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rascal, Aru! Only someone raised in a
bloody arid hellscape could speak such evil of my beautiful and
cherished homeworld….” she lashed back, reminding herself of one of
the oldest joke out there on the subject and putting it forth at
once. “How does a Calidonian know he’s arrived in Hell?” she went
on, leaving only the briefest pause before he could try to preempt
the well-known punchline.
    “He doesn’t!” she spat out
prematurely.
    “Because he’s surrounded by Occitanians?” Aru
simultaneously countered.
    Mei hit him playfully, that cad! Clearly
pleased with his rejoinder, he smiled and laughed with her, at
least to the extent his noble-born and military conservatism
allowed.
    He really was so clever and
humorous… and so handsome. There was something about knowing that you could be
atomized into non-existence at any given moment that made all the
baggage seem inconsequential. She liked this feeling. It reminded
her of her cadet days at NavCenter, where she’d been fast-tracked
through the program to be commissioned under Captain Psyron of the
Kinetic Dream, the daring handsome captain of Fleet fame –who only
ever answered to himself. She was starry eyed in love before she
ever set foot on deck. And in her thirteen years of service beside
him, they had become iconic as inseparable lovers traversing the
Taiji and leaving tales of daring valor in their wake. They had
surely done all that, but in the day to day space could be quite
boring, and over the years the crew members had fallen away til
only they two remained. Aru had even broken off his family-approved
engagement to the daughter of another elite Calidonian house in
light of their unofficialized, yet widely-known and remarked upon,
relationship.
    This was what she’d been missing, more than
the sex, more than the glory: this simple happy companionship.
Maybe that's all there really is to love, just being able to joke
around.
    “Speaking of nightmarish fiery hellscapes…”
Aru said. “Let’s see where your brief stint at mission command has
taken us. System: full display, real scale, orient to forward
vector.”
    Since the Kinetic was a centrifuge, it was
constantly spinning, so the last command was standard to orient
their view in the direction the ship was moving toward rather than
any point of the 360 degree plane they might be randomly facing at
a given time.
    All sides of the tubular gray utilitarian
primary bridge suddenly burst forth in the vivid full-scale visual
spectrum view in real-time as it was received from the ships outer
shield ring sensors. It was Mei’s favorite mode of display because
it felt like standing bare in space, free and shipless. The full
scope of the forward display was taken up by the colossal form of
Ignis Rubeli, the Red Star, its surface bubbling and broiling
before them. The weaving strands of plasma twine shifted about the
surface by the whims of magnetic storms. It was breathtaking.
Though she’d seen such solar images before, never had she actually
viewed them whilst within the star, and that made all the
difference in how richly one experienced such a sight.
    She reached for Aru’s hand and it gently
reciprocated. She rested her head on his shoulder and felt happier
than she had in ages.
    “Kinny, raise bridge temperature 2 degrees,”
she ordered. “I’m a bit chilly.”
    “Yes, Commander.”
    Aru chuckled at her attempt to defy the
searing sea of flames. “I think more than anything this occasion
calls for… ice cream!”
    “Yes! Yes yes yes yes yes!” Mei agreed
giddily. She ordered up mango ice-cream with pineapple syrup from
Kinny, her nickname for System. Aru joined her with that same old
tropical nut-blend selection he never deviated from. They whiled
away the time, talking like the old days. They spoke a familiar
fare of family happenings, political gossip and going-ons, and
playful banter as they tore through the crown of Ignis Rubeli and
on into its fiery depths. It surely was a