Entangled Episode One

By Odette C. Bell

Some are born with a plan. Some are born into someone else’s plan.
Bruce Tan is the best soldier the Coalition has seen in decades. With a cold, efficient will and a hardened fist, he forces his way through every obstacle.
But the universe has another plan for him. When an alien artifact entangles his body and mind with the weak, panic-prone Cadet Emma Hawk, he must learn a new way.
And quickly.
The Coalition’s enemies soon kidnap them, and Bruce and Emma are thrust head-first into a fight for the universe. They have two options: stay together, as close as two entangled particles – or break apart and take everyone else with them.
...
Entangled follows a cold soldier and a panic-stricken cadet fighting a hidden force for the universe. If you crave space operas with action, heart, and a splash of romance, grab Entangled Episode One today and soar free with an Odette C. Bell series.
Entangled is the 18th 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: Jun 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005110154

Book preview

Chapter 1

Bruce Tan

I regripped my blaster, threw myself forward, and just made it under the collapsing door before it could crush me in half.

Sweat beaded along my taut brow. I might be wearing holographic armor, but it wasn’t programmed to wick it away immediately – not unless I started to drown in the stuff. So I felt it jerk then fall down my chin as I lurched up and started firing.

I saw the shadow of a Merk warrior emerge from the darkness, massive body cloaked in his own form of holographic armor.

Over the past ten years, the Coalition had changed in unfathomable ways. It was easy to think we were at the forefront of technological upheaval in the Milky Way. But that would be forgetting the other empires – the Barbarians and the Kore. They’d benefited as much from recent discoveries as we had.

With one exception. The Coalition had moral limits. This Barbarian Merk had none. The armor he wore used the same core principles as mine – but with a twist. He could cloak himself, becoming virtually invisible in a shimmering second. That wasn’t all. The armor could then slice through whatever organic matter it saw fit.

The guy grunted, but as he turned his cloak on, the guttural cry was cut in half as he disappeared before my very eyes.

I couldn’t even feel the change in the air currents as he presumably jerked up and launched himself at me.

So it came down to instincts.

And I had the best in the Coalition. With a grunt of my own that no fancy tech could ever hide, I spun to the left, shoved into a roll, and came up on the other side of a bulkhead.

This ship was falling down around my ears. Its internal dynamics had been permanently – and devastatingly – altered by a compression grenade in the phase realm.

I had five minutes to get this mission done. Go beyond that, if even for a second, and I would be crushed into dust that would forever drift between the quantum realms.

Remotivated, I blasted off a continuous, white-hot shot over my shoulder. I programmed it as a wide beam, and the flash lit up the crumpling room. One of the massive silver-white bulkheads sporting the Coalition Science insignia crumpled like paper screwed up and stamped on by a mighty foot.

I was too close. The material the pillar was manufactured from was made to endure extreme stress – but not the kind a phase grenade could provide. It exploded. The resultant force struck me in the chest, shrapnel beating against my armor until blasts of sparks erupted out in a cloud.

I was thrown backward and smashed into a wall. But something squirmed between me and it.

My eyes pulsed wide. My armor’s sensors didn’t warn me of a thing, but my intuition blared louder than any alarm. I jerked my elbow up and back, and the hard bone impacted the Merk. His audio cloak failed for half a second, and I heard his hissing grunt blast out by my right ear. I even picked up several hastily spat words that drilled into the fear centers of my brain. The universal key will be ours.

I already operated on adrenaline. It surged and broke through me like mighty tidal waves. I was no stranger to intense combat – knew exactly what it did to your body as long as you didn’t fear the response and panicked. The tingle in your muscles, the rush of blood to your head, the heat – sometimes the cold. All of it was designed by Mother Nature to keep you alive, to keep you on your toes.

So I spun on mine, managed to lift a knee, and mindfully redirected the power of my armor into my kneecap. I snapped it up and smashed it into the guy’s sternum – or roughly where it ought to be. As the energy yield of my blow increased, power lines surging across my holographic armor like rills parting thick desert sand, I knocked him back.

He smashed against the crumpling wall, the Coalition Science insignia just above his right shoulder. For a flash of a second, he became visible. Long enough for me to glimpse a device he’d fastened to the center of his chest. A round disc, gold at the edges with a deep blue, long crystal in the middle, it was Scarax tech.

The Scarax Galaxy was the first other galaxy in the universe the Coalition had ever visited. We might have helped them shrug off the oppressive rule of their self-appointed gods, but for the past five years, their technology had seeped through the cracks of the Milky Way. It required a form of living energy to function. The Barbarians must have found something to sate its appetite, for this control crystal now sang a deadly song.

I watched as a surge of power flashed in the depths of the dark crystal like someone lighting a flare across a darkened ocean. Then power shot over the disc and along the wiry four-strand brace that attached it to the warrior’s chest.

The energy was so powerful, it lifted the guy off his feet. Then he used it to shove me back.

I couldn’t hold on. I tried to ground my foot into the floor, tried to scrounge as much balance as I could, but he swept me up, locked a beefy, light-covered arm around my torso, and threw me down onto the buckling floor.

In the back of my head, as my adrenaline turned to full-blown panic, I knew time ticked down. I had three minutes now. 180 seconds to get to the head scientist, to find out his secret, and to get the hell out of here before this ship crumpled and extinguished all life within like candles thrown into ice melt.

I’d spoken of my sweat earlier. Now it rushed down my head, each bead shivering before draining off my chin.

The Merk disappeared in a shimmer like glitter thrown in the air. A split second before he did, I watched his hand lurch toward his holster. I couldn’t be sure – couldn’t trust my eyesight – but I thought I saw an illegal gun appear at his hip. Something that, if fired, would rip through the air and boil all biological matter not programmed to be spared.

My heart didn’t have any more to give – my adrenaline had already squeezed out every last drop of power and fear.

But my instincts and training came in where my emotions failed.

I flattened myself onto my shaking back, yanked my gun around, and fired at the ceiling. A ripple shot across it before I did. I’d already mentioned that this ship was being destroyed on the phase realm – I hadn’t explained what that was, had I? About two years ago, the Coalition’s most maligned cadet had revealed the universe’s greatest secret – a shadowy war that had run for millennia and at its heart, a new realm of matter.

That incident might have been resolved – but the phase realm would be with us forever. For, indeed, it always had been, but the Coalition had never known how to see – or exploit – it.

Our understanding of that strange place grew daily. As did our enemy’s.

But in a galaxy as screwed as this one, understanding must come with weaponization.

You want to live? You have to be the first to adapt to and manipulate new situations. Oh yeah, you also have to have the courage to attack first.

I watched a ripple of phase space charge through the ceiling, indicating the ship was more unstable than I thought. So what did I do? I helped it along, of course.

Body shivering there as I fired at the ceiling, I watched as my energy beam lanced into the ripple. Power charged across it then lit up the whole room in an unstable flash.

It was just as the Merk tried to fire. But the ceiling gave him no choice. It inverted, actually turning inside out as if it were some mere tunic someone was about to put on.

The Merk made eye contact with me – for one nanosecond – then jerked back.

No time. The inversion spread toward him.

Not me – him.

As I watched it rip right through him, tearing him apart with as much care for his constituent molecules as a human has for the water they guzzle to stay alive, I realized my luck had prevailed.

By shooting the ceiling, I’d tossed the equivalent of a coin. The phase instability could’ve spread to me – could’ve swallowed the whole ship.

Instead, it gave me the one chance I needed. Controlling my tired muscles with a pulse of energy and gall, I rocked to my feet, spun, and stared through the warping room over to the hint of a dark corridor beyond.

I threw myself forward. Threw myself forward just as the phase instability spread to the floor, just as it turned to molten metal beneath my churning boots, just as the bulkhead beside me swayed like silver grass gleaming under a full moon.

I focused only on my object – never letting my fixation deviate onto the strange sights around me.

Get in. Get the location. Get out.

Get in. Get the hell out.

The Coalition – no, the whole Milky Way – needed me to succeed. The information the head scientist had would lead to the key.

And the universal keys….

Don’t go there, I growled in my head.

Just as the floor buckled more under my feet, I did it. With a burst of true speed, I skidded into the dark corridor.

Dark, save for the march of phase instability that leaked from the other room, crawling across the floor like a legless soldier searching for safety.

I thrust that image away. Hang around too long, and that soldier might be me.

My holographic armor adjusted for the low ambient light until I saw a half-open door 20 meters away.

There.

Finally.

I sprinted, putting everything I had into my muscles until they could’ve screamed.

I leapt over the floor as a chunk collapsed, crumbling like some old ledge of rock giving way to age and sheer fatigue.

I landed, rolled, and punched up.

I watched a patch of air just beside my left cheek succumb. It sparked then withered like some godly hand had grasped it, intending to rip it sideways out of reality.

I dodged under it, crouched, then sprang to my full height.

A meter away – the door stood just a meter away now, half open – the equivalent of a hand loosely held my way.

Time to grab it.

Just as the phase infection rose behind me – a looming, poisonous cloud of death – I grunted and skidded through the door.

There. Finally, I saw the head scientist slumped over a dead console. It sparked, but that was the least of its troubles, for its base disappeared in and out like dying fireflies.

How about the scientist? He didn’t fare any better. He was there one moment, weakly groping toward the console’s broken controls only to shimmer away a second later.

Each moment he disappeared became longer, stretching out like dulled eternity.

I lurched toward him, spun, typed something on my wrist device, and hacked into the remains of the ship’s controls.

I forced the door to close, a weak shield flickering over it in a hiss.

It would keep the phase instability out. For now. But it could do nothing to the damage it’d already wrought on the room – and critically – its only occupant.

I might’ve lost my heart before – traded it for pure animal instincts and Coalition training – but now it shuddered back into life.

This guy didn’t have a chance. He knew that. I knew that.

It was time for him to do his duty before his final second descended.

I reached him but