Page 1 of Meat

CHAPTER 1

Alyx Driscoll’s stomach lurched. The air inside the spaceship’s cargo hold was humid and heavy with the reek of sweat and other foul bodily smells. Ahead of her, murky lighting revealed row upon row of naked human cargo sitting on benches, quiet and docile as livestock. Except for the slow, steady throb of the ship’s propulsion engines, the only sounds were the continuous, sickening gurgle of feeding tubes and the occasional flush of waste removal, which was built directly into the benches.

For the hundredth time on this trip, Alyx felt like she was going to retch.

This was like something out of a nightmare.

The ship shuddered like a palpitating heart. Naked humans rocked and swayed on their benches. That turbulence signalled that they were leaving the vacuum of space and entering the atmosphere of a planet.

Good news, Alyx thought. At least that meant they would be arriving at their destination soon. Then their nith captors would finally let them out of this reeking, claustrophobic hell-hole of a ship.

Both the claustrophobia and the smell had worsened over the course of the voyage. When Alyx and the other humans had first been shoved inside this cargo hold five days ago, it had not been nearly this cramped. In fact, it had been downright spacious by comparison. Now, however, after only five days of constant ksh-feeding, the human bodies had grown and fattened until every passenger’s naked skin was squeezed against the neighbors on either side.

Alyx was the sole exception to this rapid weight-gain, and she now found herself crushed between a pair of particularly large, hairy, sweaty men.

Aside from Alyx, however, nobody seemed to mind the situation. Not as long as they got their steady supply of ksh-laced gruel from the feeding tubes that hung down from the ceiling, one for each passenger.

The ship shook more violently as they descended closer toward whatever nith planet they were arriving at. The feeding tubes swung like pendulums, dribbling bits of gruel. The man to Alyx’s left caught his tube in his plump fingers, and stuffed it between his wet lips, sucking down another ration of gruel with hungry, animalistic moans.

Another queasy sensation churned in Alyx’s gut.

She wanted off this ship. Now.

Her own feeding tube hung mostly untouched in front of her. Alyx had barely fed at all during the past five days. Only when the pangs in her belly had become sharp as a knife had she partaken from the sustenance that the tubes provided.

The food was probably drugged. Something in it to keep her and her fellow humans docile, unwilling to fight back against their nith captors.

And of course there was the ksh. When Alyx had finally given in and taken a few mouthfuls of the food, she had also noted the unmistakable taste of ksh. Lots of it. Doses that were much higher than anything found on Earth.

That explained why the other humans were plumping up so quickly.

Ksh. The precious alien nutrient that formed the foundation for all human-nith trade.

Humans and nith had first made contact over a hundred years ago, and they had soon established an uneasy partnership.

There was trade. For their own part, the nith provided ksh, a substance produced by plants that could only be grown on one of the planets they ruled. Ksh was more nutrient dense that anything on Earth. Even just a few small crumbs a day would provide enough nutrition for a human to survive.

Ironically, however, the nith were pure carnivores. Their digestive systems were incapable of absorbing ksh. To them, the chemical that was available in such abundance on their world was practically worthless. But for an overpopulated planet Earth plagued with droughts and famines, ksh was perhaps the most valuable substance in the universe. Food companies put it into every kind of product to boost the nutritional value.

But the ksh came at a price.

The nith knew full well how valuable the stuff was to the human race, so they gouged the hell out of the price. They demanded the highest price imaginable.

Not gold.

Not diamonds.

Humans. Living, breathing humans by the shipful.

The nith sent Earth their space barges laden with tons upon tons of raw ksh. And in return, the Earth repaid them with human cargo. Presumably the nith used these humans as slaves, though for what kind of work, nobody knew for sure.

Earth’s government justified this slave trade by claiming that only criminals were traded to the nith.

And wasn’t that what Alyx was, after all?

A criminal.

Not a thief or a murderer, perhaps. But a criminal just the same.