by Tim O'Dell

Created on: June 04, 2009   Last Updated: June 23, 2009

Excerpt from: Treasure The Deep

Prologue

Spinning, twirling, revolving. Jack listens to his highly oxygenated breath. The draw, rasp, pause of his lungs filling and emptying creates brief bursts of mist on the visor of his helmet. He looks through the golden sheen of the plastic and gilt lens and watches. He watches the vast emptiness before him. The glitter of a trillion planets that completely surround him. The blackness of a night without relief. He spins, twirls, revolves.

Jack blinks back tears as he remembers his wife and children on Earth. They are at home, safe, secure, alive. He closes his eyes and tries to picture Eva in his head. Though it has been many months since he's seen her, he can still recall her features vividly. The slim, aquiline, symmetric slope of her nose. The pouting, plump, sexy bow of her lips. The sheen of her auburn, long, come-to-bed hair. He can't remember the last time he kissed her. Jack blinks back more tears.

The ship that bought him here had been black, cruel, stealthy. He had been mining on the moon when they found him. Digging for ilmenite, Jack hadn't realised they had landed. Five pirates in all had crept up from behind and jumped him. He had awoken on the darkened ship, with no sound to make him aware of his surroundings except the dull thud of the oxygen pumps through the ships hull. His throbbing head had necessitated a shifting of his body, and, once he completed the manoeuvre, he was able to see through the view globe at the side of him. He was inside the black, cruel, stealthy ship.

The days had slid past like decaying embers, borne on the air to land on far off meadows, melting into the hungry earth. Jack lay in his bunk, listless, frightened, ignorant; he had seen nobody for the first few weeks. He didn't know where he was, why he was there, what his fate would be. All he could do was hope of escape, dream of home, take heart that life still flowed through him. The coldness of the stellar night made his bones ache with no hope of relief, for there was no form of heat in the stark cabin that was his cell. The days had slid past, formless, unbounded, terror-filled.

It could have been weeks, months, years before they finally came to get him; Jack didn't know. Having lived on ships slops, piped through a clinical dispenser, ever since his arrival he was emaciated, shambolic, stumbling as they led him through the bowels of the vessel to the pulsing, fetid, gasping heart.

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