Part V, Act II: In the Arena
Julian sat on the edge of the bench nearest the door, trying to restrain the urge to fidget even though his whole body was thrumming with tension. The others were watching him as they all waited for the Jem'Hadar to come for him. Only Tain was absent, already secreted away inside the wall so that not even a second should be wasted once the Vorta left his office. Parvok was standing in the corner by the door, hands clasped behind his back as he rocked nervously on the balls of his feet. Kalenna was perched on the side rail of her cot, hands folded over her knees. If not for the rigidity of her spine and the whiteness of her knuckles, she might have passed for calm. And Martok stood at Julian's left shoulder, towering over him like a glowering sentinel.
It had been an intolerably long thirty-four hours — closer to thirty-three, Julian supposed, since yesterday's match and ringside triage had ended with Ikat'ika's pronouncement. Once the plan had been laid out, there hadn't been much more to discuss, and the inhabitants of Barracks 6 had settled in for a long and featureless afternoon. It had been an ordeal of forbearance, Julian first sitting huddled on his uncomfortable cot with his blanket bundled around his shivering body, waiting for the perspiration to evaporate from his undergarments and watching as Enabran Tain began to slowly succumb to the painful torpor that all the rest of his compatriots were suffering in the cold. At first he seemed to grow solemn, then drowsy. Finally, he was slumped against the wall with his knees spraddled over the lip of the bunk, eyes closed to slits as he sawed in slow, laborious breaths.
Eventually, Julian could not bear to watch it any longer. He had unfolded his curled limbs and crossed the room, and he had suggested none too subtly that perhaps there was some preparatory work to be done inside the wall, just to be sure everything was neat and orderly for the next day's urgent task. Tain had glared at him suspiciously, but he'd dragged himself up off the cot and crawled with almost glacial slowness into his workspace. It was hardly comfortable in there, but it was warm.
After that, Julian had been reluctant to settle back into lethargy and dread. So he'd taken himself through every physical therapy routine and manoeuvre he could think of, testing the limits and the endurance of his right knee. He had then carried out as much of his racquetball warm-up regiment as he could, given the limitations of the space and the fact that by then, his healing joint was beginning to ache wearily. Finally he had to give up on pursing some illusion of physical readiness, and he lay down instead, bundled once more in his blanket, and tried to take his mind away.
He had learned a few meditation strategies from Major Kira, whose daily contemplative routine was a part of her Bajoran spirituality. But Julian had never had much luck in emptying his mind of thought: rapid, complex, almost manic distraction was more his approach to managing emotional upheaval and psychological distress. He was starting to realize how destructive that habit might prove in this place, and so he had tried, genuinely tried, to think of nothing at all.
He remembered the Altonian brain teaser that Jadzia had introduced him to during their first weeks serving together on Deep Space Nine: an ephemeral sphere of swirling colour that was attuned to the player's theta waves. With complete clarity of thought and perfect focus, it was supposed to be possible to transform the orb into a single colour. Jadzia was able to achieve a shimmering soap-bubble sunset of iridescent blues and purples and magentas. But when she had turned control of the sphere over to Julian, it had muddied into a maelstrom of violent, bright hues before bursting in under a second. She had smiled and squeezed his shoulders, amused and playfully teasing: I think your mind is still a little busy, Julian. And she'd been right, of course. But even afterwards, returning time and again to the holosuite to tackle the unusual puzzle, Julian had been unable to even mimic Jadzia's peaceful eddies. Eventually he learned how to maintain the structural integrity of the sphere, but for all his unnatural abilities, he had never conquered the puzzle: he could focus with laser precision, but he could never clear the rest of his mind.
It was no easier in a cold, barren room than in the quiet comfort of one of Quark's holosuites. Julian had lain there for hours in a turmoil of dread, wild imaginings, meticulously catalogued worst-case scenarios and woefully inadequate attempts at academic distraction. It had been a relief when at last Tain had knocked to be let out of the wall, once more warmed back to his usual falsely cheerful self. By then, it was finally close enough to curfew that Julian could justify trudging down to the waste reclamation room at the end of the pod to carry out what was fast becoming his meagre and woefully inadequate evening routine.
Even with all he had to fret over, Julian couldn't help but fixate on all the things he wanted to be doing, but could not. Peeling off his uniform, no longer crisp and fresh, and the undergarments beneath, which were definitely starting to smell. Stepping into the sultry warmth of the Cardassian steam bath in his quarters, an extravagant luxury on a space station, especially one no longer in orbit around a resource-rich planet, but something the previous administration had apparently considered essential in command officer accomodations. He had a sonic shower, too, installed after Starfleet had taken control of the station for officers accustomed to the efficiency and rapidity of the units. It lacked the delicious sensual decadence of the Cardassian apparatus, but Julian would have gladly availed himself of it now. A low-pitched sonic shower was a pleasant way to unwind at the end of a hard day, and in his present state of oily grunginess, it would have been such a piteous relief to be clean again, whatever the means.
He longed to wash his face with soap and hot water, and the yearning for a shave was almost too much to endure. Julian's neck and jaw itched, and the scruff of dark stubble crackled against his cheeks whenever they brushed against anything: his shoulder, his lumpy little pillow, his palms. As for his teeth, now perpetually sticky and furred with residue, he could not even bear to imagine what it might be like to run his tongue over smooth, clean enamel again. It made him feel sick and savage.
And so he had done the only thing he could: he relieved himself in a room crowded with other men needing to do the same, waited his turn for the small alcove in the wall, and sanitized his hands in the most cursory and unsatisfying way possible. That was all that was allowed to him, and he had returned to Barracks 6 feeling abased, filthy, and utterly spent.
He had slept deeply, not even waking to the blast of the klaxon at curfew. Julian knew he owed that to pure exhaustion, rather than any peace of mind, but he was grateful for the reprieve nonetheless. If he had passed another sleepless night, he knew he wouldn't have had a hope of facing the arena with unimpaired reflexes and a clear head. He was going to need both.
The count that morning had been tedious, but it was remarkable how bearable it seemed when Julian was merely ravenous, not famine-stricken. He was in no danger at all of fainting, and when Deyos — after only four false starts — worked his way around to the head of the second line, Julian was prepared for what he had to do. It was a task requiring a delicate touch: just enough insolence to be irresistible, but not enough to earn himself a beating where he stood.
Fortunately, as he had anticipated, the Vorta had proved incapable of passing up the opportunity to gloat. "Well, now, Doctor," he taunted as he stopped in front of Julian. "I understand you're going to be amusing the Jem'Hadar this afternoon. I do want to thank you for your consideration. It gets rather dull for them, stationed so far away from the action, you know."
The urge to bite back with a blistering retort was almost overpowering. Julian had wanted to point out that if the guards were bored, they ought to have greater consideration for the prisoners, who were practically numb with the monotony of the days. Instead, he had said; "I do hope you'll stop by. I'd hate for you to miss my debut performance."
"Oh, I wouldn't miss it for the entire Alpha Quadrant," Deyos had said with relish, before restarting the count again.
And now there was nothing to do but wait. Julian's insipid and inadequate meal sat like a stone in his stomach. With his nerves in this state, it had been a miracle he'd managed to force it down at all. Only determination and increasingly chronic hunger had enabled him to do so. And then there had been nothing to do but retreat to the barracks and wait.
The door shrieked open, and he jumped at the sharp report. Kalenna snapped to her feet, alert and almost regal in her determination to hide the fear that had been gnawing at her since yesterday. Julian fought to rein in his own galloping pulse as First Ikat'ika strode into the barracks with his escort of two soldiers with their plasma rifles at the ready. He looked down at the seated human, his eyes cold and stern.
"It is time," he decreed.
Julian rose with measured dignity. He had spent every waking moment over the last long Dominion day dreading this, and planning for it, and propping up his courage with perpetual reminders of the necessity of what he was about to do. He let none of that anxiety show as he smoothed the front of his rumpled uniform and squared his shoulders and stepped forward. Martok moved to follow him, and the First cast him a frigidly quizzical look.
"I'm coming with him," Martok said. "Today, I am his sword-bearer."
My second, Julian thought, remembering tales of high adventure out of Earth's romantic literature. A man entering into a trial of single combat always had a second: a friend who went with him to clean his pistols and count off his paces, and to ensure the customs and rituals of the conflict were properly observed by the other side. There was one more responsibility a second bore, too: he took charge of the body if his champion fell on the field.
"It is unlike you to accept the passive role, Klingon," said Ikat'ika. He was almost sneering. "If you wish to take his place, that can be arranged."
Julian's heart stopped for an awful moment. Everything relied upon today's match drawing the Vorta's interest and dragging on for as long as possible. Martok could do neither of those things, but his pride might not allow him to rebuff the First's suggestion.
The one hard eye focused on the man who had taken the other one. "Whatever you wish," Martok growled. "I am the equal of any Jem'Hadar on in this compound. Even you."
Ikat'ika did not respond with amused scorn, as Deyos would have. But his eye raked down Martok's injured arm, which was out of its makeshift sling but tucked guardedly against his ribs. The First shook his head decisively. "Not today," he said. "The men have been looking forward to testing their mettle against a Starfleet officer, and I will not deny them."
He stood aside, then, and motioned imperiously for Julian to lead the way. It wasn't a gesture of courtesy or respect. It was meant to remind him of his place: he had to go where he was commanded, and he did not have the right to refuse to turn his back to his enemies. He felt the intended shudder of powerlessness, but he did not let it show.
He strode from the barracks, head held high, meeting Kalenna's eyes briefly as he went. He wanted to wink at her reassuringly, but the guards were watching. There was a chance such a gesture might be seen as merely impudent or arrogant, but the slender possibility that it might have been taken as suspicious was too great a risk. Julian offered her a tiny nod instead: an obvious indication of mutual respect and perhaps farewell. She returned it with an air of sober courtesy, ostensibly unaffected. But in his periphery as he walked on, Julian saw that her hands were balled into tight fists at her sides.
The Jem'Hadar were gathered around the ring. They would not have deigned to make way for a prisoner, but they had casually left a clear path between the barracks pod and the ring. Julian followed it, walking the gauntlet of flinty eyes hungry for his downfall. Focused intently on putting one foot in front of the other and in keeping a firm grasp on his courage, Julian did not take notice of the faces on the far side of the crescent until he stopped just short of the lighted lip. Across the arena, watching him with his broad head tilted to one side and a saccharine smile playing on his pale lips, stood Deyos.
It was what he needed, of course. The Vorta's presence out here was the one thing that would give this ordeal any meaning at all. But still, the pure, poisonous pleasure in Deyos's impossibly pale eyes chilled Julian to the marrow and made his buccal tissue shrivel, desiccated with dread. The Vorta was positively jubilant. Schadenfreude, Julian thought icily. He wondered what the Dominionese word might be for revelling in the suffering of another. He didn't doubt there was one.
Martok was no longer at his shoulder: he had been nudged off to the side, and now stood a metre and a half to Julian's left. One of the Jem'Hadar tried to yank him back behind the front line of spectators. The scaly grey hand closed on Martok's left humerus, just above the outraged joint, but the Klingon warrior gave no sign of his pain. He merely flung the Jem'Hadar off with a broad roll of the shoulder and widened his stance belligerently.
A plasma rifle dug into Julian's back, in the tender hollow of his right shoulder-blade. He was shoved forward violently, and had to choose between taking a step or losing his balance. Awkwardly he hopped over the row of capped lights and into the arena. He took another unsteady step, wanting to get out of prodding range, and then exerted all the control he had over his limbs to square off and stand straight. Stand proud, he told himself, trying to believe he was commanding, not begging. You're a Starfleet officer. They can't make you flinch.
They could, though, and when two heavy boots struck the ground immediately behind him, they almost did. Julian was still resisting the instinctive twitch of his rigid musculature when First Ikat'ika rounded him, prowling predaciously.
"Today, we face a fresh opponent," he announced. Julian realized too late that his brain hadn't made an automatic tally of the gathered crowd. There were seventeen Jem'Hadar in his line of sight, but he did not dare to look around to count how many stood behind him. Turning his head and shoulders, or worse, his whole body, would make him look dazed and vulnerable. Neither his pride nor the strategy he had chosen would allow for that.
"Observe the human," said Ikat'ika, treading a purposeful circle around Julian. He was looking him up and down like a laboratory specimen, and for an instant Julian's fear and determination were overcome by crawling mortification. Freak. Freak. Freak. "He has no cranial crest or armoured ridges. No spinal reinforcement. No secondary rib cage. No exoskeleton. Humans are a biologically inferior species. But do not confuse physical frailty with harmlessness. In the past, humans have proved devious and far more dangerous than their appearance suggests."
It was almost worth the humiliation of standing like a bug under a microscope to hear those words. Julian felt his pride returning. He supposed at least some of the stories circulating along the Dominion grapevine involved his own crew. Captain Sisko, especially, was notorious among the Vorta.
"Observe, analyze and remember," the First instructed. "What we learn here today will serve all Jem'Hadar in combat against his people. His weaknesses are their weaknesses. His strengths are their strengths. His defeat will ultimately be their defeat."
He was probably right about the first and the third part, Julian allowed. He didn't want to think too hard about the second. Nor did he have time to.
"Verat'elar! Come forward," Ikat'ika barked. A Jem'Hadar stepped boldly into the ring, bristling for battle. Julian recognized him as the one who had carried General Martok's gear after the Klingon was released from solitary. He was stretching his neck and flexing his fingers as he came.
Julian moved at last. He was no longer being used as an object lesson in the vulnerabilities of the human body. In another moment or two, he would be embroiled in the fight. He shifted to the side, settling into a loose-kneed stance as he approached the post nearest Martok. The Klingon beckoned to him, and Julian moved nearer, careful not to turn his back on the Jem'Hadar.
"Remember that you must touch the post every time you are thrown to the ground," Martok muttered. Surely he knew that Julian had witnessed enough of these matches to understand the rules, but in this moment, with so many listening ears, it was the only reassurance he could offer. "If you do not, you will forfeit the match."
Julian nodded. He stole a hurried glance back over the General's shoulder. Major Kalenna stood at the very edge of the atrium, right at the mouth of the corridor leading to the barracks. She was positioned where she could watch the match from a safe distance, while keeping her eye on the window behind which Parvok stood guard. When she left that post to join Martok ringside, Julian would know that Tain's work was done, and that the distraction was no longer needed. That was as far as their formal plan went. What happened next would be up to Julian.
One-third of the way around the ring to Julian's left, Verat'elar slapped his post. The electronic gong sounded, and the Jem'Hadar began to advance. Julian hurriedly smacked his own, and took a sliding step to the right and back, following the curve of the ring away from his advancing opponent. He shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet, ready to spring. The guard was crouched low, in a far more aggressive stance. His hands were upheld, claw-like and grasping. Julian watched him as the gazelle watches the lion, leading him in a slow counterclockwise rotation of the ring. Neither of them wanted to be the first one to lunge, knowing the other would take advantage as soon as they did. Julian had edge over Verat'elar in one respect: he knew what the Jem'Hadar would try, while the Jem'Hadar almost certainly expected him to attempt to strike.
Instead, as the slowly mounting suspense grew too much and he dove for the human, Verat'elar was caught off-guard when, rather than duck under his arm or swing a flying fist, Julian leapt to the left and danced out of his reach entirely. He felt a sharp little twinge in his right knee on the landing, but the joint held and he skirted back into the circling stance, now moving clockwise instead. Again, the Jem'Hadar dove. Again, Julian evaded him.
They did this six more times before Verat'elar finally landed a glancing blow. It was meant for Julian's celiac plexus, but it clipped the crest of his pelvis instead, forceful but almost painless. He was moving too swiftly for the Jem'Hadar to gain the upper hand. His opponent could be lightening-quick in the moment he struck, but Julian's sustained, nimble evasion was too far removed from what Verat'elar was used to seeing with the other prisoners. They all knew they were expected to fight, and so they fought: trying to land blows of their own, or to grapple with the Jem'Hadar like wrestlers. Julian wasn't doing any of that. He was focusing his energy and every one of his swift, economical movements on staying out of his attacker's way.
The tactic owed far more to racquetball than to any martial art. Julian was executing pivoting turns and deft sideways leaps that he had perfected on the courts. Eluding an increasingly enraged Jem'Hadar was not really so different from meeting a wildly ricochetting ball, when you came right down to it. Although a ball did not snarl with mounting fury every time you bested it.
He could feel the unrest of the spectators, too. This was a kiss-in-the-ring tactic, and the skill required for kiss-in-the-ring was lost on this audience. They were restive, increasingly bloodthirsty, and every time Julian avoided a blow, a ripple of discontent moved around the circle of hostile faces. On another rapid pass, Julian caught sight of Martok's sombre, strained face, a welcome contrast to the snarling disapproval of the Jem'Hadar. Only Deyos seemed to be enjoying himself. His eyes were dancing with marvelled amusement, and he seemed to be restraining the urge to laugh.
Verat'elar was more affected by the mounting disapprobation of his peers than Julian was. He was feeling the pressure to perform, and every time he failed to strike, his movements became tighter and ever so slightly more erratic. Ordinarily that was a good thing, a sign that a combatant was losing control. But chaos was Julian's foe here: his tactic depended upon being able to predict his opponent's movements. So far, he had done well, but as Verat'elar's methodical approach began to falter, it became harder to evade him.
They had been at this for six minutes, forty-seven seconds according to the careful tally Julian was keeping in his head, when Verat'elar's ongoing tactical analysis of his opponent finally bore fruit. Julian had been watching him intently for almost seven minutes now, anticipating his every movement. Only three blows had even touched him, none of them efficiently. He had not tried to land even one of his own. But they had been at this for a long time now, and despite the stakes, Julian was getting bored. Boredom made him sloppy, and tension made Verat'elar desperate.
The Jem'Hadar feinted to the left, reaching for Julian. Convinced that he was about to attack from the right, the Doctor was prepared when Verat'elar changed trajectory at the last moment. What he wasn't prepared for was a second feint: as he danced left, Verat'elar abandoned his clockwise attack and came straight for Julian, swinging both arms with the fingers interlaced into a huge hammer of a fist.
It blasted into the side of Julian's head and sent him flying. He crashed down onto his left shoulder, legs scissoring as his hip struck the composite stone floor. Julian flung up his right arm defensively, protecting his head, and tried to skitter backwards as Verat'elar kicked him viciously. The boot aimed for his abdomen struck a hastily upthrust shin instead, and Julian's whole body was momentarily reduced to one small circle in the middle of his fibula. He swallowed any noise of pain even as he scrambled to his feet, as much to evade the next kick as to avoid forfeiting the match. He stumbled to the nearest post, trying to remember how to use a leg that was suddenly hurting far lower than usual. Bowing over the plinth as the gong rang out helped a little. At least it gave him a moment of support while he raked in a frantic breath.
The Jem'Hadar was coming for him again, and Julian skittered out of the way. Verat'elar was enraged now, and he did not change direction quickly enough. He collided with the post, momentarily doubling over it as the gong sounded again. Julian took the opportunity to retreat to the far end of the ring, rubbing at his skull and trying to blink away the stars dancing before his eyes. The time for perfect evasion was over: he was only superficially dazed, but it was enough of an impairment that springing around like a Barzanian antelope was no longer a sound strategy. When the Jem'Hadar came for him again, Julian was firmly planted on his feet and ready for the next phase of the proceedings.
He leaned into the assault this time, thrusting his shoulder under the Jem'Hadar's arm and countering his momentum so that the attempted blow went wild. They locked briefly in that position, legs straining against one other's force as they moved in a tight half-circle. Verat'elar tried to drive a fist into Julian's ribs but the human heard the movement and intercepted, closing a firm hand on the Jem'Hadar's wrist. Then in a sudden shifting of body weight and position, they flung each other off and repositioned, and battle was joined.
Julian had devoted three hours a week over the last few months to brushing up on Starfleet's standard hand-to-hand combat techniques. It was one of those things taught at the Academy that he'd thought he would have little use for in his daily practice, and so it had proved with only a few exceptions — until the Defiant had been flung into the past by the Orb of Time. A series of improbable events had led to Julian, Miles, Odo and Worf being embroiled in, of all ridiculous things, a barroom brawl aboard Space Station K-7 in the year 2268. Julian had pulled the lateral clavicular branch of his left pectoralis major while incapacitating a disturbingly smooth-headed Klingon. It was a minor hurt, scarcely an inconvenience, but it had irritated him to realize how out of practice he'd become, and he had rectified the situation.
He was glad of that now. As he blocked the Jem'Hadar's blows and brought home a few of his own, Julian found himself making use of several combinations his muscles might not have remembered from his Academy days. With the recent refresher, the movements were second nature. Verat'elar was a far more resilient opponent than the generic holographic roughnecks Julian was used to fighting. He was plainly inexperienced by the standards of his unit, but in the condition he'd been in on K-7, Julian would have been at a decided disadvantage. There was much to be said for proactively addressing deficiencies in one's skill set.
Any other crowd would have been stirred into an energized frenzy by the increased action in the ring. The Jem'Hadar, however, had been more tense and stirred-up during the evasion stage of the fight. Now that the promise of violence was being addressed, they were calmer, watching intently every movement that Julian made in response to their compatriot's assaults. It was unnerving; their silent, watchful stares and the analytical way they tracked the combatants. As Julian's fist blasted into the Jem'Hadar's cheekbone, aimed deliberately high to avoid the ridge of spines that protruded from his jaw, he had to suppress a shudder of unease as the head of every guard in his line of sight tipped from left to right in unison, following the motion.
He'd found a sweet spot, apparently: Verat'elar stumbled, and the knuckles of his lead hand grazed the floor as he tried to counterbalance. Deftly, Julian clasped his hands, clapped his forearms together, and brought both elbows down on the crown of the Jem'Hadar's head. He deliberately restrained himself from exerting the maximum force of impact. In part, he was reluctant to inflict more damage than necessary. More than that, though, he couldn't afford to deal an incapacitating blow so soon. They had been in the ring now for eleven minutes, eight seconds. Tain needed at least an hour, and Julian could not count on his next opponent being so green and inexperienced.
Verat'elar was struggling dazedly to his feet. He groped towards the nearest pylon as Julian backed away to the farthest part of the arena. He was breathing more rapidly than usual, and his pulse was elevated. Sixty beats per minute: he was feeling the exertion, but he was far from overtaxed.
The gong sounded, the Jem'Hadar turned, and battle was rejoined again.
(fade)
They kept it up for another eight minutes before Verat'elar abandoned any pretext of technique. Julian had been watching his opponent draw nearer and nearer the breaking point, treating the whole thing like a high-stakes exercise in applied physics. Every time he sprang out of the way, or narrowly evaded a blow, or took a punch that should have been enough to floor him almost without flinching because a last minute twist or shimmy had neutralized the bulk of its force, the Jem'Hadar grew angrier. The few successful strikes he landed were going to cost Julian later — he was almost certain the young guard had bruised his ribs, and his head ached where he had taken a couple of hard knocks — but they weren't satisfying enough to take the edge off of Verat'elar's rage.
He had to be painfully conscious of the way this match was dragging on, too. Most were over in just a few minutes: the only prisoner Julian had seen last longer than ten was Martok. And here was the human, who was supposed to be so physically inferior as to be utterly insignificant, still nimbly eluding him seventy-three percent of the time. Whether he understood that he was being toyed with, Julian did not know, but the Jem'Hadar finally reached the limits of his patience.
When he snapped, it was like being pulled out of a structured fight with a disciplined, sentient opponent only to be flung into a pit with a rabid razorbeast. Julian could no longer anticipate even some of Verat'elar's movements: the Jem'Hadar was in a frenzy, diving after him, clawing at him, baring his teeth and tossing his head. His hair was coming loose of its rigid topknot, whipping in dark tendrils around his shoulders. As he dodged a left hook straight into a right cross, Julian reflected dizzily that it was odd that the Jem'Hadar had such luxuriant tresses.
The next blow finally did catch him right under the xyphoid process, and Julian's abdomen exploded with blinding pain. His diaphragm seized as all the air was driven from his lungs in an explosive, strangled burst. His knees gave out and he crashed to the ground, unable to catch himself as his hands clawed instinctively at his middle. Somehow he managed not to fall forward onto his shoulder, but he bowed low over his knees, his field of vision obliterated in bright starbursts of poisoned colour. Primal panic overwhelmed him. He couldn't breathe! He couldn't breathe! His lungs were empty and he couldn't breathe!
He tried, but his chest wasn't functioning as it should. A thin wheeze high in his throat was all Julian could manage. His instincts and the wild voice of animal hysteria were screaming at him, and he buckled lower still as something crashed into the back of his skull. Another weapon, hard and blunt, blasted against his left flank, agonizingly near his kidney. Dimly, distantly, he understood that the Jem'Hadar was still attacking him, but it didn't matter because he could not breathe!
Another voice, not as loud or insistent as the personification of his panic, spoke up. All right, so you can't breathe. You'll be able to in a few seconds, once the nerves reset themselves. In the meantime, you've only been without air for seventeen seconds. You've held your breath longer than that waiting to blow out birthday candles. Get away from his feet, get up, get moving again. You have a job to do, Bashir: get off your knees and do it!
But I can't breathe! the terrified part of him whimpered.
He didn't listen to it. He couldn't. And the part of his brain that was the keeper and curator of his medical knowledge knew that the stern voice was in the right. Trauma to the celiac plexus was excruciatingly painful and instantly debilitating, but only for a very short period of time. There was no real damage to worry about, only the brilliant agony and the frozen diaphragm. And that muscle was already starting to spasm back to life: Julian choked in a tiny gasp of air, and it gave him the jolt he needed to clamber back onto his feet.
His legs trembled, but they held him. He scuttled away from Verat'elar, who was dazedly trying to figure out where his cringing, vulnerable target had suddenly disappeared to. Julian didn't know if crumpling to his knees constituted a legal fall or not, especially since he hadn't been given any reprieve from the ongoing assault, but he lunged for the nearest post anyway, and smacked it. The gong sounded with its usual intensity, but the sound seemed muffled and distant. The lack of air was beginning to tell on Julian, and he wondered if perhaps it had been a mistake to stand up after all.
Then suddenly his diaphragm came back to life and he gasped, gulping in greedy lungfuls of air. The spots vanished from his vision and his head received a sudden onrush of clarity. His senses seemed heightened: he could hear the eager rustle of the watchers and the heaving respirations of his opponent; he could see every crack and crevice in Verat'elar's horny grey hide; he could feel the chill of the air on his sweat-slicked skin and smell the sour, unwashed undertones of his own body; and he could taste the tinny tang of adrenaline on his tongue.
Already, the Jem'Hadar was winding up into a fresh frenzy. Julian saw it, and dreaded it, and he knew that he had to end this match now if he intended to do so on his own terms. They had only been at it for twenty minutes — twenty-two minutes, three seconds, the timekeeper in his head nattered superciliously — but if Verat'elar came at him again insensate with rage, Julian didn't know if he'd be able to stop him without doing real harm. He didn't want to hurt the young guard, and the reality was that either way, this match was going to be over in a matter of seconds. Whether in chaos or in calculated precision, it was up to him.
So when the Jem'Hadar charged, Julian stepped dreamily back and to the left. Verat'elar was disoriented with wrath, and he breezed on past. As he went, Julian thrust his foot between the armoured calves. The wild-eyed soldier slammed into Julian's shin, awaking pain where he had kicked him earlier and sending a shockwave of sickening trauma into the knee. But nothing tore and nothing gave way, and Verat'elar crashed to the ground. As he landed, arms upthrust to keep his face from smashing into the floor, Julian swooped down and clipped him with the heel of his left hand, right at the base of the skull.
It was a perfect blow: precisely placed, exerting just the right amount of force. Verat'elar's head snapped forward so his chin bounced off his chest, opening the first vertebral space just enough to pinch the nerve that fed the basal artery supplying his brain with blood. As the blow to Julian's stomach had contracted and paralyzed his diaphragm, so this manoeuvre froze the artery, contricting it. This disrupted the flow of vital fluid just long enough to render the Jem'Hadar unconscious. Verat'elar slumped bonelessly to the floor, the fight gone from his body.
Julian took a staggering step backward, straightening as he went. His chest was heaving and his body was sending out pulsating messages of pain from every place that had taken a blow. Hot perspiration trickled into his eyes and his heart was racing. But he was still on his feet, and his opponent was not. Verat'elar would regain consciousness momentarily; he was already starting to stir, but he wouldn't be able to do so in time to touch the post.
"Victory to the human," Ikat'ika proclaimed. Even over the rush of blood in Julian's ears, the announcement was deafening. Somewhere behind him, General Martok roared in exultant triumph. Julian couldn't even find it in himself to smile.
"Five minutes," said the First; "and we begin again."
(fade)