NOTHING HERE IS BROKEN.
IT JUST WON’T LET YOU LEAVE.
When Captain Rask takes a high-paying job to retrieve a single data core from a vault buried beneath a frozen world, it sounds simple—quiet system, no defences, no competition.
Except every crew that has tried it before is still there.
Their ships are intact. Their systems are dead. And whatever ambition brought them has long since faded.
Inside the vault, nothing fights back because it doesn’t have to. The deeper you go, the harder it becomes to act, to move, to finish anything you start. The place doesn’t trap you. It simply makes leaving harder than staying.
Rask and the crew of the Meridian push forward anyway, adapting to a system that punishes effort itself. At the centre, they find what they came for—a single object that may be holding the entire vault in balance.
Taking it will change everything.
Getting out will be the real job.
Till the Engines Fall Silent is a fast-paced, darkly funny space pirate adventure where the only way to win is to outthink a system designed to stop you.
Mark Voss writes out-of-this-world science-fiction with humour and heart.
Expect sharp dialogue, big set pieces, and the occasional moral crisis—usually timed for maximum inconvenience. The Vossiverse spans interconnected, stand-alone series, perfect for readers who like their starships scrappy and their satire properly pointy.
A sardonic space pirate novella with stolen treasure, solo missions, and very bad decisions.
Rask never wanted to be a hero. He barely qualifies as a pirate.
But when he stumbles across a derelict cargo skiff with a classified Imperial crate inside, he does what any self-respecting lowlife would do: steals it and runs.
Now hunted by everyone from bounty guilds to the Empire’s least competent officers, Rask finds himself navigating shady outposts, malfunctioning AI, and one increasingly sarcastic ship.
There’s no crew. No plan. And absolutely no chance this ends well.
The Last Corsair is a fast, funny, gloriously unwise sci-fi caper and the perfect introduction to the Space Pirates! series.