Shattered Destiny Episode Five: Shattered Destiny, #5

By Odette C. Bell

Shar's kidnapped, and Xarin must rely on every resource to save her.
But the Galaxy is falling apart. Around Xarin, one by one, the players in this twisted universal game shift. With no clear path forward, he must forge one, strike new alliances, and prepare for the greatest battle the Milky Way has ever seen.

….

Shattered Destiny follows a gritty warrior and a cold prince fighting destiny to find each other one more time. If you love your space operas with action, heart, and a splash of romance, grab Shattered Destiny Episode Five today and soar free with an Odette C. Bell series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Odette C. Bell
• Release date: Jan 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386982067

Book preview

1

There it is at the edge of reality. It cuts through everything. Time, matter, space. Existence.

They call it the Storm. A chaotic confluence of energy. It pays no heed to the arrow of time. Any particle trapped within its net shifts backward and forward from the future to the past in an unending dance of history.

No culture has ever possessed the technology to access the Storm. Not the Gap, not the Illuminates, not the great archaic civilizations that came before them.

For if anyone could access the real power of the Storm, the multiverse would lie at their feet. Not just its future, but its everything. All time and all space would be theirs for the taking….

…

Shar

Time ground to a halt, contracting like a fist pressing into a point.

I threw myself forward as desperation pulsed through my heart, tearing me apart from the inside out.

As the seconds danced down to a standstill, I sensed her. Right there at the edge of my awareness – Annie Carter.

This time, it was different. She did not loom in my mind like another personality, an entirely distinct me from the past, one I didn’t remember.

No. This time, we aligned. We became one. A one separated by time but still a consistent whole.

I had no idea what was happening to Xarin. Annie did. She shared her knowledge with me – if only for a split second – as I sprang across the remaining distance of this huge room.

I didn’t have a weapon, but I barely needed one as my body pulsed with so much rage, my hands and feet were transformed into the most powerful weapons of all.

I heard the scattering of claws and watched in my peripheral vision as two holes dropped away in the floor beside me. As I glanced their way, I saw they were endless pits of blackness, bottoming out through this massive refinery to some dark basement far, far below.

The mechanical spiders climbed out of those endless shafts, their metallic claws echoing and scratching over the floor.

I let out a lurching scream as they threw themselves at me.

I managed to catch one, my shaking hand wrapping around its back as I pushed forward and vaulted into a roll.

As I sprang to my feet, I threw it right at the man standing beside Xarin.

If you could call it a man. That part of Annie Carter’s mind that still resonated with my own recognized the creature.

It was known as a graft. A hideous amalgamation of artificial intelligence, brutal machines, and sentient flesh. The AI was grafted right onto the man’s brain stem and would override his emotion – including any scrap of compassion – subjugating him to cold, hard logic.

Though I threw the mechanical spider at the graft, the graft didn’t even need to shift to the side. The spider stopped in midair, somehow cutting out the velocity of my throw as it dropped down to the ground and lurched toward me.

I could hear the spiders behind me like some kind of metal wave crashing to shore.

They were right behind me. Right behind me.

Get out of here, Xarin screamed, his face contorting in pure terror.

He wasn’t horrified for his own life – just mine.

I didn’t have time to appreciate that thought as I felt something crawl up my ankle and slice through my Achilles.

I screamed as I buckled forward, knee slamming into the resonant floor with a thump. Though pain jolted through me, I still managed to push into a roll. As I did, I latched a hand onto the spider who’d attached to my leg. I ripped it out with a scream and threw it on the floor.

Again, I sprang toward the graft. Using a combination of skill and pure luck, I managed to avoid the rest of the spiders.

I reached the graft just as it jerked to the side and snatched a weapon from its hip holster.

One glance told me it was some kind of stun gun. I instinctively knew that one shot would be more than enough to knock me out for hours if not days.

I swore I could hear the graft’s mechanical eyes grinding in its ocular cavities as it tracked me across the room.

It fired.

Something more than skill pushed me to the side at the last moment.

For just a split second, I became so attuned to Annie Carter that something happened.

Somehow, from some source, it was almost as if I could tell the future.

Awareness of where the graft would fire exploded behind my eyes in a vision of green energy, and I tipped to the side, dodging the shot.

The graft obviously didn’t expect me to dodge its blow, and it wasn’t prepared as I sprang to my feet just a meter from it.

I heard it lurch back, heard its mechanical joints grate and groan like rasps over metal.

I screamed as I rounded my shoulder and slammed it into the graft’s middle.

There was a snap of bone, and yet the graft was not thrown from its feet.

Instead, the man wrapped his arms around my body, lurching forward as he pulled me off my feet.

I bucked backward, using my momentum as I tried to break free from his grip, but his hands were clasped with all the strength of hooks locked together.

Xarin kept screaming my name, his voice punching from his throat in a desperate, shaking gasp.

If I’d ever doubted that he could show genuine compassion for me, that doubt melted away. He seemed honestly terrified that he would lose me forever.

And in that second, as the graft’s grip tightened around my back, I became terrified of losing him too.

The connection. Our sacred connection. Whatever force tied us together across time and space, across the past and the future.

I was only starting to learn what it meant, what potential it held.

But now, as my mind opened up to Annie Carter, my heart split at the thought of losing that connection.

As the graft jerked me to the side, it wrenched my head with it, tearing my gaze off Xarin. I stared into the graft’s round, metallic eyeballs – two rotating perfectly circular discs with pinpricks of light in the middle. If I had any suspicion that this man still had a soul, staring into his cold gaze told me he was nothing more than the AI that controlled him.

No, let her go. Let her go, Xarin begged, his voice pitching through the room despite its immense size.

The scampering of claws stopped behind me. My mind… it started to shut down, crawl to a halt as the graft’s grip around my middle became tighter and tighter and tighter.

With the last scrap of my energy, I twisted my head to face Xarin once more.

I stared at him. It felt like I truly saw him for the first time since meeting the arrogant Prince.

In a flash, I understood him, appreciated how his upbringing had led to his actions, and yet understood how far he’d come to break free from that past.

My body, of its own accord, reached out a hand to him.

Xarin was encapsulated in some kind of arcing, crackling shaft of light. Several whirling metal discs were at his feet, their activity becoming more pronounced and louder as the light became brighter and brighter.

Though light should be nothing more than mere illumination, for some reason I felt it was like two hands steadily wrapping tighter around Xarin’s throat.

….

Just when I thought it was all over, I heard a bellowing scream split the air from the other side of the room.

Footfall was followed by frantic gunfire.

I used the last scrap of my awareness to twist my head to the side. And there I saw him. Commander Castle. He came springing into the room, guns held high as he fired at the mechanical spiders. Showing his worth as a member of the Galactic Police, he’d adapted to the spiders’ fighting style. He no longer attacked them head-on but concentrated on firing at their environment instead. Several well-placed rounds caught the sides of the tunnels they were using to enter the room, and they collapsed with a shaking clang that rang through the air and rattled my teeth.

Like a chaotic metal storm, the spiders remaining in the room plowed toward him.

The dauntless Commander drove right through their middle, setting his gun to spray as the discrete shots of light turned into one continuous long beam that cut from the ceiling to the floor. It wasn’t strong enough to destroy all the spiders, but it slowed them down as Castle pushed through them, leaped into a roll, and finally sprang toward the graft.

I used the last of my breath to scream at him. No, save Xarin. Save Xarin.

Castle hesitated but only for half a second. Then he whirled on his polished boots, the rubber squeaking over the metal floor.

That shaft of light was now moving around Xarin so quickly, it looked as if it would suck the air from around him.

Sure enough, with a wobble, he fell to his knees, one after the other.

With the last of his strength, he yanked a hand up and clutched at his throat desperately.

And with the last of my strength, I shifted a hand forward, fingers spreading wide as I reached for him.

But I did not and could not reach that far.

…

Commander Castle

He had no idea what was going on. But that was not going to stop him from acting.

He drove forward on instinct alone, letting his years of experience propel Castle through the metallic spiders.

He hesitated for a single moment as Shar screamed at Castle. Then he shifted, jolting hard on his foot as he brought his gun up. He fired at the rotating metal discs beneath Prince Xarin’s feet. And somehow, Castle’s aim was so pinpoint accurate, the beam from his gun dodged through two distinct balls of shielding and sliced into an unprotected panel beneath.

Those rotating discs erupted in a sea of sparks that scattered over the floor, dancing like fish pulled from the ocean.

The strange shaft of light encasing Prince Xarin blinked out like a candle plunged into water.

Xarin, already on his hands and knees, was thrown backward as the device beneath him imploded.

His large, broad back struck the floor with a resounding clang as his body skidded several meters until he stopped.

The spiders were still behind Castle, and they scattered across the floor.

He heard the man who held Shar – the graft – take a hissing, rattling breath.

Instinct told Castle to duck, and he threw himself to his feet just in time. A white-hot blast of plasma slammed into the floor several centimeters from his left arm, blistering the skin and filling the air with the scent of burnt flesh.

He screamed, lurching to the side and resisting the urge to clutch a hand over his arm. Instead, he propelled himself to his feet as he grabbed his gun with both hands. Strafing to the side, he snapped his gun up and around.

Lining up the shot and relying on every scrap of training he had ever had, he fired.

It was an unbelievably risky shot. Shar was still clutched in the graft’s arms, her body