The asteroid miners elect to continue working until they have an economic payload and then return to 'base', Mercantile Mining and Exploration, to whom they are contracted. Detecting life-signs in the lifepod, they bring it on board and open it, thus discovering the alien occupant, the Linyaari infant they name Acorna.Īt this stage, none of the Federated Sentient Planets population has had contact with alien races, so although we, the readers, know of the Linyaari and Khleevi, the humans in the novel do not. The lifepod is transported by the compression event to an asteroid belt which is being mined by Declan 'Gill' Giloglie the Third, Rafik Nadezda and Calum Baird in their ship, the Khedive. Otherwise, her dose of abaanye will keep her asleep until the air supply runs out and she asphyxiates. She will have a chance of rescue if the lifepod is not destroyed with her parents' spaceship and that of the attackers. They place their sedated youngling in a lifepod and eject it just before the defensive weapon triggers. Knowing that the Khleevii torture their captives, they decide to take a fatal dose of the soporific abaanye, setting a compression device, that will destroy their cruiser (and anything else in its proximity), when the Khleevii spaceship comes close. The little spaceship has nowhere else to run and the despairing parents take desperate measures. The story opens with Acorna's parents' spaceship being chased by the Khleevii, insect-like creatures who have preyed on the Linyaari race for some time.

But Acorna is not about to let that continue without a fight, and she vows to free every last child on the planet. The book chronicles their adventures together as they travel from system to system, planet to planet, eventually finding a planet that thrives on illegal child slavery.

Gill, Rafik, and Calum, who are determined to protect their beloved Acorna at all cost, are forced to flee all over the galaxy to avoid her pursuers. However, her unique looks and special powers make her an object of desire by many, be it for scientific studies or a rare-item collection, or sex. Furthermore, she is extraordinarily smart, picking up everything quickly. While she is growing up, the miners discover that their 'daughter' has magical powers such as the ability to clean air and water, heal the sick, and detect the slightest scent.

Raised by the three unlikely foster fathers, Acorna, a unicorn girl, matures almost to adulthood within three years. Plot summary Synopsis Īcorna is found in an unusual escape pod by three galactic miners, Gill, Rafik, and Calum. McCaffrey and Ball wrote the sequel Acorna's Quest after which McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough extended the series almost annually from 1999 to 2007. It was the first published in the Acorna Universe series. Acorna: The Unicorn Girl (1997) is a science fantasy novel by American writers Anne McCaffrey and Margaret Ball.

Acorna series in order