Instead, it gleamed.

Red eyes flickered.

Battling against the terrible damage it had sustained in the blast, the T-600 struggled to rise. Directives screamed for response. Servos whined and hydraulics pumped. But internal mechanics had been mortally impacted. That did not keep the Terminator from trying to stand.

Oblivious to the dogged determination of the severely impaired bipedal machine below, a flight of A-10 Warthogs roared past overhead, coming in low and slow. Unlovely and deadly, disdaining the sleek aerodynamics of much faster but less lethal aircraft, they began chewing up the ground in front of them with heavy cannon fire and rockets.

Instead of governmental insignia that had long since ceased to have meaning or validity, they were clad in a riot of colors and flurry of graffiti that reflected the tastes and attitudes of those who flew and serviced them: all of it wild, much of it obscene.

Popping up out of the ground, a single anti-aircraft weapon tracked, took aim, and fired. Striking one of the Warthogs behind its armor and hitting the vulnerable rear-mounted engines, it blew the Resistance fighter out of the sky. Before it could zero in on a second attacker, another aircraft hit it with a guided bomb that left only a smoking crater where the defensive weapon had once stood.

As the Warthogs whirled and danced overhead to provide cover, a flurry of helicopters appeared. Touching down, they began to disgorge squads of Resistance fighters clad in a mismatched array of uniforms, hunting gear, and civilian clothes. The attackers were armed with a hodgepodge of unusually hefty weapons that were as varied as the mix of military and civilian choppers that had transported them. Not one of the assault group would have passed muster in a proper military parade. On the other hand, all of them were alive.

One of the helicopter’s landing skids set down directly on the skull of the T-600 that had been patrolling the dish array, crushing the metal and pressing it deep into the ground. Reacting automatically to the proximate presence of human feet, the crippled killing machine still struggled to strike back. Its critically damaged servos whined loudly.