This series is a collection of stories about various people living in a corporation ran galaxy. One way or another, you work or fight for a corporation. Some see becoming mercenaries as a way out of the boring factory work while others agree to take up arms directly for the corporation. When the latter gets too much because you find yourself and other soldiers murdering innocent civilians for the corporation, then you screw up and wind up in a penal battalion doing exactly what you didn’t want to do! Yeah, it’s a strange life but it’s one that Rhett Calibos finds himself in right now.
Yes, he was a soldier or a Rubicon cor-sec academy graduate and had been doing this job for quite some time now. Yet, what he was required to do just didn’t feel right sometimes, but he didn’t know what to do about it. This last mission was against a bunch of Red Listers, people trying to live outside Rubicon corporation control, who were actually doing work for the corporation until the corporation didn’t need their services any more! These were just hard working people trying to make a living just like everyone else, but when you didn’t have corporation backing you up, you were fair game to anyone wanting you gone.
That’s what happened to the Dunhills settlement. These people, already with nothing much, were allowed to scrape out a living digging and selling barion until Rubicon found they didn’t need the stuff any more. So, as with all Red Listers, they were to be eliminated. That’s what Rhett Calibos’s job was this day. Eliminate the Red Listers of Dunhills by whatever force necessary. To say it was going to be a slaughter would put it mildly. And Rhett finally found that he just couldn’t continue doing this so he took matters in his own hands. What he did, didn’t stop the destruction of the Dunhills settlement, but it did change his life for the worse, a lot worse.
After serving his long tenure in a Mar-gur penal colony, Rhett now found himself starting a new career as a bounty scrapper. After serving his sentence, this was about the only job he could find, the only honest job, that is. And there was always the question of legality in everything everyone did. Yet, he found that he was back with a squad of competent former soldiers of one kind or another on another mission. Bounty scrappers made their living by scrapping anything floating in space. Usually, these derelicts were adrift and unoccupied, but not always. Still, if the bounty scrappers found it and it couldn’t run away, it was going to become scrap pretty quickly.
So, that’s was Rhett’s life now. It wasn’t all bad. The ship, *Vulture Six* was run by a Captain Estrada. He seemed competent and got them missions that paid a decent dividend in most cases. This next mission was going to be very interesting since it appeared to be a derelict slaver ship that had a reputation. It wasn’t known if the crew was still on-board; no one answered any hails so they were going in as though it was unoccupied. That could be a mistake.
Meanwhile, you’ll begin to read about Sokol Targe and his mech, Ogre One. He was the complete soldier when he occupied his mech, Orge One. Outside of it, he felt useless and always sought ways to get back into the mech and use its considerable fighting skills. He had not always been this way. As a Helion soldier, he had been assigned to another mech, Tank Bane, but he never felt right with it. Yet when he and his platoon were sent to settle a rebellious uprising by what turned out to be armed farmers, he conducted himself admirably and was recognized by his commanders and troops as an outstanding mech pilot.
So, eventually, Sokol decided to renounce his Helion citizenship, which was illegal, and wonder around on his own. He finally find the Red Lister ravager community of Fiat Lux out on the fringes of known space. They had brought him together with Ogre One where he now found his calling and was ready to do whatever those of his new ship, *Fatalis* commanded of him.
As the book goes on with both of these main characters, you eventually see them coming together at some point but only on opposite sides of the fight. Who comes out the victor will eventually bring this story to an end, but not an end to the series. Book 6, “Hard Cargo” is available on Amazon right now.
==[Note: As of 12/03/2023, this will not be published on Amazon since I have been banned from posting reviews for some unknown reason. Once the ban is lifted, assuming it does get lifted, I’ll go back and post this to Amazon.]==