Endless Chaos: The Complete Series

By Odette C. Bell

When the Coalition is swept up in a deadly game, only one cadet can save them.
Ga-Lax is an ex-spiral player. No one knows that – no one’s ever heard of them. Normal from the outside, she has a mind honed to play the most brutal game of all – Death Spiral. Trained and deadly, she escaped the game ring and joined the Coalition Academy. Now she’s just Sharon – the distant cadet who never smiles.
Cadet Birim’s the best recruit the Coalition has seen in years. He’s perfect in every way – except for one fatal flaw. He’s a bully. When Sharon becomes his next target, he has no clue it’ll end in a fight. For everything.
When shadowy forces initiate Death Spiral on Academy grounds, only Sharon can save them. To do that, she’ll have to defeat – and save – Birim.
Falling for him isn’t part of the game, but this time, she’ll be playing for everything.
....
Endless Chaos follows a damaged superweapon and an arrogant cadet fighting to save the Coalition from an admiral gone rogue. If you love your space operas with action, heart, and a splash of romance, grab Endless Chaos: The Complete Series today and soar free with an Odette C. Bell series.
Endless Chaos is the 21st 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: Apr 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215552919

Book preview

Prologue

Five Years Ago

Gar-Lax

I heard the vat opening around me and saw the atmosphere venting in small white clouds. I felt the moment my mind detached like somebody yanking on my finger and ripping it out of the joint. I let out a breath, and it sliced back around my face.

The tubes that usually fed and optimized my mind slid past my shoulders, gathering back into the recess in the wall. Above me, blinding fluorescent lights blinked on, one by one, and the black platform that led to my holding cell rang out with footsteps.

Master Jee’ged strode toward me, one hand in the pocket of his half armor, his smile, as always, alight on his face. I said alight – it never managed to blaze into a proper fire and burn the rest of him.

I would never be that lucky. The only way I would ever get out of here was if today worked.

His new investors lined up behind him, a Bentin trader, a Barbarian Merk, and several other representatives of races and clans I didn’t know. They wore a hodgepodge of armor, a mess of different insignia, weapons too. All I cared about was that they shared the same expression – the same avarice.

Is she the one? the Merk grunted as he virtually whipped a grin across his tusk-lined mouth, angled his head up with a creak, and stared at me.

I could tell what was playing behind his eyes – it was the same thing playing behind the eyes of every so-called investor – everyone Master Jee’ged had ever brought to see me. They wanted me, wanted to win me in one of the matches, wanted to put me to work for their fame and fortune.

My black-gloved hand slid off the white skintight armor I wore, slipped behind my back, and formed the slightest of fists.

Small for now, it would grow. It had been growing for the past 10 years of my internment.

I would get out of here today, or I would die trying.

The second Master Jee’ged nodded at me, his gray skin catching the light from above, I leapt off the foot of my holding cell and landed on the resonant black floor plating.

One of the investors got a little too close. Jee’ged whipped out an arm.

He didn’t need to program the turrets attached to his shoulder. They swept around in a deadly dance, aglow by the time they locked on the trader behind.

The man had bulbous eyes extending about half an inch from his skull. It was all the better to see his surprise with. He yanked up three hands and started waving them. Why are you aiming at me? We have a deal—

You are too close to my prize. And we do not have a deal yet. Master Jee’ged’s voice grabbed hold of the word yet, strangled it, and broke its neck. Then he tied it to the wall to let all other words – and people – know precisely what he could do when he was angry. I saw a flash of danger growing in his gaze now. If he didn’t win all his matches today, he’d take it out on us players. He’d train us – some to the death. Never me, though. Never me, for I was far too valuable.

He motioned me over as he motioned the trader back. You will not get close to my players. Understand, this one here is my crown.

The player who has won the most matches, the Barbarian Merk grunted, his voice so dark, it should’ve sucked all the light from a star.

I watched his eyes widen and fix on me harder. Presumably he was currently using neural implants to assess my skills, to scan every single centimeter of me, to figure out if I could really be worth that much.

If Master Jee’ged’s boastful claims were anything to go by, I was the most valuable player in the Milky-Way-Scarax district. That consisted of two galaxies. And while not everybody played Death Spiral – while it was only a game known amongst criminals – that was irrelevant. If you could be good at Death Spiral, you were pulled into it. And then… follow the words in the title to find out what would happen next. Then, you would spiral into certain death. Or, if you were like me, you might manage to cling onto your life while winning, while somehow finding more in every single fight.

To do that, you’d need to have one hell of a motivation – something sitting behind you all day long, perched on your shoulder, whispering in your ear whenever the pain got too much, whenever your hindbrain begged you to stop.

My motivation rose.

And it locked on the Barbarian Merk.

My gaze traced his body. There, I saw what I wanted on the left side of his muscled hip. Next to his neon blue modified blaster, I glimpsed the only thing that could save me now.

I didn’t let my gaze fix on it for long. I made it a natural movement, turned my head, and assessed every other investor in the room. Then I took a dutiful, echoing step toward Jee’ged.

He crossed his arms.

He came from a race with ghostly gray skin. It took some getting used to. For a while after you first met him, you’d keep second-guessing whether he was really alive. It didn’t help that he had milky black pupils that seemed to reflect all the shadows in the world and never the light.

Trust me – never the light.

I twisted.

Master Jee’ged gestured us forward with a sweep of his bony gray hand. It was just as the door slid open at the far end of the room, the dim lighting in here leading us toward it. Beyond, I could hear the roar of the crowd.

They pounded their feet down against the stadium seating set up around the Death Spiral ring.

I could feel the vibration making it out to me, even though there were multiple structural shields in place to ensure no percussive force from the ring would ever reach this far.

Master Jee’ged had a carefully planned operation to run. When his star players weren’t winning him money and prestige in the ring, other new players were being trained in the complex that existed around it.

Though the word trained ought to come with a grain of salt. If you were inappropriate as a fighter, you were used as fodder to train the rest.

When I had been bought from a Barbarian Merk slave trader, Jee’ged had taken one look at me, turned his nose up, and hissed the word, Inappropriate. I could still picture the exact way his lips had moved, the way his single, thin strand of inch-thick hair had twitched over his shoulder, the way he’d stared right into my eyes so the message had seeped down to my soul.

Inappropriate.

Inappropriate.

I heard it in my dreams, heard it in my training sessions, but beyond today, would never hear it again.

The investors started to get distracted as we walked along the floor toward the stadium. The door was large, and it offered us a good glimpse of what was beyond.

Master Jee’ged had made so much money on Death Spiral, he spared no expense when it came to training the players. Mechs, sometimes even single-person cruisers were programmed and pitted against us. If we failed, oh well. If we defeated his expensive technology, even better. He’d just play us harder, recoup the costs plus some, and buy more dark technology to use against us.

We reached the threshold of the door.

Everyone’s eyes – apart from mine and Jee’ged’s – locked on what was called the apartment complex.

Massive, it had over 40 programmable floors. It was kept within a field ring – a shield shimmering from yellow to red, depending on the current life force of the players.

The stadium seating was set up around it.

Once, during a boring fight, I’d counted the rows. There were over 120.

They circled this massive room. I had no clue precisely how many people you could fit in here – but didn’t that assume something? That they were people in the first place. The kind of devious, dark minds who enjoyed watching a match of Death Spiral had lost their sentience a long time ago. They’d traded it for blood, money, sweat, tears, and death.

My game suit, which consisted of nothing more than a singular millimeter of perfectly bendable programmable armor that hugged my form, heightened my senses. I didn’t need to draw in a breath, didn’t need to let my nostrils flare – I could smell the combined scent of all of that greed.

I could also detect the sweat dripping down the brows of all of the witnesses. I wouldn’t call them spectators. That suggested they were here for a game. Witnesses suggested they were more appropriately here for a crime.

None of them were in armor – they weren’t allowed to wear it.

The investors were lucky – but even they had been forced to remove most of the workable, useful parts of their armor. There were strict rules when it came to the stadium. You couldn’t allow any fights to break out. Because fights might spill over to the players, and then the players might escape. And ah, that would be costly indeed.

The stadium had to be kept at a constant high temperature, too. It was 50 degrees centigrade in here. My armor warned me of that fact, and if I’d wanted to, I could’ve tuned my nervous system into the cloying heat and high humidity.

The Barbarian Merk grunted, jerked a hand up, and wiped a river of sweat off the center of his brow. It pinged off one of his long, 30-centimeter yellow tusks.

Barbarian Merks liked things cold. Their armor usually maintained a habitable temperature for them.

Not today.

And that allowed me to slip close. I didn’t move far from Jee’ged – he’d know if I did. I inclined my body just half a centimeter to the side and waited.

If you’d never seen a stadium like this, you wouldn’t be prepared for the sight. Not only was there the cloying press of sweaty bodies, but there was the continuous bellowing.

Deprived of armor or anything else that could magnify sounds, the crowd did so with their feet and hands, stamping and shouting, and most importantly, screaming.

Who knew how much spittle splashed everywhere, but it mingled with the sweat and blood.

It’s just the blood wouldn’t come from the crowd.

I sliced my gaze to the left. I saw the other contender.

I’d never fought her before.

She looked innocent.

She wouldn’t be a new player – no one would pit a new player against me unless they were trying to make a point. A deadly one.

But from the look in her eyes as she stared at the stadium, it was clear she’d never seen anything like it. Which suggested her Master had used her in Death Spiral matches at smaller venues. Hell, maybe he’d trained her against his own players.

She wore a blue jumpsuit. It matched her tall figure and the lilac mohawk that tapered into a ponytail.

She swung her gaze toward me.

I stopped and stared.

If they insist on sending children against you, what are you to do, Gar-Lax? Master Jee’ged snarled unkindly from beside me.

Then he took a step forward. The showman within him appeared, though he was never too far from Jee’ged. He had two sides. The brutal slave trader – and the actor. The latter knew precisely why you’d come to watch this bloody match. And he would give you everything you wanted, even if it was only a prelude to taking everything that had ever mattered from you.

He thrust both of his hands into the air, and the ring turned from green – its off-state – to yellow.

Let the games begin. We know why you’re here. We know what you want to see. And I will bring it.

The crowd roared in joy.

I jerked my gaze back to the Merk, judged his physiological condition, and waited.

Merks had senses honed over many thousands of years to assist them in hunting. Long before the Barbarians had become a spacefaring race – though there were multiple races within them – the Merks had prided themselves on being the most vicious hunters out there.

They had great tactile senses – could flatten a hand on the ground and feel someone running several kilometers away. But they also had remarkably good hearing. Combine all of that together with the heat, and this might be a little too much for my friend.

It would be like taking a dog into a room of screaming children.

The Merk swayed.

Just not toward me.

As he teetered toward the trader, the man unhelpfully took a step out of the way. So I moved in.

The Merk fell against my shoulder.

I slid my hand down to his hip.

In a quick move no one would ever know I’d taken, I yanked a small oblong box off his holster.

You wouldn’t know what it was unless you knew what it was, unless you’d been studying them, praying for them, and searching for them for the past 10 years like I had.

It was a transporter scrambler.

Open a transporter, jump inside one of the beams, and deploy it, and it would take you somewhere random no one else could track.

It was the perfect way to escape – the only way to escape.

Master Jee’ged organized all transports to and from the stadium. He just didn’t know what this box was.

How did I know what it was?

Jee’ged controlled every single aspect of our lives – but there was one that he didn’t care for, one he always turned away from.

He never paid attention to dying players. He always walked away from them.

I’d learned about the existence of scramblers from a poor ex-Coalition soldier I’d fought.

And ever since, I’d been searching for them.

Now I had one, right there in my hand. I closed my fingers around it.

There was nowhere to hide it – but it was natural for me to make a fist as the game began.

I strode away from the Merk as he continued to stagger. I half-jogged around the ring and ascended the platform. As soon as I walked on it, it lit up, and so did my armor. Two long stripes of glowing blue illumination shot up from my feet to my head.

You could see my face – even though technically it was behind a micron-thick shield.

I’d been told I had plain features – not the face of a killer. I had the kind of face you’d walk past and ignore, the kind of face that shouldn’t be able to change history. Dull brown hair led to dull brown eyes, led to lips that didn’t know how to smile. And all of that led to my left hand still clutched into a fist beside me.

I paused at the end of the ramp.

You all came here for one thing. And you will get it. This is Death Spiral, Master Jee’ged roared, where the only way out is— He jerked his hand up, appealing to the crowd.

Down, they roared.

I shot into the apartment.

The floor directly in front of me was known as the first floor, even though there were 10 underneath it.

My opponent, surprised but quick, jerked in half a second after me.

Then she foolishly tried to close the distance and attack me without any pause.

Most people, upon hearing they were going to fight Gar-Lax, ran. Then it would only be a matter of time to tire them out as they jumped through the apartment.

You could only move between the levels in certain areas. You couldn’t punch through the floors or ceiling unless you got to thin spots.

They appeared at random and sometimes only for a split second. You could be sailing toward one only for the floor to become solid. The floor wouldn’t trap you within it, but you could and would be rebuffed violently.

When the only thing protecting you from death was a single second, that was as costly as it sounded.

My opponent – and no, I had no idea what her name was – grunted and threw herself toward me, her lilac ponytail whipping rhythmically over her shoulders.

It caught the pulsing light of the ring that surrounded the apartment.

It was a golden yellow for now. It would change color based on hit points.

The more I landed, the more her half of the shield would turn blue. If she somehow managed to win, though, her side would remain yellow.

She wouldn’t win. Not only had I never lost, I had never needed to win so much.

I kept my hand locked around the jammer. It meant that I wouldn’t be able to use that hand. Who cared? I could win with my eyes closed, in my sleep, on my deathbed. I would win until the end, because I had been trained by the worst.

When Master Jee’ged had bought me, after he’d told me there was no chance I’d win, he’d started the training. He’d put me in one of those holding cells – though that was a fancy word for what was instead a torture chamber. Then my mind had been bombarded with information about the game. Different players’ experiences were downloaded into me. I’d screamed so much, I’d been hoarse for three weeks.

I’d resisted the process, but it had seeped in, seeped in until my entire body had twitched with every punch, kick, and headbutt, until all of that information had become locked in my muscles, ready to be called on when I needed it most.

My opponent reached me. She sliced a punch toward my face, and her fist whistled past.

Yellow light shot across her armor, coalescing in her knuckles, looking like a sun rising above some barren landscape.

I waited until she was half a centimeter in front of me, then swept to the side. It wasn’t a physical move so much as a mental one.

Death Spiral was played 75 percent in your head and only 25 percent in your body.

The jumpsuit I wore was a curious piece of technology. Don’t ask me where the Masters had found it from – I doubted they’d created it. Though every single one of them had the kind of cruel imaginations that could craft them – they lacked the technical sophistication. The only rumor I’d heard that carried any weight was that the suits came from the Andarnian Storeroom and had somehow been smuggled out underneath the Coalition’s nose.

The Coalition was meant to be the current peaceful rulers of both the Scarax Galaxy and the majority of the Milky Way, but either they were so stupid they didn’t know about Death Spiral, or they simply didn’t care.

My opponent’s fist got half a centimeter from my nose, then I moved my mind.

That’s what had kept me alive. I had seen so many other slaves die – good friends, enemies, and complete strangers. Some of them had been soldiers themselves – Merk warriors, lieutenants in the Coalition, pirates, criminals. A few had even been Scarax gods.

They might have fought relentlessly with their bodies in the real world – but they hadn’t been able to make the shift to their mind in this game.

You moved with your thoughts, inside your psyche. If you’d ever practiced some sports move or dance move over and over again until you could feel yourself moving even though your body was sitting still, then that was the first stage.

There were 100 other stages after that.

100 stages where you learned to imagine moving your body in every perfect detail. Then you could do what I did now.

I didn’t need to tune in to my feet, in to my legs and knees. My mind just rushed into them - then I leapt back.

It was a solid but graceful flip. It took me right over my opponent’s head. I tucked my arms over my knees and whistled past. I didn’t land behind her. I shot right through the floor. While she’d been busy attempting to attack me, the stairs and ladders had appeared.

Stairs and ladders were just archaic terms we players used to describe the thin sections of space that would appear in the ceiling and the floor. If they appeared in the floor, they were stairs – in the ceiling, they were ladders.

I shot down through the floor. My body was still tucked into a ball until I landed down on one knee and fist. I wrenched myself to the side, rolled, forced both hands down, then launched up. In a micron of a moment – a delineation of time so small, most minds couldn’t track it – I found the next set of stairs.

I jumped down it. It was three seconds before my opponent caught up and sailed down onto the floor where I’d been. But I was already on the move.

I heard the crowd roar.

I’d always used this as a strategy at the beginning of the game. Though often I had the power to end the match as soon as it began, that’s not what Master Jee’ged wanted. He needed a show. He needed everybody in the stadium to get so worked up, their wallets would move before their minds did.

He wanted them on the edge of their seats, their brains cooked by all the violence and hate.

It meant that if he needed to swindle them on the way out, he could.

Sorry, swindle? I meant if he wanted to look for investors, they’d be easier to find.

Master Jee’ged had a perfect moneymaking machine, but it couldn’t run itself. Firstly, he needed a continuous supply of potential players. He also needed a continuous supply of information, because even though the Coalition had never shut him down, I imagined they were looking for him. He required intelligence, resources, and customers.

He did that by scanning the crowd during a game, accessing the bios on all of the spectators, and carefully selecting potential investors from the crowd.

Come back here, coward, my opponent screamed.

I could hear anything she said in the apartment, regardless of whether she was on the same floor as me.

I didn’t react, and I certainly didn’t turn around to reach her.

I found another set of stairs. I jumped down it. And all the while, I kept my left hand closed. My fingers locked around the scrambler, and I tried not to imagine what could be out there.

I knew there was a whole galaxy – no, a whole universe. It was waiting.

I’d seen glimpses of it whenever I’d witnessed holograms in the crowd.

I’d just never tasted it, never touched it, never reached far enough and punched hard enough to finally access it.

That would all change today.

I sailed down to another floor then just stood there. I would’ve looked like a robot someone had cruelly switched off. My hands were clenched into fists that loosely touched my thighs. My head was angled down several centimeters and slightly to the left. My gaze was locked forward.

Around about now, Jee’ged’s investors would be asking him what the hell I was doing. And Jee’ged would simply slip his hands into the pockets of his modified armor and smile. The kind of smile that creeps across someone’s lips, that climbs high, centimeter by centimeter. The kind of smile that will consume everything, including your ignorance.

Coward— my opponent roared one last time, but then she caught up. She landed down right behind me.

I fixed my gaze forward.

I tilted my head down.

I closed my eyes – and I had time to do all of this – then I turned.

She went to punch me.

I let my hand swing up and to the side as my head twisted to the left.

I dodged her blow then caught her wrist. I pulled it around, yanking hard, imagining I was pulling a mountain at the same time. And that’s what set me apart – that’s what made me the caliber of player I was.

While technically in the real world I was fighting her, in my mind, I was fighting something so much greater. I was tearing down whole cities, kicking stars, and punching the hearts of galaxies.

If you really wanted to win the game, then you had to win in your imagination first.

As I yanked her arm hard to the side, I heard something snap.

Around us, the light of the ring changed. My side remained yellow – her side started to turn red.

She screamed, and I saw fear blast through her expressive, large pupils. They were a curious lilac, just like her hair.

I can’t lose, she hissed.

I considered her as she went to kick me in the shin but missed.

With my hand still wrapped around hers, I jerked to the side, rolled, dragged her with me, and pinned her for half a second. Neither can I, I whispered softly.

I snapped forward and head-butted her. The move let out a hollow, echoing crack.

I watched as damage danced across her helmet.

It translated the injury into her face – but it was half a second after I’d struck her.

That was the other aspect of this game. Your armor was technically there to help you win – but to help you lose, too. It would translate damage over to your body with no remorse and no pause.

As I watched a deep crack appearing in her skin, maybe even in her skull, too, she curiously didn’t slow down. She only sped up. She launched to her feet, using a blast of strength to throw me off. But I wanted to leap off her anyway. I hadn’t spent enough time fighting her. This would not be a good enough game for Jee’ged.

I was always aware of where he was. He often paced around the ring, hands behind his back. Though I hadn’t been exposed to much culture before I’d been selected as a slave, I could appreciate he resembled some irritated teacher checking on his flock.

My opponent lifted her body up off the floor in a smooth, decidedly quick move.

She had her own skills, I’d admit that.

She sank her knee into my stomach, but it was just as I jolted to the side. The force wasn’t enough to damage me, wasn’t even enough to push me away faster. But it was enough to make her think she had a chance.

I twisted my head around, even though it was a distraction, and made lingering eye contact with Jee’ged.

He often got to decide when I would finish my fights.

It was usually when the crowd was becoming so energized that, unless they released their pressure, they’d explode.

But now, though it was unlikely he wanted me to end the fight so early, I took the time to stare at him, to truly see the monster he’d always been.

I didn’t care what’d happened to him – had no clue how he’d become this way. But I could promise you this. By the end of today, he would have lost me. And hopefully, considering how much he had riding on me, he would lose this operation, too.

You’re not going to win. I can’t freaking lose. Too much is riding on this – too many people need my help, my opponent spat.

For a second I was distracted by her humanity, and that was the right word. She was human, despite her strange hair.

Perhaps she had eye implants, and maybe that accounted for the pure lilac color of her pupils.

Those details didn’t matter. As her expressive eyes widened, as I saw and felt how important this was to her, a part of me wondered if I should just let her land a blow.

It wouldn’t be the same as letting her win, but at least it would give her something.

She sliced forward.

She put her whole body into the move, a lot of her mind, too, and though I couldn’t actually see her thoughts, I swore I could see the direct consequence of them. As they pushed into her fist, it shook with power.

More light raced up from her armor, coalesced into her knuckles, and shot toward me.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Jee’ged lift one finger and mouth the word now.

I shot forward, directly toward her fist. I snapped my own fist up. And I put my combined imagination behind the move. This time I didn’t imagine I was moving a mountain. I didn’t think I was kicking a galaxy out of my way. No. I imagined I was doing something far, far more impossible. I imagined I was fighting and winning against Jee’ged instead.

Though I was usually silent during the fight and never spoke to my opponents, this time I let out a grunt. Low, dark, resonant. It was dragged up out of my gullet and fired from my lips. It was for 10 wasted years of my life. 10 years of nightmares. 10 years of fighting. And 10 years that were finally over.

My punch met her knuckles and forced them back against her body.

Damage shot over her jumpsuit, breaking it from her throat downward.

There was a roar from the crowd, made all the louder by the fact that the shield protecting the apartment suddenly turned off.

Yellow light appeared underneath my feet and lit me up as I took a step back.

I stared at my opponent.

She was still alive.

I never actually killed my opponents. I just knew what happened when they lost.

Their Masters could choose what to do with them. And if they were as brutal as Jee’ged, it was never pretty.

I spent a few more seconds staring into her eyes, and I didn’t know why. I had a job to do, a final mission to undertake.

I turned and strode toward a ramp that appeared in front of me. It led down from the ring.

I had to put up with the thunderous calls of the crowd.

They chanted my name over and over again. Gar-Lax. Gar-Lax. Gar-Lax, Angel of Death.

I didn’t even have to dry a single bead of sweat. That fight, though decidedly harder than most of the usual fights I had, hadn’t taxed me at all.

I strode back toward the massive doors that led to my holding cell. And there was the Merk. There he was.

If he had slipped a jammer in underneath Jee’ged’s nose, I guarantee he had illegal transportation technology, too.

He’d use it.

Use it on me, in fact. Unless I was mistaken, he was here to kidnap me.

Good. I could use a lift.

Jee’ged strode around the ring, every pound of his footfall programmed to make it as resonant as possible. He was like his own drumbeat.

He reached me, grabbed up one of my hands, and pulled it high. A light banner appeared over my head, glowing with such brilliance, you could see it a galaxy away.

It said one word. Undefeated.

My champion has done it again. She is undefeated and always will be. Now, what do you say we have a true Death Spiral? What do you say we pit her, he pointed to my opponent, against my other players until she succumbs?

He never used the word death. Don’t ask me why. He understood what it was – trust me, he doled it out every day of his life. He just didn’t ever describe it in clear terms.

To him, you succumbed. Or you descended. Or maybe you tapped out for good. But you didn’t die – you weren’t the victim of a brutal game that should never have existed.

I stared across at my opponent. She was already on her knees.

That lilac ponytail was half over her head, a few strands of it now ripped out.

She stared at me out of one eye.

I saw the rage.

Saw it and let it roll right over me.

I wasn’t her opponent, not her real one.

The monster she needed to defeat was right in front of her.

Master Jee’ged took a step away from me. He moved toward the crowd, and he lifted his hand up and down as if he were trying to actively pump up their energy. What do you say we make this a true Death Spiral?

The crowd now roared. It was sickening to hear.

They chanted the words Death Spiral over and over again. Then they added my name.

What’s that? Who do you want to see again? Is it— Jee’ged deliberately broke off, and the crowd roared my name in reply.

And all the while, I stared at the Merk.

I waited.

Waited until his fingers twitched toward his side.

I watched him click them. I saw the tiniest black speck appear between his thumb and forefinger.

It was this fidgeting, wild blast of energy. It was so small, unless you’d been staring at him like I was, you wouldn’t have picked it up.

And maybe it was so small that Jee’ged’s sophisticated scanner net couldn’t detect it, either.

The Merk was calling a transport beam.

One second. I had one second to escape and end it all.

I jerked toward him, making it easier for him to catch me. Then the Merk shot toward me. He had a gun. But it was a toy – something that had already been logged by Jee’ged’s scanner net.

If the Merk actually tried to use his weapon, Jee’ged’s powerful detection net would remotely shut it down. But it didn’t understand the technology the Merk was using between his thumb and forefinger. Didn’t understand until it was far too late.

The Merk called on a transport beam. It lanced in from the ceiling. A shock of brilliant white-yellow light, it was like being fingered out by the divine.

I stared at it, and maybe I did have a somewhat ecclesiastical experience. I didn’t get down on my knees and pray. I waited for the Merk to jerk toward me. But at the same time his fingers slipped toward the jammer that should have been holstered on his belt.

He paled the second he found out it wasn’t there anymore. It was too late. He’d already called on the transport beam.

I punched him in the throat.

I was still in my armor, though I wasn’t technically playing the game. I didn’t need all of its excess power – just needed to shock this guy, needed to shove him out of the transport beam. Then needed one single fraction of a moment to deploy the jammer.

My fingers slid over the almost imperceptible button at the top. My heart was in my mouth, my breath nowhere to be seen.

Jee’ged turned toward me, made eye contact once, and moved his lips. I never got a chance to find out what he wanted to scream at me, never had the time for one last insult and threat.

The transport beam grabbed me and spirited me away, and the jammer deployed a nanosecond later, scrambling the signal and dumping me down somewhere random, somewhere Jee’ged would never be able to follow. Somewhere where I could finally be free.

Chapter 1

Present Time, Five Years Later

Birim

Now this was why I’d joined the Coalition Academy.

Okay, there were a lot of reasons why I joined the Academy. I was the son of an admiral – it was only logical. But this was what always made me feel alive.

I jumped down one level of the cube, feeling the wind sailing past my armor. It wasn’t the most sophisticated set – my dad had let me play with prototypes that were far superior. But I still loved that weightless yet protected feeling armor could give you. You could throw yourself off some precipitous cliff that would kill an ordinary person and flatten them until they were just blood and crushed-up bones. In your armor, you could experience the thrill of the fall without the certainty of the death that would come.

The cube, of course, was different. The cube was some ancient alien weapon that had been buried on Academy grounds and had only been discovered a couple of years ago. It led to a perfect simulated world – one the Coalition was now a custodian of. And one that let us train in a way we’d never previously been able to imagine.

I was currently in the cube playing a game of capture-the-flag with my so-called teammates.

They were slowing me down – always did and always would. They didn’t have the same drive as me. And in all my years at the Academy, I’d never met anyone who came close.

As I leapt over the railing of the multilevel cube and sailed down the central shaft, a grin shot across my mouth, sank deep into my lips, and made my heart sing.

I lived for action, in many ways lived for games, too.

But I did not live to lose.

My team failed to catch up.

I was a fifth-year – they were fifth-years, too. At the end of this year, we would theoretically graduate and form part of the Coalition Army.

Then the stars would be the limit – though these days, with the number of universal-wide incidents the Coalition had been involved in, they wouldn’t even be the limit.

They’d just be the beginning. And if you wanted to survive in a space that wild with that many odds against you, you had to take chances. But not these idiots.

My team consisted of some of the worst recruits in my year.

There was one silver lining – Matthew, my best mate. But even though I thought the guy was great, he wasn’t up to scratch. He was a doctor, not a combat soldier.

The other three members of my team were the tall Ptarnan Glar; the strange Sharon – a cold, distant figure who’d never smiled in all of her years at the Academy; and her pathetic friend, Mandy. It was Mandy who couldn’t keep up.

To win capture the flag, we didn’t just have to get to our enemy’s base and take their flag – a small glowing holographic disc. We had to reach it together. It was about teamwork. And while I academically understood how important teamwork was to the Coalition and any massive operation that needed to include millions of people, there was a limit to how effective it could be when members of your team simply weren’t up to scratch.

Mandy tripped, hit the railing, tumbled off it, and sailed down.

You needed to be careful when jumping to different levels of the cube.

There was a massive central shaft that technically repeated itself. Unless you were very skilled with simulations, you would not reach the bottom. Even I hadn’t reached the bottom – but that was because I didn’t have the security clearance to try.

The unskilled would simply reach the technical bottom, then appear right back at the top of the cube. Then they would keep falling and falling until somebody took pity on them.

I jumped into the shaft because I was smart enough to angle back around and reach one of the mezzanine levels just below me. Not Mandy, though.

I felt the moment when she cost us everything. Knew it, too, because as the commander of this ill-fated game, my wristwatch was programmed to keep me updated on our progress. A red hologram flashed right above it. A cross. A loss.

I never lost, hated to lose, wanted to tell you I couldn’t even spell it.

I’d been trained from birth to understand how important winning was.

This might seem like a game. Nothing we did in the Academy was, though. Everything was training to prepare us for the outside world – a universe so dangerous, a lot of us wouldn’t survive. And even if we did survive, we would have to go on to make a difference – because that’s why the Coalition existed. We didn’t just protect our citizens. We protected their hearts and minds, too. We were shining lights across the galaxy, there to do good.

I let out a grunt of anger, grabbed one of the railings that shot past me, and leapt onto one of the lower levels.

I could’ve grabbed Mandy on the way past, and she forced her hand out toward me, but screw it. She’d cost us everything.

I’d been on my way to a commendation. No one had been as good as me in years.

My best mate landed next to me, arched one eyebrow under his shield helmet, and mouthed, Let it go.

Let it go? Like hell.

I intended to let Mandy stew for a bit, intended to let her fall over and over again.

Better to fall repeatedly here in the safety of the cube than out there in Barbarian space or the worst wilds of the Scarax Galaxy.

Shouldn’t we save her? Matthew muttered.

He got that pained, semi-compassionate look in his eyes he always did when he thought I was doing something wrong, going too far, trying too hard to make a point.

He might be there to patch people up after they got sick and injured – I was here to stop them from getting injured in the first place.

Let her stew, I grunted, locking my hands on my hips.

Gar landed down and shook his head at our loss.

Sharon did not. She leapt off the level above.

She was Mandy’s friend, and she waited, pushed out, grabbed Mandy, and landed down in front of me.

She didn’t even bother to make eye contact.

She never did. Sharon no-smiles was a loner. How she had a friend, I didn’t know.

She was about to have an enemy in me, though.

I didn’t ask you to save her, I snapped.

Due to the recursive nature of this cube— Sharon began, about to give one of her cold explanations.

Stow it. I turned my menacing gaze on Mandy.

Her pained expression resembled a puppy that had been kicked repeatedly. She locked her hands together, moving her thumbs fast over one another until they were a blur. I miscalculated the jump – didn’t expect you to move so fast.

We were right at the end. Why wouldn’t I move fast? When victory is in sight, you take it, Cadet. Or at least you do if you belong in the Academy. Do you belong in the Academy?

No – I mean yes, Mandy spluttered.

She probably wasn’t used to being dressed down like this.

That said, I knew she often copped an ear-full from her commanders – though probably not as vocally.

But obviously their subtle corrections hadn’t worked.

Do you have any idea what you did? I snarled.

She looked down at her hands then up at me, and I saw just the tiniest spark of defiance. It was just a game. I only lost a game.

My cheeks stiffened like someone had struck them with the icy tails of comets. Only a game? This is the Academy. We don’t play games.

Just give it a rest, Matthew tried, but his voice was quiet and noncommittal.

You’re just angry you lost, Mandy muttered, a flash of her clenched teeth visible behind her darting lips.

I’m angry that you are not the kind of material the Coalition needs right now. Do you have any idea the number of threats we have faced these past few years? Do you have any clue how dangerous the galaxy has become?

Cadet, Sharon said, the only voice that could make it through. It was low but not terribly insistent. It was just – there. There was no other word for it. Because there was no other word for Sharon. She was always just… there.

Now she took a step up to me and one in front of Mandy. She looked at me with that dead gaze of hers. I stared back and crossed my arms.

Yes, Sharon? Do you have something to say?

She is correct. This, Sharon slowly unfurled one finger and pointed it at the floor, is just a game.

You really don’t want to get on my radar, I warned her. And it’s not a game.

It is. Because it’s over. And trust me, games always end. She met my gaze.

Met like we were two fists that had just struck each other in the air. Then she turned, grabbed Mandy up, and strode away.

My blood hit boiling point. The bile rose up my throat, though blasted was a better verb. It should’ve come punching out as an insult, but Matthew grabbed my arm. He pressed his lips thin and just looked at me. Let it go. We’ve got to get to class, anyway. Jefferson needs to see your project, needs to mark it, needs to get you that commendation, right?

He used the word commendation like a hook. But I didn’t bite – not yet. I locked my gaze, not on Mandy, but on Sharon. If you think you are Coalition material, think again.

Birim, Matthew hissed. Just leave her alone.

Why? There are two things the Coalition doesn’t need. One is losers – the other is loners.

Sharon stopped. She’d reached one of the light doorways of the cube. Everything was made out of semi-solid lines of light. It was weird when you first came in here – but you quickly got used to it.

The brain can get used to a remarkable number of things quickly if you get out of its way.

If you tell it whatever it faces is now reality, it’ll shrug the equivalent of its shoulders and get on with things.

Sharon slowly tilted her head toward me. You’re a fifth-year cadet. You’re not in a position to tell the Coalition what it needs or doesn’t. With that swift insult, she turned and walked from the room.

I spluttered, locked my stiff, crooked fingers on the back of my head, then spluttered again like a dying engine. What the hell did she just say to me?

Matthew, frown now so pronounced, it was consuming half his face, shook his head once. Just leave her alone.

Sharon No-Smiles just insulted me. She’s a middling cadet—

People only act that way when they have significant trauma, Birim. Just let it go.

Why? I softened my approach, letting a little of the anger leave me. I crossed my arms and stared at my good friend, hoping to convey the fact I knew what he was thinking on the inside.

He’d lost his entire family.

He knew why I was so forceful when it came to holding up the standards of the Coalition. Once we were out there in the real galaxy, people really would die from our mistakes. If you conveyed the seriousness of what we did now within the training course, you could ensure deadly mistakes never happened.

Matthew’s lips twitched, and his gaze dropped jerkily down to his feet. He sighed, then looked back at me. Some battles aren’t worth it.

Yet every single battle the Coalition engages in is worth it. We don’t waste our time, and we are here to protect. What can those two protect?

One another. Stop being a bully.

I’m not aggrandizing myself here—

You sure? You really wanted to win. He crossed his arms and faced me.

It’s not a game, Matthew, I hissed, underlining those words with my lips as I ripped them out of the air.

He’d taken a step away, but he froze and turned over his shoulder.

I might have touched on a pain point for him earlier, but now he’d touched on one for me.

We both had losses, deep wounds gouged into our hearts by an uncaring galaxy and an imperfect system.

He glanced at his feet then back at me. I know it’s not a game. It’s okay. Let’s get out of here.

It was okay? No.

It wasn’t okay.

My mother had been kidnapped and killed in some shadowy game no one knew any details about.

It happened five years ago, just when I’d begun my career as a cadet.

And… it drove me. Drove me every day, drove me in every action and every way. Drove me and would not stop driving me until I saved the maximum number of people I could.

It wasn’t a goal – it was a way of life. And it was one that accepted there were no games out there - there was nothing innocent in a galaxy this brutal. And unless you woke up to that fact as soon as you could, you’d be wasting time. And every time you wasted time – you wasted lives.

Matthew eventually cajoled me out of the cube.

It was now connected to the Academy grounds. The Academy consisted of five massive towers. Long ago, they had been spaced evenly around grassy lawns and oak trees. Now, in the middle of those lawns was a light bridge down to the cube.

We exited into the rocky area just underneath the cube, then rose up the light bridge.

We reached the lawns just as a class was released from the teaching building.

A steady stream of students, chatting and laughing, descended onto the grass and moved around us.

We weren’t the only thing they were trying to avoid.

I tilted my gaze to the side and saw two people heading toward the command building, one taller figure just behind them. I recognized the tall figure in a blink. It was my dad, Admiral Bellamy Laurent.

He didn’t see me, wouldn’t even acknowledge my existence if he did. We were both working, and though he was an admiral and I was only a cadet, that didn’t matter. To him, it was irrelevant what stage of the ladder you were on – just that you were climbing, that you wanted to do your level best to get to the top to help as many people as possible.

Is that Admiral Forest? Who’s that guy with her? What is he, Bammoniume?

Bammonium, I corrected Matthew, frowning as I watched the guy, dressed in svelte red armor with a sand cloak draped around his neck stride past one of arguably the most famous figures in the Coalition. That would be Admiral Lara Forest.

If you believed even some of the stories, she’d single-handedly saved the entire freaking universe too many times to count.

My father always kept a step behind them, his gaze, not on Forest, his direct superior, but on the strange alien.

What’s your dad up to, anyway? Now he’s been given his new position, is he too busy to help you out?

My dad had been training me since birth.

And ever since mom’s death… let’s just not go there.

He was the one who had drilled into me so many times that nothing was a game in this galaxy, certainly not at the Academy. You needed to take every single aspect of your training seriously so you could extract all of the value from it you possibly could.

He’s too busy, I said, voice filling with a measure of pride as my chest punched out.

What’s his new position again?

Dean of Future Technology, I said, a smile plucking at my lips.

If I could one day do as much as my dad, then I’d die happy.

Aside from Forest, maybe no one had ever done as much for the Coalition as he had. He’d been in charge of assessing and integrating technology from the Andarnian Storeroom for the past two years.

Nobody could do a better job. A scientist and soldier, he was exactly the kind of balance you needed.

In the current galaxy, you couldn’t rely on a normal scientist to maximize the usefulness of the Andarnian Storeroom. You needed someone with a mind that understood war, too. Because it was always on the horizon, always just around the corner, or, ironically, just under our feet.

I saw another group of cadets rushing toward the cube. How cool is it that we get to train in this thing? The Coalition’s gonna be unstoppable now.

Unstoppable? For anything to be truly unstoppable, you needed to understand two data points.

Your power and the rest of the frigging universe’s power. You had to know what you could bring to a fight and what everyone else could bring to try to defeat you.

Maybe you thought that was an excessively competitive way to describe the universe. But everything will always come down to the same equation. Us and them.

As my gaze drifted toward the accommodation block and I saw Sharon ushering Mandy away, my lips twitched.

She was now on my radar, now on my list. She was no longer one of us – and had started to become one of them. One of the cadets who was likely to get people killed, a cadet who couldn’t see the importance of what she was doing. A cadet who would never save anyone.

But a cadet who somehow still held my future and the future of everyone else in her remarkably strong hands.

Chapter 2

Admiral Forest

I strode into the discussion room, and my gaze locked on the holographic presentation hovering over the central table. The table itself was carved from a thick, rich old wood. I couldn’t tell you the number of times I’d slid my hands across it, stared at the grain, and appreciated its beauty. I could, however, tell you the number of hard decisions that had been made on top of it. And another hard decision had to be made today.

The left wall was a bank of windows. It looked out at the other Academy towers and down to the grounds. If you strode right over, you might even glimpse the light bridge that led to the cube. That’s exactly what our guest, a Professor Tata, did now.

He swept over there, steps strong.

The small sand cloak that adorned his neck flapped behind him as he came to a sudden stop by the glass.

He pressed an armored hand on it, and shadows clung between his strong fingers. And that is the cube, is it?

Frowning slightly, not wanting to get distracted considering I had to get back to Jupiter Station, I clamped my hands behind my back and strode over.

I said nothing. I was technically here as a high-level observer. This was not my negotiation.

Admiral Bellamy Laurent strode into the room behind us. He cleared his throat. Professor, we will give you a tour of the cube later. For now, we need to begin the meeting. Forest here only has a few minutes before she has to return to her post.

I nodded at Bellamy, turned, and let him sweep a hand toward the seat that had been prepared for our guest.

It wasn’t unheard of for the Coalition to use contractors. Especially in these times. The Coalition itself was meant to be a protective force. And we did protect – the past 20 years had been packed with so much danger and so many incidents, it was a miracle we’d survived. A miracle that had been crafted by every sacrifice and lesson.

But the Coalition couldn’t do everything. Especially not now we were the caretakers of the Scarax Galaxy. There were too many moving pieces in this modern universe for us to wrangle all of them.

Especially as technology from the Andarnian Storeroom was taken, broken down, and reverse-engineered.

And it was for that reason we were now in discussions with the professor and his consortium.

They were simply known as Black Dot.

It was a rough translation of the term from Tata’s home world – though I couldn’t help but reference a story from my own world, Earth. Black dots were what pirates gave as death threats.

I sat down.

The professor eased himself into his seat.

He did not remove his helmet, and he would not remove his helmet.

I couldn’t see his face – he wasn’t using a shield. He came from a curious race that was only semisolid.

If he removed his helmet, there’d be nothing to see.

They were better understood as semi-energetic beings.

And they were very, very smart.

The Black Dot Consortium had been developing some of the most interesting technology these past two years. Technology that brought hope. And in a galaxy this twisted, we needed more of it. We needed a continuous supply, in fact.

Something Bellamy well knew. He steepled his fingers, leaned over the table, pressed his large elbows into it, and smiled. It was wan. Every smile he’d given had been wan for the past five years.

The man had lost his wife in brutal circumstances, and I appreciated much of the passion he brought to his work was a distraction from the passion he’d lost.

But we all have our traumas, all have our sad histories.

Bellamy had thrown himself into a good task, into helping others, and he was a respected friend.

He also had a keen eye.

He slid it over the professor’s armor now then leaned back in his seat. I take it you have a demonstration piece with you?

Of course. I would not come here to these negotiations without providing you the opportunity to see what we can really do. The professor leaned forward, grabbed hold of the hologram in front of him, twisted his hands around, then wrenched them back. The light split. It had shown a blueprint of the Academy – or at least the outlay of the towers and the ground beneath with a glimpse of the cube beneath that.

Now the light split apart, ready to be reprogrammed by the professor.

Every particle shot around his fingers like curious fireflies. He played with them, and I wondered whether, if he were capable of a smile, he’d have one now.

Maybe not. From all reports, his race solely existed to understand the universe. That was their only goal, what they’d done ever since they became spacefaring two centuries ago. They were quite a young race, in