Starhold Vesta

Chapter 3.3

I listen. My face is void of emotion, and my body is uncrossed and as openly receptive to listening as possible, but if Moon doesn't stop offering the most useless tactics I've ever heard, I'm jumping through my office window to let the universe take me.

"That won't work," I repeat despite the last three times I've made the same unheard comment.

Elias' attention shifts from me to Moon.

"And at that point, everyone will be dead, and we can re-confiscate our stolen cargo and return to the Valediction," Moon says. He whispers the last part for dramatic effect. "What are you too stupid to understand?"

Elias' attention volleys back to me.

"I don't even want to repeat it. You haven't been listening to my input, so I'm going to let you think your plan is brilliant and we—" I gesture to Nuna and Elias, "—are going to do my plan."

"As Captain of the ship—"

"Correct. Captain of the ship. All this takes place off the ship, Moon. We're holding guns, and that's my jurisdiction."

Nuna winces. She knows what's coming before I do.

"Brig," he says flatly.

"What!"

"To the brig. Now."

"For what?" I stand abruptly, my tablet falling off my lap and clattering to the floor.

"Insubordination."

Everyone stares at the ground except Nuna. She watches me with a narrowed gaze. "You are thinking about this like you know your enemy. Both of you are wrong."

I sit back down and face her, recalling the steely compartmentalization required when sleeping with my superior. "I have led entire battalions into battle against an unknown hostile force for years. This feels like my area of expertise."

"Captain," she rounds on Moon. "Your strategy, while complicated and potentially effective if we hope to incur the wrath of all ports within this spiral arm of our galaxy, it would benefit us to avoid excessive bloodshed, no?'

Moon frowns, but his gold eye reflects light as if winking. "I didn't realize we were interested in allowing the hostiles, as you call them, to make repeat offenses. With my solution, there are no repeats."

"Murdering pirates is still murder, Captain."

Elias retrieves my tablet from the floor. "If it helps, I could set our glucks to stun mode rather than kill."

"Then we'd have incapacitated pirates. More useless than dead pirates because then we'd have to do something with them," I say, accepting the tablet and flipping it over to avoid the blinking notification light.

Nuna leans forward. "We can neither kill the hostile group nor can we bring them here to live. What else can we do?"

Moon crosses his ankle over his knee. It settles with a heavy thunk. "I predict you are about to tell us."

Nuna grins. I want to lick it right off her face. The power she holds over him, the way she swims through muddy water to be on his equal footing still surprises me. "Yes, I have a suggestion."

I nod to Elias. "Get into our inventory list. Make sure anything we don't have now, we can order immediately."

He taps around on his tablet and poises, ready for action. "Go."

"We kept Juno's image alive for a reason," she says, careful to look Moon in the eye to remind him of his agreement to this foolhardy plan. "The universe still believes she lives and controls the Olympi."