Author's Note: Sorry this took so long, but with over the weekend I couldn't long on or post for obvious reasons. But here is the next chapter. I hope you like it.

Summary: The last big fight will occur, but who will stand and who fall? And how can one choice save or destroy an entire civilization?

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Chapter 9:

Last Stand

**Captain's Mess**

They still had no real ideas as to what the Taso's intentions were. So they continued on as if they knew almost nothing so not to raise too much attention of the Taso's. It was 1830 hours and, no matter how much tension was still between Archer and Trip, they still all ate dinner together.

"Jon, I didn't mean ta go off at ya earlier. I was… I guess there's no excuse. I sorry, no hard feelin's?" Trip asked Archer. T'Pol had made him promise to apologize for his actions and he would not let her down.

Trip extended his hand and offered it to Archer. After a second of anxious waiting on Trip's part as Archer thought about what he had just said, Archer took his waiting hand and grasped it firmly. The two men broke out in smiles and laughter over their childish behavior. T'Pol had watched the entire exchange and raised an eyebrow when they started laughing.

When their laughter subsided, the stuarts came with their dinners. Steak and potatoes for the Captain and Trip and a fruit salad for T'Pol. For some reason, most likely their bond, Trip wasn't really in the mood for steak, it almost seemed to disgust him and T'Pol had thing sudden… desire to have meat.

The two of them kept sneaking looks at the other foods. Archer noticed Trip's tenth and T'Pol's ninth look and started to chuckle. "Why don't you guys just switch foods?" Archer asked when he had both of their attention.

"I am a Vulcan, I do not eat meat." T'Pol stated lamely.

"Ah, come on. Try some." Trip scooted his plate over to her. When she didn't move to try some, Trip took his own fork and steak on it. He steered it to her mouth and urged her to open it. He made a face that almost made her laugh, instead she just smiled slightly. Archer did a double take at that. T'Pol… smiling, how could this get any weirder? And it did, she opened her mouth to allow her first piece of meat to enter her mouth.

At first, it was strange. She had never tasted anything like this before. It was hard and chewy, yet juicy and soft. She found that she actually… liked it. The taste was new and alien to her but she enjoyed it all the same. Trip and Archer looked at each other, both pleased with her look of approvable as she slowly chewed the piece in her mouth, savoring every bit.

She looked at Trip once she had finished and let herself indulge in a small but warm smile. Her smiles were always small for her muscles were not use to being used. Trip gave her a lopsided grin and resisted the urge to kiss her. She had indulged herself in another completely non-Vulcan thing yet again and he loved it when she did that. It showed him she was trying to accept his peoples customs.

T'Pol continued to share the rest of Trip's steak with him as he took bits of her salad for the rest of dinner. When dinner was over, the stuarts came back and took away the dishes, ignoring the fact that Trip's steak was in the middle of his spot and T'Pol's spot on the table.

Now that Archer knew about… 'them', they seemed to relax considerably around him. They were now standing talking about whatever seemed appropriate. Trip's arms were around her waist and his chin rested on her shoulder. This seemed very… odd to him but he tried to overlook who it was in order to not laugh or become uncomfortable around the two of them. He figured he'd just have to get use to it.

When it was 1030 hours the couple excused themselves since both were going to have to pull double duties with the small crisis they were having. They walked out, side-to-side and headed to the left. At first Archer didn't think about it, then a thought occurred to him, 'They live on opposite sides of the next deck. Trip always goes to the right to get there.' He chuckled to himself. They made a great couple; in love. There was only one problem; Trip is human and T'Pol is Vulcan. This would certainly be a step in the human/Vulcan relationship.

He looked out the window at the approximant area the Taso ship was in and wondered what was going on in their minds. Then he decided him too needed his sleep for tomorrow and walked off to his room.

**Med. Facility**

Uion had observed many…fluctuations in the Commander's emotional state. It seemed the stimuli of being accused of something had caused him becoming upset which in turn caused his temperature to rise slightly and his pulse to increase.

He had also noticed other things, like when the Commander see the Sub-Commander, his pulse and respiration increase. He then became happier and when she left and his mood would be greatly increase; though he would be a little sad that she left at all.

T'Pol, on the other hand, exhibited similar reactions when she saw the Commander, although she was able to cover them up.

He also recorded the different emotions the two experienced during sexual intercourse. It was a process of sexual reproduction frowned upon in the Taso society. They now used implantation, sperm donation, and embryonic stem cell cloning to reproduce. But those methods were being to harm their population's reproduction systems therefore making reproduction increasingly hard. Which is why they were here…doing this stuff to these people. He just hoped some of the things they found would help in some way. Then he continued to look over the last bits of data before his meeting with Captain Terion.

**T'Pol's Quarters**

Trip had never seen a Vulcan meditate; not even T'Pol. He watched her, in total awe, as she sat in such a restricting yet relaxed position. Her chest rose and fell in an unconsciously rhythmic pattern. The candlelight was shining on her face, producing a shadow over the left side of her face. Then, when the fire flickered, on the right then back to the left half of her face.

When her eyes blinked open, she saw that he had not moved from the spot on the bed he was in when she had begun her meditation. Nor had he taken his eyes off her. 'What?' She asked telepathically rather than aloud for fear of betraying her emotions.

"Nothin', it's just…you're gorgeous," he said, with a voice and eyes filled with tender and caring love. She gazed intently into his eyes and allowed herself to release the smile that was hiding itself inside her. "Com'on. Let's go to bed," Trip cooed and put his arm out to grab her waist as her form moved closer to him. The smile he wore was one of seduction and before either on of them had known it, T'Pol had given into his romantic advances.

**Captain Terion's Ready Room**

"I believe I have gathered enough information from Commander Tucker and Sub-Commander T'Pol. They have been… most helpful in understanding the problem just that much more," Uion reported to Terion. They, along with Xion, had meet in Terion's ready room to discuss what to do next.

"And what should we do with Enterprise?" Terion asked his to ranking officers.

"They know to much, we must destroy them! No one can ever our methods!" Xion demanded.

"Yes, I do believe that that will have to be the solution. Destroy them, but not yet. First I what them to suffer," he paused for a moment to add to the drama and emotional suspense, "hit them and cloak. Keep moving around and keep them from detecting us. Make them panic and run around. When you've had your fun…finish them."

"No problem, sir. They'll wish they never came here," Xion replied and walked out of the room and headed to the bridge so that he could prepare.

"And your patients, doctor?" Terion asked in a scheming voice when he turned back to Uion.

"They all died. I couldn't seem to do anything for them," Uion said in a very malevolent tone as delight almost sown through his eyes.

"Good, good," Terion said with a nod of his head. Their plan had succeeded and they were about to head home to give that information which could save their people's lives. Then why did he feel so awful. Was he developing a conscience? No, no, he was given this assignment because he had no conscience. He shook his head and dismissed Uion before sitting at his desk. He observed the wall changing hue, wishing it was not him who was giving these orders.

**T'Pol's Quarters**

They were half dressed and asleep in bed, when the ship was jolted hard to port and the two practically were thrown out of bed. They spared a second to look at each other with worried faces.

They quickly got out of bed and dressed themselves in their uniforms. They had known that the Taso had caught on and were now attacking. Trip ran to the turbolift that would take him to the engine room while T'Pol went the other way to get to the bridge.

**Bridge**

Once she had reached the bridge, she could see that the night shift was frantically trying to handle the situation without the orders from a superior officer. So she immediately took charge and started to bark out orders for them to polarize the hull plating, charge the weapon systems, and scan to find where they were.

As they attempted to locate the Taso, they had been hit three more times, each one helping to find them or their pattern of movement. In that time, Archer, Travis, Malcolm,, and Hoshi had made their way to the bridge and took control of their stations.

With a silent order from Archer, Malcolm started to fire blindly at the Taso's last known coordinates. As they continued to get fired at, Travis performed skillful maneuvers to keep from them getting hit to badly. At the same time T'Pol continued scanning and trying to create a flight plan that they were using in order to anticipate were they were going to be next and Malcolm kept firing blindly at them.

Malcolm, with the help of T'Pol, had managed to hit their ship. The cloaking field in that area started to dissipate, allowing Enterprise to again see its amazing colors. Malcolm used this as an opportunity and fired directly at the spot and a little around it.

**Taso Ship**

At the same time on the Taso Ship, Xion stood at tactical. Their phasers were locked on Enterprise as they tailed it through space. Suddenly, Xion fired their phasers and hit Enterprise, shaking them hard.

He smiled and knew they weren't expecting that. This was the reason he had joined this expedition; to shot down unsuspecting ships like this one. Even though it wasn't his official job, that was being Second in Command, he still usually took over this position at times like these.

He fired a few more times, three or four, before they stopped and turned around. He ordered for them to stop as well and started to use maneuvers he had learned some time ago. As he fired they tried to fire back, blindly. He had to give them credit, they were a resilient species and would not go down without a fight. He had also learned, from their previous encounter, that they are very loyal to each other.

Suddenly, the bridge jolted and Xion, unprepared, almost fell to the ground. He looked at his console and saw that there was a brake in the cloaking field. They had managed to disable that quarter of the ship's cloak in one shoot!

He couldn't resist a smile for he had always like a respectable, strong opponent. They had managed to stay this far in the game with a sever underhand. Yet now they were almost even; the Taso still having a slight one.

The ship trembled many times as Enterprise continued to fire and hit them. Xion had hit them a few good times as well. Their cloak was gone and their shields practically nonexistent. Enterprise's weapons systems were hit and they no longer had phasers so they had started to switch to torpedoes. The Taso ship had no weapons left at all but they still had propulsion.

A beeping noise told them that Enterprise was hailing them and they were debating whether or not to answer.

"We were ordered to destroy ourselves if found out and in a no win situation," Xion countered Terion's decision to respond.

"I will not let all this information go to waste. If we answer them, they may spare us and we can leave," was Terion's rebuttal but Xion wouldn't hear it.

"Spare us! Spare us! You must be joking! We are the ones who should be choosing if we should spare them," he argued as he pointed to the beat up ship on their view screen. "We're much faster than they are. We can out run them, get away. They're not powerful nor strong enough to do or say anything about this."

Terion considered his proposal and knew it would work and that he was correct. He nodded his head and told engineering to prepare to go to Warp 8. Since it would take ten minutes to do so, he answered Enterprise's hail.

**Enterprise's Bridge**

"They're responding, sir," Hoshi Sato told Captain Archer after they had waited approximately five minutes.

"On screen," Archer called as he hopped out of his chair. The image of Terion and his bridge, it now had wires, debris, and smoke everywhere. "Captain Terion."

"Captain Archer," he replied returning the gesture of say hello.

"You attacked my ship without warrant, would you like to explain yourself?"

Terion just looked at him, his look was not one of apology or guilt. "We did have a reason, Captain."

"And that being?"

"Orders to destroy you once we no longer had a use for your services," Terion said, impassively, effectively confusing Archer.

"Why? What services?" Archer asked.

But before he was given an answer, Terion interrupted when he said, "Do not ask question that have answers you do not want to here," and with that, the screen went blank.

"Sir, they've just went to warp. Should we follow?" Travis Mayweather asked after checking his console. He turned, expectantly, to the Captain as he waited for his orders.

"No, no. We can stay here until repairs are finished." His reply was meet with confused stares, but the complied nonetheless.

T'Pol, on the other hand, spoke what everyone was thinking, "Why are we not following them, sir?"

Archer looked at her, not at all surprised that she asked, "He told us not to look any further, I'm respecting that."

"Respecting that! Sir, with all do respect, they just attacked us!" Malcolm said, outraged.

"I understand that, but… something about his comment… whatever their mission, it was very important… and personal. And I can respect that," Archer finished off his rebuttal and walked, solemnly, off to his ready room.

The bridge crew, now consistent of half the night crew and the majority of the senior staff, stood quiet for a time before, slowly, getting back to work.

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So how was the big fight? R/R and tell me.

Oh, and don't worry, this isn't the end. Not by far I hope. Well that is if you don't want it to be.

I'm pretty sure the next part will be the best of the story. That is if I don't blow it and write it completely wrong from what I have in mind.