DUALITY: The World of Lies by Paul Barufaldi

was about to tell
him anything he wanted to hear. “Those probes are on the delayed
launch list, and… and they’re being utilized in the sweep. I want
every probe on it. Once we locate the object, you can go ahead and
launch all our assets directly into the star for all I
care.”
    Aru swallowed his annoyance, along with more
liquor. They’d spent over two months being outfitted for this
mission at Carousel 7, a major Fleet base. They had ordered the
ship outfitted with multiple heatsinks, reinforced solar shielding,
and a variety of other parts to protect them from this fatal
environment, making The Kinetic Dream the most expensively
outfitted craft in the entire Fleet. It had been a tall order, and
it had been filled with without question, or at least without open
question. It made it obvious they were attempting a solar
expedition, so it would make sense to return with valuable data for
the science community, such as what could be discovered by
launching probes directly into a sunspot and following them until
the signal stopped. Since most ships had neither the capability to
enter a star nor crews that were willing to do so, this was indeed
a rare opportunity to gather inner star data for the solar dynamics
crowd to ooh and aww and ponder and debate over. More importantly
it would justify the costly outfitting and give him a reputation
boost to boot, while returning without such data would just raise
more questions regarding their motives for this
expedition.
    “The solar depth probes were outfitted above
and beyond the probes you requested, expressly for this purpose,”
he snapped at her.
    “Well, that was then. We’re going to have
double the signal loss with all this surface activity, and to
compensate I’m allocating all assets to the primary
mission.”
    This was very typical of her, too typical, and
a personality trait that irritated him to no end. Aru was a man who
was bred and raised to follow through on his word, but Cearuleins,
like Mei, had no qualms about making false promises if it achieved
their ends. This put him at a constant disadvantage because it
meant that while he was held to his every syllable, both by others
and himself, she maintained a free pass to flout her commitments
-because, well, that was just who she was. He glared at her so
derisively and so conspicuously that she could not ignore
him.
    “Look,” she sighed, “our coronal
transit entry and exit data from the Kinetic will be more than
enough to justify the mission. Bringing a vessel this size through
the corona, manned no less, is a historic first. And solar
dynamics? I mean, come on Aru. Nobody but a handful of nerds cares
about that. Stars  shine . That's all we need to know
about them. They've been charting solar cycles and flares to
predict space weather since time immemorial. Their enigmatic inner
workings don't matter to anything that concerns man or machine.
Planets are our domains. Stars... well stars are just not our
business, never have been and never will be.”
    “Ironic you should say that in the midst of
meddling in star-business.”
    “Yes, well you know me, love. I thrive on
hypocrisy. The bottom line here is that there’s really nothing you
can do it about it. Or did you forget that I’m currently in
command?”
    How could he? She basked in it on
such rare occasion as he  granted  it to
her.  Her mission  he reminded himself. The intoxication was beginning to
take hold, the positive sense of well-being, the tongue ready at
the gate to be loosed. It would all culminate in his usual rants
about the parasites of House Psyron, or if not them their
neighboring houses of The South, and if not them all the ills of
the Calidonian houses north of the rift. When hemispheric rivalries
fell dry, he always had leftover bigotry to speak against their
twin world, Aq Thalassa, or he could choose to unite his entire
dual-planetary system against the Carouselian space-dwellers, or
pit his human race against the machine