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    First Strike Book Four
    First Strike Book Four
    First Strike Book Four
    Ebook186 pages2 hours

    First Strike Book Four

    By Odette C. Bell

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    About this ebook

    They’re trapped in the Risen Empire, and there may be no escape.
    The Risen must rise – it’s in the name and trapped in their collective psyche, a virus that will never die.
    That doesn’t mean First Strike and her friends can give up. Do you think they’ve come this far and sacrificed so much to roll over now?
    As circumstances keep them apart, they’ll have to fight for the same cause or die. Lose, and they’ll take the Coalition with them. For now the future of the Milky Way rests in their hands, and none more so than with First Strike, the psychic soldier sent to destroy all.
    Can she find it in her heart to help her friends and the civilization she once vowed to destroy, or will the Risen take her and make her into the mindless weapon she always wanted to be?
    ...
    First Strike follows a Barbarian psychic weapon and the cybernetic soldier sent to stop her fighting to save the galaxy from a powerful empire. If you crave space opera with action, heart, and a splash of romance, grab First Strike Book Four today and soar free with an Odette C. Bell series.
    First Strike is the 22nd Galactic Coalition Academy series. A sprawling, epic, and exciting sci-fi world where cadets become heroes and hearts are always won, each series can be read separately, so plunge in today.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOdette C. Bell
    Release dateJul 30, 2023
    ISBN9798215034729
    First Strike Book Four

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      Book preview

      First Strike Book Four - Odette C. Bell

      Chapter 1

      Belinda

      There was no getting out of it. No dodging the inevitable. Now I was a psychic slave bounty hunter. With a secret.

      We clearly had no time to waste.

      I wasn’t given a seat. Didn’t need one, see. I was simply there to stand by my master’s side until finally he closed in on his target.

      I’d never forget the sensation of watching something on my mental viewscreen. It was unreal except hyperreal at the same time. I couldn’t blink my eyes to get away from it. I had to watch and wait.

      It wasn’t just the mental viewscreen that was hyperreal. I didn’t know if it was this ship specifically or something my master was doing, but I could actually feel our vessel moving through space. It was like it was an extension of me. And therefore, it was like its mission was an extension of me, too.

      I could feel myself like some great bird of prey sweeping through a darkened sky toward my quarry.

      My master didn’t share a single word of who the psychic was and what they’d done. But the latter was pretty obvious. I imagined there was only one egregious crime on the Risen’s books. You could probably get away with murder – as long as you were doing it to rise. You could not, however, get away with treason. The group rose, and nobody broke from its ranks. Ever. If they did, they were dealt with swiftly.

      And it was people exactly like my master who mopped them up.

      I needed to stop calling him my master. Lieutenant fit. Trust me, even though he hadn’t confirmed it with more than his reaction, he had come from the Coalition at some point, and he’d reached the position of lieutenant.

      I wasn’t stupid enough to use that title to his face again. I used it in my head, though that was the same thing.

      Suddenly, a light flashed across my internal mental-scape. I could tell we’d just tracked our psychic down.

      I was still reeling. Why wouldn’t I be reeling? I’d just been sold. I had no idea what was happening to the Coalition, and though I was trying to hold onto the hope that my friends were still alive, with every second, that hope dimmed. But I was now traversing this empire. I might’ve only seen the insides of this ship. Now I was about to land on one of the planets.

      The lieutenant slowly rose to his feet.

      His helmet was back on.

      I wondered if I’d get armor, too, and all I had to do was wonder that, and he simply shook his head. I wasn’t worth it, then? It didn’t matter if I died on one of these planets?

      No. Armor will do nothing. You’re forgetting who your enemies are and how they fight. Come, the lieutenant grumbled.

      Where? There’s no way out of here. I gestured at a smooth black wall.

      I was mildly claustrophobic. Weirdly, it hadn’t come up during my stay in this tiny vessel. But it was coming up now I was about to leave. Maybe I had reverse claustrophobia – a kind of agoraphobia. Because the sense that I was about to be unleashed on a civilization so much larger than anything I’d ever seen was almost overwhelming.

      Then concentrate on the almost bit, the lieutenant interrupted my mental chatter.

      If I hadn’t experienced First Strike in my head, I would’ve found this excruciating. People are meant to have private thoughts. Even if you’re watched continuously on the outside, at least you can keep a semblance of safety and privacy on the inside.

      But First Strike had been in my mind, and I’d already gotten used to the fact that someone could read my thoughts.

      At least the lieutenant didn’t interject all the time. He was clearly busy.

      … Busy hiding what he was.

      And what was he? One of the original ones. And who were they?

      I had too many questions. I could tell you that I’d never get the answers, but the lieutenant had told me they were in his head. I just needed to glean them.

      I was usually pretty good at estimating when I couldn’t do a task. Honestly, I’d just walk into a class at the Academy, and something inside me would groan. Maybe it would be the teacher. Maybe it would be the lessons themselves. I’d just know I wasn’t up to the task. Yet I’d never had the sense that it was utterly impossible like this before. And surely it was. I still didn’t know what that tiny fraction of the lieutenant was that wasn’t human, but it was clearly from one of the most powerful psychic races ever.

      I had no chance.

      … Except all I had was time to try anyway.

      The lieutenant didn’t bother to tell me that we’d be transporting out of the ship. It made sense. We’d transported in.

      I wondered why it didn’t have any doors, though. Security measure? I didn’t know what the outside of the ship looked like—

      No. I did have an impression of it. We were small. Quick. Streamlined. Hence no doors. But there had to be another reason that we couldn’t even access engineering or any other critical ship systems. And that reason had to be security.

      An assumption. Not a conclusion. You have to be quick, but you have to be accurate, the lieutenant mumbled as he called a phase gate.

      It opened up around us. It was similar to the technology aboard the Argonaut in that the Argonaut was a faint shadow of it. Maybe one day the Coalition would achieve the same level of control over the phase realm that the Risen had. I somehow doubted it.

      The Coalition didn’t have the same motivations.

      The lieutenant didn’t bother to tell me exactly what would happen when we arrived down on the planet. I just knew it was a planet, though. That had been part of the mission parameters.

      We arrived there almost instantaneously. The very first thing I experienced was psychic overwhelm.

      I’d read about it in class. I’d never once appreciated how terrifying it would be to experience, though. It’s one thing to have sensory overload – to have so many sounds and smells and sights crashing upon you that you can’t filter through them. It’s another to have those things come from the mind. I was suddenly aware of continuous mental chatter. It was loud and insistent, too.

      I could barely register the fact we’d arrived in some kind of building. The lower level was open to the street. If you could call it that. There weren’t vehicles. And everything was made out of semisolid light. It was like someone had tapped into the energy of the phase realm and then used it as a building material.

      The tower we were in had multiple different levels. Rather than take stairs or elevators, I watched people simply rise up through them.

      I didn’t know how the Risen Empire worked, but I did know they had solid races. Whatever this planet was, it was clearly meant for the non-corporeal beings.

      The non-corporeal beings wore a type of modular armor. They got to decide what shape they were underneath, and it seemed that the armor could keep up with that. As people floated up and down the shimmering blue levels of the tower, their arms transformed into mouths, into heads, into whatever they wanted. I couldn’t tell you what kind of experiences they were having, but I could tell you that by and large, they were thrilled. This was some kind of pleasure planet, then?

      Too much—

      There was just too much of everything. Too many mental sounds, too much emotion—

      The lieutenant settled a hand on my shoulder. It came with some kind of calming force. Suppression would probably be more accurate, but the point was, it dialed down the mental chatter until it was just a far-off whisper.

      If you can’t figure out how to control the noise of other minds in your head, you’ll die. It’ll be quick. It won’t be pretty. And you will never find out what you want to. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I was just certain they cut toward me as he tapped the side of his temple once.

      … He was inviting me back in, wasn’t he? His mind with all of his secrets was waiting….

      And it was the distraction I needed. First Strike had already taught me how useful distractions were, and though Harry was far, far away, and I didn’t want to indulge in a memory of him right now, the lieutenant’s secrets would have to do.

      But his mind was a wall. The tallest, thickest, strongest wall in existence. Even First Strike with a thousand years would never penetrate it.

      … Unless there was some other way around it?

      What would First Strike do? Lure him in with emotional bait and see how he reacted.

      That was First Strike. What would Laksha do?

      … I didn’t know. But she’d probably defer to others. She’d wait, figure out what the group thought, then forge ahead.

      It was a strangely sobering thought, and though it didn’t help, at least it distracted me again. Good. Because we continued through the tower.

      Nobody seemed to care about us. They glanced our way briefly, though I’m sure they didn’t need to direct their faces with their pointless eyes in our direction.

      I could just tell everybody knew what the lieutenant was. It wasn’t his armor, though. It wasn’t painted with any kind of symbol. It just had to be his existence, then? No. He’d have to have some kind of psychic beacon warning people he was a bounty hunter.

      Nobody got in his way, and that included the staff. As for the staff, they appeared to be cybernetics. That got me thinking of Dale. Maybe he’d been saved and used, too?

      Focus. A mind that does not know how to lead itself forward will be led by a master, the lieutenant muttered in my mind.

      His communication was direct and clear. It was like having a whiteboard and someone suddenly taking up all of the space to write in neon green letters. You’d never miss it.

      And his message, so unignorable and clear, was timely, too.

      I had terrible focus. You knew that. You’d read my story.

      I also… look, I didn’t want it. Did that make sense? If any single one of my teachers knew that, they’d kick me out of the course so fast, they’d have to replace their shoes.

      Focus is everything. Focus helps you learn, helps you decide what to do next. Focus helps you ignore all of the countless distractions in the universe and attend to only the things you need to. If you don’t have focus, you’re the equivalent of open arms that someone can shove anything into. You’ll never get to pick up the things you want, though. Unless you train your mind… right?

      Look, I wasn’t a psychic. But I wasn’t certain it was that easy. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’d had valuable insights while my mind was wandering.

      Let your mind wander on a planet like this, and you will be picked off by a stronger bounty hunter. You are not in the Coalition anymore, Belinda. And every belief you once had must now be updated. Be quick. Be accurate. And don’t fall behind, the lieutenant thought.

      I went to try to think back to him. I didn’t have the time.

      He took a step and froze. He had to be detecting our target. I went to swivel my head around to try to track the guy’s face, then realized how pointless that was.

      It was his mind that would matter.

      And while I really didn’t want to tune in to all the overactive jumped-up minds all around me, I had to.

      How would you find a dissenter in a sea of psychics? It would be the mind keeping itself to itself.

      The lieutenant didn’t move. In around three more seconds, I did it. I found our target.

      He was just on the level above us.

      He was pretending to have fun with some kind of hologram. I was assuming it was a hologram. There was so much about this experience that was fundamentally confusing, but he was watching us.

      And his mind was sharp.

      When the chase begins, do not fall behind, the lieutenant said.

      Then the chase began.

      Our target attacked. Just not with a gun. With a psychic pulse of force.

      He threw his head toward us.

      I know that sounded disgusting. He didn’t actually detach it, but that wasn’t the point. He could twist it to the side, alter the armor, get it out of the way, and throw some kind of projection from his psychic body.

      It sailed forward.

      It powered toward the lieutenant. My stupid first impression was to throw myself in the way. That was my Coalition training talking. And the lieutenant didn’t need it.

      He dodged to the side. He didn’t shove me in the chest to get me out of the way. That was up to me.

      I was surprisingly quick-footed. I twisted, and that blast of psychic force hit the floor.

      The floor that was only semisolid.

      What did it do to it? Oh, even in 100 years, I couldn’t have told you. The floor kind of melted. It buckled too. It immediately re-created itself, but it didn’t feel right. It was like a thought formed on a half-remembered fact. There was a gaping hole in it. But unless you looked carefully, you wouldn’t know.

      Move, the lieutenant roared.

      So I moved.

      I twisted to the side and started to run to the left.

      I was suddenly aware that, unlike the lieutenant and every other person here, I had no idea how to rise up and down through the various layers of this tower. It had to be psychic, but I couldn’t initiate the reaction. And soon enough, the lieutenant was out of sight.

      He rose up to a level above me, and I could just see him until he threw himself behind several sprites.

      Then there was nothing. He was gone.

      And I was alone on an

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