Chapter 7

Chapter 7

U seless.

Worthless.

Come back here right now…

Every morning, Primula woke to Trafford’s voice, ending in a violent orange fireball, her heart beating so fast in her chest she could have sworn it was a moth trying to escape her ribcage.

She did her best to put him out of her head, as she pulled on her shipsuit and made her way down to the cargo bays to check on her fish.

Every morning, the fish were thriving. Like they were just as happy flying through space as they’d been in her lab at Eden.

Until the morning the moth got out. Only it wasn’t one moth, it was a dozen of them, all flapping furiously at the overhead lighting in an effort to reach the globe inside.

That’s when the flying cat appeared, launching itself into the air after the moths. It zoomed around the ceiling for a minute or two, before it landed on Primula’s bunk, happily crunching on its catch. Wing fragments fluttered down onto the bed.

Automatically, Primula swept them onto the floor. Ugh. The last thing she wanted was to have bits of bugs in her bed. She barely slept enough as it was.

The flying cat batted her hand, then gave it a lick, before deciding to bathe itself.

Primula wasn’t sure what to do with it. She’d never seen a flying cat before, and while this one had folded its wings on its back so it looked almost normal, the extra long talons on its claws told her the creature was anything but ordinary.

“Shoo,” she said, waving her hand.

The creature gave her a flat look, curled up on the bed, and proceeded to go to sleep.

Almost like Trafford did after having sex, only this creature was cuter.

Ha. Trafford never would have allowed a cat in the house, let alone the bed. He’d claimed to be allergic to cats, but he’d dutifully brushed his mother’s pedigree Persians without a single sneeze or scratch, every time he visited his parents. Maybe he took antihistamines before those visits.

Or maybe it was just that he thought cats were as useless as she was, and he didn’t want two of them eating up all his food. If they’d gotten a cat, he probably would have kicked her out, seeing as cats ate less.

Useless.

Worthless.

Would the nightmare be easier to bear if he’d kicked her out, instead of demanding that she come back? If she’d had the courage to say she wasn’t coming back, that she intended to see this project through even if she did fail, because it was worth the chance to be the elusive first to achieve such a victory?

Even if there’d be no one to celebrate that victory with when she returned home…

Kind of like in the Colony. If she succeeded in setting up the aquaponics system on Delta, she’d be celebrating with a piccolo of pineapple fizz on her own. Better than using it to chase away nightmares, though…

She eyed the unmade bunk, with the flying cat curled up comfortably in the middle of it.

Well, it wasn’t like she was going to go back to bed, anyway. She could tidy things when she got back. Time to check on the fish.