Somehow, she wakes in the middle of things and starts wailing. The sound pierces his ears in a way that Hoffman’s guttural bellows never could. He has to gag her so he can finish.
Later, enjoying the last of her, he smacks his lips and remembers the lovely blue of her eyes. So delectable on his tongue, like tender Swedish meatballs.
The void persists, and so does his hunger. It returns like clockwork every 48 hours.
He doesn’t bother looking at the name of his next harvest. He cuts out the tongue first to avoid any more conversation.
A few days later he goes to the table-bound crewman, removes the gag and offers him a taste of his own thigh meat. The man eats ravenously, saving his questions until his own hunger is sated. Then he stares at Pelops and tries to form words. The stub of his tongue rattles around inside his mouth. His mute eyes plead desperately. They remind Pelops of the blonde’s blue eyes.
He eats them next.
The human body is indeed an amazing thing.
So many different flavors.
Five and a half months left, five CryoPods unopened.
With proper rationing, he will make it. However, the anesthetic is nearly gone.
This complicates things, but is in no way a barrier to success.
The mission is all that matters.
He has it down to a science now: Open the pod. Tie the sleeper’s hands and feet with copper wire before they come fully awake. Drag them to in the infirmary, strap them to the table. Remove the tongue, put the gag in place. Ignore the screams. Ignore the blood. Slice. Tourniquet. Ignore the squirming, the moans of pain. The tears, the squealing.
Forty-eight hours later. Slice. Tourniquet. It’s no longer a person, despite all the writhing and moaning and muffled screams. It’s only meat.
Forty-eight hours after that. Slice. Tourniquet. They’re usually too weak to scream much more after this.
Some are lucky enough to sleep through the whole process from this point on.
Three more crew members and thirteen weeks later. Only two months away from Dantus.
His next meal is the last female. But this fact barely registers; Pelops no longer sees them as women or men.
They’re only meat.
All of us… charting the course of history… only meat.
Yet this one is something special. When he slices into her abdomen he finds her secret. The command board would have grounded her had they known. Or maybe she didn’t know. Two months along before Cryo, he estimates. Her eyes are glazed by the time he discovers the prize inside her. Strapped, gagged, limbless, and unblinking, she stares at the antiseptic ceiling as he vivisects her. And there it is…
A tiny thing… only eighteen centimeters. Barely recognizable as human. More like something amphibian… a vestige of our marine origins.
Miniscule arms more like fins, or flippers. The stubs of barely formed legs. Round head no larger than an orange.
So we begin… the seed from which all of us grow.
Expanding and developing meat on a rack of expanding and hardening bone.
He carries it to the bridge, shows it to the stars. He imagines the universe itself as one big womb… an inescapable uterus containing planets, stars, and galaxies.
In the end, it’s little more than a snack.
Sweet, a bit crunchy. A fresh flavor.
Bit of a fishy aftertaste.
Its mother lasts another eight days.
In these months he’s decided to put all those bones to good use. At first he carves them into tiny figurines: goblins, serpents, scorpions, or wholly new creatures birthed in his imagination. Then he decides on a project. A sculpture. He drags all the bones and skulls onto the bridge and works nonstop in the pale starlight, baring his creative spirit to the naked universe.
Directly ahead, a red star shines. Wolf 359. His destination, the color of spilled blood gleaming brightly in a mantle of eternal night.
A new god observes and blesses the success of the mission. Its lofty head is a ring of ten bleached skulls gazing in every direction. Its body is a tangled conglomeration of leg bones, arm bones, and rib cages. It wears a necklace of finger and toe bones. With screws and caulk and ductile adhesive he has brought it to life.
He sits before it in the captain’s chair, discussing with it the secrets of the universe, watching the void outside and the red star that is their final destination.
His creation tells him things, terrible things that he has long suspected, now confirmed in the glaring honesty of cold starlight. He eats his meals before it, calling upon it to bless the meat.
He tears into his latest chop, red and quivering.
Fresh and raw, that is the only way to eat meat.
His new god approves.
With two months to go and two CryoPods left, Pelops gets careless.
The man inside (Harmon, Sgt. G.) revives while he’s being tied, his frosty eyelids flickering open. Some fight-or-flight mechanism kicks in and he knocks Pelops from the opened pod, spilling out on top of him.
“Wha…” he stammers. “Whaaaaa… ”
Pelops tries to club him on the head with a wrench but Sgt. Harmon is already too fast. He rolls away and pulls his hands free of the wire. He kicks Pelops in the side of the head. Stars swim crazily in Pelops’ eyes.
Pelops regains his senses to find Harmon holding him against the wall, pressing the tip of a screwdriver against his neck. The sergeant is still cold and reeks of cryonic fluid. He breathes hotly in Pelops’ face, the crystals on his beard beginning to melt.
“Who are you?” he asks. “And what the hell are you doing?”
He shoves the screwdriver painfully into Pelops’ skin, drawing a trickle of blood.
“I’m Dr. Pelops,” he says. “I had to… awaken you prematurely.”
Harmon looks around the corridor. Sees the empty pods. All but one now missing its inhabitant.
“Where are they?” His teeth are gritted as his black eyes bore into Pelops’. “Tell me!”
“Dead…” Pelops admits. “There was a comet, or a meteor… some kind of radiation cloud… took out the auto-drive and the pods. I was lucky.”
Harmon blinks, thinking. Considering. He knows I’m not telling him everything. His eyes fall upon the last functioning CryoPod.
“Why didn’t you wake Captain Tyler?”
“I… I was going to,” says Pelops.
Harmon grabs Pelops’ throat in an iron grip. “Then why tie me up? Huh?”
Pelops says nothing. Gasps for air.
“You look like hell,” says Harmon, examining him. Hair and beard a matted rat’s nest. Face sunken, skin sallow. Nails long as claws.
Can he smell the dead on my breath?
“How long?” asks Harmon. Rams his knee into Pelops’ groin. Pelops falls to the cold floor. Harmon bends and holds the screwdriver’s tip to his eye. “How long?” he shouts.
“F-f-fourteen months!” cries Pelops.
Shock spills across Harmon’s shaggy face. “Fourteen…” He looks again at the empty rows of CryoPods, stares down the corridor in either direction. Sniffs the air like a suspicious hound. “Fourteen months… how did you survive?”
Pelops clutches his throbbing groin and says nothing.
Harmon kicks him in the stomach.
“How? Tell me! Say it!”
Pelops tells him. Doesn’t look at his face. Hears him start to wretch.
“All that matters is the success of this mission…” Pelops growls. “And I’m the only one who can get those converters up and running.”
Harmon is strangely quiet.
“We’ve got two more months,” says Pelops.
Harmon’s boot comes down hard on his face.