiest nation on earth would be unleashed.
An unstoppable force.
Worldwide dominationbenevolent dominationwas possible for the first time in the history of man.
Still Brewster hesitated. Maybe Mr. WatchdogCongressman Stevensonwas right. Maybe turning over our entire defense network to a goddamn computer was nuts.
But they had run out of options. The U.S. and her allies were, because of the virus, totally defenseless at this moment.
Brewster reached out, almost languidly, and touched
the y key on the Mainframe DO's console, and a moment later enter.
The console monitor brought up the CRS logo, and the message skynet link established.
The system began to shift and change, slowly at first, but rapidly accelerating as tens of thousands of Skynet links were established worldwide.
"We're in," one of the techs at a computer console announced. "We're past the firewalls. Local defense nets, minutemen, subs"
It was moving too fast now for the technician to keep up with it verbally.
"Skynet is fully operational," another of the techs reported. "Processing at sixtynow ninety terafiops a second"
"Sir, it should take less than a minute to find the virus and kill it," Patricia Talbot advised.
Brewster glanced at the systems chief tech. He didn't know if he shared her optimism. "Let's pray to God it works," he said.
The plasma screen and every terminal in the Mainframe Center and out in the main room suddenly went blank.
It was as if someone had pulled the switch.
Brewster looked up, his heart in his mouth. "What the?"
"Power failure?" someone asked.
"Lights are still on," someone else observed.
The monitors and the plasma screen suddenly came back to life, and for a few seconds Brewster breathed a
sigh of relief. Skynet had merely been clearing its throat.
But then it became obvious that something very wrong was happening. The screens and monitors were filling with line after line of some alien code, symbols racing across the videos at inhuman speeds.
"What the hell is going on" Brewster muttered. What indeed.
c.25
CRS
T-X was ready to move now; the last of the operational robots on the floor had been reprogrammed.
The door to T-l Storage Bay 3 opened, and Lieutenant Hastings stepped out into the corridor just as her boss Captain McManus got off the elevator.
He was angry, and the moment he spotted her he charged down the hall like a bull on the rampage.
"Lieutenant, where in hell did you go?" he demanded. "Where in hell is that police chopper pilot? And" He glanced at the placard on the door. "What in hell are you doing here?"
"How did you know I was here?" T-X asked without inflection.
"Jones spotted you"
"Who else knows?" T-X asked.
Something suddenly occurred to McManus, and he stepped closer. "Say, you're not Hastings." He looked again at the placard. "Who the hell?"
T-X grabbed him by the throat and lifted him off his feet. Opening the door to the T-l Storage Bay she shook
him like a rag doll, breaking the vertebrae in his neck. She took his sidearm and tossed him in a corner.
T-X stared at the dying captain for a moment, only his left leg still twitching, considering taking his persona to more easily reach the Computer Center.
She looked up, her sensors attuned to the electronic emissions inside the building. There was a powerful interference here, strong electrical and electronic sources that dulled some of her sensors.
But she could feel that Skynet was coming on-line now, and very soon it would be next to impossible to shut it down.
She cocked her head. Next to impossible. But there was still a way to do it. General Brewster was the key.
She turned without another glance at the chief of security and headed to the elevator as she began to morph out of her Lieutenant Hastings persona.
A pair of Air Force security guards were stationed inside a bulletproof glass partition just past the front door.
"Where would your father be if there was trouble with the system?" Terminator asked Kate.
"Upstairs in the Computer Center," Kate told him. Her father had said that was the heart of CRS. But now that they had come this far she didn't know what to do the rest of the way.
"Do you know how to reach the Computer Center?"
Kate nodded. "Yes." She nodded toward the elevators
across the lobby from them. "But they won't let us go up there"
One of the security guards slid a clipboard through the slot "Please sign in," he said pleasantly. "Someone will be out in just a minute to escort you upstairs to the general's office."
"We're going now," Terminator said. He smashed the thick glass with his left fist, and shot both guards in the knee with a Glock pistol, dropping them to the floor with yelps of pain.
"What... are you crazy?" Kate shouted.
"There is no time," Terminator told her. "We must reach your father."
He strode off to the elevator, while Connor took Kate's arm and followed after him.
"He's been programmed not to kill people," Connor assured her. "Doesn't mean he can't disable them."
All their terminals were locked out.
General Brewster emerged from the Mainframe room out onto the Computer Center floor. His technicians were scrambling to regain control of the system. Doing everything they could to take back just one base, one military installation. Any satellite.
But even the CRS complex power station and air-conditioning plant were no longer responding. Nor were internal communications, including telephones, working.
One of the techs who had been trying to get through
to a friend on the other side of Edwards looked up and shook his head. "Cell phones are all down too, sir."
The only ray of hope in the entire mess was the virus they had been plagued with. Skynet was eliminating it, although it was taking more than the one minute that Talbot had promised.
But at what cost?
No one knew how long this situation would last, or where it was going.
"Daddy?" a woman getting off the service elevator at the back of the center shouted.
Brewster knew that voice. He turned on his heel as his daughter, Kate, came across the room toward him, her right hand extended as if she wanted to come into his arms and be held.
But her being here now, at this moment, made no sense. Then he suddenly remembered that he had asked her to bring her fiance out today. Practically begged her, and he told his secretary to take care of security if and when she actually did show up.
But not now.
"Kate, honey, what are you doing here?"
The main elevator to Brewster's left opened and he saw several people out of the corner of his eye coming toward him.
He started to turn when machine-gun fire erupted, the noise shockingly loud. One part of his brain automatically registered the fact that the gun was a Russian AK-47. They had a distinctive sound.
Another part-of his brain reacted in horror as Kate's body was hammered with bullets.
She was shoved backward, crashing through a partition in a shower of glass, computers exploding in sparks and plastic and metal shards, Kate falling to the floor in a heap behind a console.
Pandemonium erupted as technicians dove for cover, screaming in panic, trying to get out of the line of fire.
This was some kind of a nightmare. All the air had gone out of the room, and Brewster could not breathe, let alone cry out his daughter's name.