And started as a ration bar and a bottle of water suddenly appeared in front of him.
He looked up. Star was holding them out to him, a worried look on her face.
“Where’d you get these?” Kyle asked, frowning as he took them from her.
Over there, she signed, and pointed across the room.
“Whoa,” Kyle murmured, gazing in surprise at the pile of clothing and the small boxes stacked neatly on one of the room’s other chairs. “Where’d that come from?”
Star gave him the kind of exaggeratedly patient look that she did so well.
“Right—you don’t know,” Kyle said. “Well, I don’t suppose whoever left it is coming back any time soon.” He peered across at the clothing. “You suppose there’s a jacket over there that would fit me?”
Star’s answer was to make a beeline for the stack.
Kyle had finished the ration bar and half the water by the time she returned, triumphantly carrying not just a new jacket, but a new shirt and new jeans as well.
“That’s great,” Kyle said, setting down the water and trying not to wince as he stripped off the tattered remains of his own clothing. The new outfit was a little big for him, but it was warm and—most importantly—not half burned away.
“Just like Christmas, huh?” he commented as he sat down again. “I don’t suppose there was any more water over there?”
Connor had met General Olsen a couple of times over the past few months, and hadn’t been particularly impressed. The man had a casual way of talking, and an air of easygoing charm that Connor found gratingly at odds with the deadly seriousness of life in Skynet’s shadow.
But if Olsen the man wasn’t anything remarkable, Olsen the soldier and commander was.
Connor had seen only a partial list of the man’s accomplishments, but that was more than enough to have earned him humanity’s respect, and Connor’s as well.
And so it was without a single twinge of resentment or cynicism that Connor threw Olsen a salute as the general stepped out of the last of the five Black Hawk troop carriers to land on the warehouse grounds.
“General,” he said. “Glad you could make it.”
“Nice to be here,” Olsen replied. He glanced around at the swarm of men and women lugging the crates and boxes to the line of cargo helicopters, then looked back at Connor. “ ’Course, I expect you’d’ve been even gladder if we’d shown up, say, an hour earlier?”
“It could have been helpful,” Connor agreed, choosing his words carefully.
Olsen grinned tightly.
“I’ll just bet it would’ve.” The grin faded. “I wish I could’ve, too. But I ’spect you know how it is.”
“Command needed to know you weren’t risking men and resources for a hopeless cause?”
Olsen grunted. “You never have been much of one for spackling over your words, have you, Connor?”
“Not really,” Connor said. “Did we pass the test?”
“Passed it and then some,” Olsen said, nodding. “Enough that Command’s ready to take you and your team on full-time.”
“You mean like the last time they took us on?” David put in as he came up to them. His voice was respectful enough, but Connor could see the slow simmer going on behind the other’s eyes.
Connor could sympathize. Having their hard-earned prize suddenly and casually taken over this way wasn’t an easy thing to swallow.
But then, getting Command’s attention had been the chief goal of the mission, after all.
“No, I think you’ve actually convinced them this time,” Olsen said. If he had noticed David’s anger, he was pretending he hadn’t. “This isn’t some new probation or any of that crap. You’re being offered a full slot in the Resistance structure, no strings, and all the goodies that go along with it.”
“Funny,” David said, throwing a pointed look at all the crates making their way into Olsen’s helicopters. “I thought we’d already found ourselves a stack of goodies.”
“Oh, that you did,” Olsen said, his genial voice hardening just noticeably. “But if you’ll look closely, you might notice it’s mostly goodies you can’t use.”
He pointed to a pair of crates being manhandled into one of the Black Hawks. “That ammo, f’rinstance. Fits HK Gatlings. You have anything that caliber?”
“Probably,” David said stubbornly.
“Probably not,” Olsen countered. “Might figure out a way to adapt it to an A-10’s GAU-8, but it’d be real tricky. Be a lot simpler to just take out the GAU-8 and shove an HK Gatling in its place.” He raised his eyebrows. “You have any spare HK Gatlings lying around?”
“Our pilots don’t usually leave much worth salvaging,” David said with a touch of pride.
“True enough,” Olsen acknowledged. “ ’Course, even if you had one, swapping it out would take a heap of work and a crapload of equipment you probably don’t have. And as for the rest of the stuff…”
He looked back at Connor, a frown creasing his face.
“You really don’t know what you’ve got here, do you?”
“I only arrived just before you did, General,” Connor told him. “I haven’t had a chance to look around.”
“Then let me enlighten you,” Olsen said, his folksy manner suddenly gone. “This here wasn’t just a neighborhood-sweep staging area. It was that, too, but it wasn’t mostly that.” He waved a hand behind him. “This here was gearing up to be a brand spankin’ new maintenance center.”
Connor shifted his eyes over the general’s shoulder, an unpleasant tingle running through him.
No wonder Skynet had been so hell-bent on defending the place.
“Really,” he murmured.
“Really,” Olsen assured him. “And maybe not just maintenance, either. There are whole crateloads of electronics and minicomputers in there, plus some weapons we’re going to want to look into reverse-engineering. I could be wrong, but I’m guessing Skynet was planning a serious upgrade for pretty much everything it’s got in this sector. And all that was slated to happen right here.”
He smiled lopsidedly.
“Except you and your team have just single-handedly stopped it. You think Command’s going to be fussing over probation protocol?”
“I see your point,” Connor said.
“I would damn well hope so,” Olsen said. “They’ve got a base all picked out for you to move into—nice and big, well protected, and out of this mess that L.A.’s become.”
“Sounds enticing,” Connor said. “And the catch?”
Olsen shrugged. “You learn to take orders.” He grinned. “ ’Course they’re all good orders. That goes without saying.”
David snorted. But the sound was more thoughtful than resentful, and he was no longer glowering as he watched the crates being loaded aboard the Black Hawks.
“Okay, it’s a deal,” Connor told Olsen. “We’ll need to get the rest of our people back, and there’s some food and random equipment we left at our staging area.”
“Call the people; forget the clutter,” Olsen said briskly. “I got a report just before I landed that Skynet’s got more HKs burning their way up from San Diego. It is not happy with you and your crew right now.”
“Understandable,” Connor said, flipping on his transmitter. “Barnes: get your squad together and bring it in, double-time. Don’t bother stopping by the staging area—we’re leaving whatever’s there behind.”
“Got it,” Barnes said briskly. “On our way.”
Connor flicked off the transmitter and turned to David.
“Go gather your squad and Tunney’s,” he told him. “We’ll be traveling—” He raised his eyebrows at Olsen.