The Hunters of Vermin (Unabridged‪)‬

On his first solo mission and deep behind enemy lines, young reconnaissance-fighter pilot, Ensign Max Robichaux, Union Space Navy, finds himself prisoner of not the Krag, humanity's enemy in its decades-long interstellar war for survival but of the Vaaach, an incredibly advanced race of aliens legendary for their secretive and territorial ferocity. For reasons Max barely understands, the Vaaach decide that they have an obligation to train him to be a Vaaach warrior, or at least as close as a puny, fruit-eating human can come.

Max finds himself on a strange, unknown world, under the tutelage of a nine-foot-tall, carnivorous Vaaach drill instructor, learning an alien way of fighting and stalking and making war. Not only is the training like nothing Max has ever imagined, there's the small matter of the final exam: a real mission involving real combat against real Krag with the life or death of an entire Union naval task force hanging in the balance. Max is going to have to find resources of cunning, creativity, strength, endurance, and courage far beyond his years if he's going to survive and save thousands of his comrades who - unknown to them - are depending on the slender thread of the young officer's abilities for their very survival.

The Hunters of Vermin is a short novel (just over 62,500 words, slightly longer than such classic novels as Lord of the Flies and All Quiet on the Western Front), that can be listened to as a stand-alone adventure or as a part of the longer series of Max Robichaux space tales.