Sci-fi series about a ship's captain who gets put on a ship of misfits and has to rescue a female scientist kidnapped by ice pirates

Question

What I think I remember, and this is over 3 to 6 books, starts with a soldier, I believe he's a ship's captain of some sort, gets in trouble, gets sent to a ship of misfits with a female captain, that keeps everyone in line with an iron fist, and I think planted explosive charges.

I think the 2 captains become "cozy". There's a part where they find and sort of rescue a female scientist that's alone on her research ship. Think she found something crazy that makes people more powerful, something broke free on the ship, and killed everyone. I think the scientist gets kidnapped by ice pirates, with an "ice queen" that runs the entire crew of pirates in the galaxy.

Their home base is on a planet or asteroid, where they've built and congregated on top of a super tall plateau, where if you look over the edge, it disappears into mist, with the bottom being a complete mystery. They keep the female scientist locked up working on the "secret sauce", and they either keep her, or another part of her crew, in a nook in the side of the cliff on this plateau. Whoever it is they keep there, they barely have room to stay securely in the hole, and it's too cold to do anything, but sit and shiver.

In the last scene I remember, the main character has to battle the ice queen on the top of the plateau, while her crew, and the ice queen's minions watch.

That's the biggest stuff I can remember. I really thought it might be M.R. Forbes Queen of the Damned books, but I couldn't find any signs of the stuff I just mentioned.

I listed to it on audio within the last 5 or 6 years, and I don't think it was NEW, but it definitely wasn't that old. It definitely would have been available either on YouTube, or audible. I'm leaning towards YouTube, since I've tried damn near every book in my library on audible, with no joy.

Answer 1

The Fallen Empire series (2016) by Lindsay Buroker is not a perfect match, but it does have a lot of similar details, though perhaps in not the same order. It fits your timeframe and it is also available on Audible. There are 9 books (plus some short stories) in the series, so since I've only skimmed the first couple books it's possible that some of the things you recall are in later books.

Things that match:

• Captain Alisa Marchenko (ex-Alliance) is in command of her own ship, the Star Nomad.
• She has a makeshift crew that's the best she could find, though they have their issues (e.g. Beck is fleeing the space-mafia).
• Colonel Leonidas is a cyborg super-soldier who fought for the Imperial side in the late war.
• They make a run to retrieve a scientist from a secret research station in an asteroid belt, and find the station full of corpses, killed by some predators who were loosed aboard.
• They are imprisoned in a Starseer station made of ice, ruled by an elderly woman.
• They fight, evade, are captured by, and escape space-pirates.

Things that don't match the books I scanned:

• Beck has a "secret sauce" he makes, but he uses it to marinate meat.
• There is no person-to-person battle atop a plateau, though there is a ship-to-ship battle with a space-mafia ("White Dragon") ship in the cliffs and canyons alongside one. In this battle they do cram the ship onto a ledge on the side of the plateau that's barely large enough for it.
• The kidnapped person they are looking for is Captain Marchenko's daughter Jelena, not a scientist.

Most of these details are from the first book Star Nomad, but the Starseers mostly show up in books 2 and 3.

Answer 2

Was it Ice Pirates? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ice_Pirates

The female is not a Captain though