by edrobins
"All I wanted was to find the psycho that killed a little girl, but my captain has other plans for me. A young man decided he couldn't handle a lifetime aboard the starship Australis, and took the easy way off. Problem is, his mama can't accept the truth, so now I gotta hold her hand while she grieves. "Or maybe there's more to the case than it seems." Inspired by the hardboiled grit of Mickey Spillane and the concision of Elmore Leonard, Justice for a Price is a sci-fi / mystery mash-up devised in the best traditions of the dime store paperback. This novelette is a prequel to the Murder on the Starship Australis series, itself part of the 10 Cent Universe – a genre-bending macrocosm.
No streak history
One state-enhanced oracle order, filtered by each list. Observed Royal Road ranks remain separate ground truth.
Rank updated 22 Oct 2026, 12:18 UTC
Entry forecast updated 22 Oct 2026, 12:18 UTC
Ranking model: rs-public-oracle-state-v1
Forecast model: rs-model-entry-v1
Chart history contains only this ranking model's runs; legacy points are not spliced in.
Not enough recent follower history to estimate a shadow rank yet.
beats 21% of similar stories
not enough data yet
needs about a week of observations
Benchmarks: 8,060 active Royal Road stories, percentiles within the 5–9 chapters band, cohort of 2026-07-02. Conversion is measured as followers gained per 1,000 views lifetime.
