Read Online Asimov's SF, September 2010 by Dell Magazine Authors - Free Book Online Page A

his jacket and aimed it at my head.
    Clarise moved in front of me, a mostly futile maneuver, since she was two inches shorter than I was and only half as broad. Sharken's handling was good. He'd have no trouble hitting us both.
    Time seemed to freeze. Darkness roiled at the edges of my mind. I willed my vision to focus. I couldn't afford a blackout, not now, not yet.
    A gaudy wall clock ticked off seconds with my own unsteady breathing as counterpoint. I wanted to arch my back and rage at the heavens. I wanted to curl up and puke on the floorboards. Anything to ward off the gaping helplessness that had haunted me since Emmeline's death.
    Her face lay before me, hair matted to the floor with her own blood. It had been a man like Sharken who'd killed her; a South American macho who thought that by threatening my wife he'd learn information that I didn't have to give.
    My hands finally twisted free of the coarse rope that had bound them. My eyes locked on the barrel of the gun pointed at my daughter, then traced the path from Sharken's knuckles, along his arm, into his face. A fierce intensity, almost laughter, tightened my throat.
    I was not helpless this time.
    My body uncurled like a striking rattlesnake. Sharken fired. Pain flared in my shoulder, but it felt muted, gauzy. If I'd been charging him the bullet would have struck my chest, but I'd sprung sideways, pushing Clarise out of the way and diving into a thug who doubled over with my shoulder in his gut. I grabbed his gun. Didn't bother to pry it out of his hand. Just aimed for Sharken and pressed my finger against his on the trigger.
    It was a clean shot, one of the ones you feel hitting the target before the gun even kicks in your hand. Sharken went down without a sound.
    Thugs tackled me from all directions. I had no strength to resist them. Dimly, I heard Clarise screaming. Even more dimly, I felt the pressure of a gun barrel beneath my jaw. None of it mattered. It was like a dream.
    Reality surged back with an Asian teenager kicking open the conference room door. Chen-Chi stood silhouetted against the brightly lit bookshelves, her feet planted with the conviction of a war goddess. Against her stomach, an assault rifle gleamed. She raised it to position and fired.
    Her posture was dreadful. The kick from the first bullet nearly knocked her to the floor. Her aim was bad, too, but it didn't matter because she was spreading her shots along the ceiling, shattering tiles and fluorescent lights, sending a rain of rubble on the throng. The final glass fragments tinkled to the ground a half-second after the last shot rang in my ears. I began to understand why my future self might have fallen in love with that woman.
    "Everybody back off,” Chen-chi said in a voice of superb authority. “Or the next round goes below the belt."
    Like pack animals, Sharken's thugs cowered in the absence of their leader. Any man in the room could have taken Chen-chi down, but none of them tried. The hands that had been restraining me pulled away so abruptly that I stumbled.
    "In about five minutes,” Chen-Chi continued, “this building is going to explode. If you run, you might make it out alive. So move!"
    The resulting evacuation was so chaotic it was entertaining. I wanted to grin, but the blackout I'd been holding at bay closed in too quickly.
    After vision had faded, but before I completely lost consciousness, I heard high-heeled shoes skitter across the floor. Slender hands grabbed me as I fell. “Typical,” Clarise grunted as she struggled to lift my weight. “You'd think after all these years, he'd know better than to black out over hardwood."
    * * * *
    I woke on the couch in Clarise's apartment. The sky behind the window blinds was dark, but I suspected dawn was not far off. Chen-chi lay curled in the chair opposite me, her feet pulled up on the cushions. She was asleep.
    Down the hallway, Clarise's voice rose and fell in sharp tones. I walked toward it. Through the kitchen doorway