Jorec pressed the button next to the door, sending it sliding open. He made a quick glance to his right, barely seeing the white tops of the Stormtrooper's heads as they began to reach the second floor. A look to left yielded nothing but an empty hallway.
"OK, go!" he yelled to Lia as he stepped out into the hallway, his lightsaber snapping to life. She complied and began to run towards the fire escape.
Jorec began to quickly back away from his spot as the Stormtroopers rushed towards the sound of the lightsaber igniting. He glanced back, watching as Lia kept running, feeling that something bad was going to happen soon. He heeded the warning, swiftly walking backwards with his lightsaber in front of him. A single shot rang out from the stairwell in front of him, the red bolt being quickly deflected into the wall next to Jorec.
He turned around and ran towards Lia as his danger sense amplified, watching as she turned the corner leading to the fire escape. He also saw the white-armored Stormtroopers as they cut off the current exit. He quickly scanned the surrounding area for another chance to escape as the Stormtroopers raised their rifles to fire on the two escapees. As he pulled Lia into recess into the wall that led towards a maintenance droid closet, he realized that his only chance to escape would have to be try a fire escape on an upper floor, even though that meant prolonging the time spent in this apartment complex.
Blaster fire impacted on the walls and flew past the recess as Jorec held Lia close to him. She was trembling with fear, and Jorec really couldn't blame her. At the moment he was frightened as well. All of the other battles he had been in, there was always a more experienced fighter there with him, whether it was his old Master Merrick Fionst or the rebel pilot Rinoco. Now, it was just him, and he had to protect a non-combatant as well from several Imperial Stormtroopers that would not hesitate to kill either one of them. He knew the easy way to get out of this place; it was in the back of his mind, desperately trying to claw its way to the front, and waiting for him to implement it.
Yet he knew where the easy way would take him, he had heard the stories of Dark Jedi and Sith, about how they became completely consumed by the anger that powered them. He knew that if he ever gave in to the fear of dying and used it fuel his own Force powers, he would begin walking down that very path. And it wasn't a path that was easy to get off of…
"Stick close to me," Jorec calmly reminded Lia as he prepared to open up the way from the recess in the wall to the staircase. "We're going to get out this," he reassured her, hoping that his soothing words would be more than just an empty promise.
He popped out from behind his cover, his left hand extended towards the group of six Stormtroopers that had advanced less than a meter in the three seconds he had hid. The lead Stormtrooper felt what seemed to be a tremendous force slamming into his chest, sending him off balance and crashing into two of his subordinates. His finger flexed on the trigger, sending his shot into the ceiling. Jorec watched as the three troops topple into each other, bringing down the entire group with a simple use of the Force.
"Let's go Lia, up the staircase!" he exclaimed as he watched the group of Stormtroopers try and regain their footing. Lia complied, following up the staircase and onto the third floor of the building.
The third floor was thankfully free from Stormtroopers at the moment, but Jorec knew that the hard-to-escape soldiers would soon make their way up to their level, and they couldn't keep moving up the twelve-story building. As he looked at the walls next to him, he was reminded of an old dream that been a reoccurring dream during his early years on the planet.
Jorec reached the fire escape first, and had to quickly move out of the way as a barrage of blaster fire from the Stormtroopers stationed outside of the building. The realization that they were trapped sunk in as Jorec hung his head in shame. As he looked at Lia, he began to think he never should have gotten her involved in this whole mess, now both of them may very well be killed in the next few minutes.
"I've got an idea," Jorec said as a flash of inspiration happened in his brain. He jogged down another corridor and soon reached a medium-sized balcony that overlooked an empty parking lot.
"You have to joking," Lia replied as she looked down at the three-story drop that Jorec was seriously considering jumping down. "There's no way we can survive a fall like that, even if you are a Jedi!"
For a second, Jorec had to agree with her. He had used the Force before to slow his descent, but the fall from his firing perch on the Interrogator had been roughly two stories up and he didn't have to compensate for the additional weight of carrying Lia. "I think I can do it," Jorec replied. "Besides if it fails, it's either die up here or die down there. I going to have to carry you," Jorec added as he attached his lightsaber to his belt.
Lia took one more look down at the empty parking lot, thinking herself crazy for even thinking about going through with this, but as she heard the steady footsteps of the Stormtroopers in her head she consented. Jorec took a hold of her, his right arm supporting her head. "Hang on to me," he added, prompting Lia to wrap both of her arms tightly around his neck. I have a bad feeling about this, she thought as Jorec began to jump.
Several blaster rifle shots shattered the windows outside of the balcony, barely missing Jorec as he leapt off of the ledge. Lia's scream was added with his own as he desperately tried to use the force to slow their descent, and wasn't helping that Lia's death grip on him was nearly cutting off his circulation. Nearly a second into their fall, Jorec managed to succeed, slowing themselves down enough to survive the plunge they had taken. Unfortunately, it didn't slow them down completely. As Jorec landed, his left foot gave out, sending a burning pain throughout his leg. He collapsed under his and Lia's weight, barely managing to land on his back.
"You all right, Jorec?" he heard Lia ask as she stood up.
"Landing messed up my ankle," Jorec replied as he attempted to get back on his own feet. He was surprised to see her hand extend out to help him up, a gesture that he gladly accepted.
"Can you walk on it?" she asked as Jorec slowly put some of his weight upon the injured foot.
He winced as another shot of pain raced through his foot as he stood up, but he knew that he was lucky that it wasn't broken. "Walk, yes. Run, no," Jorec replied as he limped towards the parking lot. "They're still after us, though. Where's your landspeeder?"
"In the parking garage," Lia replied. "Third level, near the elevator."
"I hope it isn't badly guarded," Jorec remarked as he tried to use the Force to relieve the pain in his ankle, and was rewarded slightly by being able to put a little more pressure on it. He once again removed his lightsaber from his belt, and readily held in case the troopers found them. With that, Lia and him began jogging to the parking garage.
"I can't believe it," the Stormtrooper in front of the group said as he walked towards the balcony. "They jumped!" His feet crunched on broken glass as he stepped outside. "At least they're dead," he whispered. He peered down the edge, fully expecting to see two dead bodies on the ground, and was surprised to see the parking lot completely empty.
"What the…" he started as the other Stormtroopers joined him. "Alert the squads on the ground," he ordered the communications officer. "I don't know how, but they got away."
"Coast clear?" Jorec asked as he walked up to Lia, who was surveying the third floor from behind the door. Jorec was a few steps behind her, glancing down the staircase for any sign of pursuit. Outside of the window, he could see several Stormtroopers scout the area, and he knew that it was only a matter of time before they checked the parking garage.
"I think so," Lia replied. At least the way to my vehicle is, I can't see the whole lot, however."
"It'll have to do," Jorec said as he moved past her and into the actual garage, the somewhat dim lighting working to his disadvantage if there were any troops in there waiting for an ambush. Satisfied that the garage was indeed empty, he motioned for Lia to join him as they jogged towards her landspeeder, a simple blue model created by a local manufacturer. "Get in," he told her, motioning to the landspeeder's passenger seat.
"Can't even drive my own landspeeder?" she jokingly asked, despite their situation.
"I think I'd be the better driver," Jorec replied as he entered the car. "I know exactly where we're headed, and I think I have a better chance of getting through their little security net. Just stay down until I tell you that it's safe."
"I better get in the back then," she replied.
Jorec punched in the landspeeder's security code that Lia provided for him, and took several deep breaths. They were almost out of this, all they needed to do was get past the Stormtroopers stationed at the front and travel the seven kilometers from the apartment complex to the spaceport. Jorec knew that it wasn't going to be easy though, and he quickly fastened his safety harness. The first kilometer was probably going to be the hardest, he thought as he prepared to exit the parking garage.
JT-5001 casually watched the entrance of the parking garage with the rest of the group he was assigned, his commanding officer holding his light repeating blaster close to him. He wished that he could be at his own home watching Greelom Shariik than being on some mission to kill a Jedi, and what appeared to be his girlfriend. It wasn't the Jedi killing that bothered JT-5001, but the fact that the woman had also been marked for death. As far as he knew, she had no criminal record and had done nothing wrong.
A loud humming noise brought the Stormtrooper out of his thoughts, and he raised his blaster rifle towards the entrance.
Blaster fire flashed around the landspeeder as Jorec made a quick right out of the parking garage. The enclosed speeder provided great cover for him, but the blaster shots impacting on the hull of the vehicle couldn't be healthy. She's going to kill me, Jorec thought. If they don't do the job for her first, he added as the transparisteel window cracked as a blaster shot barely missed hitting it head on.
Jorec plowed through the group of Stormtroopers firing at him, hitting two of them and forcing the rest to scatter. By the time the scattered troops and the rest of the group was alerted to Jorec's escape, the blue landspeeder was already gone from the building.
"OK, I think it's safe now," Jorec told Lia, who slowly sat up in the backseat. Jorec reached into his pocket and pulled out his comlink. "Rinoco, I hope you have the Dream ready to go, we're headed your way."
"'We're'?" Rinoco asked? "She's with you?"
"For the moment," Jorec replied. "They tried to kill us both in there, a resident alerted them to my presence and they probably sent about half of Gevest's garrison after us."
"I heard about that," Rinoco said as he checked the latest readouts. "They've ordered a grounding of all flights in a ten kilometer radius. Getting out of here's going to be a pain."
"Is there any chance of us getting out of here alive?" Lia asked, not wanting to be left out of the conversation.
"From what we've been through," Rinoco answered. "I'd say either luck or the Force is definitely with us. I think we stand a pretty good chance."
"Keep the ship running, Rinoco," Jorec told the Xexto. "If nothing extremely bad happens, we should be there in a few minutes."
"I copy," Rinoco replied as he ended the communication.
"Who was that, Rinoco guy?" Lia asked.
"A friend of mine, and a pilot. He was one of the few survivors of the crash," Jorec answered her question.
"Crash!"
"There's a lot of stuff I wanted to tell you before we were so rudely interrupted," Jorec replied. "I'll finish telling you when we get to the ship."
"There's something I need to tell you, too, Jorec," she added, some slight nervousness in her voice.