He turned out to be a more formidable opponent than I had expected. First, he snapped my head back with a teeth-rattling blow to the jaw. Then, reaching for my throat with both his hands, he squeezed my windpipe until he had cut off my air supply.

I tried to wrench his hands away, but it was no use. He was too strong. As I felt myself blacking out, I struck him in the face.

A second time.

And then again.

The third blow was the charm. It loosened his grip on me, enabling me to suck in a desperately needed draft of air.

Turning the tables on the Carda.s.sian, I hit him in the throat with the heel of my hand. And as he gasped for air, his eyes popping as if they wished to escape their sockets, I knocked him senseless.

That accomplished, I cast about for my fallen phaser and found it less than a meter away. I was just about to close my fingers on it when a boot came down on my hand rather painfully.

Suppressing a yelp, I looked up and saw a Carda.s.sian soldier aiming his weapon at me. This time, it seemed there would be no escape. But no sooner had I thought that than a bright red beam punched my enemy in the chest, sending him hurtling into a bulkhead.

I sought out the source of the beam and saw it was Dunwoody who'd rescued me. But there was no time to thank him for it. Grabbing my phaser, I looked around for a target.

Only a couple of Carda.s.sians were still standing. And as I watched, Astellanax and Sturgis made short work of them. The skirmish over, an eerie silence filled the corridor.

Of the dozen or so Carda.s.sians who had attacked us, none moved. But we had taken casualties, as well. The Ferengi was staring at the ceiling, his eyes no doubt fixed on some celestial treasury. The woman was dead, too, her chest a smoking ruin.

I regretted what had happened to them. Nonetheless, the rest of us still stood, and our goal hadn't changed.

"Come on," said Astellanax. He glanced at the Yridian. "Pick up a weapon and let's go."

"Go where?" asked the Yridian.

"Engineering," the first officer told him.

Without further explanation, Astellanax took the point again, advancing to the intersection of the two corridors and looking about. When he saw the way was clear, he went on.

As before, we were right behind him.

Madigoor "STIRRING," SAID DRAVVIN.

"I daresay," Robinson added.

Hompaq didn't speak. She just growled deep in her throat.

The Captain of the Kalliope looked at her. "You disagree?"

The Klingon eyed him. "A warrior does not set his phaser on stun. A warrior sends his enemies to their deaths."

Picard returned her gaze evenly. "Perhaps. But I do not fancy myself a warrior, Hompaq. Nor would it have furthered my mission to destroy every Carda.s.sian I laid my eyes on."

"Nonetheless," said Flenarrh, "you were fighting for your life. A stunned enemy is one who can rise again and prove your undoing."

"True," Picard conceded. "But I was willing to take that chance."

"And this Dunwoody," said Bo'tex. "It turned out you were wrong about him. He saved your life."

Picard smiled. "He did indeed. But again, I find I'm getting ahead of myself. As I was saying ..."

The Tale WE NEGOTIATED THE corridors of the Daring, phasers at the ready, on the alert for the enemy. But, initially at least, all we encountered were a couple more strays.

One was a tall, slender Bajoran named Murrif, who looked uncomfortable holding a phaser even more so than Dunwoody. The other was an Oord, though not the one who had stood by Corbis in the mess hall.

"Have you seen any Carda.s.sians?" asked the Oord.

Astellanax nodded. "We got the best of the encounter. But there are bound to be more of them around."

"What about the captain?" asked Murrif.

"She's defending the bridge," said the first officer. "Or anyway, she's supposed to be. Our job's to get to engineering."

"And get there we will," Sturgis added.

There were nods all around. As wary as ever, we resumed our journey. After a while, the Yridian came up beside me.

"I didn't want to fool you," he told me.

"No?" I replied.

"It turned my stomach," he went on. "But the Carda.s.sians said they would kill us if we didn't cooperate."

I glanced at him. "And now two of you are dead anyway."

"I'm alive," he pointed out.

I frowned. But all I said was, "Yes. You're alive."

As I turned away from him, I heard a curious sound as if someone were pushing metal over metal. It seemed to be coming from the stretch of corridor directly behind us.

I whirled. At the same time, a half-dozen Carda.s.sians dropped from the ceiling, where they had slid away a series of access plates. Even before they landed, they began firing their weapons at us.

"Back here!" I shouted to my comrades, pushing the Yridian in one direction as I threw myself in the other.

A couple of directed-energy beams sliced past us. Someone screamed, though I didn't see who it was.

Then Astellanax and the others fired back, and the battle was joined in earnest. The air around me shivered and seethed with barrage after deadly barrage. One even came close enough to blind me for a moment.

As my eyes cleared, I leaned as far into the curvature of the bulkhead as I could and picked out a target. Doing my best to ignore the chaos all about me, I took aim and fired.

My beam hit the Carda.s.sian square in the center of his chest. It knocked him off his feet and sent him skidding backward down the corridor. But no sooner had he fallen than another came forward to take his place.

Then that one fell, too, spun about by a blow to his shoulder. A third took a shot to his midsection and rolled over, clutching himself. The tide of battle seemed to be turning in our favor.

Unlike the prior combat, this one never devolved into a hand-to-hand struggle. We simply fired and fired some more, and kept firing until none of the Carda.s.sians were left standing.

In the strange, dense silence that followed, I surveyed the corridor. Two of my comrades had been hit by enemy fire. One was the Oord, who had sustained only an injury to his shoulder.

The other was the Yridian. In his case, the damage was a bit more serious. Moving to his side, I closed his gaping, dead eyes with a sweep of my hand. Then I glanced at Astellanax.

The first officer didn't say anything. He just walked over to the nearest Carda.s.sian, who happened to be still breathing, and picked him up by the front of his uniform.

"I want to know one thing," he said evenly. "Why didn't you just materialize behind us? Why did you have to try to take us from above?"

The Carda.s.sian looked at him. For a moment, I thought he would give Astellanax an answer. Then he spat in the Orion's face.

Astellanax let him slump to the floor and wiped the spittle from his cheek. Then he took aim at the Carda.s.sian and killed him.

"Obviously," said the first officer, "the enemy is having trouble beaming men aboard the Daring. My guess is the captain has found a way to resurrect our shields."

"It's possible," Sturgis remarked.

"Or," I said, "we managed to disable the warship's transporters when we fired on her."

Astellanax looked at me. "I'd like to think so."

Then he made his way down the winding corridor again, this time with a bit more haste.

Madigoor DRAVVIN HELD UP his hand. "A question, if I may."

Picard nodded. "Go ahead."

"You didn't seem very happy with the Yridian. I take it you didn't approve of his decision to survive at the expense of others?"

"That's true," Picard replied. "I didn't approve. Mind you, I think one should do whatever one can to keep body and soul together, but I stop short of endangering the lives of others."

"I agree," said Robinson. "If you've got coin, buy what you like. But don't reach into someone else's pocket."

The Captain of the Kalliope stroked his beard thoughtfully. "Then, in the Yridian's place, you would have refused to cooperate? Even at the expense of your life?"

Picard shrugged. "I might have given the appearance of cooperation so as to make myself useful at a later time. But I would not have cooperated with the Carda.s.sians in fact."

Bo'tex laughed a hearty laugh. "You wouldn't make a very good Caxtonian, Captain Picard."

"Nor a very good Yridian, apparently," said Hompaq.

"Would he make a good Klingon?" Flenarrh asked.

Hompaq grunted. "A Klingon would not have allowed himself to be captured in the first place."

Picard couldn't help but chuckle at that.

"In any case," he continued, "we pressed on. And, as luck would have it, we reached the engine room without further violence."

The Tale THE PROBLEM, AT that point, was getting inside the place. After all, the doors to the engine room were closed, and the last thing we wanted to do was blast our way in.

Under normal circ.u.mstances, we could have contacted the engineering staff via ship's intercom. However, the Carda.s.sians were no doubt monitoring for such messages.

Fortunately, Astellanax carried a portable communications device that could interface with the workstations in the engine room. Pulling it out, he tapped out a message and waited.

A message came back. Those in the engine room wanted to know how they could be sure of the first officer's ident.i.ty. They suspected the Carda.s.sians had captured Astellanax and were using his device to try to gain entry.

The Orion frowned and tapped out another message. It wasn't a sentence, as it turned out. It was some sort of code one that someone in the engine room was capable of recognizing.

A moment later, the doors slid apart, revealing a by-now-familiar gray and black decor. The engine room contained a surprising number of working consoles, all of which reflected the pale green glare of the bulkhead globes.

However, there was no one at the consoles that we could see no one to greet us or ask us in.

Astellanax seemed undaunted by the fact. He started for the entrance until I grabbed him by the arm.

"Wait a minute," I whispered. "What if this is a trap like the other one? What if the enemy is waiting for us inside?"

Murrif seemed less than impressed with the possibility. "If it's a trap," he said, "they don't seem very eager for us to enter it. The engineers made us give them the pa.s.sword, didn't they?"

"It could be they're just playing their parts," I pointed out.

"It could be," Astellanax echoed thoughtfully. "But our people weren't under any pressure to respond to my signal. It's not as if the Carda.s.sians would've known I was sending it."

I bit my lip, wishing there were a way to allay my fears. "I don't suppose there's a countercode?" I asked.

The first officer looked at me with just a hint of a smile. "Next time," he said.

"I've got an idea," said Dunwoody. "I'll go in and check things out. If there's a problem, you'll know it."

"What if they threaten your life?" asked Murrif.

Dunwoody eyed him. "They'll have to make good on their threat. I'd die before I'd let them use me the way they used the others."

Sturgis glanced expectantly at the first officer. "Sounds like a plan to me," he said.

Astellanax considered the offer as well as the man who had made it. "All right," he said at last. "Go ahead, Mr. Dunwoody. And good luck."

With that wish on his side and little else, Dunwoody made his way down the corridor and walked through the open doors into engineering. He turned to someone we couldn't see, waved, then turned back to us.

"It's all right," he called. "There's no one here but"

Before the fellow could get the next word out, a couple of Carda.s.sians materialized behind him. Sensing that something was amiss, he whirled and fired his phaser at them.