Free Novella
Free Novella
Close Approach
A standalone novella
Helsinki, 2030. A piece of debris no one should know exists. Eight engineers. One night to keep a fleet of satellites in orbit.
The plan she builds is correct. The plan she executes is correct. And then a secondary collision invalidates everything.
The story
Close Approach
When two dead satellites collide thirty-one hours before her shift starts, flight dynamics engineer Dara Kallio walks into a developing crisis at the Helsinki ops centre of Valo Space, a Finnish Earth observation startup. Her job for the next nine hours: build a fleet-wide avoidance plan against a debris cluster sweeping through her constellation, and execute it before the first conjunction window closes.
The plan she builds is correct. The plan she executes is correct. And then a secondary collision invalidates everything — including the orbit she just nudged her oldest satellite into.
Close Approach is a procedural novella about competence under pressure, the gap between what an automated system knows and what an engineer carries in her head, and the cost of a decision that was right under one set of facts.
If you read for
Procedural, technically grounded fiction where the physics is the plot.
Close Approach is calibrated for a specific kind of reader. If any of these matter to you, you're in the right place.
- Hard sci-fi The kind where the physics is the antagonist, the math has consequences, and the engineering has to actually work.
- Realistic flight operations Control rooms, mission planners, telemetry feeds. Real procedures, not Hollywood ones.
- Real engineering Technical decisions drive the plot, and a competent engineer makes a satisfying protagonist.
- Procedural detail The story unfolds through decisions and consequences, not exposition. You're in the room with her.
- Pressure under a deadline One night, eight engineers, finite time. Real-time tension that doesn't reset.
The first page
A taste before you commit your inbox.
At 03:40 the call came, and Dara was already awake.
Helsinki in mid-January did not bother with the pretence of dawn. From the bedroom window the courtyard was an even, lightless grey, the snow on the bins eight days old and going dark at the edges. Her phone vibrated against the bedside table once, then a second time, and she had picked it up before the third.
Oskar. Need you in. Two dead birds collided over Iceland, primary about thirty-one hours ago, debris is propagating into Lynx. Eleven flagged. I want you on the floor before the cluster crosses our shell.
— From the opening of Close Approach
About the author
Daniele Romagnoli
I'm an Italian aerospace engineer. I write near-future thrillers about people solving hard problems, anchored in real science and researched engineering.
My debut novel, Moon Shadows, releases in June 2026. Subscribers get notes from the writing room, the launch of the novel before anyone else, and the free novella Close Approach.
Ready when you are
Get Close Approach now. Read it tonight.
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