He was always rather pale, as though his childhood had been spent locked away in a dark cupboard, but now his pallor was terrifying.

He was the only one who could save her, and for a moment he looked as though he was on the verge of fainting as he was thrust out of the dark doorway towards her, his eyes gray glass set in chalk.

Malcolm, what have they done to you? There was something fastened around his left leg, some alien implement, and it was that leg he was favoring.

But he pulled himself together somehow and lurched as quickly as he could across the arena to where she was tied. Even through the noise from above, so loud that the din hammered on her ears, she could hear the jerkiness of his breathing as he finally drew level with her. A bruise was already blackening on the side of his face where it had hit the wall of the cell as he was thrown into it by the pulse weapon.

But he was alive, at least he was alive after she'd been sure he was dead, and despite the awful pallor of his face it could still summon up a tight smile that bolstered her flagging courage. And that English humor as he quipped something about rumors of his death having been grossly exaggerated, even as he started trying to set her free.

She should be maintaining proper Starfleet discipline, she should keep her mouth shut and let her superior officer concentrate, but communication was her very life's blood, and she had to say something. Even if the words that sprang off her tongue were neither very brave nor in the least helpful, but merely betrayed the depth of her terror. Because something was going to happen, something absolutely terrifying, that was what they were here for, that was why the prisoners were kept in pairs – one as the defender, the other as –

Bait.

"MALCOLM!"

In another world, another life, she'd have been ashamed of the way she screamed his name. But in another life the third entrance to the arena wouldn't suddenly have swung open, two double doors operated by ropes and pulleys because no-one would open them by hand, not with what was waiting beyond to come through them.

The roar of the crowd was the greatest of the evening as what had been a dull gray amorphous mass in the gloom within slowly grew a neck which extended into the acid lamplight. At the end of it the elongated head had nostrils that flared wide, testing the hot air. Behind them small, deep-set eyes glittered as the jaws shifted to let a long blue tongue flutter out briefly, its damp surface absorbing the scents which the eddies of a fitful breeze brought to it.

Clearly, the creature had found what it expected to find. With hideous, slow purpose it stepped forward, bringing more of itself into the light.

Hysteria had initially suggested a dragon, and certainly its head and mobile neck somewhat resembled those of that legendary creature. But although its short, powerful body with squat legs was heavily scaled, it had no wings. What it did have – and the noise increased beyond belief as this emerged into view – was a high, arched tail with a curved sting at the end of it.

The ultra-proper Englishman beside her came out with a phrase of such dazzling obscenity in six different Earth languages that for a moment she couldn't even believe she'd heard such words on his lips.

But there was clearly no time now to pry her loose. She jerked with utter desperation at the ropes binding her as he picked up the javelin again and stepped away from her, his face settling into hard lines of desperation and resolve. He made a small, odd gesture, almost of accepting something, and that in itself set off a detonation of panic in her mind; what was he thinking? If only she could get free, if only she could help him; but it was impossible. The cords were as tight as ever. No way in hell was she going to be able to pull them loose.

She stared up at the faces above her – some of them leaning over the edge, howling encouragement, all lit with excitement. There was not one with a single shred of pity. They had come to watch criminals pay for their crimes, and the bloody fate to come was a fitting punishment.

"We're innocent – we're innocent!" she shouted, in the language she'd overheard the merchants using on Risa. If she could only reach one person, make them listen to her – just one –!

Nobody was listening. Somewhere in the crowd someone started a chant, and within seconds it was being bellowed from end to end of the benches, while the singers swayed in ecstatic unison. 'Ko-kotiv! Ko-kotiv! Ko-kotiv!' 'The Avenger! The Avenger! The Avenger!'

But somebody was listening. Just one person, up there in that blood-maddened bedlam, was sitting still. He was seated in the front row, but rather than leaning forward he seemed completely relaxed. His eyes were fixed on her, and the expression on his rather aristocratic face was one of almost amused interest. Not so much as a glimmer of compassion.

'For pity's sake–!' She spared a frantic glance for where Malcolm was starting to circle the oncoming behemoth. He looked ridiculously small, pathetically vulnerable. The javelin looked like a cocktail stick in his hands against the beast in front of him, and she'd already seen that the point wasn't even sharp. He might jab with it, but he certainly couldn't do any significant damage.

"We're innocent – we're innocent!" she sobbed, staring up at the watching man above her. "He's a good man, don't let him die! Stop this, please stop it!"

He took a leisurely sip of the drink he was holding, smiled, and then transferred his gaze to the center of the arena. If he'd understood, or even heard, he clearly didn't give a damn.

It was now apparent that the dragon-creature shared the ability of Earth chameleons to operate its eyes in two independent directions. One was fixed beadily on her, and the other was watching Malcolm, who was slowly edging closer. She could only hope that for all that his attention seemed to be centered on the jaws, he hadn't forgotten the hovering tail.

She wanted to call out to him to be careful, but even if he could have heard her, it would only have been a distraction. And by some mysterious alchemy, he no longer looked vulnerable. He looked … calculating. Strangely … dangerous. No longer quite the same person who'd smiled shy gratitude at her when he discovered it was she who had uncovered his secret food favorite in time for him to have a pineapple-flavored cake for his birthday.

He was the ship's Head of Security, and during the course of the voyage so far they'd all seen that he was skilled at self-defense, patiently coaching his juniors to improve. His expertise with weapons was undoubted, was the reason why he'd been appointed by the captain to safeguard the ship against armed attack. But this – this was something different, a side she'd never seen, and wasn't sure she would have liked in any other circumstance but this one.

He didn't even seem to be favoring his leg any more, though the thick silver shackle was still locked around it. He moved with a slow, deliberate lightness, placing each step with care; like a – yes, like a wolf, creeping up towards a potentially deadly enemy and looking for the weakness.

Suddenly, he pitched forward. The crowd roared and Hoshi gasped, thinking he'd tripped, but even as he hit the ground he rolled, so that the sting that immediately darted down at him struck just to the right of his twisting body. In the second that it was buried in the ground he brought the javelin around and thrust it at the thick flesh just behind the bony sting, withdrawing it immediately so it wasn't dragged from his grasp as the tail was wrenched back.

The weapon's point was indeed relatively blunt, but thrust with all the strength of his arm it was still evidently capable of inflicting some kind of damage. Possibly the skin in that area was softer than the rest, or he'd noticed some weak point there – a recent injury, maybe.

Ko-kotiv was clearly not used to being the one being stung. A high, angry shriek issued from the fanged mouth as the sting lifted high, shaking drops of blood from the wound below it. A flurry of strikes followed, but Malcolm kept moving, with his free hand throwing up handfuls of sand to confuse his outline, and at each strike the tail took another painful jab.

But his wriggles had brought him closer to the head, and as the creature suddenly realized he was within striking distance it let out a screech of triumph and plunged its open jaws straight down onto him.

He couldn't escape; he was too close, and the beast was too quick. But the next screech that rent the air was on a very different note – basically because the bloody point of the javelin was protruding from the back of the scaly neck. Even as his attacker lunged, Malcolm had twisted over to plant the haft of the metal in the ground beside him, so that the whole strength of the creature's attack, with all that weight behind it, drove the open mouth down onto the upright spike of the weapon.

Blunt the point might be. Nevertheless, all that power concentrated on the end of it was more than enough to make it deadly.

Ko-kotiv reared back, clawing at the javelin now protruding obscenely from between its jaws. The tail lashed mindlessly, throwing up huge fans of sand, and the noise of the crowd was a wall of sound from which no single emotion could possibly have been distinguished.

The lieutenant hadn't escaped unscathed. The teeth had all but closed on him before the shock of the wound sank in to the relatively small brain in that bony head, and as it tore itself free of him they ripped his upper arm, thigh and hip; blood sprang there, staining the torn fabric as he scrambled clear.

He was now unarmed – a state of things that he would hate. But Ko-kotiv was no longer interested in food. It was preoccupied with the javelin, which it could neither break nor dislodge, and which was preventing its jaws from closing. Moreover, each swat with the powerful claws at the projecting haft was worsening the damage inside, worsening the pain and reducing its ability to think. And the worse the damage became, the faster the blood ran from it.

Hoshi was no longer an object of interest. Ko-kotiv was now clearly hell-bent on destroying the miserable little creature who was responsible for this awful, unbelievable pain. But the cuts around the sting had made the blows with it too painful to be delivered with full force, and the javelin was immobilizing its mouth. Swipes with the big armored forefeet could have hurled the wretch against the walls hard enough to have broken every bone in his body, but somehow each one just missed; the prey was as elusive as a gadfly, and every so often as Ko-kotiv lunged in pursuit the haft of the javelin would embed itself in the sand, forcing even more of it through the wound and tearing it wider. Blood was now coursing freely down the back and neck and dripping from the jaws, and noises of pain and fury broke from the huge creature as it lumbered around the arena – Malcolm leading it carefully away from his imprisoned fellow officer if it ever showed signs of heading in her direction, sometimes taking dangerous risks to do so.

But the sounds were diminishing in volume, and the lunges were growing weaker and less accurate. The tail flailed as though lifting it was an effort its owner was finding it more and more difficult to sustain, and presently it did not lift at all, but dragged limply in the sand. A pause for breath and strength-gathering turned into more and longer pauses, while Malcolm simply waited, poised lightly on the balls of his feet and with a feral little smile on his lips, as though he knew it was simply a matter of time.

As indeed it was simply a matter of time now, and for all that the cries from above urged the dying creature to make one last effort and catch the felon who had dealt it this mortal injury, the felon was in no mood to be caught. He evaded the increasingly desperate and inaccurate lunges with an ease that soon became positively insulting, until at last, in a gesture that was utterly out of keeping with the reserved Malcolm Reed that Hoshi had known until now, he tore off his tunic and began mockingly using it like a matador's cape every time the head wavered in his direction. He seemed completely oblivious to the fact that he wasn't wearing a stitch underneath it, and once she'd gotten over the first shock of delighted horror, she couldn't help but laugh at his impudence.

It couldn't last. Ko-kotiv expanded the last of its waning strength in a final burst of lunges and then finally crashed its muzzle into the sand and collapsed against the wall. Even as it did so, Malcolm jumped up on to its head, ran up to its shoulders, leaped, made a grab and hauled himself up. The crowd at the wall shrieked and fell back, but rather than attack the nearest, he sprang at a particularly well-dressed, middle-aged lady and grabbed her. He only held her for a second, but when he jumped back down again there was a distinct bloody handprint on her right breast and she was gasping for breath as though her mouth had been momentarily blocked by an invading tongue.

The action turned the crowd's mood the way a gust from an easterly wind will turn a weathervane. There was an explosion of delighted laughter and applause as the villain slid down the slippery neck of Ko-kotiv's corpse, retrieved his discarded tunic and put it back on with a swagger before turning with raised arms to accept the rapturous reception.

He strolled over to Hoshi. "I believe we can take our time with this now," he said, starting to pull at the ropes. She could hardly recognize his expression: he looked so young and mischievous, his eyes sparkling with triumph. And the memory of him prancing around in the buff in front of an audience of thousands was not one she'd forget in a hurry, for more than one reason.

"Malcolm Reed, I don't think I actually know you at all," she said, shaking with nerves and laughter as the cords began to fall loose.

"I don't think you do either. But we can always work on that." His mouth was bare inches from hers. The long dark lashes lowered over a distinctly predatory look that woke several dozen butterflies in the base of her stomach. "If the idea appeals to you, of course."

"Winner gets a kiss, after all." She tried to keep her voice light, but he needed no further invitation than that.

If she'd have thought about it at all, she'd have thought he'd be clumsy, but his lips although gentle were sure of themselves. His fingertips slipped up the side of her jaw and tilted her head up for his kisses, which became more and more passionate–