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The words were barely out of his mouth when one of the younger women dashed in from the direction of the sentry post, nearly running down an eight-year-old boy in the process.

“T-1s,” she announced breathlessly. “Coming in from all directions.”

“Are they heading for the main door?” Connor asked.

“No, toward here. I saw them through the—” she faltered a little “—where Piccerno was. Maybe a hundred meters out.”

Connor nodded. T-1s were heavy, splay-armed fighting machines mounted on heavy treads, slower than the humanoid T-600s but more heavily armed and even harder to take down. The plan was probably to roll them up onto the roof near Piccerno’s sentry post in hopes of collapsing it by sheer weight and trapping the group in a pincer.

“Go to the front and tell Barnes and the others I said to pull out now,” Connor told her. “They’re to collect the rest of the backstops along the way.”

The girl nodded and took off down the corridor at a dead run.

“Tunney?” Connor called, looking around at the heavily laden men and women.

“Here, sir,” Tunney called from the side wall. He and the other lieutenant, David, were standing beside the dark opening that led into the bunker’s emergency exit. Like Connor, each man was loaded with two shoulder bags of ammo or grenades, but instead of just a submachine gun each of them also carried a grenade launcher and flame thrower. “Time to go?” he asked.

“Almost,” Connor said, squeezing Kate’s shoulder briefly and then crossing to join them. “Now it is,” he said. “I’ll take point; keep a three-meter spacing between us.”

“I believe it’s my turn for point, sir,” Tunney said, his voice low but firm.

Connor shook his head.

“My team; my job. Stay alert—if Skynet’s found the far end, we’ll have some unpleasant surprises waiting.”

He looked back at the group, to find them silently watching him. Watching, and trusting.

“Stay as quiet as you can, and don’t stop moving,” he said, keeping his voice as calm as if this was just another training exercise. “Once you’re through the tunnel, depending on what’s waiting out there, we may decide to split into small groups of two or three. Everyone knows where Fallback One is?”

The room bobbed briefly with nodding heads.

“Then I’ll see you all there,” Connor said. “Good luck.” Nodding for Tunney and David to follow, he headed into the tunnel.

The group referred to the emergency exit as a tunnel, but a real, hand-dug tunnel would have taken far more time and manpower than the group had had to spare over the past few months. The route was instead a mostly natural pathway consisting of half-crushed hallways, basements, and service corridors. Connor’s people had cleared out the blockages, propped up the ceilings, and dug short connecting shafts where necessary until they’d created an exit route that could take them invisibly a good three blocks from the bunker.

But there was always the chance that one of Skynet’s endlessly roving machines had spotted the route, and Connor felt his nerves tightening with each step as he made his way through the darkness.

There were dozens of places where the roof had eroded through to the outside world, allowing in some badly needed starlight but also precluding the use of any lights by the escapees. Worse, the longest straight-line segment anywhere in the tunnel was about six meters, with everything else being a collection of zigzags, right-angle turns, and occasional backtracks. A T-600 waiting in the darkness around any one of those corners could have Connor and his vanguard dead before they even knew what had hit them.

But each corner was clear, the starlight filtering through the fissures never blazed with HK floodlights, and he heard nothing of the telltale growl of T-1 treads. Gradually, Connor’s hopes and pace began to pick up. They might make it. They just might make it.

He was about halfway through the tunnel when the sounds of distant explosions and gunfire began to echo through the passageway from behind him.

He swore feelingly under his breath. The