Part Four — The Cradle · The Threnody
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The Cradle — Present Day
The star was dead, and it was the most beautiful thing Picard had ever seen.
It hung at the center of the main viewer, a small cold coal in an empty field of black. A red dwarf, long past its time, its core burned down to a dull rust ember that gave no more light than a candle in a cathedral. There were no planets in its inner system. There were no comets, no dust, no asteroid belts. It had been swept clean, long ago, by a hand that did not care for clutter. And at the farthest edge of its habitable zone, orbiting in a long slow circle in the faint, bruised light, turned a single small gray world.
"Designation, Mister Data?"
"None, Captain. The Federation has no record of it. The Romulan charts list it as Ahr'Valen, which I believe translates as the Silent Place." Data's voice was quiet. "Radius, four thousand kilometers. Mass, point three Earth. No atmosphere. Surface temperature, minus ninety degrees. And a periodic acoustic signature, which I can now hear without instrumentation."
"So can I," Picard said.
It had been growing for the last six hours. A deep, low, steady tone, a chord in perfect tune. It filled the bridge the way water fills a glass, silently, without any seam. He had watched his crew go quiet one by one as it reached them. No one had spoken for half an hour.
The Romulan warbird hung two hundred kilometers ahead, great and green and bronze against the dark. Its running lights burned steady. Behind it, on the sensor display, lay the Zone itself, eleven light-years of nothing at all, and every light-minute of it had been an act of faith.
"Orbital survey," Riker said, very low. "Surface features. I've got a plateau, about forty klicks across. Something built on it. Big." He leaned over the console. "And ships."
"How many?"
"Four. In high orbit. Consortium markings." A pause. "And Captain. That's the Profit Margin."
The ships hung in a loose formation over the plateau, sleek and gold and crimson, their hulls bright against the dark world below. A fifth shape lay behind them, smaller, lower, half hidden in the planet's shadow: a long, blunt, ugly salvage tug, painted so many times that it had a grain.
"They have the Fair Weather," Vash said.
She stood at the back of the bridge in a borrowed uniform, with Kestrel at her side. Neither of them had spoken since the Zone. Kestrel was looking at the viewer with a still, flat, unreadable face, and Picard saw a small muscle move in his jaw.
"That's not possible," Kestrel said. "I left her in your hangar bay."
"At 1900, her engines activated on a remote command," Data said. "She cleared the bay before the doors could be sealed. She was unarmed and uncrewed. Commander Riker judged that we should not fire on her."
"Remote command." Kestrel laughed, short and flat. "They've had a kill switch in her since the day I took the advance."
"Collateral," Vash said.
"That's what it's called."
The comm chimed. "Captain," said the officer at communications. "We have a hail from the Profit Margin. It's addressed to Mister Kestrel."
"Put it through."
The Ferengi's face filled the viewer, bright and warm and entirely at ease. He sat in a plush golden chair on the bridge of his flagship, a cup of something steaming at his elbow, with the glow of the dead world turning behind him in the window.
"Roan!" Grethis said. He spread both small hands wide. "My dear boy. What a pleasure. I have been hoping you would join us."
"Grethis."
"I understand you have changed your allegiance. It's quite all right. I am a reasonable man." The smile did not alter. "Business is a series of relationships, and some of them end. I do not hold a grudge. I merely call in the note."
"The note."
"Your advance. Two million credits, secured against your vessel and its contents, repayable on demand upon any breach of the contract's confidentiality terms." He nodded, brightly. "You failed to ping at Kel-Varesh. You failed to ping at New Beltane. You have, in fact, failed to provide a proof of presence at any site in the past five days, and I was obliged, as a matter of fiduciary prudence, to exercise my security interest. The Fair Weather is now the property of the Vantir Consortium."
"You took my ship."
"I took the collateral. Your ship is a clean and tidy asset. I shall have her refitted. I have always rather liked her." He tilted his head. "You may keep your coat. I am not a monster."
Kestrel made no reply. Picard watched him. The muscle in his jaw had stopped moving. He stood quite still, with his hands at his sides, and his face had gone a pale, steady, curiously peaceful gray, as though a long-dreaded thing had finally arrived and had turned out to be smaller than he had feared.
"Is there anything else?" Kestrel said.
"I'd like you to know," Grethis said gently, "that there is no ill will. I believe you did what you thought was right. It is a very admirable instinct. It does not pay, but it is admirable." He turned his bright dark eyes to Picard. "Captain. I am delighted to see you again. I did say we should meet. I trust you have reconsidered my card?"
"I threw it away."
"A pity. It was a very nice card." He sighed. "You are aware, I think, that the Consortium has established a presence here. We arrived eleven hours ago. We have landed three survey teams and begun the preliminary work on the site. Permit me to extend, as a professional courtesy, an invitation to observe."
"On whose authority?"
"Why, the Empire's."
The warbird moved.
It did not fire. It simply rotated, with an enormous slow grace, until its great raptor prow faced the Profit Margin. A new voice cut across the channel, clipped and cold, with the faint metallic edge of a command voice used to being obeyed.
"This is Commander Vrenna Tal of the Imperial Romulan Navy. You are in violation of Imperial space. You will withdraw your vessels and your survey teams at once."
Grethis's brows rose. "Commander. How delightful. I have papers."
"You have forgeries."
"I have a signed license, in good order, from Senator Kirrax of the Tal'Aura Directorate, authorizing commercial survey of any uninhabited body within the Imperial perimeter. I paid a handsome sum for it." He beamed. "It is quite genuine, I assure you."
"Senator Kirrax was arrested nine days ago on charges of treason." Vrenna's voice did not rise. "His licenses are void. His assets have been seized. And you, Mr. Grethis, are in the Imperial Zone without sanction, in command of a hostile fleet, in the presence of an Imperial warship that is entitled to destroy you."
"Ah." The smile held. "Then it is a difficulty. One does not like to be the cause of such things."
"Withdraw."
"I think not."
The silence on the channel was absolute.
Picard felt it settle over the bridge like a hand over a lamp. He saw Riker's fingers tighten on the arm of his chair. He saw Data's head turn, very slightly, toward the warbird. He saw, without looking, the faint glitter of weapons coming up across the sky, four ships and a warbird and a Starfleet flagship, five points of a star, each one waiting for another to blink.
"Mister Grethis," he said. "I will make a proposal."
"I am always delighted to hear one."
"You have a legal claim to nothing in this system. You have a fleet that cannot stand against a Romulan warbird and a Galaxy-class starship. You are also, as I have explained, feeding a process that will unmake several thousand square kilometers of inhabited space, and eventually, I believe, a great deal more. I propose that you withdraw. Now. Without a shot."
"And in exchange?"
"I will not report your location to Starfleet Security."
"How generous."
"It is the only offer I will make."
Grethis sipped his tea. He set it down. He looked at Picard for a moment, and the expression on his face was gentle, fond, a little sad, as of a man contemplating a child who has said something touching and foolish.
"Captain," he said, "I think you do not understand what I am."
"Enlighten me."
"I am not a conqueror. I do not covet your worlds. I am a translator." He spread his hands. "There is a language that this universe speaks, which is the language of exchange. It has been spoken since the first creature handed another a shell. Everything that exists is in that language, and everything can be priced. I do not create value. I merely notice it. And I have noticed, Captain, that the most valuable thing in the history of existence is lying at the bottom of that dark well, waiting for someone to say its name."
"That is not a name. It is a grave."
"A grave," said Grethis, "is a kind of property."
He touched a control.
It began at the edge of Picard's hearing.
A rising. A soft, deep, warm swell, rising out of the floor of the bridge like heat. It was a chord. It was several chords, stacked and shifting, each one resolving into the next. It filled the room, and he felt his own pulse slow and fall into step with it. The faces of his bridge crew had gone slack and strange. Troi, at his left hand, had closed her eyes. Her lips were parted. Her breathing had steadied into the rhythm of the sound.
"Counselor," he said.
"I'm all right." Her voice was faint. "It's, Captain, it's so glad."
"Mister Data, report."
"The planet." Data's voice was quite level. "The acoustic signature has changed. It has increased by a factor of nine in forty seconds. The Consortium's survey teams have completed an installation on the central plateau. They have, I believe, connected the Profit Margin's communications array to the Cradle's own transmitter. They are broadcasting."
"Broadcasting what?"
"Their filings." Data turned. "Every legal claim, every transfer of title, every Zone Expansion Note issued by the Consortium. Eleven hundred separate instruments. They are transmitting them, in sequence, on the Cradle's carrier wave."
Picard stared at him.
"He is feeding it," Vash whispered. "He's reading it the contracts."
"Seventy-two thousand terms," Data said. "In four minutes. At the current rate of response, the Cradle will reach activation threshold in approximately..." He paused. "Eight hours."
The warbird shuddered. Picard saw it on the viewer, a long slow tremor through the great green wing, as if the whole vast thing had been struck by a bell. On the channel, Vrenna Tal's voice rose, sharp and strange. "What is that? What is happening? Our instruments cannot—"
And the star flared.
It was a minor thing, at first. A single bright point at the heart of the red coal, like a spark struck from flint. Then it spread. A hard, pure, golden light welled up out of the dwarf's core and rolled outward across its surface, and the faint red glow of the dead sun flickered, steadied, and lit. The viewer dimmed to compensate. Every sensor on the bridge screamed.
"The star's reigniting," Data said. His voice had gone hushed. "Captain. The star is waking up."
On the viewer, in the new gold light, the Silent Place turned beneath them, and the seven towers on its central plateau began, one by one, to glow.
Grethis smiled. He raised his cup in salute, with great and open pleasure, and in the golden light of the star he had helped to wake, he looked, Picard thought, like a man in the last moment of a very long and very happy dream.