by G L Blackie
On Mars, humanity's newest hope is already waiting-if the Mayflower can get there. The International Space Consortium's first ship is transporting 50,000 passengers in suspended animation to the newly built colony.Lieutenant John Stravanski should be the steady hand at the helm; instead, he inherits command the moment the captain is found dead.One ship, one voyage, and a crew stitched together with competing loyalties. Every console blink, every diverted supply, every whispered transmission is a threat. Sabotage threads through the systems; alliances shift like air pressure; friends become suspects.To keep the future colonists alive, John must hold a mutinous ship together-even if it means becoming the leader everyone distrusts. The Mayflower's fate will be decided not by engines or planets, but by who can be trusted to keep the vessel running.The First Ship is a claustrophobic sci-fi novella by G L Blackie
No streak history
One state-enhanced oracle order, filtered by each list. Observed Royal Road ranks remain separate ground truth.
Rank updated 2 Oct 2026, 03:49 UTC
Entry forecast updated 2 Oct 2026, 03:49 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.
Coupled 14-day outlook
rs-joint-entry-copula-v1
Any eligible RS entry
23%
Two or more lists
13%
Likely threshold order: Short Story → Sci-fi → Adventure → Main.
Leading bundle: Sci-fi + Short Story (11%).
Estimated from one fitted shared story path; category probabilities are not multiplied as if lists were independent.
Separate entry forecast; this probability does not enter the ranking score.
Overall Rising Stars Shadow RS rank
#1067 of 12,409 · 1017 below RS #50
By genre
beats 71% of similar stories
not enough data yet
beats 6% of similar stories
Hidden gem — exposure is the bottleneck
Readers who find this story follow it at a high rate; there just aren't enough of them. In our cohort data, near-daily posting lifted the odds of reaching 25 followers from ~0% to 17% — more chapters, shoutout swaps and ads buy the eyeballs this conversion deserves.
Benchmarks: 8,060 active Royal Road stories, percentiles within the 10–19 chapters band, cohort of 2026-07-02. Conversion is measured as followers gained per 1,000 views lifetime.
