Minus Book Two

By Odette C. Bell

M’cla and Sisi might not be friends yet. They might still be enemies. But that’s not what the universe – no, the multiverse – needs. They need heroes.
And Sisi and M’cla will have to rise. While Axel and his drones try to push them down. It doesn’t matter what they find in the god storeroom, doesn’t matter what Sisi can do. Axel is an Underside god, and he intends to punish the Academy.
This could be the Coalition’s end.
But nothing is set in stone, and no ending is written until it comes to pass. For sometimes all you need is a chance, a hope, and someone to stand beside you until the last moment.
...
Minus follows a cadet and an alien spy battling a god to save the Coalition. If you love your space operas with action, heart, and a splash of romance, grab Minus Book Two today and soar free with an Odette C. Bell series.
Minus is the 24th 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: Feb 29, 2024
• ISBN: 9798215277515

Book preview

Chapter 1

Admiral Forest

Just when she thought that the god was going to rip the universal key out of her chest, something happened.

Forest could track a lot. She’d been around the proverbial block too many times to count. She had no idea what happened. She had specialized devices that could see into the phase realm, but if something happened there, it was too far down to tell. At one point, she was being clutched around the throat by the god as he tried to rip the key from her chest. The next, he was sucked backward through the gate he’d arrived in.

And then there was silence.

No. Then there was the sound of the whistling wind whipping over the roof. It charged along the smart concrete, grabbed her loose hair, and forced it to whip against her blood-covered face.

Her wrist device shook, and an alarm blared through it. Admiral?

Bates? Forest grunted.

What the hell happened, Admiral? We’re detecting… something, Bates said. She’d already told you the man was an engineer. He was one of the most competent scientists they had. She’d never heard him use the word something like that before. When he could measure something, when he could describe it, he did. It’s just now he had no clue. And neither did Forest.

Shakingly, she pushed to her feet. Then she pressed her hand against the back of her mouth. She breathed in through her fingers as she let them drop down her chin.

She went to turn.

The fight was over. She had to get back to Frost, had to tell her what happened. Maybe, just maybe, Frost would be able to offer some kind of insight. But Forest doubted that. It almost felt like a guardian angel had risen to smile upon Forest. But there was one thing Forest’s checkered career had taught her. Don’t rely on angels. Your luck will never last that long.

Call on your most competent soldiers instead.

She suddenly paused the conversation with Bates and called up Lieutenant Axel’s bio. A smiling picture of his face hovered just a few centimeters above the clock face.

She swiped her hand through it, and it initiated the call.

She waited.

She stared up at the point where the gate had disappeared. For all she knew, in a moment’s notice, it could reappear. And this time the Underside god could bring friends.

Her heart pounded as she clenched her teeth, and as her breathing came out in a raggedy mess, she waited for Axel to answer. But Axel didn’t.

Her greatest soldier was nowhere to be seen, so Frost was back to one thing.

Luck.

Fortunately for her, it wouldn’t run out yet.

Chapter 2

Lieutenant Axel

He appeared in twisted gate space. There were many terms for it.

He had never appeared in it before, never in a condition like this.

He had no clue what had happened. Sorry. He understood one thing. Someone – someone out there brazen and stupid enough to try – had attacked him. They’d destabilized the gate, and he’d been pulled inside.

He’d never been stuck in a space like this before, because Axel had never been stuck in anything for long before. He knew how to fight.

He pulled his thumb away from his forefinger, and a deadly charge of god force built between the two. It pulsed wildly. It pulsed, in fact, in time with his heart. As it pounded hard and shook up into his teeth, he opened his mouth and roared. The sound of it was like someone stripping skin from a freshly killed carcass. It echoed around this non-space.

There were many Higher-Up terms for this pocket space. All you cared about was that it was a void. Formless, black, and endlessly cold.

His power – and his rage – heated him up fine enough.

At one point the void and everything within it was black, but when he called on his true god power, that spark could have shone through anything and did. Very few kinds of power could light up twisted gate space. His did. It looked like a star was born. No, it looked like the seeds of all stars were born, and his mind got stuck on the word seed. It played it around like somebody with a tennis ball and a bat.

It soon reached his lips. And a plan formed in his mind.

The idiot who’d fought him, who’d collapsed the gate, probably thought that he’d be trapped inside it forever. They had no idea what he was really capable of. As he slammed his left hand down on his chest, beneath his armor, his god tattoos started to blaze. The lights shone around it clockwise. Then it met up with itself. And then the tattoo blazed. It fed more power from his god body into his seed. It was now on fire. It seemed like such a tame word for something so powerful.

Twisted gate space started to destabilize around him. As energy discharged from his god power into it, it started to rip holes in the very fabric of the void.

There wasn’t much Axel couldn’t rip a hole in.

As he focused, as his eyebrows descended hard over his eyes, he let his lips peel back from his teeth. He’d find who’d ever attacked him. And he’d rip them right out of the Coalition. He’d rip them right out of that universe. He’d throw them into the multiversal space, wrap Zarpak hands around their throats, and end them.

But first, it was time to rip his way out of this prison. It took approximately one more second. Other gods would have been trapped in here for years, if not forever. Lesser beings would simply have been killed by the cold. Not Axel. His power now blazed. He fed his attack everything he could. But it wasn’t a one-way process. For it fed power back into him in the most violent but welcome feedback loop the universe had ever seen.

The sound of the void being ripped in half was epic. But there was no one to hear. And critically, there was no one to get in his way.

Axel could have appeared right back on that roof. He didn’t.

He needed time to understand who was out there, who had dared lift their heads to become his enemy. He could try to repeat what he’d done with Forest, but she’d be suspicious. She’d run to Frost. There was only one thing for it. Axel appeared in orbit around Earth.

It wasn’t a discombobulating experience, not for a god like him. He could literally swim through the cosmos with his power, and a few times, he had. But it always gave him the perspective he needed whenever he appeared up high around a planet. It made it seem small. Because it was small. Compared to him and his power, almost everything was small.

His god power was still crackling from his hand. It was a wild show.

Earth’s orbit was absolutely crammed-packed with satellites. Some of them were visible to the naked eye – a lot of them weren’t. They were hidden in the phase realms. But no matter how powerful their scanners, they could not detect Axel. For he was in a realm far deeper. And importantly, he was untouchable. Had he mentioned he was unstoppable, too?

He suddenly closed his arms in front of his chest. He collapsed his chin down until it pressed against the top of his breastbone.

He could feel his god tattoo pulsing underneath his armor. It blazed brilliantly, continually feeding back into his power. And that gave him the opportunity to do what he needed to next. He suddenly lurched backward, dropped his arms, and opened them out wide. The sound of his body straining sounded like somebody about to snap through a heavy cruiser. He opened his mouth, his jaw unhinging. He closed his eyes and squeezed his hand, wrapping it around the god power.

Then seeds – a multitude of uncountable, unstoppable drone seeds – spilled from his mouth.

It was like air particles spilling from someone who was doing something as simple as breathing. There was almost no effort involved. And critically, there was nothing that could stop it.

As the seeds sprang from his mouth, they quickly grew. At first, they were nothing more than specks. Soon they were the size of fists. They pulsed this pearly white.

They shot toward Planet Earth.

Several visible satellites were around him. They moved right past their detection nets.

Soon they’d rain down upon the Academy, and they’d fill it with his drones.

This time, he wouldn’t be looking for Forest.

This time, he’d be looking for whatever fool had fought him.

He roared again, spitting out more drones.

He could produce them right there in his chest. But he didn’t need to. Because as his god tattoo spun, it gave him access to a small Fate Gate. And that gave him access to an Underside storeroom. It was that storeroom which the gates were coming out of.

Nothing could get in their way. When they reached the Academy, they would utilize the cube to multiply.

As they rained down over Earth, Axel was certain that no matter who or what his enemy was, those drones would find them. And soon enough, Axel would rise back to the mission that mattered most.

Chapter 3

M’cla

He fell down the side of the building.

Nothing made sense. Nothing had a chance to make sense. His head was woozy, and this dense pressure had picked up. It was drilling from temple to temple. And every single time it reached one temple and bounced back, it got worse. He was certain he was going to black out. And that was a word that had a lot of meaning for a creature made out of light like him. Black out for too long, and you would lose the cohesion of your light. You’d literally disintegrate. But there was no way M’cla could black out. Not when he had so much to keep him awake.

He stared at Sisi’s startled face as they tumbled down the side of the tower.

As they fell past every single one of the accommodation windows, he was certain no one could see them. He was certain even that god hadn’t been able to detect them. It wasn’t because M’cla had possessed cloaking technology a god couldn’t track. It was because of that box.

It was still clutched in Sisi’s hands.

She clearly didn’t know how to use it.

She’d figure it out.

For someone who, upon first glimpse, had seemed so useless, he was starting to realize she was a force he might not be able to reckon with.

But he wasn’t here to reckon with her.

He was here to capture her.

For a few more indulgent seconds, he stared into her eyes, and she stared back.

Her eyes were so wide, he could actually see his own reflected in them.

Then the ground came toward them surprisingly fast.

She stiffened and went to scream, but all M’cla had to do was shove a hand out. His fingers changed, forming a shield.

That was the thing that struck the grass. It spread out, sparking in every direction.

It stopped their fall. But it didn’t change the fact that he was on top of her.

They’d fallen like this when they’d tumbled out of 333, the storeroom universe.

Sisi stared right up into his eyes. She’d already done that, but right now there was a different kind of attention in her gaze. And just for a few seconds, he let himself watch it, let himself be led by it.

Then she shoved her hand on his chest and tried to push him away. He would not let her escape twice.

With a grunt, he grabbed the mind vessel on his holster.

He moved it around. He had to be quick.

That god was gone. It had been ripped back into the gate.

It would probably be trapped in a kind of twisted void space. It was a concept M’cla couldn’t get into right now. He just needed to capture his target.

His official target was Forest, but you knew that Forest didn’t matter anymore. You knew, you surely knew that someone who could punch up and out of a universe at will was so much more important.

He twisted the mind vessel around. He lurched to his knees. It was just as Sisi did the same. She didn’t push back as quickly as she could, which meant that she came up right in front of M’cla’s face. Which meant that once more he indulgently stared into her eyes.

Some people’s eyes don’t reflect much. It really depends on the shape of their eyes, the color of their eyes, and the lighting environment. He didn’t know why, but it seemed like Sisi’s eyes could reflect anything. Even if they themselves tumbled into the thankless black void of twisted gate space, he imagined her eyes would be able to reflect everything.

Right now, they reflected the side of M’cla yanking the mind vessel up and around.

It looked like nothing. And with her limited experience, she’d have no clue what it was. But while she didn’t understand the mind vessel, she had far more experience with him.

She shoved her hand out.

She went to punch him. But she quickly thought better of it. She grabbed hold of the box instead.

M’cla hadn’t even really figured out what it could do yet. It could detect seeds. It could break apart god gates.

That was just the beginning. But critically she didn’t know how to deploy it, and she certainly couldn’t deploy it quickly enough.

M’cla slammed the mind vessel down on the slightly burnt grass beneath them.

It shuddered.

A silver halo encompassed it from the base then widened and shot around to the tip. It opened. It was like a flower. Petal-like protrusions peeled back, and a single beam of bright white light shone upward. Then it changed direction at a 45-degree angle and shot toward Sisi.

She gasped.

All M’cla did was stare at the sight of