Far away in the cosmos, as though an observer's mind could drift from Archeon across seven light-years of interstellar distance, one might imagine floating among the outer environs of Betelgeuse itself. Here, the scale dwarfed any human perspective.
Great towers of roiling plasma rose and fell along the star's surface, each hundreds of times the size of entire planets. High above the photosphere, dense arcs of stellar wind formed coronal loops that glowed a deep orange, throbbing with energies that had built up over millennia. Steady streams of helium and carbon fused in Betelgeuse's shell, feeding violent currents beneath its surface. Closer in, the star's periphery churned like a colossal, incandescent ocean, with upwellings of bright convection cells—granules bigger than Earth's orbit.
These cells crackled and released bursts of radiation that refracted through swirling clouds of dust, forming shapes akin to shimmering veils across the dark cosmic backdrop. One might glide through a tempest of solar flares that looped thousands of kilometers above Betelgeuse's limb, each flare a geyser of neon fire. In the star's deeper layers, temperatures soared until matter existed as a soup of atomic nuclei and free electrons. It was here that something catastrophic brewed: the final fusion cycles. Hydrogen and helium burning had long ended, replaced by carbon, neon, then oxygen, each stage collapsing faster than the last.
The star was forced to fuse silicon at furious rates to uphold its own gravity. Within that roiling core, neutrinos poured outward in unimaginable numbers—harbingers of a meltdown. Pressure and heat grew unsustainable, forging a ticking clock of cosmic death. From this vantage—an invisible presence floating near Betelgeuse's broiling photosphere—one might watch as the star pulsed with irregular beats. Sections of its red supergiant shell expanded and contracted by hundreds of millions of kilometers, pulsations that normally took months or years to cycle. But now they accelerated, each convulsion sending shocks through stellar plasma and launching arcs of ejected material that drifted like fiery tendrils in space.
In swirling eddies of stardust, grains condensed from cooling gas, only to be swept outward by radiation pressure. Finally, cracks in the star's equilibrium began to show. The silicon-fusing shell stuttered, dumping energy into the star's core at a breakneck pace. For a handful of cosmic heartbeats, Betelgeuse shone more brightly than ever before, a beacon of doomed splendor. In that moment, swirling magma-like plumes erupted from the star's upper layers, each plume carrying billions of tons of superheated matter away.
Streaks of darkness—massive starspots—rippled across its photosphere, forming and dissolving in mere weeks, phenomena that might last centuries around a stable star. All the while, neutrino detectors across distant star systems, including the fledgling outpost on Archeon, would pick up the frantic signals. Deep in Betelgeuse's core, unstoppable chain reactions tugged the star's interior into a cataclysmic collapse.
Just before the final implosion, a staggering wave of neutrinos broke free, racing outward at near-lightspeed. The vast outer shells, each containing swirling storms of plasma, had no time to react.
With that core gone, the star was but an unanchored mass, certain to explode from the inside out in a fury no human craft could withstand up close. And then, that cosmic vantage would be jolted by the star's last exhalation. Betelgeuse's body, once so mighty, abruptly churned into a shock wave—a supernova meltdown that would hurl luminous matter, radiation, and dust across light-years. A single flash might outshine entire galaxies for days.
Yet the vacuum bore no sound as Betelgeuse tore itself apart, scattering stellar matter over light-years, a wave certain to sweep outward, brush any unlucky colony or starship caught too close.
Inside Archeon's science dome, initial feeds painted only a vague picture; no alarm bells yet, just irregular neutrino spikes and subtle spectral drift scrolled across monitors, anomalies outside expected stellar cycles. Teams assumed it was outbound shell fusion or sunspot activity from the distant giant.
500,000 kilometers sunward from Archeon, the Ark Explorer's sensor corvette had parked in lunar shadow, running full-bore scans before prepping a delivery run inward. Over the preceding hours, it relayed updated batches of data by tightbeam—each about an hour stale due to distance and reprocessing lag, nonetheless the best window into Betelgeuse's state available.
In the dome, wind battered the fabric roof with occasional gusts, a low groan against the dusk settling over cool fields. Farmers would just be finishing a shift under lamp-lit croplines, oblivious to the slow change unfolding seven light-years away. Inside, ozone from fusion cores tinged the air. Holo panels reflected blue-green onto anxious faces. Data streams scrolled steadily upwards—flux rates, brightness curves, neutrino counts—all nominal but rising.
Dr. Eleanor Atwood leaned over her console, watching residual fluctuations trace gentle slopes one moment, jagged spikes the next. Her team murmured over pulse patterns, minor line broadening, nothing yet screaming disaster.
"Status from the Explorer's last relay?" someone quietly asked.
Atwood pushed aside scattered notes, thumbed through the latest datastamp. "Thirty-seven minutes old. Elevated neutrino background continues," she summarized. "No abrupt collapse indicated." Her chest eased slightly. The readings still fit late shell fusion, not terminal burn.
Minutes later a new transfer window opened; Ark Explorer's fresh data dump blinked in. On queue, screens flickered—flux lines sharper, neutrino count doubled again. Residuals now spiked abruptly, then spiked again.
A hush spread. Scientists lifted eyes from consoles, quiet murmurs turning tight. Dr. Volkov leaned toward the panoramic display, sweat beading. "Is this from the Explorer?" he asked.
Atwood checked the timestamp. "Yes—less than an hour lag." Voice tight. "They got behind the second moon for glare cut."
She expanded the transmission frame. Overlay pulses jittered wildly. The giant star's infrared profile shifted visibly; silicon burning signatures—impossible just days ago—lit the panel.
Near her, Dr. Hsiang's hand hovered stiff over his controls. "That's silicon-phase transition. Core collapse phase." His tone sharpened. "Is this terminal fusion?"
Atwood felt a cold pulse of dread. It matched simulations studied—and dismissed—as far-future hypotheticals. She reset the overlay. "Yes. This is pre-collapse. Imminent."
A silence fell, loud against the hum of generators.
Volkov's brow furrowed. "Supernova." Voice scraped low. No one disagreed.
Suddenly, a technician cursed quiet—her neutrino feed had just updated. Graph lines now doubled again, rising exponentially. "Flux... just surged again! Interval forty minutes."
Atwood's eyes narrowed. "Double check—any sensor error?"
"No, ma'am. Crosscheck aligns."
"Then meltdown arrival..." She almost whispered the estimate.
"Days?" someone said.
She shook her head, a knot tight in her gut. "More likely hours. Until the primary wavefront."
Hsiang recoiled. "Near-lightspeed transit time. We can't evade."
Volkov pressed his knuckles to his brow. "Our corvettes can't clear blast radius before transit kills the drives."
"Frontier station's thirty light-years," said another quietly. "No time."
Earth was out of the question—signal delays alone spanned months or years.
Atwood straightened. "Run Doppler. Track collapse rate, outer shell velocities."
Graphics flickered as data poured through the models. The dome's fusion generator hummed lower, rerouting power to computation.
Just then, a harsh static-laced voice echoed from the wall speaker—delayed tightbeam from Ark Explorer:
"Observatory, Explorer here—massive flare expansions, sunspots erupting, plasma loops thousands of kilometers across, gravitational distortions increasing—photospheric instabilities detected—"
Atwood rotated towards communications. "Get that feed to the holo."
A grainy real-time relay filled the screen, captured inside the Explorer's glare shield. Immense neon flares gyred wildly, twisting arcs of plasma thousands of kilometers long, ejecting chaotic streams. Several scientists gasped aloud.
Volkov bent over neutrino output. His voice flattened. "Flux escalation steady." He met Atwood's gaze. "Collapse in less than ten hours. Maybe less."
Hsiang's voice cracked. "Hours. Not days."
"Narrowed shock front, near lightspeed. We have no jump window."
Atwood cut across the rising panic. "Load all data into outbound probes. Confirm the melt signatures. Sound full planetary alert."
Another transmission sliced through, sharper, closer to live from the Explorer:
"Archeon, do you copy... gravitational distortion escalating... core collapse phase verified... neutrino emissions off scale, it's—"
The transmission cut sharply. Audio dissolved into static — a burst of harsh white noise, then nothing. Silence.
Nobody moved for long seconds. The vacuum of sound pressed into the dome alongside ozone tang and faint vibrations from the generator.
Atwood's heartbeat double-timed. She leaned over the comm receiver controls. "Ark Explorer, respond," she said, voice strained, throat tight. "Repeat, Explorer, come in."
No response. Just background system hum. No telemetry. No carrier tone.
Volkov stared across his neutrino display. Jaw tense, muscles rigid in his thick neck. "Flux values exceed instrument scale," he said finally, voice flat as stone. "Latest spike likely overloaded or fried their uplink electronics."
Chevalier lifted trembling hands from his console. With slow motions, he removed his glasses, wiping at the lenses against his sleeve. Deep lines carved his brow and mouth. "This rapid," he muttered. "Explorer's shielding wasn't designed for anything like this. Nor are ours."
Atwood scanned the faces turned toward her. Pale, expectant. Men and women frozen between disbelief and calculation. She straightened from the console edge, forced her trembling fingers still against the metal.
"We don't stop a supernova," she said, the words clipped, factual. "We warn who we can, get data out, protect survival assets." Her jaw set. "Compile everything: neutrino streams, plasma shifts, collapse telemetry, Explorer's last frames. Priority load to a corvette."
Her eyes fixed on Volkov. "Starward. Prep for jump to Gamma relay sector immediately."
Volkov's head jerked up, eyes narrowing in refusal. "Warp drive now?" His tone incredulous. "Into wavefront transit zone? Arrival radiation, turbulent graviton fields—suicidal."
Hsiang's face was grey-white, jaw muscle twitching. "Thirty-two light-years to Gamma. If Starward makes it, that's weeks' delay. But better a chance than waiting for obliteration."
Atwood's palm came down hard on the holo-table edge. Sharp slap. "We don't die unrecorded," she snapped. "Fastest ship prepped, jump early. Gamma's our best hope for relay. We send the warning now."
All around, consoles beeped identifier locks. Lights flickered under power routing surges. Figures moved faster, voices taut with protocol checklists—navigation confirmation, package encryption, drive status. On side screens, red-edged wavefront projections updated, jagged parabolas carving deeper across Sector charts with each data refresh.
A somber tone issued from Volkov's console. "Logarithmic spike confirmed," he said flatly. "Wave likely reaches orbit by dawn cycle. A few hours."
"Hsiang studied his flux gauge. 'Incoming radiation will overwhelm all local field dampeners and magnetic shielding almost instantly,' he said quietly. 'Hull coatings, sensor arrays, surface equipment—they'll saturate in seconds. Plasma wave, heating, overload. Bunkers might absorb some shock, but not for long.'"
A sharp alert from planetary comms. The controller's strained voice crackled. "Observatory? Last data packet from the Ark Explorer lost. Last transmission terminated abruptly. Assume vehicle jump failed or wave impact severed transmission."
Atwood keyed transmit, forcing her voice steady over the tension. "Acknowledged. Collapse confirmed imminent. Time scale: hours. Starward is priority. Load full meltdown dataset to its core. Initiating Gamma jump attempt."
A pause. Then the faintest response, voice nearly drowned in static:
"Copy. Alert protocols issued locally. Starward prepping drive. Godspeed, doctor."
Atwood broke contact. Surveyed the faces again around her. Chevalier cleared his throat roughly. "Any hope of outside rescue? Earth-based fleet response?"
Volkov shook his head, expression grim. "Earth's four hundred light-years away. Transit lag and no pre-existing rapid deployment. Even if Starward's signal got through, response delay is months at best. Our remaining ships can't outpace or power through the radiative front."
Hsiang's chin dipped. "Any corvette jump now just stalls destruction, at best. Starward's the sole relay chance."
Atwood exhaled slow. Duty hardened her next words. "Then archive everything twice. Transmit immediately to planetary control and surface bunkers. Prioritize shield reinforcement routines, bunker deepest assets, and launch that corvette."
Around them, the dome's staff moved again, tension manifest in jerky movements and clipped voices. Diagnostics scrolled fast, final wavefront convergence times flickering in red text. Beyond the pressure hull, dusk deepened. Out the viewport, Archeon's second moon rose slow and pale — an indifferent disc against a blackening sky heavy with imminent threat.
There would be no outside help. All that remained was to record, to warn, and to hunker down beneath a dying star's last rage.