by Anthology
Jamie Gilman Kress
https://twitter.com/JamieGKress
And Now, Fill Her In(Short story)
by Jamie Gilman Kress
Daily Science Fiction
As the plane rose steadily into the sky, water vapor streaked up the glass like tears in reverse. Kiya, her head resting on the cool plastic near the pane, swore she heard the movement of the rivulet, a dry slither like a snake through dry summer glass.
A trick of her imagination; impossible to hear anything over the rumbling of the giant engines. She liked that about flying. The isolation. Thirty thousand feet from everything, the world hidden behind a shield of fluffy white cotton clouds. Only the other passengers in existence, and each of them pigeonholed into assigned seats and lost in their dreams or books or vacant thoughts. Every person a microcosm of their own, and none of them touching Kiya, a realm onto herself.
Her eyes fluttered closed, mind drowsy with the reverberations of technology singing through her bones. She drifted.
***
Children, dark with summer sun and woodland adventure dirt trampled through the kitchen, all three loud, hungry, grinning. A woman, older, blonde, smiled back, handed them each a sandwich thick with peanut butter and leaking gobs of apple jelly.
The man sat at the table, reviewing tables of numbers on a tablet, oblivious to the domestic bliss happening all around him. From the tablet holding his attention came the harsh bleeping of an alarm. A small pop-up box: Leave for Airport.
He rose, straightened his tie, gave the woman a perfunctory kiss. Never even bothered to say good-bye to the kids.
But then, he only planned to be gone two days. How could he know he’d never see them again?
***
Kiya jerked, not awake—she’d have needed to be asleep for that—but aware. Her eyes flitted about the cabin against her volition, searching out the thing she desperately wanted not to find.
He sat in the aisle seat four rows ahead, face only partially visible, but enough to recognize, to know. He’d be dead before daybreak tomorrow.
Kiya always considered flying her sanctuary, the one place the fragments of others’ lives failed to find her. And now, she’d lost even that small reprieve. But why?
The lump in her throat solid, she swallowed hard to dislodge it. She needed to figure this out; it must be important. But before she even finished the thought her head lolled, came to a stop propped again near the window. Her eyes fluttered closed.
***
Sunlight tinted pink by the gauzy curtains poured over the face of a boy with the soft rounded features of youth. A strong jaw, regal nose, he’d be stunning once he matured.
The woman wore her years well. At least twice as many as the teen in her bed, beauty had been softened by time, rubbed soft and comfortable. Until you looked into her eyes. There the years showed, the time hard, cutting glass. Her gaze was pure envy when she glanced once at the sleeping boy before slipping out of his arms and into the bathroom.
Just another conquest. She’d be out of the city before his parents found him, before he realized he’d been abandoned.
She felt nothing as the motel room door clicked shut behind her.
***
This time when Kiya jerked back to herself her bony elbow caught the book held by the man beside her, sent it spiraling. She barely noticed as she cast about in a frenzy.
There, a few rows behind, on the other side of the aisle. The woman wore a silk blouse and dark brown slacks. She looked normal, bored.
Kiya knew better. Recognized the predator eyes.
People tried to fill the emptiness within them all sorts of ways, and Kiya had witnessed many: work, drugs, sex. But, she’d never before been linked to someone so empty.
It left her feeling cold to the core.
“Hey,” spoke the man beside her, book forgotten at his feet, “are you okay?”
For a moment Kiya just blinked at the stranger, unable to process his words, to recognize he meant them for her. Then with a sharp shake of her head the fuzz cleared. “Fine.” Kiya croaked, then swallowed. “I’m fine. Thank you.”
The man, pudgy with kind, watery blue eyes and only a puffy ring of dirty snow hair, looked unconvinced, but after a brief pause where his eyes never left her face, he retrieved his book and retreated within its pages.
Kiya released a soft sigh, closed her eyes to relieve the headache building, and once again floated away, carried like a leaf trapped in a stream along the lives of others.
***
The man with the book sat in a recliner, old but well cared for, with a purring cat in his lap. The cat, a circle of marmalade contentment, looked up once and blinked its pumpkin eyes before returning to its slumber.
“Do you think it will work this time?” The voice, female, came from someone out of frame. However, even without visual cues the tone, all restrained hope and tangling resignation, made the speaker’s view clear.
The man spoke, his hands deftly stroking the cat. “She’s asking for help. It’s a step. We have to try.”
A small woman, her hands frail and atwitter like dancing birds, became visible. “I know, but I wish…” She trailed off, one hand coming to rest briefly on the man’s shoulder. “You hate flying.”
He caught her fleeing limb, kissed her palm, his eyes tender and gentle. “I’ll bring a book. I love you, Carmen.”
“I love you too, Eric.”
***
Kiya finally understood.
Turning in her seat she looked at the man, at Eric, until he felt her gaze and put down the book.
“Something wrong?” Rather than annoyed at her intrusion, he seemed concerned. “You need me to call an attendant?”
Kiya wished she’d introduced herself before, exchanged pleasantries, given some small part of herself, if only her name, to this man. Made some connection, no matter how brief to someone so truly good.
She’d seen so much pain, so many unappreciated, shallow lives, but she’d never touched someone like this: a man who deserved to be honored, who should not be allowed to fade from the tapestry of the world.
Throat like a vice around the words Kiya wished to speak, she awkwardly, reached out a hand, rested it against his cheek. His memories flooded her: Katherine, the child lost, but finally ready to get help; Carmen, the wife he’d loved since grade school and won over in college; the friends, and family, and jobs, and pets of a man who lived life well and graciously.
The images swept through her like a brook overflowing its banks, washed away her own darker memories.
No one ever loved Kiya, the strange girl left on a doorstep, raised by a long line of strangers. Even grown she’d found creating true relationships hard, drifted through lives on the currents of other people’s experiences. Clung to the unsavored moments of the soon to be dead because she’d failed to make strong memories of her own.
As hollow in her own way as the woman in the silk blouse.
Kiya felt no fear despite what must be coming. She knew, felt deep in her bones that her spot, this particular seat among the many, it’d be spared. If she stayed here, in this place, she’d survive the plane crash, go on about her simple, cursory life.
Or, she might make a different choice, create a ripple that mattered.
Eric still watched her, confusion furrowing his brow. He made no move to shake off Kiya’s touch. “Miss,” he said, worry darkening his eyes, “if you need help—”
“Change places with me, please.”
“What?” He continued to watch her with concern. “If you’re sick I can—”
“No,” Kiya said, struggling against the rising tide of another vision. “Just a nervous flier. Being near the window’s making it worse.”
“Ah.” He smiled, compassion and humor replacing the anxiety. “No problem.”
He rose swiftly, helped her up as they swapped places. Once she’d settled in, he rested a hand on her arm, the contact comforting and brief like a cool summer wind. “Is that
better?”
Kiya felt it, a shift in the currents of the visions battering her to be seen. Among them now, she’d find herself. “Much. Thank you, Eric.”
“How—“ he started, but the question became a gasp and then a scream as the plane began to plummet.
Kiya closed her eyes and gave in, let herself be dragged down by the undertow of her final vision. And found peace.
Jason LaPier
http://jasonwlapier.com/
Unexpected Rain(Novel excerpt)
by Jason LaPier
Originally published by HarperVoyager UK
CHAPTER 9
Klaxons bellowed and the bombball game on the holo-vision was suddenly replaced by the blazingly bright, red, flashing image of an alarm-bell icon. Runstom cursed and looked away, the ghost of the image already burned into his retinas.
Halsey yelped awake and fell off his cot. Tangled in a blanket, he tried desperately to stand but was having a difficult time with the action. As low-ranking ModPol officers, their accommodations were barely better than those of the prisoner they were escorting. Their room was a little larger than Jax’s cell, and featured two flimsy cots, a table, and a couple of chairs. Runstom slapped off the holo-vision—the one item they had that prisoners didn’t—and got up to help Halsey to his feet.
“What the fuck is going on?” Halsey had to shout to be heard over the alarms.
“I don’t know,” Runstom yelled. He opened the door to their room. The hallway walls flashed red and the klaxons were even louder.
After a minute of confusion, the alarms quieted enough for an announcement to be heard. An unnatural and unperturbed female voice calmly stated, “Alert. The ship is under attack. This is not a drill. The ship is under attack. Gunners, report to battle-stations. Guards and prisoner escorts, report to the prisoner bay. This is not a drill. Repeat. This is not a drill.”
“Well, fuck me,” Halsey said in a normal voice, just before the alarms started blaring again. “Come on, Stan,” he shouted. “Let’s go!”
They ran down the maze of corridors that led them from the guest rooms to the prisoner bay. Various uniforms ran with them, others ran the opposite direction. Once they hit the prisoner bay, they ran into real chaos. Most of the prisoners were still in the yard and barge guards were desperately trying to corral them into their proper cells. This did not go over well with most of the prisoners, who—quite correctly—assessed that the cells were the least safe place to be during a fire-fight between the barge and other spacecraft.
Things went from bad to worse when something got past the barge’s defenses and the walls shook violently and the floor lurched out from beneath them all. Artificial gravity started to falter, causing everyone to bounce around like they were on pogo-sticks. The guards suddenly became less concerned with getting the prisoners back into their cells and more concerned with finding something to hold on to.
“Stan!” Halsey yelled. “Stanford Runstom! Over here! I found Jackson!”
Runstom got himself turned around and saw Halsey holding Jax from behind, his arms hooked under the operator’s armpits. Jax’s head lolled around, his eyes barely open. Runstom made his way over to them, trying not to run, lest he send himself flying out of control in the weak gravity.
“Jax, wake up!” Runstom yelled once he got to them and got a hold of Jax’s chin.
“I think he hit his head,” Halsey shouted. “We need to get the hell outta here!”
Runstom looked around desperately as he racked his brain trying to remember the layout of the barge. He’d been briefed on it at some point in his ModPol officer training, but that was long, long ago. “This way,” he shouted, pointing. “To the kitchen. I think if we go through there, we can get to the storage room. We might be able to find shelter in there. Inside packing crates—or something.”
Halsey nodded and moved around Jax so they could get on either side of him, each with one of his arms hooked over their shoulders. The extra weight actually made it easier for them to move in the low gravity and they got to the kitchen without injury, dodging bouncing guards and prisoners as they went. They tried to yell to people they passed to tell them to get to the storage bay, but it wasn’t apparent whether or not anyone was listening.
The kitchen was a total mess and they had to pick their way carefully through the chaos of cookware and upended food. Once they made it through, they found the short hallway that hooked up with a large corridor.
“This is the main supply corridor,” Runstom said. The alarms rang furiously in the distance, but not in this section of the ship. “I think the supply deck might detach. There will be some minimal controls in there. If the barge takes too much damage, we can try to pull off and float away.”
“Yeah, and hopefully not draw any attention.” Halsey looked back through the kitchen, the way they came. “You think anyone else got the idea?”
“I hope for their sake, someone does,” Runstom said. “Come on, let’s go.”
They moved down the long, wide corridor toward the primary supply deck. Once they reached the end, they punched the door release and the storage bay opened widely before them. Everything inside was strapped down tight and mostly unaffected by the drop in gravity.
The floor lurched violently, one way, then the other, back and forth a few times. The three of them ended up in different parts of the room. Runstom found himself near the doorway and on his back, staring at the supports high above along the ceiling. Suddenly, a high-pitched, eardrum-piercing, nails-on-a-chalkboard sound screeched from the main supply corridor.
Runstom lifted himself off the deck and hooked his arm over the rounded edge of the door frame, getting a good look into the large hallway. Bright, white light sprayed in showers of sparks on either side of the corridor. Runstom froze, unable to comprehend what was happening, unable to react. After a minute or so, the white light was just a red ghost in his eyes. A few metallic clangs, and suddenly a round section of the wall popped out and hit the floor with a clatter. Almost instantly, three more circles of wall were projected out, one on the same side as the first, the other two on the opposite side.
There was a moment of eerie silence, save the distant klaxons, which from here were beginning to sound like an alarm clock, pestering him to wake up already. The silence didn’t last. Shouts and cheers emanated from the new holes in the corridor, and were soon followed by human forms. Human forms armed to the teeth with all manner of projectile, chemical, and even bladed weaponry.
“Fuck me!” Halsey breathed, suddenly at Runstom’s side. “Fucking gangbangers!”
“Shit,” Runstom said in a hush, trying not to draw any attention. “Why are they attacking us? There’s nothing of value on this prisoner ba—”
Runstom stopped himself as the gangbangers met in the middle of the corridor. There must have been twenty or so of them. He caught sight of the symbol on the back of one of their jackets. Three arrows in a circle, arranged as if one flowed into the next, but with the arrowheads bending outward.
Halsey must have seen it too. “Space Waste!” he whispered.
No further explanation was needed. The two officers didn’t have a need to know much about space gangs in their relatively low-key planetary assignments, but Space Waste was legendary in ModPol circles. One of the largest gangs in the known galaxy, and certainly the most well-organized, Space Waste had a knack for showing up without warning, taking what they wanted and then disappearing. More often than not, they left no living witnesses; only hundreds of InstaStick decals featuring their twisted-arrows logo.
“If Space Waste is hitting a prisoner barge,” Runstom started quietly, turning away from the doorway and slouching against the wall so he could face Halsey, “they must be here to break someone out.”
“How did they get aboard?” Halsey came around the other side of him to get coverage behind the wall.
“They must have used those tubes.” Runstom gestured vaguely. “Reinforced, pressurized boarding tubes that can extend f
rom one ship and form a seal with the hull of another ship.” He’d been asking himself the same thing for the last several minutes and finally worked it out. “They’re flexible, to account for drift. They were originally designed for rescue operations.”
“How do you know this?” said Halsey, cocking an eyebrow.
Runstom shrugged. “I saw it on holo-vision once. It was one of those rescue documentaries.”
“But if they cut through the hull, what happens when they disengage the boarding tubes?”
“Well, in a rescue operation, it’s a last resort. They only do it when they know LifSup is failing on the endangered ship, and they want to get as many survivors off as quickly as possible.”
“So lemme guess,” Halsey said grimly. “The Space Wasters won’t be so humanitarian.”
“No, I would think not,” Runstom replied calmly. He wasn’t actually calm—far from it—but the situation was beginning to feel like it wasn’t real. Like it was just a holo-vid show. “They’ll probably get whoever they’re after, and then re-board their ships and disengage the tubes without bothering to attempt to re-seal the hull breach.”
“Shit,” Halsey muttered. “This is too much explosive decompression for one week.” Runstom shot Halsey a sour look and the other man put his hands up innocently. “What? It’s not like Jackson will get framed for it this time.”
Runstom suddenly stood up halfway, his eyes darting as he scanned the storage bay. “Where is Jackson?”
“Sit down!” Halsey said, pulling on Runstom’s arm. “We’ll get him in a minute. We need to figure out what to do! We don’t have much time!”
“Okay, okay.” Runstom crouched back down and spoke in a low voice. “They’ve breached this main supply corridor. So the rest of the ship might be okay, once they detach the boarding tube. But only if someone can hit the emergency air locks, then they can cut the rest of the ship off from this hallway and be safe.”