Terminator Salvation: From the Ashes Read Online Free PDF Page A

to you.”
    Barnes grunted. “Make it snappy.”
    Blair took a deep breath, and headed toward the hangar, taking the open ground in as fast a sprint as she could without risking a broken ankle. She spun halfway around as she reached the building, landing her back against the wall beside the door as she gave the area one last quick look.
    Still nothing.
    Panting a little, she slipped inside and pulled the door closed behind her.
    And jerked back as a bright light exploded in her face.
    She had just enough time to slam her eyelids shut before the light disappeared.
    “Sorry,” Yoshi’s voice came from behind the purple blob floating in front of her eyes. A hand reached out and took her arm. “Come on.”
    “Where’s Wince?” Blair asked as she let Yoshi guide her across the broken floor.
    “He and Inji are prepping your plane,” Yoshi said. “I’m assuming Connor wants us to blow this popsicle stand?”
    “Yeah, that’s kind of a given,” Blair said. “Why, were you thinking of staying?”
    “Not if everyone else goes,” Yoshi said, an odd wistfulness in his voice. “I just hate to see the place go, that’s all.”
    Blair looked around. Actually, so did she. The purple blob was fading now, and behind it the familiar cramped area beneath the hangar’s crushed roof was coming into view.
    Or rather, now that the false floor had been rolled aside, the uncramped area of the basement storage room, a sublevel that Skynet’s initial surveillance had missed. By removing the floor and installing a winch-equipped ramp, Connor’s people had turned an expanse of otherwise useless space into a very cozy spot for stashing the team’s two A-10 “Warthog” attack jets.
    Blair ran a quick eye over her plane as she and Yoshi headed down the ramp. It was as banged-up as everything else in Connor’s meager arsenal, though the wild flying-shark paint job she’d adorned it with hid a lot of the damage. But to her, the nicks and bullet holes were nothing to be ashamed of. They were marks of honor, wounds suffered in the cause of humanity’s war for survival.
    And scarred or otherwise, the plane was no more ready to give up the fight than Blair herself was. A pair of Sidewinder air-to-air missiles hung from two of the A-10’s four remaining under-wing pylons, while the seven-barrel GAU-8 Avenger Gatling gun nestled beneath its nose promised a hornets’ nest of 30mm explosive and armor-piercing rounds to any HK or T-l foolish enough to get in her way.
    Her remaining two pylons, she noted, were sporting equipment nacelles, undoubtedly loaded with everything Wince and Inji could pry up and pack inside. That was going to play hell with the A-10’s balance and maneuverability, but Blair would just have to deal with it. It wasn’t like the two men could lug everything out on their backs. Not even with Barnes to help.
    “Is everyone okay?” Wince’s disembodied voice drifted out from somewhere behind the two planes. “It sounded pretty nasty there for awhile.”
    “It was,” Blair said, deciding there was no point in burdening him with the news of Piccerno’s death. He’d find out about that soon enough. “We need to get moving, too. If Skynet follows its usual post-raid pattern, the T-600s could be knocking on the door anytime now. We don’t want to be here when they do.”
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    “No argument there,” Wince agreed, coming into sight around the rear of the plane, his white hair glistening in the starlight that filtered through the cracks in the roof. “You probably saw the cargo pods we strapped on. You going to be okay with that?”
    “I’ll be fine,” Blair assured him. “Barnes is waiting outside by the west sign. You and Inji grab whatever you’re carrying, and get going.”
    “We’ll get the door first,” Wince said, looking around. “Inji?”
    And then, abruptly, the cracks in the hangar roof blazed with light.
    “Cover!” Blair snapped at Wince as she sprinted toward her plane. Damn the HKs,