“Where the hell did you find this?”

“Space.”

The bag makes a noise and we both eye it uneasily. We are sitting at an uncomfortable table and I can feel this planet’s dust in my lungs.

“Where in space?” he asks.

I try to explain, but the cows, the stars, and the blood muddle my mind until one thought emerges: Space smells like beef.

And that is where I begin.

Space smelled like beef. And it hadn’t been a case of the sun-blasted intergalactic cattle that floated around our spaceship, thumping their frozen heads against the tiny windows, because even when I returned to solid ground, the beef reek stuck to me like bonfire smoke to my hair, my clothes, and the folds of my skin.

But that didn’t matter, because intergalactic cattle weren’t meant to be frozen. Frozen beef was generally frowned upon, even here, thirteen hundred lightyears away from anything pleasant.

“Hey,” my supervisor’s voice drawled out over the radio attached to my hip. I blinked as a frosty hoof thunked against the window; I realized that, given this cow’s current trajectory, it would reach the view of my supervisor shortly. “... Are you, uh, seeing what I’m seeing?”

I was correct.

I grabbed the radio and pressed transmit, listening to the empty buzz for a long second. “I, well, yup. I am.”

“How.”

I pressed my lips into a thin line. It was one of those questions that wasn’t exactly a question so much as a demand; I imagined her pursed lips and deathly stare. Another cow came floating up.

“Well, the sheepdog is asleep.”

We had no sheepdog.

There was a click of her radio, silence, then another, much more decisive click. I released a breath.

Alyssa and I weren’t exactly friends. I used to plod into my station and wave “hello,” of which would be met with a mostly customary up-and-down, followed by a glance at the clock, and a scribble down on a notepad. I didn’t wave anymore. To Alyssa’s credit, it was entirely possible that she had predicted that I would someday let loose the entire fifth chamber of cattle into the vacuum of space, and preemptively withheld her good-morning waves.

Another click. Then, Alyssa’s sharp voice, “Back to work.”

Two clicks in return: affirmative.

I tucked the radio away and returned to my station – that being an airbag of a chair complete with a wall of gauges towering over it. At the right hand of the seat, and always within reach, was a thick, yellowed book of instructions on what to do if any of the hundreds of gauges went amiss. I had become intimately familiar with that book over the past fourteen months. If the milk-o-meter read too high, then my right hand flickered from the auxiliary power in Station Three-B, paused for exactly five seconds, moved towards a looming wall of circuit breakers, and began the rounds of trouble shooting. The hoof-ometer relied on a similar principle, except the trouble shooting was often much more strenuous.

The chair made a sad squelch as I sat down; I hunched over a bit miserably and did a methodical scan of the instruments. The udder-coordinator was two degrees away from being out of range. I’d keep my eye on it.

The days were long but the job paid well. There were five people who worked this same job on this spaceship, including myself. And any of them who had at least an iota of material between their ears would quickly realize that we were not a cattle ship. And that the hull loss of the fifth chamber of cattle wasn’t so much an economic travesty as much an appearance one, because now the Intergalactical Farming Association was going to be very curious. And that, above all, there would be no return ship back to Omania.

Not that I wanted to return to Omania. Nor the blood red planet before that.

But we weren’t allowed to speak of any of this. We weren’t allowed to speak of our work at all, lest we get disposed of, just like the faithful cattle.

My shift ended without excitement. Someone replaced me and I whisked away to my quarters. The place I called home was exactly the size of a twin bed plus four square feet for changing or stretching your legs. And I barely had to crouch to avoid the ceiling.

This is how I would spend the next two months. It was only a sixteen month jump, practically just a skip-and-a-hop away, but yearning for a new planet consumed my mind now that we drew near.

Most of my days were uneventful. That is how Alyssa liked them.

Some of my days were loud. That is how I liked them.

My hands would whip to and fro as bells and whistles screamed. I pulled that, rotated that, or pushed that in, each movement a slight clue on what I could actually be monitoring. Here is what I had gathered:

One: most of the circuit breakers are useless. Most of the gauges are either useless or attached in a much larger system.

Two: taking 117 cows across 150 lightyears is far more money than it's worth. The cows are a cover, and whatever we were transporting, it cannot be found in a closer system.

Three: it liked the taste of beef.

The remainder of the trip passed with issue and without further realizations.

Now, I uneasily peered out the window at the planet we’d be landing on shortly. This was a dry, yellow planet, and I could already feel the fine grit of dust latched onto my skin and packed beneath my fingernails. It fell miserably short of the purple seas and green cliffsides I had imagined, but I did my best to smile. With the money from this trip, I’d be able to stay here for a little over a year, although I doubted I would stay for longer than a month. I’d hop on another and see if it took me somewhere better. Part of me considered what it would be like if I had the means to go where I pleased. I think Alyssa enjoyed that luxury.

Everyone was geared up and had meager bags slung across their backs by the time we landed, and we loosely crowded the main entrance. This planet was nothing to be proud of, but there was a buzz in the air as I gazed through the yellow sliver of a window at the top of the door.

From the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of movement from a nearby window. A shadow blackened the yellow dust before vanishing. I did not like this flash of darkness. There was something wicked about it.

I shot a glance at one of my co-workers. They had seen it too, and now we eyed each other with unease.

The door to the planet opened slowly, but I faltered in my steps forward.

This planet was sinister and now I was sweating. I was certain that the men and women beside me were also afraid, although I couldn’t be sure why.

The pop of gunfire was abrupt. The person beside me dropped to the reddening floor before I registered where it had come from. I dropped to the floor, too.

I stilled as more shots went off, face against cold, gritty ground. I did not cover my ears and now they were ringing. Things were now happening very fast and I willed myself to stop twitching.

The footsteps that shook the floor of the ship were unfamiliar and I was convinced that none of my co-workers were alive. I did not open my eyes to make sure but I knew that they were not alive.

I stayed like this for a long while. I kept my breaths feeble, as if there was some shadowy figure looming over me, gun in hand, testing if I was truly dead.

“Are you alright?” the man across the table asks.

“What?” I blink at him.

“You’re all pale and wet. Are you high?”

“I’m not high.”

He looks half-way convinced, and slowly asks, “So you stole it in the chaos, no clue what it was?”

I gave a small nod, watching the thing in the bag squirm.

He leaned deeply into his yellow-dust chair. “I’ll give you 200,000.”

My eyes go wide and I almost lean forward, but the bag makes a particularly abominable growl and I think better of it.

“200,000?” I like the sound of this number in my voice.

“200,000.”

Something in my eyes must give me away, for he tosses me a pre-loaded card and pulls the bag towards him.

I inspect the card. I leave silently.

The dust that has collected along the edges of this hallway is good at absorbing the echo of my careful footsteps, yet it conceals nothing when the man left in the room releases an unearthly scream.

I walk on.