Death or birth?
"Aisha, I'm begging you, hurry up!" shouted the young man to his hastily gathering wife.
"Yeah, I know," she snapped back.
The guy aimlessly wandered around their apartment and stopped by the porthole, beginning to intently examine the all-too-familiar view. White dwarf IX-1345-Z-71325138984, or colloquially Hora, peered shyly through the thick glass. The slowly dying star didn't get its nickname for nothing. Researchers had approached the dwarf several times, and it constantly blasted them with such a powerful neutron wind that people simply had no choice but to consider it excessively timid.
Hora provided refuge not only to two small, completely ice-covered planets, but also under the star's temporary patronage was the "Anaida" – a ship of colossal size with over four thousand people on board."Aisha, we're going to miss everything now, come on, how long can it take," the guy barked.
"Will you let me go to the toilet, or are you ordering me to pee in open space?" the girl snapped.
The man sighed and shook his head:
"Mom, my projection, please!" he said loudly.
"Your hologram, Tom Hendrix," answered the ship's pleasant female voice.
He carefully examined the image. A young, slender man with short blond hair, light stubble, and penetrating eyes looked back at him. A blue jumpsuit with a hood tightly hugged his entire body. "Well, damn, I'm handsome, what can I say," Tom muttered to himself.
"Okay, enough staring at yourself, am I going to have to wait for you much longer?" his wife asked indignantly. The man turned and looked at his companion, a petite (one meter seventy, against his ninety) girl in the same jumpsuit, only purple. Her childlike face lit up with a sly smile, revealing attractive dimples, and her brown eyes sparkled with mischief. Aisha Hendrix smoothed her mane of wavy chestnut hair:
"Well, shall we go?"
"Finally! Of course we're going!"
Tom told Mom to turn off the projection and they hurriedly left their quarters. As they walked to the teleportation bay, they encountered only a few residents of the Anaida. The ship maintained an internal schedule, and it was only six in the morning, so there weren't many early birds.
The pair quickly moved from the teleportation bay to the ship's airlock and climbed into a compact starship.
"Mom, course to Omega Epsilon 7."
Aisha looked back and glanced at the Anaida; their little ship seemed like a tiny grain of sand before the huge station with all its sections, blocks, and communication dishes, which fringed its surface like clusters of mushrooms. Except one of the average-sized dishes was several times larger than their little vessel...
"As soon as we reach the necessary distance, we'll turn on the torsion engines," said Tom, more to himself, since Aisha understood everything just as well as he did.
"What worries me is why the star is going to give birth earlier than scheduled," the girl mused thoughtfully.
"You're not the only one worried; we've double-checked everything several times," the guy responded. Mom, turn on autopilot and display the calculations for Omega Epsilon 7 on the screen, also add a projection of what's happening to it now.
The spouses leaned intently over the running numbers and graphs.
"Look, the core temperature has increased 4 times more than predicted!" noted Aisha.
"Pay attention to the neutron flux; it's not constant but seems to pulsate," replied Tom.
"Arghhh, I don't understand anything, this is some nonsense!" the girl wailed in defeat, leaning back in her seat and folding her arms across her chest.
"Alright, don't whine; apparently, humans aren't good enough yet to accurately calculate cosmic processes, we were only off by three months. Mom, remove the calculations and prepare to activate the torsion engines."
"Twenty seconds until activation," the pleasant voice announced.
The ship rushed forward... After covering the distance, they emerged right in front of their destination. Besides Omega Epsilon 7, there was another star in the system, Hiana Epsilon 7, with a planet named Knox, whose size was comparable to our Earth; both were held in their orbits by powerful gravity.
"Mom, fly into sector F1 in front of Omega. Direct seventy percent of power to the ship's shields, the rest to the equipment. Deploy four drones for measurements. One at this distance, the second should be here," Tom's fingers confidently pointed out locations on the hologram. "The third should dive to a distance of half a trillion kilometers, and the last one should try to reach the star's core. Activate autopilot!"
"Understood, proceeding with execution," the melodious female voice sounded.
Tom leaned back in his chair:
"A bottle of beer to that captain!" laughed Hendrix.
"You'll get it later," Aisha muttered without looking away from the screen.
Through the spherical glass above the control panel, an excellent view of everything happening opened up. Omega Epsilon 7 was being torn apart by numerous prominences; these flashes of colossal energy erupted from the star's surface and carried far into space. First, a point appeared on the incandescent gas ball, changing color from yellow to dark orange; expanding into a spot, it became dark red and then exploded into a pillar of fire into the surrounding space.
"What's wrong with you, why so early?" Tom muttered.
"Sooner or later. This is the agony of death," Aisha commented gloomily.
"Or the birth of something new!" the guy objected with a smile.
"Let it be so; I hope by analyzing the data, we'll understand where our mistake was. What about the probes?"
"The fourth has two million kilometers left, if I understand your interest correctly."
"Yeah, you understand my interest correctly," Aisha said, distorting the words and making a face. Humanity had been studying stars for so many years, penetrating the very depths of the little ones without problems. But damn it! What about the giants!? We've never been able to launch a drone into the core of a star whose mass is several dozen times that of the sun!
"Maybe we'll be the first?" Tom noted cheerfully.
"I'd like that; I should have some shocks in my life that will eclipse your marriage proposal."
"If that happens, I'll understand I chose the wrong life partner. Putting a cross on our relationship, I'll dedicate my life to studying stars."
"Wait! I don't understand, who do you love!? Me or this hot thing here?" Aisha pointed her finger towards Omega...
"Darling, no need to even think! Of course, Omega! However, it's much more pleasant to put my dick in you than into clusters of incandescent gases at about two hundred thousand degrees."
Peals of laughter filled the ship's cabin:
"That's the sweetest thing I've heard from you in my entire life!"
The couple laughed their fill and returned to contemplating the data.
"What a piece of shit," Aisha cursed.
"What the hell! Damn," Tom exclaimed simultaneously.
The last drone, without reaching the star's core, lost contact with the ship.
"Well, okay, maybe we'll rejoice at a white child," Tom said hopefully.
"You're so full of optimism today. However, I'd also gladly watch the birth of a white hole. After all, no one has ever witnessed their birth firsthand," the girl said dreamily, closing her eyes.
"Something tells me we'll enter history with you anyway!"
"Let's hope. How much time do we have until the collapse?"
"Forty-three minutes, according to the drone readings. And if someone had pulled their pants on faster, we'd have more time."
"Bleh, I'm too lazy to argue with you," the girl waved off, completely immersed in observing Omega Epsilon 7.
Tom shook his head and leaned back in his seat, admiring his wife. It wasn't that he wasn't interested in what was happening on the screen; on the contrary, after the event concluded, they would receive not only footage from the ship but also detailed shots from the three remaining drones. <а hrеf="">erotic stories This material would undergo detailed analysis, and Tom understood that if he missed something now, he would carefully review it many times later.
Hendrix looked lovingly at his wife; he remembered their first meeting, the day he proposed to her. With every minute of his life, he rejoiced that she was walking alongside him. To be completely open oneself and see her through and through—such things happen rarely, but these were exactly the kind of relationship they aspired to and built.
"You've gotten quite lazy," said Aisha, glancing sideways at her husband.
"That's true."
The girl rubbed the bridge of her nose and settled more comfortably in her chair, tearing herself away from the numbers:
"How few people are fortunate enough to witness such events."
Tom reached for Aisha, and they both merged in a kiss. Hendrix stroked her curly mane, continuing to passionately kiss his wife.
"Let's do it so we can both see Omega!" she suggested.
"Didn't know you were such a pervert."
"I want to experience two pleasures at once," whispered Aisha.
"Greedy bitch," Tom teased her.
The girl stood up, and the purple jumpsuit was instantly at her feet. Completely naked, Aisha smiled playfully, looking at Tom. A slender little girl with a captivating smile and chestnut curls. Hendrix knew her body by heart, but each time he looked as if for the first time. He hastily pulled off his jumpsuit and sat back in the chair; frankly, there weren't many pose options.
"Not just greedy, but also wild."
Aisha turned to face the screen and sat on her husband's lap. With his hands, Tom pressed the girl to himself, his fingers squeezing her breasts. He felt her breath, heartbeat, and every moan with his whole body. She rocked gently on him, gradually accelerating the pace. Meanwhile, they could both observe the star itself. Tom's hands slid over her velvety skin; he stroked her thighs, moving higher and holding Aisha by the hips, controlling the pace of penetration. His fingers ran upward, skimming over her stomach, back, caressing her breasts. Merging in a kiss, Tom each time admired how Aisha's face glowed with pleasure. At one beautiful moment, she began to moan even more piercingly, trying to impale herself on Tom more forcefully; trembling finely, the girl relaxed and, letting out a sharp cry, sank onto her husband. After catching her breath a little, she began to sway her hips. Hendrix felt his wife's womb become completely warm and wet.
"Get up, or I won't finish like this!"
Aisha rose and leaned against the instrument panel. Tom positioned himself behind and accelerated the pace until he poured everything, down to the last drop, into his wife. The Hendrixes froze, breathing noisily; right in front of them, the star's final minutes of life continued to unfold. The spouses went to the small shower cubicle tucked away in their small ship and returned to their seats.
"Look, Aisha, we're just in time; it'll all be over soon!"
"Yes, not much left," she agreed.
The pair put their jumpsuits back on and returned to the calculations.
"Mom, activate the backup generator, direct all its power to the ship's shield, lower the protective shutter on the viewing glass, start the torsion engines; just in case, we need to be ready to reverse..."
After some time, what the spouses had long awaited happened. A star of Omega's class, after exhausting its internal resources, was destined for a not-so-pleasant fate. It was preparing to explode. Omega, in fractions of a second, erupted with a huge release of energy, X-ray radiation, radioactivity. The light, however, eclipsed all other stars, spreading to all corners of the universe. In a year, two months, four days, and eight minutes, it would reach the Anaida station; somewhere around two hundred and forty years later, the flash would be seen on Earth. To the great regret of the Hendrixes, the human eye was unable to discern anything, so they only saw an absolutely white surrounding space for a few seconds.
"Whooo-hooo!" Tom's cry erupted in the ship. "Aaaand what do we have?"
"We lost two more expensive drones; only one little one survived, but the data obtained from it covers the cost of all the others," noted Aisha.
"What the hell is this, look at the Miyamoto-Serov radiation; the D-particle flux is off the charts," Tom spoke excitedly.
"I've never seen anything like this. You're saying you don't like the idea of caviar in the sea?"
"No way, I prefer the version with beacons. And don't get distracted; with such power, a rupture will happen soon."
The spouses fell silent and began to carefully observe what was happening...
The remnants of Omega Epsilon 7 compressed multiple times. And the once-huge star turned from a watermelon into a small berry. But a berry with incredible density, mass, and "greed." Omega's core had now turned into a black hole. An object of the universe that had incredible density and absorbed absolutely everything, even its own light.
"Too bad, in the end, we only have a black wormhole," Tom commented on the appearance of the hole.
"But with such force that Hiana and its planet are about to meet their end."
Indeed, Omega's nearest neighbor, unable to overcome the attraction, was approaching its demise. If viewed from the perspective of an uninformed layman, it all looked quite strange. One star exploded; the other, along with its planet, changed its orbit and set course for what seemed like a completely empty place. But for the Hendrixes, it all looked banal; the fact was that the black hole was absolutely invisible to the naked eye until it began to absorb something...
Subsequent events unfolded quite dramatically; the only planet in the Epsilon 7 system accelerated too much under the influence of the black hole's gravity. Knox crashed into Hiana, which was ahead on its way to the wormhole. Part of the planet burned up even before reaching the star; the remainder caused a powerful flare, but all this paled before the impending catastrophe.
The engine power allowed the Hendrixes to hover at a safe distance like a little hummingbird. From the scientists' perspective, they could see Hiana with the perished Knox approaching an invisible point. But soon this area lit up with a bright light. A stream of incandescent contents tore away from Hiana's surface and hurried into the depths of the black hole, towards the event horizon. The running stream spiraled and disappeared right in the center of the wormhole, making it visible. The tenacious parasite held the star with gravity and continued to "drink" Hiana. The edges of the black hole heated to white-hot, and the near-space space sparkled with sparks of green, purple, and other colors. Clusters of these tiny lights veiled the wormhole's feast.
"Poor Hiana," Aisha sighed sympathetically, "In space, no one can hear you scream."
"Enough with the sentimentality. I think it's time to prepare for the 'salvo.'"
The Hendrixes froze in anticipation... The "sal