Book One of The Ammonite Galaxy series:

Six has survived ten of his fourteen years as an outcast in subzero temperatures - being drugged and shipped off to another planet as an unwilling apprentice is not going to make him a victim.

Neither is his travelling companion, who makes it clear she isn't keen on sharing space with a no-name like him. No wonder she's on the apprentice program - Six is amazed her aristocratic family managed to put up with her for so long.

Their destination is Valhai - a planet in orbit around a red dwarf star - where they are to spend so much time in a strange solitary confinement that even the sight of each other might be welcome.

Nobody on Valhai seems to know or care what happens to the apprentices - until one hesitant girl with an uncertain future of her own stumbles across the real nature of the donor program—

—And the biggest surprise on Valhai, which has been lying dormant for thousands of years, wakes up ...