To protect his young family from merciless corporate tyranny, Samuel Hyst signs up for the hazardous life of a salvage marine, the foot soldiers of a militarized deep space operation. Hazard pay is high for a reason, and Samuel must endure grueling tours of duty in the abandoned scrapyard quadrants of a war-torn universe. Endless wars rage across every galaxy, leaving damaged starships, rusted factories, and broken planets in their wake, all ripe for plunder by the desperate and the daring. Samuel must seize his destiny in frenzied combat against murderous scavengers, horrific monsters, and the elite mercenaries of rival corporations. Left with no choice but to fight, he must win freedom with a combat rifle and his blowtorch.

They are bold, daring, reliable… and doomed. The salvage marines of Tango Platoon have gone up against everything from space pirates and resistance fighters to savage mutants and the heavily armed elite troopers of Helion Corporation. By all accounts they are some of the most battle-hardened veterans in the fleet and experts at hostile salvage operations. The marines are pulled off a low risk contract and placed at the vanguard of tremendous planetary scale conflicts that will have them locked in furious battle for control of a subterranean underworld infested with brutal street gangs and monstrous creatures before pushing them to the bleeding edge of the known universe and pitting them against a city of the mechanized undead. For Samuel Hyst freedom is just out of reach and always seems one more volatile mission away.

Business is war, and business is booming. Economic competition has escalated into a full scale galactic conflict, and the salvage marines are pulling hard duty at the center of the catastrophe. All around them vast armies of conscripts, convicts, and contractors are fighting their way across hostile alien worlds and through the cold void of space at the will of their corporate masters. Whether the marines are boldly piloting their scrap wagons through the debris fields of defeated battle fleets one step ahead of deadly slave traders, speeding in makeshift boats across a backwater planet towards a bloody conflict with the creatures that lurk just beneath the surface, or storming the trenches of a tomb world defended by pitiless mercenaries, everything is a race against other violent factions looking to cash in. Samuel Hyst is surviving the war one day at a time, though while he is away at war his family must contend with new enemies and dangers of their own, and to reach them he will join a revolution.

During an apocalyptic battle against murderous machines and hardened soldiers a lone salvage marine turns the tide with a devastating counter attack. Having revealed herself as a consummate warrior, Jada Sek is welcomed into the ranks of the Dire Swords, an elite fighting force loyal only to the contract. As the other marines return to their salvage duties Jada and her new comrades, each as haunted by the ghosts of their past as she is, plunge yet further into necrospace. They are repeatedly deployed to disrupt and destroy the endeavors of corporate competitors, and along the way discover that the enigma of the machine race is more sinister and complex than any imagined. Surrounded by the specters of an ancient holocaust and forced to face her inner conflict, Jada must make a choice. When the money ceases to matter, when surviving loses its significance, and the thrill of taking the fight right into the teeth of the enemy seems like the only truth left in this scrapyard of a universe, it is time to let the marine die so that the mercenary can be born.

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.

The most wanted salvage marine in the universe thought he was done fighting. He was wrong. For Samuel Hyst the nightmare was over, left behind upon dead worlds and within the derelict ships drifting through space, he and his family having fled to the edges of the frontier to begin a new life of peace. In the aftermath of a violent raid by slave traders, the long suffering marine discovers that a relic of the ancient machine civilization has been left at the doorstep of his pristine forest homestead. He feels the menace radiating from it, and knows that the various powers and factions that rule necrospace will soon come for all of them. Samuel cuts a deal with Captain Dar of the freelance prospecting ship Rig Halo, who years ago saved Samuel’s wife and son from the trade war. Tension is high aboard the ship, as the Hyst family adjusts to being in the rough company of the Halo and a life on the run. As it turns out, the Rig is also a ship full of mercenaries, and once more Samuel finds himself with rifle in hand and squeezing the trigger just to stay alive. The hunt has already begun and Grotto predators are closing in.