Chapter 1: Lorna CB351286: Departure

“You are required to eat,” says android DGS63. “Failure to keep yourself healthy will result in severe punishment.”

Its words are addressed to several of the other women, but they make Lorna sit up with a jolt. It’s a firm reminder of her ... their ... predicament. Lorna is locked in the hold of a converted space freighter, Dog Star Six, with fifteen other young women. Lorna looks towards Caitlin, who simply murmurs ‘what did the stupid fools expect’. The hunger strike orchestrated by Tamarah ends as quickly as it began. A sharp pulse through the control collars of the offenders soon brought them into line.

Two months ago, Lorna’s life had been very different, although not necessarily better. Her rebellion against the corrupt corporate system had been effectively stopped two years earlier by an increase in the already long hours she had to work in the factory. Despite regular rumours of barbarian raids and tales of plundering and kidnapping, Lorna’s crippling workload didn’t give her time to worry about events farther afield. Besides, she always thought Cerberus was safe from attack. Deep inside the Tenth sector, Cerberus is a long way from the more lucrative targets preferred by barbarian raiders. Cerberus’s corporate overlords told the settlers that the sector’s sentry drones would repel any attack. They didn’t. That false sense of security was shared by everyone living on Cerberus and its neighbouring worlds. It’s an error for which many hapless Tenth sector settlers have now paid for with their lives. Perhaps they shouldn’t have so readily dismissed the rumours.

Like all citizens of corporate controlled worlds, Lorna’s family name was replaced with a serial number when she arrived on Cerberus. That was eight years ago, when Lorna was just fourteen. The ‘CB’ prefix in Lorna’s serial number identifies her new home planet, and the digits correspond to her assigned Cerberus citizenship number. Only those living on Earth, or one of the ‘core’ worlds of the inner sectors, are allowed to retain their hereditary family names.

Until recently, the periodic barbarian raids into the Tenth sector were confined to the sparsely populated mining asteroids on the fringe, well away from where Lorna lived. The raiders had never previously attacked settlements as large as Andromeda or Cerberus. Although Caitlin lived on a neighbouring planet to Lorna, they had both grown up listening to cautionary tales of barbarian raiders’ lust for loot and slaves. Lurid tales of ruthlessness and brutality. The stories both scared and excited them. After all, they were just stories. Stories their parents told them when they were younger to make them behave.

Lorna could easily have been mown down next to her murdered family and friends. However, the raiders obviously thought a pretty twenty-two year old woman was worth ravishing first. Lorna was dragged into the building the raiders used as a barracks for the four day duration of their raid. A control collar was placed around Lorna’s neck, making escape impossible and any resistance on her part painful, but conversely rewarding compliance by injecting aphrodisiac drugs through the tiny needles in the collar. The effect of the aphrodisiac drugs made the brutal experience tolerable at the time, but sickened and terrified Lorna once the effect of the drugs wore off. During her ordeal, Lorna was joined by other male and female captives, and they were passed between raiders of both genders like whores. All three of Lorna’s holes were well used during the four day ordeal, and her clothes reduced to pitiful rags. Lorna acquired more bruises and welts than she cared to count.