Hearing voices coming from the stairway leading to the engine room, it pushed the volume on its microphones to high and hastened to the end of the corridor.
The T-101 flattened itself against the bulkhead and peered around the corner, looking down the stairs. A man turned at the door of the engine room and leaned in.
"I'll be back," the one called Arnie shouted.
"Don't be too long."
Voice-recognition software confirmed that the second speaker was von Rossbach. This was excellent. As it listened to Arnie's footsteps moving down the corridor, it could hear only one other set of footsteps within the engine room.
Its quarry was alone. There was a violent clash of machinery from the engine room and it lowered its volume to protect the sensitive auditory device. Then it moved quickly down the stairs.
***
Dieter was wishing the engine room were air-conditioned; his body was covered in oil and sweat and only a drenched headband kept it from stinging his eyes.
The captain had decided that while they had a few days they should perform basic maintenance on the yacht's engines. Essentially a tune-up with an oil change on a massive scale. Von Rossbach assumed he wanted it done here because local regulations about used oil were a lot less strict than they were in San Diego.
Right now he was steam-cleaning the engine and resenting Arnie taking off, leaving him to, literally, take the heat. He grabbed the handle that would move the crankshaft and leave another area accessible.
The Terminator found a box of tools beside the door and pulled a two-foot-long pry bar out of it. As it had neither gun nor knife, this should do for a weapon.
Though it should be able to destroy an unarmed human with its bare hands, mission parameters stated that any and every available advantage should be used. The soft clatter of machinery being manually cranked succeeded by a sound like a compressed air blast led it to its prey.
Dieter sprayed the upper part of the engine with the steam, watching the muck run off with a sense of satisfaction. He was almost done with this. It had been a long time since he'd pulled maintenance on a marine diesel, and it made him feel nostalgic, in a way. Another half hour or so and he'd be able to go up on deck for some of the comparatively cooler air there. Then a shower. He imagined the shower stall would look something like the engine did now, with black goo running down its sides.
He squatted to get the lower side and a pry bar hit the engine with enough force to dent the metal.
Dieter fell onto his butt and reacted instinctively, turning the steam jet on his attacker.
There was no scream of pain and the figure dimly seen through the steam didn't stagger back. Instead, the bar came down for another blow.
Dieter rolled to his knees and shoved at the man while he was overbalanced to make his strike, and his opponent went down. The Austrian rose to his feet and stared at the man, astonished to see that he was naked. Then the man turned over and began to rise, the pry bar still in his hand and—
That is my own face. Red and covered with blisters, the eyes white and peeling from the steam blast, but still terrifyingly familiar.
The Terminator reached up and plucked the cooked flesh from its eye sockets, revealing the red lights and black plastic of its eyes and allowing it to see.
"Oh shit!" von Rossbach said, and turned, running for the door. He needed a weapon; something in the way of high explosives would be nice.
The Terminator's hand flashed out and the hooked end of the pry bar locked around Dieter's ankle, bringing him crashing to the metal floor. The Austrian scrabbled forward, reaching for the toolbox, intending to throw it. Then the pry bar hit his thigh glancingly and von Rossbach shouted with pain and went down again. His hand reached out and came up with a five-pound sledgehammer.
Dieter rolled onto his back just in time to block a blow from the pry bar aimed at his neck; the force of it was shocking, slamming the head of the hammer into the slatted grillwork of the engine-room deck.
I'm going to die, he thought as the Terminator raised the bar for an impaling stroke.
Vera heard someone cry out and she hurried down the narrow stairway, listening with alarm to what sounded like a fight. She arrived in the hatchway just in time to see the Terminator place its foot on Dieter's injured thigh, causing him to cry out again.
She shouted "no!" as she saw the pry bar come up for a blow and the Terminator turned toward her.
For Vera everything stopped in that moment—sound, breath, thought. A terribly burned face in which blazed red, glowing eyes turned to her, hesitated, then the Terminator began to bring the bar down toward the man on the deck.
Dieter swung the hammer, knocking the bar out of the Terminator's hand, then
brought it down on the T-101's knee. It crumpled, and at that moment Vera realized that the sound was… metallic.
As it adjusted its leg von Rossbach rolled free, coming up against the bulkhead, seeming to rise to his feet in one fluid motion. He grabbed the power cables that had been rigged to test the engine and hit the switch with his elbow as the Terminator lunged toward him, its big hands reaching for his throat.
Dieter pushed the live cables into its reaching hands and the Terminator almost flew backward to lie twitching on the deck. Instantly von Rossbach scrambled to the wall, took up an electric arc welder, and went to work on the twitching, recumbent form; he didn't have much time until it reset.
Vera sank to the deck with a little cry, her eyes so wide the whites showed all around, her hand to her mouth in horror.
Ignoring her, von Rossbach cut through the metal neckbone analogue, watching with grim satisfaction as the red lights behind the thing's eyes went out. Then he stood panting for a moment before he turned his attention to the frightened woman in the doorway.
"It isn't human," he said to her.
She looked up at him, uncomprehending.
Dieter knelt beside her and spoke very gently. "Look," he said, pointing. "You can see the metal. It wasn't a person."
She looked at the fallen Terminator, then turned to von Rossbach and back
again. "Not human," she said, her voice shaking.
"Are you all right?" Dieter asked her. He hoped she wouldn't go into shock. "Do you know who I am?"
Slowly Vera frowned. She was shocked, and badly frightened, but she was also very tough. "Of course I know who you are. I'm not an idiot! What the hell is that thing? Why does it look like you? And how the hell are we gonna get rid of the body?"
He leaned back and studied her, assessing her condition, and decided that she was going to be all right. As all right as anyone was after meeting their first Terminator anyway. "It's a Terminator," he explained. "Its mission was to kill me in order to protect that AI program that I told you about."
Dieter watched as her eyes turned to the fallen Terminator. Its skull showed metallic gleams through the mass of crushed flesh, and the spine was a mass of gleaming cut metal and sparking wires.
She licked her lips and then looked up at him. "How did it know where to find you?" she asked. The she straightened with a gasp as an idea struck her. "Are there others?" She grew pale. "Could there be another on the ship? I mean, right now?"
He laid a gentle hand on her shoulder and shook his head. "It's unlikely that there are more around right now. They're not all that common. As to how it found me"—he shook his head—"I don't know. It probably picked up something on the Internet and came looking."