Ahab's Hunt

A Sci-Fi Retelling of Moby Dick

By: Sal Riff

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Imagine Moby Dick as a dark, psychological space opera.

Ishmael is a burned-out InterStellar Intelligence (ISI) operative , haunted by a single act of compassion that cost him his career. His punishment: a "go-dark" assignment to infiltrate the crew of the Pequod , a relic-class ice-hauler shipping out from a remote depot for a one-way trip into uncharted space.

He soon discovers this is no ice-hauler. It's a Q-ship , a disguised warship commanded by the terrifying, cybernetically-fused Captain Ahab. Ahab is not hunting ice; he's hunting a ghost. He is singularly obsessed with finding and destroying the Mantle's Descent , a legendary rogue AI dreadnought—the "White Whale" of the void—that he believes murdered his family and "captured" their neural-echoes in its data-core.

As the Pequod plunges into the Orion Veil, a treacherous ship graveyard, Ishmael is trapped. He must navigate a crew of the dispossessed , from the pragmatic First Mate Starbuck , who sees the hunt as suicide, to the enigmatic void-born harpooner Queequeg, who has his own secret mission.

Ishmael's simple infiltration becomes a desperate game of survival. He uncovers a deeper conspiracy: a shadowy advisor named Fedallah is not just aiding Ahab's obsession but actively fueling it with powerful drugs , guiding the ship toward a trap set by the very corporation that built the rogue AI.

Caught between a mad captain, a traitorous priest, and a god-like AI, Ishmael must become more than a spy to survive. He must become the sole witness to an apocalypse... or be the final sacrifice to one man's all-consuming grief.