She sat up and looked more carefully around the room. She recognized six of the other seven women in the room. Mulasi stood head and shoulders above the rest of the women in the room as she did above all the crew. Her muscular naked body glistened in the dim light. Blond hair was an easy identifier. Herana, an Attack Craft pilot was the only blonde among the entire Marauder crew. For similar reasons, Bethu’s dark skin and Muari’s green skin immediately identified them. Barney, actually Bernadine, was easy to identify by her almost lack of tits and her masculine body with no ass. Boobs, on the other hand, was easy to remember because of her enormous chest. No one knew her real name. Even her official service records referred to her as Boobs… Boobs Beauchamp.
Mousey thought the seventh woman was possibly new to the Marauder. “Who are you?” she asked, pointing at the only totally “normal” woman in the cell.
“I’m Ensign Kolly,” she answered, “Kalina Kolly.”
“Tell me, Kalina,” Mousey said, dragging her chain over to be close to the Ensign. “Why did they choose you?”
“What do you mean?” Kalina sputtered.
“Look around you,” Mousey answered heatedly. “All of us are non-standard. We stand out. But you are 100% in compliance with the GGW Genetic Peace Compliance Act. Why did they choose you?”
Kalina looked down at the floor and said softly, “He was looking for Coleen.”
“The Ghost,” Bethu said. “She’s different. She’s so white she damn near glows in the dark.”
“She can’t help it she’s an albino,” Muari said sharply. Then she added softly, “… anymore than I can help it that my skin is green.”
“Or anymore than I can help it that I’m a nymphomaniac,” Kalina said even more softly.
The other seven women were now staring at her.
“I knew why they were taking us,” she said. “And I knew that it wouldn’t be as bad for me. I love sex… any kind of sex… even violent or unwilling sex.” She shrugged her shoulders and added, “And why else would space pirates abduct female crew members?”
“Because they wanted the sniffers!!” Mousey said sharply. “And sniffers just happen to all be female.” Her voice rose in pitch and volume as she practically shouted, “You’re not a sniffer! The rest of us are… and Coleen was too. Somehow they could tell who the sniffers are and yet they chose you. WHY did they choose you?”
“They sniffed me,” Kalina said weakly. “He got right up in my face and sniffed really hard.”
“Then they should have known that you weren’t a sniffer,” said Mulasi flatly. Her deep voice reverberated slightly in the metal room. “Up close, a Tookee can smell a sniffer, just like we can smell them… or each other.”
“Coleen was hiding under the bed,” Kalina continued. “I pushed her under there and told her to stay quiet. We had been… making love. She loves it when I eat her lily-white pussy. … And I love it when she squirts as she comes.”
Barney started laughing. “The room was full of her pheromones,” she said as she laughed, “and you had Coleen’s love juices all over your face,” She paused and then said, almost angrily,“You smelled like a sniffer.”
“Nothing we can do about that now,” Mousey said flatly. “Hopefully they won’t realize their mistake.”
“What happens then?” Kalina asked anxiously.
“At best they put you back and get Coleen,” Boobs said quickly.
“And at worst?” Kalina said. Her face now clearly showed her fear.
“They fuck you to death,” Bethu said almost angrily.
“Well,” Kalina said with a nervous laugh, “there are a lot worse ways to go.”
The other seven women were still laughing when the door clanged loudly and two guards stepped into the room. One guard was huge. The other was probably more average size for a Tookee. Whoever the Tookees were, they had been outsiders in the galaxy long enough that there were natural variations in their genetics.
There was an even smaller Tookee in a long gray coat standing with them. His coat and the infoboard he was carrying made him look very much like one of the lab techs on the Marauder. The large Tookee, however, called him “Mufah,” which was an old word for a religious person like a priest. “So Mufah Manu,” the large Tookee said angrily, “what went wrong?”
“I don’t know what went wrong,” the little Tookee answered nervously in a high-pitched voice. “We will just have to repeat everything before they go stale… or whatever it is that happens.”
The larger man glared at him and then the women before saying gruffly, “Come with us!”
Mousey pointed at the chains locking them to the floor and said, “How?”
The large guard glowered at the smaller guard and he hurried over and placed a cylindrical object against the fetters on Mousey’s leg. The band of iron immediately opened. He quickly repeated his actions with each of the other girls.
“Come with us,” the larger guard repeated loudly. The eight naked women fell in line behind him. The smaller guard and the Mufah followed behind them. They walked through a series of small corridors until they came to a large, domed chamber. The floor was a glossy black substance that looked almost like glass but was more likely a highly-polished stone of some sort. Etched deeply into the stone was an eight-pointed star with lines that ran from each point of the star to the middle. Where the lines met in the middle of the star a round cylinder that seemed to be made of the same material as the floor rose up at least thirty meters into the air, almost to the top of the dome. It was also highly polished and came to a blunt point at the top like a pencil that needed sharpening. It looked like there was something carved into the blunt point, but from the floor it wasn’t possible to see what it was. Just below where the stone pillar began to taper there were eight, wide bands etched into the polished stone. The lines from the points of the star each went up the column and terminated at the lowest of the wide bands. Much finer lines connected the bands together and then went on up the taper to the very tip.
“Get on the receivers,” the Mufah ordered in a very weak voice. When no one moved, he added, “… please,” and gestured toward eight, large, oblong rectangles of stone which were positioned so that they were touching each of the points of the star. Mousey recognized the rectangles as the strange tables from before.
Only the top surface of the stone was polished. The rest was left rough. Along each of the sides of the stone block, a number of steel or iron eyebolts had been embedded. They looked old and rusted, but as Mousey had seen with the leg irons, looks can be deceiving.
“Face up or face down?” Kalina asked hesitantly.
“Just get up there!” the guard yelled. Then he added in a more normal tone… for him. “We’ll put you where we want you.”
The eight naked girls clambered up onto the top of the stones. Some sat on the edge of the stone. Some stood. Mousey lay on her back. Perhaps it was the way she was lying on the cold stone, but she couldn’t help but feel that she had just climbed onto a sacrificial altar… and she was the intended sacrifice.