Terminator Salvation: From the Ashes by Timothy Zahn Page B

street.
    Unless Orozco was planning to block that line of fire with his own body. Was that what the little push had meant? Was Kyle supposed to duck into shelter, and try to take down as many of the attackers as he could before one of them got Orozco? Or him? Or Star?
    There was another tug at Kyle’s arm, even more insistent than the first.
    “What?” Kyle bit out, glaring at her.
    Her eyes met his evenly, her hands tracing out a single word. Empty.
    Kyle frowned. Empty? What was that supposed to—?
    And then he got it, and his eyes lifted from Star to the gun pointed at them from down the street.
    To the gun, and the faint hints of light he could see peeking coyly through the revolver’s cylinder.
    The gun was empty.
    Kyle looked back at the gang leader, still bearing down on Orozco. Was his gun empty, too? The kid was holding it low, pointed at Orozco’s waist instead of his chest or head, too low for Kyle to see if its cylinder was also empty.
    But it almost didn’t matter. The minute the boy reached them and got his hands on either Orozco’s Beretta or Kyle’s Colt, he would have a loaded gun. If Kyle was going to do something, he had to do it right now.
    The kid was nearly there, his free hand reaching toward Orozco’s holster. Setting his teeth, Kyle took a quick step to his right, ducked down behind the burro’s side, and yanked out his Colt.
    “Freeze!” he ordered.
    The gang leader’s head snapped toward Kyle, his eyes burning with surprise and rage, his gun swiveling toward this sudden new threat. As he did so, Orozco took half a step forward.
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    And in a haze of motion that Kyle never did completely figure out, the gang leader was spun 180
    degrees around, his gun hand yanked up behind his back with the revolver pointed harmlessly down the street, and Orozco’s left arm snaking its way around the kid’s neck to press tightly against his throat.
    “Like my friend says,” Orozco said. “Freeze.”
    “Let him go!” the gunman down the street snarled, jabbing his empty revolver threateningly toward Orozco as he and his friend unglued themselves from their positions and charged toward the would-be victims.
    There was a sudden muffled crack from the direction of the gang leader’s twisted arm. The kid cried out in pain, and his revolver thudded onto the broken pavement. An instant later, Orozco had released the kid’s wrist, drawn his Beretta, and had his arm crooked around the front of the leader’s face with the gun pointed toward the two incoming teens.
    “We only say freeze twice,” he warned quietly.
    The boys came to a sudden halt.
    “Join the group,” Orozco invited them, twitching the Beretta’s muzzle toward the five who were still spread out in front of him. “Put the gun on the ground first.”
    Silently, the two teens complied. Orozco’s Beretta followed them the whole way over to the rest of the pack, and now there were seven sets of hate-filled glares washing at Kyle over the muzzle of his Colt.
    “Here’s how it’s going to work,” Orozco said into the brittle silence. “You’re going to put down your weapons— all of them—and you’re going to walk away. And you’re not going to come back.
    Ever.”
    The leader began cursing. Orozco tightened his grip slightly around the other’s neck, and the swearing abruptly stopped.
    “That’s the easy way,” Orozco continued. “The hard way is that we make sure you don’t bother us again by killing all of you.” He cocked back the hammer on the Beretta. “Right now.”
    Kyle felt sweat gathering on the back of his neck. He’d seen Orozco use this same threat on other gangs, and so far all of them had backed down.
    What if this one didn’t? Would Kyle be able to cold-bloodedly open fire on other human beings if they decided to make a fight of it? Even to save his own life?
    Beside him, he felt Star brush his arm…and with that, all the questions and indecision faded into a cold determination. Because he wouldn’t