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Necrospace #5
Carrion Duty
Hostile salvage confirmed.
Rhett Calibos is a bounty scrapper, his life as an indentured soldier a welcome alternative to imprisonment on a penal colony. A man haunted by his past, Rhett throws himself into the work, his only sanctuary. Sokol Targe is the leader of a mech warrior squad, stationed aboard an ancient and deadly warship, and conducts violent raids on behalf of a Red List commune. Cast away from corporate society, they have embraced the ravager way of life.
As these troubled men endure furious combat across the ragged edges of civilization, neither of them realize they've become entangled in the deeper mysteries of necrospace.
It's a hard universe, and nobody gets away clean.
Rhett Calibos is a bounty scrapper, his life as an indentured soldier a welcome alternative to imprisonment on a penal colony. A man haunted by his past, Rhett throws himself into the work, his only sanctuary. Sokol Targe is the leader of a mech warrior squad, stationed aboard an ancient and deadly warship, and conducts violent raids on behalf of a Red List commune. Cast away from corporate society, they have embraced the ravager way of life.
As these troubled men endure furious combat across the ragged edges of civilization, neither of them realize they've become entangled in the deeper mysteries of necrospace.
It's a hard universe, and nobody gets away clean.
- GenresScience Fiction
170 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 17, 2017
37 people are currently reading
34 people want to read
About the author
Sean-Michael Argo
65 books43 followersSean-Michael Argo is an author and independent film producer from the backwood swamps of Arkansas. He writes the kinds of books he likes to read and makes the kinds of movies he likes to watch, so his expanding body of work is a testament to his love of gritty urban fantasy, epic tales of swords & sorcery, horror movies, and the post-apocalyptic wasteland. His films are available on Amazon and presented by Dark Roast Releasing. He spends his time traveling the country for work, making art, and raising his son.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 24, 2018
Carrion Duty
Necrospace, Book 5
By: Sean-Michael Argo
Narrated by: Persephone Rose
This is an audible book I requested and the review is voluntary.
I have not listened to the previous books but that didn't seem to bother how I understood this book.
This was a gritty, rough, mech sci-fi, that told a story of men on the edge of necrospace, fighting with limited resources and limited knowledge of what is really happening.
It is an intriguing book, hard core, and that isn't for everyone. Lots of combat.
The book jumped around a bit and it was hard to focus at times. I love sci-fi but sometimes it was just too much combat all at one time.
The narrator was excellent!!!! I think the narration helped the book tremendously. I can't imagine trying to read this and stay focused! Too much!
Necrospace, Book 5
By: Sean-Michael Argo
Narrated by: Persephone Rose
This is an audible book I requested and the review is voluntary.
I have not listened to the previous books but that didn't seem to bother how I understood this book.
This was a gritty, rough, mech sci-fi, that told a story of men on the edge of necrospace, fighting with limited resources and limited knowledge of what is really happening.
It is an intriguing book, hard core, and that isn't for everyone. Lots of combat.
The book jumped around a bit and it was hard to focus at times. I love sci-fi but sometimes it was just too much combat all at one time.
The narrator was excellent!!!! I think the narration helped the book tremendously. I can't imagine trying to read this and stay focused! Too much!
November 23, 2017
Ah, the fifth book in the series and this one took a different approach. It was more noir, more of a hardboiled take on the Corporate universe of Necrospace. The Bottom Line (profits and control) and the Reapers are still written in here, but we have unique character. One is an ex military man who floundered during the events of a Red Liner revolt, in other words, squatters, people who lived somewhere off the grid, they though. The company ordered them to be destroyed and they were. This warrior refused and was sent to serve time, but his contract was bought out and he was put in with a salvage crew. The other character is a member of a freelance infantry division and he pilots a walking tank, a mechanical warrior. He and his crew search for a lost cargo another corporation has lost.
The weaving of these two separate characters and their crews, as well as several terrible battles draws to a conclusion when these two characters draw a bead on each other and both of them go out the way the universe intended. The ending of this book was sad, final and very satisfying, and then the writer throws us for a loop. The ending chapter introduces us to an Actuary of Grotto Corporation, a being who catalogues, moves power and shares around, buy and sells and overall serves the best interests of the Bottom Line for Grotto. He sits like a spider in a web and takes in and takes over the running of the sector he is in charge of. What we are left with here is a true sense of how the corporations power truly is total and final. They are the Bottom Line. And the last we read involving the Actuary is him referencing a retired Reaper Salvage Marine by the name of Samuel Hyst...... from the first book. Well done, Mr. Argo. Well done indeed.
Danny
The weaving of these two separate characters and their crews, as well as several terrible battles draws to a conclusion when these two characters draw a bead on each other and both of them go out the way the universe intended. The ending of this book was sad, final and very satisfying, and then the writer throws us for a loop. The ending chapter introduces us to an Actuary of Grotto Corporation, a being who catalogues, moves power and shares around, buy and sells and overall serves the best interests of the Bottom Line for Grotto. He sits like a spider in a web and takes in and takes over the running of the sector he is in charge of. What we are left with here is a true sense of how the corporations power truly is total and final. They are the Bottom Line. And the last we read involving the Actuary is him referencing a retired Reaper Salvage Marine by the name of Samuel Hyst...... from the first book. Well done, Mr. Argo. Well done indeed.
Danny
November 14, 2025
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.]==
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.]==
May 31, 2017
Good, Solid Read
Don't care who author or book is, you can always find something to pick apart. I mention this only for folk that read reviews to figure out if they're going to read book or not. I don't feel like I'm on same page anymore with most reviewers,readers. And want to convey that , depending on what you're looking for, this is good mil SciFi regardless.
Think late 1800's, Industrial Revolution, indentured workers, Pullman, Rockefeller , railroad barons and the mass of 'man', humanity with not much of a live or future. That's this authors future universe throughout the galaxy as corporations rule economic sectors and areas of space w no government.
Story... Character driven but with quite a bit of action and succeeded,with me anyway, relating, investing w characters. Don't know if me or not but timing off? or just slow a bit here n there. Second MC type character intro, dev seemed off. Or maybe just me, impatient....
Book is almost stand alone until final chapter. To think Hyst is returning to duty... Alright!
Author needed to slow down, expand more or something w that last chapter because you need to have read series to kinda get it and some of it still went over my head. I've tried twice and still scratching my head.
I read the first 3 and skipped #4 -- if I'm taking a hill w a rifle that's a little iffy, I don't want to go up and take it with Women's Soccer Team. Rather have boys from the hood to my right n left. 4-5-6+ years and millions n millions of dollars and USMC still can't get 3 pull up minimum implemented w female marines. Forgot, we don't need CQB anymore.
Book is good to go with a relatable purpose until last chapt.
Don't care who author or book is, you can always find something to pick apart. I mention this only for folk that read reviews to figure out if they're going to read book or not. I don't feel like I'm on same page anymore with most reviewers,readers. And want to convey that , depending on what you're looking for, this is good mil SciFi regardless.
Think late 1800's, Industrial Revolution, indentured workers, Pullman, Rockefeller , railroad barons and the mass of 'man', humanity with not much of a live or future. That's this authors future universe throughout the galaxy as corporations rule economic sectors and areas of space w no government.
Story... Character driven but with quite a bit of action and succeeded,with me anyway, relating, investing w characters. Don't know if me or not but timing off? or just slow a bit here n there. Second MC type character intro, dev seemed off. Or maybe just me, impatient....
Book is almost stand alone until final chapter. To think Hyst is returning to duty... Alright!
Author needed to slow down, expand more or something w that last chapter because you need to have read series to kinda get it and some of it still went over my head. I've tried twice and still scratching my head.
I read the first 3 and skipped #4 -- if I'm taking a hill w a rifle that's a little iffy, I don't want to go up and take it with Women's Soccer Team. Rather have boys from the hood to my right n left. 4-5-6+ years and millions n millions of dollars and USMC still can't get 3 pull up minimum implemented w female marines. Forgot, we don't need CQB anymore.
Book is good to go with a relatable purpose until last chapt.
June 29, 2018
" Format : Audiobook )
"Progress was as merciless as it was unstoppable."
The age of the corporation. They owned everywhere and (almost) everyone. Without corporate 'protection' life could be both hard and short as redlisters found out. Carrion Duty is essentially the tale of two men living, seperately, on the fringes, Rhett, whose rebellion against his corporation's orders to exterminate a group of settlers landed him, first in prison then indentured to a salvage ship's company, and Sokul, pilot of a mech and following the orders of the ancient captain who oversaw The Rock, home of the Ravager commune. Eventually, the two meet.
This is a fast paced book, heavy with battle action but also with good character building. Inevitably, the reader realises that there will have to be a confrontation between the two and very different main protagonists and loyalties are pulled between them.
Narrator Persephone Rose has a pleasantly mellifluous voice, fast paced, clear and well intoned. Speed of delivery and emotional imput is directed by the text and individual character voicings are distinctive: a good performance fitting the style of the book.
Although this is the fifth book in the Necrospace series, it can easily be read as a stand alone. The very last chapter provides another change of direction suggesting a return to the beginnings for book six.
Good series and recommended for those who enjoy military/ action type science fiction.
"Progress was as merciless as it was unstoppable."
The age of the corporation. They owned everywhere and (almost) everyone. Without corporate 'protection' life could be both hard and short as redlisters found out. Carrion Duty is essentially the tale of two men living, seperately, on the fringes, Rhett, whose rebellion against his corporation's orders to exterminate a group of settlers landed him, first in prison then indentured to a salvage ship's company, and Sokul, pilot of a mech and following the orders of the ancient captain who oversaw The Rock, home of the Ravager commune. Eventually, the two meet.
This is a fast paced book, heavy with battle action but also with good character building. Inevitably, the reader realises that there will have to be a confrontation between the two and very different main protagonists and loyalties are pulled between them.
Narrator Persephone Rose has a pleasantly mellifluous voice, fast paced, clear and well intoned. Speed of delivery and emotional imput is directed by the text and individual character voicings are distinctive: a good performance fitting the style of the book.
Although this is the fifth book in the Necrospace series, it can easily be read as a stand alone. The very last chapter provides another change of direction suggesting a return to the beginnings for book six.
Good series and recommended for those who enjoy military/ action type science fiction.
July 1, 2018
Disclaimer.
I had requested and received audible version of this book for free from the narrator, in exchange for an unbiased review.
What I liked about the book -
I hadn't read previous books in this series and yet, I didn't feel like I was thrown into the deep end while listening to this book. This one works fine as a stand alone book. It is action packed from end to end and doesn't let you sit back n relax even for a bit. Keeps the suspense tight throughout and a great ending at the climax.
What I disliked about the book -
I felt like it lacked character development. Most of the time was spent on gritty combat situations and we didn't get much insight into the character's drives. Maybe all that was covered in earlier books.
Narration -
Narration by Persephone Rose was very well done. He always excels at books of this genre and this was no exception. His fantastic delivery sets the stage and keep you engrossed.
I had requested and received audible version of this book for free from the narrator, in exchange for an unbiased review.
What I liked about the book -
I hadn't read previous books in this series and yet, I didn't feel like I was thrown into the deep end while listening to this book. This one works fine as a stand alone book. It is action packed from end to end and doesn't let you sit back n relax even for a bit. Keeps the suspense tight throughout and a great ending at the climax.
What I disliked about the book -
I felt like it lacked character development. Most of the time was spent on gritty combat situations and we didn't get much insight into the character's drives. Maybe all that was covered in earlier books.
Narration -
Narration by Persephone Rose was very well done. He always excels at books of this genre and this was no exception. His fantastic delivery sets the stage and keep you engrossed.
October 19, 2018
This one was good. Mechs? Fascinating element. The space stations with the girls named after them? I liked that element incorporated. The parallel lines of story coming together at the crux was also a thing of beauty. I really am enjoying it. Also, the idea that people who haven't seen the Gedra view it as myth? Definitely lends realism, though I imagine the recordings would have made it out even to the places on the rim of current human civilization.
September 19, 2025
After the hit-and-miss that was the fourth book in the series, I’m happy that we’re back at the great, gritty quality of the beginning of the series. New characters, liked the alternating chapters leading to the final clash
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews