Chapter Two

Scratch hadn't planned to spend the night. Her plan, as usual, was for a nice, forty-five minute nude cuddle, followed by a midnight walk of shame, and, as usual, she had fallen asleep almost immediately. There was just something about a couple of hours of debauchery that made her sleepy, the evening not even remotely ruined by Charlotte calling her “Katie” a couple of times.

The luxurious slumber was interrupted a few minutes after two a.m., when the small device clipped to her waistband started to buzz. The waistband was on the other side of the room, but its settings had been cranked high enough to set off seismic sensors. Scratch groaned. She'd tried to do it quietly, but apparently not quietly enough, because Charlotte was already stirring. She rolled onto her back, and without opening her eyes said, ‘What does he want this time?’

A lobotomy was what Scratch almost said. She thought better of it at the last second, figuring it probably wasn't the best idea to be trash-talking the guy to his daughter. It was the very height of unprofessionalism, and Scratch was nothing if not professional.

‘No idea,’ she said. The buzzer was not a particularly complicated piece of technology. Similar to the kind of thing that cheap restaurants used to tell you when your food was ready to be picked up from the serving window. It really could have been anything. Once he had set it off by accident at four a.m. while looking for the remote control, and didn't even think to tell Scratch it was a false alarm until four-thirty. ‘I'm just gonna go back to my room after,’ she said, but Charlotte was already asleep again.

After a quick detour to pick up a clean jacket, Scratch dashed to the kitchen. Mr. Vandersnoot was already there, fully dressed. He wouldn’t have looked out of place at a tractor show. He was wearing well-worn jeans held up with a leather belt, and a flannelette shirt that didn’t even seem to have a brand name. That was the thing about old money. They didn’t always care too much about how they looked, but they paid a lot better than new money, and were generally a little nicer, too.

But, of course, money was still money, and it had still come from running hundreds of asteroid mining facilities throughout the quadrant, and could be comfortably called blood money. Not that Scratch was in any position to judge. She'd done shitty things for not a lot of money, which somehow felt worse. At least Mr. Vandersnoot was getting superyachts out of his sins. Money and a veneer of friendliness made a lot of people look the other way.

The first time they had met, Mr. Vandersnoot had insisted on being called "Jim,” but it had only taken a single stern glance from Damaris for Scratch to never ever want to do that.

‘Sorry for the early wake-up call, Kitty,’ he said, and Scratch didn’t think he was particularly sorry at all. After all, he had a synth in his quarters. He could have very easily gotten himself food. ‘I just had a real hankering for a grilled cheese.’

‘Of course, Mr. Vandersnoot,’ Scratch said. Okay, maybe she did it intentionally because it was funny to see the look on his face. Somewhere between indignation and preening.

‘And if there’s any more of that truffle aioli left from yesterday’s sliders, that would be fantastic.’

The aioli that had been made from…well, scratch, using truffle oil that had been imported from literally the one place in the entire galaxy that had it. It had been more expensive than even the pork had been, including the cost of freight. A drizzling oil, for sure, and Jim Vandersnoot had ordered an entire crate of it. Scratch planned to swipe a few bottles of it on her way out the door if there was any of it left, and she was pretty sure they would be. Mr. Vandersnoot went through food fads like tissues. Last week it had been Afronian Beef, and this week it was truffles.

There absolutely was not any of the aioli left, but there was enough oil to make more. This was going to be the universe's most expensive grilled cheese sandwich.

‘Make yourself one too,’ he insisted. ‘It's always so boring eating alone.’ There was a smile, and a very dramatic flourish on the word "boring,” like he was trying very hard to convince her that he was down-to-earth and relatable.

Regardless, Scratch wasn't going to say no to free food. She would happily enjoy a six-hundred thousand stilbit grilled cheese sandwich at two in the morning. What was the point of being the temporary personal chef for an out of touch billionaire if you couldn’t take advantage of the perks?

For all that the truffle aioli made the sandwich expensive as fuck, Mr. Vandersnoot insisted it was made with plain white bread and the shitty plastic cheese that was intended for children. Scratch would have preferred to make it with a nice sourdough loaf made in the steam oven, and an aged cheddar that would have knocked anyone’s tits clean off, but Mr. Vandersnoot was very particular. ‘I like the simple things in life,’ he said.

So, Scratch got out the immersion blender and made truffle aioli, and slathered it on a mediocre grilled cheese sandwich. At least the cooktop was gimballed, and she didn't lose either of the sandwiches in one of the ship's sudden lurches. It never got pants-shittingly rough, but there was nothing more devastating than losing a good meal to motion.

Mr. Vandersnoot was, at the very least, grateful. ‘I've been up all night negotiating with investors in the Xingdao system. I'll tell ya, it's hard enough keeping track of time zones on one planet, let alone something across the galaxy. Sometimes the way the time dilation works I'll get a reply before I've even sent the message!’ He looked at her expectantly, waiting for the laugh. Scratch gave him the expected polite chuckle. She was about eighty percent sure he was joking, but she didn’t know enough about time dilation to be able to dispute it if he wasn’t. For all she knew, that was technically possible, but really, it was more of a Fania question. Scratch’s expertise was in cooking and…well, crime, but she wasn’t very good at it. Not on purpose, anyway.

After he'd finished his grilled cheese, and told her all about his woes with a diamond mine that wasn't meeting quota, Mr. Vandersnoot pulled a bottle of aged whiskey from the cupboard that Scratch was forbidden from even looking at, and poured out two glasses. Scratch sure was glad she hadn't made Kitty Sparklestone a teetotaler, because that bottle of whiskey was worth more than her ship. Not that it was a high bar to clear.

‘Just the mid-shelf today, I think,’ Mr. Vandersnoot said, as they both took a sip, and then, when Scratch made a strangled sort of look, he added, ‘Everything alright?’ The whiskey, of course, was perfect. Nice flavour, good notes, went down smooth. But even as an aspiring connoisseur of fine things, Scratch didn't think that she would ever actually pay for it. Not unless she got really rich.

‘Of course,’ Scratch said, working desperately hard to channel the “polite to authority figures” persona that usually belonged to JD. ‘Do I detect a hint of rosemary?’

Mr. Vandersnoot gave an impressed sort of nod. Scratch didn't bother to tell him about the image of rosemary leaves on the label.

‘What do you think of truffle cheese?’ Mr. Vandersnoot asked, without any particular preamble. The look on Scratch's face must have turned to confusion, because he added, ‘You know, so I don't have to get so much oil next time, we just put it in the cheese instead. It's a pretty innovative business idea if I do say so myself.’ Scratch was not sure how to go about telling him that the idea of truffle cheese had been around for hundreds of years, so she didn't.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

‘I think that's a great idea, Mr. Vandersnoot,’ she said, with a saccharine sort of smile that she had definitely gotten from someone. It wasn't a JD smile, but then Scratch had not borrowed any smiles from JD, just stoic looks.

It was three o'clock by the time Scratch made it back to bed, very slightly tipsy. She would have to be back up again at 5 to finish off breakfast. Fortunately, the guests were heading off on a snorkelling trip for the morning, and wouldn't be back until afternoon tea time, which meant that Scratch would have a chance to catch up on sleep during her few hours of freedom.

At least it was dark. The planet got roughly eight hours of darkness every two weeks, and the rest of the time the normal sleep cycle was made marginally more comfortable by blackout shutters on all of the windows. Scratch was sure she would have slept incredibly well in the true night, had it not been for the wake-up call.

Breakfast was run on autopilot. Eggs poached, muffins toasted, caviar very delicately placed atop the whole affair. Just a normal, everyday breakfast that would be enjoyed by normal, everyday people. At least she hadn’t had to hand make croissants this time.

The food was eaten, and the dishes were washed all by eight forty-five, and Scratch managed to quickly choke down some toast before going back to bed. Blackout shutters down, she was asleep almost the second her eyes were closed, and enjoyed a very nice nap until she was rudely awoken forty-five minutes later.

“Rudely awoken” in a very literal sense, by someone turning on the light that was six inches from her face. There was only one person on the entire boat that would be brazen enough to wake her up that way, but that didn’t stop Scratch from mentally swearing up a storm as she shook off the cobwebs. ‘What the fuck Damaris, I was sleeping,’ was what Scratch had intended to say, but she had a face full of pillow and all that really came out was the tired groan of a teenager being dragged out of bed by their mother on a Sunday morning at eleven.

‘We need to go over supplies for the docking with the Determinator,’ Damaris said, and there was not even a hint of apology in her voice. If you grabbed a galactic dictionary, and looked up the word “no nonsense” you would find a picture of Damaris, who would then scowl, and say “no nonsense is two words, get your ass back to work.” ‘I put it on your schedule.’ Damaris was not all that much taller than Scratch, but she had a force of presence that made her seem like a giant. Her dark hair had been cropped close to the skull for easy maintenance, and she was far too good, far too clever to be stuck here doing this. Scratch actually liked Damaris quite a lot, but at this moment her feelings were not particularly charitable.

She would have dearly loved to ask for even just an extra thirty minutes, but she knew beyond shadow of a doubt that Damaris would refuse outright. It didn't matter that Scratch had been dragged out of bed at 2.a.m. to make a sandwich, because dinner service had ended early enough that anyone not sneaking off to “hang out” with a passenger could have gotten ample sleep. But that wasn't an argument that Scratch wanted to have right now, knowing that she would never win. Instead, she said, ‘Aren't I entitled to personal time?’

‘No,’ said Damaris. ‘Glad we’ve had the chat. Put on some pants and come to the ready room with your inventory. Fifteen minutes.’

Fifteen minutes was downright generous for Damaris. It would only take five minutes to put on pants and get the inventory clipboard, which gave Scratch about nine and a half minutes of lying in her capsule and staring at the ceiling. Practically a luxury. From Scratch's capsule bed to the galley was a mere ten metres, and there was even a porthole. Not that there was much to see out there except ocean, and the first of the suns in the sky. It was a one sun day, so the weather would be nice and mild. Some of the three sun days were brutal if you couldn't get to shade. Scratch was glad that she didn't burn easily; the Vandersnoots were like lobsters if they spent too long out there, and she'd had to help Aziz set up umbrellas more than once.

On her way past the porthole, something flashed in the corner of Scratch's vision. She stopped. Eh, it was probably nothing. Besides, Damaris would be even crankier than usual if Scratch was late.

The bosun in question was standing in front of the pantry, checking against the inventory. ‘There's a bottle of truffle oil missing.’

Scratch blinked. ‘I used it to make Mr. Vandersnoot a grilled cheese sandwich at two o'clock this morning,’ she said. very pointedly, trying to draw the barest scrap of sympathy from Damaris. Her efforts were utterly wasted.

‘You used an entire bottle of truffle oil to make a grilled cheese sandwich?’

‘No, I used it to make aioli, the rest of which is in the fridge next to this evening's charcuterie.’ Scratch was now very glad she hadn't swiped one of those extra bottles yet.

This seemed to be an acceptable answer. Or, at the very least, Damaris didn't press Scratch considerably. Hell, she didn't even get a dressing down for forgetting to update the inventory. There was the slightest of withering looks, but for Damaris that was like breathing.

‘Our guest list for the Determinator has been updated,’ the other woman told Scratch, who grimaced. Updated guest list meant a whole new set of dietary restrictions, like people that couldn’t eat gluten, and people that got an as yet unexplained allergic reaction from all food that was grown on asteroid belts. Trying to plan a menu around it was fine with a dozen or so people, but with a hundred…Well, it was a good thing she was getting paid well. ‘A couple of heiresses, a professional DJ...most recent flight of fancy addition is Herut Benedictus,’ was the bombshell that Damaris decided to finish on.

‘The famous detective?’ Scratch asked immediately, as though there was anyone else in the universe with the name “Herut Benedictus.” In fact, Scratch would have put money on the fact that he had picked the name himself. All the best names were hand-picked.

‘The very same,’ Damaris said. ‘I'm told he's "very close" to an answer on that unsolved museum heist. Has promising ideas about why they needed all those pigeons.’ She sounded very disinterested in this fact, and did not bother looking up from the clipboard to see the look of abject horror on Scratch's face.

‘Uh huh,’ Scratch said, and she was no longer really listening to what was being said. Herut Benedictus being anywhere near Scratch was bad. It was utterly, colossally even more extraneous adjectively bad. Even if she hadn’t been partly (mostly?) responsible for the museum heist, it was not a great idea to have a detective around while you were pretending to be someone you weren’t.

She needed a cigarette. She needed a long nap, and a cigarette. Of course, she couldn't have a cigarette, because the atmospheric conditions on Serendipity meant a stray spark in the wrong place could literally kill them. The kitchen was the only place that unrestrained fire was allowed, and that was because it had its own separate life support designed to mimic an atmosphere that wouldn't kill everyone.

Scratch knew better than to smoke in the kitchen, though. She could have vaped, but Damaris's keen senses would have picked up on any lingering traces of blue raspberry in an instant and they would have kicked Scratch all the way back to Praxis Station.

‘Anyway,’ Damaris continued, as though Scratch hadn't gone through seven stages of panic in fifteen seconds. ‘Mr. Benedictus advises that he only eats organic fruits and vegetables, in addition to animal products that have been synthesised or organically harvested. Also, no peanuts.’

‘Sure,’ Scratch said. Dietary restrictions were now the least of her worries. 'Did anyone mention why a universally famous detective is coming here?' She tried not to sound too curious about the whole thing. Like she didn't really care why the guy was coming, but if Damaris just happened to know…

‘I didn't ask. Whimsy, I presume.’ Damaris flashed the guest list to Scratch's tablet. Scratch was almost afraid to look. What if one of the other celebrity guests was a psychic or something?

‘Aren't you even a little bit curious?’

‘Not really.’ Right. That was Damaris to a T. Very focused on her job, had no interest in the secret lives of billionaires beyond what was specifically needed to do said job, like where that missing bottle of truffle oil had gone. It was very boring, frankly. Even Aziz was a little curious sometimes.

Hopefully, on the Determinator, having a few more crew members would make things a little more interesting, and a little less like there was someone breathing down her neck at all times. If she had to stay on a yacht with just Azis, Damaris and all of Mr Vandersnoot’s weird friends for the next six months, it was really going to suck. Like being stuck in purgatory and forced to sit through all nineteen installments of Robots Without Sin.

Only slightly less boring than that, though, was the prospect of spending the morning going through inventory. What made it worse was that she had lied through her teeth on her resume, and told everyone that she had done this a hundred times before, but really, who the fuck had any idea how much pasta you were supposed to stock for a hundred people for four weeks until their next supply drop. A metric fuckton? How different was that from an imperial fuckton? Ridiculous. Nobody used imperial fucktons anymore anyway.

By the end of the meeting, Damaris was surely feeling some level of regret about her hiring decisions. But, it was hopefully far too late to do anything about it, and as long as she was already on thin ice, a few more extravagant requests weren't going to get her in trouble. She'd always wanted to cook with real Aedan chillies, for one thing, and given that the food budget could buy an apartment in Helix City, now was her chance.

It definitely wasn’t Scratch’s job to comment on that fact, because it would definitely get her fired, and she just couldn't afford to not get the paycheck she was owed for making 2am grilled cheeses.

It wasn't until the inventory meeting was over and Scratch had returned to her capsule that she allowed herself to panic. Everyone and their dog had heard the story of how Herut Benedictus had solved a locked room murder in the amount of time it took to make a cup of tea. If he even looked in Scratch's direction, she was done for.

The last thing in the world that she needed was for anyone to know how the Galistar heist had gone down.