To distract myself from the silence I looked at the radar
and the scenery. Though the scenery really just consisted of decaying buildings
and some movements on the ground. But I couldn’t tell if the movements were
from Resistance fighters, nomads, or Skynet. It wasn’t my place to determine
that and Katherine didn’t speak.
Her silence might be her way of discrediting me later. While
that wasn’t comforting on its own, it was comforting to know that it must not
be that bad for her to hide it from me. Katherine might loathe me, but she
would never put her hatred of me above the protection of the Resistance. In
that way John had chosen a good wife.
I had let the silence go on for so long since I had failed
to get a conversation started with her earlier. If she wasn’t going to make the
effort to reply, I wasn’t going to make the effort to talk.
“So how do you keep your hair like that?” I heard Barnes ask
by way of the headsets.
“I don’t think Kyle would like you asking questions about
his girlfriend’s hair.” I joked as I needed to say something. The silence was
getting really bad.
“Is that really how you think pick-up lines work?”
“Hey, it’s not my fault if I’m a little uneducated in
certain areas.”
“Just certain areas?” Barnes replied and I could see a smile
briefly on Katherine’s face.
“What, you acting like you’re better than me?”
“I’m human.”
“Well, you’re not a very good example.” Star said dryly.
I grinned as she had just ended a silence that could’ve gone
on a long time.
“Barnes is an excellent example. John trusts him.” Katherine
said, defending the man.
“So you’ve decided to talk?” I asked Katherine.
She became silent. Smooth, Jash, very smooth.
“Well, you got one defender.” I said after the silence went
on for a few minutes.
“That’s more than you have.” Barnes tried to counter.
“I’ve got the leader of the Resistance on my side. Other
people have seemed to act kinder to me as of late.”
“But you’re never going to fu-“
“You keeping track of those movements?” Katherine asked and
I could tell that her reason for interrupting wasn’t to check on anything.
Not even Barnes could bring up my obsession with John while
she was around.
“My job is to look at the radar and your job is to look at
the ground.” I replied dryly. “Tracking movements on the ground isn’t important
in this point in time. We’re still a little bit away from the area we’re
supposed to scout. But tracking movements on the ground for now could give us
some hints for future missions.”
“You like commanding me, don’t you.” Katherine said.
“No, I’m just doing my job. Besides, dealing with you means
dealing with John later. It isn’t always the best thing when you have something
negative to say about me.”
Katherine formed a small smile on her lips and I sighed. She
liked causing me pain and I’d like to cause her some pain at this moment. But
she could get away with any jabs at me while I couldn’t. Sort of sucked to be
me at the moment.
“What are the movements on the ground like?” Star asked.
“Nothing threatening.” Katherine replied. “No movements that
would signal that they’ll be involved with our scouting mission later on.”
“That’s good.” I said and then noticed something strange on
the radar.
Skynet wasn’t human and could move ahead of what us humans
were capable of. Luckily that had proved not to be such a big advantage in the
war so humans could still have victories. One thing Skynet had done was tamper
with how radar saw their different Terminators. Depending how important a
Terminator was, such as one going to infiltrate a Resistance base would have
higher priority over one fighting in the battlefield, they could get it so that
radar would pick them up as something else.
Luckily the Resistance had a decent percentage of spotting
when this trick was being used. From the radar reading it seemed like Skynet
was trying this trick again.
“Katherine, John mention to you any other Resistance
choppers being in the area?” I asked.
“No,” Katherine said. “Wouldn’t he have mentioned something
to you?”
“We have a friendship, not a relationship. Besides,
sometimes a leader has to hide facts to get a victory.” I paused a moment.
“Star and Barnes, get prepared for some action. Shit is about to hit the fan.”
I watched where the ‘Resistance’ choppers were and turned just
as the first shot was fired.
“Get ready to shoot back!” I shouted and tried to get in a
good position for Katherine.
But she was pregnant and getting a good shot was hard. I
wasn’t going to be the one to have John lose his children. However, I still had
to make sure we all didn’t die.
I spent a few minutes just dodging and cursing the fact that
this was just supposed to be a simple mission. Katherine wasn’t supposed to be
in danger and if something happened John would kill me.
Thoughts of John killing me were cut short as Katherine was
finally able to get a shot out, but that victory was cut short when Skynet’s
HKs finally landed some hits on the chopper. Due to me having to dodge,
Katherine wasn’t able to land another hit.
Then I dodged some more, Skynet shot the chopper down, and darkness.
I opened my eyes slowly and the sight of burning wreckage
greeted me.
“Katherine!” I shouted as I looked at her.
I quickly pulled her away from the wreckage and tried not to
look at the metal that was now showing through my burnt skin.
“Star! Barnes!” I yelled, but there was no reply.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment