“We’re going to make for the cabin,” he told Preston. “There should be extra guns and ammo there, plus the controls to the netting.” He looked sideways at Preston, the face of Preston’s daughter suddenly flashing to mind. “On second thoughts, maybe you’d better stay here,” he amended. “I can do this myself.”
“We do it together,” Preston said firmly. Maybe he was thinking of his daughter, too. “Though we might want to angle a little to the right so the cabin will be between us and the H-K.”
“Way ahead of you,” Barnes assured him. “Follow me. Quietly.”
Keeping an eye on the H-K, Barnes circled around the end of the log and headed toward a gap between trees that should bring them into the clearing at the right spot. He stepped over a mass of brittle-looking dead branches, passed one final clump of bushes—
The swiveling of the H-K’s main guns was his only warning.
“Down!” he snapped, throwing himself forward onto the ground.
Just as the thunder of the H-K’s Gatling guns shattered the evening calm, stitching a line of death above his head.
Barnes was on his feet again even before the burst ended, hunched over and clutching his minigun to his stomach as he made a desperate sprint for the cabin’s gunfire shadow. A second burst hammered through the air at him, and he winced as a sudden slash of pain ripped across his left shoulder. Once again he threw himself forward.
And as he hit the ground he saw that he’d made it. The H-K’s Gatlings were now out of view behind the near corner of the cabin.
Or at least they would be until Skynet revved up the engines and got the damn thing into the air. Even with the canopy closed, there was more than enough room in here for the aircraft to hunt down a couple of human targets.
There was a flicker of movement at the corner of his eye, and Barnes looked over to see Preston heading for the cabin. Heaving himself to his feet, Barnes followed.
They were nearly there, and Barnes was looking for where to aim his thirty rounds in order to blast open the wall, when there was another thunder of Gatling gun fire.
And without warning, the wall they were heading for exploded violently outward.
Barnes found himself once again on the ground, this time without any conscious memory of how he’d gotten there. Preston was beside him, his face turned upward, his eyes closed, the right side of his head wet with blood.
“Preston!” Barnes shouted over the roar of the H-K’s guns as they continued to rip into the cabin.
There was no answer. Crawling on elbows and knees, Barnes worked his way to the other’s side.
“Preston?”
For a moment there was nothing. Then, the man’s eyes fluttered open, narrowing again as the pain from his head wound came jarring back.
“What happened?”
“Skynet’s decided it really, really wants us,” Barnes ground out, throwing a look at the cabin.
Or rather, what was left of the cabin. The entire top half had been shattered, its metal walls turned into shards and splinters by the gunfire still raking systematically across it. Only the lower meter or so of the four walls were still intact.
Cautiously, Barnes eased up enough to sneak a look into the shell that had once been a structure. Sitting on the floor just below the demolished section of the far wall were a pair of generators.
He craned his neck to look skyward. High above the clearing, the canopy was starting to retract.
Snarling under his breath, Barnes rolled up onto his knees and brought the minigun up into firing position. He had maybe five seconds to put the generators out of commission before the canopy opened far enough to let the H-K escape into the darkening sky. He pointed the minigun into the demolished cabin—
“No!” Preston said, grabbing at his arm and pointing toward the edge of the clearing near the H-K. “There. Shoot over there.”
Barnes frowned as he searched that section of forest with his eyes. Had Jik arrived? But he couldn’t see anything.
“That one—right there,” Preston persisted.
Barnes frowned harder. There was nothing there except—
Swinging the minigun around, aiming carefully, he squeezed off his last thirty rounds in a half-second of blistering fire.
And with a crackling groan, the tree whose lower trunk the hail of lead had disintegrated toppled ponderously over and landed with a deafening crash.
Squarely across the top of the H-K.
The echoes faded away, and a new silence filled the clearing. Cautiously, Barnes lifted his head.
The tree’s impact had crushed the entire top of the H-K, burying the machine’s nose in the ground and jamming the muzzles of its Gatling guns deep into the dirt.
“Nice call,” he said, turning back to Preston. “How’s the head?”
“I’m okay,” Preston said, looking a little shaky as he got to his feet. “What now?”
“We get some fresh firepower,” Barnes said, sniffing the air as he dropped the empty minigun on the ground. Now that the stink of the Gatling rounds’ propellant was dissipating he could smell the equally pungent aroma of aviation fuel. The falling tree must have ruptured the H-K’s fuel tank. Glancing around the clearing, he got up and went over to the wreckage of the cabin.
The equipment inside had indeed included a set of the T-700s’ preferred G11 submachineguns. Unfortunately, the weapons had been racked or wall-mounted in the upper part of the cabin—which had just been obliterated by the H-K’s firestorm. Barnes could see several of the weapons lying amid the debris, all of them badly damaged. He climbed up onto the broken wall and dropped over to the other side.
And jerked in surprise as his feet landed with an audible splash.
“What was that?” Preston asked, coming up and peering over the wall.
“Aviation fuel,” Barnes said, wrinkling his nose. So it wasn’t the H-K that was leaking, but the reserve tank he could now see peeking out from beneath a broken slab of metal along one of the other walls. “Stay there—if I find something in decent shape I’ll pass it to you.”
But, to his frustration, nearly every gun he spotted had been damaged beyond safe use. Midway through the search he found a single functional weapon, but everything else was useless.
He’d seen plenty of Terminators wreck their own G11s rather than let them fall into Resistance hands. Clearly, H-Ks were even better at it than T-700s were.
“Come on, come on,” Preston urged, his voice low and strained. “Jik could be here any time now.”
“I’m hurrying, I’m hurrying,” Barnes responded. Across the cabin, beneath a section of broken ceiling, was what looked like an operating table with a collection of surgical gear scattered around it. Sloshing through the pool of aviation fuel, he crossed over to it and crouched down to look beneath the broken ceiling.
And felt his whole body go rigid. It was an operating table, all right. And lying half buried beneath it...
“Anything?” Preston asked.
“No,” Barnes said quickly. Too quickly, but Preston didn’t know him well enough to catch it. Straightening up, he headed back to where the older man was waiting. “Here,” he said, handing Preston the G11. “I’ll see if I can find some more ammo—”
“Barnes?” a voice called from across the clearing.
Barnes spun around, snatching back the G11 and turning it in the direction of the voice.
“Jik?”
“The name’s Connor,” Jik said sternly.
“Whatever,” Barnes said, eyes straining to pierce the gloom. “Welcome home. You like what we’ve done with the place?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jik said. “I’ve never been here before in my life.”
“You’ve just forgotten,” Barnes said. “Come have a look. Maybe it’ll come back to you.”
“What are you doing?” Preston asked quietly. “Shouldn’t we find some cover?”