He reached the line of windows and eased his head up for a look. But for once, caution was unnecessary. The Terminators at the north end of the street were evidently saving their ammo to keep Kate and Barnes out of the Moldavia, and the machines that had been firing on the two kids had disappeared.
Disappeared back onto their tail, no doubt. But there was nothing Connor could do about that now. Turning toward the south, he looked upward.
Nothing.
He checked east and west, then south again. Still nothing.
Had Blair lost her macabre game of tag with that last remaining HK? Connor checked east and west again, and even north, just in case she had gotten disoriented.
And then, there they were: a pair of shadows framed between the city’s broken buildings to the south, heading toward them across the moonlit sky.
Abruptly, Connor tensed. Blair was coming toward him, all right, exactly as ordered. But she was coming in way too high for what he needed. He had to get her to drop to strafing level.
Only there wasn’t anything in the mission code for that.
Beside him, Tony popped his head out of the next window over.
“Got ’em,” he announced, tapping the muzzle of the minigun he was holding just out of sight.
“Still got plenty of ammo—they must have figured they were here for the long haul.” He peered up into the sky. “If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, aren’t they coming in too high?”
“Yes, they are,” Connor said through clenched teeth. There had to be a way for him to clue in Blair without tipping his hand to Skynet at the same time.
And then, he had an idea. A completely crazy idea.
“You and Joey get ready,” he told Tony. “You’re only going to get one shot at this.”
* * *
They had made it two blocks past the corner with the bus when Star suddenly grabbed Kyle’s arm and staggered to a halt.
“What’s wrong?” Kyle asked sharply as he grabbed her around her waist. “Were you shot? Are you hurt?”
She shook her head. Tired, she signed.
“Oh,” Kyle said, relief flooding into him. After all that shooting back there, he’d feared the worst. “Over here,” he said, leading her to an angled piece of broken concrete and helping her sit down. She was worn out, all right, her chest heaving as she gasped for breath, her face shiny with sweat, her legs trembling with fatigue. He should have noticed that earlier, he told himself guiltily.
Still, under the circumstances, there hadn’t been a lot he could have done differently.
Though he had the discomfiting sense that Star had a different opinion on that one. The look on her face was one he’d seen before.
“What?” Kyle asked warily.
Why didn’t we go with the people in the bus? she signed.
Kyle grimaced. What could he say? He’d seen the line of Terminators moving into the street to the north, clearly preparing to march on the people who’d blown up their buddies. The man and woman in the bus were as good as dead. If he and Star had joined them, they would have been dead, too.
No, he couldn’t tell her that. Not after those people had saved their lives.
“We need to get back to the Ashes,” he said instead. “Orozco needs our help, and the people on the bus had it under control. Besides, we don’t even know who they were.”
He really should have known that Star wouldn’t buy that one. We didn’t know Nguyen or Vuong, either, she reminded him pointedly. But we went with—
Abruptly, she broke off, her face going rigid.
Kyle froze, his eyes darting through the pale moonlight around them. Had the Terminators back there caught up with them already?
But no. That pair should still be somewhere to their east. The lone figure he could see striding along the street toward them was coming instead from the west. It seemed to notice the two kids sitting on the slab and changed its course to head toward them.
Kyle whipped his rifle up to his shoulder, uncertainty flicking through him. The figure was big, but he’d seen humans who were nearly that size. And so far, it hadn’t opened fire on them.
And then, as it passed through a patch of moonlight, he saw the glint of metal from the minigun in its right hand.
“Go north,” Kyle muttered at Star. “Go.”
The girl nodded and took off, her legs pounding the pavement as fast and hard as they could.
Aiming at the Terminator’s leg, Kyle squeezed the trigger.
The machine staggered with the impact, pausing as it fought to regain its balance. Kyle fired a second shot, and a third, each one briefly stopping the machine in its tracks. So far, the barrage seemed to be keeping it back.
He frowned suddenly.
Or was that what Skynet wanted him to think?
He squeezed off one final round, then abruptly leaped to his feet and took off after Star.
And as he did so, a burst of minigun fire slashed through the space he’d just vacated.
The other two Terminators had caught up.
Kyle threw a quick look over his right shoulder. They were both still half a block back, but they were taking every opportunity to fire at him as he darted in and out of their view past rusting vehicles, piles of rubble, and clumps of weeds.
But though they were firing, neither Terminator seemed to be making any effort to close the distance between them. In fact, they were actually retreating, backing toward the street they’d just passed.
Kyle looked over his other shoulder. They weren’t chasing him for the simple reason that Skynet had already put the other Terminator on that job. It was striding toward him, all traces of its earlier unsteadiness gone.
He turned forward again, putting everything he had left into increasing his speed as he realized what Skynet was up to. Guessing that Kyle and Star were on their way to the Ashes, it had pulled the three Terminators from somewhere with the hope that the two from the east would drive him and Star straight into the arms of the one to the west.
Now that the plan had failed, Skynet was going to try the same thing, but in a slightly different way. The single Terminator was now going to chase him and Star until they either dropped from exhaustion or else turned east and tried to get back home. Only they would never make it, because the other two Terminators would be paralleling their run along the next north-south street over, which would put them in position to intercept him and Star if and when they tried to turn in that direction.
It was a good plan, and with anyone else it probably would have worked with lethal efficiency.
But there was something Kyle knew that Skynet didn’t. Something that might just get him and Star out of this alive.
He glanced over his shoulder again. Terminators weren’t all that fast, and the one back there was starting to fall behind. But he wasn’t falling behind fast enough. Reaching into his shoulder bag as he ran, Kyle pulled out his last pipe bomb. He’d hoped he could save at least one of them, but he needed to slow the machine down and there was no other way he could think of to do that without having to slow down himself.
Lighting the fuse, he let it run down to just the right length, then hurled the bomb behind him.
It exploded with the usual thundercrack, lighting up the cityscape and peppering Kyle with bits of shrapnel. He looked back again, to see that the blast had knocked the Terminator off its feet. The few extra seconds it would cost the big machine to haul itself back up and continue the chase ought to be enough.
They would have to be enough.
Star had made it nearly to the next corner when Kyle caught up with her.
“Come on,” he told her, grabbing her hand. “I’ve got a plan.”