Faces

io9 is proud to present fiction from Lightspeed Magazine. Once a month, we feature a story from Lightspeed’s current issue. This month’s selection is “Last Meal Aboard the Awassa” by Kel Coleman. Enjoy!

Last Meal Aboard the Awassa

by Kel Coleman

Gardener ladled dark-purple porridge into her primary digestion sac, staring absently out the viewport at black space and the distant smudge of the planet they had come to study. The simple meal and the gesture it represented soothed her after a long, thorny morning in a section of the growth bay that was in full flower and had needed hand pollinating. Though the other crew members around the mess made do with the usual break time assortment, Cook had steamed and spiced osard grains just for her before going off shift to nap in their rooms.

When the two of them joined the crew as a couple, roughly four solars ago, Gardener had worried the special treatment shown to her from the kitchen would lead to resentment. She had heard it could get lonely on a long haul if you made a bad impression, especially on a tiny ship where everyone knew each other’s families, had vid night sleepovers in the observatory, and could count at least a handful of birthdays and Endless Nights aboard. But unlike Gardener, this hadn’t been Cook’s first long haul and she’d soon researched the crew’s home planets and ports, tracking down family recipes, popular street food, and festival treats. The crew of the small science vessel were immediately smitten with her, and Gardener found herself warming to them as a result.

She finished her porridge, scraping the bowl clean, but lingered at the table to—

The speakers mounted around the mess blared three urgent tones.

The other crew members scattered at tables and behind the serving counter dropped what they were doing and moved to readiness. For Gardener, like many bipeds, this meant standing with her limbs at her sides. She turned toward the nearest screen, which had already switched from Union news to video from the bridge.

The captain’s wings were tucked close to their thorax, their five eyes reddened and rapidly blinking. In all four solars of her time aboard, Gardener had never before seen them fearful.

“Crew of the Awassa, this is your captain speaking.”

Gardener’s sensitive hearing picked up all the ear dots around the room overlaying the words with translations. Her own ear dots not only translated the captain’s words but amplified things like pitch changes so she would be less apt to mistake one tone for another. They were frightened, but with a tinge of anger perhaps?

“As some of you may already know, we lost contact with the team sent to Gulsan-6 two hours ago. This happened shortly after they sent a probe into the gas giant. Following review of footage, scans, and probe data, we can conclude with high certainty that Gulsan-6 is, rather than a planet, an unknown species. It is capable of surviving and navigating the vacuum of space. And since exiting dormancy, its size has become incalculable as its shape is ever-changing. It is capable of reducing matter to its smallest units, and I regret to inform you your crewmates Engineer Ulli and Physicist Andel, along with their shuttle, were consumed by the alien. With equal regret, I must inform you the alien is now on a course to intercept and consume the Awassa as well.”

As her hearts’ paces fell out of harmony, Gardener found she could no longer sort out the emotions behind the words. On the faces around her, though, she read the captain’s pragmatic hopelessness regarding the situation. As they continued speaking, a time-to-intercept countdown appeared in the bottom of the screen. They ordered three senior crew members to the bridge and told everyone else to call their loved ones. So . . . there was nothing useful for her to do except find Cook.

• • •

Cook was in the hydroponics row, pinching leaves off of herbs and dropping them into a handwoven basket. Her dark, smooth skin was riddled with planet-orange hives and her voluminous whiskers were drooping.

“Cook?”

She didn’t stop pacing or look up.

“Nailo? Did you see the captain’s—”

“Of course,” Cook said. She gestured at the herbs and fruits tumbling around in the basket like that was explanation enough.

And for Gardener, it was. The two of them needed few words.

Cook would do what she loved until the end. She was already gliding around the corner to the next row, and if she had been the same species as Gardener, she might’ve heard her utter a term of endearment, one that didn’t translate well to many other fleet languages.

An endearment close to meaning beloved, one her caretaker had called her often. An endearment that had journeyed with her when she left her lush world for Outpost Nine. An endearment that kept her and her seedlings warm despite the miserable cold outside the outpost greenhouses. An endearment that had come with her on a vacation where she got crater-sloshed with a slick-skinned traveling chef in the backroom of a Meat Meet Meat. An endearment that had accompanied the both of them to the Awassa, where they were swept up in all the drama and mutual care of a large family that Cook had missed and Gardener discovered she could tolerate when she wasn’t flat-out loving it—the shift-change gossip, the hugs, the too-loud music shoving through thin walls, her first spacewalk accompanied by Engineer Ulli . . .

Her hearts skipped.

She pulled herself out of her ruminative state and joined Cook in another section of the bay, where she was snipping blue flowers from climbing dewdrops. Gardener gently took the shears from her. “My job,” she said. “Just tell me what you need.”

• • •

When they were finished with harvesting, Cook agreed to give prep over to uninitiated but enthusiastic crewmates so she could call her family. Gardener lay in bed, blankets holding down her jumpy limbs, and tried to block out Cook’s murmurs two rooms away. She set the updates from the bridge to a volume high enough that it caused her some pain.

The bridge crew had learned a lot about “the vapor” and how it consumed the team and the shuttle. They were able to collect this data when the vapor altered its course to eat the second probe they sent to analyze it. They still couldn’t stop it or outrun it, but they estimated that they could buy several additional hours with the remaining probes as decoys.

When she got off the call, Cook was weirdly pleased with the news. “More time to cook,” she explained. A few minutes later, with bottles of something clear she’d been “saving for a special occasion” cradled in her arms and a nuzzle against Gardener’s cheek, she was off to make a feast for their crew, their beloveds.

• • •

Gardener didn’t often record videos unrelated to her duties. She smoothed down the fur around her eyes and cleared her throat.

“This is Gardener Ketri,” she began. “A hostile member of an unknown species is bearing down on my ship, the Awassa, and I don’t have anyone to say goodbye to who isn’t in the same boat . . . except you, I guess, whoever sees this.”

The dread dripped steadily through her bloodstream now, but she imagined the people who would watch this, especially the younger ones, and she didn’t want them to feel afraid for her.

“Instead of goodbye, though, do you mind if I tell you what it’s like to be a gardener on a long-haul science vessel?” She found a smile, showing silver-specked herbivore’s teeth. “It’s incredible. I love my job. Every day, I coax things to life. I help them grow. I spend my shifts with dirt under my feet and light on my skin. Sometimes my partner, Cook Nailo, brings me a germination challenge, usually a special request from a crewmate missing home cooking, and sometimes I get the water and light and nutrients just right on the first try. Not often, but those are good days.”

She could already hear music thumping from the observatory. Scientists that they were, everyone wanted to watch the vapor’s approach. It was an undeniably cool way to die: eaten by a space monster. There would be papers written about it for decades, and they only regretted they wouldn’t be the ones to write them.

“If you’re considering joining the fleet, go for it. Don’t let our bad luck stop you.”

• • •

By unspoken agreement, they all followed the dress code for vid nights, which had no requirements but personal comfort. Several crewmates had moved empty crates from the storage bay to make a long table for a “family-style” meal. Gardener wasn’t familiar with family-style, but it seemed to mean an impossible amount of food being passed around chaotically until everyone proved, under threat of more heaping spoonfuls, that they were physically incapable of eating another bite.

The meal was a showstopper, of course.

Dewdrop blossoms stuffed with fungus, tied closed with the plant’s delicate vines, and fried to midnight blue. Thick, smoked leaves used as wraps and plates to enhance flavor. A fruit platter with everything from extra bitter, underripe kio to sweet, waterlogged berrymelon to sour, gritty seeds Gardener hadn’t even known were edible before today. Roasted frog and tomatillos inside corn patties, served with yellow rice. Raw tentacles, sliced thin, alongside a dry dip that was such an angry red she knew it would send her to the med bay if she touched it. A vivid, purple gradient of osard, from the light uncooked grains still on the stem—good for digestion—to the steamed kind perfect for lunch to a nearly black pile of pebbly bread rolls. Smoking papers packed with calming herbs and tightly hand rolled. And those bottles of suspiciously clear liquid. And more. And more. Something, a gift, for each member of the crew.

What followed was a night of dancing, imbibing, embracing, some prayer, more eating, the revelation of juicy ship secrets, and four rounds of “Lunar Penny” by everyone with the parts to sing or stomp or howl.

Halfway through the night, they watched the last probe disappear into the vapor. Gardener was at Cook’s side, resting a furred cheek on her smooth shoulder, their hands clasped tightly enough to cut off circulation.

Someone cheered awkwardly, intoxicated. A few more cheers went around the group like nervous laughter. Then it was silent . . .

Gardener surprised herself by shakily starting another round of “Lunar Penny.” The crew joined her heartily, turning away from the end and back to their party.

About the Author

Kel Coleman is an Ignyte-nominated author whose fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in FIYAH, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Solarpunk Magazine, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2022 and 2024, and others. Kel is a Marylander at heart, but they currently live in Pennsylvania with their family, a stuffed dragon named Pen, and a collection of strange and frivolous collections. They can be found online at kelcoleman.com.

© Adamant Press

Please visit Lightspeed Magazine to read more great science fiction and fantasy. This story first appeared in the September 2025 issue, which also features short fiction by Jake Stein, Cadwell Turnbull, Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko, Bogi Takács, C.Z. Tacks, Isabel J. Kim, Stephen S. Power, and more. You can wait for this month’s contents to be serialized online, or you can buy the whole issue right now in convenient ebook format for just $4.99, or subscribe to the ebook edition here.

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