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Most space gas masks didn't really fit beaks, which was definitively the only reason Jet hadn't brought one to a presidential campaign.
Luckily, he had a poncho, and a poncho was basically a towel you could wear. He wrapped it around his beak, so it would at least filter the air a bit.
It didn't stop the Kenku from coughing a bit, though.

After a moment, he dispersed the smoke, flapping his poncho with one arm like he was a theatrical vampire, about to wrap his cloak around someone for a bite.
For a moment, he wasn't the most productive member of the little rescue party. Instead of making sure he had activated the options to avoid space-highways and dudes with guns, he made general angry kenku noises at Yoo-nit.

Unfortunately, the two had made either too much noise, or one of the attackers suddenly had developed the genius concept of object permanence., and realized that when people vanished into vents, they didn't actually vanish, but tended to just be in the vents.
And vents shared a feature with a lot of things: they were entirely shootable. A flash of laserfire pierced the wall of the vent, somewhere behind the two, and more followed as the rhinos started just shooting up the vent.
The kenku noises grew unhappy again, as he started pushing Yoo-nit again, scrambling to get to a less dangerous part of the vents again, as the shots drew closer and closer.

Meanwhile, below...

Hostages, rhinos and Lord Helmet were floating around the room. While the grunts had momentarily lost track of the small group who had drifted toward the vents, their attention was quickly redirected as it became apparent that square metal robots not designed to travel through air ducts and bird people were rather bad at stealth.

The henchmen were slow to rise from the floor, but now that they were getting ever closer to the source of the noise, they began shooting the duct system up. Despite being even closer, they were still terrible shots and somehow managed to miss both Yoo-nit and Jet. It only took a few more moments before those same grunts bumped into the ceiling. Even though they were even closer to their targets than before, it made it even harder to hit the air system due to the inability to maneuver their large blasters at the correct angle to take aim. This, of course, worked to the droid and kenku's advantage.

Helmet was quite upset about this and began yelling at his minions about their incompetence, the lack of gravity, being left behind by his sister who was doing something far more interesting and also they had run out galoop berry pie. All of that changed a moment later as there was a loud click. Nothing immediately happened, however. The emergency backup generators for the gravity in the building failed to kick on.

This was in-part because Larry in the maintenance department had failed to change the space batteries out some months earlier. The room the backup generator was in had been plagued by an annoying chirping noise for multiple space months as a result of this oversight. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on one's perspective, the chirp to alert Larry the backup batteries were low had gone unnoticed. This was largely because Larry had not been in that particular room in many space months, but no one else had been annoyed by the constant ear-piercing shriek of the alert.

Back in the main ball room where the hostages were, another click was heard a micro second later. This was the back-up, back-up generator kicking on. This generator did have fresh batteries thanks to Susan in accounting whose office was near the room where these generators were installed. The annoying chirping noise had been promptly corrected when it came to Susan's attention and she became annoyed by the noise. She was even more annoyed when Larry didn't respond to any of the messages she'd left him, so she did the task herself. It later turned out that Larry had been fired some space months before the batteries in the first generator room failed, explaining why they had not been changed.

At any rate, gravity was restored in the main room and Helmet, the hostages, the rhino men and anyone or anything else that had been near the ceiling quickly realized they were where they didn't belong and came crashing to the ground. During that time, Yoo-nit had decided the best and only course of action was to move forward, which it did allowing Jet to follow.

Jet being bad at stealth was an accusation with no base in reality: he was really good at sneaking up on people, why else would he be humming the mission impossible theme while doing it?
The bird took a quick look through one of the new ventilation holes in the air duct that the rhinos just added without a proper construction permit.
He looked into the eyes of a very angry rhino.
Suddenly, it was high noon. The rhino tried to lift his blaster, while Jet went for his repeater. If it wasn't for the bulky build of the rhino and the tight air duct around the bird, maybe one of them would've been fast enough. Under those circumstances… we'll never know who would've won. Jet probably, at least according to Jet.
The click disturbed the standoff, and suddenly the Rhino fell away. The Rhino's eyes were suddenly very huge, It didn't even have time to comically try to walk on air or to come to philosophical conclusions about the ground before it crashed into it.
Jet took another look through the blaster-hole. After dispatching his enemy with sheer willpower and insignificant help of gravity, he could see the main double door, so he could easily orient himself at least.
"Take a left turn." he instructed, borrowing the voice of space google himself as he continued climbing through the air ducts. It almost looked like they were getting somewhere!

"Left," Yoo-nit repeated in a monotone voice. The droid moved forward and took the next left in the air duct. There were still shots being fired turning the ventilation system behind them into the equivalent of space Swiss cheese which begged the question, what exactly Swiss cheese was. Unfortunately, there was no time to consult The Guide on this matter.

Meanwhile, back in the room... Helmet was really very upset. "That's not fair," he whined. "Find them! Find the ones that escaped! Then, um... do something bad to them!"

"Sir yes, sir," the rhino men replied in unison. Several of them broke off to begin checking the building. Lord Helmet turned to a few remaining guards.

"You," he ordered a random lackey. "Do something with these hostages!"

"Sir, like what, sir," the guard asked.

"I don't know," Helmet retorted. "What do bad guys do with hostages normally?"

"Sir, shoot them, sir," The grunt responded in a questioning tone.

"No! Not yet! Uh, we do that later," Helmet quickly snapped. Clearly, he was unsure what to do with them himself. "Uh, tie them up! Don't you tie hostages up?"

"Sir, yes, sir," The subordinate returned and saluted.

"Go find some space rope or something to use," Helmet ordered. There were quite a few beings in the room and it was clearly going to take a ridiculous amount of rope and a very long time to bind all of them all.

For now, the space Swiss remained neutral on matters of the hostage situation.
At least Jet's fear that this party could be boring was laid to rest by the last few minutes. He fiddled with his repeater as he followed Yoo-nit, clearly reasoning that it worked just like a SNES (Space Nintendo Entertainment System)-cartridge: he blew a bit of air in each slit of the weapon and shook it once.
That was enough to make it work again.
Probably.
With a head that was happily unburdened with the fate of hostages, Jet slid through the vents, taking a look out of the side of the vents here and there.
Slowly, he got the hang of the ventilation system.
While he waited for Yoo-nit to clear a path, he even hummed quiet space-elevator music to pass the time.

Until he stopped and crawled one vent back. That was it! If his navigation was correct (a 60% shot), they were almost there! They would just need to crawl down this floor, and they would be at parking.
After a quick look to make sure the floor was clear, a spirited kick of the kenku sent the cover out of the air vent, and he crawled into the room..
Of course there was no way for Jet to actually see the one Rhino guarding the floor - he stood in a traditional rhino-guarding position, with one foot placed to the left and one to the right of the air-vent. A perfect blind spot, for the kenku, even as he almost crashed into the guard.

60% or under, they got to the parking garage.

As luck would have it, Jet had successfully found the parking garage. In fact, unbeknownst to the Kenku, he had been correct (or lucky) by more than 13% of his prediction. Regardless, the avian and droid were approximately where they needed to be. Unfortunately, however, as their luck seemed to be running, their lucky event was countered by another unlucky one.

As Jet crawled out of the vent into the garage, he was promptly spotted by a rhino grunt. Even more unfortunate than that, the birdman was even more promptly spotted and the guard responded in the following way in broken basic...

"You! Bird person... put hands, um arms, uh.... appendages in air and turn around slowly," It demanded rather rudely.

Meanwhile, Yoo-nit paused when Jet backtracked and went through the vent. The little droid rotated his eyes behind him. About the time he did that, the rhinoman below had already seen the Kenku and was yelling at him and so missed the loud scraping noise the robot made above.

Jet jumped to his feet, although his movements slowed down significantly as he heard the commands of the Rhino, accompanied by the humming of a laser rifle.
No doubt it was trained on his head, and Jet would rather keep that head. It was his most beautiful head with his best brain in it after all!
Slowly, he lifted one arm, while the other moved for the repeater. He counted on the poncho to hide the exact movement of his arms from the rhino.
He was still pondering some good last words, as he heard the sound of a vent creaking, as a droid was moving around just a bit too much inside.
Jet grinned.
"Timber!"
He almost felt like a badass as he recited the line. The Rhino was less than impressed, and shouted some more.
Jet's foot tapped on the floor. "Timber!" he repeated, then, exasperated his foot begann tapping. How long would this ramshackle vent hold. He almost gave away the game by looking up.
Luckily, the guards eyes followed Jets, just in time to see the underside of a Yoo-nit and a loose vent-segment falling at his head.
Jet saved himself with a totally necessary combat roll forward, that in no way just could've been a normal jump, as Yoo brought down the roof.

For a moment the guard still stood there, after being hit by both, first the segment, then Yoo-nit. Then he started to tumble. Jet added a cartoon birds-flying-around-your-head tweeting sound, as the guard finally also lost his senses and fell to the floor.
One victory-hop later, Jet leaned over the guard to pick up his rifle. The gun was far too large for the Kenku, but having a comically oversized gun made him happy.
"You talkin' to me??" he asked the downed guard two or three times while recklessly pointing his new rifle, then he looked at Yoo-nit.
"That still only counts as one " he decided to be charitable and share this victory with the toaster, before seeing if he needed help to get back on his feet.
The way to the hanger seemed to be clear. Time to steal a ship!

Yoo-nit was heavy trouble with his cues as Jet attempted to signal him to roll through the opening and land on the Rhino.

"Timber!"

"Um..." the little robot mused aloud in its monotone voice.

A moment later... "Timber!"

"Um..."

A series of lights and whirs began as lights furiously blinked. As the red light came on and the small wheeled toaster processed what it was supposed to do, the duct suddenly collapsed. The cover hit the grunt. The section in front of Yoo-nit bent down making a ramp. The droid rolled forward involuntarily a moment later and slammed the lackey in the head as the ground approached rapidly.

Luckily for Yoo-nit, the droid's metal body was sturdy and didn't take any damage from the fall other than some more dents and scratchs. It bounced off the helmet of its unfortunate target and landed on its back. The droid's four wheels spun comically as the Rhino's eyes rolled back and it hit the ground a beat later.

"Error...error...error," Yoo-nit announced. The red bulb on its head pulsed each time it said error. Since it was on its back, it was much like a space turtle at the moment and would require the Kenku upright it, which would be easy enough to do with a little effort.

"You talkin' to me??" he asked the downed guard two or three times while recklessly pointing his new rifle, then he looked at Yoo-nit.
"That still only counts as one " he decided to be charitable and share this victory with the toaster, before seeing if he needed help to get back on his feet.

Luckily, Jet usually passed the Voight-Kampff test with flying colors, and was inclined to help tortoises back on their feet - the same went for turtles, bugs, and droids.
For a moment, Jet tried to hold his new gun with one hand while helping Yoo-nit, but the kenku almost was toppled over by the weight himself. Very, very reluctantly, he leaned the gun against the wall, before flipping Yoo-nit back on his feet.
He gave the little droid a few pats on the red error light, hoping this would be enough to repair his companion. Then he picked up the gun again, after all he hadn't broken any gun-saftey regulations during the last ten seconds, and he didn't want to be accused of going soft.

For a moment he almost looked like he knew what he was doing: he pointed his gun at the hanger-doors. The bulk made it clumsy to handle, but he managed.
He nodded at Yoo-nit, then at the button that would open up the hanger.
"World, the time has come to... push the button" he quoted the Chemical Brothers, as he got ready to blast armies of Rhino that might or might not be inside the hanger.

After uprighting the droid, Jet grabbed the blaster rifle. It seemed he was waiting for more rhino men to come charging through the door. Yoo-nit tilted its eyes upward toward the bird person.

"We must save The Operator," it stated bluntly in its monotone voice. The robots eyes remained fixed on the door and the button that opened it. SO far, all was quiet. Too quiet... no more grunts came for the moment.

Meanwhile, the rest of the grunts were having trouble find much in the way of make-shift restraints to tie up the many attendants being held in the main ball room. That had Lord Helmet very perturbed.

"Try harder," Helmet demanded. He then turned to another of his lackeys. "Have you found THEM?"

The Rhino shook its head. "Well try harder!" Suddenly helmet began wheezing and lifted his mask. He took a quick puff from his inhaler. The grunt nodded and hurried off.

Back in the parking area...

Suddenly, the comlink on the unconscious and/or dead rhino crackled to life. "TK-421... come in." There was silent and then the gruff voice repeated itself followed by the words "Do you copy? TK-421... why aren't you at your post?"

"Push the button" the Chemical Brothers/Jet repeated.
His arm slowly got tired by holding the oversized gun at the ready for so long.

Jet then quoted someone sighing. "You see lad, a well armed ship and a smile brings you much further than a smile." he quoted his old captain for a change.
"Afterwards…" he added in his voice, before switching to media again. "save the cheerleader, save the world"
He laid his hand, um arm, uh.... appendage on his chest and lifted the other one, pantomiming an oath.

Then the space radio of the space rhino came to life. So Jet whirled around and started blasting.
Luckily, the weight of the weapon pulled him further than he intended to go (proving his captain's point), so he only shot up the floor next to the comlink and the Rhino. After a moment of thinking, something that didn't come quite naturally to the Kenku, he put the gun down and picked up the comlink.
"TK-427… copy…" he quickly improvised, just throwing back sound bites he just had heard, before recreating the static sound of a radio interference with his beak.

"We have some loose ends the boss want dealt with," The voice on the other end replied. "A few beings got up in the air ducts and escaped. Right now, we know we're missing what appears to be an autonomous kitchen appliance and a giant crow. have you seen them? Over."

Yoo-nit's eyes tilted from Jet to the grunt lying on the ground and Jet. "Ummmm....," The droid said in its monotone voice before adding. "Everything is here. We're all fine here."

Yoo-nit waited a moment and repeated itself, "Everything is here. We're all fine here."

So far there were no alarms going off and no one else was in sight.

Jet hit the send button of the space radio but just sent some more static interference. For a moment he thought about the few words the Rhino said and how he could slice them together, but he came up blank.
So he just blasted the space radio for good!
Of course, Jet wouldn't be Jet if he didn't double tap the radio. It was the only way to be sure!
Actually, thinking about it, he tripple tapped it. He might've even send a forth blaster bolt in the thing, if it wasn't just a rain of red glowing ash by now, that had no body left that could be shot.

He then smiled at Yoo-nit. "Boring conversation anyway." he said to the droid. Maybe the poor droid had spent too much time with him.
Maybe the Rhinos accepted this as a equipment malfunction, maybe not, they were likely to send someone up here in both cases, and Jet was all out of toasters to throw, so he decided to get going. Since Yoo-nit wouldn't do it, Jet hit the door-button (with his fist, not with his new rifle) and got ready to storm the hanger.

Hanley had, unfortunately, while crawling through a pipe, gotten herself in a rather sticky situation. It was both literally sticky and physically a situation, not just a superfluous figure of speech; when her denim-reinforced kneecap patches had dragged over a greasy floorspace (if one could call the bottom of a space vent's pipe a floor), her uniform leg had gotten swathed almost entirely from the top of her calf to the bottom. With her leg thus gummed and grabbed towards the floor, held excitably and fiercely by this puddle of gunk and goop that was only half-dried-up and (on some molecular level, probably,) did not want to live a lonely life in these tunnels anymore, let alone die a lonely death, Hanley was forced to cut away her remaining dry calf region of the pants, and some of the thigh too.
The rest was, as you may remember, reinforced.
All four walls of the pantsleg torn slightly, Hanley heaved a sigh at the thought that these were not her easily-cut fatigues but her heavy-duty workshop pants. And heavy duty workshop pants for workshops in space are pretty heavy duty indeed. Huffing and cramping, Hanley crawled along what she was pretty sure was the incorrect pipe going left from the general area she'd followed after the Bird in, sweating and gasping and hoping the tingling in her limbs would go away soon. She was quite used to exercise, and also pretty well used to tight spaces. However, exercise in a tight space in space was a little much for anybody. At least it was low-gravity; if it had been higher than the norm the walls would have been actually crushing in on her. Strenuous crawling and mortal struggle to be freed complete, for the time being, Hanley's half-well-dressed-leg of the leg of the journey took her into a turn in the pipe. The turn was squarer than the rest of the metal tube, a corner, which was a metal tube still but sort of crinkly, corrugated almost, like an accordion but... Well, a square tube. The captain rallied herself, and did a bit of a stretch. The room which was before her seemed to be some sort of supply/maintenance access, and she stood in her pipe upon a shelf in a corner, which had had a grate and a screen in front of the pipe entrance but which now had a grate (screws removed, slightly bent) and a screen (chewed, like some sort of S.R.O.U.S [Space Rodent Of Unusual Size] had been at it) cast to the side nearby. Hanley looked around in a bit of a reasonably cautious but laughably owllike swivel, and stepped out of the pipe onto a chalky-textured but apparently sturdy ledge. It protruded directly from a recess in the wall to level with the rest of the wall, and the captain-turned-runaway soft-footed her way across the ledge to peek down into the room.
Brooms, mops, vacuum attachments, a spigot, two buckets, an open door with a pacing guard just outside. The bootsteps receded far down a hallway - and either the alien had a couple convincing voice actresses invisibly accompanying him, or he was watching kawaiiflix. Or, being a pirate, more likely he was illegally watching spaceanime.net.

She almost but did not quite notice the squedgy, squashy *plop* behind her.

Yoo-nit followed the Kenku after he blasted the radio and headed to the hanger door. So far, so good. The coast was clear for now. Jet opened the hanger door. There was not any sign of any henchmen or anyone else aside from a droid standing idle by a podium. It's body was designed to resemble it wearing a tuxedo. The robot looked like a parking valet perhaps. It stood eerily silent at its post.

Meanwhile, Hanley seemed to have found a janitor closet. There was a rhino henchmen nearby. However, its comlink came to life and it seemed to have been summoned and left its post, heading down the hall. Just then, the space captain heard a noise behind her that sounded like a "plop" behind her.

Should she look behind her, a small blob of green would be found rising up. This blob was actually a green jelly that happened to be sentient and enjoy space chess named Steve. Steve was from the planet Ook and happened to be a day trader of space stocks, particularly specializing in the belly button lint market since the tech sector of Ook was basically non-existent. How Steve had come to be here was quiet complicated, but it seemed he and Hanley had ended up in the same place in the air duct where neither belonged.

The Kenku looked at the Val-9-T-robot (well, it made sense when they were Val-3-Ts, but that was six models ago) and tilted his head. For a moment he thought about swindling it out of keys, but talking wasn't his strength, and just throwing Yoo-nit at it might not fix his problem this time.
He pondered for a moment if he should still try, just to be save, but then just pulled out his multitool. Whistling, he went down the row of spaceships.
…oh, hey, a Deluxe Cruiser Stingray in the luxury version, low-slung for less air resistance and better grip in the vacuum of space. A wide smile grew on Jet's beak as he approached the ship.

He fiddled with the door lock for a few seconds, then the ship's alarm system started shouting profanities at him. Of course it had an in-build filter, so every curse word were beeped out automatically, making it sound functionally like the beep-beep-beep of a regular thieves protection, but who ever owned the ship had at least the satisfaction of knowing that their system had attempted to throw the meanest possible insults at the would-be thief.

Jet moved on to a second luxury ship and a third. For some reason all expensive ships seemed to include an expensive security system. Very reluctantly, the Kenku moved away from the high-class ships. After all, they were about to have company soon, and he'd prefer to get out of here quickly. Also, the constant background-beeping started to be a pain in his neck.
He finally just decided on a run down space-van and tried his luck there. At least Yoo-nit was bad at communication, and no one would ever knew that the great space pirate Jet ever sunk as low as stealing a ship like this!

Yoonit followed the Kenku like a lost space puppy. Jet casually made his way up and down rows of space ships. The bird person spotted an ideal candidate... a Deluxe Cruiser Stingray! Jackpot! As he began to fiddle with the door lock, the ship began beeping at him rather rudely.

Yoo-nit rolled up and tilted its eyes toward Jet. "Um...," it said, but the Kenku seemed to be distracted by the vehicle's anti-theft system. Not wanting to draw the attention of the Valet, who happened to bear a striking resemblance to Andy Kaufman, if Mr. Kaufman had been a robot and made of metal, and also hoping not to run into any more Rhino men or other security, he kept moving.

Each vehicle Jet came to, he would try the same tactics and got the same results. Yoo-nit followed behind and when an alarm went off, the small toaster tried to get the bird person's attention with no luck.

He finally just decided on a run down space-van and tried his luck there. At least Yoo-nit was bad at communication, and no one would ever knew that the great space pirate Jet ever sunk as low as stealing a ship like this!

"Um...," The droid tried again as Jet attempted to boost the van. This time, Yoo-nit ran into his ankle, hoping that the Kenku might actually look down at the droid.

Jet was a bit irritated by the constant beeping. It was distracting, and lockpicking as work he had to concentrate on.
And then, just as he got into the zone, a robot rammed his legs.
For a moment, Jet joined in on the cursing, using the new vocabulary the Operator had left him with, then he took a step back and just pointed the rifle at the lock of the van.
Finally, he paused and looked down at Yoo-nit.
"What is it now, son?" he asked with the annoyed voice of that father in the credit-card space ad. The annoyance was disarmed by the fact that this voice was really, really overacted.

Just as it looked like Jet was about to blast the door off the space van, Yoo-nit finally managed to get his attention.

"What is it now, son?" he asked with the annoyed voice of that father in the credit-card space ad. The annoyance was disarmed by the fact that this voice was really, really overacted.

"Um...," The little droid answered. Its eyes slowly rotated the opposite direction and fixed on another vehicle. It, too, was a space van and in not much better shape than the one the Kenku was determined to break into. Upon closer inspection, this van was arguably in rougher shape. Probably the first feature the bird person noticed was the blinking yellow light on top. It was clearly a commercial vehicle. An orange space traffic cone sat behind it.

Should he investigate further, Jet would realize that it was not only a commercial vehicle, but specifically a space telephone repair van. Even more specifically than that, it was an Intergalactic Telephone Company repair van. This was likely The Operator's ship. Without a word, Yoo-nit rolled over to it and stopped, then rotated its eyes back to the Kenku.