This is the single dumbest idea I have had since I said yes to this job. And yet here I am, all out of options. May Space God have mercy on my mortal soul.

  “Captain, we need to know the plan. Now, preferably.”

  I really want to say it. I just get the feeling they’d say no if we aren’t already past the point of no return. I know they’d convince me not to try. Would not take much.

  “Just keep heading towards Lunar Princess. We start with a slingshot maneuver.”

  I’m trying not to look behind us. Despite its size, the dreadnought is keeping pace. We’re just far enough ahead to keep the biggest guns from being effective. That won’t last long.

  “Hey, Captain fuckwit,” Raze is classy as usual. “A slingshot won’t accelerate us enough to get past all those defenses! And it could follow us! What’s the actual plan here?”

  “Trust me, you don’t want to know!”

  “You don’t get to tell me what I do and do not want to know!”

  Inanna raises her hand to hush Raze and then turns to me.

  “I don’t want to agree with him but Raze is right. We need to know what we’re doing.”

  “What we’re doing is a theoretical maneuver invented by a bunch of drunk, stupid, human teenagers, half of whom dropped out of the academy, named after a song older than the literal apocalypse, being half remembered by a complete freaking moron. I’m the moron by the way.”

  “This is not the time for jokes.”

  I stared directly at her with a stone faced expression. It starts to dawn on Inanna that I’m not joking.

  “You can’t actually think what you have in your head is actually going to work?”

  “Not in the slightest.”

  “Then, we need to come up with something-”

  “If you have a better idea, say it now. That goes for all of you.”

  Blank stares and open mouths making no noise.

  “That’s what I thought. Just be ready for what comes next. You should strap yourselves down.”

  Inanna hurries to her station and buckles her safety belt. The clicks of everyone else’s belts filled the room. I follow suit strapping down my own safety belt. And then my second belt. And then my reserved belt. And then my emergency belt. After I get my last strap put on tight, there’s a brief moment of silence, followed by even more hasty clicking.

  “The dance with the Lunar princess has begun.”

  Gravity yanks us hard by the balls. The Lunar Princess has a lot more fat than the old Lunar one back where I lived. She’s a dainty little girl compared to this amazonian princess. The pull on the Moby is almost as hard as earth itself. The Slingshot begins. Just like Raze predicted, the dreadnought is following us into the gravity well. Both of us quickly gaining speed beyond our normal limits. The Moby shakes violently, even more than before. My vision becomes blurry as the speed reaches beyond the critical upper limit.

  “Alert: Enemy vessel slowing acceleration.”

  I can barely hear Alcea as she tries to speak over the rattling.

  “Its structure can’t take the G-forces. At this rate, we won’t be any better.”

  “Shift all energy to the structural shields and the engines. Vivian, prepare to dance with the Priestess.”

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  Her feathered head turns all 180 degrees, her eyes bulging at my order. I simply nod, and she understands.

  “Tonight, we dance with two beauties.”

  Lunar Princess and Lunar Priestess, the twin of Moons of Andamus. Two beautiful spheres that glowed in the black night. Some people come all the way out here just to see the spectacle. For me, however, they are critical to the next incredibly stupid move.

  Vivian turns the steering wheel all the way to the right. The Moby flips and shoots out of the princess' gravity and directly into the priestess’. I have run out of carnival rides to describe what I have just experienced. Perhaps a log flume where you fall backwards and upwards. The momentum we gained from the princess only increases as we shoot alongside the Priestesses' circumference.

  “THIS IS YOUR PLAN?!”

  Even Razes’ booming voice has to reach a pitched screeching to be heard.

  “WHAT ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO NOW BURN UP LIKE ONE OF YOUR STUPID CIGARS?!”

  “THIS IS WHY IT’S THEORATICAL! WE DON’T HAVE TWO BIG CELESTIAL BODIES NOR SHIPS STRONG ENOUGH TO SURVIVE THE G-FORCES! AT THIS POINT WE’RE JUST GAMBLING!”

  The familiar tug now has some sharp claws digging into my arm.

  “IS THIS RULE TET?! OR POKE HER?! PLEASE TELL ME IT’S NOT RELEASE THE FISH!”

  “MORE CRAPS BUT WITH 20 DIE!”

  “BUT YOU ALWAYS LOSE CRAPS!”

  “NAME A GAME I EVER WIN!”

  Fairy buries her face into my chest. I couldn’t come up with anything either. We round Lunar Priestess nearing the end of the second slingshot. The dreadnought has stalled out. Must have shot itself pretty bad trying to follow us. Ten Kilometers sounds like a big target, but in the vastness of space it might as well be a needlehead. Hopefully Vivian holds her resolve; next part is going to rely entirely on her. Lucky she doesn’t have to hit it dead center or anything like that. A glancing blow should do it at these speeds. It’s not hard, I’m only asking her to hit a bullseye from a million kilometers away.

  “DEED! PREPARE TO FIRE THE HARPOON! I WANT IT UP HALF A SECOND BEFORE IMPACT!”

  “Acknowdlgement: PARAMETERS ACCEPTED.”

  The Moby has five different types of shields. Three of them are meant to keep The Moby from suffering any type of critical damage, be it from the enemy or the natural dangers of space. The structural shield keeps us in one piece when we take that critical damage, or are otherwise stressing the hull beyond its limits. Just like we are now. Then there is the Harpoon. A Blackout shield that covers the prow in a sharp, spike-like coating. A perfect battering ram for punching through anything that gets in our way. Rackter technology, as if that’s surprising. As brutish and primitive as a civilized society can be. I consider the system removed or replaced with something far more practical. Glad I didn’t bother. When shields meet shields, they pass through each other. The actual strength of the shields themselves don’t matter. If these were your standard shields they would dissipate, and this would be the Mobys hull versus the dreadnoughts. The Harpoon doesn’t do things that way. Now, it’s an impenetrable spike flown at the speed of two whole moons against the dreadnought's brittle hull.

  “WITH SILVER BELLS UPON OUR SPEAR, WE STAB THE HEART OF THE DARK SERPENT!”

  That’s some kind of mythology that I have no reference for. Must be something like Ra killing Apothis or Thor slaying Jormungandr or Michael vanquishing Leviathan. Take your pick, the message is the same. In fleeting moments, the dreadnought’s form turns from a tiny speck to filling our entire view. In a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second, before we reach impact, I spy the solid blue spark of the harpoon engulfing our frontal prow.

  Somehow, there isn’t a massive crash of force slowing our momentum from a fuck ton kilometers per hour to a snails crawl in the time it takes to blink my eye. Instead, the dreadnought is in front of us, and then it is behind us, as we keep careening into space. Slowly, Vivian presses down on the break. It takes almost three minutes to slow us down enough that I don’t feel I’m in perpetual free fall. We finally reach a speed that the inertia dampeners can handle. The clicks return as we all unbuckle ourselves from this wild crazy ride somehow in one piece.

  “Report: Anyone have eyes on that bastard?”

  “Alcea somehow finds the energy to speak.

  “It’s over there… and there… and there… it’s in a lot of places, actually!”

  Holo-image of all the different cuts of this butchered beast. Alcea wasn’t kidding when she said its structural integrity was weak. The whole thing crumbled like a cookie soaked in milk.

  “Any survivors?”

  “What do you think, hot-blood?”

  “Good. Please tell me there aren't a bunch of ships in retaliation.”

  “Justes one. It Inenne big beast. Its speaks to us.”

  Our view screen opens up an image of a Phibian captain. He looks just as tired as we are.

  “Can’t thank you enough for the assist, expeditionary captain. Thanks to your actions, all hostiles are retreating en masse. If I may speak informally, that was the craziest thing I have ever seen in my entire life. It’s amazing you made it out in one piece..”

  “Happy for it. Now, how about that vacation?”