YSS Eucharis - Zero-G Passageway
Sienna's pulse pounded rapidly in her head as she pumped her legs, sprinting down the passageway after vaulting over couches and tables in the recreation room. Her breath was coming in ragged heaves, and she still felt like her mind was not completely clear of the hazy, blurred sensation.
Then her blood went cold as she dug in her heels, skidding to a stop right at the edge of the zero-G passageway, waving her arms to keep from teetering in. She'd run the wrong way.
It was too late to do anything about that now. Turning around would cost her precious time, and almost certainly run her straight back to her captors. She'd have to find another way around. Panicked, she looked around frantically, up and down the cylindrical passageway, behind her, at the ceiling, the baseboards of the room, the walls. Anything. She had seconds to decide, and it was over.
She bit her lip and tightened her grip on her weapon, and took a couple of steps back from the edge, holding her breath. Hopefully she could launch herself to the opposite wall with enough momentum to kick off of it and double back a deck below as quickly as possible. With luck, the few crew members aboard would follow where they thought she went and leave the cargo bay door unguarded.
With a double step, she launched herself into the open void and felt the previously unnoticed pull of gravity release her, sending her flying across. She panicked further when she realized that rotating herself in flight was almost impossible without anything to push off of; if she didn't get her feet in front of her she was going to hit the opposite wall face first.
She brought her knees to her chest, curling up in a ball, but the act of doing so actually caused her to spin downward instead. She impacted the white cushion on the wall on the back of her shoulders. Thankfully, the cushion dampened most of her momentum, bringing her to a slow drift away rather than a hard richochet. At that moment a sudden, explosive series of earth-rending bangs reverberated throughout the ship, and in her peripheral vision she saw heavy-looking blast doors slamming shut over passageways all up and down the passageway in the blink of an eye. They were trying to trap her.
A quick look at the lights and arrows running the length of the vertical shaft indicated to her that she was suspended facing downward. Ahead at the end of the passageway there were a pair of small doors that did not appear to be armored. Tucking her legs beneath her, she pushed off of the cushion and sailed downwards towards them.
Reaching out as she approached, she grabbed onto the handle of one and stopped herself, turning it much harder than she intended to in her adrenaline rush. It didn't budge. She tried the other one, same result. The second, however, echoed a bit when the latch struck the lock. There was some space behind it; how much, she didn't know.
She was running out of time. The passageway ended below her, and the other ways out above were now sealed. They would be upon her soon. She tried to turn the latch on the second door again, harder, more frantically, two, three, four times, each time more rapidly. "Come on, god damn it!" she screamed at the locked hatch.
A third hatch caught her eye just below her that she hadn't noticed before, bigger than the other two, and looking more as if it were designed to accommodate humanoids, at least if they weren't claustrophobic. Her options dwindling, she pulled herself along the handholds down to it, and felt a rush of very short-lived relief as the latch slid open effortlessly and opened, revealing a dark, narrow crawl space.
She placed the knife between her teeth and bit down, wriggling into the shaft. She felt heavy again all of a sudden as the force of gravity renewed its hold on her. The space was barely wide enough to accommodate her, and she could only crawl on her stomach, her shoulders scrunched together. She tried to look back over her shoulder at the open hatch, but it was difficult to see.
As her feet dangled out of the hatch, she felt around for the door with her toes, and upon finding it, hooked it with her boot and pulled it shut with a quick jerk, getting her feet clear just as it slammed closed, leaving her in very dim light.
Immediately she started to slither forward, pulling herself along on her elbows. Her jacket, still tied about her waist, snagged on something. Rather than bother to free her coat, she instead wriggled her hips out of it, and left it behind, continuing along the tiny cabling conduit.