First Strike Book Six

By Odette C. Bell

The Risen have started the war. Can the Coalition win? Or have they finally met their match?
As all the players in the war assemble, First Strike fights like she never has before. Her old anger falls, her brutal training, even the walls she used to keep herself back. For Laksha is done rotting.
The Coalition will need her help and more. Unless Dale, Harry, and Belinda can win their separate battles, the Milky Way is doomed. For its greatest threat rises once more, and this time there’ll be no stopping the Force.
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First Strike follows a Barbarian psychic weapon and the cybernetic soldier sent to stop her fighting to save the galaxy from a powerful empire. If you crave space opera with action, heart, and a splash of romance, grab First Strike Book Six today and soar free with an Odette C. Bell series.
First Strike is the 22nd 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: Jul 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215190210

Book preview

Chapter 1

Belinda

We were on our own. Again. I'd been reunited with Harry for what, 10 minutes? Maybe it had been more. It felt like less, felt like it had been nothing more than my imagination.

Now he was gone again, and I couldn’t stop my heart from pounding.

At least Brian was distracted. He couldn’t descend heart-and-headfirst into his anger – not when he was flying the ship with all his might. Or should I say with all his mind?

Great glistening globs of sweat slid down the center of his brow and shook on the tip of his trembling nose. He grabbed both armrests with such a stiff grip, I thought he’d lose his fingers.

But Brian had no intention of losing again, and wasn’t that the point?

I might have just met this man, but I don’t think I’d ever seen determination as pure flashing in his eyes.

I’d said he was flying the ship. Whose ship?

Good question.

We'd transported aboard it with a flash of whatever device he’d revealed. The same device that had withered and disappeared upon use.

I’d asked Brian what had happened, what the hell that thing had been. He didn’t have the bandwidth to answer.

Now I was a psychic, I could feel just how much energy it was taking him to fly the ship.

There had to be more to it, though. This was a vessel of a sophisticated alien race. It should be able to fly itself. If you wanted it to engage in defensive maneuvers, it could use its own scanners to figure out what was going on and chart a path through danger. Brian didn’t need to shake there right on the edge of his seat, almost falling off into a puddle of sweat and fatigue on the floor.

He still did. Which meant there had to be something more going on.

I fancied I could tell you what.

Even though I was a newbie myself, I could detect the attacks being leveled at this vessel, and only some of them were physical charges. Our ship was dodging them well enough, though occasionally one or two struck it.

The rest were psychic attacks.

I still didn’t know where we were, whose ship this had been before we’d stolen it, and ultimately what or who was outside. I did know I had to help.

I descended onto one knee, not really thinking it through, going through with my urge rather than any intelligent desire.

I shoved a hand out and went to grab Brian, but he soon pushed my palm back. I could tell it took a lot of energy for him to do that.

He clenched his teeth. No. Go out and… fight in the corridors.

My eyebrows could’ve disappeared behind my hairline. Fight who? And what corridors? What even is this ship?

Backup…. I had it… on the other side of the galaxy.

Something made a noise from the corridor outside as it sliced into it with a weapon the likes of which I’d never heard before. It was a shriek. It blasted out in the psychic realm and in the physical realm too. It blasted right into the open doorway and tore chunks out of it. They hailed down, struck the floor, and heralded the same thing happening to our heads.

Go and fight. Buy me time. I just have to shrug them off. Then we can…. Brian didn’t finish his statement. Then we could what? Escape? Again? How many times would we have to escape before we did something important? You could accuse me of having forgotten recent history. We’d finally rendered a blow to the Risen by destroying that mine site. We could repeat the process. We could do it again. But this time it would be harder.

And this time, we'd have to get through the Risen first.

I can’t tell you exactly what was within me that kicked into gear and threw me out into the corridor, regardless of the horrendous sound echoing from there. I can, however, tell you I didn’t slow, didn’t think, didn’t have time for doubt, just action.

My armor wasn’t in the best condition.

That didn’t matter. As soon as I skidded into the corridor to see a 10-foot warrior glowering down at me, a visor covering three red, pinprick eyes, I still used what I had to full effect.

I threw out a hand, not that I of course could produce any fancy attacks like Brian could.

But this armor did at least have palm guns.

I blasted away at the 10-foot-tall creature only for him to scream. Predictably, it did more damage psychically than it did physically. Because the second he looked at me with those three red eyes was the second he realized I was a psychic too. Sure. I was a psychic, but I was on a level so far below him it was like comparing a single pine needle to a giant redwood.

He jolted forward, taking my attack on his chest. It struck him, but it didn’t spin him around, didn’t do much of anything at all. It fizzled. It was like somebody had taken a hot coal and shoved it into the Pacific Ocean. It'd never had a chance of doing any damage, and soon enough, it would sink below the surface, disappearing for good.

Before that happened, the guy would wrap his hands – and mind – around my throat.

I tried to twist to the side, but I couldn’t. He rammed me with his elbow. I squeezed to the left as much as I could, but he caught my arm. He pinned it against the wall. It was such a ferocious, quick move that not only did I dent the wall, but I created sparks as my metal armor slid across it.

Underneath my own helmet, my eyes pulsed wide with fear. It was the kind of fear that can’t go anywhere, so it just backs up in your body like pressure in a pipe.

He slammed his palm down against the top of my head, his fingers quickly wrapping around the back of my helmet. He brought his gargantuan face close. I didn’t know if I was thankful for the fact I could see his eyes – that they weren’t hidden by a solid helmet unit. It meant there was something to stare at, meant I could try to figure out what he was thinking. But it also meant that those three pinprick eyes could glare at me with the kind of force that could strip the universe bare. He opened his mouth and said some words, but they were irrelevant.

They were garnish on some meal. Or should I say garnish on poison?

All I needed to do was stare into those red eyes to melt.

… But I had a mission to complete.

Long before Brian could scream from the cockpit seat, I moved myself.

I can’t tell you how. Even if I lived through this and you asked me in ten years, after I’d had time to cool down and reassess everything, I still wouldn’t be able to answer how I moved. I just did. I sank all of my attention down into my feet, somehow ripping it off those eyes and the deadly invitation within. I threw myself forward, balancing on the tips of my toes as I cartwheeled to the side of him.

He was big. But he was lumbering. And for now, at least, I could pretend I was faster.

I struck the empty corridor behind him, took my chances, and ran. I wrapped my arms around my middle, but not because I needed a quick cuddle.

I pulled my fingers out wide and started firing off blasts with my palm guns behind me.

They weren’t completely random, though I made sure at least 80 percent of them were. I laid down cover fire and ensured it was distracting enough that my 10-foot friend wouldn’t get bored with me and go rip Brian’s head off.

The massive warrior screamed from behind me.

I knew I needed to control my mind. Because that guy was about to attack it.

Have you ever been head-butted before? Have you ever been head-butted by a giant brick wall? You’re about to tell me that giant walls don’t headbutt you – you headbutt them, right?

But there was no other way to describe this guy, nor the sheer ferocity of his attack. As his mind was brutally smashed into mine, I reeled. Blood even splattered out of my nostrils. It splashed onto the inside of the helmet and was soon burnt up.

He rammed me with his mind again.

Somehow, some impossible how, I was still running.

Dutifully putting one foot in front of another like I was a glorified program, I shot down the long corridor. As long as I could lure this guy far away from Brian, he’d have a chance, right?

Who knew? It all depended on what was attacking the ship. It hadn’t stopped.

Brian had to be weakening, because more attacks were getting through. Suddenly the floor beneath me lurched. From close by, maybe through the closed door to my left, I thought I heard the outer hull plating being ripped off. I even detected the unique fizzle of a shield erupting into place to protect us from the void beyond.

I clenched my teeth, trying to ignore every single threat piling upon me all at once. I wrapped my arms harder around my middle and fired off more shots.

From behind me, my 10-foot friend roared.

This one at least was physical. The sound of it ripping through the air was deafening. It was followed up by the sound of something slicing close by.

At least I didn’t need to turn over my shoulder to figure out what it was. This helmet could tell me what was happening behind me quite easily. Perfect footage of the warrior opening some kind of void blade appeared on my visor.

I said opening as opposed to unsheathing. He didn’t wrench it off the holster behind him. He simply twisted his hands around, seemed to add his psychic scream to it, and waited until something morphed into existence.

You can’t see voids. Sorry, you can. It’s just from the outside, you can’t necessarily see the void part. True voids can’t exist inside other matter without them being sufficiently delineated. Otherwise they’ll spill out and take everything with them.

When you encounter a black hole, you see the event horizon. And with this blade, I saw something similar. It was just… there but not there. And its capacity to be not there wanted to spread to you and rip you in half.

He grunted once, and it was a satisfied move. No one fights the Risen for long.

You should try it. Maybe you’d find out you’re wrong. I know everyone hates the Risen. They even hate themselves. If you try to help me— I began.

This little act might’ve worked against the cybernetics. It did not work against this guy. I could tell that the Risen were escalating their attempts to capture us.

First they’d sent that armada ship. Then they’d sent that guy with all the arms. Now they’d sent this guy.

He had a definite height advantage – though not against a massive ship. But he had a massive power advantage.

I could tell he was the kind of guy the Risen only cracked out when they had to. They probably kept him in some kind of cupboard like a glorified suit until then.

The blade sliced past my shoulder. At the last moment, I jolted. It was part me, part my suit, part plain intuition. As it rattled and punched through my chest, it threw me off balance. And I watched that void blade slice through the air. It greedily lapped the air up, too. It kind of reminded me of the stable anomaly in the Argonaut’s drive room.

There was no time to be reminded for long.

The blade paused close to my shoulder, changed direction, and jolted toward me.

My eyes were wide. I could tell that the blade’s sheer fury played over my dark pupils and pooled above my eyelashes.

I just couldn’t tell you how I could get out of this—

There was a roar from