As we headed out again in pursuit of Valentine, we strapped @auroraloon securely into crew station five on the bridge. I had no doubt she could escape, but we used three rolls of duct tape, so it would take her more than a few minutes, I thought.

  I also banned her temporarily from playing Scrabble. She had filled the board with embarrassing insults, mostly about me. When I returned to collect her, she was sitting in the chair laughing to herself, and then she summoned me over urgently to show me the board. Her first words were kitty across, then boy (also across to make kittyboy), then burnt down, urine across, and fizzle down from the i in kittyboy.

  "I told you it would be fun," I said, trying not to be irritated, and then I exacted my revenge by deploying our duct tape solution.

  Jumping after Valentine was getting tedious. We had made twelve DEAD jumps already, and while we all knew this was going to be a slow game of hopscotch to follow the ship, I was starting to wonder if we were better off using scouts and spy networks to locate Valentine instead. I even asked myself if @horus was right, but I wasn't going to give up on @bitchfrog.

  Each jump made the chase seem more and more futile. The urgency and excitement of identifying Valentine was lost, and boredom set in. We needed to eat. We needed to rest. We snacked as best we could, but we couldn't afford to rest. Not yet.

  We all cheered when finally, after two hours and fifty-two minutes, we found a potential location. The Pharaoh's DEAD dropped us out of warp, @zerogstar ran her scans, and the next jump pointed us at a small asteroid named 995658 Flummox. One final jump would get us there in nine minutes.

  Our solar system has millions of asteroids, and we mostly pay attention to the larger ones that make for possible mining operations or habitation. I was just glad this wasn't an asteroid someone had paid to name and then called it Eye Booger. Yes, there is an asteroid called Eye Booger. And yes, there is also an asteroid called Rocky McRockface. And then there are thousands of asteroids named after people and pets, like Baby Franny, Hermione, Lupin, and Zooey the Great. Nobody wants to visit Karen, for example, but everyone wants to see Rocky McRockface.

  I digress.

  995658 Flummox was small, sporting a surface area of 8.13 square kilometers. Think of a small town in the middle of nowhere, in just about any old Earth country, where everybody knows everybody, and there is a bank, a post office, and a handful of places to eat. Flummox was a dark and boring asteroid without a registered settlement.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  We had nine minutes to finalize plans, but @astrowave had already laid out a variety of scenarios.

  "Either it's an empty rock," he said, "or we'll find someone there. They probably don't get many visitors, so when we show up, they'll be alerted to our presence. This isn't a stealth ship. We don't know what we're going to find. Could be a ship, a settlement, a base of operations. We just don't know."

  "So you charge in," @biclops suggested. "And I stay here."

  "No."

  "She has a point," I said. "They might recognize a v90 Dominator ship, even if it's modded to look like a merchant ship."

  "We don't have enough of a force to charge in," @astrowave explained. "Even in Thunder Ops, we would attack in waves with dozens of soldiers at a time, with one or two Thunder Ops included. This is a small location. If this isn't a military operation, then a force of at least 300 well-armed troops could capture the asteroid. If the entire asteroid is well defended, then we'd be looking at up to 5,000 troops to capture it."

  Holy crap. My optimism had gotten the better of me. We had four aiways and two flamingos.

  "But we don't need to capture it," he continued. "We just need to get in and get out. I suggest we fly in, drop off two or three of us, and then have the ship depart immediately. Make it look like a scheduled drop-off."

  I agreed. "We can't sneak in," I said. "This is a trafficking location, probably full of humans like @bitchfrog. On a remote location like this, with no natural resources of note, we'll probably find that this is a staging area to sell people off to other locations or a labor camp of some kind."

  "Exactly," @astrowave said. "I looked at various attack options, but it's not feasible. If it's just us, we need to engage with them as if we have a reason to be there, assess the situation."

  Muffled grunts from @auroraloon interrupted us. We all looked at her. She desperately wanted to say something.

  "What is it?" I asked. "Do you need to use the restroom?"

  She made her you're an idiot face at me and grunted again. @biclops carefully removed the duct tape around her mouth.

  "I'm an Infiltrator," @auroraloon said. "This is my job, and I'm Solar Union. I know people, enough people at least that I can get us in there."

  I would be a fool not to consider it. I hadn't thought to include her as an asset, but she probably was our best chance at infiltrating. That's literally the job description.

  It was my call, so I made it. "@astrowave, you pilot the ship. @biclops and @zerogstar, stay with him on board. I don't want to be stuck here without The Pharaoh. Once we're there, stay put unless you need to escape. Send the flamingos out to guard the area, wherever we end up landing. I'll proceed with @auroraloon."

  "You sure about this, Captain?" asked @astrowave. I couldn't help but notice he addressed me as Captain.

  "I am. Unwrap her. Let's make the jump."

  I should have remembered to ask @auroraloon why she was helping us.