Before:

     Niki came to, but she kept her eyes shut.

     She had no idea where she was.

     The last she remembered, she was being lifted by a transport beam, against her will, into a dilapidated warship.

     And now?

     Was she alone? 

     No. No, she was not.

     She heard grunts and mutterings all around her in languages she didn't understand.

     Fuck.

     No one needed to know she'd regained consciousness quite yet, not until she collected herself a little, accessed her situation.

     Could she move? That was her next question to herself. Was she restrained in some manner? Did she even need to move right then? Could she just lie there until...

     "BLOKARIKALITAT!"

     Someone or something with a deep, baritone voice shouted this right at her head.

     Niki made no response. Maybe that bellow had nothing to do with her.  It was possible that...

     A foot kicked her in the stomach to send her tumbling, and that did it.

     No more pretending to be unconscious.

     Niki rolled to her feet as she opened her eyes, ready to attack in order to defend herself. 

     And where she found herself, fuck, was in a locked cell...

     and not alone.

     Niki saw that it was a huge cell, say half the size of a basketball court.

     Niki counted, maybe, half a dozen "others" in the cell with her. No humans. Only one being looked smaller than Niki, and it was a purple, scaly thing with both tentacles and arms.

     Several in the cell babbled at Niki in their native tongue.

     She understood not a word of what any of them said.

     One thing, though. A couple of them seemed to be staring at her, leering at her.

     Niki looked down at herself for the first time.

     Oh.

     She was naked.

     Oh.

     Laser whip and laser knife, gone.

     Just about everyone in the cell wore glowing, yellow robes.

     Niki saw the table, then.

     At the other end of the cell, Niki saw a table built into the wall.

     On the table, a stack of yellow gowns.

     Niki also saw food.

     Food.

     Meat, both raw and prepared. Vegetables. Bread. 

     Food.

     Niki didn't realize how hungry she felt until she got a look at that food.

    So hungry, it made her faint to even look at it.

     Niki started for it.

     A hand stopped her, a hand that belonged to a man four times Niki's size. He had to squat to fit inside the cell.

     A man with tusks. 

     He told her with his eyes and body language that, to get to her clothes and the food, she would first have to fight her way past him.

     Niki looked at the others in the cell.

     The look in their eyes was the same as in the giant's.

     They'd formed a gauntlet.

     To dress and eat, she'd have to fight her way past all of them.

     Niki heard whimpering and peeps of suppressed pain from behind her. She glanced in a corner to see the broken bodies and corpses of those who'd already tried to beat the gauntlet and failed.

     Why can't anything ever be easy? Niki thought.

     She advanced.

     She figured, I can't live without food, and they're not going to just let me get to it, so I may as well take the first swing. 

CONTINUE