In the dying days of the Soviet Union, a Russian mobster sets in motion a daring plan to steal a dangerous prize from a secret naval base. In a desolate forest in Imperial Russia, a peasant and his son are caught at ground zero of a fifteen megaton explosion. The two events are joined by a desperate struggle for an artifact that could destroy the world, an artifact that fell out of a CRUEL SKY.

Cruel Sky is an action-packed race through Russia's darkest corners that brings the unsettling mysteries of THE X-FILES to world of THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER.

Steven Lassiter is a former naval officer who served on both submarines and surface ships and a writer whose work has appeared in markets as diverse as INTERZONE, POLYPHONY, ON SPEC, and several original DAW anthologies under the name Steven Mohan, Jr. His work has won honorable mention in THE YEAR'S BEST SCIENCE FICTION and THE YEAR'S BEST FANTASY AND HORROR and he is a past Pushcart Prize nominee.