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Close to done with "Breach of Peace" (Book 1 of the Breach of Faith series) by Daniel Gibbs and Gary T. Stevens.
Contains a well armed cargo ship (The ISV Shadow Wolf, a Holden-Nagata Mark VII) with a motley crew assembled from a wide range of planets and backgrounds, including one non-human. The captain is ex military, formerly a religious man. Yeah, seems quite like Firefly, but in an interstellar milieu, with several alien species.
The League of Sol, headquartered on Earth and Mars, is flat out Communist, ever expanding to bring the "benefits" of "Society" to the galaxy. Gulags and reeducation camps? Check. "Justice" for "Traitors to Society" meted out by torture followed by slow hanging? That too.
They're at war with the Terran Coalition, an organization of systems that Do Not Want to be taken over by the League. Upcoming in Book 1 is supposed to be a declaration of peace between the League and Coalition. (As if that is really going to work.)
Some Fascist organizations in the Coalition (particularly on the planet of Lusitania) seem to be a bit *too friendly* towards the League, or are behaving pretty much just like how the League operates.
Then there are the independent worlds, some of which are owned and ruled in stereotypical 19th Century "company town" fashion, with particular attention given to the world of Hestia. The Hestians had a socialist revolution but got sold out by some of their own. Now some of the rebels who fled have been enticed back with an offer of amnesty - but are cozying up to the League, believing the lies of the League infiltrators.
Meanwhile, the League has been pirating independent trading ships, using new non-destructive disabling technology. The ships get taken and the crews sent to the camps. What are they doing with the ships? From the latest captured ship, one woman jumps out an airlock in a spacesuit rather than be caught by the League. She'd rather suffocate in space than be in the League's clutches again, for very good reason. She did something that *really hurt* the League several years before.
She becomes the center of several different groups attention, the League wants her, so do the Lusitanian Fascists, the secret organization she retired from offers rescue, the Trade and Culture Minister of Lusitania also wants to pick her brains, and the independents have convinced themselves her story of the League pirating ships is a lie and *she* is one of the pirates. Even some pirates are out to get her, assuming she killed a friend of theirs. (It was the hit man the League hired to capture her.)
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