Starbound Cold Protection Novels & Stories

Then blackness. Shit. I finally come to the realization that I was taken. I test my body for injury, but find only old scars and working limbs. I feel no pain, but I cannot escape the icy bite of the marble. I look around for my bag and I find it thrown in a corner of the tomb I have found myself in. I remove the clothes and dress myself in layers. I warm myself enough to stop shaking and I find myself fatigued from my shivers.

I whispered, a warm feeling welling up in my heart. As time went by, the tension in our home seemed to grow even thicker as darkness enveloped us. I went into the bathroom, ready to wash off the day's fatigue, but my heart still struggled to calm down. The moment I closed the door, I made a point of checking the lock to make sure it was locked. I had recently cultivated this habit as a form of self-preservation. The water gurgled, and I tried to immerse myself in the comfort of its heat, but my thoughts were unbridled and uncontrollable. I kept thinking back to Victor's malicious gaze, and my heart was filled with unease.

He could feel the artificial stabilizers Elara had injected him with instantly burning out, the necrotic Project Ouroboros scars across his ribs throbbing with renewed, agonizing intensity as his core temperature plummeted. "Grab my hand!" Elara screamed, her voice tearing at her throat over the deafening cacophony of the imploding ship. The massive dark-matter core behind her groaned, the heavy containment casing visibly buckling under the sudden, immense drop in ambient temperature and the influx of seawater. Scalding steam hissed violently from cracked coolant pipes, mixing with the freezing spray of the ocean to create a blinding, suffocating fog.

The cold wind whistled as it pierced the air. It blew so powerfully it carried off away anything not tied down. The wind only made the freezing temperatures of the surrounding arctic environment even worse. The only relief Kronos had from the blistering cold was the tent he was currently in. All he had for bedding was a worn blanket that had plenty of holes. Calypso wasn't about to provide her prisoners any decent protection for the frigid environment.

She rehearsed her disarms and counters until they became second nature. The cold exposure therapy was the most challenging part of her routine. Every evening, after hours of physical exertion, Clara would strip down to her exercise clothes and step into a small chamber she had modified for the purpose. The chamber was kept at a constant -10°C, cold enough to simulate the worst conditions she would face during the apocalypse.

It howled through the iron battlements, carrying the scent of ancient glaciers, frozen ash, and a strange, metallic static that made the hairs on my arms stand on end. Below us, stretching as far as the eye could see under a starless, obsidian night sky, lay the white expanse of the Frost-Bite Continent. I was wrapped in a sweeping winter mantle of midnight-blue wool lined with thick snow-fox fur. Underneath, my titanium armor hummed with a quiet, continuous heat, powered by the five-fold bond thrumming softly in my blood. The Star-Metal Crown was stowed safely in the armored command transport behind us, but the Sovereign mark on my collarbone burned through my dark tunic, casting a faint si

Starla made time to visit the lab. Professor Zimmer told her that to prevent any disturbances during cryogenic preservation, the freezing chamber would be stored at the bottom of the ocean. “You can choose any sea you like,” he said. “Really?” Starla thought for a moment before replying, “I want my chamber placed in the Arctic Ocean.” “Why?” She smiled, though a trace of sadness lingered in her eyes. “Because you can see the aurora there. And when the aurora lights up the sky, it hides the Milky Way from view.”

began not with a storm, but with a "Structural Crisis." "The bronze-wood is 'Spalling'," Vane reported, her hands covered in frostbite as she inspected the primary support struts. "The outer layers are freezing and snapping off in sheets. We’re losing the 'Ablative-Shielding.' If we don't insulate the hull manually, the cold will reach the residential decks in hours."

The transition from the upper atmosphere to the vacuum of space was marked by a terrifying silence, broken only by the scream of the sled’s hull. Above them, the Sovereign Array’s thermal shield ignited—a shimmering wall of high-frequency microwave radiation designed to vaporize any unauthorized "biological contaminants." "Temperature at the leading edge is 1,200 Kelvin and climbing!" Isabella shouted, her thermal suit already venting steam. "The magnetic rollers are beginning to lose cohesion! We're going to slide back down the ribbon as a puddle of molten slag!"

At least I can hopefully trade these for some medicine, some food, and a place to stay. The truck slows to a stop and I find an old blanket strewn on the floor. I use it to wrap around my waist to make it look somewhat like a skirt also it helpd to keep the chill out. The Crimson Moon Pack is always hot balmy 35 degrees or more, there no need for layers or anything like that but at night it can be bitter cold after the sun sets. Each room has a fireplace and thick blankets to keep us all warm in the winter nights. Other than my time in the cells, this will be the first time I haven’t slept by the warmth of the fire or with my fur blankets that sit at the end of the bed.