"Shadrach"

On the icy world of Titania, three strangers—each bearing the name Shadrach—find themselves thrust into a trial as fierce as the biblical furnace that once tested ancient heroes. Their uneasy camaraderie is set against the grim backdrop of Xuerl’s Cosmobar, a notorious Martian dive where miners, off‑worlders and schemers converge over cheap lisk and dangerous deals. From the moment they step inside, the air crackles with the promise of peril and the whisper of something far more valuable than gold.

Chip Warren, a hard‑boiled spacer, watches a drunken miner clutch a shimmering sphere of ekalastron, the universe’s rarest metal whose mere touch can reshape a starship’s hull. The bar’s eclectic patrons—Venusian, Uranian, Jovian and Earthmen—circle the man like predators, each eager to claim the priceless alloy. As alliances shift and tensions rise, Warren’s curiosity pulls him deeper into a web of intrigue that could ignite a conflict as hot as the furnace of legend.