Terminator Salvation: Cold War Read Online Free PDF Page B

Pipeline stretched across 800 miles of rugged wilderness, connecting the oil fields on the north slope of Prudhoe Bay with the ice-free port in Valdez. For more than forty years, the pipeline had transported nearly a billion gallons of crude oil each day across mountain ranges, tracks of verdant wilderness, rivers, and streams.
    Judgment Day had halted the flow for a time, but not for long; repairing the conduit and placing it under its direct control had been one of Skynet’s top priorities, alongside exterminating the human race. As a result, all of the oil— and the energy it contained—belonged to the machines.
    But that didn’t mean the Resistance didn’t help itself to a sip now and then.
    From the edge of the woods, Molly surveyed an elevated section of pipeline. Faint sunlight filtered through the snow-laden branches of towering pines and spruces. Pendulous gray clouds threatened to drop more snow any time now. A bitter wind chafed her face. Her lips were chapped and raw.
    She chewed on a tough piece of smoked beaver. An owl hooted in the forest behind her. Something scurried through the underbrush. A breeze rustled through the trees.
    The sun was high in the sky. Despite the cover of the forest, she felt uncomfortably exposed, sneaking up on the pipeline in broad daylight. As counter-intuitive as it seemed, however, nocturnal raids were even more dangerous. The Hunter-Killers’ infrared sensors worked even better after sundown, while the darkness placed their human prey at a disadvantage.
    John Connor had taught her that, in one of his invaluable pirate broadcasts. She had never met the man—hell, she didn’t even know what he looked like— but, like so many other freedom fighters, she owed her life to the urgent warnings he had been broadcasting ever since Judgment Day. He had given her hope, and tips for survival when all had seemed lost. In her mind, his would always be the voice of the Resistance.
    If the machines ever get him, I don’t want to know about it.
    Several yards away, the pipeline zig-zagged across a glossy white plain leading toward a narrow mountain pass less than a mile to the north. Dense green forest encroached on the cleared strips of land on either side of the conduit. Riveted steel saddles, red paint protecting them from the elements, lifted the huge links of pipe over ten feet above the frozen earth. The enormous white cylinders were four feet in diameter. Coiled heat pipes topped the vertical supports to keep the permafrost from thawing beneath the heavy saddles. The zigzag layout was supposed to protect the pipeline from earthquakes, as well as from drastic temperature shifts. Or so Molly had been told.
    None of that mattered at the moment. She just wanted to come through this fuel run in one piece.
    “Look clear?” Geir asked. He stood a few feet back, behind the basket of one of the fifteen dog sleds she had mustered for this operation. Teams of well-trained malamutes, huskies, and mutts waited patiently for the command to go forward. They rested upon the ground, sniffing idly at the snow. Empty metal drums and plastic gas cans were piled in the cargo beds of the freight sleds. A few of the sleds were hitched to snowmobiles instead of dogs.
    Grim-faced men and women, bundled up in mismatched winter gear, stomped their feet to keep warm. Goggles, scarves, and earmuffs protected their faces from the cold. Scarlet armbands marked them as members of the Resistance. A thermos of hot coffee was passed around. Roughly thirty guerillas had been drafted for this operation. Nervous eyes searched the snowy canopy overhead. You never knew when an HK, or maybe just a snoopy Aerostat, might come zipping above the trees.
    “What about it?” Geir pressed when she didn’t answer. “Have we got a clear shot?”
    “Maybe,” Molly hedged. Not even Skynet could patrol all 800 miles of pipeline all the time, and the nearest automated pumping station was fifty miles north at Delta Junction.