‘We have been travelling through time every time we go through the wormhole?’ asked Echo.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why haven’t we just gone back to the start of time and killed the dead?’ said Joker.

  ‘That is the point. We don’t know where in time we are, as we have no point of reference. This isn’t a science fiction movie where we can travel faster than the speed of light. The only reason we can explore the universe if because of the wormholes. We can use the star maps to know where we are in space, but we don’t know where we are in time. Even if we did know where we were in time, it would take us hundreds of thousands of years to travel through deep space to get anywhere with the engines we use today. We also don’t know where to go.’

  ‘We could go to all the possible worlds where the dead are and plant nukes. Blow them up when the dead get there,’ said Hex.

  ‘Can we even change time?’ asked Babylon, cleaning his sniper rifle.

  Rogue paused, ‘I don’t know. The theory is that what has happened has happened. We are battling the dead in the past, present and future. The dead are fighting aliens that don’t exist at this time or are already extinct in their time, but from where they are time is relative. Everything is happening in the now. We don’t know if we can change what has happened, but the dead have the knowledge and power to open new wormholes. They can pick destinations they want to travel to, and at the time they want to go. This is a technology we do not have. We believe they learnt this from a race of aliens that no longer exist. I believe I read the mind of one of these aliens, well a zombie version of that alien. I looked into his memories. I have seen everything he has seen in his thousands of years of his existence.’

  ‘What is the plan?’ Echo was lighting up a cigarette.

  ‘I have found the planet the alien was turned on. I know all the wormholes the alien took since it left its world. We are going to travel through them all, like unravelled string leading us to the start of the maze, and once we are there, we will find what we find.’

  ‘And whilst we are doing this all of our colonies and homeworlds are destroyed?’ quipped Breaker.

  ‘The six of us are more helpful to them here.’

  ‘How long will it take for us to get to this origin planet?’

  ‘It will take no more than a few weeks.’

  ‘So, we are going to an alien origin world with limited ammo and numbers. We have no idea what will be waiting for us and will most likely be the last six humans alive by the time we get there,’ said Joker. ‘Well, at least it won’t be boring.’

  ***

  Two weeks had been and gone since the complex journey through the wormholes began. Echo sat in the cockpit looking up through the reinforced armour-plated glass. They were travelling through yet another wormhole on a course to God knows where. All around the transport ship was the white tunnel of shimmering energy. The length of each wormhole was different to the last. They could pass through a wormhole in mere minutes, or it could be hours, but it wasn’t the wormhole that Echo was interested in. It was the figures beyond the wormhole. Towering figures the size of mountains were locked in battle. There were figures of pure white energy and then there were figures of pure darkness. The figures look humanoid, but no features or any details could be seen. It was like they were silhouettes on the peripheral of his vision. The figures would disappear for a time and then reappear, clashing sword against sword, or striking fists against jaws. A battle was taking place.

  ‘Beautiful isn’t it,’ said Rogue from behind the pilot’s chairs.

  Echo hadn’t even heard the High Priest approach.

  ‘Beautiful isn’t the word I would use.’ He thought about it for a moment. ‘Do you know what they are?’

  ‘No,’ replied Rogue with a shrug of his shoulders. ‘All the priesthood can do is speculate what is happening.’

  ‘And what is your speculation?’

  ‘There is a battle taking place in another realm of existence. One thing we do know is that time works differently in this other realm.’ Rogue dropped himself down into the co-pilots chair and pointed up to the mountainous figures battling beyond the wormhole. ‘These beings have been battling each other since the dawn of time. The fight you are seeing started long before the birth of humanity and will continue long after we are extinct. We don’t know who they are or why they are fighting, but I like to think one of them is fighting for us.’

  ‘Do you think that is where the dead came from?’ asked Echo.

  ‘It is possible. Star, the Queen of the Dead, was not a mortal being. We may just be victims of a battle between the Gods. They might not even notice that we are down here. What I do believe is that one day that fight between those two beings will end. From our point of view it appears that they have been fighting for an eternity, but in their realm, only mere minutes could have passed by. I believe it is this battle between the Gods that had brought chaos to our realm.’

  Echo sat in silence for a long moment.

  ‘Do you really think we can stop all this at this origin world?’

  ‘I think we have searched for decades for an original being. I can travel through the mind of the dead, but no zombie seems to last longer than a hundred years. I have now looked into the mind of a zombie that has lived for two millennia. This is at least a start. This origin world is the starting point of our salvation. We might find a way to stop this war or close the wormholes forever. Without that technology, the dead will be trapped where they are. It might give us a chance to survive. Or we might be able to undo what has been done. It is all speculation until we are able to find this origin world and learn the truth about what happened there.’

  Echo looked up at the two beings locked in battle.

  Who are they? Why are they fighting? Would this forever war ever end?

  ***

  ‘I am fed up with this fucking shitty piece of shit,’ Hex’s voice echoed through the silent transporter. Crashing and banging could be heard from within the kitchen as he cursed every bad word he knew. Echo looked up from his bunk and glanced across at Joker. The space marine was carefully wiping down the blade of his sword with a cloth dabbed with special oil. Joker didn’t even flinch at the noise the medic was making. ‘It has been three weeks of eating this fucking paste. I have had enough. I am hungry. I want proper food.’ The banging and crashing continued, as Hex took out his frustration on the metal cabinets. The whole team felt the same way. The ship wasn’t stocked for long-range travel. They were rationing the survival paste. It was called survival paste as that is what it was. It had the consistency of wood glue, smelt like damp socks and tasted worse, but it was designed to keep your energy levels up. The problem was it never filled the void of hunger in the depths of their stomachs. Hex liked his food. They all knew this. This wasn’t even the first time he had needed to vent his frustration. The medic would normally have an outburst four or five times a mission. In one regard it was good, as he took his anger out on the dead, but three weeks into the journey and they were all feeling the hunger. It was not a sensation Echo ever wanted to feel again.

  ***

  Breaker sat on the stool with his plaster cast resting upon another stool. The plaster cast was covered in artwork designed by the rest of the team. Breaker especially liked Babylon’s green dragon and was kind of gutted that he was going to have to cut this thing off in a week. Babylon was stood on the opposite side of the table with Joker. The two space marines had deep frowns etched into their brows as they studied the space map in front of them. Thousands of blue and red pinpricks of lights were sprinkled across the map.

  ‘We haven’t received any signals for two days,’ said Babylon.

  ‘What are you saying?’ Breaker strained his neck to see the flat screen display on the table top.

  The sniper said nothing as he reviewed the star map. The star map was a map of the Pegasus Houses Empire. Every single coloured dot represented a populated world, a colony, space station or spaceship. The majority of the populated areas were represented by red dots, which meant they had been destroyed. The dead had invaded all worlds at the exact same time. It was the very definition of shock and awe. Pegasus House simply didn’t have the numbers to defend all locations at the same time. Early reports stated that the dead had also placed deep space mines within the wormholes to block escape and ambush any potential support.

  ‘We are so far out of contact now we might not be getting any signal,’ replied Joker.

  They looked down at the star map in silence.

  The map was mostly red.

  Blue dots were few and far between.

  ‘If Rogue is correct then that means that these dead fuckers just launched the biggest full-scale assault on humanity in different places in space and time. How is something like that possible? How could they know where every single one of our bases is? How could they know what time frame they were in? If there are so many millions of wormholes all connected to different places in time and space, how do they know where each wormhole leads too?’

  ‘Shit happens,’ said Babylon.

  ‘Shit happens...?’ Breaker repeated, stunned.

  The Chinese sniper picked up his cup of hot water from the table and headed up towards the cockpit. Breaker sat in silence as he watched him walk away. Joker politely cleared his throat, ‘I agree with Babylon. There is not a lot we can do by talking about all this. Pegasus House has been destroyed by the dead. I don’t know why or how they managed to launch a full-scale attack, but something has scared them into action.’ The sword-wielding space marine had a dark and dangerous smile climb up the side of his face. ‘Maybe they know something we don’t. Maybe they didn’t want Rogue getting the information that he had. Maybe they are so scared of what we could do to them that they reacted by trying to wipe us out in one big final push.’ Joker brought himself up to full height and let his smile slowly disappeared. ‘Or none of it is connected. Shit happens,’ he replied with a shrug of his shoulders. ‘All we can do is make enough problems for the dead bastards when we arrive at this origin world.’

  ***

  Breaker pulled up his knee pad and tested out his leg. It felt good to finally have the plaster cast off. The young marine got to his feet and pulled up his combat trousers. An odd calmness washed over him as he slipped on his jacket and lifted his backpack up off his bunk, testing the weight. It was the lightest it had ever felt pre-mission. On his right hip was his handgun with two clips of ammunition. It wouldn’t go far against a zombie horde. He picked up his assault rifle with the pump action grenade launcher attachment. He had three clips of ammo for the rifle and only two grenades left for the launcher. His trusty combat knife was slipped into the leather holster on his left hip. It was time to go. Breaker took a moment for himself. It would most likely be the last moment of peace he ever felt. Pegasus House was being hunted to extinction by the dead, and they were so far out from anyone that nobody was coming to save them if things went wrong. If Rogue was right about his prediction, then they were about to walk into an origin world, which sounded like a one-way ticket into the afterlife. Breaker let out a breath he hadn’t realised he had been holding and marched out of his sleeping quarters. Hex and Joker were coming out of a doorway a little further down. The two marines were locked and loaded. Hex carried his chainsaw in his hands like a lumberjack off to work, as Joker had strapped his two samurai swords to his back. Breaker followed them down the corridor and into the main living area. Babylon was sleeping in a chair, camouflage cream smeared across his feature, as his destructive sniper rifle rested against the wall beside him. Echo and Rogue were already in the pilot and co-pilot seats.

  ‘How long do we have?’ Hex asked what they were all thinking.

  ‘We are here,’ announced Rogue.

  The white glow of the wormhole faded from view, as the transport ship flew out into the darkness of deep space. All eyes looked forward at the floating mass of debris in front of them. Thousands upon thousands of badly damaged starships awaited them. At a glance, the Marines knew they were all deactivated and had been for a long time. There was certain finality to what they were seeing. The space craft’s were a brown colour like tree bark, but every inch of their hulls was covered in a strange alien language that resembled hieroglyphics similar to those from ancient Egypt. The alien spaceships were oblong in shape and didn’t look as if they were designed for space flight. Mingled amongst the alien ships were thousands of zombie space bugs. The frozen remains of the black-skinned mutated beetles were everywhere to be seen. The dead used these disgusting creatures like humans used spaceships. They could travel through the wormholes protected within their stomachs, only to be spewed out upon reaching a new world for invasion. This was the first time Breaker had ever seen any race manage to cause the dead so many problems.

  Echo’s fingers danced across the cock-pits control panel, bringing up sensor readers, but the computer was not alerting them to any danger. The marines looked high and low, left and right, near and far, as their transport ship passed through the remains of this ancient battle. Bits of splinted alien spacecraft twanged off the hull, as they headed for their true destination. Beyond the battle was a world. It was a world cast in a strange purple haze. Breaker could see no landmass or sea. It was as if the world were nothing more than purple gas locked within a glass ball. The light from within the world was almost hypnotic. It was drawing him in. Rogue was leaning forward, ignoring the debris of the ancient spaceships. The High Priests eyes hadn’t left the purple world in front of them. Breaker hadn’t even seen the man blink. He was transfixed. Silently, the transport ship continued forward towards the strange unknown world.

  ***

  Joker led the way down the ramp into the misty landscape below. The air was damp, and there was a cold sting to the lungs with each breath he inhaled. The bottom of his boot tested the surface of the planet. The ground was sodden and soaked through, but appeared to hold his weight. A squelching sound came with each step that he took. Visibility was practically non-existent because of the mist. There was no breeze to move things along. Everything had a strange purple tint to it, but where the purple light was coming from was beyond the space marine. One by one the others followed him down the ramp and into the wetland. The group were spaced five feet apart from one another, which was the maximum distance they could be separated before being unable to see the man in front. It wasn’t ideal as it meant a single explosive weapon could wipe the six of them out they were in such close proximity. Joker spotted the telltale sign of a planet that had been touched by the army of the dead. There was no sound. There was not a single cry, squeak, howl or bark from a native animal. This world was silent. Only six pairs of boot walking from the damp earth made a sound on this graveyard of a planet. For five minutes the team walked. Every fifty yards Echo would drop a red flashing beacon down onto the ground. The red light was enhanced by the floating mist, creating a strange red haze in the air, visible from one marker to the next. This was the team’s only route back to the transport ship. Five minutes of walking through the damp undergrowth the team touched rock. An incline was leading up a slope towards a rocky outcrop. The ground was so smooth on the rock that at one point in time this place could have been a road, but there were no visible markings to show this. The spiralling path led them through a rocky canyon, around a towering boulder and then to a place where the mist disappeared. The group stood at the front of a five hundred foot long stone bridge, towering over a sea of mist. They didn’t know how far the drop beyond the bridge was, but they could hear no sounds of running water. On the other side of the bridge was a town. The dome roofed buildings were covered in purple moss and large parts of the roofs, and exterior walls had collapsed. Purple trees were growing from within the ancient buildings.

  ‘I’m going to overwatch,’ said Babylon, slinging his sniper rifle over his shoulder and climbing the face of a towering boulder by the side of the bridge.

  ‘This is the place that I saw,’ said Rogue, remembering the images he had seen in the zombie's mind.

  ‘It’s too quiet,’ said Hex, holding his chainsaw.

  ‘That’s because everyone is dead,’ said Breaker.

  ‘Even the dead make noise,’ countered Echo.

  ‘He is right. This place is too quiet, too still,’ agreed High Priest Rogue, ‘I think we are being watched.’

  ‘And here I thought this was going to be a walk in the park,’ grumbled Hex, leading the way across the stone bridge. Joker glanced up at his friend, as Babylon disappeared over the lip of the boulder. Babylon would become invisible to any enemy in a mere handful of moments. Joker allowed himself a brief smile. They might be getting watched, but now they had the best sniper in Pegasus House watching the watchers. Joker followed the others over the bridge towards the decaying ruins of the alien structures beyond.

  ***

  What remained of the alien town was covered in the purple moss. Tree’s with black bark and twisted branches had grown through the broken walls and collapsed rooftops. The only sound in the air was the clicking of boots off the stone pathway that had replaced the water soaked grass. There were no obvious signs of advanced technology. The town was big enough to house a population of several thousand people, but there were no derelict cars or street lamps or anything that would indicate that an alien race with advanced technology once dwelled here.

  ‘Rogue...’ a voice whispered in the High Priests mind.

  Rogue paused in mid-stride, wide eyes searching the surrounding buildings for a sign of movement.

  ‘Rogue, you must help me,’ said the familiar voice. It sounded like words spoken by his father.

 

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