Books in the Star Kingdom series

What if being a hero was encoded in your genes? And nobody told you?Casmir Dabrowski would laugh if someone asked him that. After all, he had to build a robot to protect himself from bullies when he was in school. Fortunately, life is a little better these days. He's an accomplished robotics engineer, a respected professor, and he almost never gets picked on in the lunchroom. But he's positive heroics are for other people.Until robot assassins stride onto campus and try to kill him. Forced to flee the work he loves and the only home he's ever known, Casmir catches the first ship into space, where he hopes to buy time to figure out who wants him dead and why. If he can't, he'll never be able to return home.But he soon finds himself entangled with bounty hunters, mercenaries, and pirates, including the most feared criminal in the Star Kingdom: Captain Tenebris Rache. Rache could snap his spine with one cybernetically enhanced finger, but he may be the only person with the answer Casmir desperately needs:What in his genes is worth killing for?

All Casmir Dabrowski wants is to return to his normal life as a robotics professor on the solid ground and agreeable gravity of his home world. No sane person would want to cavort around in space, being chased by mercenaries, soldiers, and knights-not to mention the unidentified organization that's been sending robot assassins after him.But his best friend's mother is missing, an entire team of archaeologists is dead, and the greatest find in the Twelve Systems is hidden in a wreck entombed on a frozen moon.As the Kingdom Fleet, Tenebris Rache's nefarious mercenaries, and sinister strangers from another system descend on the ancient wreck, all wanting the secret in its hold, Casmir and his friends are caught in the middle of a battle for the future of humanity. They may be the only ones with the unique skills to decode the wreck's secrets, but will they survive long enough to do so?

Casmir Dabrowski is finally heading back to his home world, determined to gain an audience with the queen and convince her to tell him the secret of his genes. But the terrorists who have been sending robot assassins after him are still there-and still want him dead. As soon as he lands, the trouble starts. His best friend is whisked off by Royal Intelligence, his new ally walks him into a trap, and he learns the queen isn't in the city. But the king is.Casmir finds himself face to face with the man who has the power to wave a hand and have him and everyone he loves tortured, imprisoned, or even slain. King Jager isn't pleased with the role Casmir played in keeping Fleet warships from claiming an ancient technology for the Kingdom. If Casmir can't convince Jager that he's worth keeping around, he could lose everything and everyone he cares about.