Mercury Nova: The Complete Series

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: The Complete Series 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: Aug 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215620588

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 about to say. I now worked for a shadowy force called the Higher-Ups that may or may not consider themselves to be gods.

Which was exactly my point. The Guardians, for all their morality and strength, asked too few questions.

Until all of six years ago, no one had ever seen a Higher-Up’s face. Dodgy, right? Yeah. But I guess in the grand scheme of things, it was nowhere near as dodgy as what the Underside had planned for the rest of the multiverse. I knew a little. Probably nothing compared to what my commanders like Frost knew. But if the Underside were ever allowed to get a foothold in the multiverse, they would destroy too many universes to count.

Maybe one day I’d find out precisely what the Higher-Ups were. I’d find out what stories they were telling themselves and figure out if they were lies or not. First, I kind of needed to do my job as a Guardian and ensure the multiverse continued to exist.

I snapped a salute.

Frost frowned. Yeah, of course she frowned, I realized as I mentally kicked myself. There’d been no call to snap a salute. The conversation wasn’t over. I just hadn’t been paying attention, and I’d now made that obvious.

She looked down at her hands. She pressed her fingers together, then slowly stared at me. Your performance up to date has been lackluster. You know that. I know that. The question is, can you change? Have you just faced harder odds than your fellow Guardians, or are you… unsuited to this task?

Oh… god. We were gonna have this conversation now. When Frost had called me to her office, I’d known it was about a mission. I hadn’t thought it would be about my last mission.

She considered me carefully. She would see as my purple skin started to pale three shades. She would know precisely what that meant. Hell, from reports, she had very mild psychic powers, too, so she’d probably know I was freaking out on every level.

If it were me, and I was some powerful responsible commander who needed to ensure the peace of the freaking multiverse, I think I might’ve gotten rid of me, day one.

But maybe Frost could see something in me I couldn’t even see in myself.

You are on review, she concluded simply. Her lips carved that out of the air without the drama they should have. I’d been playing this moment over and over in my head, knowing it was coming. It was just a statistical certainty. I’d screwed up too many times. But now I was here… it was too hard to bear.

I bit my lip.

I opened my mouth to give a thousand excuses, but I stopped. I wanted to tell her that I had it in my heart to be a Guardian. I wanted to help others. But do you know what I really wanted to do? See Mercury again. And I… couldn’t really tell you why. I had seen him again… just not like I’d seen him in the pocket space.

He had this… I don’t know. Endless kind quality to him? That was a pathetic way of describing it. It didn’t come close, anyway. Every time I set my mind to the task of describing what happened that day, I couldn’t. And that was a mystery I simply couldn’t let go of.

I might not have the same go-get-'em attitude as the rest of the Guardians. I might be a lot slower and more diligent – I had been a librarian before I’d punched up. But when I got in a mood like this – when a mystery tugged at my heartstrings and wouldn’t let go, I couldn’t let go of it, either.

I tried to make as much direct eye contact as I possibly could – tried to look like I meant what I’d say next. I’ll do my best, sir.

I snapped another salute, and this time it was called for.

She stared at me with such an even gaze, I wondered if it could watch the apocalypse knocking at her door without ever flinching once. To be fair, apocalypses had knocked on the door of her station many times. Maybe she’d flinched when they’d arrived. Importantly, she’d always dealt with them.

The multiverse doesn’t require your best. The multiverse requires results. Now go. The mission parameters are already loaded into your armor. Try at least to treat it like it’s a conduit for your Peacekeeper, she added.

I winced. I’d been expecting that. I’d heard a version of it for the past three years.

All Guardians got Peacekeepers. And Peacekeepers were… one of the most incredible creatures in the entire multiverse. They were energetic beings capable of forming a symbiotic relationship with Guardians. And across that relationship, they channeled wisdom and, critically, power.

They could give you the energy to produce blasts from your very fingertips. They could even help you fly with your armor.

Unassisted, even without armor, some Guardians could fly with Peacekeepers anyway. I kept saying some people. Because I needed to emphasize a very important distinction between everyone else and me. All of the other Guardians talked to their Peacekeepers daily. They were symbionts – they were always together with their hosts. Me… due to my mild psychic powers, I didn’t have the same relationship with my Peacekeeper. I’d always had problems, and eventually I’d figured out why.

I couldn’t hear my Peacekeeper like everyone else could. So instead on missions, I spoke to my armor. It became the conduit for the symbiont within me.

Just another thing I always failed at, apparently.

Frost’s expression didn’t change. Her bottom lip was still pulled in tight, and she still looked like she knew this was it. This was the final mission I’d ever go on.

I wondered if she was right.

I at least put more effort into my salute this time. I really forced my wrist into it.

But salutes can’t save the multiverse, can they?

She inclined her head to the side and muttered, Go, quickly.

So I went.

Just before I reached the door, she paused. I knew she’d just received a communication.

I’m mildly psychic, remember? The quality of her attention changed.

I turned, somehow knowing it had something to do with me. My stomach niggled.

It did that when I was hungry, when I was full, and for so many other reasons. It was hardly an important source of intuition, but I just… knew something was wrong.

What is it, Commander?

A message from the Higher-Ups. You may encounter one of their representatives on the planet. As always, ignore them. They are nothing to do with us.

I paused, then nodded. Of course.

With one last slowly snapped salute, I was out of there. Probably for the last time in my life, my objective mind pointed out. Good luck getting through this. I mean seriously, even a baby Guardian would be able to get through it. All I had to do was go to that market world, walk around, let my Peacekeeper find out whatever readings it needed then return home.

Except let’s be real – that wasn’t gonna happen. I’d find some spanner in the works, and I’d be thrown headfirst into a mission I could not complete. Then the other Guardians, the older, capable Guardians, would be pulled off whatever missions they were on to come save me.

If you thought that sounded pathetic, spare a thought for me – I had to live that reality most days.

I didn’t hang around.

I had a number of friends in the Guardians, but they were on important missions, so there was no one to say goodbye to.

I headed straight to the armory, kitted myself out, then went to the hangar bay.

You know, the first time I’d seen the hangar bay of this station, I’d believed anything was possible.

A pretty grand statement, ha? To be fair, a false one. Anything is not possible. All things have their limitations.

It’s just when you walk into something that blows your mind like the hangar bay of a freaking multiversal station, your once limited world view is broken and replaced by… everything. I had once lived my life cataloging way too many religious tomes for my liking. I’d thrown myself into any fictional story I could find to soothe my soul. And yeah, I’d loved the ones about space the most.

I’d never actually thought I’d see something like this. And now, the sight of the hangar bay, regardless of how humdrum it had technically become, would always stop me in place and see a smile curling over my lips.

Anything is possible, I muttered to myself, a personal prayer. When no one was looking, I touched my lips, then pressed my fingers against the doorway.

Maybe I hadn’t supplanted my religious training, after all. Maybe I’d always be a little suspicious.

But in the grand scheme of things, praying that anything is possible is better than realizing it’s not.

I booked a single-person cruiser from the chief engineer, Rathbun.

A truly impressive lifeform, suffice to say, she wasn’t even from my universe.

I’d forgotten to mention that Frost was an alien, hadn’t I? I’d forgotten to mention that pretty much every single person I saw on the station was an alien. It became normal after a while. Who cared what the shapes of their bodies were, what the color of their skin was, or how much hair they did or didn’t have? After a while, even tentacles become ordinary.

This is it? Rathbun said as she looked up at me, her massive eyebrows crumpling over her one eye.

Ah… you mean I only want one single-person cruiser? Yes.

She shot me that look. And for someone with only one eye, it was a really obvious, impossible-to-hide-from look.

That’s not what I mean, she cut straight to the chase. Is this gonna be your last mission, Guardian?

Oh.

Frost wasn’t the only person to have noticed that I wasn’t the best Guardian there’d ever been.

And even though I actually didn’t have too much to do with Rathbun, there were rumors.

She was also mildly psychic.

She crossed her very impressive arms. She looked at me and shook her head. You have heard of psychic defense, right? I could feel you walking down the corridor to the hangar bay. You are freaking out. You think this is it. If you think this is it, trust me, it will be it.

I think I can get through this. I tried for a cheery smile.

That just made her laugh.

It was a booming move. You couldn’t hide from it; you certainly couldn’t hide from the look in her massive, piercing eye.

You know, my people think that reality starts here. She drove her finger down just above her eye, indicating her mind. What you think about reality will determine what you face.

If all of reality was created by my head, don’t you think we’d be in trouble? I tried for a joke.

It was slow to work on her. She did eventually laugh. It was a little too ribald. You have a good point. But so do I. Stop thinking so little of yourself.

I opened my mouth. I didn’t think little of myself. I just got unlucky, okay? But in a way, that was thinking badly of myself. I knew that statistically other Guardians ran into trouble, too. They just always figured out a way around it.

Me… look, I don’t know. No, I did know. It came down to my own indecision. To shoot, not to shoot – to follow, not to follow. I could just never decide.

Back when I’d been a librarian, there’d been rules. I’d known precisely where to file a book. Now everything seemed so complex.

Rathbun laughed. She locked one of her beefy hands on my shoulder and looked into my eyes. I will see you around.

Because it turns out I’m the sole person generating reality? I tried.

She laughed. I think you’ve got something unique in you. At least one epic win, she added.

I arched an eyebrow. Only one? We’re Guardians. We have to keep producing epic win after epic win. Otherwise, the multiverse falls.

The correct word is descend, she said as she turned, picked out the right cruiser, and strode over to it.

She had an armband on.

It suddenly morphed, changed size, and covered her entire hand all the way up to the elbow.

She swiped that arm up, and the entire hangar bay changed. It re-sorted. There were… I guess you could call them bricks underneath each one of the ships. She moved them around until my single-person cruiser was right in front of me.

Regardless of how bad it is and the fact that Frost has probably put you on notice, at least you’re getting a ship all to yourself, right? Rathbun tried.

I scrunched my lips to the side. It’s my armour’s, technically. My armor gets to fly it. I just get to come along for the ride. It’s technically my armor’s mission, too. I’m just the filling in the sandwich.

An attitude like that is just gonna get you killed.

Nope. An attitude like that will do something worse. It will keep me on the sidelines forever.

I faced the hatch of the back of the ship as it opened. White atmosphere vented everywhere. It framed Rathbun’s eye as it crumpled down. She crossed her arms and leaned against the smooth side of the ship. Before punching up, I’d never seen anything like it. It looked like someone had beaten all of the friction out of starlight then made it solid.

Just watch yourself, okay? Her voice and countenance changed.

Alarm rose in me. What do you mean? Do you honestly think I’m gonna screw up—

Just look around, kid, she grunted.

Her gaze swept over the hangar bay.

I didn’t know what she was looking at in her imagination, but she flinched, and it became all too obvious all too quickly.

Within six short years, we’d had two incidents that could have destroyed this station. In the past, apparently, this station had only ever come close to destruction a handful of times.

Now things were heating up.

And I knew precisely what that felt like. I knew exactly what it was like to be in a civilization that just knew it was racing toward the edge. You could see it. You could feel it. Everyone was warning you about it. But because of collective stupidity, you couldn’t get off the fatal ride.

There wasn’t as much collective stupidity with the Guardians. Just uncertainty. The Underside was more powerful than us, and they had a head start. God knows where they were hiding. God knows precisely what they could do. And yeah, I used the word god there intentionally.

She clapped a hand on my shoulder. Keep your head down, okay? If there’s one thing you are good at, it’s not dying, at least.

I snorted. I guess you’re right. Maybe I can be the Guardian famous for staying alive, despite the odds—

It was meant to be a joke. Maybe for a second it could have been funny. Then an alarm sounded loudly, filling the hangar bay with its incessant sharp tones.

I twisted my head around, adrenaline punching through me.

I could still remember the horror of what happened three years ago. With no warning, an Underside god had dragged one of my Guardian friends back to the station, and they’d brought something called a life drive. These self-replicating roots had pushed through the station, almost crushing everything. And then I’d been dragged… into that space… into it with Mercury, and he’d….

I didn’t need to shake the impression off now. It crashed and burned. Incidentally, almost like the ship that came shooting through the hangar bay shields.

By the look of it and the energy cascading over the hull, the beleaguered vessel had opened a universal gate right outside the station.

I watched strong shields flicker into place beyond the hangar bay doors.

Engineers, assemble, Rathbun roared.

Swiping her armband to the side, she programmed all of the other ships in the hangar bay to make room for the crashing vessel.

It didn’t crash – technically. Those tiles I’d spoken of earlier punched up, created a suspension net, and grasped hold of the ship.

They were at the same time as solid as they were spongy.

An alarm shrieked behind me. It rattled my frigging heart.

I just knew—

There was no point telling you what I just knew. As I think Rathbun knew, too.

Should we call the medical team— one of her engineers asked.

A grim expression haunted her features, and she didn’t say a thing until she programmed the door of the single-person cruiser to open.

A guy flopped out. His armor had been half burnt off.

One eye was open. One eye was closed.

I stood there, cold and shivering, terrified by the fact that another Guardian was down.

The station itself might’ve been safe these past three years, but the war for the multiverse was heating up every day. We were losing good people in missions. We weren’t recruiting enough to make up for them. And meanwhile, in the middle, was me. A Guardian with 6 years of training who couldn’t make a difference.

Rathbun got down on one knee. Was the guy still alive? Wait – no. He wasn’t. It was his Peacekeeper.

Rathbun used her mild psychic abilities as she laid her hands on either side of the guy’s face.

This cloud of energy rose through him. It was ghostly.

I had the same ghostly force in me, and even though I’d made peace with my Peacekeeper a long time ago, I locked a shivering hand on my chest.

Get the Peacekeeper holding cell in here, Rathbun roared.

She clutched the guy’s dead hand. Another one down.

If this were my own doomed world, I’d follow that statement up with ‘one down but more to go.’

We’d lost one Guardian, but we had so many more to lose.

Suddenly my ability to stay alive despite the odds didn’t seem like such a burden anymore.

Rathbun turned and looked at me. Keep your head down. If that’s the least you can do, do it. And be proud. You don’t have to be like the rest of them. Just come back alive.

She was trying to be kind, but I stopped to consider her point. I didn’t have to be like the rest of them – giving their lives up for duty. I just had to stay alive?

I turned, cold. My mission had a deadline. I needed to get to that market world and scan it now.

I stopped as I watched Frost herself run into the hangar bay.

She got down on her knee beside the dead Guardian. She immediately removed the hand unit from his armor. And that’s when I saw… there was something on it.

His hand, not the armor. This shiver raced up my back and shot into my jaw, so powerful, it made me want to gag.

It was the symbol of the Underside.

This was the Underside’s way of saying they’d killed this Guardian. Worse, they would come back for more.

What was his mission? Rathbun grunted at Frost. They had a good working relationship. You’d have to have an extremely good relationship to treat Frost like that and get away with it.

The library, Frost muttered. We sent him off to find the sacred library on Mercury’s recommendation. Another Guardian lost.

I wanted to hang around and find out more. It felt too much like dancing over somebody’s grave.

I moved into my cruiser. The doors hissed shut behind me. I closed my eyes then opened them slowly.

If the least you can do is stay alive— I began, about to parrot Rathbun’s words. I stopped. I suddenly punched the wall, but at least I didn’t use all of my armor’s force.

I sighed hard. The least you can do is not enough anymore, B’Anna. This time… This time, I closed my eyes, "you have to do more. You have to make a difference."

Chapter 2

Mercury

Across the multiverse, things were… escalating. We had another word for that where I came from. Quickening.

And only a madman would ever think the word indicated something good. When you’d been around for as long as I had – when you’d seen as many civilizations from across the multiverse – you realized one thing. Progress is often underrated. If you can instead find it within yourself to live on the peaceful margins of reality, eking out your existence in the most natural way possible, do it.

For when things quickened, often, all you’d get to do was die.

I’d arrived on the right world. I stepped out of a transport bubble.

I swiped my ring to the side. The bubble moved within.

Bubble was a non-technical way of describing it. But there comes a time when descriptions, no matter how minute and precise, become irrelevant. All that matters is what you can do with what you have left.

My cloak moved around me, swept by the hot desert wind. A programmable piece of clothing and blood red, it caught the shimmering sunshine bleeding off the massive star in this system.

It rose up, covered half of the side of my face, and left only a little of my armor glinting underneath. I’d already reprogrammed it. It would appear like nothing more than a nondescript set of ablative plating – common for this locale.

I moved toward the city ahead, dug half out of the side of a hill of stone and sand. But it was just another city on just another world.

And just another dead end, I added under my breath.

I glanced up at the star of this system hanging low in the sky then looked across at the city hugging the edge of a thick desert. Somewhere at the back of my mind – a mind that should always know better – I wondered if she could be here.

Just thinking the word she made my heart shiver more. For an organ that had never moved, that had sat cold and immovable in my chest for untold centuries, only she had ever been able to make it race.

But she wasn’t here.

No matter where I went in this diverse, vast multiverse, she was nowhere to be found.

I ran my fingers down my gauntlet, feeling my sacred tattoo underneath. All of us Higher-Ups had identifying symbols.

They were more than tattoos, however. They were the means to operate hidden Higher-Up technology kept in most universes.

There was nothing I needed to wield here. Yet. If the rumors were correct, however, there might be something important in that drab desert city.

I approached it from the eastern gate. I soon came across a ridge of sand, compacted and brown with age, that led up to a magnificent stone archway. There were two shield poles on the top, glimmering under the unrelenting sunshine. Bolts of blue electricity spasmed over them like hands that had lost their tendons and were left to flap in the wind.

Traders of every ilk and size wandered up and down from the gate. You’d think they wouldn’t want much to do with the unrelenting desert of this equally unrelenting planet. You’d be wrong. There was a lot out there waiting for someone to find their fortune. A ship graveyard, this world lay at an important intersection of two hyperspeed pathways. If ships miscalculated their jumps, they often ended up on this planet, buried in the sand for the first pirate to find.

I saw pirates now, dressed in a mishmash of clothes, stolen armor, and ceremonial headwear. They dragged in guns, flight seats, sparking fuel manifolds – everything and anything. Some of them lugged their finds around in modified hovercraft. Others used rock-like creatures with limited intelligences to drag in burnt metal carcasses, the sand screeching and grating beneath them.

Maybe you thought that, considering the attention I was using to describe this world, I’d never seen anything like it. On the contrary. There were planets like this across the multiverse – too many to count. And after a while, they all blurred together. After a while, almost everything blurs together.

Except for her, right?

It was like I was questioning my heart, wondering if it could still flutter at the mere thought of her. The answer was yes, it could.

Did you find the Black Terror? a tusked merchant under a giant sand cloak hurried past me and asked one of the pirates lugging gear up the hill. Did you find it?

With a quick scan of the merchant’s communications gear, I realized the Black Terror was an important ship that’d crashed on the planet two days ago. Due to electrical interference from a sandstorm and the limited technology of these parts, no one knew precisely where it was.

The pirate in question shrugged. Ain’t nothing left. Sand bots have already consumed it.

Sand bots were nanobots that had escaped their master’s programming long ago. They’d reached plague proportions on parts of this desert world.

… And I found myself being pulled into the details of something that didn’t matter – something that was a simple, useless distraction.

I reached the gate. There was security, though of course it was limited. A law-abiding planet would not allow pirates to come and go as they pleased.

The security consisted of two cyborgs, both towering at well above 10 feet.

With their gleaming red eyes, silver bodies, and sand cloaks of their own, they shoved out hands and randomly stopped passersby. Rent, they chorused together.

Anyone they stopped had to cough up bribes. One cyborg was stupid enough to shove his hand out in front of my face.

Though there were limits to what powers I could use when I was in an ordinary universe, should I have a reason, I could rely on my Higher-Up abilities. I would simply have to argue the case it was justified once I returned home.

And considering I was the god in charge of hunting down the Underside, that reason existed in and of itself. That said, I did not suddenly disintegrate this cyborg with nothing more than a touch of my outstretched fingers.

Here, I muttered. I closed my hand. I opened it, and suddenly there was a credit chip in it. Or at least an extremely convincing hologram of one. One that would operate independently of me, that would hack into any nearby financial systems to ensure that it got every detail of the local currency right. One that would be perfect, and one that would remain until, unseen by anyone else, it disappeared in a flicker of light.

The cyborg grunted. Careful, it added.

I sliced my gaze over to it. Was there a problem with my currency? Unlikely. Be careful of what?

The oracle says it’s finally coming.

I stared at him evenly. I see.

I had no idea who this oracle was – nor what could finally be coming. I did not care.

I could find out at any time by hacking nearby communication systems. There was no technology – anywhere in this universe – that could be blocked off from me. It would be a waste to find out, though. It would draw me into the details of this land – like I had been drawn into the useless details of the Black Terror.

The more attention I gave it, the less I would have for my own mission.

There was a rumor that a certain piece of forbidden god technology had traveled through this planet recently.

The Underside was desperate. They hadn’t done anything big for the past three years. Ever since Pluto and Volturnus had lost, and their attack on the station had failed, the Underside had kept their heads down. But they wouldn’t do that forever. And no large-scale attacks didn’t mean that they were staying quiet. It meant that whatever they were doing, they were doing it somewhere else, away from us so we had no clue and no ability to respond.

I hurried. I did not rush, however. I would not let anyone know how much zipping energy collected in my limbs.

This market city was large, probably the size of the Guardian station. It was mostly flat. Though it was spread out underground.

Old tunnels led to many different stores and households. There were even tunnels lower than the official scans indicated. Old, they came from one of the many civilizations this world had wiped away and rebuilt over, like someone paving over weeds to produce a new garden.

I caught myself. Weeds. That was the kind of word you would use on lower life forms.

I had always prided myself on being different from some of the other Higher-Ups. The word higher was, in many ways, pointless. We weren’t better. We lived longer. We understood more. But we were still drawn into the same petty disputes, pointless wars, and endless quests for greed.

Or at least we were now she was gone. I needed to be careful with you there. I was referring to two different people when I said she.

The woman I’d lost, the person responsible for revealing to me I had a heart, was not the same as the person I had just referenced.

The latter was the last angel. My lost lover was a god, just like me.

But I was wasting time once again.

My senses aligned. I looked up to see clouds gathering on the horizon.

Several traders suddenly ran past me, movements wild. It’s a sand bot storm. We’ve only just had one. Dammit, prepare to descend.

I felt the traders’ worry, saw the fear in their faces.

What they were scared of was indeed fearsome – to them. But they had no clue what sat just beyond this threat.

One sand bot storm might destroy their stock. It might push this city further underground. It was nothing compared to what the Underside had planned, however.

All the more reason to get this done quickly.

I did not have an external scanner. My senses could be spread – even across an entire planet if I had the energy and time.

Forbidden technology had a certain taste to a god. Especially one like me who’d been trained specifically for this purpose.

As I continued down a street shaped like an open pipe and I fought off a horde of sellers showing their wares, I let my eyes roll into the back of my head. Instantly, my mind produced a perfect blueprint of this city – laid out in front of me by nothing more than my sense of smell. It moved past every perfumer, every food store, every unwashed pirate. It traveled deep down into the tunnels of the city then up into the rest of the desert beyond.

And finally, I caught just a whiff of what I was after.

It was in the exact middle of this municipality.

It was a shadow of what had once been there. But it would do.

I thrust forward, wanting this mission to be over. I had things to do. I always did.

If there was one personality fault I’d never been able to outgrow, it was my eagerness to get everything done as quickly as possible.

There was a reason they called me Mercury – the swift-footed one. There was also a reason they sent me on the most important missions. Because time will never slow. You either run beside it, or you fall behind.

I pushed forward, ready to follow these winding streets to the large building in the center of the city that smelt of riches, sweat, and recent death.

The crowd in front of me parted.

The sun above shone down, a single ray of light penetrating through the tall stone towers and shade cloths to my side. It struck one woman standing back from the rest.

A woman I knew.

A Guardian I had worked with.

… It was B’Anna.

She spun as if something alerted her to my presence, the light ray striking the side of her face and a strand of her long hair.

Her eyes widened with recognition, then widened a touch more. It suggested she didn’t just recognize me – she wanted to see me.

I had informed Frost that I might be on this planet lest one of her Guardians came here, too.

I hadn’t expected they’d send B’Anna.

Three years ago, we had spent half an hour in fragmented space after an attack on the station by Volturnus – an Underside god.

I stared at B'Anna now. Not for long. Just for a few seconds – a blink in time. But she stopped whatever she was doing, the sun still adorning the left side of her body, and made direct, hopeful eye contact with me.

She would know the rules. She would know that she was not meant to interact with me off the station.

She would know her mission would pale into insignificance compared to my own mission.

The crowd thinned sufficiently that it made it obvious she was staring at me.

I held that unwanted gaze for one more second, tilted my head up, broke eye contact, and strode away.

Her hand twitched toward me.

She was wearing a prosthetic shield. It made her features look like a member of the dominant race in this sector. It did not change her expression – it simply removed the purple hue of her skin and the light from her bright yellow eyes.

Yet nothing changed the fact that her other hand twitched toward me, her fingers opening wider as if she somehow expected me to take her hand.

On the station, she took any opportunity to try to speak to me.

A pointless endeavor.

I existed for one reason. She existed for another. And in this quickening multiverse, you did what you were meant to do.

Because if you fell behind, if you failed, others died.

Mercury, she began, using my real name.

My name had only been revealed during the incident three years ago because Volturnus had mentioned it. It was a misdemeanor for the Guardians to interact with us Higher-Ups without permission; it was a dischargeable offense for her to reveal my name.

I would tell Frost when I returned to the station.

I turned from B’Anna.

My mind refocused. After a moment.

It strained for some reason, trying to return to her, or at least the thought of her.

Once upon a time, many years ago, I had lived by instinct.

But my instincts had lost me my cherished partner. Ever since, I’d never trusted them and would never trust them again.

Mercury, B’Anna called my name once more.

Two strikes. When I made it back to the stations, she would lose her position.

A pity. B’Anna seemed to have promise. But if she did, she knowingly held herself back. And in this multiverse at this tumultuous time in history, that was criminal.

And we all know what you do with criminals.

Chapter 3

Frost

Tell me this isn’t what I think it is, I said as I crossed my arms in front of the vat.

The Peacekeeper from my dead Lieutenant, Villie, rose up and down in the vat, bobbing quietly. Its energy was almost nonexistent. It was only just being kept alive by the unique energetic fluid it was suspended within. Even then, as it bobbed back and forth away from the glass, it visibly dimmed. It was like smoke being swept away by an unrelenting gale.

Nothing, a grim-lipped technician said as he came to a stop beside me. I’m sorry. I don’t think it will survive.…

Think? I questioned, voice hard.

The guy rubbed the side of his face. Look, the CMO said… he trailed off, his throat pushing forth and back weakly, somewhat like the Peacekeeper.

The CMO said what? I prompted, knowing I needed to coax the truth out of this man, even though I already knew perfectly well what he would say.

The CMO said this looks like some kind of virus. The guy looked panicked as soon as those words spilled from his lips.

The man had punched up. He was a Guardian. You’d think he’d know that words alone cannot hurt you. It is the actions you take around those words that’ll hurt – the context you build out of blood and sorrow.

Words are meaningless. Viruses, on the other hand, that are targeted to attack your number one resource – ah, they’re not meaningless. They’re potentially catastrophic.

I stared across at the vat again. The energetic signature of the Peacekeeper rose, and if it had a hand, I imagine it would forlornly press it against the glass.

But then it sank again, and my stomach itched with gathering nerves. When will the CMO be finished with the autopsy?

Imminently.

Imminently, indeed. A door opened from behind us both, and Pamela Hawk, the best CMO I’d had in years, walked out and stopped beside me. She stared grimly at the vat.

Please do not tell me this is really a virus.

It is, she concluded, hardly being subtle nor kind. But I hadn’t employed her because I wanted someone gentle. I needed direct. And I needed the truth, now more than ever.

We were promised that no virus could ever affect the Peacekeepers. Nothing in Guardian history has ever mentioned anything like this. I crossed my arms harder.

Because it hasn’t happened before. But these are new times. Dangerous times, Pamela added, her voice dark, her countenance worse.

Yes, they were.

A quick shiver raced across my back. But I hid the move as I stared at the vat. How does it spread? Are we satisfied that this vat will keep it contained from the rest of our Peacekeepers?

I locked a hand on my own chest as I asked that. Because I had my own Peacekeeper. The symbiont I had trained with, lived with, fought with, and almost died with. Together, we’d protected these stations and the multiverse beyond for countless decades.

I would do anything to keep my Peacekeeper safe.

But no one can do everything.

The infected Peacekeeper can’t get out – and neither can its virus. At least… we don’t think it can. I still haven’t figured out how the virus is transmitted. But once it infects the host… I believe that’s it.

There will be a cure, I tried to correct her as if she had foolishly said the wrong thing. All viruses can be killed. Because anything can be killed. If you stop a pathogen from replicating, as long as the body isn’t damaged, healing will occur.

But I looked at Pamela’s face and saw the truth behind those dark brown eyes.

She came from a universe I had all too much experience with. She’d cut her teeth working for my kindred spirit in a force called the Galactic Coalition – someone called Admiral Lara Forest.

I knew Pamela had faced many horrors in her time. She’d been forced to give many a dire prognosis.

This one felt worse.

She stared right at me. Everything I have modeled suggests there is no cure. It seems to be… some permanent virus. You can try to ask me to explain – at the moment I don’t have an explanation. I just have facts. And a prediction. She gestured to the Peacekeeper with three stiff fingers. Two days.

I winced.

As hard as it sounded, losing a Guardian was one thing. A terrible thing – especially considering how few we currently had. Other than going out and recruiting – which was illegal under Guardian dictates – we needed to wait for people to punch up. That was a natural and unpredictable process. Folks simply weren’t punching up as much as they used to. And even if they made it here, we couldn’t force them to become Guardians. Another dictate. They had to decide to join the cause. And tell me this – who would decide to join a dying cause?

The word dying got stuck on my mental lips as I stared at the Peacekeeper. It was time to tell you why, though bad, losing a Guardian wasn’t nearly as bad as losing a Peacekeeper.

Guardians were valuable – Peacekeepers were invaluable. We only had a limited number of them. Each Guardian had one, and the Peacekeeper would stay with them until the Guardian’s death. Then the Peacekeeper would move on to the next host.

Aside from an incident with one wayward Guardian – a Lawrence Freeman – each Guardian had to have one Peacekeeper.

But if I was about to face a virus that would rip through my Peacekeepers, then all of that would change.

I took a step back from the vat. It was just as the Peacekeeper rose again. The image of someone weakly touching a window struck me once more.

My own Peacekeeper shifted and rose in my mind to point out, Pamela is right. The Peacekeeper will die. Do not let this virus spread.

I closed my eyes and opened them one by one. I’ll contact the Higher-Ups to ask for advice.

Some time ago, I’d almost never contacted the Higher-Ups. They’d only contacted me – infrequently, and usually only when they needed to save a last-one. Now… in the last six years, everything had changed. Not only did we have our own Higher-Up stationed here with us, but we had one of their worst criminals locked in the basement.

And across the multiverse, we dealt with attacks from the Underside almost daily.

I turned.

I glimpsed through the open door into the morgue.

Villie lay, cold and still, on a floating medical table.

His hand must’ve slipped off. It hung limply by his side. The Underside symbol glinted over his bloodless palm.

It could not be removed. You could throw the hand away, apparently. The symbol would simply shift to some other part of his body. He was marked – and the mark would remain until his body was disintegrated. A warning – or a calling card, if you will. The Underside had brandished him so we knew who’d killed him. So that we’d never forget what they could do.

Pamela saw what I was staring at. She looked at me and didn’t say a thing. Unchecked, this could—

I lengthened my neck and stared at her, and that gaze was enough to silence her. I didn’t need her warning. It already hammered in my ears. "This could threaten the entire Peacekeeper force, change the multiverse, and give way to the Underside. And that would leave everyone to descend. I know. Find a way to stop it, or at the very least slow it down." I turned and strode for the door.

Pamela threw out her hand. I don’t think there’s gonna be a way to stop it.

I slowed, heavy muscles pausing on the threshold of the door. "Then the rest of my demand remains. Slow it down."

I might be able to buy you a day at most.

A lot can happen in a day. Especially if you get someone motivated enough and brave enough to try anything.

Chapter 4

B’Anna

Mercury… it… it had to be Mercury, didn’t it? The one Higher-Up that, if I saw him, threw me off my tracks faster than a train striking a frigging mountain.

Sticky sweat spread between my shoulders and fingers.

And my heart… look, I wanted to take it into a corner, pat it sincerely on the shoulder, and point to Mercury. I wanted to tell it he was a freaking god – or at least something really, really high above me that thought it was a god. His actual views on the ladder of evolution aside, I had to stop pretending there was any point in thinking about him.

Whatever… had happened three years ago, it had happened three years ago. That was my way of trying to point out that it was in the past. It would remain there. And this, unfortunately, was the future.

This was also a strange alien planet, and the second I’d arrived here, I’d known something was wrong.