The ship groaned again. Louder. More insistent. The deck beneath us shuddered, tilted another five degrees.
"Escape pods," Zorn said, already moving down the corridor. "This section should have emergency evacuation stations."
Should. If they hadn't been destroyed in the raider attack. If they hadn't been used already. If we could reach them before the structure failed completely.
I ran after him, my lungs burning from the smoke-filled air, my legs protesting the sprint after hours of surgery. The corridor was a nightmare of collapsed ceiling panels and sparking conduits, every step an obstacle course in the dark.
Zorn stopped suddenly. I nearly crashed into his back.
"What—"
"Listen."
I held my breath, straining to hear past the omnipresent groan of dying infrastructure. There, a rhythmic hissing sound. Air escaping. Hull breach nearby.
"This way," he said, changing direction. "Away from the breach."
We turned down a side corridor. More darkness, more debris. My shin connected with something solid and I bit back a curse, kept moving. No time to stop. No time for pain.
The evacuation station appeared in Zorn's scanner light—a recessed alcove with two escape pod hatches. One hung open, empty. Already launched.
But the second one showed green status indicators. Functional. Waiting.
"Inside," Zorn ordered, already working the manual release. The hatch opened with a hiss of equalizing pressure, revealing the cramped interior of a single-occupant escape pod. Maybe six feet in diameter. Barely enough room for one Zandovian.
Definitely not enough for two.
"You first," I said.
"Bea—"
"You're the Chief Medical Officer. Mothership needs you more than?—"
"We're both getting in." His voice carried absolute certainty. No room for argument. "Now."
He was right. Standing here debating while the ship collapsed around us was suicide. I climbed into the pod, pressed myself against the far curve of the hull. Zorn followed, his larger frame filling the remaining space entirely. We were pressed together, no room for modesty or personal space, his forest-green skin warm against mine.
He sealed the hatch. Initiated the launch sequence. The pod's systems came online, status indicators, life support, minimal propulsion.
"Brace yourself," he said.
The pod ejected with bone-jarring force, explosive bolts firing us away from the dying ship. Through the small viewport, I watched the refugee vessel crumble with sections breaking apart, atmosphere venting in frozen clouds, thewhole structure folding in on itself like a paper sculpture on fire.
We'd made it out with maybe thirty seconds to spare.
The pod tumbled through space, its stabilization systems fighting to correct our trajectory. Debris fields surrounded us with twisted metal, frozen atmosphere, the wreckage of both the refugee ship and the raiders who'd attacked it.
Zorn worked the minimal controls, trying to establish communications. Static answered him. The same harsh interference that had cut us off before.
"Mothership knows we're missing," he said. "They'll be searching."
"In a debris field spanning dozens of kilometers, with radiation interference making scanning difficult." I stated the reality we both understood. "They might not find us in time."
The pod's life support indicators glowed steady green. For now. But escape pods weren't designed for extended occupancy. We had maybe twelve hours of air if we were lucky. Less if the systems were damaged.
We were alone in the dark, drifting through debris, hoping Mothership's sensors could distinguish our tiny pod from the thousands of other metal fragments spinning through the void.
Not exactly promising odds.
