Chapter 17: The Pursuit (Part one)
Kayden tapped on the 'On/Off' button on the dashboard screen to start the ignition, so to speak — the truck was actually powered by Skynet's plasma technology — of the truck as the door of the secret exit crumbled to the ground. Through the side mirror, Kayden saw five T-800s burst out of Side Exit C, guns at the ready. They were quickly followed by another group of five T-800s exiting behind the first group, with even more T-800s filing out behind them in groups of five.
"Damn it! Are all the Terminators in the area after us?" Kayden complained.
As soon as the first 5 T-800s stepped out, they quickly locked on Kayden's truck, and on seeing the two humans — Kayden and Serena — at the front of the truck who looked like they were trying to start the truck in order to escape in it, the T-800s immediately sprinted towards the truck.
Unfortunately for the T-800s, the truck came to life immediately Kayden pressed the 'On' button, and so he managed to start the truck before the first five T-800s could even get their bearings after walking out of the mountain facility and into the hidden parking lot outside.
So, just as the T-800s locked on the truck and before they even started to run towards it, the truck came to life and Kayden stepped down hard on the accelerator. The truck lurched forwards due to the hard acceleration before Kayden quickly regained control of the vehicle and steered it into the lone dirt road that winded through the woods and that also led out of the area, and stirring up dust clouds behind them, the truck sped away.
Kayden had driven for only a few seconds when he suddenly heard screams coming from the former prisoners being carried in the personnel space at the back of the truck.
"What's going on over there at the back?" Kayden shouted.
"They are shooting at us!" Several people's voices shouted back.
Kayden and Serena glanced at each other for an instant, before they both rushed to look check the side mirrors on their side of the truck. Through the side mirror, Kayden saw that the T-800s had started shooting at the truck with their plasma rifles, trying to either destroy it or at least cause some amount of damage to the truck and stop it from escaping.
Most of the plasma shots had flown wide of their target without having any real chance of hitting the truck, with only a few even coming close to hitting the fast-moving truck.
But even this must have been too scary for the former prisoners who could see the T-800s through the open entrance of the personnel space at the back of the truck as the T-800s, cold, unfeeling and relentless in their pursuit, tried again and again to gun down the truck — their only hope for salvation and freedom — and stop them from escaping from their place of imprisonment and finally get to safety.
"Give me one of those." Serena said, pointing at the 2 plasma rifles on the truck's dashboard. "I can distract and slow the Terminators down for you to put enough distance between us and them."
"What? Oh, right… those." Kayden looked away from checking the T-800s' progress through his side mirror in mild confusion before he finally realized that Serena was referring to the plasma rifles.
As soon as Serena mentioned the guns, Kayden realized that he had overlooked something. He had placed the two plasma rifles on the dashboard when he got into the truck and had not given any explanation about how he had obtained an extra gun during the time he was away from the group.
Kayden had been distracted by the huge battlefield he saw when he stepped outside the mountain-hollow facility, and it had occupied all of his attention. Besides, while they were still inside the facility and when he had rejoined the group at their meeting place in front of the secret exit, Kayden had been in too much of a hurry to escape out of the facility through secret before the patrolling HKs could find them, so he did not have the time and opportunity to explain to the group — especially to Serena who he was most wary of — about how he obtained his extra plasma weapon.
'But this isn't the time to be too wary.' Kayden thought.
Although he still had a few suspicions about Serena, she had not done anything bad as they travelled together along the way. Besides, Kayden already had his hands full driving the truck, and he did not want to test — okay, he'd really love to test it, but maybe not right now — whether he could both drive and shoot at the same time without crashing the truck and killing his passengers in the process.
"Alright. Use one of the guns. I found the extra plasma rifle when I got in a lucky shot on a lone Terminator and instantly destroyed its head." Kayden explained, gesturing towards the guns with his head.
Serena grabbed one of the plasma rifles while muttering something, her whisper too low to be audible to normal human ears, but Kayden's sensitive ears picked up the whispered words "Must have been a really lucky shot", causing him to raise an eyebrow while also wondering what she meant.
Serena opened the door on her side of the truck and hanging from the door with her left hand with the top half of her body hanging out of the truck, she began to shoot back at the pursuing Terminators, returning fire for fire.
Serena seemed to be a better shot than the T-800s because unlike the Terminators who did not manage to hit the fast-moving truck, Serena plasma shots did manage to hit a few of the T-800s even though her shots were mostly ineffective at completely destroying the Terminators and only succeeded in hitting some non-lethal areas on their bodies. The only thing the shots did to the T-800s was knock them to the ground for a short time and maybe also incapacitate them enough to cause them to lose their mobility. But, the T-800s were not actually completely destroyed; they really only needed to return to the facility for some repairs, and they would return to normal functioning.
Even with all that, Serena accomplished what she had promised, and she succeeded in slowing the pursuing Terminators down, and though the T-800s might be fast, Kayden's truck was even faster, and so, even though the Terminators were relentless in their pursuit of the truck, they were soon left in the dust.
Serena seemed to notice the truck increasing the distance between them and the Terminators and looking like she wanted to completely destroy at least one of the T-800s before they got out of the effective range of her plasma rifle, she paused her shooting for a second as she took a deep breath. She aimed, holding her plasma in her very stable hands, at the frontmost one of the pursuing T-800s and pulled the trigger.
A plasma shot flew from her rifle to strike the T-800 in the center of its head and blasted it off its body.
Kayden watched all this happen from the corner of his eye while he drove the truck down the dirt road and away from the pursuing Terminators.
As the armored personnel truck left the T-800s behind them, Serena climbed back into the truck and closed the door.
"They shouldn't be able to catch up with us anymore." Serena said, flashing Kayden a smile.
Kayden nodded in agreement, watching the T-800s through his side mirror as they fell behind.
But soon, he was distracted from what he was doing when he heard Serena mumbling some words.
"Ah! Where is it? Is it here? Or is it this one? No? Okay, let's try this one…."
Kayden glanced at Serena to find her looking at the large dashboard screen and also tapping some of the buttons on the screen.
"What are you doing?" Kayden asked.
"I'm looking for the way to activate the truck's exterior cameras." Serena answered.
"Exterior cameras?"
"Yeah. I noticed that you were always looking at side mirror in order to see what was happening behind the truck, so I'm trying to see if I can find out how to turn on the exterior cameras on this truck. You may not know this, but it's common knowledge among the Resistance that all of Skynet's vehicles always have a few cameras on them for better monitoring of their surroundings."
"That makes sense, I guess." Kayden said.
He then added with his thoughts, 'At least this will be less distracting for me than having to frequently turn away from my driving in order to check the side mirror. But how do we turn on the cameras?'
As soon as Kayden thought that, some new words appeared on his HUD; they were instructions giving directions on how to operate the truck's cameras.
Kayden now knew how to operate the truck's cameras, but he did not say anything to Serena in order to not look too suspicious, since he had already acted like he did not know anything about the cameras just a few seconds ago. Anyways, it was a fairly simple method which he knew Serena would soon figure out on her own.
"Oh! There it is!" Serena exclaimed as she pressed a button on the screen on which was written 'Camera' in the cryptic Skynet-developed machine language.
Several small-sized video feeds from the few exterior cameras appeared on the windshield, revealing the windshield to be some kind of transparent screen. The video feeds were displayed around the periphery of the windshield in order to not obstruct the driver's view of the road ahead of them, and they showed camera views of the rear, the sides and even the sky above the vehicle.
"Nice." Kayden said before turning towards Serena and saying, "Thanks. This is much better."
"You are welcome." Serena said with a smile.
'Damn. She really shouldn't be smiling at me so much while I'm trying to focus on my driving. It's too distracting.' Kayden complained in his mind as he drove the truck along the dirt road which seemed to be curving towards the direction of the main road that led to the main entrance of Skynet's Core facility in order to reconnect with it.
Kayden soon realized that if he continued along his current path, he would soon have to drive the truck through an area that was too close for his comfort to the battlefield with the ongoing fierce battle between Skynet's forces and the Resistance.
But he had no choice. He had to use the main road if he wanted to get out of this place.
*****
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