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

generation of HKs weren’t particularly good at this kind of warfare; it didn’t mean Skynet didn’t have something more maneuverable already in the works.
    There were also rumors of some kind of plasma gun that would replace the HKs’ Gatlings. Given time, she suspected, every advantage the Resistance had been able to find or carve out would be blocked.
    It was her job, and the job of people like John Connor, to make sure Skynet was taken down before that happened.
    She checked her mirrors. The HK she’d thought she’d left far behind was still in pursuit, moving as fast as its little midships turbofans could take it.
    Skynet wasn’t yet ready to call it a day.
    Fine. If the massive computer system wanted to lose another HK, Blair would be happy to oblige.
    In fact, there was a little maneuver she’d been saving for just such an occasion, and with three of Skynet’s four radar towers currently down, it was the perfect time to try it. Watching the blip behind her, adjusting her speed just enough to let the HK start closing the gap, she headed due west, toward the edge of the city and the dark ocean beyond.
    The HK had closed about half the gap between them by the time Blair came in sight of her objective: a pair of twenty-story buildings about fifteen meters apart, probably once the towers of a hotel, with a fair amount of wall and ceiling still clinging to their skeletons.
    She didn’t know why so much of their structure had survived, especially that high off the ground, unless there had been something even bigger and taller to the south that had shielded them from the worst of the nuclear blast. However it had happened, though, the buildings presented her with a golden opportunity.
    Smiling tightly to herself, she reached over and shut down her starboard engine.
    It was like throwing fresh meat into a shark tank. The HK behind her abruptly leaped forward, drawing on a reserve of extra speed that Blair had never realized the damn things had. As it closed the gap, it began firing, sending quick bursts across her wingtips and tail, clearly targeting her remaining engine.
    Blair swore under her breath as she checked the distance back to the HK, then ahead to the two buildings, then back again to the HK. It was going to be tight, and with the enemy firing at her the 20
    whole way. Briefly, she considered restarting the starboard engine and getting back her speed advantage.
    But the minute she did that, Skynet would know she wasn’t as vulnerable as she was pretending and realize it was a trap. At that point, it would either break off the attack entirely or else send the HK in with more caution than Blair really wanted from it.
    On the up side, after all the shooting tonight the HK had to be running low on ammo. On the down side, so was Blair. Of the 1100 rounds she’d started with, less than 150 were left. At the A-10’s cycle rate of 3900 rounds per minute, that was roughly two seconds’ worth.
    It was definitely going to be tight.
    They were nearly to the buildings now, and despite Blair’s evasive jinking the HK was starting to get the range. She could feel the thuds and hear the whining screeches as the enemy’s Gatlings tore bits and pieces off the A-10’s skin and dug furrows into her wings and tail. Just fifteen meters between buildings, she reminded herself as she turned north, putting herself on a vector that would pass her along the left sides of the buildings. A fifteen-meter gap didn’t leave much clearance for an HK, and on paper, at least, it was pretty much impossible for the A-10’s own seventeen-and-a-half-meter wingspan.
    The HK made another surge forward, closing the gap even more as Skynet apparently decided that Blair was on her last legs.
    She shot past the first building.
    And with a hard yank on her joystick, she turned the plane into a tight right-hand turn. The maneuver banked the A-10 halfway up onto its right wingtip, the angle shortening its effective wingspan, and without scraping