Terminator Salvation_ The Official Movie Novelization - Alan Dean Foster [54]
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Only Barnes, watching his squad commander, sensed that something was not right. The test of the transmitter had worked perfectly. Everything had gone as well as or better than planned. Yet instead of partaking in the general elation, Connor had sunk deep in thought. Barnes knew his commander well enough to leave him alone. Which was hardly new.
No matter the circumstances, John Connor always seemed to be alone.
The Transport came down between several decaying buildings whose interiors were anything but inactive. Smoke and fire belched into the leaden night, suggestive of the continuous activity that was taking place within the flanking structures.
Straining to peer out the tiny openings in the side of their flying prison, Kyle Reese could see shapes moving about in the haze and darkness. Some he thought he recognized while the design and function of others were completely alien to him.
Limited as these glimpses of the outside were, they were not reassuring.
Then the lights went off inside the detention compartment. A few of the prisoners screamed. Others uttered whatever oath was most immediately at hand. Curses were voiced in a multiplicity of languages.
Something tickled Reese’s sense of smell, then assailed it. Gas; pungent, thick, and pregnant with unknown possibilities, not the least of which was the prompting of a sudden urge to retch uncontrollably. Brighter light appeared in quantity at the far end of the compartment.
Fighting through the surging mob, the effluvia, and the rising stench, he found his way to Star and Virginia and shielded them from the escalating chaos as everyone on board the Transport stumbled toward the exit, desperate to get away from the intolerable stink.
The oversized doorway toward which they were being herded by an assortment of T-1s and T-600s was lit like the mouth of hell. Floodlights turned the immediate unloading area bright as day, forcing exhausted prisoners who had been held in near darkness to shield their eyes from the sudden intensity. The light had no effect on the silently watching machines, whose vision was modulated by circuitry and not sensitive retinal pigmentation.
As they staggered out of the Transport away from the gas that was coercing them, something that had been dropped on the floor of the craft caught Reese’s eye. Holding his nose and forcing a path back through the surging crowd, he managed to recover it.
Battered, trampled, and dirty, it nonetheless brought an immediate smile to Star’s face when he was able to put her hat back on her head. If he could have identified them, he would have thanked whoever had originally found it.
There was no time to inquire. Lurching forward, a huge machine with a wide curving front blade rumbled to life and began ungently shoving the dazed and tired humans along the walkway on which the Transport had deposited them. An ominous actinic brightness dominated the interior of the building in front of them.
Forced forward along the walkway together with everyone else, a terrified Star turned an imploring gaze to Reese.
He had always been able to help her, to fix things, to make it all okay. This time all he could do was meet her forlorn stare with one of his own.
One of the prisoners had no intention of being thrust into the waiting maw. Leaping out of the line, the man who had previously challenged them to revolt on board the Transport charged one of the remorselessly scanning T-600s. Reese had to admit that the guy was fast, and to his credit he actually managed to get his hands on the Terminator’s weapon. His chances of actually wrestling the gun away from the machine, however, were about as likely as Star taking over the machine’s brain.
Responding to the desperate assault, two of the other metal sentinels immediately zoned in on the rogue human and fired simultaneously. Both shots missed their automatonic comrade. Both struck the human who was fighting