IT WASN'T SAFE TO SLEEP.
Berat closed his eyes and lay very still, trying to slow his breathing so they couldn't be sure whether he was awake or not. He ached with weariness. He simply ached.
He was assigned to the bunk nearest to the head, so he was constantly hearing the rush and gurgle of the sewer conduit, the voices of the men going in and out to relieve themselves, the sound of their boots clanging on the bare deck plates. When he was an engineering officer, he'd been used to having a cubicle to himself, no matter if it was just four walls, but there was no privacy for anyone here in the lower-deck barracks, with the metal bunks lined up in double rows and the lighting element sputtering faintly overhead. And of course all of them had to pass by him on their way in and out of the head, so that every time he heard their footsteps he would never know when someone would decide to deliberately "trip" over his bunk or commit some other petty act of harassment just for the amusement of it.
Amusement could easily get bloody on the lower deck of a Cardassian warship. One of the favorite tricks was tossing a blanket over the victim and holding him down while the rest of them beat the struggling form. If he survived the blows and the suffocation, he still wouldn't be able to identify his assailants. They'd already done that to him more than once since he'd been brought onto the Swift Striker. They might do it again, at any time. Whenever the men started drinking, when someone got into a fight or lost money gambling, or after the Gul had given another one of his rousing inspirational speeches about recovering lost Cardassian territory.
He had dared, once, to report a beating, but all it had gotten him was extra punishment duty for fighting. And then retaliation, later, in the dark. They laughed as their heavy boots thudded into his ribs, mocking him in the crude Cardassian language used on the lower decks. "You gonna report this, too, are you, traitor? You gonna report this?" It was all the more amusing because they knew he'd been an officer before he was broken, a rare opportunity for vengeance that the much-abused denizens of the lower deck greatly appreciated.
It wasn't safe in the dark, wasn't safe in the head or the shower or anywhere they could catch him alone. It wasn't safe here, in his bunk, to sleep.
And it was all going to get worse. Berat knew it, because it was common knowledge that the ship was heading into Bajoran space, to the station the enemy was now calling Deep Space Nine. The closer to Bajor, the worse it was for him.
Lower-deck rumors were spreading that Gul Marak was heading there to deliver an ultimatum to the Federation: Turn over the stolen wormhole or face the might of the Cardassian fleet. It had happened again today. He was coming into the head to fix a broken ventilator, and a couple of crewmen were talking: "Gul's gonna blast'm if they don't hand it over."
The other nodded agreement: "Vaporize those filthy Bajoran scum."
Then, seeing him, they both went silent, fixing him with hostile stares. "What are you looking at, traitor? What are you doing, anyway? Spying on us? For your Bajoran friends?"
Berat was tainted with guilt, even if there was nothing they could prove. He knew it was no coincidence that he was assigned to this ship, to this commander, to this mission. They were setting him up. Something was supposed to happen once they got to DS-Nine, and then, somehow, he was going to be the one to take the blame. To be dragged home in chains for execution.
The way his father had been executed. And two of his uncles and his brother.
When their government fell, at first it seemed that Berat was lucky, assigned as systems control officer to Farside Station—on the other side of Cardassian space from the Bajoran sector. There was no evidence to link him personally to the wormhole sellout scandal. But of course it was all politics. As soon as the Revanchists had consolidated their power, he was stripped of his commission. Even after he had signed the denunciation. Which still made him burn with shame, remembering. They had made him watch, of course. The whole thing. One of them had handed him a stone. "You aren't soft on traitors, are you?"
And he'd thrown it. Aimed to miss, but—to his eternal disgrace, he'd thrown it.
Now, lying in his bunk, reliving it all, Berat found it hard to swallow, even to breathe. The Swift Striker was already in Bajorans space.
Footsteps came down the corridor, armored boots ringing on the deck. Berat tensed. The footsteps paused at his bunk, and the bare metal frame suddenly rang with the force of a kick.
"Berat! On your feet, scrag!"
He recognized Subofficer Halek's voice. He would recognize that voice on his last night in hell. But there was no time to think, only to react. In an instant, Berat had leaped to his feet, was standing at rigid attention by the side of the bunk, eyes straight forward, not meeting Halek's. Inside, where they couldn't see it, his heart was racing, his gut was churning with apprehension and fear. But it was death to let them see weakness.
"What the flakk are you doing in your farking bunk when you're supposed to be on duty?"
"Sub, I was on duty the last two shifts."
"Well, you're on now. Let's go! Don't just stand there taking up space on the deck! I've got a job for you." Halek slapped his data clip smugly.
Berat knew better than to protest. He supposed there was a sewer backup in one of the heads, or some other filthy job that no one else wanted to take on. As quickly as possible under Halek's hostile glare, he got into his soiled fatigue uniform. He already knew he wouldn't be given time to make up his bunk, and that he'd be blackmarked on account of it, on account of the dirty uniform that he hadn't had time to get cleaned. By this time, it didn't much matter. He'd already accumulated enough black marks on his record to keep him on nonstop punishment details for the rest of his natural life span, which he didn't expect to reach.
But he was shocked when Halek ordered him, "Get over to the main docking airlock and strip it down. I want a complete point-by-point maintenance checkout—every motor element, every seal." This was normally a job for a skilled two-man engineering crew, not a single low-grade technician. He said nothing in protest, though, nothing to provoke Halek into one of his rages. But he was worried, as he pulled a tool kit from the engineering locker. Why this particular assignment? Why now? Were they setting him up for something? A charge of sabotage?
Or maybe this was just a quick and dirty way to get rid of him. An "accident" when he was working inside the lock, and Bajoran space would swallow up one more Cardassian body.
The worst thing was knowing there wasn't anything that he could do to stop them, if that was what they meant to do. If he refused an order, they'd space him anyway. Only after he was hanged. It was a quick way to die, in comparison to some others he'd seen.
He double-timed it down to the airlock with Halek on his heels. Their boots rang on the bare metal deck plates. He passed a crew working on one of the massive power cables that fed the weapons systems, and they looked up to smirk at him, amused at the sight of someone being marched to a punishment detail. But there didn't seem to be anything wrong with the airlock when he got to the docking port and took a look at it. Maybe this was just routine maintenance.
Berat set to work, trying his best to ignore Halek, who stood over him with folded arms, giving unnecessary and contradictory orders and emphasizing them with an occasional kick or slap with his mesh-gloved hand.
"Lubricate those bearings.
"Well, it doesn't look aligned to me. Strip that farking seal off and set it again!
"Do you call that track clean?"
Finally his tormentor took note of the time. "I'll be back at 0600 hours. You'd better have this back in working order by then."
Left alone, Berat leaned up against a wall. He was shaking with repressed tension and fatigue. He'd figured out their game on his first day on this ship. They wanted an excuse to bring him up on capital charges: refusal of a direct order, assaulting a superior officer. He wondered how long it would be until one of them provoked him past the breaking point.
Halek hadn't given him much time to finish, so Berat turned back to his task. Without interference, he reassembled the airlock mechanisms, making sure that the door rolled smoothly in its track, that the seals fit to the proper tolerances, that the air-pressure level was correct. The work, now that he had a chance to do it right, restored a little of his battered self-confidence. He was still a first-rate engineer, even if they had broken him to the lowest grade. No matter what else they'd done to him, they couldn't take that away. Only his rank, his career, and probably his life.
Halek returned finally, tested the airlock, and grudgingly acknowledged that the task had been completed to specifications. Berat noticed the deliberate way he checked off the job authorization on his data clip, and he felt that sense of dread again, that he was being set up somehow.
Released, he stumbled back to his bunk and fell into it, forgetting even that it wasn't safe to sleep.
It seemed like only minutes until alarms rang throughout the ship. The comm system blared: "The ship will dock in thirty hours. All hands to duty stations!"
Berat groaned. He dragged himself to his feet, swaying with exhaustion. How much longer could this go on? How much more could he stand? He knew they were going to break him, sooner or later. It was only a question of when.