To say that Galistar had been a disaster was not altogether far from the truth. It had very nearly been a catastrophe, and had settled somewhere in the vicinity of “comedy of errors.” One day, maybe in fifteen years or so, it would be a great story to tell at parties, but for now Scratch was keeping it close to the chest.

The bad news was, the moment Herut Benedictus started asking questions, the whole thing might unravel. The good news was, the actual story was such a clusterfuck that the famed detective might not even believe it even if he did figure out the truth.

The truth being that Scratch genuinely had no idea how she'd been left holding the bag. It was a mystery that she had no intention of solving, because solving it meant an examination of her own shortcomings, and that was a hard ask for anyone. But, regardless of how much she knew about what had gone down, she was also the one that would spend the next ten years in galactic prison if the cat got out of the bag.

In the end, there wasn't a lot of choice. If it looked like Benedictus was getting too close, then she would have to flee the planet. It was a pity, really; this was one of the nicer planets she'd had the pleasure of visiting. A much lower chance of getting stabbed than on Karsis, but that was true of most of the galaxy.

Scratch decided not to worry about it until it was an actual problem. Either it would be, or it wouldn't be, and nothing she did was going to change that.

What she could do something about was her frankly criminal lack of sleep. The moment Scratch returned from inventory, she crawled into bed, pausing only to take her pants off once more. She was allowed a merciful three hours of rest, woken only by a light buzzing from Aziz telling her that the guests were on their way back from their snorkel trip.

They would be starving, Scratch knew, so she had opted for quantity over quality. The sliders had been popular, and pretty easy to make if you had done the prep work. It also meant that she could make a few extra for herself, and for Damaris and Aziz, neither of whom she had ever actually seen eat. She was pretty sure they both just used the synthesisers, but there was always the outside possibility that they were both robots.

Sadly, probably not. There was no chance her life could have been that interesting. She was half hoping for the ship to be attacked by pirates, or for the fabled Serendipity Kraken to make an appearance, but sadly, both options were fairly unlikely. Even then, Mr Vandersnoot had a pretty good security team, all of whom were sadly uninterested in distractions of a salacious nature. You couldn’t get bad help these days.

Dinner that night was a scratch affair (hah!). As a kid, for Scratch that had usually meant going hungry, or whatever expired packets of biscuits she could get her hands on, or food stolen from someone else’s synthesiser. A slapdash dinner for rich people meant a very nice charcuterie platter, and tapas, and just the three hundred stilbit bottle of wine instead of the three thousand.

It was actually more work in the end, even though she'd actually done her due diligence to plan ahead. Her first few nights on the ship, Scratch had actually tried to be innovative. She'd created flavourful dishes that utilised her admittedly very shallow knowledge of cuisine from across the galaxy. On the third day, Damaris had instructed her to tone it down a bit, as Mr. Vandersnoot had found her stir-fry “too spicy.” She did not think it would help to mention that the spiciest thing in there had been black pepper, and instead elected to stick to the most basic of salads and grilled meats. As long as you sprinkled at least one expensive ingredient over the top, most people seemed to think you'd put in a lot more effort than you actually did.

So, cutting up a bunch of little things and arranging them decoratively on platters was the worst. By the time Scratch made it out of the kitchen, it was eleven o’clock, and she was exhausted. In spite of the raised, questioning eyebrows from Charlotte, Scratch went straight to bed, and slept until dawn.

She suspected that someone must have said something to Mr. Vandersnoot. It wouldn’t have been Aziz or Damaris, for sure. Neither of them would have dared. But, Scratch had yawned once (quickly stifled) in the proximity of Mrs. Vandersnoot, who had given a sympathetic, knowing sort of chuckle, clearly aware of her husband’s nighttime habits. At least, that was what Scratch hoped she was giving a knowing chuckle about.

Breakfast was simple enough. Poached eggs on top of toasted muffins, and whatever remained of the truffle aioli. Scratch made a mental note to figure out how she was going to snatch a bottle of oil without Damaris finding out, which was very silly, really. She had stolen one of the most valuable artworks in existence, surely she could manage a single bottle of oil.

Both Damaris and Aziz were mysteriously absent, so Scratch buttoned up her jacket, and put on her best waitress face. The face that she had to keep calm and emotionless when one of Mrs. Vandersnoot's friends drenched her eggs in tomato sauce. Personally, Scratch did not think those flavour profiles went together at all, but who was she to judge? She was just the culinary expert that had slaved away over the menu (had looked in the fridge and seen that there were still eggs left). It really shouldn't have bothered her so much.

The day sort of melted together after that. Scratch was absolutely chomping at the bit waiting for their docking with the Determinator, because that meant time off. She could have sworn that Damaris had told her that they would be reaching port today, but there was no land in sight, and Scratch resigned herself to the fact that she was going to have to wait one more day before being able to get away from all of this for a bit.

There was very little to do on the runabout, or at least very little that she could do during broad daylight with other people around. When she had seen the application for a chef on a billionaire’s superyacht, it had sounded fun, and glamorous, and not at all like she was going to spend half her time wishing she had four more arms just to be able to get things done, and the rest of it dying of boredom.

If she had any quiet, mundane sort of hobbies, it probably would have been fine. She could have read a book on the approximately one square metre of deck that they had afforded to them that guests did not access, but Scratch legitimately could not remember the last time she had read a book for pleasure. Not a whole one, anyway. Fania had recommended some, but Scratch inevitably read a chapter or two (or, more realistically, a sentence or two) before getting bored and going to do something else. She couldn’t even just lie on the deck and get a tan, because sunbathing on a planet with three suns seemed like a bad idea. She wasn’t some rich person that could afford to live on a planet and then die of skin cancer at forty-two. She didn’t mind painting, both for pleasure and for forgery purposes, but it was a little hard to do in a capsule cabin. Even sketching was difficult.

Dinner was frenched lamb cutlets with a garlic lemon sauce. Just as difficult to get lamb in space as it was pork. In fact, all meat was a hard sell even when you did live on a planet with good agriculture. Or maybe that was just if you were below the poverty line on a planet with good agriculture. Scratch’s first time eating non-synthed meat had been at a restaurant she’d been doing dish duty at when she was fifteen. One of the line cooks had snuck some off the grill and taken it out into a back alley for her to try. It had been juicy, and delicious, and well worth the fact that they’d both been fired for the transgression. Now, of course, all she had to do was fake a resume and a culinary school graduation, apply for jobs as the personal chefs of rich people, and eat the leftovers while hiding in the walk-in.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Scratch could have gotten herself up in arms about where exactly that money was coming from. After all, she was fairly certain that the people responsible for Mr. Vandersnoot’s record profits weren’t getting paid several hundred thousand stilbits for a few months of work, and they were almost certainly working a lot harder than Scratch was. Probably didn’t get free lamb cutlets, either.

They definitely weren’t able to experience the other perks of the job. The kind that had Scratch sneaking down the hallway at eleven o’clock in her pyjamas. Along the way, she met only Damaris, who gave a long-suffering sigh. ‘Be a little more discreet, would you? I will not be coming to your rescue if you get tossed into the sea.’

Scratch was fairly sure that if push came to shove, Damaris probably would back her up. Maybe not to the extent of running around to find a wetsuit, hooking up the oxygen tanks, checking for sharks and diving into the sparkling seas after her, but maybe enough to just like…put in a good word and make sure it didn’t quite get to the murder stage.

Not that she thought Mr. Vandersnoot was capable of murder. Scratch was, of course, not the best judge of character, but he seemed like the type to not want to get his hands dirty, if only to maintain the jovial “totally definitely your friend” persona. If he wanted someone dead, he would probably outsource it to one of his more violent lackeys.

Hopefully there would be at least one person to mourn her, instead of Damaris and Aziz sighing, and bemoaning the fact that someone would be needed to de-vein the shrimp and clean up the puddle of blood on the galley floor. She presumed, in this hypothetical scenario, that they would be gutting her with one of her own knives.

‘I don't know what you're talking about,’ Scratch said, keenly aware that the horse had already bolted.

There was a very long pause. ‘You know what,’ Damaris said. ‘I don’t want to know anything about this. I can’t answer questions about something I don’t know anything about.’ She turned, and walked away. Scratch was pretty sure that that was the closest she was going to get to tacit approval, so she was going to consider it a win.

Charlotte was unbothered by the news that Damaris knew. ‘Oh, she loves me, it’s fine.’ Scratch had no idea if that was true or not. ‘Besides, it’s not like she’s going to tell him.’

That was probably true. Still, it probably wouldn’t hurt to be more discreet. Scratch made a concerted effort to…be quieter. Charlotte made no such efforts, and Scratch was beginning to suspect that she actually wanted her father to find out. Not an ideal scenario. As much fun as Scratch was having, she had absolutely no interest in being a weapon in someone’s daddy issues battle.

Still, when Scratch got up to leave afterwards, Charlotte said, ‘Wait.’

Scratch waited.

‘Stay?’

Scratch hesitated. She had stayed more than once accidentally, but it felt like a very different thing to stay on purpose. In any case, Scratch was nothing if not a sucker for a pretty face, so of course she stayed.

It was, admittedly, a little strange to be sleeping in someone else’s bed with no plans for hanky-panky, and Scratch wasn’t sure if she hated it or not. Really, the fact that the bed was so goddamned comfortable made up for the fact that it was infinitely harder to sleep with someone else’s breathing right next to her ear.

Somehow, she managed to push through the hardship, and had the best night’s sleep in…well, maybe ever. It was only the fact that she was rudely awoken by a knock on the door in the early hours that it was not truly perfect.

“Early hours” was a bit of a stretch. It was seven a.m, which was both very nearly late to breakfast, and much better than a two a.m wake-up call. If Scratch was really thinking about it, she might have wondered why she didn't get a two a.m wake-up call.

Almost on autopilot, Scratch rolled out of bed, and started putting on her pants. There was another knock on the door, and the voice that followed catapulted her brain into being truly awake.

‘Charlotte, sweetie, are you up?’

Scratch froze. It was Mr. Vandersnoot. She should have expected this. In fact, from the very almost guilty look on Charlotte’s face, she had expected this. Shit, maybe she had even planned for it. Scratch made quick moves to duck around behind the other side of the bed, forgetting that she was midway through getting dressed.

She fell flat on her face, almost knocking the bedside table over. A priceless artefact wobbled, but did not fall.

The door slid open, and Scratch kept her face planted into the floor. Maybe if she couldn’t see Mr. Vandersnoot, he wouldn’t be able to see her. That was the way object permanence worked, right?

‘Oh.’

Well, that settled it. That was definitely the ‘Oh’ of someone that had walked in on something that he didn’t particularly want to see. Not the ‘Oh’ of someone that just realised they’d accidentally left their curling iron on.

‘Dad,’ Charlotte said, in a needling sort of voice. ‘Just because you knocked doesn’t mean you can come right in, remember?’

‘Right, right, of course. I’m so sorry, sweetie. Kitty. I just wanted to know…’ His voice sounded almost flustered. Scratch chanced a glance upwards and saw that his cheeks were red with embarrassment. Well, better embarrassment than anger. ‘You know what, I can probably just have toast.’

Whelp. Damaris was quite possibly going to kill Scratch. If only anyone could have possibly predicted this outcome.

Scratch managed to get to her feet, and put on her pants. She was keenly aware of Charlotte’s eyes piercing in her direction, and she did not dare make eye contact. Not until she reached for the waist of her pants, and found her pager missing.

Well. Okay. She definitely should have seen that coming. ‘You know, if you want to make him mad, there are plenty of ways to do it without throwing me under the bus.’ She held out her hand, and after a second or two, a small device was dropped into it. There were two missed messages on the screen. One at five forty-eight a.m, and one at six twelve a.m. It was now six twenty-seven, which meant that Mr. Vandersnoot had shown remarkable restraint before bursting in here. The pager must have had a locator tag on it.

Scratch bit back a sigh. She was absolutely going to regret this. There was absolutely no way in hell that this was going to go well for her, and yet…she couldn’t quite stop herself from doing it. Scratch could be accused of a lot of things, but intelligence in the face of adversity was not one of them. She would do a lot of very stupid things to get one middling thing.

‘I…’ she started, and then common sense took hold of her. She would have time to do stupid things later. ‘I have to go.’

Scratch went back to her capsule, and had the longest decontamination shower that she could afford to. Then, she dressed carefully in her clean chef whites and strode off in the direction of the kitchen like nothing had happened.

Damaris was waiting for her there, and she did not look impressed. Scratch did everything in her power not to make eye contact. 'Please don't say I told you so.'

'Why would I need to say I told you so, you just said it for me.' There was no yelling, which was nice. Scratch had already experienced one humiliation this morning, and was in no mood for a lecture.

'Did he eat, at least?'

'Yes, I had to stop him from putting peanut butter on his toast.' It took Scratch about half a minute to remember that Mr. Vandersnoot was allergic to peanuts. A fact that he himself had apparently forgotten.

‘Well, we still get paid if he dies, right?’ Scratch said, forgetting that she was talking to Damaris, someone with the power to fire her, and the willingness to murder her and chop her body up into tiny pieces.

Instead, Damaris laughed. It was a short bark of a thing, and though Scratch would never, ever tell her this, it was kinda hot.

‘Not nearly enough.’ It was the closest thing that Scratch had heard from Damaris to being outright criticism, and she was kind of living for it. Sadly, Damaris was very strict about her “there is absolutely no way in hell I am interested in engaging personally with any co-workers” policy. Truly devastating. Scratch was willing to bet that Damaris would have been very entertaining to drink with. ‘Anyway, now that you’ve had your fun, you might want to start thinking about lunch. I think Alberto caught some lobsters yesterday that Mr. Vandersnoot mentioned wanting to turn into ice-cream.’ She dropped this casually, as though it were nothing more than a request for fresh bread, or a nice stew. Scratch probably deserved it.

Muttering swears under her breath, Scratch pulled her apron off the hook on the wall. Damaris’s expression was a deeply confusing one, and Scratch decided to ignore it completely, because she did not have time to get stupid right about now.

It had gotten her in enough trouble already.