The black box

ok, haven't done a short piece in some time, and I haven't ever finished a space story, so this should be interesting. I am already aware that I can and may expand this.

The Black Box by Max Malcolm

We might have never found it if it weren't for the passing freighters. Black boxes are limited in their broadcast range, so teaching them to be smart enough to be found has been what engineers have put most of their energy into. That is why it crashed itself on a little speck of rock near a major space lane. It wasn't the busiest space lane in the galaxy, so the box may have been there for a year or more before we found it. Of course we found out before too long that much. Nothing on the tape let us know where the ship had jettisoned it's black box, but listening to the tape told us we would have a hard time finding  the wreckage.

This is what the recording said:
"Hello, this is captain Dan Callenbach of the good ship Endeavor. We started with a crew of five, however I am the only current survivor and I doubt that is going to last long. I am being pulled into the gravity of an unknown object and I doubt either the ship or I will survive the impact. The fuel is low and I can only hope that by pushing this recording device back into the space lanes it will find someone who can use this information so others can avoid our mistakes.
We were three days out of starport 2298 local nickname Kryldan's place headed out towards the end of the north arm to pick up passengers to bring back towards the outer core. Retirees and tourists mostly. It seemed like an easy gig, nice medium sized profit because most cruisers won't bother going out that far. The space lane we had chosen was rarely used, few stops along the way other than spaceports for freighters. There were rumours that some unknown risk had discouraged settlers from setting up camp near the lane. However the lane was not likely to be used by pirates because they need high traffic to make a profit. The only danger was dark matter. Our crew felt that was not even enough risk to be concerned about. It was night shift and most of the crew was asleep, most time on these long trips is spent resting because the only duties needed are to eat and check equipment. I was manning the controls, but I confess I may have dozed off or was daydreaming about some lovely lady I would pick up when we got back near the core.
All the data pointed to that the space lanes were intended to be cleared for one hundred miles of dark matter, and it was illegal to push any sort of matter in a way that it's trajectory passed it through the route. I suppose that's why the item that hit our ship was unexpected. A jolt went through the ship, followed by alarms going off all over. Something had punctured the hull leading to massive decompression in the crew cabin. The automatic safety systems sealed the room from the ship and attempted to seal the breach. It was too late at that point though, in less than five minutes my entire crew was dead.
I had bigger fish to fry, trying to pull into a safe zone to regroup and possibly at least keep myself alive. When you are going that fast and get hit, it alters your course and there is no way to correct it using steering. I was far out of sight of the the space lane before I even corrected the spin on our craft. By the time I had brought us to a near stop it was too far from the space lane, I would be at least a few days trying to backtrack to it and getting my ship to a repair yard.
Now that my ship was stopped I pulled up diagnostic screens. The main engines were beyond patching up, fuel tank ruptured, however the life support, food stores and computers remained undamaged. It was clear pretty quickly that I would not be surviving the crash. There was a slight chance our distress beacon would catch the eye of a passing ship, but those chances would keep getting worse as time went on. I must have blanked out my mind for awhile, because when I woke up hours later what I saw out the front window had changed radically. People talk about the thousand yard stare, but it feels entirely different from the inside. When you become so weary and worn out that you can't take it anymore it's like your mind detaches, and you find yourself staring off into the emptyness, unable to process. I suppose that is what happened to me, I had not prepared myself for the idea of my own death, or the death of all of my friends. Once the adrenaline wore off I had to face the reality, and I had trouble with that.
What I saw when I became aware again distracted me from my fate. I had begun passing through a graveyard of ships, perhaps thousands of them in all directions. All were dark hulks illuminated by the lights off of my ship. These hulks appeared to be orbiting something off to starboard, just out of my view. I turned the ship to face it. It was the largest piece of dark matter I had ever heard of, if it was solid it would be of too much mass to be possible, such a large object would collapse on itself as it was larger than any planetoid. In fact, as I looked on it and tried to turn my ship to see the edges of it, I realized it was larger than any star. The scale of it is beyond description, just imagine a giant wall, seemingly flat, extending in all directions. The surface is in fact curved, like a part of a sphere, but it appears flat because it is of such size. The surface area would be more than all of the planets in five star systems. It took me some time to examine what I could of this strange object, when it first appeared I was only able to detect it on instruments, it gave off a small amount of heat and radiation. As I got to a point that I should be able to see it I sent out probes to provide light to show the surface. The surface was either black or somewhat reflective. The lights on my probes reflected back, showing me some of the surface. It appeared metallic, with the exception of some areas that looked like organic portals, like the mouth of an octopus. I decided to put my ship into a geostationary orbit near one of these portals to record the circumstances of the crash and perform the appropriate burial at space for my crew. Unfortunately this ship will be my grave, but not quite yet.
It took me a few days to do all this, and I have watched the mysterious object. A few days ago a small craft pushed it's way out of one of the organic ports and sped up to escape the system, followed by a rocklike object fired out of the organic port like a bullet out of a gun.
Finally, just a few hours ago, a section of the side split open along lines I had not seen before. As it did I could see sunlight coming from the inside of the object and it became clear at last at least some things about this object. This object had once been a star system, and the star was unmapped because all light had been trapped by a huge sphere. I hope that I can find out more as some medium sized craft have emerged and seem to be approaching my ship presently. If they are friendly then this black box is unnecessary, so I will have to take the price of sending it back to the lanes as a loss. However the reason I fire it now is I may not have another chance, if I go inside the sphere I may never return. Furthermore I don't know for sure that those that come to greet me are friendly. So this may be the last that anyone hears from me. I cannot tell you where I am, I have told you everything I know. My advice is to avoid that length of the lane, it may mean a day or two detour but it would be better to avoid what happened to my ship. Goodbye, Godspeed gentlemen."

Needless to say we still have not found the system he spoke of, and many of our analysts are skeptical to take his word for it. Considering the condition of his psyche he may have been hallucinating. Regardless you have to wonder where he got such wild ideas, and where the final resting place of the man and his ship is.