The Night of the Gods: The Complete Series

By Odette C. Bell

The complete The Night of the Gods series. Follow Alyssa and Max on a saga through the galaxies in this four-book boxset.
The fight for eternity is here.
Max Farsight has one mission – teach a superweapon to have a heart. But no matter what he imparts, Alyssa Night can’t change the fact she exists to destroy. An energetic being coursing with temporal particles, she can end anything with a touch, but could she ever create?
Max thinks he knows the answer. He’ll soon find out he doesn’t. When they’re thrown together into the clutches of a mysterious corporation hell-bent on controlling Alyssa’s power, Max must learn who she is. It’ll violate his every automatic assumption. But it’ll do more. To save her, Commander Max Farsight will have to find out who he is, too.
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The Night of the Gods follows a legendary creature and the man tasked to protect her as they bring the Scarax war home. If you love your space operas with action, heart, and a splash of romance, grab The Night of the Gods: The Complete Series today and soar free with an Odette C. Bell series.
The Night of the Gods is the 12th 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: Sep 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005189037

Book preview

Chapter 1

Max Farsight

He stared over at Alyssa Night as she sat on the transport opposite him. Nothing could break up his steely, determined stare. The ship didn’t kick or shudder, even as it shot toward its target with throat-punching speed. He’d flown on some pretty untrustworthy vessels over his time – the kind of bareknuckled, skeletal, barely spaceworthy carcasses that got you from a to b but no further. This prototype, top-of-the-range sub-cruiser was as far from such ships as you could get. For Max’s current mission was like no other.

He’d cut his teeth mopping up pirate scum on the Rim and running sorties into Kore space. Then Alyssa came along. Or should he say the Night?

She had no rank – didn’t need one. Though Admiral Lara Forest, his direct commander, was determined to train her in the ways of the Coalition, why pretend Alyssa Night would ever be anything more than… whatever she was? And what was she again? It was a question that kept dogging Max over the last six months of her training.

Alyssa was an energy being unlike anything the Coalition had ever seen. A sentient creature with a temporal gravity field within her very form, she had the singular capacity to destroy anything – anything at all – with nothing more than a touch.

She’d fallen into the Coalition’s hands six months ago, a literal gift from the gods. For it was the self-proclaimed gods of the far-off Scarax Galaxy that had once trapped Alyssa and would do anything to get her back.

The Coalition wouldn’t keep Alyssa trapped. Admiral Forest wanted to train her, to inculcate her in the ways of the Academy and its recruits so she could fight alongside the very people protecting her from the gods, no matter the costs.

This was Alyssa’s second operation in space. The first went according to plan. And by that he meant she hadn’t used her incredible temporal altering capacities to destroy anything.

This was a real, live mission. They were headed to an embattled Coalition cruiser. He didn’t understand the exact nature of the problem yet. But he did appreciate, statistically, whatever it was, Alyssa could deal with it. If you included in the equation dealing with it destroying it.

The Night, as the gods called her, possessed incredible powers – evidenced by her skin. He didn’t want to admit this, but he found himself staring at it whenever he could. Who wouldn’t? Channels of power crisscrossed deep down through her flesh. They radiated over her entire body. Whenever she concentrated – and whenever she destroyed anything – that bright force surged, light spilling off her like a newborn star. But that was the wrong simile, ha? Alyssa couldn’t be a newborn star. That suggested creation. She destroyed.

She tilted her head to the side. She sat there in a strong set of solid-state armor and a layer of ablative carapace he didn’t begin to understand the physical capacities of. It was a prototype scrounged together by Lara’s best scientists specifically for the Night. No, Alyssa, he corrected himself quickly. It wasn’t only because Lara kept demanding he call Alyssa by her name to humanize her – Alyssa responded better.

At the end of the day, this was all about her.

Max might’ve had a troubled past, especially over the last five years. For a man who’d sported a stellar early career with the Coalition, he’d hit the rocks after his destructive divorce. But this right here would be the most important mission he would ever go on. Hell, it would likely be the most critical operation in galactic history. The very future of not only the Milky Way, but of the Scarax Galaxy rested in Alyssa’s hands. And Max had one simple task. Or perhaps it wasn’t that simple. He must show Alyssa Night what and when to destroy and what to keep safe.

Chapter 2

Alyssa Night

They’d given her a name. She didn’t understand the point. Why call something by a specific set of syllables? All things ended, as the nature of reality dictated. The more you named such things, the more you by definition grew close to them. A foolhardy thing. For when the object disappeared, you lost.

The name remained. As did Commander Max Farsight – a fixture of her life over the past six months. When the admiral wasn’t coming to see her, Max trained her.

For 2000 years, the Night – or Alyssa, as she must start calling herself – had sat in a temporal prison staring at a wall with nothing but her mind to entertain her. No one had expected anything of her. For the gods trapping her had only wished she would not break free to consume them.

Now? Now she could not stop her gaze from deviating across the small vessel and locking on the commander’s visor. Despite its opacity and bulk, she guessed his expression. His brow was likely pressed with consternation, his lips pulled thin with worry, and that suspicious glint no doubt glimmered in his eyes once more.

He didn’t think she could complete this mission.

Perhaps he was right. Ultimately, Alyssa didn’t understand why she was being put through this training. She’d already imparted her knowledge to the one they called Admiral Forest. They needed to destroy every single Hendari crystal, sooner rather than later. For they were the forbidden. They gave the gods their inherent power. And if they wanted to save the Coalition and the rest of the Milky Way from the oncoming war, they must act quickly.

But Admiral Forest wouldn’t let Alyssa anywhere near the Coalition’s Hendari crystals yet. She kept promising when they destroyed the crystals of the gods, the Coalition would surrender their bounty.

A mistake. A fool’s game.

It would likely cost them everything.

All civilizations, whether the Coalition wanted to accept this or not, ended in the blind pursuit of power. Alyssa held onto that fact as if she knew the history of all civilizations, though she did not. She didn’t even have discrete memories of her own people – the Hendari. The Coalition databases couldn’t help elucidate her. No one was sure what the Hendari called themselves, let alone who they’d been. The Observers was the closest anyone had come to their real name. Whenever Alyssa thought it or even heard it, her stomach clenched and cold fear swelled within her.

Though Alyssa possessed memories of her incarceration, any recollections of her people were conspicuously absent. She’d lived for over 2000 years. She knew that. She was also the reason the Hendari had ultimately destroyed themselves. They’d been scared of her power and had misused it. They’d run from the end. And it had ultimately cost them everything.

Yet Alyssa failed to remember anything specific. The Coalition had grilled her, attempting to force her to give up her secrets, but the recollections, if they were ever there, were buried somehow.

As far as Alyssa was concerned, she’d been born roughly 2000 years ago in that temporal prison, and for that entire time she’d done nothing but stare at the wall.

Right now, she did the same. Though it was tempting to keep her gaze locked on Max’s rigid visor, she settled it above his left shoulder on the glimmering metal bulkhead.

Just like him, she wore thick, prototype black and silver armor. To Coalition standards, it was sophisticated, though it lacked the true power of Scarax technology.

Regardless, it hid her skin, and that, apparently, was all Admiral Forest cared about.

To these Coalition people, appearances were critical. In the Scarax Galaxy, people embraced glowing skin. To the gods, the capacity to store up and reflect light in one’s body revealed their inherent power. Alyssa was yet to discover a single person in the Coalition who looked like her.

We’re almost there. The commander checked something on his wrist.

She couldn’t technically see what it was. That was until she concentrated. Her formidable senses pierced through his thick prototype armor, and she discerned the powerful personal computer clamped around his left wrist. It was called a wrist device. They’d attempted to fit her with her own, but it had been a thankless task. Every unit had crumbled into dust. Most things did around her.

Max crunched forward until he locked his broad arms on his knees. Whatever happens, you—

I will follow your lead. I will do as you say. I will follow, she paused as she tried to remember the exact vernacular, your orders.

He stopped then let out a gruff blast of air. I’m not looking for a rote-learned response here, Alyssa. This is a real mission. Unlike our first one, we’re dealing with a cruiser. He stabbed his finger toward the left. There were no portholes in this tiny vessel. It was large enough for the two of them to sit down, but that was it. It lacked a cockpit, and there was no mess hall. There wasn’t even a bed. Though she didn’t require such things, she understood ordinary creatures needed comfort, as they put it.

This ship was built specifically to get assets from one end of a system to another. Deployed in secret off a Coalition vessel, equally in secret, it would traverse some long distance, utilizing its sophisticated anti-detection technology to ensure not even the most advanced races in the Milky Way would discover it. When it reached its target, it would connect to its underbelly unseen and allow the soldiers within to transport aboard.

In reality, she didn’t need this ship to help her transport. With a mere thought, she could push right through a wall. All she had to do was reach out a hand and let her fingers settle on some surface. The temporal particles within her body would remind it that, ultimately, it had never been truly solid in the first place.

Perhaps Max could guess whenever she was becoming distracted. He leaned even further forward, tilting his head to the side. He peaked his thick eyebrows up underneath the protection of his visor. What I’m trying to say is there are real people on board, Alyssa. Actual lives.

She opened her mouth to tell him all lives ended. That was the nature of life. You could not fight death forever. Doing so would only bring you heartache. But she’d said that so many times and been corrected repeatedly by the gruff commander, she knew there was no point in voicing it again.

He still paused as if allowing her to make that mistake once more.

He soon shrugged and jammed his thumb toward the back of the vessel again. We go aboard, and you do exactly as I say. We have to discover what attacked the ship then deal with it. And all the while, we have to hold on to the sanctity of life. His voice dipped down low.

The sanctity of life. That was a favorite saying of his, one he used to counter her assurance that everything ultimately ended. In his mind, regardless of whether people were destined to die, until they died, you looked after them. You gave them the space to live. You shepherded them back from the brink, as he always put it.

In her mind, there was ultimately no point. All civilizations died in the same way. They could not accept their inevitable demise, so they clutched at any power, no matter how dangerous, that would promise the certainty of continuation.

Though Max didn’t want to appreciate this, that was precisely what the Coalition did now. They could train her all they wished. They could take her on these missions and try to make her feel the importance of their ways. But unless they gave up their greed – and importantly, their Hendari crystals – it would end. Sooner rather than later.

Chapter 3

Two days from now, Planet Commerce One

Max Farsight

He struggled against the restraints. Two fully-equipped security robots locked their long, impenetrable metal arms through his. Even in full armor, he wouldn’t have been able to pull free from their unwanted embrace. These were the best. Because his ex-wife had created them. That didn’t stop him from straining until sweat slid down his shoulder blades.

The level 20 security fields flickered in front of him, burning his cheeks. They were so thick, you would need a drill to penetrate them – or a cruiser with propulsion set to maximum.

But at least he could see her.

He watched as Alyssa fell to one knee. She stared emptily at her hands. Energy discharged over them. Then her fingers became limp and fell.

Alyssa, he screamed, true emotion punching through his tone. It arced up higher, threatening to bring the ceiling down. Even then it wouldn’t save her. Nothing could.

She shouldn’t be able to hear him. Those security fields didn’t just keep him out and Alyssa in. They blocked off all sound, all airflow, all temperature – everything. But she still darted her head up, her long neck muscles straining like taut ropes. As energy continued to crackle over her form in violent bright spurts, her every movement weakened.

For a creature meant to be the strongest in existence, it was heart-wrenching watching her succumbing to weakness.

He thought the word creature, but it was an old program. The new Max rose high and shoved that notion from his mind. She might not be human, but that didn’t matter. He’d once thought it had – he’d been wrong. She was alive. And she deserved to stay that way.

Alyssa, he screamed again, his throat bulging against the stiff collar of his armor.

She could no longer lift her hands. More energy discharged around her. It came from the ring beneath her feet. It continued to poison her through her holographic armor. The same damn armor Max had suggested she wear in the first place. He watched it interact with her skin, digging further into those channels covering her flesh. She was virtually naked now, not that you’d be able to tell. As light bled out of her, that was all he could see. He knew he shouldn’t keep staring at her. He could do himself permanent eye damage.

He couldn’t look away.

Alyssa, he screamed until his throat croaked.

She looked up one last time.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything, he spluttered as the impending horror of the situation struck him.

Alyssa Night, apparently the greatest monster in existence if you believed his old self, smiled one last time.

She fell backward, silent and still.

Chapter 4

Present day

Max Farsight

Fear raged in his gut. He hated feeling afraid. It was the one emotion he rejected with all his heart. Panic led nowhere. It locked you up when you needed to move. It gave your body permission to spiral out of control. If you wanted to make a change in this galaxy, let alone in your own life, you had to reject fear with all your heart. Whenever it rose, you pushed it back, and you did what you had to.

Their vessel reached the embattled cruiser. Though it still flew Coalition colors, and by that he meant he recognized the command protocols, they couldn’t transport aboard obviously, not in the current galactic climate. Seemingly random deadly attacks occurred in Coalition space every day. Hell, why stop there? The Coalition wasn’t the only Milky Way force unlucky enough to be receiving this attention. From reports of spies deep within Barbarian and Kore sectors, they endured the same thing. It was worse for the Kore. Ever since the Hand of the Gods incident, the Scarax gods had grown a liking for Kore soldiers. From the reports of the best Coalition assets in the Kore Empire, the Empress lost soldiers daily. Whole ships of troops disappeared as the Scarax Galaxy opened up light paths and stole them away across the galactic expanse in seconds.

Six months ago, you could have rightly accused Max of being over-cautious by using full stealth to undertake this mission. But in those short months, the entire Galactic landscape had irreparably changed. It hadn’t felt this way since the Force war, and that hadn’t been long ago at all.

Max could still remember a time when the Milky Way – or at least his small section – had enjoyed relative peace. With the Coalition powerful enough to protect the weak, people had possessed dreams. Now all anyone wanted to do was get through this.

He pressed forward. It was disarming not having bridge controls on this ship. Though it was rich to call it a ship. It traveled through space, but only to its intended target.

One of the reasons it didn’t have bridge and navigational controls was its stealth programming. Theoretically, if the whizbang Coalition scientists who created it could be trusted, nobody in the Milky Way possessed the technology to detect it. You would actually have to eyeball it in space. Even then, you’d need some seriously sophisticated eyeballs. It used a special type of cloak. The only person who could see through it stood right next to him. And yeah, he caught himself thinking of Alyssa as a person again. Though he didn’t know. He hadn’t been sure since the moment Lara had given him this cursed mission.

Alyssa… there was no time to answer that question.

Contact, he whispered over the wireless communication network connecting his sophisticated armor to hers.

Very well, she answered.

The transport beam snagged hold of them and transported them away. It glowed brightest around Alyssa by far. She had a massive energy yield. To cancel that out, the transporter used everything it had. Even then, according to their best Coalition scientists, she wasn’t truly broken down like an ordinary person. A normal soldier took their heart in their hands when they transported. Though rare these days, there could be issues. If you encountered sufficiently strong interference or your destination was destroyed, you were obliterated. Your body would never reappear. Your energy would cease to exist. As for your mind? God knows what happened to that.

With Alyssa, it was different. If you believed current theories, she allowed herself to be transported. If at any moment she didn’t wish to continue, she could pull herself out of the stream. Who knew what would happen to anyone being transported by the exact same stream? Presumably they would end.

End was a word you got pretty used to when you spent a lot of time with Alyssa. It was all she knew.

They arrived in a small corridor. It looked like a maintenance tunnel. Though usually they were cramped and wended through the back halls and underbellies of most vessels to allow engineering crews to get to far-off critical systems, this one was more than wide enough to stand in. It also had flickering lights that weren’t working. They came on only to jerk off as if the illumination was nothing more than a string somebody let a cat play with.

Though he wanted to take the opportunity to remind her again she wasn’t here to end anything, he took a reticent step back. What the heck is that? He stared up at the light, neck straining. It could be nothing more than an impression, but it looked wrong as it jerked and swayed.

Alyssa glanced up at it. He wanted to see her expression. Then again, what emotions could she show? No matter what happened, and no matter what she faced, regardless of how gut-wrenching, she kept the exact same look on her face. If he were kind, he’d say that if he’d stared at a wall for 2000 years, he’d have the same stoicism. Try as he might, he couldn’t get over his reticence about Alyssa and his gut instinct this was fundamentally a foolhardy mission. Admiral Forest was wrong. He couldn’t teach Alyssa how to be a Coalition soldier. To do that, she needed a heart. And while she had a lot of power and an unchecked ability to destroy, she’d never possess a heart, no matter how hard she tried.

That didn’t stop him from waving her forward. As he took a wary step to the side of that flickering light, she paused beside him.

Her hands rested slack by her sides. He’d already plucked up the gun from his holster, and he held it in a secure grip. He could admit his fingers locked too tightly around it. That flickering light unnerved him. The mission brief unnerved him, too. When they’d been deployed from Admiral Forest’s cruiser to this ship, the admiral said there was no indication of what was actually wrong with this vessel. The crew had just gone silent.

There might’ve been some kind of novel virus attack. It could’ve been a communications problem. Or maybe it was another attack from the Scarax Galaxy. A new breed of incursion. Something else that would get his heart pulsing and his brow sweating whenever he woke in the middle of the night thinking about the Milky Way’s future.

He paused under the light, utilizing his armor’s sophisticated scanners to detect if there was anything inherently wrong with it. When it didn’t come back with a satisfying answer, he waved her on.

She followed. Not once did she show fear. She wasn’t capable of it.

Maybe that was another reason Max had long ago concluded the so-called training of Alyssa was destined to fail. It wasn’t just that she couldn’t feel fear. She thought the end was logical. Necessary even. Fundamentally, didn’t she want the Coalition to fall?

This wasn’t a good time to think that dark thought.

They reached the end of the corridor.

He needed to have his wits about him. A thick hatch door separated this section of the maintenance tunnel from the main corridors of the ship beyond.

He leaned toward it without scanning it first.

I would not recommend that, Alyssa said noncommittally as his fingers almost brushed it.

We need to get out there and find out what’s going on with this crew now.

There is an energetic field surging through the metal.

As soon as the words slipped out of her lips, his armor detected it. It was subtle, almost not there, but his helmet zoomed in on it. He saw the faintest few crackles zipping along the metal’s gleaming surface. It almost looked like invigorated worms emerging out of wet soil only to plunge back in.

His gut kicked. He’d been about to touch that.

His armor quickly came back with the conclusion that whatever the energy was, it likely wouldn’t be able to penetrate his armor’s defenses.

Alyssa took a step forward.

It was clear what she thought she had to do.

She stretched out her hand.

He caught her wrist.

He slowly turned and looked at her, even though his visor hid his true expression. The first thing you need to learn, Alyssa Night, is there are other ways to move forward without destroying everything in your path.

Chapter 5

Alyssa Night

The commander’s words echoed in her head. She made note of them. She made note of everything he said to her.

She tried to learn. She didn’t fundamentally understand why she needed to, but she tried to do so, nonetheless.

She felt a sense of… she didn’t know if it was loyalty. She hardly had the ability to distinguish such a strong emotion considering her millennia of solitary confinement. But she had to admit the Coalition had given her a semblance of freedom. They too feared her powers, but at least they didn’t lock her in a temporal prison and send so-called sacrifices to keep her trapped for longer.

The commander held her wrist for a little too long. She wasn’t sure why she understood that. It was another impression. She struggled to comprehend it.

She wondered what it was like for ordinary people. Not simply humans, but other races. Were they this confused about the origin of their senses? Presumably, it didn’t take them long to understand their bodies and the abilities of their minds. But while Alyssa was technically much older than the commander, he had more experience. All of this – from this ship, to his curt words, to this galaxy – was new to her. So she could not understand why she got the impression he held on for a little too long. But he did.

He soon let his hand drop. He turned, getting down on one knee in front of the hatch. His armor possessed keen sensors. According to Admiral Forest, it was some of the best technology the Coalition currently possessed.

She was also fully aware of his armor’s defensive systems. It could likely withstand the insidious effects of the strange energy haunting that hatch. But there was no point in potentially damaging the armor in the first place. This hatch was in their way. It was infected. Why not allow Alyssa to use her powers to get rid of it? It consisted of nothing more than metal. It wasn’t sentient life. Over the past six months when Alyssa hadn’t trained, she’d watched many videos of Coalition soldiers. They often destroyed things with their guns. In critical situations, they thought nothing of blasting through walls. Ultimately walls could be rebuilt. But perhaps the commander wanted to hammer home his point to her. Creation, to him at least, was always preferable to destruction.

He knelt and placed his hand on the hatch. She could tell his computer connected to it and tried to access whatever remained of its internal processors.

He reached up with his other hand, found a hatch panel, and tore it off in a neat move. It was easy for his armored fingers. They locked around it despite its shielding and pulled it right out of the wall with an echoing snap. With one hand still placed on the smooth metal of the hatch as his internal sensors continued to scan it, he sorted through the wires with his other hand. He soon found an unshielded green one and ripped it right out.

An act of destruction, she wanted to point out. But a very effective one, nonetheless. With a beep, the hatch opened.

He turned and looked at her.

There was a triumphant glint in his eyes.

Wait, that was just a guess, wasn’t it? As she technically still could not see his face.

Once upon a time, Alyssa had never guessed.

Once upon a time, she had just existed. Now… she followed.

The commander nudged his way out of the hatch, taking seconds to lock one boot on the dark floor beyond. There was a barely perceptible ring of metal on metal.

The gun stayed in his grip. He held it so tightly that, with a fraction more effort, his armor would break right through the shielded base and splinter it like ice under a hammer.

She went to push past him.

He paused, opened a hand wide, then, a few seconds later, allowed her to follow.

She stared at the corridor.

There was only one working light all the way down the middle of the corridor, approximately 20.4 meters away. The light had an odd quality. It didn’t function as an ordinary electrical source of illumination should. It dimmed in and out almost as if it was alive.

There was only one light Alyssa knew was truly alive, and that was the forbidden. Those in the Scarax Galaxy called it the Light of the Gods. It was a parasite. It gave its host power, but in turn, it took power from its host, demanding ever more sacrifices, for that was the nature of power. There was no power in all of existence that came for free. You had to sacrifice. The stupid sacrificed themselves. But the smart found a way to sacrifice others. And that was the only reason the gods were as powerful as they were now. They’d found a way to offer up every other being in the Scarax Galaxy for their assured and continued dominance.

Having recognized the light, there was only one thing Alyssa could do. She opened her hand. She dug deep into the channels of power permanently glowing across her skin. Allowing a pulse of force to develop in her palm, she reached toward that light. Before she could let loose with a barrage of force, the commander jerked in close, grabbed her hand, and held it in place.

What are you doing? he hissed, his words sharp and hard. I told you to only act when you’re ordered to.

That is the Light of the Gods, she hissed back. For the first time in a while, emotion hardened her words. She was fully aware that the commander often questioned her sentience. Or whether at least she had the kind of sentience he did – one that ultimately mattered and deserved his respect.

Though the usually cold commander didn’t seem to be the kind to take much stock by emotions, he did. And her lack of obvious feelings unnerved him. Now it did the opposite. He opened his mouth quickly, an angry frown parting his lips like hands viciously pulling at wire. I told you, you only act when I tell you too.

That is the forbidden.

We desperately need to find out what’s on this ship. We have to find the crew first, he said, slurring, his words muddling together with fear and haste.

He yanked her hand down hard.

Again, he held on to it for too long. And once more she pondered the question of why she knew that. For him to hold her wrist for slightly too long meant there was a designated time she should have been held for. One he exceeded for some reason. The question was what reason? Was he even aware of it himself?

Five seconds later, he let go of her wrist.

They reached the end of the corridor.

There was a malfunctioning door. It hissed open only to close quickly. It did so blisteringly fast. Or at least it would’ve been so for a human.

She could tell Max had to use his onboard scanners to try to penetrate it. She didn’t have the same issue. She discerned what was within. The crumpled corpse of a crewman. What had killed the man was also apparent. An energy source currently feasted on his body like a wild animal to a kill.

The commander grew tired of attempting to scan through the door, shot forward, grabbed it in his powerful gauntlets, and wrenched it open. He took a single step into what appeared to be the mess hall, then froze.

He came face-to-face with the corpse. He also detected the energy. It ravaged the poor dead man’s body. It looked… she stopped herself. It was a trait of humans to divide experiences into similar things. They often searched for examples in their pasts they erroneously thought would provide insights into novel experiences in the present.

There was nothing this looked like. For there was only one thing it was.

That is the Light of the Gods. Allow me to destroy it, Alyssa said quickly, every word stringing together as she forced them out of her stiff lips.

Alyssa might have no direct memories other than that of staring at a wall for 2000 years, but from within her whenever she faced the Light of the Gods or spoke of the Handari crystals, something rose – a powerful, unsettling force. She wondered if this was what it felt like to be a human and to ultimately be under the control of one’s emotions.

Though control was always a hallmark of her mind, it ended whenever she encountered the Light of the Gods or the Hendari crystals. All she had now was instinct.

She felt the parasitic light snacking on the human’s corpse. It pushed into the dead man’s heart, crushing every cell and extinguishing what was within. As it writhed, her power rose to meet it before it could wreak more havoc.

Far from allowing her to surge forward and destroy the infection – and the corpse still holding it – the commander threw out a hand. He got down on a knee.

The crewman’s eyes sightlessly stared at the ceiling. His white pupils reflected the commander’s gleaming helmet as he leaned in. But every now and then, a flicker of light chased through them. To a human, perhaps it looked as if the man still lived. He was dead, a fact the commander well knew. It didn’t stop him from muttering something under his breath and reaching forward. With a stiff hand, he closed the crewman’s eyes, pressed his palm over the man’s head, muttered something again, and lifted to his feet. The whole while, the commander kept his arm outstretched wide to stop Alyssa from moving in.

Commander, she said in a trying voice.

We have to find out what’s going on. We need to concentrate on getting to the crew.

If you leave the Light of the Gods, it will simply move on to consume other things.

If you start destroying it, Alyssa, it’s gonna know you’re on board. And if the Light is still connected to a god that has somehow made it into this galaxy, they will hunt you. You will not fall into their hands.

Everything he said was a certain statement. There was no question in his mind, no uncertainty in his heart.

The commander’s mission was twofold. He wasn’t only here to teach Alyssa the ways of the Coalition. Primarily he ensured she didn’t fall back into the hands of the gods.

Alyssa appreciated while it was important she didn’t return to the Scarax Galaxy, it wasn’t only for her own safety. The Coalition didn’t want to let go of her. For she was powerful. And as she’d said so many times, civilizations, especially when they start to end, clutch hold of all power, regardless of whether they can control it.

So she didn’t shrink back at his words.

She was happy he couldn’t see her expression. Though she rarely did so, now she narrowed her eyes at him. Her lips parted over her teeth. Her eyebrows clunked together. And the energy that always charged over her form became ever more powerful.

But she said nothing.

When it became apparent to the commander Alyssa wasn’t going to ignore his command, he shrugged her forward. They reached the end of the mess hall. There were two doors. One led out into a corridor beyond, and the other appeared to lead to some kind of kitchen unit.

The commander paused, ready to head out into the corridor, but he changed his mind.

He opened the door leading to the kitchen.

In one swift move, it revealed destroyed equipment strewn over the floor. Cooking units, refrigerated compartments, and matter calibration devices lay crumpled and mangled. They sat in clumps as if someone had gathered them together to start a fire.

On top of one pile was a crewmember.

And that crewmember was snacking on an arm.

A human arm.

Alyssa didn’t react to the gruesome sight. The commander did. He barreled forward. Grunting, he reached the infected crewmember and pushed him off the pile of destroyed equipment. The man shrieked. Though Alyssa had precious little experience with the emotions of soft-fleshed races, she could tell this was the scream of a body driven to the edge.

Fresh blood splattered up out of the human’s mouth. It scattered over the commander’s helmet, concentrating across his visor and slipping down the sides of his angled jaw units.

The commander wrenched the arm off the man, but the man tried to scrabble toward it.

Alyssa stood there.

She didn’t scream. She didn’t shake. She simply stared at the man and watched as the subtle infection of the Light of the Gods took further hold.

The infected crewman tried to wrap his teeth around the commander’s throat, but there was the clang and snap of enamel as the man’s incisors shattered against Max’s near impenetrable shield.

The guy jerked back, more blood splattering from his mouth. This time it was his own.

The commander finally wrestled the man onto a clean section of the floor and pinned his arms.

Though Alyssa should have attended to the fact the infected crewmember started screaming as if his life was about to be ripped from his body, cell by cell, all her attention focused on the commander. For whatever reason, she swore she suddenly heard his heart. It pounded in his chest, adrenaline and fear shaking through his body in a toxic mix of fright and despair.

What’s wrong with you? the commander snapped in the man’s face.

The man had no capacity to answer. Instead, after breaking his teeth unsuccessfully on the commander’s armor, he scrabbled desperately toward that arm.

It was beyond his reach.

The whole while, Alyssa just stood there.

She could see the tendrils of the Light of the Gods energy within him. It was twisted somehow. And by that she meant more twisted than it usually was. The Light of the Gods, fundamentally, was parasitic. And yet she’d never seen it like this. It was clear the commander hadn’t seen this, either.

He possessed Coalition intelligence data Alyssa did not. Admiral Forest appeared to trust him. She didn’t trust Alyssa. She simply planned to use her.

Alyssa, what the heck am I looking at? he spat.

An infection of the Light of the Gods, she answered. I have never seen it act specifically like this.

I’m not gonna let you kill him, he suddenly spat, even though Alyssa hadn’t suggested it.

Though she liked to believe she only became emotional in the presence of the Light of the Gods, and that emotion was only directed at destroying it, something rose in her heart now. Not that she had a heart. It was a turn of phrase she’d learned from the humans. The point was, a new, distinct sensation spread through Alyssa. She knew enough about the humans she observed to recognize it was anger.

How little did the commander trust her? He was currently grappling with an infected crewmember. He could right now see what occurred when the Light of the Gods was allowed to run its course. Yet she was the monster?

She found her hands stiffening by her sides.

What do I do? How do I get it out of him? the commander spat.

He didn’t give her time to answer.

She could feel his stress becoming greater by the second.

She somehow connected to his heart. As it pounded and shook through his chest wall, with every beat, he became more afraid of the situation. And as that happened, somehow he chose to transfer that fear onto her.

Never mind, he spat at her. Just don’t you dare do anything to him. He reached around and scrounged several scraps of metal. He used his armor to bend them. He dug one end into the floor beneath the thrashing infected crew member’s wrist. He bent it around and cuffed the man to the floor in one simple move.

He went to rise, but immediately the man started to turn on himself.

The Light of the Gods would be fed. And if the infected man could not feed off that arm, the Light would be content to feed off the man instead. He immediately snapped his own wrist into his mouth, and there was a crunch as his teeth impacted his bones.

No, the commander screamed. Jerking forward, he found another section of metal, and he cuffed the man’s other hand.

That didn’t stop the man’s feet from thrashing.

It wasn’t until the commander restrained those too that the man could no longer hurt himself. Or at least not visibly.

As Alyssa stood there, she watched as within the man, the Light of the Gods gathered speed.

Did the commander really think he could save this man by simply restraining him? There was no saving him. The Light of the Gods would always do as it pleased.

That was evidenced as the commander pushed to his feet. It was only in time to see the Light surge up and into the man’s eyes. They flickered, opening so wide it seemed the eyelids would be torn right off the man’s face.

His mouth gaped open wide. His back arched.

The commander jolted forward, his boots squeaking on the floor, but it was far too late.

Alyssa felt the moment the man died. His body still thrashed, but that didn’t matter. Within, the sentience that had held on this long crumpled.

His eyes didn’t stop glowing. His head turned and jerked until it faced her. Night. We are coming. We are coming for you, Night. You must return to your prison so all can live.

There was a crack like lightning, and the man fell back. His body became limp. All the semblance of life disappeared as the Light of the Gods crackled up, arced in a wave, then shot into the floor.

The commander danced back, but the light wasn’t that stupid. It obviously knew there were far easier, softer targets still left on this ship. It pushed into the floor and presumably disappeared through the many conduits of the vessel, hunting out its next prey.

The commander stood there. His heart continued to shudder until it skipped a beat. He turned and looked at her.

She stared impassively at the corpse then swiveled her gaze over to Max.

Though her intuition had told her exactly how he looked and what he’d thought previously, now, for whatever reason, it failed.

She had no clue what he thought, but presumably, he would have heeded the Light’s words.

The commander had been under the impression no one knew she was aboard. He was wrong.

Dammit. We have to get you out of here, he said, disappointment dripping from his tone.

He wanted to rush through this ship and save whoever he could. He was burdened by her presence.

She stared at him impassively, even though he couldn’t see her expression. We are already aboard. We must contain the spread of the infection.

She didn’t need to spell out what that meant.

He turned around.

For the first time, despite how dangerous it was, considering what was aboard, he took his helmet off. Not all the way. He pressed a button on the side of his neck only accessible by him, and his visor retracted, showing his gaze. Or should she say his glare? It was direct and sharp. Though this wasn’t something she’d ever felt, she wondered if it was akin to a knife pressed up against her throat.

I told you, he growled. We came aboard to save people. Not condemn them all.

I’ve never seen the Light do that. But that does not mean much. As I have been in a prison for 2000 years. But I can confirm that was the Light of the Gods. And you presumably have not forgotten what just occurred, she said coldly as she gestured at the now-still corpse. There was even less emotion in her words than there usually was. They were nothing more than empty, soulless syllables.

Within her, she had to control the constant urge to turn and fight.

All the temporal particles in her body wanted to do was to be let out. She had to face the infection that was the Light of the Gods. And she had to pull it from this galaxy before it ran out of time.

Yet right now she had to play by the commander’s rules.

No, Alyssa. We will give this poor crew another chance. You may not be able to see this, and you may not be able to understand it. But in the Coalition, we watch each other’s backs. We recognize the sanctity of life. Whenever possible, we give people a chance to survive.

Usually she simply allowed the commander to say as he wished whenever he started speaking like this. Not this time. She took a challenging step up to him – the first time she’d ever done so.

It was her turn to remove her helmet.

Theoretically, she wasn’t meant to be able to do it. It was practically soldered onto her body. She’d been fitted out for it back at the Academy on Earth by the best scientists the Coalition had. But now she interacted with it deliberately, her temporal particles leaching out into the armor’s computer until she grabbed hold of the visor and removed it with a single thought. Then she settled her gaze – her endless gaze on commander Max Farsight. You can only truly save somebody when in saving them you do not condemn another.

Chapter 6

Commander Max Farsight

The situation had gone to hell. It had deteriorated quicker than a cruiser losing both engines and crashing down to earth.

The Light of the Gods infecting the crew was one thing. A horrible, terrifying, gut-wrenching thing. But the moment Alyssa proved this armor couldn’t contain her was something else. She took a challenging step forward. She got even closer, her words still ringing in his head. If anyone else had said them, maybe he would’ve heeded them. He would’ve seen the sheer stupidity of his own actions. He’d been briefed on the Light of the Gods. He understood fully what it was, so he knew it wasn’t the exact fearsome substance Alyssa thought it was. As Isabel Carter, the Hand of the Gods, had proven, the Light of the Gods was only as rapacious and unstoppable as its host. If you gave it a new purpose, and you gave it the correct mind to inhabit, it would lose its parasitic ways. But that wasn’t the point.

Whatever had happened to the Light of the Gods on this ship, it was somehow consuming the crew, and in turn, turning the very crew against one another.

But he couldn’t see that right now.

The one thing he could not allow was for Alyssa to get out of control.

She had an unchecked ability to destroy anything. Given a few seconds or minutes, she could take down every single wall on this cruiser. Every body would crumble under the temporal gravity field in her form. All would crumble to dust.

His mission was clear. While Forest had the ridiculously wishful dream that Alyssa could be trained, at heart, Forest was a smart woman. She’d been through enough galactic-wide trouble to recognize while you could dream, you had to plan for the opposite eventualities, too. If Alyssa became uncontrollable, he had the permission to activate a hidden program within her armor.

Though she was meant to be an asset of the Coalition, all powerful assets had to have an off button. You needed a kill switch in case they went off the reservation.

Based on the technology of the prison Alyssa had been kept in for the past 2000 years, engineers had created a mini temporal field that could interact with and temporarily block her force. It hadn’t been tried out, and she had no clue it existed. If everything went according to the scientists’ plans, she would be knocked out. It would be the equivalent of reaching up and carelessly turning off a robot.

The kill switch was programmed into his current armor. He needed nothing more than a single thought, and it’d initiate.

She didn’t step back from him. She continued to stare on with her steely gaze. It was one thing being stared at by a bolshie recruit. It was another being gazed at by a Barbarian mercenary. And it was one final thing for someone like Alyssa to do it.

Sometimes he forgot her power. It was easy enough when her body was blocked off from him by armor.

He would forget exactly what she could do, exactly what she was.

Now as her gaze blazed even more, the reality of the Night came back to him.

Every time you run around this ship, trying but failing to save the crew, is time given to the Light of the Gods to do as it pleases. Every time you try to save one person, she said, her voice getting stuck on the word one, you condemn the rest of the ship and quite likely the rest of this sector. What will you do when the Light spreads? Who will you blame then?

Alyssa had never been this bolshie before. Even when she’d failed in training scenarios, she’d simply shrugged it off.

Blame it on the fact she’d done nothing but stare at a wall, but she could face superiors with an empty energy in her eyes that would put even the most obedient cadet to shame.

All of that was gone now.

He saw the viciousness in her heart.

And no, he didn’t temper that thought. Lara mightn’t think Alyssa was violent fundamentally, but in moments like this, he could see the truth.

You are not in control of the situation, Night, he spat. But I am. You will not be destroying the ship under my watch.

Her gaze flickered. I thought you agreed to call me Alyssa? I thought the Coalition had given me a name because, in your own words, I deserved one?

They did. You’re Alyssa Night. And you will do as I say. Put your visor back on. This is your last warning. His voice hardened.

She stared at him. And the look in her eyes… God, he shouldn’t have to tell you it was endless.

It felt like being stared at, appropriately, by time itself.

I don’t know why the Light is shielded from me, and I cannot detect it throughout the ship, but I understand what it will be doing. While we are uselessly arguing, it will be attempting to control more of the crew. You’re wasting time. And in doing so, you are wasting lives.

Admiral Forest had given him this mission because, to her at least, there was no one like Max. Whenever someone pushed him down, he bounced back. Or at least that’s the impression he gave everybody.

There was another side to his personality he kept under wraps.

There were some things he could never bounce back from.

There were some injuries that were carved into his very heart. And her statement rekindled one such injury.

Five years ago when he’d had to struggle to pull himself together, it had been after the sudden divorce of his wife, Suzanne Winters, the light of his damn life.

Long before he’d joined the Academy and gotten his life back on track, she’d been the sole unifying force in his otherwise broken existence.

Then she’d gone and broken up with him.

Now she was married to one of the wealthiest men in the galaxy. She’d left Max far behind. But before she’d gone, they’d had an argument. And she’d used that exact statement on him. Looking him right in the eye, she’d spat at him that he was wasting lives.

Suzanne was a scientist. A truly brilliant engineer. She had dreams, dreams bigger than he would ever be able to imagine. She was cutting edge, and she often pushed the boundaries of acceptable practices.

She’d researched some kind of transport technology. Technology capable of completely altering the face of the Coalition. There were natural restrictions on the range one could transport. It was a fundamentally energetic process. The further you went and the denser the objects you transported, the more energy the process consumed.

Suzanne was working on a way to make everything far more efficient. But one of the trade-offs was increasing the risk of critical failures.

Max had given evidence to one of the Coalition committees that had told her to halt her research.

To him, the trade-off wasn’t worth it. Sure, you might save energy, but you didn’t do it at the cost of lives. That wasn’t how the Coalition worked.

To Suzanne, the capacity to transport more over a greater distance saved more lives in the end because it gave the Coalition more power.

Max and Alyssa were still in a critical situation here. This ship was still falling to the Light, but for several seconds, his mind became empty, vacant even. He could hear the winds of his thoughts rushing through his psyche.

But then the ship shook, a violent shudder that ran up his feet and pounded into his jaw, despite the shielding properties of his armor.

It broke him out of his reverie and reminded him he was currently in a critical situation.

Alyssa, however, needed no reminding.

She moved around quickly.

The floor continued to shake, but it meant nothing to her. Her balance remained perfect.

She jolted toward the door.

He still had a mental hold of his kill switch. As his stomach erupted in nerves, he almost flicked it, but he stopped in time. Night, he roared, sick of playing the game that she needed a name in the first place, what are you doing?

Something is surging in the corridor.

He snapped at her to put her visor back on, lest they miraculously ran into a cognizant member of crew, but she didn’t. She plowed into the corridor.

It was just as more shakes embattled the cruiser. It felt as if it’d been swallowed by earthquakes. He cast his gaze to the side quickly in time to see a wall buckle. It exposed wiring within, and it crackled like lightning held inside pipes.

Warning alarms split the air. He knew every single one of them. This cruiser was on the edge.

Alyssa darted her head up and down. As soon as she reached the corridor, she skidded to a stop, and he knew full well it wasn’t because the floor suddenly cracked beneath her. It exposed neural wiring, and hyper-lethal neural gel spilled out everywhere. Sorry, it would be lethal to anyone but her. She could stride right through it, and her body would simply obliterate it. Which is exactly what she did.

Max hesitated. His current armor was more than strong enough to deal with that neural gel without any deleterious effects, but that wasn’t why he stopped.

A part of his mind couldn’t get over the fact Alyssa was trying to take control here, and he kept grappling with turning her off.

The admiral had been clear. If Alyssa were to get out of control, he would switch her off and Alyssa’s future would be dealt with later.

But something held him back.

Perhaps that thing was his intuition because there was a rumble in the wall beside him.

Alyssa turned quickly. She darted to the side. When he was done judging her, he had to admit when she moved naturally, there was a grace to her he’d never seen in anything else. Be it cybernetic, mechanical, or organic in nature, Alyssa moved… perhaps she moved like time itself.

And right now she moved her body in front of his just in time. An arc of power threw itself out of the wall. It had been headed right for Max.

It struck Alyssa’s chest.

Though he knew what she was and knew what she could withstand, his body took over. Actual fear – heart-pounding and skin-chilling – raced through him. It sank into his gut then erupted up into his jaw. It shook through his mouth and forced his lips open as far as they could go. Just in time, he stopped himself from screaming her name.

The energy struck her chest straight on. It rippled across her armor. She might be wearing something more sophisticated than anything else the Coalition could engineer, but it had nothing on the Light of the Gods. And make no mistake, the energetic wave attacking her was that substance.

Max had spent the last six months studying every single scrap of information the Coalition had on it. Most of it had been drawn from the Eye and Hand of the Gods incidents.

It was a substance with absolutely no parallel in the Milky Way.

An energetic force capable of breaking up any other force, it somehow possessed a semblance of a mind.

Alyssa called it a parasite. The best information the Coalition had put it as a semi-sentient power.

A power that, if the Coalition could possess and wield, would change everything.

The galaxy had never really been a peaceful place. There were too many enemy factions and empires out there. From the Kore to the Barbarians, there were always those who wished to destroy rather than create. But the Coalition was founded on peace. The drive to protect all others and to ensure a galaxy that allowed people to dream and thrive was its reason to be. Yet it had never had the capacity to go up against its true enemies. It’d never truly been able to ensure the equality all deserved. They needed a game-changer – a force nobody else could match. And the Light of the Gods, and critically the Handari crystals, were such a force.

It might’ve been Alyssa’s sworn goal to destroy them all, but… if they could just be controlled, the future could be assured. A future for everyone.

Max hadn’t always lived the life he did now. Way before he met Suzanne, he’d been an orphan. He’d been found in a broken cruiser on the Barbarian and Coalition border. According to the reports of the Coalition cruiser that had found him, they’d taken a chance. He’d drifted across the border to the Barbarians. If the Barbarians had discovered him… Max would’ve lived a different life. He mightn’t have even lived. They might’ve thrown his mewling form to one of their dogs.

But the Coalition had taken a chance on him. They’d risked, and in doing so, they’d saved his life.

So he owed his life to them and everyone else. And more importantly, he owed his very existence to the same hope that had saved him in the first place. He needed to spread that hope out to other people. He had to ensure others had the same chances he did. Otherwise he would have to accept that this galaxy was a cruel, capricious place, and if he did that, it would destroy everything he’d ever worked for.

Alyssa’s name might’ve been on his lips moments before, but it died. As the Light of the Gods arced into her body, she simply closed her arms forward, locking that energetic blast against her chest.

It was now almost irrelevant that she was wearing armor. It cracked up. Perhaps it was because she’d taken her visor off. Or, more likely, she was now using her energy how her energy wished to be used in the first place. It was pretty rich for her to be so fearful of the Light of the Gods. When the Light of the Gods wasn’t controlled by a violent mind, it was fundamentally creative. She was not. A fact she now showed in full.

She clasped her arms tighter in front of her chest, and he watched that energetic wave try to push into her body, yet she simply closed her eyes peacefully, and a temporal field began to pick up over her skin. Technically, there was always one in her body, but she could control it to some extent. Now she let it loose.

Energy unlike anything else he’d ever seen and one that spoke of the basic destructive capacities of time blasted out of her body. Her arms thankfully contained it.

He said thankfully, but he could bet the Light of the Gods wasn’t thankful for that fact. It screamed.

It didn’t have a throat, but