Read a summary of the first three books in the Star Pilot series. Click here to read the series on Kindle and in KU.
A Star Pilot’s Fearless Rebel recap
Calpurnia Bellatrix (aka Cal) was the best pilot and smuggler in The Uprising—a military organization determined to stop the tyrannical Supremacy. She worked alone because she had been burned before. Her parents abandoned her, her sister died in Supremacy mines, and her boyfriend, Orion, ghosted her.
For a deadly mission to rescue Agent Winters—a spy with intel that could bring down the Supremacy—Cal was assigned a new crew. They all caused her trouble in different ways:
Orion: The ex-boyfriend was trying to win her heart as though he hadn’t left her.
Polaris: The nerdy best friend who was in love with her.
Hamal: The sweet doctor and Orion’s best friend who Cal couldn’t help but be attracted to.
Antares: A Supremacy bounty hunter who switched sides to help find Winters. Cal wasn’t certain she could trust him, no matter how hot and charming he was or how cute his pug, Mr. Pancake, was.
Rux: The gruff soldier who mistrusted Cal and believed she was working with Antares to doom the mission.
Cal initially refused the assignment, believing the men would get in her way and doom the entire mission. After Rux called her a coward, she decided to accept the mission only to be told it was too late. She had been re-assigned to a lower position and her ship had been seized.
So, she conspired with Antares to steal her ship and go on the mission anyway. The other men were asleep on her ship at the time and believed her lie that she was the assigned commander.
Cal plotted to lead her crew to Vinera space port so she could ditch them and continue the mission alone. On the way, she started to develop feelings for the men. Finally, Orion admitted why he had left her three years ago: Someone in The Uprising had framed her and was going to throw her in jail. Orion took the fall and went to prison so Cal could remain free.
Cal was conflicted: Orion should have told her the truth when it happened. But when he vanished, she assumed he didn’t love her and decided not to look for him. If she had investigated his disappearance, she could have saved him from prison. Moreover, the organization she had devoted her life to had betrayed her and Orion.
At Vinera, they ran into Prince Castor of the Supremacy, the only fighter pilot who’d ever bested Calpurnia. She sacrificed herself so her crew could escape and continue with the mission.
In Castor’s claws, Calpurnia learned that he’d decided not to kill her when he’d had the chance years ago—and the Supremacy looked down on him for it. But he wasn’t all good. He used her captured ship to trick The Uprising into thinking Cal and her crew had betrayed Agent Winters. Unless they found the spy, they could never prove their innocence and return home.
Cal tried to escape at the same time her crew arrived to rescue her. Together, they fled Castor, stole his ship, and escaped Vinera.
Orion and Cal decided to get back together just as the stolen ship broke down in the middle of nowhere.
A Star Pilot’s Daring Rogue recap
Commander Calpurnia (Cal) Bellatrix and her crew escaped Vinera on Prince Castor’s stolen ship, but it broke down light-years from their destination, with no planets or other ships in sight.
Stranded with limited food, tensions among the crew ran high.
They were pleasantly surprised by the quick response to their distress call. Unfortunately, their savior was Lady Camilla Sigana, one of Prince Castor’s many betrotheds and the commander of a jumpship—a rare type of ship that can travel through hyperspace without a jumpgate.
Thanks to his impersonation skills, Antares tricked Lady Camilla into thinking he was Castor and that they required a ride to Etrea—the last place Agent Winters had been spotted.
The crew escaped Lady Camilla and a fleet of Supremacy ships to find refuge in a hidden docking bay. The crew split up with Cal, Po, Antares, and Mr. Pancake searching for the Woods Witch, Antares’s contact on Etrea, and their best lead for finding Agent Winters.
They soon found themselves being hunted by Asherah Doug, Queen of Etrea, another of Castor’s betrothed, and someone who made Polaris very uncomfortable.
Antares found his contact, Ursa, aka the Woods Witch, who was running an underground resistance and surveillance system with her husband, Major Tom Marshal of the Etrean Resistance. Most shocking of all was that Ursa was Polaris’s sister.
Cal’s confusion around Ursa’s hostility towards Po and his reaction to seeing Queen Asherah forced Polaris to reveal his history.
He explained that he had loved Asherah and helped her build surveillance tech that he believed would help defeat the Supremacy. In reality, and to his shame, she used his creations to become a tyrant and strengthen the Supremacy’s hold on their home world.
Fighting a mix of emotions, Cal struggled to understand the man she thought she knew and possibly loved.
Ursa and Major found Agent Winters, who had been captured by strange men they assumed were bounty hunters working for The Supremacy. Cal, Po, Antares, and Mr. Pancake chased after Winters while pursued by Supremacy soldiers and Castor, who managed to track them down. They escaped but were too late to save Agent Winters, who had been taken away on a ship.
Later, while fighting feelings of failure, Orion and Cal had a heart-to-heart about their relationship and Cal’s feelings for Polaris. With his approval and support, Cal accepted that she could love more than one person and left to talk with Po.
Polaris, unable to trust his own heart and believing that Cal could not love him, left the crew.
Cal and her men went after Po, only to learn that Ursa and Major had been captured by The Supremacy in a ploy to draw everyone out.
Finding Polaris, Cal was able to confess her feelings to him, and he did the same in return. Now together, the crew formed a plan to free Ursa and Major as well as to raid the Supremacy’s central communication servers for intel on Winters.
Asherah and Castor placed mind readers on Ursa and Major on a stage in the town square in order to make an example of them. Upon seeing his sister in mortal danger, Polaris abandoned the crew’s plan and confronted Asherah about betraying him.
Before the entire town, he revealed a code that allowed people to undermine the Supremacy’s surveillance tech. This, combined with Mr. Pancake lowering the protective shield around the palace, kicked off a fresh wave of rebellion against the Supremacy. Camilla Sigana and her massive fleet arrived to help crush the resistance.
Antares distracted Castor by kissing him, to everyone’s shock and horror. But his efforts didn’t work. Po, Cal, Po, Antares, Mr. Pancake, Ursa, and Major were stunned and captured. But Cal faked being hit by a stun bolt. Once left unattended, she used a dose of adrenaline to wake Polaris. Together they snuck the others onto a ship and saved the rest of the team who were raiding the communications hub.
As their ship took hits from Castor and surrounding Supremacy ships, Cal used the jumpgate to escape, with the promise that they would return one day to help the Etrean people.
Po searched through the servers they stole from the communications hub and found an old message from Winters. It revealed that Winters was betrayed by someone within the Uprising, and that there was another heir to the Supremacy throne. The news caused Antares—always calm and collected—to faint.
A Star Pilot’s Renegade Spy recap
Commander Calpurnia and her crew headed for Luto to seek refuge and a new ship.
During the flight through hyperspace, the crew questioned Antares’s loyalty for kissing Prince Castor. Cal demanded to know why he had fainted upon hearing about Princess Pollux, another heir to the throne, but he remained cagey. Meanwhile, Ursa and Major announced they would return to Etrea as soon as possible, to Po’s despair.
The crew dropped out of hyperspace to find Castor and his guards behind them. Their stolen ship couldn’t withstand another hit. But Luto’s planetary defenses provided enough help for them to escape and crash land on a city floating in the upper atmosphere.
With the Supremacy servers—containing invaluable intel—strapped to their backs, the crew fled to a safe house: a meditative sex temple of the Divine Rooster cult. The head nun promised to shelter them, but only if Cal and her men married each other first.
While hiding in the temple, they were visited by Lutonian Resistance fighters, Sappho and Will, who told them that Castor had shut all ports to prevent the crew from escaping. The only way off the planet was to drop through the dangerous atmosphere onto a cargo ship, thus bypassing the ports.
They spent the following days learning to fly with jet packs. Despite Antares being dodgy about his past, he and Cal grew closer and shared a kiss. While combing the Supremacy’s servers for more intel, Po found a message that proved the Empress was using Castor as bait to draw out the royal family’s enemies.
As Cal and crew dived through the sky onto a passing cargo ship, Cal noticed Castor’s fighter on patrol. Cal, followed by Antares, landed on his ship. They planted explosives and sent it burning into the tumultuous atmosphere below. With their jet packs damaged, they clung to each other to make it to the cargo ship alive. It entered hyperspace, and they were away safely.
On the ship, the crew found a meter-long centipede. Rux was terrified of them, so Cal adopted them and named them Ruxiekins to annoy him. They also found a lost kitten, who melted Rux’s heart. He called her Ms. Waffles.
As the crew and their new companions made their way to Star Keeper, Cal learned that Antares planned to leave and return to bounty hunting. Realizing she did not want him to go, Cal confessed to Polaris that she and Antares shared a kiss. To her surprise, Po was not upset and said he believed Antares loved her.
At Star Keeper, the crew was unexpectedly arrested by General Brison of The Uprising. Cal, with no choice but to be honest, admitted she was never the commander of their mission and had taken the crew AWOL without their knowledge. The crew was disappointed in her.
Hamal revealed he was a cyborg by offering to have his memory banks read to prove that they were always acting in support of The Uprising. Brison believed them.
The Uprising’s Council of Generals ordered Cal and her crew on a suicide mission to infiltrate the Rigel Court and gain more intel about the missing princess.
The crew decided that Orion, Po, Rux, and Ms. Waffles would remain on the Firebrand as an extraction team while Cal, Antares, Hamal, and Mr. Pancake snuck into one of the royal palaces. Because they were likely to be captured, Cal, Antares, and Hamal received explosive teeth they could activate to kill themselves and avoid being mind-read. Antares admitted that he didn’t want to return to his home world and only accepted the mission for Cal.
Once on Zertanih, Cal, Antares, Hamal, and Mr. Pancake used invisibility cloaks to sneak through the royal palace of Prince Consort Kamuel, the father of the missing princess. Antares, pretending to be a spy for Castor, spoke with Kamuel’s assistant, Bethpazzaz. She unknowingly confirmed that Princess Pollux’s parents had faked her death. Pollux was hidden within the Asimodoxxo alien fleets on Haffadilt.
Just as Cal informed the Firebrand crew of this information, Castor captured her, Antares, Hamal, and Mr. Pancake. He brought them before his mother, the Empress. Cal tricked the Empress into believing they were secretly working with Castor all along. Castor went along with the lie to protect himself, but the Empress decided Castor must be punished for looking weak and had Antares whipped in front of them.
After the torture, Cal, Antares, Hamal, and Mr. Pancake were locked in a lavish room in Castor’s palace. Antares finally spoke openly about his past. He was Castor’s closest friend and lover until he could no longer support the Supremacy’s tyranny and betrayed him.
During imprisonment, Antares admitted to loving Cal. Castor demanded they share intel about The Uprising, and Hamal revealed false info that was planted in his memory as a trap for the Supremacy. Hamal’s knowledge of it being fake was erased from his memory banks to better sell the lie.
Cal finally admitted to Antares that she loved him, just as Castor learned of their fake intel and angrily tore them apart. Using Cal as leverage, Castor sent Antares and Mr. Pancake to Haffadilt to find solid proof that his sister, Pollux, was alive. Hamal and Cal were held captive separately, and Cal feared for his life.
Rux, secretly a shapeshifting alien, disguised himself as the palace etiquette teacher to access Cal’s room. Learning of his ability, Cal devised a plan for him to shift into Castor and order the Supremacy fleets to abandon both Zertanih and Etrea. This would save Etrea from the current battle, make it look like Castor staged a coup, trigger a civil war among the royal family, and allow Cal and her crew to escape.
Together, Cal and Rux found Hamal, who said he received Cal’s message about being in love with him, and he loved her too. But the message was a mistake by a Supremacy staff member. Cal told Hamal she didn’t love him, and it broke his heart.
Once back on the Firebrand, the crew took off for Haffadilt to save Antares and Mr. Pancake, find Pollux, and stop the Supremacy once and for all.
