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The Spoken Edition

The Black Ship

Written on September 5, 2025 by Mitch K

Categories: favorites

the black ship

by SciFiStories1977

For Warrant Officer Wyatt Staples, life as a commoner in the Royal Fleet is anything but glamorous. While nobles command gleaming warships, he pilots a rickety garbage hauler in the forgotten fringes of the Principality. His days are a monotonous cycle of hauling containers of bio-waste, a future far from the heroic space battles he once dreamed of. But in the quiet emptiness of this backwater system, monotony is shattered by the sudden flash of a warp signature. The Royal Yacht, the fastest ship in the fleet, appears on his screen—and it’s under attack. A silent, arrowhead-shaped vessel, black as the void, hounds it with deadly precision. With communications jammed and no help in sight, Wyatt is the sole witness to an assault on the royal family. He’s a garbage man in a glorified tugboat, armed with nothing more than a tiny cannon meant for asteroids. Running is the only logical choice, but doing nothing is not an option.

Forced to act, Wyatt realizes his only weapon is the very thing he’s paid to discard. In a desperate, borderline-suicidal gambit, he weaponizes his cargo, turning a container of combustible methane into a makeshift bomb. He pushes his old ship past its limits, dodging enemy fire in a daring attempt to get close enough. The plan is insane, but it’s all he has. His reckless courage pays off, and the mysterious black ship is forced to retreat, battered and burning. But his relief is short-lived. A transmission from the saved Royal Yacht brings not praise, but a chilling revelation. A coup has rocked the Principality. Duke Draymor has seized power, and Wyatt’s own commanding officer is a traitor who signaled their position. He hasn’t just saved a VIP; he has stumbled into a civil war. Now, this lone garbage pilot is a fugitive, an unlikely ally to the loyalist cause, and the only person who has seen the Black Ship and lived to tell the tale. His boring life is over, but his fight for survival has just begun.

Cortex V
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One of my favorite weekly podcast(?) audio books. I don’t listen to it every week, but rather binge when there are some new updates and chapters added. Really fun and action packed SciFi. Someone needs to turn this into a TV show or movie series.

Mitch K
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