Elizabeth Bear - Worldwired

The man with the gun wasn't big. He was about fifteen feet away, down the shallow slope of the aisle, and he held the gun in both hands at arm's length. She couldn't see his face clearly. He wore a Western-style business suit with a tie and silver cuff links that flashed in the overhead light, and his hands weren't shaking. Somebody sobbed behind Patty. She heard a big, resonant thump as the crowd heaved against the doorway, a beast scraping itself on the sides of a too-small den. She spread her hands out wider, and wondered if being shot was going to hurt much. She wondered if she was tough enough to hold the man off until Riel could vanish into the crowd of escaping bodies.

“Step aside,” he said, his English thick with an accent.

“No,” Patty answered, and dove for the gun.

Something kicked in her chest as she lunged forward. She thought it was a bullet, at first, but there was no flash yet and the gun hadn't popped. It was her heart, slow thunder a counterpoint to screams from people cowering near her. She shouted; it left her lips a slow roar, and nothing moved— nobody moved —for a thin slice of a second until she saw the gunman's eyes widen and his knuckle pale on the trigger.

Once, again. And then he was plunging aside, and Patty didn't see the bullets, couldn't hear the bullets, but it didn't matter because she had seen where the gun was pointed and seen how the barrel had kicked, and the part of her brain that could calculate starship trajectories at translight knew that second bullet wasn't coming anywhere close. The first one, though—

Patty couldn't catch bullets in her hand, the way she'd heard Jenny could. But she twisted hard, her hair flying into her eyes, and tried not to think that when she ducked the bullet was going to hit somebody in the mob behind her. Her knee shrieked as she wrenched herself out of the way, and then she found out that she wasn't really faster than a bullet after all.

She didn't fall down. She didn't even stop moving, as if some animal part of her brain knew that if she slowed for a second the next shot would end between her eyes. It didn't hurt at all, not a bit — just a thump against her left shoulder like whacking it against a door frame at a run, and white stars lighting her vision as it spun her half around, and her left arm gone, as if the impact had taken it off.

She was committed. She plunged at him, head-butt to his abdomen like a playground wrestling match, and there was more blood, everywhere, slippery-sticky and hot, on her face, in her mouth, sticking her hair across her eyes. She slammed him against the railing, felt something snap. They landed hard, and she brought her knee up, fighting dirty like Papa Fred had taught her, and she was fast, faster than she'd known she'd be, but he was faster somehow and he got his thigh in the way and he still had the gun in his hands and her arm wouldn't work and he clawed at her nose, her mouth, pushing her back. Her right hand locked around his wrist and yanked his hand off her face and—

The white stars turned red-black as he struck her across the temple, once, with the barrel of the gun.

Damn, this son of a bitch can move. Like a fencer, like a ballet dancer. He feints and I fall for it, but rather than cracking my forearm, his pistol rings off my metal arm like somebody whaled on a cold water pipe with a claw hammer. He grunts. I bet he felt that all the way up to his shoulder.

Unfortunately, it doesn't distract him enough to slow him down when I go for a sharp right jab. Fluid sidestep, faster than I can think, and he grabs my wrist and tries to put me over his shoulder in some kind of martial-arts throw. He reckons without the weight of my prosthesis throwing my center of gravity off, though, and I clothesline his throat as he tosses me. It doesn't stop me going over his shoulder, but he loses his grip and I roll with it instead of landing cripplingly hard, flat on my back. When I come up into the crouch he's gone straight down, vertical drop from his feet to his knees, and the gun is on the floor in front of him because he's clutching his throat with both hands, his eyes bugged out so far I can see the whites all the way around. I bet I crushed his trachea when I hit him.

I'm surprisingly okay with that.

But I don't have time to think about it long. Gunfire, two shots, from up where Patty and Constance were headed when I lost sight of them. And then three more shots, flat and close, that could be the guys on the podium snapping off a couple at me, or at Min. It's an easy decision; I dive after the dying guy's gun, squirm between two rows of desks, kicking a huddled dignitary in the head—“Pardon”—and risk a peek around the end of the row, trying to get a look up the aisle toward the doors.

I'm just in time to see Patty knock the gunman into the railing on the nearest section of seats and both of them go down. Riel hesitates, her fists pressed to her chest and clenched so tight I see her knuckles whiten from here.

My right hand knows how hers must feel. Fingernails bite my palm, and I turn my back on Patty and Riel, transfer the pistol to my meat hand, and turn around to see if I can help Min.

I'm just in time to hear a splintering crash and a surprised yelp that turns quickly into a moan. Min-xue's put his shoulder against the podium, and shoved, suddenly, hard, topping the whole damned thing over onto the gunman crouched behind it. Smart child: he keeps moving, too, diving off the stage with as much commitment as a swimmer kicking off. He tucks and rolls beautifully, and the gunman behind the long table pops up, handgun held in a police stance, tracking Min-xue like a pro. He snaps off his first shot, which misses, and waits the opportunity for a second, which I think won't.

The palm lock on the stolen handgun I've stolen back is sticky against my flesh. I hope to hell it's cracked. It is a nine-mil, semi-auto, caseless ammo in a horizontal magazine. I expose myself, level the gun, brace with my left hand, wishing it were my gun and the interface weren't trashed so I could lock on the threat scope in my left eye, and I double-tap the gunman right over the heart. He doesn't even have the decency to look shocked as he folds across the table, his weapon discharging randomly.

Min-xue's got a hell of a lot of trust. He never even looked back; he's vaulted the barrier and is crouched behind the PanChinese table. From the motion of his head and shoulders, he's shaking bodies, trying to find out if Premier Xiong is alive.

Fred's still bleeding under a table over there somewhere. God knows how bad Patty is hurt — I turn around in the aisle, the gun still braced, and freeze right where I am.

The last gunman has Riel, her arm twisted behind her back, his pistol pressed against her temple, using her body as a shield. Patty's sprawled at their feet, crosswise across the aisle, puddling blood staining the grass-green carpeting black.

I don't look at that, at Patricia. It can happen later, when I have time to deal with it. Instead, I look at the gunman, and at Riel's calm expression and tight set jaw.

Dammit, Connie. Why the hell didn't you run?

Which is when, suddenly, sharply, Richard's presence explodes back into my brain.

Min-xue tore kidskin and cloth in his haste to bare his own hands, and then to bare Xiong's throat. There was blood — a great deal of blood — and the ragged tear across the premier's scalp showed a glitter of white through the crimson. Min-xue tasted blood when he wiped the sweat from his face onto his sleeve. No breath stroked his fingers; the air was sickly and still.

He worked his mouth and spat, leaning to the side as his fingers slid and stuck in the mess of stringy blood smeared over the premier's skin. He didn't expect a pulse. That wound looked like the bullet had plowed through hair and flesh and bone, and Min-xue half suspected that if he lifted Xiong's head off the floor, it would leave a blood-pudding of brains behind.