Chapter 19: Lorna

Sandra isn’t the only captive who has been piecing clues together and arriving at a plausible explanation for their abduction. Lorna is also drawing towards the conclusion that Dog Star Six is heading towards Valkyrie territory. She too has heard rumours of Valkyrie zoos, and of illegal human trafficking to stock them. Lorna never anticipated being a victim of such a vile trade, but the possibility of that being Dog Star Six’s destination, and their fate, is frighteningly real.

In Lorna’s case she has found more tangible evidence of Valkyrie involvement. Close examination of the control collars around each woman’s neck reveals tiny symbols that Seeta recognizes as being Valkyrie words ... or more precisely, the AI generated symbols used to represent Valkyrie words. No human has ever spoken with a Valkyrie face-to-face, nor seen any written message or document in the Valkyrie’s native script. Lorna deduces that the collars are of human construction, but the sophisticated monitoring and control features may well have alien origins. Having detected the symbols on the control collars, Lorna starts noticing the script on several other electronic devices on board Dog Star Six. The androids watching over them have a small panel on the back of their heads displaying a similar set of four symbols. Does this mean that Dog Star Six contains more alien components than are typically installed in human spacecraft? Lorna knows too little about spaceship construction and operation to be able to answer that question. While Seeta agrees that the symbols may be Valkyrie words, she doesn’t know their meaning.

Lorna turns her attention to the profiles of the dozen captives confined in this new area. All of the captured women on Dog Star Six are mentally and physically stronger than the average human female, reflecting their rebellious past and the harsh conditions they’ve been forced to endure. All are perfectly capable of self-preservation in the rugged environment of the outer sector worlds. It seems likely that their fortitude and strength was a precondition for their initial selection. A further connection is that each woman has previously been labelled as a troublemaker by one or more of the various government and corporate overlords of Earth and the planets of the core sectors. However, why the Valkyries would want such a group of misfits is still a mystery.

While gaining an insight into their possible destination is an achievement, Lorna worries about the consequences of her discovery. Humans are unable to survive in the poisonous atmosphere of Valkyrie worlds. Does that mean that the captives are doomed to spend the rest of their days in an artificial nitrogen-oxygen bubble; relying on imported supplies of water and food provided by their keepers? To Lorna, such a horrific outcome doesn’t make sense given the huge expense of transporting the women across the galaxy. Unfortunately, all the evidence Lorna has gathered so far points to that being their likely fate.

Like Sandra’s theory, there are flaws in Lorna’s deductions due to missing information. Unlike Sandra, Lorna has wrongly assumed the women on board Dog Star Six were simply chosen from the available stock of captives in the slave markets of the Thirteenth sector. She hasn’t realised that their selection and kidnapping was part of a wider scheme that has targeted a much larger number of women. In some respects Lorna and her fellow travellers are fortunate. The kidnapped women who failed to meet the final selection criteria are doomed to spend the rest of their lives in the brothels and sex dens of the Thirteenth sector, until disease or injury cuts their life short.