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Sturgis ran his fingers over his controls. A moment later, the viewscreen filled with the sight of the warship. It looked like some great, tawny predator savoring the prospect of a kill.

And the kill it was savoring, no doubt, was us.

Red Abby bit her lip, none too happy with the spectacle. “Hail them,” she said at last.

At the tactical station, Worf complied with the order. The seconds ticked off slowly.

“No response,” he told the captain.

“Keep trying,” Red Abby insisted.

I didn’t like the odds. The Daring was an able ship, but not a fighter. On the best of days, she was no match for a Galor-class warship. If the Cardassians decided to attack …

And then, it was no longer a matter of if.

“Captain,” Worf called out suddenly. “The Cardassians are accelerating to warp eight.”

For a moment, I imagined he was speaking to me. Then I remembered where I was and what station I held there.

“Full power to the shields,” said Red Abby.

Sturgis muttered a curse at navigation. “They’re powering up their weapons batteries,” he reported.

Our captain eyed the enemy vessel as it loomed larger and larger on our viewscreen. “Ready phasers,” she said.

“Ready,” Worf replied.

“Target and fire,” Red Abby barked.

The Klingon did as she said. Our phasers lashed out furiously at the Cardassian vessel, but her shields appeared to be a match for us. I glanced at Sturgis’s monitors.

So did the captain.

“Not much effect,” the navigator told her.

Worf made a sound of disgust. “They’re returning fire!”

The viewscreen confirmed his warning. We held on to our consoles as the Cardassian’s weapon batteries raked us with a blinding barrage.

The Daring shuddered and bucked with the impact, but not so badly that anyone was hurt. Recovering quickly, I glanced again at Sturgis’s monitors to see how severely we had been damaged.

“Shields down forty percent,” he reported.

Red Abby turned to me, the glare of the viewscreen glinting in her eyes.

“Evasive maneuvers, Mr. Hill. And for all our sakes, I hope you’re as good as you claim.”

I hoped the same thing. After all, it had been a long time since I’d done any tactical piloting, and I wasn’t nearly as intimate with this ship as I would have liked.

As I directed the Daring into a sudden, gut-wrenching turn, sending a couple of my comrades tumbling out of their seats, the Cardassians unleashed another energy barrage. This time, they missed.

It seemed I had gotten us one step ahead of them. It was a step I was reluctant to relinquish.

With that in mind, I whipped the Daring about in the opposite direction. The move elicited cries and curses from my shipmates, but this time they hung on. Again, the Cardassians attempted to skewer us on their beams. Again, they fell short.

However, I couldn’t elude them forever. It was only a matter of time before I made a fatal mistake or they anticipated our next move and made us pay for it. With this in mind, I gambled everything on a single maneuver.

It was one that had originated in the skies over Earth’s European continent some four hundred years earlier, in a conflict called World War One. The idea was to loop over and back behind one’s pursuer, instantly transforming oneself from hunted to hunter.

In the Enterprise, the move would have been a difficult one. And the Daring was by no means as quick or maneuverable as the Enterprise. Still, I felt compelled to try it.

“Hang on!” I bellowed.

Suddenly, I brought our nose up and accelerated, straining our ship’s inertial dampers to their limit. I was thrown back in my chair with enough force to rattle my teeth.

The deckplates screamed as if with a human voice, but I showed them no mercy. In for a penny, I thought, in for a pound. I pulled us up and back into the tightest arc the Daring could handle.

On the viewscreen, a shower of stars plummeted past me. For a moment, I lost all sense of up and down. My stomach flip-flopped and I experienced a brief but awful moment of vertigo. As I mentioned earlier, this was definitely not the Enterprise.

Through it all, I kept my eye on my controls.