CHAPTER 0

A shudder shook the passage as we rushed towards the portal. The mothership had come under attack by something, and we could only fathom at which of the enemy forces might be behind them. An explosion ripped through the wall behind us. I turned to see a horrifying insect with long pincers easily tear through the reinforced alloy that made up the ship.

Staring at the grotesque form, I pulled the trigger of my plasma rifle rapidly. Green acidic blood sprayed over the wall quickly turning it to puddles.

“Lex! Hurry!” Layla shouted, holding the blast door open.

“I know!” I shouted back.

I ran through the passageway, and she allowed the doors to slam shut. It wouldn’t hold for long against the Biuna, but it would give us a moment. The rest of the crew were working at their stations to get the portal activated. I looked around but only saw three people, not including Layla and myself.

“Where are the others?” I asked only to receive silence. I ground my teeth and turned to Hector. “Is the self-destruct set?! We can’t allow them to gain control of the portal.”

“It was the first thing we did,” he replied.

There was a crash from three separate points around the lab. The structure was built from the strongest materials available to the human races. The Biuna didn’t appear to care about that though as they hammered away quickly creating dents in the walls.

“Fuck! We don’t have time! Fuck this shit!” Hope shouted, slamming her fist on the panel hard enough to cause it to bleed.

I pushed her out of the way and started adjusting the settings. “Set it to random! We’ll just have to pray our safety measures are enough to place us somewhere we can breathe.”

An acid covered pincer stabbed through the lab wall punctuating that we only had seconds. I slammed my hand down on the button and the rings in the center of the room started swirling. The space in between them started to shift unnaturally before it stabilized.

“Fuck this!” Hope shouted again before she ran and leapt through the event horizon.

“Everyone go! I’ll make sure they don’t make it through!”

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“Lex no!” Layla shouted before Hector dragged her through with him.

I looked to Maya with a grin and she nodded in understanding before she hopped through the event horizon. I placed my plasma rifle on my shoulder and moved to stand in front of the portal as I lit a cigarette. It was set to overload in three minutes, and I wasn’t letting a single one of the bug bastards through it. Entire worlds had been lost from a single drone after all.

The opening in front of me had widened as the bugs continued to spray acid on it. I leveled the rifle with a grin at the opening. “Eat super-heated lead!” Bolts of plasma streaked across the lab to strike the head of the bugs trying to get through turning them into slag. I held the trigger realizing for the first time how long three minutes could be.

Another stomach-turning rendering sound filled the lab as another section of the wall was breached. I directed my new friend at the breach and held the trigger down. A nasty yellow-colored bug that had tendrils of some sort found its body torn apart.

“Echo! How long until it overloads?!”

“Approximately, one minute and ten seconds.”

“Fun!”

I had to make it overload. That was the only way to assure the bugs didn’t acquire the technology. For insects, they were frighteningly good at adapting things that didn’t belong to them.

With another metal wrenching sound, a bug managed to get through the first opening. I drew my proton pistol and pointed it at the bug. I unloaded its full charge into the insect, causing it to jerk on the ground, but not kill it. With my plasma rifle and proton pistol occupied by the two openings, I was short a hand when the third wall broke.

“Echo! Activate any self-defense articles in the portal lab!” A hexagonal barrier formed around the portal, but it was already red. It would last less than twenty seconds. Thankfully, that was all I would need. I lowered my weapons and flipped all the bugs off. “See you all in hell!”

I turned to take in the portal. It was pulsing blue and green. The normally stable event horizon wobbling like a top that was about to fall over. Arcs of electricity bounced around the rings that were spinning fast enough to turn a human to paste if they were hit by it.

 My life’s work reduced to this, well, Layla’s life work. I just made sure she was safe for every step of it. I was glad she had survived. I’m not sure where she landed, but the system had safeties built in to assure atmosphere and water at arrival.

“Five seconds.”

“It has been a blast Echo.”

“It has been a pleasure, Lex.”

Taking the portal in, I felt it was a shame that I needed at least thirty seconds for my body to materialize anywhere. The portal would be space dust by that point. “I always did want to go out with a bang! They should be able to see this one in several galaxies.” Despite myself, I started to laugh.

“Lex! Look out!”

I felt a stabbing pain as something tore through my stomach. The force of the bug pushed me into the portal, miraculously missing all of the rings. After that, my world was dyed black with countless elongated dots as I felt my mind stretch like it normally would as one went through the portal, then something whitewashed it from behind me as I assumed the portal exploded.