CHAPTER ELEVEN

The four Enterprise crewmen turned around at the sound of approaching footsteps, to be confronted by five of the angriest men they'd ever had the misfortune to meet. As soon as T'Pol was released, she strode over and joined the five as they gathered their weapons.

Jon looked around him, but the exits were too heavily guarded to make a run for it, and there was always the problem about Hoshi.

"Ok, let's concentrate on staying alive, but try not to hurt T'Pol if you can help it."

"Maybe somebody should have told the sub-commander the rules, Captain," Malcolm muttered. Jon merely nodded resignedly.

"Doctor, do you know how to swing a club?"

"I'd really rather not, Captain. I took an oath to preserve life, not take it."

"Ok then, start by preserving yours and Trip's. He can't hold his shield."

"Stick with me, Doc. I've still got one good arm," Trip muttered grimly.

The four men formed a square with their backs towards each other. Their opponents raised their clubs, the five men grinning wildly as they relished the favourable odds. T'Pol circled slowly, occasionally lunging at the four men, causing them to raise their shields, but never making contact.

"T'Pol, fight it! We're your friends, we haven't hurt anybody. Your family's alright."

Jon tried to get through to her, but his attention was diverted as a club came whistling towards his head. He brought his shield up in time to divert the blow harmlessly, but the sheer force behind it alarmed him. This wasn't going to be easy, and it certainly wasn't going to be pleasant. Phlox had said that the aliens had been given performance enhancers. What chance did they stand against six normal opponents, never mind five super-aggressive Solanese and one angry, very strong Vulcan?

He lashed out at two of the advancing men, taking one down with a blow to his head, but the other got inside his defences and caught him a glancing blow to his shoulder. It burned in white-hot pain, but wasn't incapacitating. He whirled on his surprised opponent, driving the man away from the others.

Malcolm watched cautiously as T'Pol seemed to circle towards Trip and Phlox. She'd been assessing her opponents and had obviously noted the weaker pairing, intending to strike there, first.

"Sub-Commander, snap out of it, please," he tried, but she totally ignored him, honing in on the others with but a single thought…to kill.

"Oh crap!" Trip exclaimed, as the Vulcan advanced on him. "T'Pol, I don't wanna hurt ya, so stay back."

Malcolm had to shift his attention away from them as two more of the aliens engaged him in battle. He threw himself into a rolling log, careering into the legs of the startled men. They landed in an untidy tangle of limbs, and Malcolm somewhat unsportingly bounced his club off their heads before they'd time to recover. He caught his breath and glanced quickly at the captain, who was holding off his opponent and doing quite well, even if he was breathing a little heavier than usual. That just left T'Pol and the last of the Solanese facing off against the commander and Phlox.

The doctor held his shield desperately in front of them, as if its very presence could hold back the tides. The alien snorted derisively as he grabbed it and threw it aside.

"Get behind me, doc!" Trip yelled, and Phlox moved, with surprising speed for such a big man, to comply, but his opponent had a different idea. His club descended cruelly onto Phlox's unprotected cranium, and for the Denobulan, the fight was over before it had really begun.

Trip swore silently as he faced T'Pol. She swung her club casually back and forward through a gentle arc, as if daring him to attack her. He knew he couldn't reason with her, but he also knew in his heart that he would find it difficult to bring himself to raise his club against her.

Sensing his hesitation, the other man brought his club round, aiming single-mindedly for the engineer's head. Trip managed to dodge the clearly telegraphed attack, but only partially. A red mist of pain crossed his eyes as the club made devastating contact with his left collar bone. He dropped to his knees, all strength gone, his abused body unable to take any more. His opponent had his club raised to deliver the final blow when T'Pol growled.

"No!"

Hope soared through Trip's weary heart at that single word. Perhaps T'Pol had fought her demons and was even now coming back to them…but the hope was to be short-lived.

"I demand the kill. I have the right!"

"T'Pol, please…" Trip tried.

She stepped up to the fallen engineer and ignored the pleading in his eyes and the quiet, desperate murmuring of her name as she clutched him viciously about the throat. Her strong fingers closed tightly around his windpipe, intent on choking the life from him as easily as squashing an ant. Trip's blood pounded in his ears, blocked in the carotid arteries with nowhere to go, no oxygen getting through to feed his starved body. T'Pol looked on mercilessly as the eyes of the man in her clutches turned up in his head and he collapsed. She didn't halt in her pressure, determined to finish the kill, but her act of revenge was brought suddenly to a halt as Jon brought his own club down onto his First Officer's head.

He fell sobbing onto his knees beside his fallen officers, fearing that they were already dead, that he'd been too late to save the life of his dearest friend. But he couldn't take time now to mourn; he struggled back onto his feet to fight on beside Malcolm.

Ardl watched the scene with growing concern. His anticipated joy at setting the Vulcan to fight against her friends was being eroded by the tenacity of those same friends and their strong sense of self-preservation. He'd assumed from their first conversation that humans were a weak race, having given up combat, but these were tenaciously hanging on to life, ruining his sport. Grabbing Hoshi by the arm, he strode into the centre of the arena. The crowd were still roaring in enjoyment, but he knew it was only a matter of time before things might get ugly.

Jon and Malcolm were holding off the remaining two Solanese, and Ardl was determined to use Hoshi's presence as his final card. He stopped just short of the fighting, preparing to direct the final outcome of the contest.

Hoshi fought back the tears as she looked at her friends; Phlox lay sprawled face down in the dirt, Trip lay in that crumpled-clothes look that so often indicated loss of life, and T'Pol had fallen with her face to the sky, no longer angry, just calm. She tried to struggle against Ardl's grip, but his strength made her puny attempts laughable.

Ardl opened his mouth to address the protagonists, but stopped, bewildered, as his world started to shimmer and shift. A feeling of nausea and dizziness gripped his stomach and he closed his eyes until the feeling had passed, but when he opened them again, his mouth went dry. They were no longer standing in the middle of the dry, dusty arena, but now stood in an alien place, a room of dull grey walls and metal floor, filled with more Vulcans than he'd ever wanted to meet, all armed to the teeth, and pointing their weapons at him.

TBC