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Anne Bonny sat against the smooth metal wall of the holding cell, knees drawn up to her chest. She ignored the dozen or so other prisoners packed into the space in favor of staring sullenly at her hat, held in her hands in front of her. "How'd we end up in this mess?"
To her right, Jack Rackham sat with one leg stretched out in front of him and his head tipped back to rest against the wall. "I'm going to assume that was rhetorical, since the three of us know very well how."
To her left, Charles Vane loosed a sigh that sounded more like a disgruntled huff from a large cat.
"If it wasn't rhetorical," Jack continued, "the answer is: our illustrious captain fucked up."
Vane slowly turned his head toward Jack, his eyes narrowing.
"We could have gone the usual way back to Nassau Station, but no, our captain had to take a shortcut through the Minos Nebula where an Imperial customs ship was patrolling, a shortcut that would have made the entire week-long journey a truly significant three hours shorter. And to what end, exactly? Because—"
Vane sat up straighter and opened his mouth to retort but was interrupted when one of the other prisoners, a gangly man with the hollowed-out look of an addict, chose that moment to amble over and stop in front of the trio. "You guys got any stardust?"
They shook their heads. The guy muttered something and stumbled back to the other side of the cell.
"Not anymore," Vane muttered, deflating back to his previous hunched posture. He rested his forearms across his knees.
The addict cursed when he saw that his spot on the single bench had been taken, and spat at the usurper. The usurper, a woman with a bright pink buzzcut and biceps to rival Vane's, rolled her shoulders as if preparing to throw a punch.
Jack lifted his head away from the wall to look at Vane. "I thought the stardust was in the other smuggling compartment?" Customs had arrested them over the illegally-harvested pearls from the beaches of Scarif. They hadn't noticed the drugs, or the half dozen other contraband goods onboard.
"It was, but the ship's impounded now. They'll have the whole thing searched before long."
"And won't that do wonders for the length of our stay here."
Vane bristled. "I didn't hear you argue against taking the shortcut in the first place."
"No, you didn't hear me, because you were too busy thinking about what you planned to do with your honeypot this evening. I hope you at least have an escape plan; I'd so hate for her to be lonely."
"Why don't you come up with a plan yourself," Vane growled, "since mine are so terrible?"
"Will you both shut the fuck up?" Anne snarled.
They did. They looked at her, still huddled between them and glaring at her hat, albeit a shade more murderously than before.
Jack leaned back against the wall again and tried not to breathe too deeply. The air in the cell was warm and humid and reeked of sweat, stale vomit, and what he strongly suspected were farts from the scruffy wookiee in the corner.
On the other side of the cell, the prisoners squared off. Pink Buzzcut had apparently said something inflammatory, because Addict took a messy, poorly-timed swing at her, and tripped, and plowed into a slim, grayish alien whose face looked like it had been embalmed a decade ago. Then Pink Buzzcut decked Addict. Grim Reaper was shoved into the wookiee and the two of them started wrestling. Before long a majority of the prisoners were brawling, and the rest seemed to be taking bets.
It meant no one was bothering them, at least. Jack decided he better take Vane's sarcastic advice and start cooking up an escape plan, since clearly no one else in this cell was capable of doing so. He watched with mild interest as Grim Reaper sailed through the air and crashed limply into the opposite wall. The other prisoners cheered.
"All right," Jack began a few minutes later. "I think I've got something. Step one: get our weapons back. In case things do go south we're not much use without them. The weapon lockers shouldn't present much of a problem, though there will be a guard or two.
Step two: locate the Ranger, and unlock it. This will be a bit more challenging as it requires me to access the prison's control systems, but there should be a terminal near the weapons where I can do so.
Step three: Figure out how to get to the ship, and run."
He knew that Anne and Vane had heard him, and felt the slight change in the air that meant they were processing his words, mulling the plan over to check it for flaws. It might be a little vague in parts, sure, but Jack thought it was solid. Certainly impressive for only a few minutes of thought in an environment that definitely did not lend itself to creativity.
Finally Anne spoke. "I thought step one was gettin' out of this cell."
Jack blinked. "Well. Yes. But I figured that was implied."
Vane, who was closest to the cell's bars, examined them. "How are we gonna do that?"
"I was hoping you two might have some ideas," Jack admitted.
Vane turned back to him, one sarcastic eyebrow raised. "I thought you wanted to be the hacker mastermind?"
"Right, of course, let me just hack my way through these solid steel bars." Jack stood and aggressively sauntered over to them. "Watch how I alter a few lines of their code, and they bend aside for us." He grabbed one of them and tried to rattle it. It, naturally, didn't budge.
To his credit, Vane didn't try to counter with another smart remark.
They looked around the cell. The floor, ceiling, and three walls were all made of the same smooth metal, unbroken by so much as an air vent. The fourth wall consisted of the steel bars, with one securely locked door in the center. It was the only way in our out.
"Pick the lock?" Anne suggested. "I've still got the backup." Jack's main electronic lockpick had, of course, been seized with the rest of their weapons.
Vane remembered how thoroughly they had been searched and looked her up and down, baffled. "Where?"
She scowled.
Jack shook his head. "It's too small. This door would take too long to crack, and besides, once everyone else—" he waved at the rest of the prisoners, who were now griping about their bruises — "sees what's going on, they'll want in. Or out. You know what I mean." He sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face and through his shaggy hair. "At least it's just the three of us. Breaking out the whole crew would be significantly more difficult."
"But with their numbers," Vane pointed out, "we could've fought the customs ship off in the first place."
Jack rolled his eyes. "Yes, picking a fight with an Imperial customs ship never ended badly for anyone."
Anne shrugged. "Wouldn't've made much difference; we're known criminals anyway. I say worth a try."
"Fuck the Empire," Vane agreed.
"I think we're getting sidetracked," Jack interrupted, feeling like his grasp on sanity was slipping away just as rapidly as the conversation. "If we could return to Anne's initial point, that of getting out of this cell?"
They thought. And thought longer. On the other side of the cell Pink Buzzcut and Addict, both bleeding from different parts of their face, sized each other up for a rematch.
"I do have one idea," Jack finally said, "but you're not going to like it."
They listened.
“We could flirt our way out."
Anne raised her head, incredulous and disgusted. "Flirt?"
"With a guard. You know, convince her to let us out. Or him. Them. You get the idea."
He expected Vane to argue, but instead he gave a thoughtful shrug. "Eleanor said it worked for her and Max once."
"I ain't flirtin' with a guard," Anne said.
"You don't have to," Jack sighed. "It was my idea, I'll do it."
Anne watched him pace back and forth a few times, her expression dubious. "Since when can you flirt either?"
He stopped pacing and cast long-suffering eyes up to the ceiling. "Thanks, Anne. Love you too."
He didn't move for a minute, until Vane prompted, "Well?"
Jack thought back on any interactions he had observed at taverns or brothels where one party had tried to lure in another. He faced the hallway and folded his arms so his shirt could strain against his muscles, but then remembered that he didn't have any muscles for the shirt to strain against. He tried leaning an arm on the bars above him and crossing one leg behind the other.
"You look like you're trying way too hard," said Vane.
Jack stepped back and threw up his arms. "Then you do it!"
Vane pressed his lips together. He stood, stretching, and brought his hair forward to fall over his shoulders. He settled into a relaxed stance of leaning one shoulder against the bars and hooking his thumbs into his belt's empty holsters.
A few minutes passed before there was any movement outside. The guard passing by was a woman, maybe thirty. Vane visibly perked up. She wasn't approaching the cell, but walking down the hall parallel to it.
"Hey," he called. "I didn't know Imperial guards could have such sexy…" He hesitated, looking her over. She was completely average-looking in every way. "…Hair?" he finished.
Jack winced.
The guard didn't break her stride, just gave Vane the briefest of sideways glances before she and her unremarkable black ponytail disappeared down the other side of the hall.
Vane studied his boots.
Jack patted his shoulder. "Well done, Casanova."
"Fuck you, Jack. What the hell do I even say here?"
"I don't know, maybe something about the cell being cold and lonely and just a few moments of her company would be a kindness?"
Vane very deliberately looked around the overcrowded space and then back at Jack with a deadpan tilt of his head.
Jack cleared his throat. "Yes. Well. This is why I'm not in charge of Operation Flirt, clearly."
Now it was Vane's turn to push off of the bars and start pacing.
"So what now?" Anne asked.
Jack slumped back against the wall next to her. "Either we wait until a guard with sexier hair walks by—" Vane shot him a look — "or we sit here until we think of something else."
Vane kept pacing. Anne turned her hat around in her hands. Jack intently studied a small black spot on the otherwise smooth gray ceiling.
"I'm hungry," Anne said after a while.
"Mm-hm."
"Same."
None of them could say exactly how much time passed after that. It could have been one hour or five; time in this cell was meaningless. Vane had gotten bored of pacing and sat back down next to the others.
They looked up as two different guards came around the hallway bend and stopped in front of the holding cell. One pulled out his datapad and read two names off of it; Jack, Anne, and Vane knew that those two were being moved to their more permanent cells in the prison proper. "If you'd come with us, please."
The addict and the gassy wookiee staggered to their feet.
"Good riddance," Jack muttered.
The guards passed two sets of wrist shackles through the bars. Once the prisoners put them on, the guards unlocked the door and escorted them out, locking the door again behind them. Jack and Vane exchanged a glance. If more guards came for them, their escape would get a lot more difficult.
"There," Anne said.
The two men followed her gaze to the guards and prisoners disappearing around the hall. "What?"
"That's our opening. Next time they come for someone, we grab them, get the keys, get out."
Vane thoughtfully cocked his head, but Jack said, "The others in here will hardly be content to let the three of us quietly slip away. They'll all make a break for it. It will be a riot."
"Maybe a riot's just what we need."
Jack squinted at her. "How's that?"
"It's a distraction."
Vane nodded. "They'll try to get out, but they've got nowhere to go. More staff will converge here to subdue the fight, drawing them away from other parts of the prison. By the time everything's back under control we'll have long slipped away."
Jack thought merely watching the earlier brawl had beed bad enough; he couldn't imagine actually being at the center of one that also included guards. "They'll realize we're missing."
"Will they?" Vane challenged. "This cell is a revolving door. If three of the others in here disappeared, would you immediately be able to tell who's missing?"
Jack looked helplessly between the other prisoners and Anne and Vane's confident expressions, realizing he was overruled. "No, I don't suppose I would."
"Then next time someone comes to collect," Vane said, "we move."
They only had to wait another half hour before three more guards came, one of them studying his little datapad. The Ranger trio, now standing, perked up. Vane moved to his position near the door while Jack and Anne hung back closer to the rest of the crowd, waiting for his signal.
The guards stopped in front of the door and the one with the datapad cleared his throat. "Anne Bonny, Jack Rackham, and Charles Vane."
The air in the cell suddenly felt a lot colder. Jack and Anne exchanged a panicky glance.
"If you’d come with us, please."
They tossed three sets of the shackles through the bars, sending them clattering to the floor. For a moment, no one moved. Then Vane bent to pick one of the sets up, giving the tiniest nod to his companions.
Sounding bored, one of the guards said, "We don't have all day."
Anne and Jack picked up their sets of the shackles, hoping maybe they could only pretend to lock them, but the guards were watching them too carefully. They felt the shackles snap shut around their wrists, dread festering in the air. They would almost certainly be taken to separate cells. A coordinated escape would be impossible.
"This changes nothing," Vane whispered, a statement that Jack very much doubted, as the guards unlocked the door. "Follow my lead."
The bored guard rolled his eyes. "Come on, step lively."
Vane, with a final look over his shoulder at Anne and Jack, turned to face the guards. The moment he stepped through the doorway, he lunged. He threw his bound hands around the nearest guard's neck while kicking the cell door farther open behind him. They both crashed to the floor, Vane's outstretched legs preventing the door from closing.
One of the guards shouted for backup, but Anne had already slipped outside the cell and behind him. She aimed a vicious kick at his knee.
Jack, still in the cell, raised his shackled hands. "This is our chance!"
The prisoners around him, unable to resist an even better fight, surged forward as one. Jack sent a quick prayer up to whichever deity might be listening as he was swept through the door at the crest of their wave.
The remaining guard had launched himself at Anne, and was winning, but then the tidal wave of the other prisoners hit him. Chaos reigned. Vane tussled with the guard on the floor, trying to choke him, but unable to get a good grip thanks to the shackles. When two of the other prisoners descended on them, he let them have the guard and rolled out of the way. He scrambled to his feet.
Anne extricated herself from the melee and joined him, adjusting her hat. Both panting, they watched for a sign of Jack. A few seconds later he staggered out to join them, his vest missing a button and a bruise blossoming on his jawline.
Overhead, an alarm started blaring.
"Time to go," Vane said. As one, they took off running down the hall toward the processing office, guessing that the weapons lockers would be nearby. The alarm rang in their ears. Any second they could run into a second wave of guards, and be overpowered, and dragged back to the holding cell under increased surveillance. The metal shackles bit into their wrists.
Rounding a bend, they saw a doorway helpfully labeled RECOVERED POSSESSIONS. They ducked inside. There was only one guard, and he spun around to face them, his eyes widening. "What—"
That was as far as he got before Vane raised both of his fists and felled him like a sapling.
The trio paused for just a moment to catch their breath.
"Well, we got away, but I suppose we're not getting those extra minutes of anonymity anymore," Jack said. "Since they'll see very quickly that the VIPs of the hour are missing."
Anne suddenly had the backup lockpick in her hands — Vane, tragically, hadn't noticed where it had materialized from — and set to work on Jack's shackles. "Better work quick, then," she said.
Once free, Jack stepped over to the computer terminal and bent to search the unconscious guard for an access code. Anne turned to free Vane.
Jack propped the guard's arm up so his thumbprint could unlock the computer, then swiped the access card from his belt. He searched through the ludicrously long list of records until he found the one for the currently impounded ships, clicked on it, then cursed when an ACCESS DENIED — ENTER PASSCODE screen popped up.
Vane's shackles fell away, and lastly he took the lockpick and started on Anne's.
"Not to rush you two," Jack said, "but I'm going to need my password breaker, and I can't step away from this or I'll have to start over."
Vane finally cracked Anne's shackles open. She unclipped the set of keys from the guard's belt and opened the first locker. The shelves inside had temporary labels with prisoners' names. Theirs weren't among them.
She opened the second locker, and the third, and the fourth, scanning the labels with increasing apprehension. What if there was more than one locker room, and their stuff wasn't in this one at all?
She breathed a sigh of relief when their names were in the fifth one. She tossed Jack's bag of gear and single blaster over to him. Vane joined her and retrieved his lightsaber and blaster. Anne slipped her two blasters into their holsters, and clipped her little lightsaber-dagger to her belt.
Vane drew out the final item on their shelf, a small belt pouch. His brow furrowed as he opened it, then he broke into a grin. "It's still here."
Anne peered over. "What's still here?"
In answer, he pulled out a lighter and one of the hand-rolled joints, and lit up.
When he noticed her disbelieving stare, he just shrugged. "Might be my last chance." He exhaled the smoke through his nose and took up a position by the door, watching the hallway outside for guards. "Anyway, it—"
"It helps you use the Force," Jack finished, not looking up from his work.
Anne didn't need to see his face to picture the look of sarcastic exasperation. She kept watching Vane, nonplussed. "You still believe that shit? High or not, you ain't ever been able to do anything with it."
"Yes I have. It helps me fight." He pointed with the joint at Anne's shortened lightsaber. "How do you not try?"
"'Cause I don't need Jedi shit to know how to stab someone. Stabbing is stabbing."
Vane continued watching the hallway and blew a smoke ring.
Anne turned to Jack, still hunched over the computer. "Any progress?"
"The Ranger's in bay A54," he reported, the little password-breaking gadget clicking and whirring against the screen. "Working on getting into the control systems for that level now. This poor fool hardly had access to anything; we might be here a while."
"Dunno if we've got a while," Anne said.
Abruptly, the alarm in the hallway cut out. The riot must have been subdued.
Jack wiped sweat from his brow. The faint sounds of the password breaker sounded more like the ticking of a clock, and the trio didn't know how many seconds they had before its alarm went off again.
Anne's eyes darted from Vane in the doorway to Jack at the computer. "Well?"
"It's run through most combinations already. We're getting close."
"I hear footsteps," said Vane. He grasped the lightsaber. Anne's hands went to her blasters.
The password gadget beeped. "We're in!"
"Then let's go," Anne urged.
Jack wiped his brow again. "I still have to override the locks so the ship can launch. Just a few more seconds—"
"It's them!"
All three heads whipped around. In the hallway outside were three Imperial guards, their uniforms rumpled, but otherwise unharmed from the riot. Their leader's eyes gleamed with a promise of unfinished violence.
Vane's violet lightsaber flashed to life.
Jack forced himself to turn away from his companions and punched in the final commands. The whooshing hum of the lightsaber filled the room, punctuated by the guards' grunts of pain and the occasional shot from Anne. Jack risked a glance up to see that she was standing just in front of him, shielding him. He typed faster.
"Done!" He stood up just in time to see Vane withdraw his saber from the final guard's gut.
They holstered their weapons. Jack slung his gear bag over his shoulder. "What's next?"
Vane raised an eyebrow. "I think step three of your plan was run."
They burst out into the hallway at the exact second another group of guards rounded the bend behind them. Both groups pulled up short.
Anne raised her blaster and shot one of them squarely between his eyes. The spell broke, and the remaining guards shouted and surged forward, drawing their own weapons. Anne, Jack, and Vane turned and ran.
They darted into a side hallway, out of the guards' line of fire, and sprinted onward. The overhead alarm sounded again, flashing red, its wail echoing around the sterile hallway. "Which way to the docking bays?" Vane shouted.
"How should I know?" Jack shouted back.
"You have a map, don't you?"
Jack slowed. "What?"
"Watch it!" Anne snapped. Jack ducked just as two guards materialized out of nowhere. In one fluid movement, Anne brought her left gun around and shot one of them, then activated her lightsaber — a short yellow dagger — and pounced on the second. They were both dead before they hit the floor.
"A map?" Vane repeated as they took off running again. "Of the prison? That you downloaded at the computer?"
"We never discussed a map!"
"Maybe," Anne snarled, "we figured it was implied!"
They kept running, taking turns at random whenever more guards appeared. The prison was huge, and thoroughly disorienting. Every hallway was the same.
The hall curved, and suddenly hit a dead end. They skidded to a halt. A half dozen locked doors branched off from the chamber — administrative offices, judging by the window plaques. No exits there. Frantically, they looked around the space, the red lights still flashing, the alarm making it difficult to think.
"There!" Anne pointed. At the base of the wall was a grille covering an air duct. It would be a tight fit for Vane, but they were out of other options.
At that moment, six guards rounded the bend in the hall, cornering them. They all drew their blasters.
Anne and Jack tensed. There was nowhere to take cover, and even Anne couldn't shoot all six quickly enough. They drew their own blasters anyway, bracing themselves for the end.
Vane, instead of drawing his gun, planted himself in front of his friends and turned on his lightsaber.
The guards fired.
Time seemed to stretch as he swung with the lightsaber, blocking the first shot and sending the bolt ricocheting harmlessly into the wall. Then he blocked the next shot, and the next, and the next. The fifth he redirected back toward the guards. It grazed the shoulder of one, who yelped. The sixth went wide, punching a tiny, smoking hole in the floor.
Anne and Jack shook themselves out of their trance and returned fire. The guards kept shooting. Vane's saber flashed through the air, redirecting bolt after bolt too quickly to follow, now spinning, now lashing out sideways. One guard went down. Vane took a step forward.
The saber kept whirling as he advanced down the hallway, peppering the walls on either side with redirected fire. Another guard fell to Anne's aim. The four still standing pressed closer together and kept shooting at Vane, but he didn't break his stride as his blade met every shot with the strength and precision of a dance. One by one, the guards fell to Anne and Jack's bolts as Vane drew closer, until only one remained standing as he stepped into melee range.
The guard dropped her gun and readied her stance for a hand-to-hand fight. Vane flicked his saber off and lunged. They clashed, ducking, dodging, blocking each other's punches. Vane's right fist slipped under her guard, coming to rest at the bottom of her ribcage.
And he turned the lightsaber back on.
The guard, skewered, died instantly. Vane freed his blade, and the body fell with the rest.
He turned back to check that Jack and Anne were all right, his chest heaving from exertion. At some point during the battle ricocheted bolts had smashed the main overhead lights, and in the semidarkness the beads of sweat on his face glowed in the saber's reflected violet light.
For a moment, Jack and Anne just gaped.
He turned the saber off and jogged back to join them. "Come on. More will be here soon."
"Right." Jack wrestled the grille off of the opening.
"Hey, you! Freeze!"
They froze. Then, slowly, they turned their heads to look back at the hallway.
More guards poured around the bend. There were at least twenty of them this time, far too many to fight off. They took a step closer.
Anne swung her blasters around and fired. The bolts pierced one of the thick, pressurized pipes running along the ceiling and it buckled, venting jets of opaque white steam. The flashing red alarm cast a slow-motion strobe light effect as the steam obscured the guards from view, granting the trio a few precious seconds.
Jack dove headfirst into the air duct. Anne slipped in next. Vane took a deep breath and followed, hooking the grille back into place behind him.
The duct sloped downward. Jack and Anne had slid down easily, but Vane had to wriggle backwards, his shoulders bumping against the metal sides. He could almost feel the weight of the entire space station pressing in around him as he squeezed farther down, inch by painful inch. At last he hit a flat stretch that was, mercifully, just wide enough for him for roll over and see the path ahead.
Jack and Anne were crawling forward, stopping to peer into branching passages. Somehow Vane was able to turn himself around so he could follow. They continued straight for a while, less out of any sense of direction and more because few of the side passages were wide enough to allow him inside. When the light filtering in from outside became too dim to see by, Jack reached into his gear bag and retrieved a flashlight.
There were no sounds other than their own movement and the faint hum of the air conditioning. None of the guards had followed them, then. They'd surely figure out that they were inside, though; there had been no other exits from that room. Vane wondered if the guards were dispersing to station themselves at other air vents, and how extensively this particular duct system spread. Was it better to stay in here longer, not coming out until they had traveled a fair distance, or to exit sooner, before they could be cut off?
They ended up doing the former. Whenever Jack caught sight of a grille leading out, he'd choose the most accessible side passage and turn down that instead. None of them spoke, in case the sound carried. They crawled for what felt like an hour, Vane's shoulders beginning to cramp.
At the final intersection they came to, one passage sloped sharply upward and the other plunged down into darkness. The trio exchanged looks, but knew they only had one choice. The first passage was too steep, since all the walls were slick metal with nothing to grip. They would just slide back down. Behind them was a particularly narrow stretch that Vane had no desire to retrace. The only way onward was down.
Jack, still in the lead, nodded to his companions. "See you on the other side," he whispered. And he lowered himself into the second passage.
He tried to control his descent, bracing his arms and feet against the walls. It didn't work for long. He picked up speed. The duct twisted and turned like the world's worst playground slide, throwing him against the walls. The flashlight slipped from his grasp, leaving him in pitch darkness. His body bounced off a ledge, sending his teeth rattling, and suddenly he was in free-fall.
Light filtered up from below. A grate. This was the end of the line. Jack twisted to position himself feet-first, knowing it wouldn't do much good, and braced himself.
He crashed through the grate and landed, inexplicably, in a pile of cushions. He blinked, surprised to be alive, let alone uninjured, and looked around. No, he hadn't landed in cushions, but a mountain of wrinkled fabric. Uniforms. Giant washing machines lined the walls. He laughed.
Then he heard a clunk in the duct above him and Anne came zooming out. Without the grate to slow her down she hit the laundry pile in a perfect pencil dive, her speed burying her so deeply that only her hat remained peeking out above the surface.
"Oh god," Jack realized as the blood drained from his face. Vane was next, and he and Anne were squarely in the landing zone.
He plunged a hand down into the pile, searching until he caught hold of Anne's arm, and pulled. Her torso emerged. They flailed to get out of the way, the laundry suddenly quicksand.
With a much louder clunk, Vane barreled out. Jack had mostly gotten out of the way, but one of Vane's arms still caught him across his chest. He almost threw up his lungs.
As he sat there gasping and Vane looked around, confused, something else rattled in the duct. They looked up. The rattling got louder, and then the flashlight landed squarely between them. Somehow, it was still on.
Vane finally noticed that he had almost killed Jack and thumped him on the back, which only made him choke more. Anne rolled off of the laundry pile and looked around. The room was empty of other people, and had one door out. It wasn't locked.
At last, once Jack realized that he was not in fact going to die, he could appreciate their sudden turn of good fortune. None of the uniforms around them were too badly soiled, thanks to the Empire's fastidious rules concerning cleanliness and appearance. There were diverse sizes. One look at Anne and Vane confirmed that they were all thinking the same thing.
Fifteen minutes later, three Imperial guards very cautiously peeked their heads out of a laundry room and into an empty hallway. They scurried out, quietly closing the door behind them, and started down the hall at a measured pace, hands clasped behind their backs and noses in the air. Sure, the woman's belt was cinched a little tight, and the tall, gangly guy's sideburns were decidedly not regulation, but would anyone be looking that closely? They hoped not.
In addition to the laundry pile, the room had conveniently contained a shelf of freshly polished boots and a few over-the-shoulder gear bags. The trio had stuffed their weapons and regular clothes into the latter. Anne and Vane had tied their hair back into neat buns under their caps.
They emerged into a main hallway — this prison had too many fucking hallways, Jack thought. This level must be the off-duty staff area, with doors labeled CAFETERIA, STORAGE, even a REC ROOM B. There was no alarm blaring here; the alert must have been confined to the processing levels.
Two real guards appeared from one of the side doors, and began marching officiously in their direction.
The trio pressed a little closer together. Either their disguises would work, or they wouldn't. There was one way to find out.
"Excuse me!" Jack called, raising his hand. "Fellow, uh… comrades!"
His companions tensed. The guards drifted over.
He continued, "Would you kindly remind us how to get to level A of the impounded ships bay from here? We're supposed to be reporting there now." At the uncertainty that came over the guards' faces, he added, "We're new here, you know."
The taller guard, a brunette woman, frowned. "They didn't give you a map in orientation?"
"We're very new." He offered a sheepish grin.
The guards exchanged a quizzical look, but told them. "Follow this hall about a hundred yards, make a left, and continue until you reach the elevators. The buttons are clearly labeled. This side of the station, it should put you somewhere around A50."
Anne relaxed and subtly elbowed Jack as if to say hey it's even close to our bay. He smiled again. "Of course," he said to the guards. "Thanks. We'll remember that." He started forward.
The guards didn't budge. The shorter, round-faced one pointed at Jack's chin. "Colorful bruise you got there. What happened?"
Jack opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
Vane smoothly took over. "Riot at the holding cell. Nasty fight."
"Right, that. Well." The short guard scratched his head. "Good job subduing it, but I heard that three of the prisoners are still on the loose."
Vane's voice remained nonchalant, but he raised a deliberate eyebrow. "Maybe they wouldn't be, if enough guards had responded to the alarm in time."
The guards traded another, distinctly more awkward glance. "Yes. Well. See you around, I guess."
Vane watched them over his shoulder as they left. "See ya."
He kept watching until they disappeared through another door. When he turned back to Jack and Anne, a barely suppressed smirk played around the corners of his mouth. They all exchanged looks that clearly said holy shit I can't believe that actually worked and then, as one, broke into giddy, relieved laughter.
"You heard the woman," Jack said, wiping away a tear. "To the docking bay!"
In high spirits, they found and boarded the elevator. Now they could see how the prison was organized, with administrative and staff levels in the center of the space station, cell blocks of varying security both above and below, and the docking bays at the bottom. The impounded ship levels asked for an access code, but Jack's password breaker made quick work of it, and they descended.
The elevator doors slid open into an empty chamber that branched off from a wide, industrial-looking hall, with a gentle curve to it that made the trio guess that it ran in a loop around the entirety of the station. The outer wall was made up of a series of thick bulkhead doors; the one opposite them was labeled A50 exactly.
A nervous excitement hung over the trio as they passed bay A50, then A51, A52. The Ranger was nearby, and with it, freedom. They passed bay A53, not a guard in sight. They could almost taste Nassau Station's artificially-ocean-scented air.
Vane flicked the controls to open the bulkhead doors of bay A54.
Over a dozen Imperial guards were waiting on the other side.
Vane and Anne automatically reached for their holsters, but of course these uniforms didn't have holsters; their weapons were in the gear bags. Before they could unzip them, the guards swarmed, roughly pinning their arms behind their backs. They tore the bags away and looked inside.
"It's the escapees, all right," one guard said. He was tall and stocky and wore an impossibly smug smile. Jack narrowed his eyes.
"We'll take 'em back to processing," he continued as the guards holding Jack, Anne, and Vane slapped handcuffs on them and began hauling them back toward the elevator. "The rest of you, tell everyone the situation's been resolved."
Vane looked back over his shoulder at the Ranger's hull with a hurt longing. Jack's heart sank at his rare display of vulnerability, and then he was seething. They had been so impossibly close.
The smug guard noticed Jack's anger, and had the nerve to laugh. "We noticed that A54 had received a launch clearance from an unauthorized user," he explained. "When no one in the processing level caught you, we figured we'd wait here, since you were bound to turn up eventually."
When Jack didn't stop glaring, he clapped him on the shoulder. "Don't take it too hard. You made it farther than most who try."
Bitterly, Jack asked, "How much farther can one get before it's no longer trying?"
"We've had to shoot some guys in orbit," Smug Guard replied cheerfully. "We considered letting your ship launch, just to keep the gun team on their toes, but, well, we decided against it."
That got everyone's attention. Jack frowned. "How many escaping ships have been shot down?"
"There's about one a month."
"And," he continued, getting the sense that he might not want to know the answer, "how many actually make it out?"
Smug Guard puffed out his chest. "Hasn't been even one in the five years I've worked here."
Jack, Anne, and Vane exchanged a look that didn't need to be put into words.
Their momentary relief fizzled when the elevator doors opened back onto the processing level. Sure, their ship hadn't been vaporized, but they were still stuck in an Imperial prison, and now weighed down by the knowledge that escape truly was impossible. Their weapons were taken away again, and this time they were stripped to their underwear and searched. Glumly, Jack doubted that even their tiny backup lockpick would be left behind when the guards finished.
"Er… excuse me." A new guard appeared in the doorway, looking embarrassed. "Sorry to interrupt, but an emissary's just arrived on these prisoners' behalf, and he, um…"
The guards and prisoners alike turned confused heads in the newcomer's direction.
Behind the new guard was a middle-aged man; he had a scruffy beard and wore clothes that wouldn't have been out of place on any merchant or smuggling ship. He wasn't anyone the Ranger trio recognized. Contrary to the nervous guard, he gave off a calm, self-assured air. In his hands was a datapad.
The guard swallowed. "You might want to take a look at his documents."
Annoyed, Smug Guard stepped forward and grabbed the datapad. The blood slowly drained from his face as he scrolled through the pages. "How—"
The sailor nodded. "Permits, licenses, and receipts, all endorsed by the relevant authorities of the Guthrie-Hornigold Consortium. I believe they should cover all of the goods seized from the Ranger."
The trio carefully exchanged looks, hoping that the guards wouldn't see the shock written plainly on all of their faces. None of them quite dared to believe what was happening, but neither were they about to argue.
No-Longer-So-Smug Guard blustered. "Customs found no such documents on board."
The sailor shrugged sympathetically. "You know the computers on those older ships, they don't have the most intuitive layouts. Don't worry, we don't intend to file a wrongful arrest suit against you for this. We understand it was a simple mistake that could have happened to anyone. Now, if we're all free to go?"
The guard, stunned, limply handed back the datapad.
Jack, Anne, and Vane's possessions were brought back out. The sailor smiled and swept out of the room, leaving the trio scrambling to gather up their stuff and follow. Somehow Vane put his trousers back on while walking, and Anne slipped into her coat. Jack only managed to gracelessly pull on his boots before running after them.
"Okay, who sent you?" Vane asked as soon as they left the processing area. "Eleanor?"
"Or Max?" Anne guessed.
Jack squinted at the sailor. "But those papers weren't on the ship."
"No, but they are now," he replied in a low voice. "They've been sent to the ship's computer and backdated. If customs really wants to go digging they'll be able to see that, but it should pass casual inspection."
He hurried them through the visitor area and down the elevator to the regular docking bays. One impressively large ship was docked and waiting. Vaguely wondering if this was all just another, more elaborate trap, the trio stepped on board.
The sailor joined them a few minutes later, smiling. "The Ranger's attached to the towing anchors; we're clear to launch!" He sealed the airlock. "Oh, and the captain wants to see you."
With growing apprehension, the trio followed his directions to the cockpit, distinctly aware of how literally underdressed they were. They cycled through all of the possibilities of who the captain could be, but none of them seemed likely to go to all this trouble to rescue them. Neither Jack nor Anne recognized the ship's layout. There was something vaguely familiar about it to Vane, but he couldn't put a name to it.
They opened the cockpit doors. A slim man sat in the pilot's chair, and standing behind him was a tall, broad figure with a weighty air of authority. His long black hair, tied back, was streaked with gray. He turned around at their approach, revealing a full beard.
Edward Teach examined them with a totally unreadable expression, his keen eyes taking everything in. Jack felt his bare knees go wobbly. Anne hugged her coat tighter around herself.
Only Vane stared back, but his shoulders still hunched under the piercing scrutiny. He asked, "Why?"
Teach stroked his beard. "I didn't plan it all myself. Your Nassau friends provided the documents, for instance."
The trio waited for him to continue, but it seemed that was as much of an answer as he was going to give.
"Let me guess," Vane finally sighed. "You're not angry, just disappointed?"
Teach regarded him for one more long moment, then turned to his pilot. "Set a course for Nassau Station. I think we've all been delayed long enough."