DUALITY: The World of Lies by Paul Barufaldi Page A

of the signal to the
intersect of this target orbit, which should put us in the vicinity
of the receiving body,” he finished.
    They had several probes rendezvousing with
various satellite links on the chain. Some, however, would not at
times be accessible through the wide-scale hyper-relay network they
had laid. But even just sticking with one satellite, they should
observe it align and transmit within the next forty-seven hours,
the full circuit of the satellite ring orbit.
    “We can do this even one better. Kinny, assume
an object in an orbital period range of 8,000 kilometers above or
below The Kinetic.”
    “Yes, Commander.”
    “Now find which orbit our satellite ring would
be optimized to transmit to.”
    A bright highlighted ring wrapped itself
around the diagram of Ignis Rubeli, 2,330 kilometers above their
current position.
    “That's our absolute target orbit,” Aru
confidently declared. “System, navigator: Take us back up there,
and reassign all nearprobes to sweep that orbit.”
    “Aye Captain,” responded Mei and System in
unison. Mei's official position was, after all, the Navigator -not
that titles usually held much meaning in a two member crew -or
three if you counted Kinny.
    System spoke. “Captain, I don't mean to divert
attention from the search, but we’ve just come into the midst of a
sudden thermal spike. The hullbots are reporting an issue with the
physical shielding on the outer shield ring you should be made
aware of immediately.”
    “Whoa, wait... what's going on with the shield
ring?” he asked.
    The holograph put a profile view of the
Kinetic on display along with her surrounding toroidal
magnetospheric shield.
    “Due to the lower surrounding voltages of the
chromosphere, our environmentally powered magnetospheric
force-shield is considerably weaker here. That has resulted in a
marked increase in the density of highly charged plasma ions,
particularly single protons, seeping into our shielded space and
raising The Kinetic's thermals rapidly beyond safe
levels.”
    “We're getting too hot.” translated Mei. It
stood to reason that would happen gallivanting around inside of a
star. At least they still had plenty of heatsinks.
    System continued. “Three of the outer physical
layers are showing increases in molecular expansion, begetting what
will be a slow but continuous and irreversible degradation of
structural integrity.”
    Mei translated once more. “We're, um...
melting.” Then she laughed. She didn't know why she found that
amusing, because it certainly wasn't. Maybe it was so alarming she
had to imagine it that way in order to cope with it.
    “System, how much longer can we continue to
sustain the Kinetic in the chromosphere?” Aru asked
nervously.
    “It depends on how much damage you're willing
tolerate, Captain. My recommendation would be that we exit this
star immediately, as our hull integrity will be further compromised
on our passage out of the corona. Based on current data and a best
case scenario, the Kinetic could remain in this environment for
another 14 hours before exiting, though in doing so we will sustain
extreme damage to the hull, outer weapons systems and sensors in
the interim. To be clear about this, Captain, that is the maximum
amount of time we have before engines and basic life support become
compromised.”
    It was all so surreal. Mei still had her eyes
on the holograph tracking Farprobe 34, which suddenly began
blinking and then disappeared altogether offline.
    System started to go on about the other near
probes that should be online, but were lost in the surface eruption
and others that had reported in but were otherwise teetering on the
verge of breakdown. That only left them with 8 fully functional
near probes for the sweep. Vast sums in military assets were being
lost, but that was far from any of her immediate
concerns.
    “Where is Farprobe 34?!” Mei
insisted.
    “Lost,” System replied. A display overlayed
Farprobe 34's forward camera