story identification - Trying to find a book about kids with 'sunguns' revolting against alien overlords

I'm trying to identify a book (or possibly a series, as I seem to recall reading a sequel which still left the story unfinished).

I read the book or books in the early 90's and had picked them up from a jumble sale at school, so they were probably published in the 80's or possibly 70's. I guess you would class them as YA fiction, though that wasn't really such a thing back then...

As I recall the story began with a slave transport craft crash landing on an alien world, with only a handful of teenage and pre-teen humans surviving. They scraped together what they could, including a couple of functional 'sunguns' (basically, laser rifles) and began a low level guerilla rebellion against the alien race that were using humanity as slave labour on the planet.

I've googled 'sungun' repeatedly, thinking that this should be the best way of finding the story but the references that come up are all for other stories or conspiracy technologies.

Anyone got any vague recollections of a book or series like this?

Answer

Gonna go with Exiles of Colsec by Douglas Hill. The summary reads:

When a space craft carrying twelve youthful offenders, who have in someway rebelled against the Earth's harshly authoritarian society, crash lands on an alien planet, the six survivors must contend with the planet's hostile life forms.

See here for multiple mentions of sun-guns.

The book is part of The Colsec Trilogy, there's a plot summary of the books here.

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