Chapter 24
Tilyer peered out of the turbolift car into the nearly deserted corridor beyond. Red emergency lights pulsated epileptically overhead and an automated female voice repeated instructions to abandon ship. A pair of crewmen fled down the hallway, hardly even giving him a second look in their mad flight for the escape pods.
"Okay, it's clear," he said, motioning Linia out after him.
She grimaced, her breath coming in beleaguered pants, "It's getting harder to breathe in here."
"Yeah, I know. We must be venting atmosphere somewhere. Let's hurry up and get out of here." He hefted his blaster and moved out into the hallway, looking around once more before cautiously trotting down the passage toward where he knew a bank of escape pods was located.
They continued on down the corridor, casting furtive glances down side passages as they went, but the ship seemed to be deserted.
"What do you think Lieutenant Del'Goren was talking about?" Linia asked as they went.
"I don't know," Tilyer said breathlessly, "but if I had to guess, it has something to do with Commander Venka. I can't say for sure."
"Why do you say that?"
"Just something he said after one of our missions. I don't really know the details of it, and to tell you the truth I don't think I want to. I just want to get the hell out of here. Speaking of which, look."
Linia smiled with relief, looking ahead to where the hallway emptied out before an array of escape pod hatches. When they drew closer, however, that smile quickly faded. Each and every one of the escape pods had already been jettisoned.
"Damn," Tilyer hissed, looking around in frustration.
"What are we going to do?"
"The only other bank of escape pods on this deck is located on the other side of the ship. We're going to have to start back-tracking."
"I don't know if I'll be able to make it," Linia wheezed.
Tilyer ignored her comment. Instead he motioned for her to follow as he headed back toward the main corridor. Suddenly he stopped in his tracks.
"What is it?" Linia asked
He was silent, peering down toward the curve in the hallway.
"I thought I heard something." He paused, listening intently.
At that moment a trio of stormtroopers rounded the corner at a jog. They paused momentarily, lifting their rifles to their shoulders to open fire. The hallway erupted with a hail of blaster bolts as Tilyer roughly shoved Linia toward a side passage, barreling after her with iridescent laser fire nipping at his heels.
"How'd they find us?" Linia gasped.
"I don't know. Just go!"
Tilyer paused a moment to lean around the corner and trigger a pair of shots back at the approaching troopers. One of the blasts caught the lead trooper in the leg just below the pelvis. He sagged against the wall for support, but his wounded member gave out, and he toppled to the floor with a clatter. Tilyer didn't wait to see if the others slowed up. He whipped back around the corner and took off after Linia.
He caught up to her soon enough and motioned her down through another hallway.
"What are we going to do?" she gasped.
"We gotta keep moving and make our way to the other side of the ship."
"How do we even know there are any pods left at all?" she protested.
"Don't worry about it, just keep moving!"
They headed off, rounding another corner. Linia sprinted down the hallway as Tilyer paused, turning back to unleash a volley of fire as their pursuers came into view. The hastily aimed shots missed, but it forced the stormtroopers to seek cover in a side passage as blaster bolts tore through the area they had just occupied. Tilyer didn't wait for them to reemerge and took off down the hallway after Linia.
After a brief flight the corridor dead-ended into a T-intersection, but he could find no sign of Linia. He looked both ways, desperately trying to decide which direction to go. Suddenly blaster fire splashed off the bulkhead to the right, throwing up a cloud of pinkish smoke as Linia came tearing out from a side hallway, multiple bolts coruscating behind her.
"Go!" she shouted breathlessly, running toward Tilyer full-tilt.
Tilyer turned to run back the other way just as three stormtroopers appeared from out of the side passage behind Linia. Almost simultaneously the two troopers who had been pursuing them previously appeared down the hall from where he had just emerged. Tilyer put on a desperate burst of speed and headed in the only direction he could, dodging into another passage, this one considerably larger than the last. As he skidded to a stop, he realized where he was—the promenade, the main corridor that ran down the spine of the ship.
Linia appeared behind him a moment later, chest heaving with exertion. She roughly shoved him into motion again, and the two of them thoughtlessly took off down the hall. Any sense of direction he had previously held had been obliterated by the headlong flight through the Enforcer's innards. His mind raced nearly as fast as his legs, desperately trying to get his bearings and figure out which way to go next. He wasn't allowed that chance, however, as the trailing stormtroopers appeared behind them. To make matters worse, up ahead he caught sight of one of the ship's huge blast doors as it began to grind downward over the hallway. He just gritted his teeth and barreled ahead anyway.
"Keep going!" he shouted over his shoulder.
"We're not going to make it!" Linia yelled from behind.
Tilyer ignored her and kept going, striving to squeeze every ounce of speed he could from his straining muscles. When the door was barely half a meter off the ground, he kicked his legs out from under himself, sliding underneath the blast doors in a blur of descending steel. He twisted around to see Linia take a head-first dive beneath the door. The pursuing stormtroopers opened up, sending bolts of iridescent energy through the hallway, into the floor, and against the blast doors, but none of them hit the blur of olive gray that shot underneath the slab of steel. Linia slid to a stop just as the doors ground shut, drowning out the whine of discharging blasters.
Tilyer rolled over, laboriously lifting his blaster rifle to his shoulder. He rose to his feet as fast as he could and triggered a shot into the blast door controls. The computer display fizzled in a shower of sparks and then died. Tilyer pumped another blast into it for good measure, then moved over to Linia and offered her his hand.
"C'mon, we need to keep moving."
She looked up at him wheezing, her breath coming in ragged pants. For a moment she looked as if she was about to refuse, as if she wanted to say that she couldn't go on anymore, but she just nodded and took his hand.
"How . . . did they know . . . where to find us?" she gasped, trying to catch her breath as Tilyer hauled her up.
"Someone has to be plugged into the security system. They must be communicating over commlinks."
"You think it's Commander Venka?"
"You can bet on it. Come on, we need to get out of here. That door isn't going to hold them for long."
He started to head off down the hallway, but Linia stopped him.
"Do you know how to get to the escape pods from here?"
"We'll work our way around," he reassured her.
"We can't keep running blind like this," she protested. "They'll box us in sooner or later."
"And we can't just sit here either. We've got to keep moving!" Behind them the blast door shuddered. "They'll be through any minute, come on!"
Linia's next statement died on her lips as he grabbed her arm and pulled her after him and down the corridor.
Tilyer barreled down the hallway, frantically searching for a route that would get them closer to the escape pods on the other side of the ship. His lungs were on fire and his legs had turned to jelly, but still he kept up the headlong pace. A few seconds later he reached the passage he had been looking for, but another sight made him stop in his tracks.
Ahead of them barely ten meters down the hallway stood Commander Venka flanked on either side by a quartet of stormtroopers. His face twisted into a vicious sneer as he leveled his pistol at the two of them. "The game's up," he growled. "Now it's time for you to die."
