"Ghost of a Machine"
By Jezie Lin
Summary: When the unimaginable happens, sometimes there are too many potential actions and the possibilities immobilize you.
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognize and will not profit in any way from this work of fiction.
--
Black holes are not really black. The sparkle of small pieces of doomed matter dragged through the failing light creates a myriad of rainbows. A splash of color that dies as quickly as it appeared. As the black hole inexorably drew more and more of the bits and pieces into its maw, the irregular lightshow continued.
No one would ever see this dance of transcendence at the horizon of being and not, no one would marvel at the brilliance of creation remaking itself. No one would ever know…
Once, this had been a warm yellow sun, benevolently warming its system of planets and the people who lived there. Now it was just the last stop to oblivion and nothing was left.
Nothing except the starship that wasn't really there.
--
The planet was unremarkable; brown and blue with large polar ice caps, colder than humans would find comfortable. Winds howled over the empty plains, scouring down to the rock and carving its paths across the land, and then stirred up violent storms when they meet the oceans.
Not a place you would choose to live in.
Far above this desolation, the Andromeda Ascendant had a problem. Her captain, crew and avatar had disappeared. No sign, no message, no indication there was a problem. Just gone.
And she did not know what to do about it.
Her programming demanded that she find them, save them, get them back at all costs, but where to start looking? She had already ascertained that they were gone, but did not know how, let alone where.
Maybe if she reviewed the avatar's transmissions again…
--
It had all started with a song. Well, maybe not a song as much as a series of notes the Andromeda had picked up from deep space, a lilting melody that sounded both sad and desperate and demanding. Like something lost and forgotten.
In retrospect, she wished she had just ignored it. But no, she had told Dylan and he'd told the rest of the crew and of course Trance felt it was something that should be looked into. And Dylan always seemed to do what Trance wanted.
So they followed the music back to a small planet that did not even rate a name, just a number and a set of coordinates in the database. The survey team who had discovered it 130 years ago described it as an inhospitable climate with no valuable resources and the only thing of note was the ruins of a large stone fortification, but no life forms were found.
A dead planet singing to the stars.
--
Andromeda traced the signal to the remains of a huge circular building in the center of the ruins. Its first floor walls were mostly intact even after the upper stories had collapsed. What remained standing had long settled and seemed stable enough for her crew to safely explore so she gave the clearance for the Eureka Maru to launch and watched them until they were down and inside the ruins. Then she monitored them via Rommie.
Everything was going as planned. Her crew explored numerous ancient structures that had collapsed due to old age and admired the faded artwork that covered the remaining walls. The ruins felt almost like the ancient Egyptian archives she maintained from old Earth and Harper kept making mummy jokes.
The center of the building was a large open room with a high ceiling supported by massive columns and braced with graceful arches and absolutely nothing that could produce the song they could hear drifting softly through the room.
Harper and Beka were arguing about the harmonic frequency of stone when the crew just was not there any more. No power surge or flash of light; just gone.
At first, she had assumed that Rommie had malfunctioned and sent a message to Dylan. But Dylan did not answer her call and then nobody else answered either.
Then for an endless moment, she thought they were all dead and the thought of losing her captain just about overloaded her AI core. She performed another in-dept scan of the area, she even descended to an dangerous altitude to get the best possible readings, but she could find no sign of them, any parts of them or any trace that they been there at all.
It seemed they disappeared without a trace.
--
Her avatar had been transmitting every moment the crew was on the ground. So why did she not know where they went?
Should she have been more worried? Should she have stopped them? But no, this wasn't anything unusual; Dylan and the rest were always investigating something. And they always seemed to get into trouble, and then get out of it okay.
So she wouldn't panic. Yet.