The Union sergeant hadn’t seen saw the attack coming. He was long dead before his brain registered that two bullets had punctured his skull. Kline fired two more shots as he dove for cover behind the rows of bunk beds. One bullet slammed into the elevator door. The other hit one of Hector’s captors in the shoulder.
Both soldiers shoved Hector to the ground and hustled for cover. Hector fell behind the wounded soldier and they hunched low behind one of the lower bunks. The soldier cursed and grabbed at the wound.
“Give me your rifle!” said Hector.
“No…way!” the soldier grunted.
The other soldier dove across the aisle. He fumbled with his datapad, but in his haste to call for reinforcements he neglected to stay low enough to remain out of Kline’s line of fire. As the soldier lifted the datapad up to his ear a bullet tore through his hand and splintered the datapad into shards. A second shot cut the soldier’s scream short. He slumped over.
The wounded soldier at Hector’s side froze. He stared at his fallen comrade across the aisle. Hector wrenched the assault rifle from his hands and fired haphazard, wild shots in Kline’s direction.
“I need your datapad!” hissed Hector.
The soldier was still shaking his head when a bullet ripped through his neck. Hector fired another stream of bullets back at Kline before digging into the soldier’s protective vest. As soon as his fingers grasped the datapad Hector scrambled for the elevator.
Ping! Ping! Ping! Shots ricocheted off the wall behind him, but he made it.
The elevator door slid shut. On the other side of the room, Kline checked his watch. Five minutes, forty-seven seconds. No time for a firefight with a rival timeslinger. He had to get to the subassembly before the spider nuke obliterated the Exodus ship and its production facility.
Kline bolted for the corridor that would lead him to the ship’s power core. Operation Yamato’s final minutes were about to unfold.
