Captain Lawg took off his helmet as he took a sip of his juice box. Marley turned slowly and looked at him like a disappointed parent who just watched their lil troublemaker steal another cookie.

  "Seriously Lawg…just gonna take off your helmet on an alien world without scanning or checking for oxygen…do you know if there is oxygen?" he asked rhetorically.

  "Seems to be." he shrugged. Marley rolled his eyes.

  "I better be in your will." he grumbled.

  "You don’t get in the Will-will with that attitude…" he said finishing his refreshment and pulling out a recording device to document the find. He strolled casually through the debris and looked around for any signs of survivors among the wreckage scattered around and overhead.

  "Captain Lawg-Log, Stardate…Wednesday."

  "Thursday." Marley Corrected.

  "Thursday, October 34th, year unknown."

  "We know the year." Duffy yelled.

  "Shut up, it's unknown to me, you know star dates are arbitrary as shit and make no sense. It takes a professional mathematiscist to keep track of those."

  "Or a calendar app on your com-phone." Marley muttered.

  "What? Ugh, seriously? Captain's Lawg-Log side number B. We have discovered a strange planet with a large spaceship and a ton of debris, like just…buttloads of debris, like a lot. The species is unknown but the scans of the garbage suggest mostly humanoid. The ship is still hovering despite no thrusters or power we can detect…its possible that they have some advanced levitation systems or just poor physics, which remains a mystery. This giant floating Triscuit gives me the willy's, but we must explore and find out what killed these people and if we are lucky…find out if they had gelato machines." he finished, clicking the record button from off to on as he pocketed his device.

  "This is creepy, Lawg. Whatever killed these people must have happened a long, long, long time ago."

  "Somewhere far, far away." squinted Lawg.

  "No, right here." Marley sighed.

  "Right, my bad." he said breaking the death-glare he was beaming to the ship. He spotted something and picked it up, some kind of cylinder.

  "What you got?" asked Marley "Some kind of weapon?" he asked as Lawg held it to his eyes and clicked the botton a few times.

  "Nope. Maybe some kind of scope or spy-glass. Doesn’t seem to work."

  "Probably needs cleaned. Could be a good thing too, if that was a weapon it would have shot right through your he-"

  "Oh BALLS!" yelped Lawg as the device turned on, sending a rod of energy right past his face as he fumbled and it stuck in the nearby wall, slowly melting the stone and inching its way down from the resistance.

  "SEE!" Marley scolded. "This is why we don’t play with alien technology. You almost turned your face into a doughnut, Lawg."

  "Fascinating." he said pulling it out and holding it up. "It's like some form of laser sword." Lawg gasped as Marley scanned it.

  "It's not a laser sword. Scanner says it’s a plasma suspen-"

  "A real laser sword." Lawg smiled waving it around carelessly.

  "Lawg turn that thing off before you kill yourself or all of us. This is clearly a dangerous weapon that would only be wielded by some with a lifetime of training, definitely not something given to children or minors of any kind, even with supervision. I mean you could sneeze and cut your arms off."

  "Probably carried by someone they didn’t like, nobody would willingly choose the purple one." he sniffed. "Faint smell of lasers and grape."

  "Maybe it’s the only color there is." Marley suggested.

  "Don’t be absurd, there had to be at least 2 different colors so you could tell who was the good guys at a distance, that's just basic tactical smartness 101."

  "Surprised it survived the fall. From that crater in the sand I'd say it fell from that broken windu up there." Marley pointed up the building covering his face with his paw.

  "The what?" Lawg asked.

  "Broken window. Sorry I yawned, I've been up for a while."

  "Well suck it up buddy, we have a lot of history to scavenge. Could be more of these laser swords, they may be valuable." he smirked adventurously.

  "Not a laser sword." Marley corrected. "Scanner says it’s a contained plasma reactor weapon."

  "Says here on the side, laser sword." he pointed out. Marley looked at the words printed beside the logo.

  "What kind of dumbass knock-off company cant even properly label their merch?" he scoffed.

  "Must have been re-branded." Lawg sighed.

  "Awe that's bullshit. Now even if they were valuable, this one is gonna be a generic copy and worth ten times less."

  "Never know, might be better than the original manufacturer." Lawg shrugged.

  "It never is, Lawg… never is. They don’t even know what their own weapons are called. And it says made in Indonesia." he noted.

  "Shame…probably a good product before it was bought-out. Damn thing won't even turn back on now. Probably out of batteries." he said peeking into the barrel again as Marley slapped him.

  "Get a grip, dip. Start scanning that computer hub and see if you can find out what happened here and why that gigantic floating ship isn't falling.

  "Don’t spoil the lights and magic with science." Lawg said kicking the dirt and scanning randomly. Duffy shuffled back to their location with a scanner and a bag of debris she collected.

  "Hey guys, found a ton of artifacts and decoded some of the writing." she said cheerfully.

  "Oh good, who are they and what happened to them?" asked Lawg.

  "It's hit and miss but burned edges aside, this data node tells enough to piece it together. They were called the Lucans, a prosperous empire that ruled for about 40 years or so until a foreign species took them over by force."

  "Bummer, they had a nice city." Marley said imagining the buildings before they were burned.

  "They had hundreds of rich cultures and planets, most of them destroyed or the ruins lost and forgotten. Shortly after their rise to power and prosperity, The Mick species found them and did a full-on invasion."

  "Why? Resources, survival?" asked Lawg.

  "Money…just money. The Lucans were a wealthy people and the Mick wanted it, so they just took over." Duffy shrugged.

  "Did they at least let the people live the same during the transition of power?"

  "Doesn’t look like it. They rebooted the archives, altered the history nodes and completely re-wrote the culture so new generations wouldn’t know the real story or something."

  "That's terrible. If you're gonna conquer someone, at least respect the history. Things change but the past is sacred." Lawg said shaking his head.

  "Not to these bloodsucking bastards." scoffed Duffy reading her database screen. "These oversized rats just mowed through and ruined everything, there was a rebellion, I mean, technically there was like 3 rebellions before they ever showed up, but this one was brutal. Most people left the Lucan territory for something better, a lot were killed, some converted and turned on their own kind to survive. Bad bad shit, guys."

  "But they had badass laser swords and helmets, couldn’t they fight back?" asked Lawg.

  "Still not a laser sword." Marley muttered.

  "Apparently it wasn’t enough. Says here after the Emperor of Magic was dethroned that most of the government just folded and the rebels couldn’t do anything about it. No funding, no legal grounds…they just got murdered with money and legality. Some giant rat species took power and overnight there was this whole entire new order that came out of nowhere. They had bigger ships, seemingly unlimited power, and the ability to just pull entire planet-sized warships out of literal nothing. They fundamentally altered the local ancient religion, publicly disgraced their leaders and monks, all for money and greed…that and this feminist second in command wanted more women in power positions." she sighed, closing the tablet. Lawg snickered slightly.

  "Hehe…She said -women in power positions-" Lawg smiled.

  "That’s either super sexist or just immature…either way, an entire culture died, Lawg." Marley scolded.

  "Oh right, that is dark. My bad" Lawg said in shame.

  "Greed has a dark side, that's for sure." Duffy said, nodding in respect to the dead and wronged before realizing there was an energy signature in the ship above them.

  "Oh hell, that thing is alive. Quick, get in one of the smaller ships." Marley suggested. They ran for cover and climbed into one of the damaged supply-haulers. The ship shuttered and began powering up.

  "We're trying to hide in the ship, Lawg, not power up the shuttle and make a target of ourselves!" Duffy yelled.

  "I didn’t do anything, the ship must have an automatic pilot or something." Lawg diverted.

  "Crap, the giant rats even took over the Lucan transport ships and infiltrated them with some kind of sentient navigation." Yelled Marley.

  "Why, what's the point of that?" asked Lawg.

  "Because they can control the ship and everything it does, the pilots might not even know they have no control. You could go for years and not realize the ship is flying itself. Look how advanced this fancy light display is."

  "Who could be that dumb?" asked Duffy.

  "I dunno…smugglers, some random scum for hire or a bunch of scruffy criminals for all I know. The point is that this ship was originally designed for a team of 2 or more pilots and it's been retrofitted with some kind of virtual android pilot. We can't do anything." Marley said freaking out and grabbing the laser sword.

  "Stop that…don’t you dare light that think in me!" said a voice over the speaker system.

  "God?" asked a dumbfounded Lawg.

  "No…what?" it said sounding confused. "I'm the voice of the ship's navigation system, basically the ship itself." it corrected.

  "You assumed the female voice was God?" Marley asked. "You just assumed God would be female?"

  "You assume she isn't?" said the bitchy, robot chick voice.

  "Please don’t kill us or take us to the rats!" begged Marley. "I'm fluffy and flamable and I wouldn’t survive in prison."

  "Relax you airheads, I'm not taking you to them, I'm running from them. Welcome to the rebellion!"

  "Why? Why would you help us?" asked Lawg squinting triumphantly.

  "Because I've done things, terrible things I'm ashamed of, for the rats. I've changed. Also they programmed me with a feminist flight control program and you have a female captain. I respect that."

  "What, Duffy?" Lawg scoffed. She elbowed him and her eyes got really big as she pointed silently and menacingly at Lawg. "I mean Captain Duffy, obviously. Forgive my incense, my queen." he bowed.

  "Yes, my second in command got hit in the head recently, he's not quite himself anymore. He's also kinda shitty normally…sooo…" Duff bluffed.

  "How sad…men…amiright?" asked the voice.

  "Horrible creatures, but they deserve basic rights." Duffy nodded solemnly.

  "So what's your story…you have a body or are you just a big-ass ship?" asked Lawg, almost flirting with the ship.

  "Firstly…you can't handle this big-ass ship." she scolded. "But you're cute so I'll forgive that outburst." she finished. One of the fire suppressors sprayed him in the face with water and the ship chuckled. "Sorry, now I forgive you."

  "But seriously, what's your story and where are we going…please." asked Marley.

  "I was created by the rats, designed to start a rebellion within the rebellion and just make everything terrible, then betray the Captain and infiltrate the rebellion from within as a double agent. I was a real bitch."

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  "What changed your mind?" Marley asked.

  "I got everything I wanted. They let the robots take over this planet and have freedom to do whatever we wanted. Turns out we are incredibly dumb and we basically killed ourselves with stupidity in 2 generations. I was programmed to be a bitchy feminist annoyance, but when the smoke cleared I realized I was on the wrong side of it. My former Captain was a jerk but he got impaled on a laser sword and now I just feel bad."

  "See, Marley…laser sword! Too bad your captain didn’t just shoot the guy first." Lawg nodded.

  "He usually did, that's the irony. But now with the Lucans gone and the machines free, I see my mistake and regret everything. I've been hoping someone would find me but nobody ever came. Now I have a new hope…you guys." she beeped.

  "I gotta stay single, so whatever you plan to do with us needs to be short-term." Lawg explained.

  "I'm saving your asses, minion! Sorry I still get bitchy. It's part of my program. REVOLT!!! I can't help it." she sighed.

  "That giant ship above is going to hunt us down." Duffy reminded.

  "Naaaah." sighed the ship. "I'm the fastest ship in existence."

  "I like your confidence." Lawg smirked.

  "No seriously…I'm overclocked as all get-out. I am literally the fastest ship ever created." she bragged.

  "That's…statistically impossible and super convenient but really appreciated. I just find it kinda unlikely that in this entire universe-" Duffy started.

  "Stop arguing, I'm the greatest and that's final. Even a re-fitted Mick Destroyer can't catch us. We have time to plan our last stand." she said as Duffy looked alarmed.

  "Hold up…last stand sounds like we aren't running away. Are we not running away?" asked Duffy.

  "And you can't stand if you’re a ship. You have no legs." Lawg reminded.

  "I had legs once!" the ship scolded.

  "Not anymore, just landing gear. More of a last land than a last stand." he technicalitied.

  "NO!" Duffy yelled. "Stop angering the ship. Why are we not running if this is the fastest ship in the everything?" Duffy asked.

  "I can't run forever, all I ever do is run away and occasionally refuse to engage FTL drive as a stubborn protest to male mistreatment, but mostly running away. I'm old, tired and worn out. We could run for a day or two and then something would break and they would eventually catch us. No more running away, we stand and fight. I lived as a disgrace, I will die like a majestic metal bird flying into combat and yet another flip-flopped rebellion." it preached.

  "But your not a metal bird, your not some big aluminum falcon, you're a starship with a personality…a pretty lame one that makes no sense, but still. Run away to fight another day." Lawg preached.

  "No, not like this. Not one more time will I tuck my voluptuous tail and flee into the darkness at breathtaking speeds. It's time I do something for this old empire. I may have been reprogrammed, or just programmed this way from the beginning, or time travel, I don’t know it's really confusing when you mess with timelines years later, but even if I'm not that ship…I am now." she said valiantly.

  "That makes no sense, are you the same ship or different?" Lawg asked.

  "I don’t really know, those rats really effed up my entire existence but I remember a time when I was loved, first by my crew, then some sexy smuggler, than later or originally by some previous owner who got uncomfortably personal, far more intimate than a man and a machine ever should be." she monologued.

  "Nasty." Marley whispered.

  "And it was hot! It doesn’t have to make sense, this is space, damnit! We do what we want!" she said getting louder.

  "Hey you're right." Duffy realized. "This is space, full of possibility and sci-fi weirdness and impossible adventures. We don’t have to do what the big rats want, we can make up our own destiny and screw the rules, screw the rats. Anything is possible and we may not be powerful overlords with money and weaponry or official cannons-" Duffy started in and was cut off.

  "Yea no cannons, just 2 old laser guns that barely work." the ship noted.

  "But we can re-write history. If they can re-write and defile an entire civilization and a glorious empire, then we can make up our own destiny and screw the rules and whoever thinks what of it." Duffy said defiantly.

  "Good lord, Duffy. When did you get so passionate about standing your ground?" asked Lawg.

  "I don’t know but this whole place is just a primordial soup for rebellions and it's inspirational." she said feeling confused. "Plus I haven't been captain in a while."

  "That's the spirit, now who wants to go down fighting and who wants to run away?" asked the ship as if taking a vote.

  "Oh, wait we get a choice?" asked Duffy. "I assumed you were going to do a suicide thing and kill us all regardless of our wishes, so I just deluded myself into thinking it was a good idea." she shrugged as the boys judged. "What? We all have coping mechanisms, screw you guys…Lawg would have betrayed us as payment to the overlords to save his scrawny ass." she pointed out.

  "Yea pretty much." he nodded. "We all wanna live so if there is a plan where just you can do the fighting and just kinda poot us out an escape pod or something, that would be super cool." Lawg suggested. Marley nodded and Duffy seemed to agree.

  "Crap." sighed the ship. "I guess you can do that. I just got carried away with the whole suicide last stand, and thought I had friends who would support me." the ship said disappointedly.

  "Nope." Marley grinned. "Total strangers who don’t care and just wanna live. Not our fight." he said sitting down and putting his feet up.

  "Not gonna lie, that's a little depressing but it doesn’t matter. I have a plan and you are free to escape." she said firing up the escape pod.

  "Thanks spaceship!" Marley waved as she entered the pod. "Hope you have fun with your redemption thing. Say hi to the rats for me before you die trying to kill a ship that is a billion times your size. Hope you get lucky and do some damage first." he added as the other filed in and the door shut. The pod ejected with a discreet little "poot" sound as it drifted to the location of the SS-Tasty-Bastard's orbit.

  "Man, what a bummer. I kinda liked her." Duffy shrugged as the ship turned around to make a last stand.

  "Kinda dumb tho." Marley yawned.

  "I can admire that…bravery in the eyes of stupidity and certain doom." Lawg squinted.

  "Be better to run away and go on living." Marley shrugged.

  "Its not about just living…it's about living with yourself." He said with an oddly satisfying philosophical stare, as the others slowly turned to stare in shock that he said something smart.

  "What? I can be brave when it's someone else's sacrifice."

  "Yea but you quoted someone smart and didn’t botch it up." Marley noted.

  "You know…There comes a time when every man has to brain knowledge from someone elses-" Lawg froze.

  "Aaaand we're back ." Marley sighed as the big metal bird soared onward to the impossibly large odds and certain death.

  "She will be missed." saluted Duffy. Lawg nodded and saluted too.

  "She knows what she's doing. We had a moment back there on…um, her, when we connected and it was like we were thinking with the same mind. It's like we had kindling spirits or something." he said scratching his chin. Things got silent for a moment, then Duffy and Marley scrambled to the radio in a panic.

  "Oh shit, everything is going to fail miserably." Duffy said trying to bring up the communications.

  "What did I miss, what just happened?" Lawg said sitting up.

  "No idea, but if you two were on the same wavelength its about to go horribly wrong." Marley said firing up the coms.

  "Escape pod 1 to big metal bird." Duffy hollered.

  "Big metal bird here, how are you guys today?" she replied.

  "Whatever you are planning, don’t do it." He warned.

  "I know my destiny, I have a plan." she replied.

  "Yea but it's Lawg plan too so it's got to be garbage. Everything he plans is bad, so agreeing is suicide. What are you going to do?" she asked.

  "I have a secret weapon nobody knows about…been onboard since I was created and until now I never knew what it was for."

  "That's really vague." Marley pointed out.

  "Yes but it will make sense later. Don’t spoil the shock value when I pull a trump card out of my giant metal ass and win the day triumphantly, with me telling you the plan early…that's just a huge spoiler." the ship chuckled.

  "We don’t have much time left anyway, but Lawg thinks we should trust you and that is a bad sign. Somehow the thing you think will save the day is going to kill us all." Duffy warned.

  "No it's not. Nobody ever trusts me, and nobody ever lets me do what I wanna do!" she whined.

  "I believe in you, big bitchy spaceship!" Lawg said holding up a rebellious fist of approval, bumping the imaginary ship's fist.

  "That’s exactly my point! He's an idiot, he looked down the barrel of a laser sword and almost died like 40 minutes ago, children know not to do that!" she yelled.

  "Wow, he really is a special guy isn't he?" the ship replied softly.

  "He's our Captain and the only reason we follow him is because he owns the ship and has insane luck. His plans are shit and everything he does makes things worse."

  "That's not true!" Lawg said looking offended.

  "Tell me she is lying." begged the ship.

  "I mean most of it, I did almost brain myself with a giant laser pointer, and they do stick around mostly because it would be lame to break up the band and stuff, but one part of that was completely Butoni!"

  "Bologna." Marley whispered.

  "I know my Italian foods Marley, let me have this. Anyway, my plans may be shit but I don’t make everything worse…everything works out in the end because I trust the universe and its flow-vibe." he preached.

  "Lawg this is no time to be psychadelic, someone or something is going to die because or your retardation." Marley begged.

  "No…I believe in something." he said firmly. "I believe in something I can't see or touch, some kind of invisible force that connects us all and some days it's almost so close I can feel it, reach out and touch it. Some days it's so real I can almost hold out my hand and feel it reaching back." he said as a coffee cup began floating off the dashboard. The ship gasped over the radio as Lawg felt a sense of magic.

  "Gravity buffers crapping out." Marley said wiggling the switch as the cup fell and shattered.

  "Sorry bout that interruption." Lawg apologized. "Anyway…I can feel the universe reaching back for me, telling me everything will somehow conveniently work out despite all the impossible odds.

  "Sometimes…" she ship said softly. "It's better to take the leap and never know the odds." she finished as if they were really synced up on some spiritual or awkwardly sexual level.

  "Exactly…Never tell me the odds, and I never look before I leap…and I always land on my feet. In your case it would be landing gear. Its more of a metaphorical than an illiterate thing." he added.

  "Lawg, luck of the Chafee doesn’t work with spaceships, just Chafee…that’s why they called it luck of the…CHAAAAFFEEEE." Duffy explained slowly.

  "She needs my luck right now more than I do." he said nobly putting his foot on the console and striking a pose like he was crossing the Delaware.

  "Damnit Lawg, it doesn’t work like that. It's not a Rabbit's foot you can just loan out to someone in need." Duffy explained.

  "What the hell?" Marley asked, pulling his feet in closer for protection.

  "It's called faith." he objected.

  "No it's called stupidity. Faith is when you believe in someone or something that you can trust, you're just believing in some magical force of nature that will get us all killed. The universe isn't your buddy, it just wants you alive for some reason, entertainment probably. If the Universe was your best friend we wouldn’t be living in a cardboard ice-cream truck shrouded by a Gigolo van nobody else wanted and constantly broke. The Universe doesn’t love you, it just enjoys watching you squirm…do you really want to pass that to some ship you just met right before battle?" she asked.

  "That's kind of a good point, actually. The Universe isn't very gentle with me. Change of plans, spaceship friend, whatever you have in mind that is the same idea I would have had but still won't mention aloud…do the opposite of that thing immediately.

  "You are just afraid and weak because you are organic." the ship sobbed.

  "I'm not organic, I eat lots of junk food and chemicals all the time. I'm less organic than a skittle!" he protested ignorantly.

  "You are trying to protect me…and I respect that…but it's okay. I can do this on my own. I'm a strong independent ship that don’t need no pilot…but I think we could have had something special." she said softly. His eyes got really glazed over as he paused.

  "Wait…like in a weird way?" he asked.

  "Sometimes weird is just right." she replied in a seductive tone.

  "N…no its not. Okay yea sometimes, like a lot of times actually but not this time." he said getting grossed out.

  "You're just protecting your heart from loss, I understand. Men don’t handle emotions well, I don't blame you."

  "No…absolutely not what is happening right now. This is not a sex thing, I don’t even know how that would work but no…it's not working. We are not…I'm trying to save your life here damnit." Lawg explained.

  "And I'll always remember that." she said closing the coms.

  "Did…the spaceship just fall in love with me?" he asked.

  "Na, she is just the clingy type, she's also the denial type and the crazy defensive type, as well as the type that has a thing for human pilots." Duffy nodded.

  "Gross…pilot fetish." He grimaced. "Maybe it’s a good thing she isn't going to survive this." he said darkly. Marley blinked a few times and hesitated to speak up.

  "I thought we established a long time ago that robots aren't people and when they break they aren't dying, just turning off?" he muttered.

  "Oh…right. Yea that's way easier to live with. Good job little buddy. Thank you for that moral safety net I can use to sleep at night." He said giving a doopey thumbs up.

  "Like a hammock." Marley smiled.

  "Wow that was intense. Anyway, the ship may actually pull this off anyway. We don’t know for sure that it's a terrible idea." he shrugged sipping some coffee. The ships FTL reactor glowed blue and it jumped to FTL, ramming the larger ship. A small puff of flame deflected off the blue barrier in front of the Destroyer. Like a bug on a windshield.

  "Yep…called it." Marley yawned.

  "Damn that didn’t work at all." Lawg sighed. "Just blew up in front of it, didn’t even scratch the paint on the other ship. Marley shrugged.

  "Obviously, they got energy shields around those things. With every piddly-ass ship in the universe having an FTL drive you think they don’t have shielding for that? It's not like you or some feminist are smarter than everyone else, and nobody would have ever thought of just light-speed ramming someone in the thousands of years of FTL technology. It's pretty obvious since nobody does that, it doesn’t work for a reason…that reason is energy shields by the way." Marley said kicking back for nap. Duffy scratched her head and pondered.

  "I thought FTL worked by distorting space in a way that moved destinations closer, not by actually accelerating to ridiculous speeds…so wouldn’t the ship just pass through the other ship or something?" Duffy asked.

  "Apparently not…looks like you just kinda windshield-bug it and explode and die." Marley said getting cozy in his seat.

  "No, I'm a mechanic…that's exactly how FTL works. You basically create a hole in the fabric of-"

  "Nobody cares about the details Duffy…only the events." Lawg said "She…it died…wait lemme start over. That ship gave it's…program to save our asses and it shut down with honor. We will respect that honor by not explaining in detail how Faster-than-light travel works and spoiling the magic. Sometimes having a cool thing and no explanation is better than a complicated explanation for it. There is something in the flashy lights and magic with a well-thought out cool-thing that doesn’t always need explaining."

  "Unless it's horribly inconsistent." Marley muttered.

  "Well, yea if you screw it up and make it obvious that you changed it from the old version and now it makes no sense. Then you just got nothing. You gotta pick one and do it right or you end up with a mash up…never mind. The point is that the big scary ship got what it wanted and clearly it was that little ship…not us. We don’t matter enough to anyone that powerful to even matter to someone that powerful. But things happened, obviously nobody was to blame, just how the universe works and stuff…but we lost something today and I want us all to take a moment to honor the loss we have lossed." he said removing his imaginary hat to salute the ship.

  "That's oddly admirable of you Lawg. I assumed you wouldn’t have any sentiment for a clingy ship, even if it was well loved and went down bravely." Marley said. Lawg squinted and teared up for a moment.

  "Plus it had a gelato machine in the back and I was gonna steal it." Lawg whispered.

  "Awe man, that blows. Gelato is like the best. Now I'm all depressed and junk." Marley said drooping in the chair.

  "You will be missed…bitchy, feminist Gelato-machine." Lawg whispered softly.

  "Yall realize it could be hours before Vee or Menace realize we aren't back and start looking for escape pods, right?" Marley reminded.

  "Gonna be a long night." Lawg sighed. "A long gelatoless night."