Three armored military vehicles, emblazoned with the symbol of the Human Resistance and the Resistance Army, burst in through the gates of the remote Skynet base and drove into the compound and proceeded to stop in the open area in front of the main building in the base.

The vehicles had entered in a single-file formation, but the three armored vehicles came to a stop when they were some distance from the building—a distance of about ten meters away from the large bay door that served as the entrance of the two-story building—the two armored vehicles following behind the first one immediately spread out on either side of the leading vehicle, and all the vehicles finally came to a stop, standing side by side in a single line beside one another with the first armored vehicle in the middle of the formation.

All the four doors on each of the armored vehicles opened and many stern, serious and tough-looking soldiers in Resistance Army uniforms rushed out and immediately took cover around the vehicles while also aiming their modified plasma rifles at both the closed bay door and the several glass and metal windows of the main building.

Two men stepped out in front of the two front doors of the armored vehicle in the middle.

One of the two men—who was also the driver of the first armored vehicle—was Barnes. He was one of the high-ranking officers in the Resistance Army and also a fighter in the Tech-Com Unit. He was also one of John Connor’s closest friends.

He was a tall, muscular, black man. After he had taken aim at the building from where he had taken cover behind the open door of driver’s side of the armored vehicle, he—like the rest of the soldiers who had come out of the three armored vehicles—looked towards the second man, and seemed to be waiting for further instructions on how to proceed from him.

“John, what’s your order? It seems like we came a bit late. The fight has already started.” Barnes asked the second man.

The second man was John Connor. He was the current leader of the Human Resistance, and a man who was admired and revered by most of the remnants of humanity as a legendary hero and the destined savior of humanity from the subjugation of the machines.

John Connor was also a tall man who looked like he was in his early forties, but the thing that most people meeting him for the first time would notice first about him was the large, prominent scar that covered a substantial area on the left side of his face.

John had the hard look of a man who had experienced and survived many difficult and challenging situations in his life. He seemed to have a charisma and charm about him which made the center of attention of all the soldiers arranged around him. His charisma did not seem to be even slightly hampered by the intense, intimidating aura—the tales of glorious feats he had accomplished while he led humanity in their war against the machines had greatly boosted this charismatic and intimidating aura—which he also had around him.

John Connor stood calmly beside the armored vehicle, not even bothering to take cover as he scanned his surroundings.  He had already noticed the strangeness in this hidden and remote Skynet base even before the rest of the soldiers. He had expected their armored vehicles to encounter a lot of plasma gunfire from the Terminators, Hunter-Killers and the other defense facilities in the base, but their entrance had been unexpectedly peaceful and uneventful.

The base seemed to be empty of the machines. The only sign of machine presence that John noticed in the whole base came from the large, two-story main building that occupied about eighty percent of the space in the small base.

As he observed the main building, he soon figured out what was happening in the base and the reason why they had not encountered any armed resistance during their entrance into the base from the things he could see happening inside the main building through the few glass windows of the second floor of the building.

He could see several shadowy silhouettes moving about or running from place to place inside both the first and second floors of the building. He could also see and hear the frequent flashes of light and the sounds made by plasma weapons and loud noises from large objects falling down or crashing into other objects. The things he was seeing and hearing made it very obvious to him and the rest of the soldiers outside that a fierce battle was currently on-going inside the second floor of the building.

Surprisingly, from the arrangement and movements of the silhouettes, John quickly judged that the on-going battle seemed to have involved all the machine forces in the base, and they seemed to be fighting against only a single person who was taking on the entire squad of Terminators and Hunter-Killers.

He raised his hand and gestured for the soldiers to remain in place. “Everyone! Don’t move! We will all wait here. Stay where you are, but make sure to maintain your focus and aim.”

“John, don’t we need to go in. I thought we came here to rescue the high-value target? Won’t he be in danger if we just wait here and do nothing?” Barnes asked, frowning.

*****

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