First Strike Book Three

By Odette C. Bell

They can save the Argonaut, but can they save the galaxy?
They’ll have to find out. When the plot deepens and they’re thrown into a psychic war aboard the Argonaut, they may think things can’t get worse.
They can.
Soon, they’ll be thrown across the universe and into the shadowy clutches of an ancient civilization with one point. They must rise. At the cost of all.
First Strike must learn she’s more than a Barbarian assassin, and she’ll have to find her heart before it’s quashed for good. Commander Simpson will have to help her. Because no one can survive – or save others – on their own.
...
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 Three 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Odette C. Bell
• Release date: Jul 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215702079

Book preview

Chapter 1

First Strike

I was back.

Just in time, right?

No.

As my bullet slammed into the goddess’s head, it didn’t kill her, but it did slow her down and stop the Argonaut from ripping a hole in the galaxy's center. Or at least a wider whole.

There was already damage. Damage that could never be fixed. Ever.

The captain shrieked. Make no mistake, it wasn’t his voice.

Something was overlaid over the top of his usual tones. This harsh, animalistic shriek. I’d never encountered anything like it. It blasted out on ordinary frequencies and psychic frequencies, too.

He spun.

I was already moving toward him.

For him to be in charge, there had to be something different about the thing in his head. Now every single person aboard the Argonaut had essentially been replaced by blank versions of themselves, there’d be no reason to keep the old command structure unless it benefited our enemies.

It wouldn’t be the command structure. It would be something specific about the captain.

As I jerked back from him, dodging well, using Cadet West’s body better than he’d ever used it himself, I managed to shift out of the captain’s grip. That animalistic hiss broke through his lips again, shaking through the air, almost burning it.

Meanwhile, a critical alarm blared in the drive room. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that when I’d shot the goddess, the force of my blast had pulled the conduits out from behind her. Not all of them but enough to create one hell of an explosion unless the problem was dealt with immediately.

Good.

If I took out the heart of the drive room, I’d probably take out the Argonaut. Then I’d remove the problem.

I would be in the center of that explosion, but c’est la vie.

The captain almost reached me, but Dale got there first. He powered in from the captain’s side, moving like a flash, because, essentially, he was one. I thought I’d seen Dale move at the top of his speed previously. I hadn’t. Which meant back when we’d fought, he’d been holding back. Now there was nothing to hold him back.

He reached the captain’s side just as he snapped a hand toward my head.

The captain’s hand shook. Sweat glistened across his skin, collecting most between his fingers and over his palm.

His whole body was covered in it, in fact. Without access to any scanners, I could tell his form was being pushed to the extremes of its capacities.

Every psychic knows that using too much of your mind will have a deleterious effect on your body. If you keep pushing more and more power into your thoughts, you will simply take it from the rest of you. There’s a tipping point. Go beyond that, and death waits.

The thing in the captain’s head didn’t care about death, or rather his death. It was focused on mine.

Dale shoved a shoulder into the captain, pushing him off course. Considering the force Dale used, you'd think the captain would end up in a bulkhead on the opposite side of the room, but he barely moved 10 centimeters. He deviated off course, became unbalanced, then twisted on the ball of his regulation boot and continued to stretch a hand out to me.

So Dale tried again. This time, he used the gun in his palm. Or rather, he used his palm. His skin retracted, and the sound was as unpleasant as possible. The small metal units within resorted until I saw this glowing light. I didn’t know what kind of power units ran Commander Simpson, but I could guarantee they were the best the Coalition had. He, though I had not appreciated this previously, was essentially like me – a first-strike weapon. While I had extreme psychic skills, he had the best skills technology could provide. The Coalition would have spared no expense.

A grim look marked Dale’s face as he fired on the captain, just a short sharp blow to the side of his hip. Something to slow him down – but not permanently. Yet as that blue-white blast struck the captain, while it spun him around, it didn’t stop him. Blood splattered over the floor. A few splashes even struck the side of the captain’s wizened face. One actually splashed into his left eye. He didn’t even blink.

There are many autonomic functions that psychics can’t interrupt. Things like blinking and breathing don’t really come through the thinking mind, so there isn’t much a psychic can do to disrupt them. Yet whatever was happening to the captain now meant he didn’t blink as his blood blurred his eyesight.

He just let out another one of those guttural, animalistic cries and went straight for my throat.

I had no idea what would happen if he wrapped his hand around my neck. I wanted to believe nothing would happen.

I was the strongest psychic – clearly. This entire situation had confirmed that.

They’d had no clue I was in Cadet West’s head. Nothing in the end had been able to stop me, including Richardson. But something told me that if the captain wrapped his hands around my neck, all that would change.

You already knew I’d experienced fear multiple times since coming aboard this vessel.

I suppose you didn’t know that every time I kept experiencing it, it kept getting more powerful. I wanted to tell myself that was simply because, though I'd denied emotions for the last decade or more of my life, they were returning with a vengeance. But I imagined that wasn’t true. The stakes were escalating. Every time I fought, I fought for more. And now I fought for Commander Simpson, too.

Dale dashed in from the side so fast, I couldn’t technically hear his movements against the floor. Get any faster, and he’d likely produce a shockwave. He reached the captain, wrapped an arm around the man’s middle, and settled for hauling him up off his feet. All that meant was the captain’s ire was diverted to Dale instead.

Dale looked at me once, but long before he had a chance to say anything to me mentally or psychically, the captain twisted, and in the most animalistic move yet, sank his teeth into the nape of Dale’s neck. His neck, mind you, but while it looked as if it was skin, flesh, muscle, and bone – it was pure metal. I heard the clunk of his teeth sinking past the first fake layer of fake skin.

Dale twitched his head down, curiosity more than alarm playing in his eyes, but then the captain’s eyes fixed on Dale, and I waited.

Waited to see what the captain really intended to do.

Every single time I fought, the stakes kept escalating, right? Because every single time I fought, I kept realizing just how powerful our enemies were. And before you could pause and point out I’d just said our enemies, whatever we were facing felt like the enemy of the very universe.

As the captain sank his teeth harder into Dale’s neck, Dale froze.

His arm was still half around the captain’s back, holding him hard against his chest. But one second Dale’s eyes were darting toward mine, and the next, they just stopped.

Worse than that, I could feel that tiny little spark of his mind stopping, too.

Considering his mind was so buried, Dale might be the perfect weapon to send against these psychics. But if I could detect it, in time, they’d learn to detect it and do to him what they’d done to me. They’d turn his mind against him until he was pinned under the weight of it. While I wanted to believe he could get free, who knew?

Let him go, I roared.

I spun forward.

You had to remember I wasn’t only fighting the captain.

Every other crew member on this massive deck turned against me, too. While it was easy enough to dodge them, especially now I knew how to circumvent their phase mind shields, I couldn’t turn them all off at once. It would take far too much power, and it would take it away from me when I needed it most.

Richardson arrived.

I felt the second the phase lift appeared, and I half spun on my foot before I could throw myself at Dale and save him.

Even though Dale couldn’t communicate with me, if he could, I could guarantee you he’d tell me to face the most significant threat first. If we didn’t, everything I’d just achieved would be for naught.

What the hell is going on— Richardson looked into Cadet West’s eyes once, and I could tell he knew I was in here. First Strike. You jumped heads. You— he roared, not bothering to finish his sentence. He flung himself toward me so fast, he could’ve set the floor plating alight.

I wish he had, frankly.

The alarm I’d heard when setting up the booby-trap near the med bay now stopped. Maybe somebody stopped it because it irritated them. Or, more likely, it automatically stopped because the threat was dealt with. The damage had been isolated, and soon enough, the drives would be ready once more, and the Argonaut would again rip through the belly of the Milky Way.

Unless I could do something.

What?

I had three problems. The crewmembers, Richardson, and the captain. Because the captain was done with Dale, he unwrapped his mouth from Dale’s neck. I saw strange little crackles of yellow-blue energy discharging across Dale’s metal endoskeleton.

His eyes were still wide open, his stare directed forward, his face like a blank robot.

While he’d always wanted to be that, I felt actual grief at the fact this was happening.

A new emotion for me.

New fuel to feed my fight.

Richardson didn’t need to say anything more. All Richardson needed to do was attack.

He flung his mind forward. And once more, I encountered the wall in his head.

I swear it was even taller than the last time we’d fought. Thicker, too. It was a wall that told you, no matter what you tried, no matter what you came back with, you’d never scale it.

It would exist long after you crumbled.

Richardson shoved his fingers out, twisting them to the side and grabbing what seemed to be empty air. But at the last moment I realized he was grabbing the minds of all of the crew members behind me. I could no longer easily switch them off.

You wouldn’t think that Richardson would fight this intelligently. Richardson clearly had help. That wall in his head only got thicker and taller, harder and more impossible to breach.

From behind it, he could throw any attack he wanted my way.

Once he had all of the blank crewmembers under his control, it was easy enough to throw them at me like pawns on a chessboard.

I’d have no help from Dale. This eerie prickling sensation at the back of my spine told me he’d been switched off for good.

I only had myself—

And one other person.

Belinda was still tied to the deck by containment chains. For obvious reasons, no one had bothered to let her out, regardless of the fact it was now clear she wasn’t me.

But maybe I’d left a gift in her mind, or maybe the talented cadet had finally figured out how to use that psyche of hers. She’d never be a psychic like me, but she’d be something.

Precisely what I needed.

She twisted her head around, straining against the containment chains, her hair singeing as it flopped down against them. Rather than look at me, she looked at the drives. Of course. The goddess.

When your enemy is fighting you to the death, pick the most crucial target, the one thing they can’t lose, and throw every resource you have at it until something cracks.

The goddess didn’t have the greatest psychic skills. Or rather, she had messy psychic skills. She could clearly throw images at people’s minds. She couldn’t force them to see those images. Nor could she read someone’s intentions. She was more of a receptor than anything else, and I wondered if that’s why they desperately needed me as a node. All of that didn’t matter. What mattered was that Belinda’s small psychic skills were enough to interfere with the goddess.

The goddess was seconds from waking. Her eyes fluttered open, and her fingers, still tied to her chest, were moving from the knuckles up.

But as Belinda stared at her, sweat raining down the cadet’s brow, the goddess froze.

Richardson didn’t even notice. He was busy using his full psychic force against me.

… So I would buy Belinda a chance, no matter what it took.

That equation there – no matter what it took – was one I had been solving ever since I’d become a weapon. And you already knew what I’d answered it with. Death, espionage, and assassinations. Because previously, I’d only ever been able to imagine those as the answers to the galaxy’s problems. Now the simple equation of ‘whatever it took’ involved me sacrificing myself to buy a cadet of the Coalition the last chance she’d need.

Richardson, I roared with Harry’s mouth and my psychic force, you’re a weak psychic. Tear down that wall, rip off your phase shield, and fight me. Otherwise, you’ll never achieve anything real. Instead, you’ll be a child hiding behind your powerful parents. Show me you have power, Richardson. Or are you too scared? Will you continue to cower behind that phase shield? It’s up to you.

I had to fight off several cadets as they lunged at me from the left. They grabbed me. As their fingers slid over my legs, they forced psychic attacks into my body.

If I were an ordinary psychic, I would’ve blacked out already. Even as an extraordinary psychic, it took continued effort not to make a mistake.

Tumble and slip on the floor, and I knew a second later, every single crew member would pile on top of me until my lungs collapsed.

But Richardson had another