Nightswept Episode Three

By Odette C. Bell

Samantha and Sebastien can learn to fight, but can they win? To win, you need to defeat every enemy that lines up against you, and they’ve got no clue how many lurk in the shadows of the universe, waiting to rise.
They’re about to find out, though. When they’re trapped aboard a Kore vessel and tortured, they’ll fight to find each other again. Then they’ll take that fight further. For their universe is still on the line.
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Nightswept follows a playboy and an amnesiac cadet fighting to save the universe from darkness. If you love your space operas with action, heart, and a splash of romance, grab Nightswept Episode Three today and soar free with an Odette C. Bell series.
Nightswept is the 19th 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: Aug 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005683092

Book preview

Chapter 1

Admiral Forest

I received a message out of the blue.

A couple of hours ago, we had discovered a massive disturbance on Salasa One, where Samantha had been taken.

An unusual disturbance, the likes of which we were only starting to understand.

Something had jammed our scanners, not just in that section of the planet, but in the entire sector.

Anything could’ve happened on Salasa One, and unless someone had seen it with their eyes, they would not have noticed.

I stood, as rigid as I had ever been, in front of a moving bank of holographic screens. They utilized some of the technology we had encountered during the entangled incident. Should I wish to make a communication with someone else who had one of these long-range holographic emitters, there would be little to nothing in this entire universe that could block it. Or at least that was the theory.

I faced a harried engineer, one of my best. He came from an alien race with certain markings along his face. They changed depending on his emotional state. Right now, it looked as if a storm had picked up above his eyebrows. His usual pink forehead had descended into a dark blue as if somebody had plunged him into a choppy sea.

Admiral, we don’t begin to understand what happened on Salasa One. Unidentified enemies used some form of jamming technology on the quantum level.

What exactly does that mean?

He looked away, either avoiding eye contact because he didn’t have a sufficiently accurate answer, or, more likely, considering his rank, because he was still wrapping his head around this strange incident. It reminds me of the phase realm but seems deeper. His eyes flashed over to me at that revelation.

Our best scientists had already realized there would be realms deeper than even the phase level. Considering how much trouble that particular dimension had brought us, that was just as problematic as it sounded. The far worse prospect here, however, was that the Kore had reached this realm before we had, and critically, they had interacted with it sufficiently to destabilize our sensors. If they could do that, what else could they do? With true command of the phase realm, you could transport anywhere in the universe.

I still took a step toward the viewscreen, not away. Is there any way to find out what happened?

The only certainty is that Tom Walker is dead, the hospital was trashed at some point, and your cadet is missing. So is one other registered guest on Salasa One.

I already knew the answer. I whispered under my breath, Sebastien Vanguard. I had been alerted when he had disappeared on Salasa One, a few minutes, in fact, before being alerted about the disappearance of Samantha. Why? Because he happened to be the son of one of the most important men in the galaxy. Regardless of the fact I was on the precipice of universal war, there were certain things one still needed to do as an admiral, certain forces you had to defer to, even though the galaxy should be above that kind of privilege.

Do you know if their disappearances are related yet?

Unknown. But, Admiral, I’m warning you, this appears to be the tip of an iceberg, he said, gaze flashing with fear.

Yes, it did. And I’d been on many similar cold tips in my life. The thing about standing on something you have no idea of the size of is that, at any moment, it can rise up and swallow you whole. Or perhaps it will turn out to be nothing more than a mouse at your feet. In this quickly unfolding, wild modern galaxy, the latter was impossible. The former seemed to happen every single day. But I certainly could not get used to it.

This felt different. Every time I tried to tell myself I had been through situations similar, that I had always seen myself and the galaxy out through the other side of danger, I shivered as I realized the significance of this.

I had fought in this galaxy. And I had won here, won following the rules. If we really were fighting an enemy that had slipped in from another universe….

My chief engineer threw a salute. His eyes darted to the side, and from the way they dilated and tracked something, it was clear he was receiving an information feed.

Perhaps you would assume it was rude for him to accept one while he was speaking to me.

I needed him to be efficient, and that meant dropping decorum. It would be the last thing we would require going forward. Firepower, collegiality, luck, and maybe gods that would listen to our prayers – those would be far more important.

I still snapped a salute. Alert me if you find anything more—

There is one thing. His face loomed closer in the feed, his skin tinging with more blue.

I’d been ready to turn away, but I stopped, back rigid, every vertebrae sliding into place until they slotted even tighter against one another, forming a stiff steel spike and not the equivalent of a movable backbone. What?

I just got data from a hover bike, of all things. It confirms Sebastien and your lost cadet at least met up. What happened after that is anyone’s guess. All right, that’s me out, Admiral. He snapped a salute and ended the conversation.

I simply nodded.

Nodded and turned.

So they’d met? Samantha and the cadet whose life she destroyed? My mind could leap to all sorts of theories, but I was a woman of facts, not fiction.

I might not be able to contact Sebastien, but I had another way to have my questions answered.

His father.

Richard Vanguard was a brilliant man. You had to be brilliant in some respect if you were going to head up a company like Vanguard Tech. Nobody had taken the technological advances that the Coalition Army had come across in the past 20 years and changed them like Vanguard Tech had. They were a trusted partner of the Coalition Army. And for a good reason. Their scientists – and especially Richard Vanguard – were brilliant. They could take the snippets of technology we had dragged back from modern incidents, reverse engineer them, rework them, and deploy them on a massive scale in a time frame no one else could match.

But that came at a cost. Brilliance often leads to arrogance.

Communicator, I said, voice deep, knowing this would hurt, please begin a priority message—

Before I could, a priority message reached me first, a shrill beep warning me as a pulse traveled up from my wrist device.

Whoever it is, I began, about to tell my communicator to end the message line so I could call Richard.

You are receiving a priority feed from Richard Vanguard, my wrist device informed me first.

Curious. The left side of my lip twitched down and was soon followed by the right. They suddenly felt heavy, as if someone had injected them with iridium.

Why would Richard contact me first?

I wasted no more time, swiped my hand to the side, and mentally accepted the call.

A perfect holographic recreation of Richard Vanguard appeared in my office.

He was seated behind a massive desk. It was solid old wood. I happened to know it was an antique from Earth. Some general at some point had sat behind that, presumably making important decisions that had changed the course of old Earth’s history. Regardless of what they’d achieved, it wouldn’t touch the sides of the changes Richard had made to the galaxy. For Richard sat upon a company the likes of which old Earth had never seen.

He sat upon a company that could change the galaxy in the blink of an eye.

He was usually a man of total composure. I don’t think I’d ever seen him express anything other than controlled force like a lethal bullet stored in a magazine, but one with the ability to load itself and fire at any moment.

But now all of that calm cracked. His brow was wet with sweat, and it glimmered under powerful sunlight.

His bottom lip cracked open and shivered to the side. But before he could say anything, a wave of emotional tension struck him, and he drooped, as weak as a flower dipped in acid.

My brow twitched. I took a step closer, even though all I needed to do was swipe my hand, interact with the hologram, and bring it over to me. Richard Vanguard. I intended to contact you—

I knew you would. So I got here first.

I had faced many an admission in my time. Some from colleagues – from close friends, even mentors. In a galaxy as complicated as this, with as many moving parts as this, you couldn’t always trust the people around you. Temptations would come and temptations would go. If they struck a person at the wrong time, the greatest and most moral of your colleagues could be turned.

But I doubted I had ever faced an admission quite like this. For one, it did not need to be coaxed out of Richard.

He reached forward, closed his eyes hard, grabbed the edge of his desk, shook his head to regain his composure, and opened one eye.

He grasped hold of that wobbling bottom lip. He pulled it up with a snap and pressed it hard over his teeth. Then he hissed, I know about the universal keys, Forest. Know about them, because my son is one. I tried my hardest to keep him safe. Tried my hardest to do exactly what my wife told me. Guess I failed.

I stared sternly at him. I’d spoken of icebergs previously. This was far worse. He’d given me a glimpse of several facts but failed to fill in all of the important information. It left my imagination to freewheel.

I found my breath, or rather it found me. My lungs twitched, sucking in a deep inhalation as I hissed, Universal keys?

He closed his eyes, swallowed, and turned hard to the side.

I could see the light filtering through his office. It was located on Spica One.

Brilliant midmorning sunlight caught the side of his face, giving his emotional expression all the more significance, lighting it up with nature’s greatest paintbrush. He drew me in as he muttered, My wife encountered an alien from beyond this universe. She saved her life. In exchange, my wife had to give birth to Sebastien. That’s it.

I very much doubted that was it. By the sounds of it, Richard had always known what his son was. Which meant he’d been keeping a universal key from the Coalition.

I could jump down his throat. I could demand to transport him here right now and take him straight to jail.

The first thing I needed was information. And I had a time limit.

Ever since fighting the Force and securing arguably my greatest triumph, I’d developed a sixth sense for danger. I could just tell when the galaxy was being pushed to the brink again. Maybe my heartbeat quickened. Perhaps I’d see it in other people’s eyes. Perhaps, quite impossibly, I would connect to the phase realm and simply sense the danger that pervaded within.

Whatever that strange mechanism, it seized me now. It dragged me forward another step until I stopped right in front of him. I stood halfway through his desk.

I could feel the wood pressing against me – or at least the holographic sensation thereof.

It was like a hand, timid but there, trying to push me back, attempting to tell me that if I kept pushing, I would simply get hurt.

I could confidently tell the hand that I was used