Chapter Excerpt: Edge of the Abyss

Pre-dawn cold gnawed at Vostochny Cosmodrome—a scarred sprawl of concrete and steel crouched against the Siberian taiga. Floodlights sliced the dark, glinting off snowdrifts piled against a rusted Soyuz gantry, abandoned since the ‘90s. A crooked sign, “Vostochny Cosmodrome – Gate to the Stars,” sagged half-buried, paint flaking. Beyond, a frozen crane jutted from the snow—rusted junk from Vostochny’s past, half-buried and forgotten.

Drakon-3 loomed over the abyss—a 67-meter machine monstrosity clad in dark CerMet scales, the most powerful machine ever built by man, hauled slow and heavy from the Vehicle Assembly Building. Twin support towers flanked it, weathered husks streaked with rust, steam hissing into the freeze. Its drill head hung idle. Inside, twin thorium-salt reactors thrummed, pumping 80 megawatts each shielded by tantalum, venting heat through the scales. Eight gyrotron arrays sat coiled behind the head—terawatt microwave blasters, primed to slag rock at 4000 Kelvin when needed.

Major Anastasia Ivanov trudged the perimeter, parka zipped tight, boots crunching snow. Her breath fogged as she scanned the hull—scales gleaming, track joints taut under floodlights. She paused, gloved hand tracing a hydraulic piston—cold, untested, built to drag the beast down the shaft below. A gyrotron lens glinted above. Too clean for this wasteland.

She stepped to the abyss’s rim, wind clawing her hood, and pulled a Poljot watch from her pocket. Mikhail, My Moon caught the light. Her jaw tightened—she muttered, “My love… you reckless fool,” voice low, bitter-edged—then let it drop. It spun into the dark, gone.  #SciFiDebut #ScifiNovel