the Life of Cold
I Cold’s Escape and New Life
After escaping from desperate
grasping arms of the Electric
Transcendentalist movement buried low
in the still closed off Singh Sector,
with it’s secrets and Protectors;
through apathy, when lax watchmen were slow.
Our hero, one, Maximus Cold
made his way—somehow—untoward
to a UEA Psychological
Mind-Wiping clinic on the Rim.
He later, meekly, left it grim
with a UEA stipend was able
to pay for steerage to Haj Pei
in the smuggling ship of a grey
Ocheen and his robot co-pilot Dot.
In Tre on Haj Pei our Cold found
a flop-room where he could rebound
and get easy work on an Ainee yacht.
II Cold Is Made a Proposition
Not quite fulfilled cold lived alone, cheap
and fast on Haj Pei, and he’d weep,
and the rich crossroads-world spun beneath him.
Until a fellow worker said
that he would need help to collect
on an account his group knew and could skim.
III Cold Gives In
At first Cold thought he would not help
His life was good but he still felt
without what the man could possibly give.
His impassive state could not hold
still his limbs, and they carried Cold
to the sublevels: the Criminal’s maw.
IV Cold Finds a Place
The heist went on, slow to conclude
and when a small fortune accrued,
at a crew party in sublevel two,
that was the night that Cold first met
the old Gaulnemi man who set
precedence for his villainous crew.
His mauve skin pulled taught, on his head.
It set a flare off in Cold’s head:
something uncanny, but comfortable too.
“You’ll be alright son, as long as
you have fun. Space is void whereas
we’ve got it shiny.” he said in review.
That night passed slow, in reverie,
and Cold regained something every
lonely space-trader finds it’s his own brood.
V Cold Is Orphaned Again
The pattern set, they filched again.
A lingering wont took Cold then,
for a thing no food or drink could restore.
Surprise took him, and his gang, away,
when the SecForce entered the fray
via a gas-can through the broke-down door.
The friendships that had grown below
were torn asunder unto woe,
in the chaos of the ensuing flight.
The Gaulnemi man, with a Gin
in his hand took a blast bolt in
the head, and his pale mauve skin went stark white.
With tears streaking down dispassionate
cheeks, Cold streamed away, by only a whit,
as stow-away on some aquatic’s ship.
The hold was small, and sickly wet
but cold was thankful that they’d set
upon dry cargo that they couldn’t skip.
VI Cold on Osmasis
When he fell out of that hold some
time later, hungry and numb
he was in an Osmasian dry-dock at Clip.
He wouldn’t know how he’d traversed
so much of the galaxy’s girth
in one fell swoop without having planned it.
The Osmasians were nice there
but austere, and forced Cold to bear
out of the leaky dry dock, a living.
Osmassis was a sodden lair
where the Dry-Zones solely had air.
He lived a small life cleaning exhaust rings.
One day the heat arrived on-world
but not at Clip, or so Cold heard.
He quickly set about finding transport
And to Cold’s great surprise before
he’d really tried, fell to the floor.
Underfoot was the Ocheen—there in port!
VII Cold’s Situation is Exacerbated
The Ocheen ship, with Dot it tow,
blasted off Osmasis below
UEA sensors scanning the Dry-Zone.
Pulling around the planet’s edge
for a less known vector, hedged
into the middle of a battle—prone.
VIII Cold in the Battle and His Escape
Ocheen boats on torp’ delivery,
craft with UEA livery:
reams of new lancers from up the Singh Arm
cart-wheeling through the grand melee.
Their freighter dipped, and was waylaid
by their proximity klaxon’s alarm.
They quickly looped around again
and charged up their Ion engine
swerving and dipping, accelerating.
When they’d pulled away from the clash
the noise of the fracas left in the vast
empty spaces behind them—the comm. pinged.
IX Cold Finds a New Home
The message left was scheduled
and sent when the Gaulnem’ was culled.
A note of inheritance was within.
A station, small but adequate
to keep poor Cold from some lament,
hidden in Null Space, way down at the end.
X Cold Crosses the Bar Draw
His Ocheen host was not modest
about his ship-controling, lest
one should think he was afraid. But to cross
the central bar was dangerous.
The forces there could plainly stress
a ships hull beyond duress, or could toss
it farther down into the Core
whose gravity there would ignore
the weak-forces keeping one’s cells apart.
They all bore down, and then Cold found
through the freighter’s bucking sounds,
as the bar-draw hastened their way to doom,
that this grey minisucle Ocheen
and robot Dot could handle things.
Cold, alive, silently cried and smelled fumes.
The cobalt from the Ion core
was leaching blue onto the floor,
and Dot clambered and put a stop to it.
So, battered they, and in dismay
reached the far side, close to Haj Pei
and Cold had an inconsolable fit.
XI Cold Falls Ill and is Healed
The Null Space station was quite bare
but Cold, Dot, and the Ocheen there
settled—slow—into a quiet routine.
But unseen spores inside were laid
by unseen hands, whose plans delayed
the ruination of this little team.
Lying still Cold became ill
and profuse sweats racked him with chill.
Dot was quick to ascertain the main cause.
“But can we cleanse our newfound home?”
The Ocheen asked in monotone.
Dot didn’t know and they set, without pause
to gather things, and prep the ship
and get away, and to outstrip
whatever their current speed-record was.
Cold’s condition, as they escaped
from their refuge, improved post haste.
and so they went back, despite breaking laws.
XII Cold Returns with the Virus
But what the spores held went unseen,
and dormant laid an infirm seed
until the freighter opened on Taj Pei.
Cold left the ship with his two friends
into the city’s distant ends
so spreading his virus to newer prey
and blissfully incognizant
Cold settled in to some extent
to await—somewhere—their near demise.
And though it cause some great dismay,
the quarantine did not allay
an epidemic of galactic size.
copyright 2007