Free Terminator Salvation: Trial by Fire by Timothy Zahn Page B

you were alone out in the wild.”
    “I don’t deny it,” Halverson said with a grunt. “But that’s only as long as we’re in the town. Once we leave it, the gardeners and stove-fixers aren’t going to be worth much, are they? Not much point in Ginny and me even hanging around if that happens.”
    Preston hissed out a sigh. “How many times are you going to do this, Duke?” he asked quietly. “How many times are you going to threaten to take your wife and your friends and walk out if the town doesn’t do what you want?”
    “You don’t like me?” Halverson challenged, just as quietly. “Replace me. Until you do, I’ve got a right to speak up the same as anyone else.”
    He leveled a finger at Preston.
    “But we’re not talking about quotas or crop shares this time. We’re talking about survival. There’s a Terminator sitting on our doorstep, and we damn well have to do something about it.”
    “What do you think we’ve just been talking about?”
    “What you’ve been talking about is giving up,” Halverson said. “Giving up and running away.”
    “Only temporarily.”
    “Yeah, and isn’t it funny how easy temporary turns into permanent ,” Halverson said with a sniff. “And I’m serious. If we have to give up this town and these buildings, there’s no reason for Ginny and me to stay with the group. I can hunt enough just fine for the two of us. And have enough spare time left over to make my own arrows.”
    “And if you go, you’ll take Chris and Ned and Trounce with you?”
    “Hey, we’re all free citizens,” Halverson said with a shrug. “I don’t speak for anyone except myself.”
    But whether he spoke for them or not, Preston knew, most of the town’s best hunters looked up to Halverson. Many of them would follow the same logic he’d just laid out, and desert Baker’s Hollow right alongside him.
    Without the hunters, the town was doomed. And when the town died, so would any chance for even a modest degree of civilization here in the mountains.
    Preston couldn’t let that happen. No matter what it cost.
    “So what’s your idea?” he asked, the words stinging in his throat.
    “We take the damn thing out,” Halverson said flatly. “Right now.”
    Preston winced. He’d been afraid that was where he was going.
    “We can’t do that,” he said as calmly as he could. “At the moment it’s not coming after us. We attack it, and that’ll change.”
    “Not if we kill it,” Halverson said. “Come on, Preston—I’ve killed full-grown grizzlies. How tough can a Terminator be?”
    “For starters, your bear’s vitals weren’t encased in solid metal,” Preston pointed out, striving to maintain his calmness. Arguing with Halverson was an absolutely guaranteed way to solidify the man’s position. “Even if you found a way through that, Skynet’s not going to just sit back and watch you do it.”
    “Ah,” Halverson said with the self-satisfied air of someone who’s been hoping for precisely that question. “It may in fact do exactly that. I talked with Lajard this morning. He says that with the San Francisco hub gone, the nearest Skynet long-range transmitter is on the east coast. If he’s right, it can only punch a signal through this far at night.”
    “Unless Skynet has some kind of relay system between the east coast and here that it can use,” Preston warned. “Through smaller stations or even H-Ks.”
    “It doesn’t work that way,” Halverson said. “Lajard says multiple relays are too vulnerable to interception and signal something-or-other—signal degradation, I think it was. Anything big, including large downloads or major changes in mission profile, has to come directly from a Skynet hub.”
    “Interesting theory, anyway,” Preston said. And obviously in Lajard’s exact words, too. Halverson’s vocabulary wasn’t nearly that extensive.
    “It’s more than just a theory,” Halverson growled. “The point is that if this Terminator is at the