Ages in Oblivion Thrown: Book One of the Sleep Trilogy

Ages In Oblivion Thrown

The Sleep Trilogy

Kate Gray

Dedication

To D, for still putting up with all of this.

Acknowledgements

Song lyrics quoted from Wayfaring Stranger, public
domain, mid 19
^th
c.

Kate Gray

Copyright 2014

Smashwords Edition

The sky was no longer
simply the sky when
you
lived in space. It was a cold progenitor. Wrapped in its embrace,
it was easy to fall in love and forget planetary life. It could
also bring on madness, to which those not used to the unfaltering
darkness were prey. It was the unknowable begetter of life, as well
as its end.

At the center of the vast portrait lay
a sun, a class G2V star, provider of light and chaos. It was a
seething mask of eternity, veiling the impermanence that humankind
loathed so much. There was no way to escape space on the
Nimitz
, however, as that behemoth
structure drifted between the Martian asteroid belt and Jupiter. It
housed nearly seventy thousand people, fifty-five thousand of which
were military personnel. Since the days when age restrictions on
military entry had been altered, ranks swelled accordingly with
fourteen-year old privates and sixteen-year old ensigns.

The primary distinctions between those
two were education and its frequent companion, wealth. Not that one
could purchase a commission at this late date, not outright, at any
rate. Those who could afford it paid to have their children sent to
military academies that would turn their pre-teens into officers
and gentlefolk. The
Nimitz
and its formerly empty cargo spaces had, in the last seven
years, been slowly filling with these youthful troops.

These wide-eyed adolescents weren't
allowed to marry until having turned twenty, nor were they allowed
to bring any other family with them. Because of this, the
Nimitz
tended to boast a lively and
rambunctious atmosphere. It was a self-contained base, a fortress
city drifting otherwise serenely through its orbit. There were
civilian sections; as with most other military posts, an economy
and need for diversion dictated such things.

The commander of this base, Colonel
Jorge “Tark” Tarkington, leaned against a bulkhead while staring
out a portside window, lost in thought. As much as he’d been
initially unsure of the posting after his billet had been
announced, the
Nimitz
had
become both his home and beloved child. The bridge was currently on
night shift, nearly empty, and blessedly hushed.

Substantial solar storms had dropped travel
coming and going from Earth to the station, as well as from many
other neighboring systems, whose inhabitants had adopted a somewhat
irritating human-like trait of superstition about the flaming
eruptions. After years of lag during these times, the so-called
government of Earth had decided to follow the nonterrestrial lead
and had declared the storm periods to be perennial holidays. Tark
regularly sent away a good twenty thousand of his people to regular
liberty, put another ten on base liberty and tried to make the best
of it with the remaining personnel.

The crew that stayed behind usually had a
trying task in filling their days usefully. There were some
creative minds, but Tark noted that there was a definitive rise in
pranks, alcohol consumption, and general tomfoolery going on. The
one person who consistently opted to stay with him sat across the
bridge from him at her station. Tark turned his head, arms still
folded, and contemplated Sa’andreniaeu, or as she preferred,
“Sa’andy”, Madoc. She was not human. All the Colonel's personnel
were aware of a relationship between the two, a fact that prompted
both of them to maintain high standards of decorum in public.

During this downtime she had volunteered to
analyze the Terran system for her own people, with an in-depth
survey of the planets, and all their satellites. This task was
supposed to result in some suitable options for colonization and
on-site research stations. It was a mind-numbing ordeal to his
mind. Apparently it appealed to her perverse sense of
entertainment. He decided to go chat with her and infuse some
vitality into the otherwise dead atmosphere. Having made it halfway
across the space, he found himself overwhelmed by an obnoxious
aroma. He stopped dead, turned, and soon found himself glaring at
the source of the smell.

“
Lieutenant.” Tark stared down at the
other man, trying to blink past the smell. The younger officer
hunched over his daily communications reports, trying to look
urgently busy. He ventured to peek over his shoulder, knowing full
and well what was to come.

“
Sir?” The lieutenant tried and failed
to feign ignorance. Tark would have gone over to him, and placed a
firm hand on his shoulder, but for the offending air.

“
What exactly am I smelling? Don’t
worry about making it sound interesting.”

“
Uh...well, sir, the thing is, I’ve
been doing research, and the cessation of laundering of socks is
supposed to bring luck. You know, sir, because of the
storms
.” He whispered the last word,
as though some vengeful spirit might come and punish
him.

“
I think, that if those things are not
removed from your person, and destroyed by your next on-deck time,
you’re going to need something more powerful than luck to preserve
yourself.” Tark wished his XO was back. This was definitely not his
department. Lieutenant O’Leary, visibly deflated, tried to maintain
some degree of bearing and not look like a whipped
puppy.

“
Roger that, sir. I guess I was
getting some dirty looks anyway.” He excused himself, hopefully to
find something less redolent of death to wear. Tark barely held
himself back from slapping a palm to his own forehead. What a weird
kid. Good officer, but
weird
.
Once removed from the polluted air, he took a deep breath of
cleaner stuff, and finished his traverse over to
Sa’andy.

Deeply engaged by whatever it was that she
had found, she stared at what appeared to be a several views of the
same image on her console. There was a certain thoughtfulness
swirling in his mind as he approached, and a strong impulse made
him halt his feet one more time, to peruse her. She had an intense
look about her, which overtook her normally placid porcelain
beauty.

Slender fingers selected a section of the
display to magnify a certain area. Another light touch and the same
area popped up into three-dimensional display. She manipulated the
image until it skewed in the direction she wanted, like a
gyroscope, and then she froze it, mid-spin. There she sat, chin
upon fists, looking at the image as though she expected it to start
conversing with her.

While he stood still, the lights changed to
signal the start of the day shift. A subdued rustling denoted the
changing of the guard, accompanied both by sighs of relief and
resignation. For an instant, Sa’andy lifted her head to take note,
and Tark felt his breath catch. The overhanging light enveloped
her, until it transformed her face into a luminous oval of pale
fire.

Completing the scene was the mass of her
gleaming black hair, which flowed and coiled fluidly around her
skull, down her back and over her shoulders. She seemed to expand
into the air around her. It might have been hours before he finally
became aware of the passage of time again. The art of her receded,
until finally, he could move again. By that point, she had noticed
him. Her smile was knowing, leaving Tark nothing more than to blush
a lovely shade of plum. He stumbled to recover himself.

“
Have you found anything? Otherwise
I’ll feel terrible that you got stuck with this job.” He wanted
nothing more than to place his hand on the back of her neck. Too
many people standing around. She gleamed another tiny smile at
him.

“
You are fully aware of course, that I
asked for this job.” Sa’andy hummed while she zeroed in on whatever
it was that she’d been working on. Tark leaned forward, in a mood
to be funny.

“
Oh, I see. Does that mean you’ve
discovered that Jupiter’s core consists of peanut butter? Or that
Pluto is populated by dogs?” He grinned widely as Sa’andy responded
with a human gesture that she’d picked up. An indigo-tinged tongue
flicked out at him. “Very nice.” He feigned a scowl. “Did you learn
that in training?”

She smiled serenely, keeping her voice low.
“If you would stop offering idiotic commentary, I would tell you
what I actually have found.”

“
Be my guest.” He swept his arm out to
the image she’d been studying. She bowed her head,
mock-deferentially, and pointed at it. A touch to the panel
expanded the view, and it became evident that the image was that of
a planet, or perhaps a moon. Tark frowned at the orb. “Which one is
this?”

“
Europa, mostly ice, iron core.
Uninhabited and undeveloped as of yet, thanks to your government’s
laws.” She slowly spun the image in lazy contemplation. Though he
chided himself for not knowing, Tark already knew that it was
because his military specialty had been intelligence. He didn’t
concern himself with scientific details about the Terran system
planets and moons unless they were being invaded. Running the
Nimitz was detail heavy enough.

“
So, what’s there? Someone finally buy
enough lawmakers to put up a new luxury resort?” He was still
transfixed by her, rather than by anything she might have to say.
She held back a sigh. He could be so...what was that human
word...silly, whenever he was talking to her.

“
There appears to be some sort of
hidden object. I mean, it’s disguised, intentionally, through some
sort of non-naturally occurring signature on a thermal level.” She
transferred the image onto a larger screen about ten feet in front
of them. It became more apparent what Sa’andy was talking about
then.

There was an area, about twenty by
five meters, which was mimicking the temperature readings directly
next to it. The “trick” would never have been apparent to the naked
eye. A passive electrical signature had given it away. Once
stripped of the frigid temperatures the moon gave off, a boxlike
construct was visible. Whatever it was, Tark had an urge to see
it.
How strange
, he
thought,
I feel like a little kid who’s
just found a time capsule.

"What the hell is it?” He said it louder
than he’d intended. The entire forward observation crew went
silent, all eyes on the ghostly image, all ears waiting for an
answer.

“
From where we are, it’s impossible to
know. We need to go and get it, don’t you think?” She looked at him
seriously. “There should be nothing on this moon. Europa was set
aside ages ago. Off-limits.” Her gut twisted as she recited what
she’d been told to say.

“
I agree fully with your assessment.
Question is: whom do I send?” He mused aloud, almost instantly
realizing his mistake. Too late now. The crew was silent a second
longer, closing and opening a collective mouth like drowning fish.
An eruption ensued, flooding the area with voices and pleas. Tark
moaned inwardly, knowing that he’d offered too little sustenance to
intellectually starved men and women. Blowing a sigh of
frustration, he looked to Sa’andy for help.

It was terrible, but he knew he could rely
on her to do her magic and save him. Actually, it was a good thing
that she wasn’t an actual member of his crew, or under his command.
That would have been trouble a long while ago. All they had to
contend with was working together, and the giant rumor mill of the
military. Even that was too much at times, he supposed.

Just looking at him, she could see the
wheels grinding along. He hadn’t slept more than a few hours a
night for some time, claiming insomnia. She suspected instead that
it was some attempt to keep pace with her. Her species had evolved
to sleep half their brains at a time. That meant she could be
conscious whenever she liked, and Tark didn’t like to leave her by
herself all the time. In fact, his attentiveness was lately at an
all-time high.

When they’d first met, it had taken a while
for Sa’andy to come around to his affections. She’d been more than
a little certain that he would lose interest once her novelty had
worn off. This theorem had proven incorrect; Tark had grown more
enamored with each passing minute of contact.