Mercury Nova Book One

By Odette C. Bell

When an ancient force rises, the Guardians must fight together. Before they can try, they’re torn apart.
A solitary Guardian, B’Anna, is soon the only force standing between the stations and death. Not just for her, the guardians, and her home – but all universes.
When she’s thrust into a journey to find out the truth, she’s thrust into the tale of a man she can’t get out of her head. Ever since Mercury saved her years ago, she’s always wanted to get to the bottom of him.
But to do that, she’ll have to dig – dig right through is murky past and out the other side. Because for a man – a virtual god – even Mercury doesn’t remember what he really is anymore. He’ll have to find out. But he’ll never do it without B’Anna’s help. For a woman he’s ignored and worse – dismissed – she now holds his future and everyone else’s in her small hands.
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Mercury Nova follows a down-on-her-luck guardian and a cold-hearted god fighting to understand the past. If you love your space operas with action, heart, and a splash of romance, grab Mercury Nova Book One today and soar free with an Odette C. Bell series.
Mercury Nova is the 3rd Supreme Outer Guardian series. A massive, exciting, and heroic sci-fi world where the day is always saved and hearts are always won, each series can be read separately, so plunge in today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Odette C. Bell
• Release date: May 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215138915

Book preview

Prologue

B’Anna

B’Anna, Mercury roared from behind me, his powerful, godlike voice bouncing off the walls. If you steal that, we will hunt you. There’ll be nowhere you can hide.

I cringed. My hands tightened around Sparky.

Sure, he had other names, but Sparky fit. Or at least it would fit for as long as I stayed alive – which would be a perilously short time.

I threw myself faster down the long echoing corridor.

Mercury roared. Was it just me, or was there a note of kindness right at the end there?

I quickly shook my head. It was a fantasy. I knew precisely what Mercury wanted and precisely what he didn’t want.

I could see the open shield door that would lead out onto the icy embrace of this mysterious planet beyond. Above, the sun started to set. I calculated it would give me only a few minutes until dusk turned into darkness. Then the snow would probably begin, and it wouldn’t stop. If I stuck around, I’d die. It was only a matter of time.

But the ice wouldn’t kill me – Mercury would.

So I had no choice.

I knew there was a gate on this planet. I’d felt it – it’d called to my very soul when I’d escaped Mercury earlier.

Now I could see it, not just feel it. My gaze locked onto the ancient gate on the hill in the distance. I mean really locked. Locked like I’d never let it go.

Because I couldn’t let go. I couldn’t let Sparky go, either. Even though Sparky was my stupid immature name for something that could change the fate of the multiverse.

I reached the shielded door.

I didn’t hesitate, even though I wasn’t wearing armor anymore. I plunged through it. There was nothing it could do to stop me. It could at least warn me. And with a shrill beep, it did just that. Only idiots would plunge through unassisted into the wild embrace of this ice world, each beep hissed. And only true idiots would flee a god like Mercury.

Yeah. We all knew I was an idiot. I should never have punched up. I should never have joined the multiversal protection squad that was the Guardians. Soldiers from universes around the multiverse, they existed to keep everybody safe. They never did anything wrong. They were the most moral of the moral. And then there was me. Someone who’d apparently stolen Sparky from the very people we Guardians answered to. So that made me the worst of the worst, apparently.

Just as I plunged out of the door, I heard Mercury. Run, and I won’t just chase. I’ll kill.

That sent such a shiver shooting down my spine, I could’ve lost it. But my whole body did what it’d been doing since it had met Sparky. My hands clamped harder around him, and I pressed my back forward as if the spark of energy needed protection from the wild wind that suddenly slammed into my back, my side, and my legs. It sounded like wild animals intent to rip me apart. They’d have to wait in line, apparently.

Mercury had tried threatening me. All too soon, he tried running me down instead. And while his injuries imposed limitations on him, and he couldn’t use his powers much, he’d still catch up awfully fast.

I locked my gaze on the gate. It shimmered just above the horizon. I saw the quick rays of dusk giving in to darkness as if they were being crushed underfoot.

I didn’t waste a single breath to tell myself to come on. I didn’t think, either. What was the frigging point? I shouldn’t waste a scrap of energy. Everything had to be redirected into my pumping legs.

B’Anna, Mercury roared as he leapt through the door. It took him a little longer to get through it.

Maybe he pushed too fast. Perhaps he strained too hard, and his mortal injury protested. Maybe it bought me all of two seconds. I would use them.

I grasped hold of them just as tightly as I held Sparky, and I would squeeze every last drop of energy I could from them. Then more. I'd need it. Because this was just the beginning, wasn’t it? I might pull off the impossible and escape from Mercury. Then the real mission would lie just ahead.

I would have to deliver Sparky back to where he needed to go while running from not just the Higher-Ups, but from their sworn enemy, the Underside, too. In other words, every god in the freaking multiverse would be after me. I would have no chance.

But you tell that to Sparky. Just as my fear got the better of me, just as it almost tripped me up and I wobbled to the side, I felt him press himself harder into my fingers. And I saw that spark – the reason for his name, in fact. It appeared just in front of me, right in the middle of my field of view. It was like an invitation. Just an uncertain one. This wasn’t someone inviting you to their house or some known location. This was a fragile, frightened person picking up your hand and asking you to come with them into the unknown.

If there was any Guardian out there who couldn’t do that – it was me. Or at least it had been me.

Recent circumstances had ensured I’d grown up.

Now it was time to fight every known force in the multiverse and see if I could win.

B’Anna, Mercury roared one last time. Our past relationship will count for nothing. I will be sent to hunt you down, to kill you. And I will have no remorse.

I turned my head over my shoulder. I clapped eyes on Mercury. He ran over the snow, terrifyingly fast for someone who couldn’t apparently use his extended skills anymore. He was still taller than me and still far more powerful on paper. What did I have? To be fair, I had the body of a trained Guardian, but I’d been through hell these past couple of hours, and it had taken its toll on every single one of my fragile muscles.

I might also be mildly psychic, but it wasn’t like I could use that on Mercury. So it left me with no advantage. Apart from the few meters I still had.

I twisted my head around, and the wild wind of this planet caught my hair and sent it whipping over my face. I almost couldn’t see through it. But the gate was just ahead. It was illuminated like someone had carved it out of the heart of a star.

I wouldn’t tell anyone else this, but it sang to me. A song it’d taken me a long time to hear.

A song of adventure, the unknown, and… something that’d always existed beyond my reach. It wouldn’t be beyond it for much longer.

I powered up the side of the hill. I almost slipped, but again, I swear Sparky helped me. Light filtered down from the condensed ray in my hand, across my shoulders, and into my ankles. It held me up, helping me to power forward not back. Because behind me was Mercury. He’d just closed in by a meter. Oh god.

Worse, apparently dusk would be quicker than expected.

It practically shot across the horizon line as if it had something to do – something to consume and condemn.

With no one else around, that had to be me.

The gate was just there. So was Mercury. I heard his powerful breath just a meter behind me. He shoved his hand out. Don’t become an enemy of the multiverse.

I focused all of my mind onto the gate.

It shimmered in anticipation, realizing there were people just ahead. I’m not an enemy of the multiverse. I’m doing what Sparky wants.

You are a simple bipedal life form. You cannot see the truth. You aren’t destined to, he hissed, even though he’d told me he never thought of anyone as lower than him.

Guess he was a liar.

He’d lied about a lot of things, to be fair. So had I, come to think of it.

You’d be surprised what I can see, Mercury. Goodbye.

I reached the gate.

It was just there. God, I’d done it. I’d actually done it.

There was a problem. Just as it illuminated, power racing around it from the eternal force feeding it and it lit up the sky with bright blue electric rays, Mercury reached me. I threw myself through the gate, but he grabbed my wrist. His fingers fixed in with a grip I couldn’t fight.

I’d never even been destined to try.

Chapter 1

Earlier That Day

B’Anna

So… it’s another grab-and-bag mission, then? I said slightly hopefully.

Frost, my Commander, stared across at me. I knew what that look meant. The one that puckered her lips ever so slightly and dragged her brow down. It meant that, yet again, after three years of being corrected, I’d gotten the vernacular wrong.

No, not a grab-and-bag. This is a simple information-gathering mission. Her lips opened. I knew what she wanted to say. I could do that, right? Out of all of the missions I’d failed, I wouldn’t fail this, right? It was so simple. All I had to do was head into the target universe, go to some market world, and just… walk around. By virtue of wearing Peacekeeper armor, I would by default search for whatever I needed to.

Peacekeeper armor adorned every single Guardian, and it was supposedly the most technologically advanced stuff in the multiverse. It came from the Higher-Ups. And the Higher-Ups were… look, there were a lot of rumors out there. The one I liked the least was that the Higher-Ups were somehow gods.

Before I’d punched up – a process where you accidentally left your own universe behind and got stuck in the multiversal fabric until the Guardians picked you up – I’d been drowning in a culture obsessed with gods.

My poor planet had believed in the divine for thousands upon thousands of years. So many wars had been fought over different people’s gods. Hell, toward the end there, it’d almost killed us all.

So I really didn’t like that term.

Which left me back at the start. What were the Higher-Ups? Well, all you really needed to know was that they were higher up the chain of command than the Guardians. They didn’t exist on the stations that peppered this space. Hell, until a while ago, Guardians apparently had only ever dealt with them by messages and never in the flesh. Then… a while ago had happened. That wasn’t very specific, was it? You wanted details, didn’t you? Okay. Here we go.

Six years ago, during an incident that could’ve consumed the station, Frost found a god trapped in the basements. Again, when I said god, you needed to take that with a grain of salt.

Before our station could be completely destroyed, the Higher-Ups had intervened, but they hadn’t stopped the Underside – a shadowy group sowing mayhem throughout the multiverse. So a Higher-Up had been stationed here to help protect the Guardians and search for the Underside. His name was… Mercury.

And I had to hesitate there… because… okay… let me fast forward the timeline by three years. Three years ago – from today, in fact – another incident had almost consumed the station again. And you guessed it, it had to do with the freaking Underside. During that incident I’d been locked in some form of pocket space with Mercury. And….

Thinking about it made my skin shiver. I came from a mildly psychic race. I had to be careful whenever I called on this memory, because I always lost hold of my skills ever so slightly. If there were other psychics around, they’d know, even from down the corridor, that I was freaking out. And there were psychics in the Guardians. So be careful, I told myself.

The memory wheedled in any way.

Three years ago, when I’d been trapped in that pocket space, Mercury had… looked after me, okay? In the kindest way possible. He hadn’t been able to escape. Pretty quickly, I’d succumbed. And he’d just… kneeled there, his hand on my shoulder.

He hadn’t been able to save me, but he’d been willing to… just stay with me.

And to this day, all I had to do was think of that, and I could call up the exact feeling. It rose in me now as if it was somehow trapped in my blood.

It reached my shoulders, and even though I didn’t want to, I shivered.

Frost, always eagled-eyed, noticed. I’m taking that to mean you’re wondering whether you are up to the task.

No. What I was wondering was whether she would ever send me on any real missions. Okay. I wasn’t the most reliable. Yep, I screwed up a lot, but honestly, I’d been thrust into some pretty unlucky situations. Any accident that could happen seemed to automatically happen whenever I was out on a job. It wasn’t my fault, I wanted to plead.

Frost was not the kind of operator who would accept such an excuse. Frost instead would go over your battle logs and study them. And she would find out that, regardless of what I was telling myself, in part, it was always my fault. I wasn’t quick enough. And I sure as heck wasn’t decisive enough. I would always hedge my bets, always wait to find out more information. And when you work for a force there to save people from the worst things the multiverse could throw at them, hesitation leads to death.

Frost sighed. She clenched her hands together. She locked her elbows on her desk. It, like everything else in the room, was programmable. Not just the room, mind you – but the entire station. Hell, every station out there. And weirdly, I didn’t even know how many there were. There were enough, apparently, for the Guardians to do their job.

I thought that was a quite ambitious hope. If it were me, I’d want to find out for sure. Remember, I came from a world that had almost destroyed itself. To condemn the very planet you live on, the first thing you need to believe wholeheartedly in is lies.

Pick the stupidest, grandest story you can, and keep repeating it, over and over again, regardless of how much evidence you have to the contrary.

The second thing you need to do is to shut down all debates and questions.

Okay, I can pretty much hear what you’re