Endless Chaos Book Three

By Odette C. Bell

Sharon is controlled. Birim is too. But just when it seems as if there’s no hope, they’ll fight through to create it.
As Bellamy hatches his bloody plan for the Coalition, there’s no one to stand in his way. He’s already contacted Legion, and soon they’ll have what they want.
The Coalition only has one small group of cadets and officers left to rely on. Can they rise when they’re called upon, or will they fall as this great civilization finally succumbs?
....
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 Book Three 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: Mar 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215995747

Book preview

Chapter 1

Sharon

I was taken out of the room.

I wasn’t taken by Aurora. I took myself.

I moved… moved like I’d always been controlled, but my body had just been waiting to recognize it had never been an autonomous vehicle for my mind. It had simply been a toy in waiting. And now it had its true master.

I warn you, Mortician, Aurora hissed in my ear, don’t have too much fun. I guess that’s what you do, though, isn’t it?

What are you talking about? Desperation shook in my voice. Gone was the cold, cool, and calculated version of myself that had been playing a game with Aurora, that hadn’t wanted to let her understand I was still in control. There was no more control. This suit was a jail.

Master had always been trying to create the perfect suit. One of the reasons he’d tried so hard to get investors was that he knew that something far greater was just out of reach.

If he played enough games, acquired enough money, and crunched enough data, he understood one day he could finally find the ideal coffin. And this was it.

I caught a glimpse of it, but it was only as Aurora dragged me out of the room. I saw its reflection in the shiny, solid door that looked as if it could withstand a thousand anomalies.

My suit was this deadly, sickly gray. There was only one color you could equate it to – rotting flesh.

It seemed so frigging appropriate – that’s what I’d be doing on the inside. On the outside, I would be doing whatever my new master wanted.

First, we will assault Starburst Stadium. Second, Bellamy hasn’t actually told us which one we’ll go after next. I suppose we will go after Master Taro then.

I stared at her, cajoling my neck into turning. It let me twist. Let me open my mouth and hiss, What? It might have allowed me to do all those things, but I knew that if at any moment my suit didn’t want me doing something, it would stop me. It would be like a hand always inside my own body ready to slap me back if I ever got too volitional.

You’re too slow, Mortician, she hissed. Haven’t you figured it out yet? Bellamy’s going after the game ring. He wants to destroy the entire thing.

I had a moment. This twisted, confused, deeply alone moment.

All I had ever wanted was for someone to destroy the game ring. I had dreamed about it and prayed for it, then, eventually, banished the thoughts from my mind when I realized it was impossible and the thoughts were nothing more than a trap.

Nobody could destroy the game ring. It was simply too powerful.

But then Bellamy had come along.

Aurora looked at me and laughed once. If I’d ever known you were this stupid… she trailed off.

She palmed her face, not that she could reach it. Her suit was still on. I imagined ever since Bellamy had picked her up, it hadn’t come off.

… She was just like me. She might be laughing, might technically sound like she was in control. We were still both trapped in the same soulless game.

Aurora, I know we’re enemies, but promise me this. If you ever get the chance to escape, just run.

Her hand was still on my shoulder. She twitched. Just once. It was a micro movement, really. It was the kind of thing you could easily convince yourself into thinking was nothing more than muscular tension relieving itself. But I knew, knew what it meant.

Aurora slipped into a dark silence.

The corridor changed again. We strode out into it. It started to move in front of us, growing with every step we took. While the technology to change rooms and the internal blueprints of buildings seamlessly had existed for some time, I knew it was expensive.

This was ridiculous, too. Why would you need to change your internal layout constantly?

Two reasons. You wanted to show off. Or you had to keep moving for some other purpose.

The Coalition couldn’t fight Bellamy. I’d now appreciated that point like someone would appreciate they’d just received a fatal chest wound. There was no point in trying to convince themselves there was any chance they could live.

But just because the Coalition couldn’t fight us didn’t mean some other force couldn’t do it for them.

I concluded Bellamy must be hiding from the game ring.

When they realized what he was doing – that he was about to turn on them – they would use every single one of their considerable resources, including Coalition spies, to go after him. But something didn’t sit right there, either.

I didn’t have the time to assess the possibilities any further.

We walked into a transport bay.

The first thing I noted was that the transporters were bigger and more powerful than the ones I was used to. They were also shielded, and I saw technology that looked a lot like my own scrambler.

Who exactly was Bellamy hiding from?

The thought struck me again, but once more, I’d run out of time to assess it.

Starburst Stadium. Take us to the central arena, Aurora hissed with some pleasure.

I didn’t know what the time was at Starburst Arena, but one thing was clear. Because one thing was always clear. Games were run almost permanently. If you had enough players, you could keep the arena entertained 24/7.

And we, apparently, would arrive during one such game.

There was no time to process what would happen next – only time to experience it. With a flash of blindingly powerful transporter light, considering we had to travel across the galaxy, we disappeared.

My heart beat once, this cold, empty move. Then we arrived. Back in the game.

I wanted to believe I was a different person, that the last five years of studying at the Coalition had made me someone better. But the first thing I experienced when we landed down on the ramps leading to the game apartment was the same old feeling. I won’t call it fear. It was… a thrill.

I wanted to rationalize that it was just what a nervous system did when it was repeatedly asked to fight in similar contexts. If you pair life and death fights with the same stimuli, your body will soon connect them.

But my little rush of energy, that spike of anticipation – that was more, wasn’t it? That’s what you got if you actually enjoyed your job.

Aurora must be messing with my mind. I had never once enjoyed Death Spiral and never would, but the thought that I was a monster, that I’d always been the Mortician waiting to dole out death, settled itself in my mind and could not be removed.

Fortunately for Bellamy, Aurora knew precisely what she was here to do and didn’t slow down for a second.

She let out a roar, loud and proud. It was just as the invader alarm echoed out.

I saw transport flashes as security guards appeared on the edges of the game.

I heard the crowd. At first they roared with joy, thinking this was some new deadly escalation of the match. Then Aurora twisted around, accessed something in her subspace pocket, and deployed a bomb behind her. Just like that. With no pause, no words, no warning. Just the bomb as it arced over her shoulder.

I watched in cold-faced horror as it exploded above the crowd.

I didn’t know what the bomb was until it detonated, and by then, it was far, far too late.

A small spatial anomaly ripped the air open right above the crowd.

An alarm began, but the sound of it was soon absorbed by the anomaly, bent, and spat back out as a spluttering wheeze.

One of the security guards reached me. I didn’t want to attack him, didn’t want to do a thing but watch in horror as the stadium tried to empty. I said tried. People lurched up from their seats and attempted to get to the doors on the opposite side of the room, but most of them couldn’t even move. The ones unlucky enough to be directly beneath the anomaly started to run backward.

They didn’t intend to. Something must be messing, not just with their minds, but with gravity.

One guy screamed, and it sounded like the high-pitched cry was sucked back into the anomaly first. Then his body was pulled back a second later.

He bent, twisted, and disappeared. And he was just the beginning.

Meanwhile, Aurora punched her fists together, activated the long lines of energy on her suit, and threw herself forward. When I didn’t attack the guards going for me, she casually twisted around, accessed the holographic gun from her subspace pocket, and fired off several rounds.

The poor guards didn’t have a chance. They were mowed down.

The first thing I could tell was that the bullets were holographic. I wondered if the bomb was holographic too but doubted it. The anomaly was real. These bullets, on the other hand, utilized the powerful holographic technology of the arena, essentially turning it back in on itself.

It was like a virus coming across someone’s cells then using the cells’ internal mechanics to destroy themselves.

The guards screamed. They couldn’t go anywhere, and they couldn’t fight someone as strong as Aurora. She lurched into the air, landed behind several of them, grabbed another gun from her pocket, and fired, fired with a certain look in her eyes. It was one I recognized, because it was one I had given myself for so long. The stare of someone willing to do whatever it took to save themselves. Whatever it took.

And what it would take was murder on a massive scale.

Don’t get me wrong. I had always hated the idiots who watched Death Spiral. Violent fools, disgusting sentient beings who should know better. But nobody deserved to die like this.

And it wasn’t over, wasn’t even getting started.

The players inside the apartment stopped what they were doing and turned, and I saw one of their expressions. The guy was in a holographic helmet, which meant I could see his eyes perfectly fine.

I watched the hope. The actual hope that rose in them as so many people were mowed down. If I’d been in his position, if someone had attempted to destroy an arena while I’d played as a victim, would I have engendered the same soulless emotion?

Probably.

The old me should have risen and pointed out that I had never been in control of my reactions, hadn’t been in control of a single frigging thing. Everything that had happened to me and everything I had done in consequence had been down to my master’s greed, not my own. But we are in control of what we think, of what we want, and this guy just wanted to be free, no matter how many people had to die.

Do it, he roared at Aurora.

I wanted to scream at him to run. Who knew what Aurora would do to him?

I was forgetting something. Aurora wasn’t technically here for revenge. Aurora was here because the cold-hearted, calculating Bellamy wanted something.

It wasn’t just to destroy the game ring, apparently. Bellamy needed players, too.

As Aurora continued to mow down any security guard stupid enough to get into her path, she twisted and controlled me.

I had no option but to throw myself toward the players.

The male player might have thought we were here to save him, might have enjoyed the spectacle of the entire arena being destroyed, but his female opponent wasn’t that stupid. She saw me barreling down toward her and winced. She didn’t even lift an arm, just hissed, Please get it over with fast.

But I didn’t get it over with fast.

Aurora threw a site-to-site transporter at me, and my controlled fingers deployed it with ease.

The woman disappeared.

I moved quickly, lurching elegantly toward the male contender. I did the same, using a site-to-site transporter Aurora grabbed from her subspace pocket. Who knew what else was in there? It would be enough to not just take down this stadium, but the rest of the game ring too. Bellamy was the kind of soldier who, once he started a war, tried to finish it the very same day.

But to finish it, he’d have to get through the game ring’s true security guards. The fools Aurora had fought and destroyed were just the beginning. Crowd control, if you will. Something there to scare players into never resisting. But not the real means to protect the ring.

I couldn’t tell you precisely how long the ring had been functioning.

I’m not entirely certain anyone else knew.

I’d heard rumors that the ring had existed for over 50 years – just not with its current technology.

In other words, some version of these brutal, bloody games had been played for decades.

I was telling you this not to point out how disgusting some people can be, but to tell you that for such an illegal enterprise to operate for so long, they must’ve had an extraordinary means to hide.

We were about to meet that means.

There was a hiss. Not an alarm – something that sounded a lot more like someone expelling a tight breath of air from equally tight lungs.

Then a transport beam appeared with a bright flash.

Not a standard one.

Standard transport beams needed to have enough energy to break down complex life forms.

This beam was a lot duller, suggesting whatever it transported was simple or small.

But what is simple and small can grow under the right circumstances.

The flash appeared just behind Aurora’s shoulder.

Then I heard the telltale sound of the holographic projectors changing.

Idiots, she hissed. Do they really think they can lock me out of their projectors? I guess that’s what happens when you practice arrogance your entire life and not sense. She lifted her hand.

I realized that she had a wrist device – an Academy wrist device – locked around her left arm. Bellamy must have given it to her. I imagined it was the means by which he communicated with her and controlled her, not that she would accept the latter point.

Now it released a field. It pulsed out in a quick wave.

I knew it was holographic in nature but couldn’t track what kind of technology it was. Whisper quiet and