The wheel of the heavens will turn again.

  Jeannette Ng was born in Hong Kong and now lives in Durham. She designs and plays live roleplaying games, makes costumes and writes speculative fiction. Her debut novel Under The Pendulum Sun is published in October 2017 by Angry Robot.

  These Are the Ways

  Premee Mohamed

  Art: Mark Toner

  These are the ways I wished for you to die:

  Fighting, to assure your family of honour.

  With courage, for the comfort of your immortal soul.

  Swiftly, that you might not suffer at the end.

  And at my side.

  The plasma arc hit low, scorching calf and flank, and at first we thought it was not fatal, not even serious; we’d all seen burns like that in training, same shape, same size. You joked as we pulled off your melted boot and snipped away the damaged remains of your uniform trousers. “Hey guys, do I need to shave this week?”

  “Smooth as a baby’s butt,” Kara said, setting aside the scissors and cracking open her damaged first-aid box. Medics and their black humour. As a sniper, I was useless except as extra hands for the hurried field dressing. I held your ankle on my shoulder, encircling the knobbly warmth with my entire hand, your eyes meeting mine accusingly between frantic blinks that barely cleared the pain-sweat. I should not even have been there, your eyes told me. That was the rule. Useful personnel: continue the assault. The wounded (“We do not say ‘hurt’,” the major had snapped): repaired and sent back into action if possible; gathered and guarded if not, to prevent the Akhjians from taking POWs. As a last resort, gassed.

  Kara worked quickly – anaesthetic aerosol, antibiotic gel, a lint-free paper sleeve, pressure dressing, a blast of UV to harden the resin enough to bear weight. Someone had sent one of the privates, big Gilmour, to fetch you a new boot. Wounded himself, he gamely zigzagged across the battlefield between pops of green and violet light, looking for a size 7.

  “This is bad,” murmured the other medic, stiffly rising and shutting his kit. “Maybe we should—”

  “I’m fine,” you snapped. “Gimme a couple of pain pills for later and let’s just get this push over with.”

  “I agree,” Kara said, gesturing at me to lower your leg. “Thanks for helping, Jen. I know you don’t like blood. Can you wait with her till Gilly comes back? X’eo and I have to keep moving.”

  “Of course,” I said, and placed your foot in my lap as they trotted off, keeping low. In the dust and darkness soon all that was visible was the reflective cross on the back of their jackets. The ground rumbled ominously. That wasn’t small-arms fire, let alone the broad-spray plasma arcs on either side. What else did the aliens have that our intelligence hadn’t told us about?

  In the blood and antiseptic-soaked mud you squirmed for your gun, fingers running across the grimy plastic, automatically checking load and range with the feedback dots. “Oof. How’s it look?”

  “Messy,” I said, “but shallow. I think Patra got a worse one in training last year, and she was fine.”

  “Ugly, but fine.”

  “She was ugly before.”

  “Ugly like me,” you said, and laughed faintly. But you weren’t ugly, you were just you, touchy about the smallness and lightness that I loved, a little wild animal in baggy fatigues, running faster, packing more, shooting straighter than anyone else to prove that a girl from Crutas, of all planets, could make it in the corps. To prove that someone whose nickname ranged between ‘Cockroach’ and ‘Mousie’ could win a war.

  “Does it hurt?” I asked.

  “Burns some. I think they’re running out of deadspray.”

  “Could be.”

  “Why’s the ground shaking like that, Jen? It’s not an earthquake. And it doesn’t feel like ground troops...”

  “I don’t know. I hate to imagine.”

  “Well, I’m glad you can feel it too. Thought maybe it was just me.” In the dark, I saw your dark eyes crinkle in amusement, moistly ringed with salt. Gilmour returned with a dirty but unbloodied boot, the nanoceramic tan rather than black. Just as I opened my mouth to rib him about it, the ground heaved rather than trembled, and he fell to his knees in the mud.

  “Time to jet,” you said. “Jen, do you mind?”

  “You owe me for this degradation.” I tugged the boot over your bare foot, ignoring your hiss of pain, laced it tightly, made sure to tuck in the bandage on your calf. “Private Gilmour, please assist Corporal Nemerin to verticality and draw your service weapon; we will be moving as a three-person unit until cessation of original orders.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  He easily got you upright, and we disentangled, moving into the darkness along the battle lines planned the day before. Your pulse-rifle; my plasma arc and a dozen grenades; Gilly’s laser pistol and extra cells. We were a walking bomb; if anyone shot us, our drop ship would see the explosion from low orbit. I wondered what it would look like: lightning under clouds, maybe, but what colour?

  I wanted to reach out as we stumbled in that nightmare landscape, the ground bucking under our boots, to put a hand under your elbow and feel the warmth of those light bones. Not to support you – you and your pride both would have been a heavy burden – just to touch you for a moment. But Gilly planted himself between us with some half-invented idea of chivalry and ploughed ahead, helmet swivelling like clockwork. Something rose from the rocks ahead of us, invisible except for the glint off its goggles; I drew smoothly and fired at the fleck of light, watched it disintegrate into green chunks.

  “Very nice,” you grunted. “Have you been practicing in secret? We’ll have to have a re-match when we get back.”

  “No thanks; I’m already a month behind in pay thanks to you.”

  We slowed; I glanced at Gilmour in case he had seen anything, but it was you, limping heavily, the chrysanthemum odour of your sweat overpowering the smell of the antibiotic gel. As one, we looked down; an obliging flash a hundred yards away lit up your bare leg, no longer the sterile white of the bandage but soaking red, flowing easily over the cuff of your new boot, washing it clean of mud. Gilmour yelped. I held back a noise of my own. And you, you, my love...

  “I’m fine. Come on.”

  We destroyed a scouting party, walked through their stinking remains, caught ourselves constantly on a knee or an outstretched hand as the ground shuddered. Gilmour came within an inch of stepping into a steam-vent that opened under his boot; you yanked him back, and we stood abruptly marooned in a ring of blood, dust, steam, and glowering cracks. Expressions emerged in the dim, orange light. You looked resigned, Gilly baldly terrified.

  Despite the comms ban, we heard a crackle from our sternum radios – a shock, hearing the voice of the ship after so many days. “Attention all personnel in quadrant C. The Akhjians have activated a seismic weapon in this vicinity. Do not engage further. Return to muster point Romeo, repeat, Romeo, and await pickup. You have. Seven. Minutes. And. Forty-five. Seconds.”

  “How far is it?” I whispered.

  You said, “Half a mile. Come on.”

  I trusted your sense of direction; mine was pathetic, and Gilmour had an extremely good one that was unfortunately ninety degrees out of true on this planet. Yours was the only one I would have followed. And so we did, weaving through gaps in the vents, panting at the noxious gases they spat out. I fumbled absently for my rebreather, lost hours ago; yours was filled with blood. Gilly handed you his at once, and I hope he saw the look I gave him in the volcanic twilight.

  The ship itself could not be seen, but we looked up and saw its green lights hanging against the faint silver stars still visible through the clouds of dust and steam. I cried out at its nearness.

  “Corporal,” Gilly called. “Please—”

  I looked back and saw that I had been walking alone; you had gone down, the saturated bandage finally peeling away to reveal the arc burn no less ravaged than the land around us, bubbling with blood and lymph. I dropped beside you. The mud was so hot I felt my skin scald at once.

  “Get up,” I told you.

  “I can’t.”

  “Can’t, or won’t?” I snapped, quoting the major. A smile flickered across your face, quick and dark. Your eyes were like the sky hidden above us.

  “Give me your grenades. I’ll give those bastards a sendoff to remember.”

  “We’ll carry you,” I said. “Gilmour.”

  “Ma’am.” He reached down for you and reeled back, lip split, landing heavily on his back. I would not have thought your small fist could have carried so much force. You were licking your knuckles, face set and drawn.

  “I’m not going to make it, Jen,” you said, voice miles away. As if in agreement, a six-foot crack opened up nearly at our feet, white inside rather than red, a sudden jerk of earth skywards.

  “Corporal!” shouted Gilly; we heard another number, incomprehensible, through the radio. I ignored it.

  “You can. You will. Look how close we are.”

  You slid a hand into my jacket, the familiar coolness of your nimble fingers, and just as I was about to touch your face I saw that you had taken my plasma arc and gently pressed the barrel to my throat. I felt my blood tick against it, pulse metronoming out of the corner of my eye. “Unhook your grenades and give them to me,” you said softly. “And then run, my love.”

  It was the first time you’d said it. Something exploded nearby, showered us with pattering grit, shook the tears from my cheeks. Your eyes were dry. You wanted to die not merely with honour, but in the carnage of any enemy foolish enough to approach you. I unclipped the belt and dropped it into your lap, hearing the end splash into a widening pool of blood. Your free hand met my hair, tangled in the curls, then fell away. “What medal do you want?” I whispered.

  “The biggest one they’ve got, of course.”

  One swift kiss, tasting of dirt and sulphur, and then I was running, supporting Gilmour, counting down as the ship hovered, swayed, dropped below the cloud cover. Acid burned in my throat. The mud was a treadmill, we grew no closer, and the land itself fought progress, throwing up slabs and boulders and sinkholes filled with boiling mud. We vaulted vents, wrenched ankles on the far side, burned our palms. The ship’s ramp was still down, only beginning to retract as we approached.

  “No!” Gilmour cried.

  I snatched his pistol from its holster and fired into the air, one, two, three, and watched through a glaze of fresh tears as the ramp paused. And then we slid into the circle of its light, strange hands pulling us up, dumping us into a pile of uniforms and warm limbs and clean air. I pressed my face to the floor and tried not to vomit.

  Someone hauled me up by my jacket: Kara the medic. “My God, Jen! You’re alive! Is Thea coming?”

  But I dragged myself to the viewport as we teetered into the air, grasping a grab-rail – yes, there. An Akhjian ship arrowed into the darkness and went up without warning in a string of turquoise fireballs, the micro-stellar cores of the grenades, flickering the lights on our ship.

  “No,” I said when it was over. “She got what she wanted.”

  That’s what they say on Crutas, I know; you had told me one night, late, jigsawed together on my bunk, eating each other’s whispers. There are bad deaths, easily known, and there are good deaths, which are subtle, which can only be judged as a piece of the whole.

  And you died the way you wished. A good death.

  Premee Mohamed is an Indo-Caribbean scientist and spec fic writer based in Alberta, Canada. Her work has been published by Nightmare Magazine, Martian Migraine Press, Innsmouth Free Press, and many others. She can be found on Twitter at @premeesaurus.

  Arthur Kovic’s Days of Change

  Michael Teasdale

  Art: Becca McCall

  Friday

  It is evening on a day like any other.

  Children are tired and exhausted. Adults, glad of the temporary reprieve, snooze peacefully in front of chattering television sets and poke at their TV dinners. On the flickering tubes, game show hosts crack lame jokes about mother-in-laws and the streets outside lie empty. The crickets are singing their evening lullabies and the encroaching dusk paints the sky a lurid shade of orange.

  All is calm.

  Arthur Kovic enjoys the sunset. He admires it for its quiet regularity and the way it always arrives, like a familiar friend, to usher in an end to the daily madness of meetings, appointments and complex office politics.

  The weekend is here and Arthur smiles. Tomorrow will be his birthday and Anna is planning a surprise party.

  He has practiced his planned expression several times in front of the bathroom mirror. “Oh, how wonderful,” he will say. Then he will raise his eyebrows in a carefully rehearsed display of dazzled duplicity.

  Arthur Kovic likes to be prepared. He does not enjoy surprises or situations that require him to ad-lib, which is why Anna is always careful to warn him in advance.

  As he reverses up the drive, he switches off the car radio to better enjoy the satisfying crunch of his premium gravel.

  It is important to find pleasure in the small things in life.

  Arthur read this in a book. The author of the book is a successful man. Arthur wants, very much, to be a successful man.

  “Evening, Neighbour.”

  Ned stands by his lawnmower on the other side of the garden fence. In one hand he clutches a can of Pab’s Blue Ribbon, as he strokes his greying beard.

  “Good evening, Ned,” says Arthur.

  They nod quietly at one another. All the wisdom that the world needs at 7:00pm on a Friday evening is communicated in the reassuring familiarity of such gestures.

  It is the small things that keep the world turning, thinks Arthur, the everyday normalities that give us strength.

  Arthur unlocks the door and slips off his loafers, wiggling his toes and allowing them to breathe through the cloying cotton of his thick, black socks. The big toe of his left foot waves up at him through a newly punctured hole. It is a familiar problem. No matter how frequently he clips his toenails, the toes do not want to stay hidden from view, poking through like ugly, alien rebels.

  Arthur does not like his toes.

  He pads through to the kitchen where the scent of boiling vegetables is causing his stomach to knot with hunger. The limp sandwich he had for lunch has done nothing to abate it.

  His interest in Anna’s cooking is so all consuming that, as he enters the kitchen, he almost fails to notice the girl sitting at the kitchen table.

  The girl is not his daughter Jennifer. She has a set of raven coloured pigtails that trail down the shoulders of a grass stained t-shirt. Jennifer’s pigtails are a mousy blonde. Below her gingham skirt, the girl is barefoot and her pale, thin legs swing nonchalantly back and forth like the ticking pendulums of an erratic grandfather clock. She does not look at Arthur as he enters the kitchen. Instead she stares in fixed concentration at the large sheet of cartridge paper she has laid out in front of her. With a worn-down colouring pencil, she scribbles furiously as her protruding tongue hops from one side of her mouth to the other. A sea of stationary lies scattered across the table. There is no sign of Jennifer and yet her friend seems either unaware or unconcerned by Arthur’s presence as he stands, momentarily transfixed by the rhythmic swinging of the girl’s milky legs.

  In the end it is only the sudden hissing of the saucepan, as it begins to bubble over and singe on the heat of the electric hob, which causes him to break away from the girl’s hypnotic motion.

  Arthur hurries over to the hob and removes the lid; watching as the overflowing bubbles begin to dissipate and a collection of wiggling green beans glare accusingly up at him from beneath the foam.

  He feels himself blushing for a reason he cannot fully explain as he re-covers the vegetables, turning down the heat and placing the saucepan back on the hob.

  Despite his commotion, the girl has not looked up from her drawing and Arthur wanders over to the table to see what she is doing.

  “Hello,” he says, “that’s a nice picture.”

  The girl does not answer him. Instead she continues scribbling, furiously; adorning the wings of a large, ornately detailed butterfly.

  After a few seconds she puts down the pencil.

  “There’s a hole in your sock,” she announces.

  Arthur looks down at the protruding big toe. He feels quietly ashamed.

  The girl begins to slide herself down from the stool.

  “It’s silly to be scared of butterflies,” she scolds him and then pokes out her tongue in a wry act of childish rebellion.

  Arthur does not know how to respond to either the gesture or the accusation and so he reverts to a childish mentality himself, poking out his own tongue in response.

  The girl laughs. Arthur does not like the laugh. There are secrets in a laugh like this one. Arthur does not like secrets any more than he likes toes.

  “I’m going outside to play with Rachel,” announces the girl and she skips past him, and out through the lobby. “See you later,” she calls, as she disappears into the garden, slamming the front door behind her.

  Arthur stands alone in the kitchen. On the table top, the half completed picture of the butterfly flaps briefly at the closing of the front door, before settling into stillness. The only sound now is the dull roar of the stove’s solitary flame and the green beans bubbling quietly.

  “But… I am not afraid of butterflies,” says Arthur Kovic.

  He says the words out loud.

  He wonders why he did.

  •

  “Who was the girl downstairs? A friend of Jennifer’s? I’ve never seen her before.”

  Arthur Kovic stands by the wardrobe. He is wearing grey boxer shorts and the dishevelled upper remnants of his work clothes. He has removed the sock with the hole and thrown it away, although he is still wearing the other. Carefully he undoes his tie and slips it over the hanger.

  “Mmm...” moans Anna from beneath the crumpled duvet.

  His wife of fifteen years lies crippled by a migraine. She has forgotten the pot that she set boiling. It is not the first time.