Elena Ivanovna Markova - Chief Engineer of Vostok Station

Basic Information:

• Full Name: Elena Ivanovna Markova

• Date of Birth: March 3, 2055

• Place of Birth: Novosibirsk, Russia

• Education:

  • B.S. in Mechanical Engineering – Moscow State Technical University, Class of 2077

  • M.S. in Aerospace Systems and Habitat Engineering – Bauman Moscow State Technical University, Class of 2079

  • Specialized training in Martian colony infrastructure and extreme environment survival

Elena Ivanovna Markova

Position:

• Chief Engineer of Vostok Station (Russian Settlement on Mars)

• Lead Infrastructure Specialist, responsible for maintaining life support, power systems, and structural integrity of the settlement.

  
  

Affiliations:

• Formerly affiliated with Roscosmos' Deep Space Engineering Division, before being reassigned to Mars as part of the Vostok mission.

• One of the last standing senior engineers in the Russian settlement after the storm catastrophe.

  
  

Elena's story

Novosibirsk, around 2060

The city never truly slept—it only froze into silence now and then. The Siberian winter lay thick over the concrete blocks of the housing estates, as if trying to press every sound, every movement, every shred of hope into a single, grey mass. Slick walkways wound between the buildings, rusted railings lined graffiti-smeared walls, and the playgrounds had long since been abandoned. Novosibirsk—too big for anyone to matter, too small to truly disappear.

Elena Ivanovna Markova grew up in this noisy silence. Home was sometimes a place of safety, sometimes a trap.

At home in Novosibirsk

Her mother’s fragile mind frequently led her to psychiatric clinics, disappearing for days at a time. During those absences, Elena either stayed with her grandmother or was locked alone in the apartment. As a young girl, her brother had still been around—until school, then the military took him away. By her teenage years, the silence had grown heavier, more familiar. A silence that settled in the bones.

She wasn’t a loud child. She didn’t need to be. Survival isn’t noisy—it’s about watching, learning, and sensing the currents of the world. She idolized her brother, and even her father—at least the version of him she imagined, before he came home drunk and ready to lash out.

Elena didn’t cry. She clenched her jaw and moved forward. Something wild lived in her, an instinct that had always kept her going. She didn’t want to be special. She just wanted to make it through another day. In a childhood wrapped in grey walls and groaning heating pipes, that was dream enough.

Playing with friends on a playground in Novosibirsk

2073–2079: Fire and Steel

Elena was eighteen when her brother was killed. One week he was sending voice notes from the front lines, the next his belongings arrived in a sealed military crate. There was no funeral—just silence and a single, clumsy message from an exhausted officer. Then came the occupation.

Chinese troops entered Novosibirsk in late 2073. The streets grew quieter, tenser. Surveillance drones hovered where pigeons used to sit, and the bratva street gangs that once ruled the alleys evolved into underground resistance cells. Elena didn’t join for patriotism. She joined to eat. To not be alone. To survive. What began as petty courier jobs and message relays turned into long nights crawling through sewers, rerouting stolen power, or patching up sabotaged heating systems before the next blackout froze someone to death.

On the streets of Novosibirsk

Those four years reshaped her completely. She learned when to speak, when not to. How to be invisible in a crowd. How to lie. How to fix anything that ran on wires, pressure, or code. No one held your hand in those days—not unless they were searching you for weapons.

And then, against all odds, in 2077—she got out.

Somehow, her application made it through. Moscow State Technical University sent a confirmation code, and Elena, carrying only a weather-worn duffel bag and a bundle of forged travel permits, made it across the restructured border.

Elena Markova as student in Moscow

Moscow was another planet. Dirty, cold, and overcrowded—but still breathing. While others partied or complained, Elena took every credit she could. She funded her tuition by building project prototypes for lazy classmates, wiring dorm kitchens, and rebuilding trashed ventilation systems. In two years, she completed what should’ve taken four—her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, on fast-track survival mode. And then she did it again: accepted into Bauman Moscow State Technical University’s aerospace program, specializing in off-world habitats. She worked, studied, rebuilt, never stopped. She didn’t have the luxury of breaking down.

By 2079, she had become something new. Something forged under pressure. And that’s when Kazakhstan came calling.

Elena Markova in Kazakhstan

2079–2083: Nowhere Else to Go

Kazakhstan was supposed to be a stepping stone—a proving ground for aerospace engineers. But by the time Elena arrived, the space program was little more than a banner on a rusting hangar wall. Chinese oversight had redirected most resources toward gas extraction and deep-earth mining. Engineers were reassigned to field rigs, data towers, and automated maintenance crews spread across the windswept steppe.

Elena adapted. She always did. She learned the rhythm of the drills, the bitter crack of dry wind against temporary shelters, the hierarchies between Chinese officers and the fading remnants of local Russian staff. She didn’t argue. She worked, fixed, optimized, rewired, survived.

But she never belonged.

And then one day, without warning or explanation, her clearance was revoked. Just like that—badge deactivated, transit card wiped, final salary delayed indefinitely. It wasn’t personal. It never was. She was Russian, and that was reason enough.

She didn’t go home. There was nothing to go back to. Her parents were ghosts in the wreckage of Novosibirsk. Her brother was buried without a grave. No friends, no anchor, no next step.

She lived for weeks in a rented storage unit on the outskirts of Almaty, subsisting on cold noodles and boiled tea, her body bruised from fatigue and disuse. Then, one-night, half-scrolling through old aerospace job boards on a borrowed tablet, she saw the banner:

"Join the Frontier. Mars Needs Engineers."

She stared at it for a long time. Not because it sounded glamorous—God, no. But because it didn’t ask for references. It asked for survival skills, systems knowledge, and willingness to relocate. Permanently.

She clicked Apply.

Want to know what happens when Elena Markova sets foot on Mars?

Discover her first days at Vostok Station in The First Sol — a prequel story to The Mars Chronicles. 👉 Read the story here

Elena’s story doesn’t end here — in fact, it’s only just beginning.

Follow her journey deeper into The Mars Chronicles in the opening chapter of Icarus.

👉 Start reading here

Disclaimer: All characters, events, and storylines presented on this website are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real persons, living or deceased, is purely coincidental. Visual representations of characters were created using AI-generated imagery and are intended solely for illustrative purposes.