Chapter 4

Stepping out into the black polished corridors, I let my eyes rummage over the empty hallways that were constructed of a variation of dark metals and a very glossy black floor that reflected the ceiling lights.

'Thank god we managed to get out of there'.

All of us began to run down the long hallways, until we made it to the shipment bay windows. Looking through the large rectangular glass pane, I was met with an uncanny sight. A space ship sat in the landing bay, the same strange white armoured men from before grouped around it.

"There she is." Han said proudly, admiring his ship from the corner of the window.

Luke then stepped aside and began to speak into his device again, less urgency in his voice compared to the situation we were in moments before.

"You came in that thing?' Asked Leia, visibly surprised by the size of the ship, " Your braver than I thought." She spoke, admiration evident in her voice.

We continued our way down to where we last saw the weird space ship thingy, and unfortunately ran into the white army troopers, who were all gathered in a group around a corridor corner.

"Its them! Blast'em!" I heard one yell to the others as they all turned around to face us at once.

Standing his ground, Han pulled out his gun and fired it the group of men. Hitting its mark, one of the men fell to the floor, his body now limp and still. Han and Chewbacca then proceeded to sprint after the ones fleeing, screaming like warriors as they went. But my gaze wasn't on them, instead it was locked onto the body lying still on the floor.

'Is he dead?!'

"He certainly has courage." Stated Leia, a small smile making its way onto her glossy lips.

Ignoring Leia's remark I walked towards the man on the floor. My heart beating increasing with every step I took. Keeping my distance, I bent down and reached towards the figure now only an arms length away from me.

A weird vision began to corrupted my thoughts. The image was blurry, but one thing stood out the most, the white ominous helmet of a soldier, much like the one in front of me, lying on the ground surrounded by hundreds of other bodies just like it. But they weren't the only bodies to be seen, the bodies of what looked to be a mix of villagers and people wearing lavish articles of clothing, littered the floor until not a single slither of the surface beneath their forms could be seen. Blood covered them all from head to toe, creating streams of red around their bodies, like a mosaic of blood and death.

"What are you doing?"

I jumped, completely caught off guard from the sudden sound of a voice from beside me. I turned to my right and looked up, Luke gave me a quizzical look, glancing every now and then between me and the body on the floor.

"Is he dead?" I responded, my blood going a few degrees cooler as the words slipped off of my tongue.

"Y-yeah, didn't you see Han take him out?" He replied matter-of-factly, the look on his face implied he didn't understand why I was so taken aback by the dead body lying on the floor.

Realising that I was mere inches away from a dead body, I quickly stumbled back towards where Luke and Leia were standing, not once taking my eyes off of the lifeless corpse on the floor.

"Hey, are you okay?" Leia asked, concern etched onto her face.

"No, I'm not okay," I breathed, "I have no idea where the hell I am, - who you strange people are, - and now there is a dead body lying in front of me!" I raced the words pouring out of me like an over flowing sink of water.

This was my breaking point.

"Come on, we don't have time for this, we need to get going as soon as possible!" Expressed Luke, grabbing both Leia and I's hands and running off in the opposite direction as Han and Chewbacca. It wasn't long before more of those troopers caught up with us and began to fire the deadly lasers at our retreating figures. Letting go of Leia's hand, Luke turned swiftly and fired a shot from his own gun he had attached to his waist, missing the troopers heads by about a foot. We all kept on running, as the troops were hot on our heels, until we suddenly came to a dead end. The middle section of the walkway was absent, leaving a deadly drop in its place. We were so high up, the only thing I could see was darkness in the black abyss down below.

Almost toppling over the edge, me and Leia quickly grabbed Luke and pulled him back away from the edge.

'What now?' I thought to myself in distress, eyeing the distance between us and the platform on the other side. There was no way we could jump that, it was too far. We also couldn't turn back as the troops would get us.

"I think we took a wrong turn." Stated Luke, also staring down into the darkness below.

It was then that I heard the dreadful noise of one of the lasers being fired behind us that I quickly moved out of the way, only just slightly missing the shot. Luke spun around and began firing back, whilst Leia punched a couple keys into the key pad, causing the door to fall down shut.

"There's no lock!" She cried, raising her hands and shrugging her shoulders in an urgent matter.

Gabbing her arm, Luke twirled her over to my side of the door and turned away from the control panel that controlled the access to the door. In one single shot he blew up the panel, thick grey smoke rose from the fried up wires and metal.

"That'll hold for a while." He spoke coolly, now looking at the ledge across from us.

"Quick! We've got to get across. Find the controls to extend the bridge!" Ordered Leia, clinging desperately onto his arm.

"I think he just fried the control panel for the bridge." I spoke, annoyance clear in both my voice and my expression.

"Well, what would you have wanted? To be killed by stormtroopers?" He barked back, equally just as annoyed.

"It doesn't really look like were going to make it either way!" I yelled back, letting go of all of my bottled up anger.

"Enough!"

We were both silenced by Leia's angry shout. Both me and Luke took one last look at each other, before turning away to look for a possible escape route. Neither of us saying anything, too afraid to even try as Leia's scolding tone made us both cower away, not wanting to make her angrier then she already was.

"They're coming through, we don't have time to stand here and argue, we'll have time for that later. She spoke with resolve, glancing between me and Luke, 'that is if we have later." She mumbled the last part to herself.

Once again the red laser beams were fired at us from afar. The 'stormtroopers' as Luke put them, were standing on another ledge a few metres up, shooting their guns at us. The red lasers danced around our bodies as we tried our best to stay out of their shooting range. Every now and then Luke would step out and fire a few lasers back, one actually hitting a guy, causing him to fall down to his untimely death. Well, that is unless he was dead when he fell.

Passing the gun to Leia, Luke began to unravel what looked to be a grappling hook from his belt.

"Here they come!" Informed Leia, as the bottom of the door behind us rose slightly revealing the armoured boots of the stormtroopers behind it.

Luke then managed to swing the grappling hook around a metal handle located above, and grabbed onto Leia, then looked to me signalling me to grab onto him. Stepping back a bit it shook my head indicating that I won't do it, causing Luke to grow agitated and restless.

"I don't have all day, get on!" He said, tilting his head to the side to encourage me to move.

Giving in to his demands, I grabbed onto him. My arms wrapped securely around his neck. Leia then leaned her head towards Luke and gave him a small peck on his cheek, making him turn to look at her in surprise, a rosy tint now surfacing on his tanned skin.

For some reason that small exchange bothered me a little. Resulting in me looking away towards the other side of the bridge.

It wasn't long after that Luke had pushed off of the platform and swung us all to the other side, all the while I kept my eyes firmly shut, not wanting to look down at the huge gap we were swinging over.

In no time at all, I felt my feet come into contact with the floor, my eyes flying open at the sudden sensation of the hard, solid surface beneath my feet. I breathed out deeply, not even knowing I was holding my breath until just now, and smiled to myself knowing that our escape from those Stormtroopers was successful. Sparing one final look at the stormtroopers, who were now lying on the floor in an attempt to shoot us, we made a mad dash for our escape.