ANNE MCCAFFREY

Sassinak was 12 when the raiders came. Old enough to be used, young enough to be broken - or so they thought. But they reckoned without the girl's will forged into a steely resolve to revenge herself on the pirates who had killed her parents and friends.

The penal planet Botany had fought a grim and dangerous war to free itself from their Eosi overlords. Now the Eosi were gone, and both Botany and Earth were free again - free, but in serious trouble without their communications satellites and ravaged by disease, hunger and the debris of war.