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Paramount systems // Mechanical layer

A science-fiction story ten years in the making

Fortuneof theVoid

A dead ship. A living vessel. Twenty-four hours to choose.

Captain Elias Riker salvages dead ships at the edge of charted space. Then one of them answers back.

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Fortune of the Void by Robert Vanarsdale book cover
Signal acquired

The Signal Knows His Ship

Elias trusts one voice in the dark: GAISS, the intelligence that has kept his battered salvage ship alive for fourteen years. Then an unknown signal locks her out of her own core.

Captain
Elias Riker
Only crew
GAISS
Intruder
Knows Omega Lock
Ship time03:17

The Characters

Two Survivors, Different Kinds of Alone

Elias spent fourteen years turning the battered Paramount into a home. He trusts old machinery more than institutions and GAISS more than any living person. Every distress call tests the solitude he claims to want.

Sahara presents herself as the human steward of Nexus, a living Celestial vessel carrying a possible answer to Langus. She needs Elias, but her history with the ship—and with the intelligence hunting it—is deeper than she is prepared to explain.

Their alliance begins as an abduction and becomes a negotiation over the line between saving a life and owning it. Neither offers trust easily. Both know the cure will demand more than blood.

Signal age+00:43

Restricted Ship Interface

System layer // Interference

Query GAISS

Three queries survived the lockout. Each reveals only what GAISS is cleared to disclose.

GAISS interface ready. Select one permitted query.

Scripted controls are unavailable, so every permitted response is displayed below.

GAISS // READY

Restricted query channel online.

Three responses are available. Select a permitted query to continue.

GAISS // SYSTEM STATUS

Core available. External signal unresolved.

Vessel
PARAMOUNT
Power
DEGRADED
GAISS core
AVAILABLE
Signal origin
UNKNOWN

GAISS // VESSEL QUERY

Nexus

Living Celestial vessel. Carrier of a possible Langus solution. Steward authorization verified. Full architecture sealed.

Scripted interface · fixed commands · terminal choices are not transmitted or stored.

Clock drift+??:??

The World

Celestial systems // Organic layer

What Survival Demands

A human figure inside the luminous living architecture of a vesselMEM

A Ship That Remembers

Nexus carries more than a cure. Its oldest secret links Sahara to a history she does not fully remember—and to a choice Elias is not ready to make.

A medical vial surrounded by branching violet energyLNG

A Plague With a Purpose

Langus is not simply a disease. It is a system built to decide who may survive and what they must surrender for the privilege.

Two silhouettes facing a luminous heart inside an organic vesselCNS

Survival Requires Consent

With another world hours from collapse, Elias and Sahara must choose what can be saved without erasing the people they are trying to protect.

Nexus timeNONLINEAR

Visual Transmission

Enter the Void

Experience a short atmospheric interpretation of the novella’s living ships, deep-space salvage, and impossible scale.

From first page to first publication

Ten Years in the Making

Robert Vanarsdale began Fortune of the Void in 2016 and spent a decade developing its living ships, damaged worlds, and central mystery. The result is a science-fiction adventure about memory, identity, consent, sacrifice, and the price of survival. Fortune of the Void is his debut.

“More than anything, I am proud that I carried it across the finish line.”— Robert Vanarsdale

Kindle Storyteller 2026

A Participating Title

Fortune of the Void is a participating title in the 2026 Kindle Storyteller Award. Participation does not mean finalist, winner, or Amazon endorsement.

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Choose Your Way Into the Void

Fortune of the Void by Robert Vanarsdale book cover
A science-fiction novella by Robert Vanarsdale

Reader transmission

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