She woke with a pounding headache throbbing in her temples. A cheerful female voice encouraged Serena to open her eyes; she almost wished she hadn't when she cracked them to peer warily around. The gamin face which swam into focus was as full of good spirits as the voice had been. Both were equally annoying. Serena took her eyes from the petite woman talking to her and gave her surroundings a thorough once-over.
Bright pink walls and diffused lighting gave the room a soft, feminine appeal. Serena hated it. She sat up on a long, thin bed. The only other furniture was an identical bed across the small square room. The woman who was enthusiastically trying to hold her attention sat on the other bed.
"Hi, I see you've finally rejoined the living. My name is Nicole."
Her eyes refused to focus properly. Feeling very unsure of her surroundings, Serena fixed the woman with a hostile, mute expression.
"Oh, I see, still got that godawful headache from that weird gun. And you're probably wondering where you are and how you got here and who I am and where is this room?" Nicole spread her arms to encompass their environment.
Serena held up her hand, hoping to slow the flow of words.
"I'm sorry, I always ramble on when I meet new people or when I'm in an unfamiliar situation," Nicole apologized.
Suspicious, she asked. "Where are we and what's going on here?"
The woman shrugged. "I don't know anymore than you do. I woke up probably an hour before you did."
"Do you have any idea where we are, or who kidnapped us?"
Nicole shook her head, a confused look on her face. "I guess it must have been those two fat men who shot me."
"Sure," Serena agreed as she examined the other woman. She seemed awfully composed for someone in her situation. Suddenly, Serena's fear of a seemingly uncontrollable predicament turned to anger. "What do you take me for, an idiot? Alright sister, who are you and who else is involved in this kidnapping?" Serena demanded as she grabbed the small woman's dress by the front.
"Well?" Serena's voice rose in volume with her frustration. She shook her to elicit an answer.
The frightened look on the other woman's face sapped all of Serena's anger as quickly as it had overcome her. She let go of Nicole and strode the few steps it took to reach the door. The woman watched her with a sad, knowing expression.
Serena couldn't find anything that resembled a doorknob and tried to pry her fingers between the crack of the door jam to no avail. She pounded on the barrier for a few seconds and yelled out her frustration, then finally kicked the door. Serena walked slowly back to the bed, plopped down, put her head between her hands, and rubbed her hands agitatedly through her hair.
"It's OK," Nicole said soothingly. "I was really upset when I realized there was no way out. I've tried that door lots of times. No dice. I just hate being cooped up," Nicole continued when she received no answer.
Serena looked thoughtfully at Nicole, the short space between them leaving Little room for misjudgment. She saw kindness in those deep brown eyes and something else, something she'd missed through her emotional outbursts. Nicole's lip trembled slightly and her eyes had a telltale shimmer of unshed tears. The much smaller woman sitting across from her was very frightened, but she had tried to be kind. Serena wondered briefly if the woman's chatter was a sort of defense against her fear or an attempt to distract her during her first shocked awareness.
Screeching static resounded abruptly through the small room, making them jump in startlement.
"What the devil was that?" Serena exclaimed as she looked around cautiously.
"It sounded like a very poor quality intercom system."
The scratching message cleared, so the words were clearly understood. A female voice told them to go to the doors, which would now open for them, and once in the hall, follow a red light. In a firm tone, the woman warned not to go anywhere but where the light directed, otherwise they would be punished.
It continued, "Look upon the bracelet on your left wrist. If you do anything other than what you are instructed, this ornament will send out an electric shock. It's only a mild shock, not enough to truly hurt you, but enough to convince you to follow directions."
Unexpectedly, the door slid back into the wall with noiseless ease. Serena went through first and glanced up and down a long metallic gray hall. Nicole's head bumped her arm, she moved aside. They saw doors all along the corridor opening silently and tall, attractive young women peering or walking cautiously outside the rooms. When a red beam appeared over their heads and started slowly down the hall, Serena became irritated when not one woman made a move.
She motioned to Nicole and strode briskly after the light; the others followed more slowly. Serena hated the unknown more than she feared a scary, known fact. So she continued to lead the Little expedition, which soon turned into a tide of nubile young females as they passed more doors and frightened women waiting at the entrances.
Serena knew her patience was at an end when a door up ahead opened and a hostile Olga jumped defensively into the corridor. Before Olga could open her mouth and start a confrontation, Serena stated, "I'm not the enemy, at least not this time."
"Who are all these women and why are they all following you?" Olga looked suspiciously at Serena.
"You all look like a bunch of old cows at feeding time." Olga sneered to the grouped girls behind the red-head.
"I don't have the patience to argue with you, Olga. We're all in the dark here as much as you."
"I'm going to find a way to escape. Anyone else coming?" Olga strode off angrily when she received no recruits.
Serena realized that she couldn't meekly accept her fate either. She glanced down at Nicole. She didn't really know her new friend well. Would she come along?
Nicole looked up in surprise when Serena raised her hand and yelled down the hall to Olga, "Wait up, I'm coming with you."
She paused and waited for Serena to catch up to her. "Better someone with guts than one of those limp wrists," Olga indicated her head back toward the cowering women.
"You can't blame them for being scared," Serena commented as they started down the seemingly endless gray corridor. They came across a door set within the wide expanse of wall. It opened automatically when they approached and they had just managed to peer inside, before they heard a voice boom near their heads. It was male this time.
"You were warned."
Serena gripped her braceleted arm as the promised electric shock zapped her nerve endings. She fell to her knees, nausea crawling for a purchase in her belly, as the pain continued to lance through her system. It seemed to last for hours, but she knew it couldn't have been more than a few seconds. Breathing heavily, she looked at Olga who was on her knees as well, sweat beading on her forehead.
"Do I look as bad as you feel?"
"Worse." Olga's lips were stiff, squeezing that one word out with difficulty. They both got slowly to their feet as if by mutual agreement.
"Did we see what we thought we saw?" Olga asked in disbelief as they walked back the way they'd come.
Serena nodded. "I think we can forget about our plans for escape." They stayed silent the rest of the short journey, each remembering the room they had abruptly entered. It was filled with odd flashing machinery and a mechanical humanoid, which turned at their entrance. It had been working knobs over a console and regarded them with flat red eyes for a few seconds before it turned back to its work, paying them as much attention as it would flies on a wall, Serena thought.
The young women grouped in the corridor immediately started in with anxious questions when the two tall women returned. For once, Nicole saw the discretion of silence as she saw their strained features. One pretty girl questioned nervously. "What's going to happen to us?" Serena shrugged and turned away from the panicky expression on her face. She realized that soon enough they would know more than they wished about their future.
Serena had been convinced by both her painful lesson with the bracelet and her blunder into the robot-inhabited room, that there was no simple explanation to their situation. But nothing in her life had prepared her for what followed.
All the women were guided by the red beam into the lounge area, where the truth about their kidnapping was unveiled. Their kidnappers weren't men at all, but strange piggy-looking aliens; pink-skinned with large ears. They were called Moyds, Pulack the captain and Rolan' his assistant, to be specific. And they weren't even the true abductors, but simply flesh merchants for the planet Volarn.
The women were shown an "interstellar transmission" from the King of Volarn; information that was shocking and unbelievable, and took many hours to fully sink in. They were being taken to Volarn as mates; "baby factories" in Serena's eyes. That's their problem, I want no part of it! It didn't matter that the Volarnians fertility problem was so severe, they had Little choice left.
The facts were, they had been abducted by aliens and traveled aboard a space ship. The journey took a month, one that seemed to drag on endlessly. Serena wondered how they'd all made it through, without somebody getting seriously hurt. She and Olga had many confrontations, but had not come to blows. Their mutual experience with the bracelets kept them at arm's length; the Moyd made it plain that any fighting would result in getting zapped again.
Serena didn't feel any real antagonism toward Olga anymore, but she had plenty for their kidnappers. She received the same impression from Olga, but felt the tall blonde woman snapped every once in a while simply out of boredom.
The games in the lounge became boring; the video library exhausted. Their true captors, the Volarnians, had supplied numerous tools for learning their language. Serena determined to learn the alien tongue, convinced that knowing as much as one could about your opponent could be useful.
She picked it up quickly, with the aide of the marvelous language and speech instruments. Her every mistake and mispronouncement was exaggerated and dissected, making it easier to correct. She could even carry on a decent conversation in the alien tongue. But, even she got tired of studying the Volarnian language.
Then there'd been the exhausting task of keeping Nicole out of trouble. If she wasn't teasing Olga, who easily rose to Nicole's verbal baiting, her intense interest in Dr. Melat, the ship's doctor, kept Serena's warning instinct on alert.
She worried about Nicole's crush on the blue-skinned alien doctor. The self-same doctor who had examined them all, making sure they were all healthy, and fertile. Nicole seemed fascinated with his pointy-eared similarity to Spock, her favorite alien character, and the fact that his personality reminded her of a doctor she'd worked for and loved in the past. Their mutual interests in medical treatments and technological instruments from both cultures, only fueled their relationship.
She'd just beaten Nicole at a game of checkers, when the irritating, static-filled intercom popped to life. Their boredom was at an end. Tomorrow they would land on Volarn. Animation seeped throughout the large room, which had often served as their respite from the tedious monotony. Pulack appeared and announced procedures for the landing. He talked at length about how they were to conduct themselves once off the ship.
"Like we're a bunch of uncouth barbarians," Nicole huffed.
"Perhaps we are to them," Serena said thoughtfully.
It couldn't have been more than two hours since Serena and the other women had been sequestered in the awe-inspiring bedrooms within the huge castle. Time for them to get refreshed from their long journey and dressed up for tonight's ceremonies. Her "hostess", the older woman assigned to oversee her care, was kind and under other circumstances Serena may have liked her.
Yet, it pleased her on some primitive level to shock the woman, Surad, by choosing a simple black dress from those offered. Perhaps black's not a favored color she thought. The woman handed her a matched set of accessories, consisting of necklace, earrings, bracelet and belt. Surad exclaimed over the value of the lais metal encrusted with red jewels set in dragon settings.
Serena could have cared less, getting costumed in the Volarian apparel mechanically. She admitted though, once examining herself in the full-length mirror, that she was pleased with the results. She looked and felt barbaric; a state, which somehow made her feel more ready to meet her kidnappers with confidence.
It seemed but a short time later, a knock on the door signaled the return of one of the male guards. His stern features didn't change a bit, but Serena could feel his curious sidelong glances as he urged her into the hall again.
Nicole almost skipped from across the hall when she spied Serena's entry into the corridor. She was taken with Nicole's changed appearance. Much different than the plain garments they'd been made to wear on the ship. She wore a dress of hunter green with jewelry of gold and brown intertwined metal. Interspersed every few inches in the metal were large amber cut stones. Nicole looked pagan.
"What do you think?" Nicole questioned anxiously as they moved down the hall in response to a guard's request, joining the gathering group of young women.
"You look beautiful Nicole, like a fairy about to escape to the depths of the forest," Serena laughed. "But I think the previous owner was a tad bigger than you."
"Tell me about it," Nicole giggled as she looked down. Whereas the other girls dresses hit their legs mid-thigh, Nicole's costume flirted with the top of her knees. Her saving grace was the slits on either side, which parted to show glimpses of her slim legs. "I guess I'm lucky these dresses are made in such a simple fashion. This one was easy to pin and tuck, otherwise it would have swallowed me up." Nicole plucked at the volume of material over her tiny waist.
"You look fabulous Serena." Nicole examined her tall companion. She glanced to their rear and then to the front several times. "You know, I think you're the only one wearing black though," Nicole noted.
"I know. I don't have to look around to see that. My hostess had a fit when I wanted to wear this," Serena indicated her dress.
"Hmm, who can tell about aliens?" Nicole dismissed the subject with a nonchalant shrug.
Serena was surprised Nicole's natural curiosity didn't lead her to further questions, something she'd experienced in-depth during their month long exposure as roommates. But, then she quickly realized the reason; the group of women had been halted by the guards in front of an immense open doorway.
She examined the basami, Volarn's version of a dragon, detailing the arched entrance. They were the same as the ones she wore on her jewelry, but larger, fiercer looking creatures. They snarled in frozen vicious grimaces, as if guarding the portal.
Someone was speaking Volarnian inside, but with the crush of bodies surrounding her, Serena couldn't make out the words. Several guards urged the girls forward. Prodded was more like it, Serena thought, for they all seemed hesitant to step through the doorway. She felt dry-mouthed herself and her heart seemed to be racing entirely too fast. Nicole squeezed her hand and then kept a light contact by touching their wrists together as they started forward. Serena was sure this was Nicole's way of bringing courage to her tiny frame but it gave her a calming sense of comfort also.
They entered a room large enough to hold several hundred people, and that was probably the size of the crowd Serena saw awaiting them. She saw a mixture of male and female Volarnians, but a large portion of the assemblage was made up of handsome men. The sights were too many to absorb all at once, but Serena tried, for it was like stepping back into the pageantry of the past. Her eyes widened in wonder.
All the males were huge and muscular, with their distinctive black locks brushing the tops of their massive shoulders, held back from broad foreheads by metal headbands. Their clothing ranged the full spectrum of colors, just as the dresses brought for the captives. Serena was glad to see that many of the males, as well as several female Volarnians, wore the same distinctive black material as herself.
The mens' costumes were similar to the simple lines of the womens' dresses, but appeared to be two separate pieces. The tightly fitting shirt was tucked into the kilt skirt, with both sides split to show off their muscular thighs. The males skirt's hit their brawny legs at mid thigh also and appeared to be made of a rougher suede.
The lovely females were only slightly shorter versions of the males, with more delicately proportioned features. They were as feminine as the males were overwhelming in their masculinity. Most of the womens' ebony hair was waist-length and intricately coiffed for the occasion. The few women Serena noticed who wore black outfits had hair that only reached to their shoulders; being dressed in similar fashion to the men gave them the appearance of being cut from the same mold. These women wore their hair as the men, straight, with a metal headband holding the heavy length back from their fine features.
As the guards organized the Earth women into a line stretching across the width of the room, Serena continued to observe her surroundings. All the women were heavily laden with jewelry. She noticed that some of the men wore necklaces, but all Volarnians, male and female, wore bracelets. Every one of the planet's inhabitants wore a bracelet on their right wrist and many also wore matching armbands, particularly the men.
The row of beautiful Earth women, in their elegant garb, was breathtaking. The only common note was the incongruous bracelet they still wore, a reminder of their passage here. Serena rubbed the ugly thing idly.
Her attention zoomed back abruptly to the throne room as her eyes found the alien who must be King Rhamus. Serena's breath was sucked in and she realized she had held it for several seconds when it came rushing out. He was the most handsome man, alien or human, she'd ever seen. The transmission aboard ship, when the king had welcomed the women and explained their upcoming role, certainly hadn't done him justice.
Her thoughts wandered further as she speculated that he probably has a gorgeous wife already. She squashed those thoughts as she realized how traitorous they seemed to herself.
As some pompous older Volarnian male began to pace back and forth in front of the captives giving some kind of speech, Serena examined her feelings. She felt disturbed at herself, but on closer examination, realized that this alien King represented the ideal man to her. It was as though someone had gone deep into her psyche and drawn out her idea of the perfect man and thrown him together here on Volarn. How ironic that an alien and not an Earthman drew such a reaction from her.
Serena knew that the physical aspect was only one part of the concept of the "ideal mate", but it wasn't just his looks. There was something undefinable about this man which drew her like a magnet. She was puzzled by her continued reaction to his presence and her breathlessness when gazing his direction. If her romantically inclined mother had been here, she would have told Serena that maybe, for the first time in her life, she had found a man who was capable of causing a "toe-tingling" reaction in her.
Rhamus was impressed by the Earth women as he slowly looked them over. He was disappointed there were no more tall ones than the handful he saw, but Pulack had warned him that the females were much smaller on Earth. And even though his instructions were for at least six kriegers tall females, he knew that getting a sufficient number of tall, healthy, attractive, fertile women wouldn't be an easy task. He couldn't help the feeling of excitement as he noticed the endless variety in the female's hair, eyes and even shadings in skin color.
Volarnian women were very beautiful, but natural selection in their ancestry had created a population of black-haired beauties with differing shades of their violet eyes only. Many Volarnians, including Hartoos his royal advisor, who was putting on quite a show right now for the assembled Volarnians, were opposed to changing the long established gene coding of their planet by mixing with the many varieties from Earth.
The King smiled wryly to himself. Hartoos, and all other opposition had finally shut up when faced with the reality of their situation. Only the race with an extra eye had come close in coloring to their own, and even Hartoos wasn't willing to change their gene pool that much to sustain the black hair, pale beige skin and violet eyes of the Volarnian race.
A full-figured blonde caught his eye. She was short by Volarnian standards but tall for an Earth woman. Rhamus continued his review of the women, stopping to examine the taller females longer. It was important for his people's genes to continue, and imperative that the royal line be propagated since there were only he and his sister Kasha left.
Rhamus smiled at the thought of his beloved sister. She was a member of the smaller warrior group made up of only women. He saw no hope of children coming from her loins to help sustain the throne anytime soon. Kasha had found no mate to her liking, so continued her dedication to warriorhood.
The old tradition of choosing the ruler of Volarn by a contest of strength and leadership was no longer utilized, but a King or Queen was still expected to be a wise ruler and strong adversary. He needed to pick from the largest and strongest females to ensure these traits; Rhamus couldn't allow small, weak children to be born for the throne. He just hoped the Tarthra choosing would cooperate.
Rhamus had the responsibility of seeing that the royal blood established by his ancestors over two thousand years before continued. It was not just a matter of manly pride or even royal continuance, in his mind it meant the salvation of their world as they knew it.
Hartoos' sudden appearance in front of him shook Rhamus out of his thoughts. He smiled in response to his councillor's words. Hartoos brought fresh enthusiasm to his speech, encouraged by the King's attentiveness. Rhamus again took up his pleasurable duty of previewing the women. A tall girl with long, black hair and skin of a lovely golden brown shade caught his attention for a brief time before he continued. He glanced at several more of the taller females and became a Little worried; they were all very attractive and, if not for the Tarthra, he would find himself in deep trouble.
Of course the "choosing" always worked, but it had never found a match for Rhamus in all his adult life. He hoped for the sake of the throne that he could find one. Then there was the concern put forth by Hartoos, that the "choosing" wouldn't work with an alien species. If it did work, but he still couldn't find a match with this group of females, he'd have to wait for the next shipment of captives. It frustrated him to think that his quest for a Tarthra match might still elude him. And, he wondered, what kind of female was right for him, if he had been unable to find a life-union among an entire race of Volarnian women?
