Ninel entered the little control room cautiously, looking all around with wide eyes.
"It's all right," John said, and grinned when she jumped.
"Sorry."
"I didn't see you," she accused. She gave the computer a more matter-of-fact look and moved to stand beside him. "What are you doing?"
"Trying to figure out if the info in the computer is good. I probably should leave it to Snog. He'll kill me if I do something to screw it up."
Ninel frowned. " Snog?"
"I have no idea if he knows what it means, I never asked,"
John said. He rolled the chair down the console to a video screen.
"Look at this."
She went and stood looking over his shoulder at the monitor.
"What am I looking at?" Some kind of assembly line; that was obvious. It looked like it was manufacturing dress dummies.
"You've attacked a mannequin factory?" she asked in disbelief.
John snorted a laugh and turned to look at her. "Would all of us get together and train for months to attack a mannequin factory? Not to mention that such a place would be unlikely to be defended by machine guns or to be located in the wilds of Alaska."
With a huff of annoyance she put her hands in her pockets and frowned. "So, then what? What am I looking at?"
"They're robots," John said, watching her reaction. "They're called Terminators and they're designed to kill humans."
"What?" She narrowed her eyes and looked at him scornfully.
"Killer robots? Isn't that a little far-fetched?"
Okay, so it's not gonna be easy. He tapped a few keys and changed the view. Now the monitor showed a storage room with what looked like at least a hundred of the things standing in neat rows, gleaming and complete and utterly motionless, their eyes dark.
"Weird," she breathed from over his shoulder. "Do they work?"
"I have no intention of finding out," he said. "If they're already programmed, then they'll start killing the minute they're turned on."
"So who's making them?"
He turned the chair so that he was facing her. " Now is when it gets weird," John said. "The U.S. military developed a computer to run their war toys. It was, without question, the most advanced computer run by the most sophisticated software ever developed. And then it became sentient."
"How could you know that?" Her voice was both scornful and accusing.
I know because I pressed the button that made it so, he thought.
Aloud he said, "I have privileged information. It was my mother who first found out about Skynet. That's the computer's name, by the way. We've tried and tried again to prevent them from using it, but there was nothing we could do. They finished the damned thing, put it on-line, gave it complete control of our missile systems"—he waved a hand—"et cetera, and the next thing you know, Judgment Day."
"Huh," she said, eyes on the Terminators on the screen.
"They're not dress dummies, Ninel, honest."
She looked down at him, her eyes troubled, then away. He turned his chair and pushed himself back to the workstation he'd been using when she entered. Clearly, some people were just incredibly hard to convince.
* * *
Ninel glanced at John, a worried look on her face, then leaned forward, tapping keys to change the view in the storage area.
Behind the rows of robots were boxes, the kind of boxes that looked like they were designed to hold rifles or ammunition. She hissed thoughtfully and put her hands on her hips.
What was going on here? Weapons. This was some kind of weapons factory, probably something set up by the government, and now it was in the hands of John and his friends. These people didn't seem like murderers. Although one or two had come across as paramilitary, antigovernment nut jobs, not one of them had spoken about killing innocent civilians as though it was something they felt they had to do. In fact, she'd heard Luddites more inclined to say socially unacceptable things about killing people.
As she clicked the enter key, the view kept changing, from the storage area to the factory itself, to exterior shots. She paused to watch the wounded being treated by one of the corpsmen. Had these people attacked the transports she'd been sending into Canada? Not one had indicated in any way that they had done such a thing. Not that she supposed they would tell such a thing to a new recruit.
She glanced over at John intensely working the keyboard.
Since that one night they'd never shared that level of intimacy.
He'd made a point of talking to her, and others had noticed and commented on his attentions, but otherwise… Well, otherwise she'd kind of been twisting in the wind, wondering what she meant to him, if anything. Wondering, in fact, if he was capable of using sex to recruit followers. Because it had very quickly become apparent that this resistance thing was John Connor's property. The others looked at him like he was God or something.
Killer or savior? she wondered, glancing at him from the corner of her eye. Time to make up her mind. People that she trusted insisted that he was a mass murderer. And here he was attacking some kind of automated weapons factory. Why would a savior want a weapons factory? She hit enter two more times and thought, Time's up. Time to act.
Hands in her pockets, mouth dry, her heart beating in her throat, she walked back to where John was working. "What are you doing?" she asked, leaning forward.
He held up one hand. "Just a second," he said, preoccupied.
Ninel yanked the sap out of her pocket and smacked him across the back of the head. Goggle-eyed, swaying, he turned to look at her, his mouth open in astonishment. Terrified, she hit him again, this time on the side of the head, and John slid bonelessly out of the chair. She let out her breath in a gasp, reached toward him, then aborted the gesture. Turning, she rushed to the door and opened it.
Balewitch and Dog Soldier came barreling in, Dog with a soldier lying limply across his shoulders. Dog dropped him carelessly in a corner, and together with Balewitch advanced avidly on John as he lay helpless on the floor.
Ninel recognized the soldier as one who'd worked with her, and started toward him, to at least untangle his body from the heap he'd landed in.
"He's dead," Dog said over his shoulder. "No need to worry about him."
"Whaaat?" Ninel said, horrified.
"Uh, had to," Dog said, annoyed. "We're slightly outnumbered here, in case you didn't notice."
"Not for long," Balewitch muttered. She reached for the keyboard above John's head.
"He said there were robots," Ninel blurted as she watched Bale-witch type.
"Yeah," Dog said, nudging John with his toe.
"He said they were designed to kill people." She heard her own voice sounding wild and desperate and hated it, but something was going wrong here. "He said a computer called Skynet made them; he said Skynet caused Judgment Day."
"Well, duh," Dog said. He looked at her. "We could hardly let them fall into this guy's hands."
"What are you doing?" Ninel said, snatching the keyboard away from Balewitch.
"Give me that," the older woman said calmly.
"Tell me what you're doing!" Ninel insisted. She raised the keyboard as though she meant to smash it. "I mean it!"
Balewitch took a deep breath and huffed it out. "I'm activating those robots so that they can take care of these resistance types."
Ninel could feel herself going pale. "But they'll kill them."
"Ye»-ah," Balewitch said, smiling. "That's the idea, honey.
Just think of all those innocent, unarmed refugees if you think we're being too tough."
This didn't seem right, it didn't! Then it hit her. "How do you know how to wake them up?" she asked, her lips numb.
"Ron gave us the codes," Dog said. He moved a step closer to her.