If you have just two things, you can’t do this. You need to have at least three, and then the trick is you “take” speed from one of them to speed you up relative to the other.
Say you’ve got a planet going around the Sun and a spacecraft coming up to the planet. If you plan your approach just right, the very tiny gravity your spacecraft has will slow the planet down an incredibly tiny amount but in return your spacecraft gets sped up.
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